The Game of Reasons: A Fable

There was once a woman who lived at the outermost edge of a crowded city. She wasn't wealthy. She wasn't particularly powerful, either. But she had something in abundance that was rarer than either of those things – time. And because her time was precious, many came knocking at her door.

At first, they asked for what they wanted gently and with prudence. “Walk with me,” said one. “Write me a letter,” said another. And the woman, being kind and mindful of the feelings of others, often said yes. But when she said no, they demanded to know why.

So she gave them reasons. “I am tired.” “I have work to do.” “I must tend my garden and feed my animals.”

And each time, the petitioner smiled, tied a little rope around her wrist, and said, “Then I will wait until you are rested.” Or, “Then I will walk with you while you work.” Or, “Then I will help in your garden, and you will owe me your company.”

Soon, both of the woman's wrists were completely bound by great quantities of rope woven from her own words.

Then one day, a stranger came, not to ask, but simply to watch. He noticed the woman tugging at her bindings and rubbing her red, raw wrists. He saw the neighbors tightening the bindings and adding more of them with every new reason she offered. Finally, he asked her, “Why do you keep handing them more rope to bind you with?”

The woman was weary. “If I do not give a reason, they will think me cruel,” she said.

The stranger shook his head. “No. If you give them rope, they will only bind you tighter. The cruelty is theirs, not yours. Why not simply stop playing the game?”

So the next time someone asked, “Why will you not give me your time?” the woman answered only, “Because I do not want to and simply will not.”

And this time, when they reached for the rope, there was none to take.

Some grew angry. They shouted. They called her cold, selfish, and unkind. But their hands remained empty all the same, and so their games ended there because they had to. Others, seeing she would not be bound, stopped asking for reasons at all. They learned to ask for less and accept her answers as they came (if they came).

The woman, though lonelier at first, eventually grew lighter day by day. Her wrists healed, and the raw redness went away. Her garden flourished. She forgot what it felt like to be bound. She also found that the ones who stayed were those who loved her without proof. Those who could cherish the yes while retaining the ability to hear no.

So it is told. The ones who demand reasons seek only control. The rope you hand them is woven from your own excuses, and the only way to win the game of reasons is never to play.

The Iron Heart of Heaven: A Parable

The first time it fell, no one noticed.

It struck the earth in the night, a streak of fire breaking across the crooked sky. By morning, only a shallow crater marked the spot where it had landed. The farmers who found it thought it was a piece of machinery, an engine torn from some plane that must have somehow passed unseen. 

They tried to lift it, but the weight pulled their arms down as though the thing were rooted to the ground. It made no sound, no hum. It gave off no shiver of heat. It was just iron, so its only language was silence.

They called it the Heart, because that was the only shape everyone who saw it could agree upon. It wasn't a wheel, or a blade, or a stone. It was a heart. But it was also too heavy, too perfect, and too empty to be alive. 

Some claimed it pulsed faintly at night, though no two watchers could agree on the rhythm. Others swore that when they leaned close, they heard their own name whispered from inside.

And then the rulers came, of course. They always do.

They declared the Heart an object of study, property of the crooked crown. Men in uniforms tried to chain it, winch it, drag it out of the crater. But every chain mysteriously rusted through before breaking. Every machine groaned and died. And the Heart remained, unmoved. At last, the rulers agreed to place a veil over it, and they called it holy. 

"Do not touch," they said. "Do not question. It is the will of heaven." 

But in the crooked world, nothing is ever straight.

The fields began to wither, rivers bent away from their banks, and afternoon shadows lengthened at wrong angles. Sleepwalkers carried on their errands without noticing, but those with sparks inside felt the slant of things. They laughed or wept without knowing why. They dreamed of iron teeth gnashing through the sky. And always, the Heart waited.

Unilt one among them was chosen.

He was no priest, no scholar, no soldier. He was simply one whose laughter had split the silence. He alone saw the Heart not as a blessing or a curse, but as a burden. 

The dream came to him first. A world that would fold like paper and collapse into silence if the Heart were not returned. And he woke with his hands aching as though he had carried a weight through the night.

The Chalk in His Pocket

Conversations With Robin at the Edge of Departure

Eleven years ago, we lost the unparalleled Robin Williams. 

I've been thinking about Robin a lot lately, since long before I realized the anniversary of his death was coming up. Among other things, it made me realize how much I miss coming up with little stories to tell people about all these beloved figures who pass away. 

I apparently still really like mythologizing life, both my own life and life in general. And getting back to that, even in small ways, has been therapeutic in ways I didn't expect, like a return to form, because this is totally something I would have done as a little girl.

As I get older and so many of the public figures I grew up with and looked up to over the years pass on, it's freaking me out on this whole other level. Index of the Sainted Dead was created specifically to honor and elevate those people in a small, simple way I can keep up with and add to over time.

But before I had the index, I used to have dreams about a liminal train station called Cold Station. The vast majority of these sainted dead would pass through there and sometimes even stay a while before moving on. Sometimes I'd talk to them. And then I'd share these dreams on Facebook the next day with other friends who might be grieving.

When I met Robin there, he was throwing a Mardi Gras party, despite the fact that it was the middle of August. I can still taste and smell the special kettle corn he served. Then, not that long ago – maybe a week or so – I had another dream about Robin of Cold Station. In this dream, Robin had apparently elected not to leave (yet), as he'd found a new sort of purpose there. Here's a little flash fiction about that, to honor him on the eleventh anniversary of his passing. 

Remember, the opposite of death is not life. It's birth. That was a door. And this is a door. Everything else is one very long story you're writing yourself while you make your way across the bridge between them.

Fine China and Swine

They said she was mad.

Not with any sentiment as dark as malice, or at least not exactly. They just used that tongue-clucking, tilted-head tone people use when someone stops playing by the rules. When someone removes the lace from the curtains and starts growing wildflowers instead of roses.

“She actually used to be... sort of normal,” the butcher muttered to the baker. “She taught piano. Had that shy, quiet little husband who sold shoes. What was his name again?”

They no longer exactly remember, and maybe that was always the point.

She didn't take much when she left the house on Hazel Street. Just her books, her perfume, and three heavy trunks of clothes she hadn’t worn in years — gowns she once called “ridiculous” and now called “essential.” She also took a single teacup with a crack in it and a chipped plate shaped like a scallop shell. 

She left the wedding china. She'd never actually wanted it anyway.

The farmhouse was already hers, an inheritance from a great-aunt no one remembered. It sat just past the willow grove, just down a little dusty dirt road that likely hadn’t seen a carriage in half a century. The house was crooked, and the roof leaked in four different places. Sometimes crows congregated on the roof after a storm, looking for wayward bugs and other prizes. It was perfect.

The pigs came with the land.

They were half-feral and vaguely pink, with beady dark eyes like muddy marbles. At first, she only watched them from the window, wary. But then one day, she noticed they had been watching her, too, in that way animals do when they know something about you that you don’t yet know yourself. First, she fed them. Then, she talked to them, tentatively and quietly. Then, she danced with them in the golden hour, as it seemed like the most appropriate time for such goings-on.

“They say I’m mad,” she told them one evening, reclining on the grass in a dress the color of old, dried blood. “But the truth is, I’m just finished.”

And she was. She was finished apologizing for her voice, her laugh, and her hunger for all sorts of exciting things. Finished folding herself into half-measures and polite silences. She was definitely finished saying "thank you" when what she really wanted to say was "don’t touch me."

The pigs didn’t answer, but one of them placed a gentle snout in her lap in a silent show of support. That was enough.

The townspeople took to whispering when they passed her gate. She never locked it, because she didn’t have to, because no one dared go past the willow trees. “She feeds them by hand,” someone whispered. “I hear she even lets them into the house,” hissed another. One woman claimed she saw candles in every window, all lit at once, like a séance or a wedding was going on inside. Maybe even something worse.

“She’s always alone,” the grocer’s wife said. “Except for the pigs.”

That part was true.

But she liked being alone. (For now, anyway.) She liked the silence of wide rooms with no one in them who was asking her to shrink for no good reason. She could light all the candles she wanted simply because it pleased her. She wore perfume because it made her feel like a badly-kept secret. She poured red wine or Earl Grey tea into fine china and sat on the porch at dusk, surrounded by soft oinks and rich golden light while crows squawked in the distance.

Sometimes she laughed. Loud, unfiltered laughter that rose through the trees and made birds scatter. “She was always a little touched,” the librarian said. “Even before the divorce.” No one ever mentions what happened to the husband. Not anymore.

But occasionally, someone swears they saw him at the edge of the grove once. They say he had mud on his cuffs and a nasty scratch down one cheek. His eyes were wide and startled like someone who had seen a ghost that looked an awful lot like regret.

No one asked questions. No one really wanted answers. Meanwhile, she lived.

She embroidered things that didn’t really need embroidery, just because. She read poetry to the pigs. She bathed beneath the stars, unashamed. Sometimes she wore the crown she made from rusted nails and ivy and laughed like a woman who finally understood the joke.

They said she was mad.

But the pigs followed her everywhere, and the wind listened when she felt like talking. And every time she raised her cracked teacup to the setting sun, the whole world paused, just for a second, to see what she would do next.

* This freewriting exercise is part of the full moon edition of the Feast of the Wandering Pen, a lunar-centric writing challenge about consistency, creativity, and storytelling.

A Few Year's End Thoughts on Writing, Inspiration, and Ideas

With Christmas and New Year's Day having fallen on Fridays this year, I don't know whether I'm coming or going at this point. On the one hand, I don't really take vacations anymore, as it just doesn't make sense for my writing career right now. That makes the occasional long weekend extra important, though, and I've realized just how badly I needed some downtime these past couple of weeks.

Naturally, 2020 was stressful for me for all the same reasons it was stressful for everyone. But it's also been a very productive year for me personally. I never would have seen that coming at this same time last year, but it just goes to show you that you never know what's around the corner. It does pay to hang in there and keep trucking, even when you're sure you're not getting anywhere. 

In fact, the past twelve months have done something for me that I wasn't sure could be done after well over a decade of full-time professional writing. It gave me new reasons to get excited about sitting down to write, as well as new chances to do precisely the kind of writing I've always wanted to do as far as my living goes. I'm currently working on becoming my own version of Carrie Bradshaw, and it's been both fun and lucrative so far -- a winning combination if ever there was one. 

........

Our Christmas and New Year's celebrations were blissfully low-key. I slow-cooked a ham for Christmas and made pork chops with homemade mac and cheese, black-eyed peas, and collard greens for New Year's. I also baked for a change -- gingerbread for Christmas and sugar cookies for New Year's. I often forget just how special homemade baked goods can make a holiday, but I enjoyed them immensely this year -- both the baking and the eating. 

Seth and I spent our time enjoying being together, as well as catching up on movies and television we'd missed in recent months and years. We watched HBO's Chernobyl, which we just finished last night. We also watched an absolutely fantastic movie called I'm Thinking of Ending Things. It was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, the same writer responsible for another long-time favorite of mine -- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.