A Torrent of Thudding Pain…and Not-Nurse-Ratched to the Rescue

[Just a note, Dear Readers:  Today is the 100th post at Dy’s Mind’s Eye! WTF?! I thought to wax quixotic about this milestone with you all…and maybe post something seriously ranty-ravey in my purest political uprisingness style. However, that is not to be. We’re in a happy cozy mode at El Castillo tonight…my marvelous Sky martinis, hot roasted smokehouse almonds, chilled prawns & cocktail sauce, BBQ ribs, coleslaw, Mr. RockStar and Fantabulous Daughter in Da Haus. It’s way too nice & mellow for a ranty-ravey-type hooplah. So sip your Friday Night Poison of Choice, and read this here little blurb of an installment in the continuing story of Jill & Thol. Short and Sweet tonight. We’ll catch ya later and Have a Fucking Marvelous Friday Night! 🙂 ]

“Jillian…darling…Jill, honey?”

Her Mother’s voice continued its irritating intrusion through the fog that was most likely some sort of sedative that had kept her asleep for…how long? What time was it now? What day? How many wasted hours had she been in this gawd-awful hospital? Had she missed many classes? She hated missing class and having to make up and catch up. She tried to sigh without letting her parents hear her.

“Em…” Now it was her father’s voice. “Emilia, leave her alone. She’ll open her eyes when she’s good and ready. Just…Em… I mean it. She’s fine. Come…let’s get some lunch, I’m starving…and we need to continue our discussion where it won’t disturb her. She needs her rest and we aren’t helping anything here.” He made his way toward the door, trying to steer his wife by the elbow in the same direction.

“Jill, dear, we’ll be right back, okay?” Oh, take your time, Mom, really. “You need anything…anything at all…just call the nurse. The nurses’ station knows how to reach your father and I…” Her voice faded away as she was gently pulled out the door by her husband.

Oh, thank god, thought Jill. Finally.

She gingerly opened one eye when she was pretty darn sure they were long gone down the antiseptic-smelling hallway. Good. The coast was clear. Now for the other one. Jeezus, her eyes stung like the insides of her lids were made of sandpaper doused with lemon juice. And her throat…she tried to swallow the golf-ball coated in crushed glass stuck between her tonsils and her collarbone. She needed some water, juice, something, that was for sure…anything liquid and cool to soothe the swollen scratchy painfulness of her throat. She looked around for the little plastic pitcher she was sure was nearby…there always was one in these hospital rooms, right? She’d seen them in every soap opera she’d ever tried not to notice on the televisions in her friends’ apartments and dorm rooms. There had been a one by her bed when she was a little girl of seven and she had her appendix out. Yep, they still used them…there it was on the little rolling table just out of reach. She struggled to sit up and reached for the puke-yellow/gold plastic pitcher and the matching cup beside it. Empty. It figured.

She pushed the button to call the nurse, despite her desperate need to shut out any and all persons at the moment. She needed to think, to try to remember what had happened, to try to figure out what she needed to do. Was her apartment completely toast? Was she going to have to move? Did she have anything left to move? Maybe it wasn’t as bad as that…maybe it was just a matter of repairs and replacing those possessions that were damaged in the fire. She brightened at that thought. If that was the case, she could hole up in a hotel for a while and not have to…she shook her head not wanting to think of the horror of the alternative, and released a torrent of sharp thudding pain throughout her skull. Ouch. Better remember not to do that for a while.

The nurse that answered the call was a heavy-set, older woman…probably in her late fifties to early  sixties. Jillian’s first impression of her was that she was not exactly a sweet grandmother type, yet not quite a Nurse Ratched, either. She was something in between, no-nonsense, with an air of “I’ve been doing this longer than you were even an egg in your mother’s ovum” about her. Tired maybe, but not weary, and to use the word efficient in describing her was probably the understatement of the year. She took one look at Jillian in her upright sitting position, saw the rolling table had been moved closer and knew exactly what was needed next. She swiped up the pitcher without a word and went to fill it from the tap. Jillian could only hope…in vain, she was sure…that the hospital had some kind of automatic water purification system of the Britta/Pur type throughout the building that would transform the water flowing from the tap in her particular room into something other than all the other tap water in the city. Yeah, right. Well, any water was better than no water at this point. A little chlorine right now wouldn’t kill her, but she longed for the sweet H2O of her Pur water filtration system at home even before she let the cup touch her lips and she could smell the chlorine and other unfamiliar miscellaneous chemicals used to treat the city’s water, to make it “drinkable”. Ugh.

Oh, but it did feel nice flowing down her raw irritated throat.

© 2011 D. Kessler

 

All that Glitters is Actually Platinum

Emilia Rosalind Amhurst Kingfisher was a piece of work, to put it mildly. In her early mid-fifties, she easily and consistently passed for forty due in part to good genes and in large part to one of the most expensive and exclusive plastic surgeons in the world. She thought nothing of jetting away to The Continent (as she called all of Europe) for a few days…or sometimes a few weeks…just to have Dr. Sebastian, her médecin extraordinaire, take a nip here, make a tuck there, inject, siphon, sculpt and plump as she felt necessary. In addition, her arsenal of vitamin supplements, prescription medications, ointments, creams and spa treatments added to her defenses against the all-evil eternal enemy: AGE. Her daily routine five days a week included at least three different exercise sessions…yoga, weight training, and various cardio workouts…all in the comfort and privacy of her own home, all by separate private coaches and all at least two hours each. Add to that her own private dietician to map out and plan her each and every meal with her own private chef and there was no way the enemy was going to sneak up on her. Being independently wealthy from before the day she was born, with no need to do anything whatsoever to stay that way, keeping up her appearance was her job. Hell, it was her duty, as she saw it.

She was, after all, Emilia Rosalind Amhurst Kingfisher, daughter of William Bertram Emerson Amhurst III, sole heir to one of the largest fortunes in America and overseer of over a dozen charities and trusts. Her grandfather, William Bertram Emerson Amhurst II, or “Bertie” as he was affectionately called, had grown up among the East Coast Elite and had been educated in the very best educational establishments money could buy…and money was definitely something the family had in great abundance. It flowed like water…or rather, it flowed like expensive champagne and the highest-end gin…and no Amhurst ever went parched.

Despite the exclusive clubs, the Washington connections, the dizzying array of parties and accompanying hob-knobbing with the elite of every corner of the globe, Bertie had wanted to set himself apart and lobbied his formidable father extensively to let him travel out to the west coast upon completing college on the pretext of temporarily overseeing the various oil interests the family held there. He wanted to see how the money was made, how to optimize the profits, to set himself apart and bask in the victory of millions of dollars bent into submission of his rule. Oh, but these were not reasons for going out west that he highlighted to his father. Heaven forbid he would want to dirty his hands and reputation with actual work! Even though he would really only be overseeing figures and visiting the various oil wells, overseeing shipping and sales arrangements and making business connections…of course, no actual “work” would be done. The mere association and implication of “work” was completely beneath any Amhurst. One hired others for such things. An Amhurst’s place was at one of his various social clubs…yachting, riding, tennis matches, and attending social functions with others of their bored class. No, he didn’t let on his true aspirations. He stressed to his father the importance of travel and a well-rounded knowledge of the country. One couldn’t be expected to end up in the White House if they didn’t know or understand anything of what lay west of Chicago. He’d be back after a few months…maybe a year…and father’s continuous schedule of brandy and cigars would take him over. So, scandalous though it was considered by his family and peers to actually do or even oversee any actual “business”, Bertie eventually won out and got his wish. He left by private rail car to points west the year he turned 23…and the year the country went dry…in nineteen-twenty. And the rest, as they say, was history.

Emilia had been the apple of Bertie’s eye…everyone’s eye, really. Silver spoon? Oh, no…more like a Platinum spoon, and a new one for every course of the lavish dinners that were the Amhust trademark and specialty. The only girl and youngest of only three grandchildren, everyone doted on her and there was nothing she couldn’t have or do. Her two cousins were awful boys, with no ambition and no real intelligence. All they cared about were sailing and cars and which girls they could impress with their old money. Grandpa Bertie knew it from the start, from when they were not even old enough to go off to prep school. It was Emilia that got Bertie’s personal attention, Emilia that went to Bertie’s offices during vacations from her East Coast schools, Emilia that Bertie thought of when he met Raymond Kingfisher and hired him to rethink his business portfolio.

Straight out of college with dual Masters degrees in finance and public relations in the early nineteen-seventies, Ray had been a seven years older than Emilia. She was only eighteen and not yet started at college herself, but Bertie knew he knew best and saw an opportunity he was not about to pass up even if his son, her father, couldn’t see it and wanted her to wait until after college to settle down. Over the course of the next couple years, Bertie made sure that Ray was invited to the same dinners as Emilia, was at every family holiday function, attended every polo match…and set him back east on business during the school year whenever possible. Eventually it stuck. The Christmas she was about to turn twenty years old…halfway thru her junior year at Bryn Mar…Ray asked Emilia to marry him in front of the entire West coast Amhurst clan. Grandpa Bertie had a light in his eyes that most in attendance thought was wistful beaming happiness, but it was the glint of money Bertie saw…the continuation of power as he molded it, as he wielded it even from his impending grave. They were married that June and Grandpa Bertie died a mere two months later in August…and Emilia never went back to finish her degree in Art History, as had been planned. 

But no matter, as she saw it. She had married Bertie’s own protégé with Bertie’s blessing…and inherited a large portion of his estate. It was not as large as her father’s share, of course. William Bertram Emerson Amhurst III was heir to the company and all its holdings, but she received a sizable sum as well as stock options…and in all, it was more than double what had been left to her two cousins combined.

She was pretty much set for life.

© 2011 D. Kessler

 

Upon Waking in the Most Uncomfortable Bed…In A Most Uncomfortable Situation…Amongst The Parentals.

Jillian awoke to the sounds of her mother & father arguing in hushed tones by the side of her hospital bed…hushed, yes, but arguing none the less. Although her head pounded & felt as if gripped by a vice in the worst way, and she couldn’t yet bring herself to open her burning eyes, she could guess what it was they were arguing about: Her. Oh, most definitely they were talking very urgently about…her. For a moment she cringed at the promise of her father’s impending lecture about the damage to the new Lexus, her beautiful Lexus (his words) that he had wrapped in ribbon to surprise her for her birthday…but then she remembered: it had all been a dream. The car was fine…well, she assumed that it was fine. Very most likely it was still parked in the secured garage under her apartment building. Next to the bicycle cage and mere feet from the door to the basement “lobby” as she called it. Not the real lobby of course, but the elevator landing accessible only to the tenants of the building through the garage. Might as well be a lobby, she thought. Sconces on the wall and a rug with an air not suited to muddy boots…but what was her mind doing rambling around about such things! The current urgent reality was vastly more important…and quite grim. She almost rather the Lexus was bashed to a pulp, completely totaled, compared to her current state of affairs! Her apartment was toast…literally. He refuge from her father and his continual urgent expectations, her inner sanctum…burnt to a crisp, probably a gutted box of charred filth…as also were all her belongings, she was sure.

She mentally heaved a huge sigh to muster the courage to open her eyes. She just needed a few more moments to hash out a plan…a story…something that would stave off the vultures, uh, her parents, she meant. She knew that this was all they needed to…

“Oh! She’s awake! Ray, honey…stop, just stop. Our daughter’s awake…”

Jillian chanced a peek from one slitted eyelid to see that, yes, her mother had noticed she was conscious. Hell, her “mental sigh” had probably been a REAL sigh and audible to everyone in the room. Crap.

“Jill, darling…Jill? Can you hear me? It’s Mother. How are you feeling?” Emilia’s elegant fingers with extremely well manicured nails adjusted the thin blanket around her daughter. Jill inwardly cringed. When would she just stop treating her like a child? She felt she was just some mobile real-life accessory…a doll, a pet…to her mother’s never-ending parade of fashionable moments. She was merely something precious to be shown to all on Emilia’s whim, her mother never seeing the real person that was there, the daughter as a force of nature in her own right and not just some extension of the Grand Emilia Rosalind Amhurst Kingfisher. She was an expensive knick-knack to be gloated about or embarrassed about or…worse yet…to be disappointed and annoyed about.

© 2011 D. Kessler

 

Pour Me a Glass of AB Negative and Hand Me the Clicker (or…It’s Not About the Writer’s Block. It’s about the Writer’s Cluster-fuck Traffic Jam)

One of the many reasons I seem to have difficulty in writing something every day is that I just can’t decide what to write about. There are so many things that interest me that my mind flits from topic to topic all day. Yes, okay, so maybe I’m a bit A.D.D…Hell, A.D.H.D. even…but come ON. It shouldn’t be that hard, you know? Throughout the day I will find something that catches my ear or eye and go “Yeah! THAT’s what I’m going to write about tonight!” Then, I get home and I’m screwed…because there were at least a hundred moments like that from the time I got up to the time I got home and they are all shiny at first…and kind of dull by the time I get home.

I’ve tried keeping a list of everything as they pop into my head, augmented with little notes as to where I want to go with it, that way I can review and research them after I leave the office. I listen to a lot of NPR with earbuds while slaving away in the Cubicle of Doom…keeps me from being distracted by others in the office, helps me “get in the zone”, as it were. So, I’ll be listening to Talk of the Nation or The World or Fresh Air with Terry Gross…or any number of other programs…and there will be a blip about something that I want to check up on when I get home. Yes…when I get home.

*sigh*

See, I can’t just stop work and research it right then and there. Oh, no…and not just because I’m supposed to be filing, amending, inquiring, researching any number of the tasks I actually get paid a pittance for. No, more than that it’s the dreaded BARRACUDA… the SlaveBox’s Nazi Web-Filter. This security filter makes just surfing the web very problematic. It seems that everything you actually want to look at is “restricted” and so we get the “access denied” screen of doom for all sorts of things you wouldn’t even think it would apply to. I’m not talking just of the understandable and usual no-YouTube/no-Twitter/no-Facebook and no access to your personal web-based email like Yahoo or Hotmail or Gmail. If there is any possibility of streaming media of any kind on a site the whole site is blocked. That’s it. No can do. Do not pass “Go!” Do not collect $200.00. This means no going to the NPR website at all because, at that website, there is the mere hint of the possibility that you might-could listen to one of their podcasts. Even if all you want to do to just READ the damn story or check out a photo they were talking about on Science Friday…nope, no can do. Yeah, it’s not so fun.

Not being able to do even the most rudimentary of research such as this makes it very hard to keep your topic of choice in mind all day. For me, doing a bit of investigation helps to lock the idea in place, keeps the plate warm, reminds me to check back on it and where to check back in on it. So, try as I might to keep notes that pop into my head…I put them in a little on-going open email to myself and send it off to my personal web-based email at the end of the day so I can refer to it when I get home…it just doesn’t work. It’s very hard to keep the momentum going on any of this if you have to break away from it repeatedly. And then…the moment is gone. I imagine this is what it is like for a musician that has a hook in their head and then, if they wait too long to get it down, to try it out, to record a rudimentary riff on their voice memo app on their iPhone…it’s on the wind and gone. It’s the Mist of the Muse. *sigh*

Yeah…and it’s a problem.

So, here I sit at home now with an email full of notes that barely make sense even to me, on a hundred different topics, and now I’m like, “Uh…where do I start?”

I want to write about all of them. I want to write about none of them. I want to write about something else that grabs me…that way it will grab you. I want…

Damn it. I just want a glass of wine and a True Blood episode. Screw this.

And so…that’s my continual Dilemma…of Death.

© 2011 D. Kessler

 

Some Fluffy Stuff Floating Between The Ears

I know I’m all over the place here lately. New Year’s Resolutions, a rant about winter and the retail nightmare, a blurb about lesser headlines and a near-choked-up tribute to a recently dead-and-gone musician doesn’t really live up to my previous life as a post-every-day ranting lunatic, a political-and-entertainment-news op-ed wanna-be somewhat serious writer. But at least I’m writing/posting SOMETHING. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

Yes, getting back in the groove of posting something meaningful every day, or at least somewhat entertaining, is proving to be harder than I’d like. Thank the ever-glorious SlaveBox aka Cubicle of Doom for zapping the light & life out of me by the time time I set foot on the bus home. Add to that a tiny (read 650 sq ft) apartment with three adults and two cats…and at least three-to-five large egos…all living, breathing, fighting and whatever else you can imagine and holy crap you’ve got a pickle of a situation. Where the hell am I supposed to squeeze in the time and mind-set to focus on a single topic let alone actually form an opinion about it? Um…yeah. *sigh* We’re working on that part, but bear with me for a while longer, okay? 

Here’s the plan…or at least a foggy semblance of an outline of a plan.

Since we be a nine-to-fiver (or thereabouts) during the week, expect some fluff on the weekdays. Might be a gem that emerges here and there, but then it might just be some fluffy stuff floating between my ears.

Weekends are my time…all day in pajamas time…so that’s the time we hope to focus on getting some actual writing done. Think of Dy’s Mind’s Eye more like a weekly zine…in one or two installments. Hopefully part one on Saturday, part two on Sunday. Anyway…that’s the idea I’m runnin’ with. To be clear, we’ll be here everyday (hopefully) keeping the space warm, feeding the fire, handing out tid-bits to the masses…sides to the Main Entree, as it were. The supporting roles to the Saturday/Sunday Sit-Down.

That said, for today’s tid-bit I thought I’d share my Morning Coffee SlaveBox Playlist for today. Yes it’s fluff…but it’s nice fluff.  I’ve added links to various versions of most of the tunes via YouTube etc where available. Enjoy. 🙂

Morning Coffee SlaveBox Playlist

Massive Attack – Karmacoma
Stegasaurus Rex – Premumbra
Royksopp – Triumphant
Maia Krasnaia – On Ledianoi
Massive Attack – A Prayer For England 
Jel – Sweet Cream In It
Frederico Aubele – Postales 
Tricky – Overcome
Moby – Natural Blues
Massive Attack – Paradise Circus 
General Fuzz – Comfort Zone
Gotan Project – Tango Cancion 
PANTyRAID – Get the Money
Trance Fury – Guilt 
Mono – Silicone 
All India Radio – Lo Fi Groovy
Gotan Project – Vuelvo Al Sur
DJ Shadow- Midnight in a Perfect World
The Last Atlant – Anima Mundi
The Crystal Method – London

© 2011 D. Kessler

 

Oh no, I di’n’t…Oh yes, I did…(Or, Back From The Grave: Part 1)

So you see, there’s been no action over here for quite a while…like months. Part of that was due to some weirdness with my ‘puter (see previous post), part was because I no longer have wi-fi access anywhere in my apartment, and part (most?) was because I was Just Plain Lazy. Tired and Uninspired. Had a serious case of Writer’s Block. Ok ok…I Just Plain Suck.

HOWEVER…as part of the Jump On The Bandwagon Program (also known as the New Year’s Resolution Brainstorm, version 20.10), I plan to…I endeavor to…I’m gonna TRY to…?  Whatever. Let’s just say there’s going to be a flurry of activity over here…well, at least compared to what’s been going on here in the past few (many!) months. It’ll be starting out as a small flurry…an occasional dust devil, if you will…nothing big enough to lift a farmhouse out of Kansas over the rainbow…but it will be SOMETHING.  And that’s the important part.  Writing SOMETHING…anything…getting back in the swing of things.   

Ya’ll should bear with me, though…I might have forgotten how to ride this bike just like I forgot how to drive a car.  We won’t be poppin’ wheelies or yellin’ “Look, Ma! No hands!” right away. And we may even be a bit all over the place, wobbling back and forth from one side of the road to the other, sampling a plethora of topics as they flit though my mind (like they always do. Focus? What’s focus? I swear sometimes I…Oh! Wow, look at that! SHINEY!! Wheeee!)

Uh…Where was I?  Oh yeah. Topics. Bunches of them. Some fun, some we’ll have to try to make fun, some angry, some just there…but then again, this IS Dy’s Mind’s Eye.  It’s just observations from my reality. So, welcome back to my reality, Everyone.  And welcome back to Me!  It will feel good to breathe again, I think.  Because that’s what writing is in my world: Life’s Breath.  And I’m back from the grave, Baybee!  Oh yeah!

 

Writer’s Block: Take Two and Try Again Tomorrow…

As I apparently blew off my writing/blogging for the month of January…with the exception of two posts…it was with trepidation that I meandered over to the NaBloPoMo site in search of a new badge for February for the right-side column of my blog’s front page.  Does it make a mockery of the whole idea if I, with my happy little badge declaring that “I write every day!”, don’t fulfill the task?  I mean, you all see that little thing in the corner and go, ‘Yeah, right, Dy.  Sure you’re going to post everyday.  Uh-huh. Ok. Whatever you say.  You know we came by here a number of days last month and you were nowhere to be found.  Totally incognito, kaput, vaporized…just plain GONE.”

*sigh*

Yes, that’s true.  But then there’s the idea that if I stick that badge in the corner that maybe it’ll help nudge me in that direction, sort of a way to guilt me into it, as it were.  Not that I don’t want to write something everyday, it’s just that it seems so hard lately to do so.  I don’t have the helpful external prodding from the media blitz that preceded the election, I don’t have the hours of nothing to do that I did before I re-joined the workforce, I don’t have the brain energy to get wrapped up in some trivial thing and make it a big thing and I certainly don’t seem to have the words free-flowing out my fingertips. 

Not to say that I don’t have the words still stewing and swirling around my brain…they just seem to be having a hard time finding the correct corridor to the exit. 

See, the words that are romping around my head seem be different than the previous ones.  Additionally, they have stifled the cool creative words, the words that really want to/need to get out and about, the words that are interesting and create stories and opinions and observations worth reading.  The non-cool words…aka the Bully Words…sprout from things like financial concerns and getting my living space livable and PMS and general non-happenings that bug me in Real Life…things that are best left in a private journal or hashed out with one’s psychiatrist.  These Bully Words loiter around the hallways of my brain, blocking the exits for the Creative Words…and they apparently think this is a riot.  I imagine them calling out in their best Nelson voice, “Haw-haw!  Look at the freaky-artsy-fartsies trying to get out!  Haw-haw! What a bunch of idiots!  Haw-haw!”  Which, of course, makes the neurotic Creative Words forget all their Coolness and they mill about trying to look cool and pretend that they’re waiting for other Cool Creative Words to hang out with…which means that they never really get out, do they?

Well. We’re. Not. Having. Any of it!  Apparently the geekiest of the Creative Words made it out somehow…or else how do you explain this bizarre metaphor of a story?

So.  February’s topic at NaBloPoMo is WANT…and I WANT to beat those Bully Words to a pulp and get those Cool Creative Words flowing again.  If ya’ll have any ideas on how to get that done, by all means, toss ’em my way!  In the meantime, it is my full intention to plop some shit on this shingle everyday this month…hopefully some of it will be worth reading.

See ya tomorrow…one way or the other…

© 2009 D. Kessler