Fireplaces
Here’s a gem I wrote after lunch today when all of the blood in my body pooled in my stomach. It’s an appallingly bad paragraph, but I couldn’t resist starting this musing with it:
Fatigue soaked dreariness encompasses my drying bones as I fight through a post-lunch food coma that’s decided that for now my brain and all of its messaging will stop moving and start sighing pitifully. Oh to complain most eloquently, that most virtuous of beasts, why do you avoid me?
I’m hoping the quality of my writing is directly proportionate (I guess which is different from indirectly proportionate, whatever that is) to the quality of the fire burning in my fireplace. Today I lit the perfect fire. Yesterday, the fire was weak, pathetic almost. I wasted tons of paper as kindling, but I didn’t place the wood properly and the fire burnt sporadically at best giving little light or warmth. The only good that came out of the fire yesterday was two partially burnt pieces of wood. I used those as the base of today’s fire along with a new log (wood side down, of course), added only a few pieces of newspaper as kindling, and I was rewarded with my best burning fire ever, the type of fire you only see in TV shows and commercials for Christmas carols. I tried to take a few pictures of the fire, but I think the excitement and the flash weakened the fire a bit, and it doesn’t look half as good as it did before I started clicking away.
Just as I was starting to get into writing my story, I receive an e-mail from Chuck, and in that e-mail he off-handedly mentions rereading some of the letters (see my archive section between 1995 and 1996) I wrote him when he first moved to Korea to get a feeling for what he was doing (by the way, Chuck, I have those letters under my bed in Brooklyn if you want copies of them). Suffice to say, I spent thirty minutes reading those older and horribly written—I’m not sure English was my first language—letters to search for inklings of my future writing voice. There are moments when I can almost see it, but then it runs away. Damn, I was a confused and sad individual back then. Now look at me: I have a purpose in my life, a love in my life, and a good job to support said purpose and love. Okay, enough of that, I have to get back to pursuing that purpose.
We return now to the streets of Brooklyn for the continuing saga of The Flying Toe Stomp.
Our school gym has a heavy, lingering polyurethane smell that overpowers you when you walk in, but fades into the background once you’re there for a few minutes, like the buzzing on walkie-talkies. The odor destroys your sense of smell for hours, ruining lunch if you are unlucky enough to have gym in the morning. Even opening the gym’s back doors didn’t help. If anything, when those doors are open—and they only open the doors when they fear that we’ll drop dead from the heat—the air outside the gym starts smelling badly but the gym air doesn’t change.
Charlie crossed the line with Roger during a morning gym period. The gym doors were open on an abnormally hot spring day where all you can think about was the heat and the impossibly slow moving clock. When you bothered to look around, and on days like that your body repays every bit of effort you expended in buckets of sweat, things looked wavy. Everyone acted out in class eager for the teacher to send them to the principal’s office since his office, like every administrator’s offices in the school, had air conditioning, a luxury they wouldn’t think of wasting on students. The teachers caught on quick, though. Only the most resourceful students could find an act that created enough anger in the teacher to send you to the office, but not enough to risk a long detention. Students overcrowded the nurse’s office and she ended up treating them in the hallways, painfully close but still outside her air-conditioned office.
Roger was playing his made-you-flinch game with Charlie during that gym period. We were standing around hoping the gym teacher would forget to come to class. The thought of playing anything on such a hot day was next to unbearable. Charlie and I were standing around and Roger joined us along with a few other kids. We were arguing about whether Mr. Gerling, our outsized gym teacher, was capable of speaking in full sentences or just grunts and explosions of words as he did during class. Roger jerked toward Charlie, his fists raised, and pulled back before he got close. Charlie took a quick step back and fell over. I’m not sure if Charlie was trying to get into his fighting stance, or just make sure that he was out of reach of Roger’s fists, but whatever went through his head at that moment, the result was he ended up flat on his butt in the gym.
The rest of the class gathered around Charlie and Roger and there were some catcalls and yells of “fight, fight.” Charlie remained seated for a while and we didn’t know what he was going to do. His eyes were watery and I was hoping for his sake that he wouldn’t cry. He surprised everyone, though, and instead of standing up, he slowly lifted his fist toward his face, his thumb inward, and formed the Roger nose. Someone chuckled and there were more cries for a fight, but to tell you the truth, I was disappointed. I expected more from Charlie. Charlie wasn’t done yet, however. He was far from done. Charlie removed his fist from his nose and lowered his arm slowly until both hands were behind him. He stared at Roger the entire time and used the palms of his hands to push himself up. He wiped off the back of his shorts and put his hands on his hips. Looking back, I should have jumped in and stopped him, but there was something fascinating about watching him work. His insults were a real art, if you know what I mean.
Charlie spoke quietly, and the circle of students closed in tighter. I think at that moment, Roger was having second thoughts. He didn’t want to fight Charlie even though we all thought that he would break Charlie in half like a fallen twig. It looked more as if Roger wanted to get out of there before Charlie started, but it was too late for that. There was no way that the circle of kids was going to let him get away that easily. That’s when Charlie said it. He said, and to this day I remember the words he used, he said, “Roger, your flinching didn’t knock me over. What you don’t realize—and I’m not sure if it’s because your acne sucks the essential oils from your brain or your greasy hair—is that when you jerk forward, your nose is at least five feet from your face. Even when you pull back, it’s too late.” There gym was dead silent. Even the cars driving on the avenue outside the school made no noise. We waited to see what Roger would do, what he would say. If I had the time to take odds, and I would have made a killing if I had, it would have been one to three that Roger would swing, three to one that Roger would say something lame, and ten to one that Roger would turn and run away. Roger started to say something, his face turning splotchy red and his mouth and jaw moving, but no words came out. Charlie stood in front of him and he made a fist and placed the pinky side of his fist on his cheek creating a reverse Roger nose to show us where Roger’s nose had hit him. We couldn’t stand it anymore and the entire class broke into laughter. Roger stood there and said nothing, his face turning redder until even the splotchy white parts stained red. The fight might have happened there if Mr. Gerling didn’t walk in. He barked, “laps,” or his indecipherable rendition of it, and we all groaned in unison and began running around the edge of the gym.
***
Argh! I spent too much time today editing instead of writing. I forgot all the lessons of the Marathon and instead of moving the story forward and getting lots of words on the paper for me to later manipulate, I spent the time forming and sculpting (I love that word) the first three paragraphs into beautiful but stale prose. I did catch a second wind toward the end, but I still don’t feel like I’ve found the voice I had during the first day’s writing.