The Hellish Handbasket Blog

  • On the continuum

    Have you ever seen a stranger doing something that makes you wonder if they are functioning with a different operating system than other people you know? For example, once I was on the bus, and I saw a young man with a large book on his lap, I think it was a dictionary, and he was methodically crossing out line after line with a black marker. As if he were erasing language. It was kind of mesmerizing to watch and wonder what world he lived in.

    Something similar happened at the writer’s group on Friday. While a member (I’ll call him Gerald) was reading a short but deep essay about the nature of a box, another member of the group (I’ll call her Maggie) appeared to be listening intently with her head turned toward him. As Gerald’s voice rose and fell in a poet’s cadence, Maggie nibbled on a wrinkle on the shoulder of her T-shirt shirt. Not once or twice, but for at least a minute, she pensively tasted the wrinkle. At times she seemed to be looking in my direction but I could not say if she saw me. In any case, she did not stop nibbling.

    I felt like I was looking through a window into an exotic foreign land, where a green cotton T-shirt could be considered food.

    I wonder what else I’ve been missing.

    Here are the five words from last week’s meeting, followed by my contribution.

    Search

    Recollection

    Myth

    Manipulate

    Find

    I searched my recollection archives, looking for a spell small enough to manipulate but not large enough to kill me. I thought I’d stored something reasonably bite-sized last week when I was looking up how to live the slacker life after retirement. Apparently my filing system went haywire when my cat knocked over the myth-maker in the corner. (Note to self: That seems to be happening more often. Time to take the cat to the vet and find out why it hates me). Anyway, I went deep into the archives. I searched in all the corners, honest, but the smaller spells seemed to be hiding under drifts of cat hair. All I found was a box of expired Dinomite Magic Flakes, which taste like crap without some Millennium Soymilk to wash them down. Anyhoo, the upshot of my futile search was I chewed on a spell that was too big for me. It blew a hole in my mother’s roof, and that’s why I have to go back to work.

    Some of the members write a lot more than I do in twenty minutes, which I find amazing. They apparently don’t edit themselves like I do. I write into a Google Doc on a dinky off-brand tablet. That means I can easily chop my words down to something resembling a succinct story. But some of the members write on laptops, so presumably they could do that too.

    In my defense (as if I needed to defend myself), I write something original every time. In other words, I base my writing on the five words. The words are the thread that inspires the subject and the action. So maybe it’s not surprising I don’t write as much as others.

    Gerald writes the same way, and he manages to write a lot. Maybe it’s because he’s a poet, and his words sound like music. In contrast, the other three members in attendance set their stories in worlds they have already created, with characters they know well. I am guessing that approach is easier than starting from scratch.

    I wonder if I should try that next time? What world would be the backdrop for my story? What characters from past novels would I bring back to life? Or would I try to present the world I’m building in my current novel before it’s ready to debut?

    After two seconds of pondering, I conclude it’s much less painful to pull something out of the air each time than to expose my half-formed world to the scrutiny of strangers. Unexpected responses could happen. For example, what if they all starting nibbling on their shirts or blouses? I’m not prepared to see my work whet their appetite for cotton—or any other fabric, for that matter. What if they chewed on polyester and got explosive diarrhea, right there in the library conference room? I’m guessing it wouldn’t be cheap to hose off those Pepto Bismol-colored Pleather chairs.

    No, I’ll wait until I’m ready. Meanwhile, I will continue to glean inspiration from five random words. It’s the safer highwire.

  • Why wait? You can always pre-worry

    When something good happens, my first inclination is to pretend it didn’t happen, like a compliment or a good grade. Like my car running so well for so long. Like Walmart having excellent Smic apples. Like this spacious apartment in this peaceful small town. After I finally realize I can’t deny it has happened or is happening now, my next thought is, someone is going to take this from me.

    When I see a blue summer sky, my next thought is, winter is coming. When I see my empty inbox, my next thought is, this won’t last, soon someone will demand my attention, I’ll have to pretend I’m smart, and my freedom will end.

    My friend would say I’m being controlled by childhood trauma. Maybe she is right. I don’t know. I am not a psychologist. I’m not seeing one either.

    I don’t let negative thoughts stop me from doing, receiving, and enjoying, but I am aware of those thoughts. Another friend said (about herself), “On a good day, my mind is trying to kill me.” That claim always makes me laugh. It’s a dark way to look at life, but it also rings true in a macabre sort of way, which I find hilarious.

    Right now, the sky is blue. But it wasn’t earlier, and it won’t be forever. Winter is coming, whether I live to see it or not.

    What is reality? Who knows. Sometimes I worry about the state of the world even before bad things have happened. But, as the economists say, in the long run, we are all dead.

    For some reason, making room for neutral thoughts cancels out my pre-worrying. I don’t find it depressing to think about things ending. I feel sad sometimes but I don’t feel depressed. I find it liberating to realize the universe does not depend on my existence. It takes the pressure off. I don’t have to do or be anything other than what I’m doing and being.

  • Outrage is the last refuge of the incredulous

    I can’t wrap my brain around some things that are happening in the world. My refuge is to hide in a sticky messy bog of simmering anger. Even though I know it’s useless to try to hide. Insanity is everywhere.

    To me, the sad thing is the incompetence, obliviousness, and cruelty (here’s looking at you, America) have repercussions for everyone and everything on the planet. I’ve said before the earth would be better off without humans, and I stand by that statement. The evidence speaks for itself, getting louder everyday. The world is on fire.

    Here are the five words from Friday’s writer’s group:

    Regurgitate

    Constipation

    Obstinacy

    Cleanse

    Between

    Should I hold it all in or should I let it all out? I’m torn between the two. Looking at the empty page on my computer always makes me wish I hadn’t eaten those nachos. Regurgitating the ideas I’ve been incubating can be so satisfying at times, but it’s rarely a cleansing operation. The insipid words I’ve spewed all over the screen are almost always banal, trivial, inane… all the adjectives a hack writer doesn’t want to see when reading Amazon reviews of her latest novel.

    On the other hand, holding it all in, like the chronically constipated residents of the nursing home I used to work for back when I thought a regular paycheck was essential (before I knew what happens when you give an obstinate 85-year-old too much Miralax), well, holding things in can cause its own set of challenges. Sometimes the best solution is to do neither. The creative muse often takes a hike. The liminal space between is the wellspring of curiosity, which is why I keep trying those nachos.

    I find it endearing, amusing, what’s the right word, that almost all the writers in the group show up for the Five Words meetings and hardly any of them show up for the Writing Only meetings. If suppose if I lived far away, I probably wouldn’t attend every meeting. I have no geographical excuse. I can literally walk around one corner and down the street for five minutes and be at the library parking lot. I have no excuse for not going. So I go. And I write.

    I get it. On the Five Words days, there’s no pressure. After we share our contributions, few people have outside work they want to read. I’ve been pondering what I will do when I run out of blogposts. I still have a few more weeks’ worth of entertainment. But eventually my inventory content will run dry, and then the pressure to write something new to read will ramp up. For the first time since I started attending, I might have to say those shameful words: “I got nothing.”

    My deep fear is I might feel obligated to read a scene from my current writing project. Which is progressing, thanks for asking. Reading work in progress inspires anxiety.

    Speaking of feedback, the leader of the writers pack invited the women writers in the group to join her in a new critique group. Red flags sprang up immediately upon reading her email. For one thing, a group of women? No way. A room of female energy is too hormonal. Second, critique? No way. I’m happy to review other peoples’ work, but they better keep their grimy opinions off mine. Third, the leader said she was stuck and needed some feedback on what to do. She was referring to character, plot, setting, etc. My opinion is if you have to ask a group about those things, you should just make the group your ghostwriters, because you have lost your voice.

    Many years ago, I joined some friends in an Artists Way group. I was lost in indecision so I welcomed others’ input. Life is much easier when you delegate thinking to someone else (here’s looking at you, America). Plus, I got a certain level of satisfaction at hearing myself read and hearing others praise what I wrote. Immature, I know. I had no sense of self back then. I didn’t find my own voice until I was in my forties, and even then my voice was riddled with the paradoxical malady of self-doubt and self-seeking.

    Can I say my writing has changed since then? Sure, I can say whatever I want. It’s my blog. I believe after my ill-fated foray into academia, my creative writing has improved somewhat since the early 1990s. It’s still all about me, though.

  • Help, I’m lost in the mind palace and I can’t get out

    I used to have an excellent visual memory. Not eidetic, but I could easily visualize words and phone numbers. This skill made me a star in spelling bees. I found it useful on tests as well: I could remember how paragraphs looked on a textbook page, including subheadings. I didn’t think anything of it.

    I thought everyone’s memory worked this way, until I met someone who remembered events as if they were filming a movie: every scene, every bit of dialog, captured accurately in sequence, frame by frame. I was astounded and envious. That’s when I realized I remember events in snapshots. I can’t remember what came before what unless the end of a story is emotionally charged, like a breakup, a bad driving error, or some form of public humilation (like forgetting my speech at a Toastmasters competition).

    Sadly for me, somewhere in my 50s, my visual memory skill deserted me. The loss was gradual but it was a fast gradual, like how objects in the rear view mirror recede when you’re going 75 mph. Now I can’t remember phone numbers unless I dial them frequently (in my defense, who does that anymore?). I’m really bummed that I can’t spell a word by how it looks. Double sad for me, no other memory skill has replaced what I lost.

    I can hear you saying, but Carol, don’t be such a downer, you can develop new memory skills. Audio for instance. Make sound your friend. I’d like to, but sorry, I never had an audio memory for anything but Monkee songs. Others of you are cautiously saying, but Carol, have you heard of this thing called a memory palace? Yes, I have. First of all, palace? Dumb name. Where would I have developed any connection to a palace? Second, I can visualize my childhood home fairly accurately. Up the concrete steps, through the dark green screen door (don’t slam it!). Piano to the right, Dutch Village TV and Hi-Fi console record player/radio to the left. White fireplace, afghan covered couch. My high school paintings on the walls. Dining room barely big enough to hold the table, Persian rug, bay windows. Kitchen, formica topped table, window curtains with blue and green pompoms, phone table, chalkboard, black rotary phone (Alpine 4-67XX). Stainless steel sink (unwashed glass holding dregs of Dad’s Metamucil), dishwasher that never worked, Grandma’s sewing machine.

    I could go on. The problem isn’t remembering my home. It’s remembering what words and numbers I put in the rooms. I know what the piano looks like down to the sticky keys but what word did I attach to the piano? No clue.

    You could say this is just age. You could say it’s the onset of dementia. You might be right on both counts.

    When I was young, I was privately haughty when I encountered classmates or friends who couldn’t remember how to do things that were second nature to me. I understand now that there are many ways to remember, and I was good at only one.

  • Freaks, weirdos, losers, and crazies

    I laughed when I read that a member of the current regime used the phrase “freaks, weirdos, losers, and crazies” recently to refer to members of the political party he would like to see deported. I’ve been a card-carrying member of at least one of those groups for most of my life. As evidence, I give you my elementary school fears, my high school social awkwardness, my college indecisions and geographicals (more than one), my so-called career as an impostor teacher, my current job as a faculty-wannabe, and my on-again-off-again lovefest with creativity. Oh, I forgot to mention my many failed relationships and my recent stint of homelessness.

    I think I’m qualified to be considered a freak-weirdo-loser-crazy, possibly all at the same time. I’m not ashamed. I’m proud, especially because a member of the regime I find particularly abhorrent thinks people like me don’t deserve to exist. Maybe someday he will wake up (when he’s in prison) and realize he’s a member too. Joke’s on him.

    Speaking of jokes, or maybe not, I trotted over to the library on Friday to sit with the leader of the writers group to get some work done on my current writing project. Every other week, the agenda is what she calls “Write, write, write.” These days are designated as writing days. Almost always, we are the only ones there. I assume the other members opt out because they like the social interaction and attention they get at the “Write, read, critique” sessions. I’d rather sit alone and write, but that’s just me.

    Anyhoo, at the end of the two hours, she always asks me, “Did you get a lot done?” I always say, “I sure did, how about you?”

    On Friday, she said, “The words just flowed out of me.”

    I said, “That’s amazing,” but hearing her words transported me back in time to a moment when I was sixteen or seventeen, with my boyfriend (one of my brother’s friends, age 19), in the backyard of the house I grew up in, talking about getting high on weed (I was never an expert, but I seem to recall we called it dope or grass back then). I asked him something about getting high, and he said he was “naturally stoned.”

    For some reason, that stuck in my craw and it’s been there ever since. I remember feeling righteously resentful, first that somehow he was high in some kind of natural way (like, what is that?) and second, that he sounded so arrogant and braggy about it. His attitude pissed me off, and it still pisses me off when I think about it.

    In our defense, we were kids (statutory rape was not in our consciousness at that time). Our brains weren’t fully developed, which means there was a lot of look-good going on, plus some sweaty social anxiety.

    But why do I feel so annoyed when someone claims “the words just flowed out of me?” Haven’t I had words flow out of me. They’re flowing right now.

    I think I’m cranky because I am judging this writer on the quality of the words that are flowing. I base my judgment on a few months of listening to her read her work in the group. I question my opinion constantly. Am I qualified to judge? (hm.) Does my opinion matter? (no.) Am I simply imagining that her work lacks character development, plot arcs, tension, conflict, or danger? Who am I, a self-labeled cozy fantasy hack, to judge someone who obviously loves what she is writing?

    All I can tell you is my brain wants to run screaming from the room when she starts reading her endless tome about boring humans excavating an asteroid somewhere in the vicinity of Mars. (I like hard science fiction, don’t get me wrong, and I really like the premise of people co-existing in space.)

    Now that I’m ranting, let me really get into it. In the group, when we write from the five-word prompts, she always places her response in outer space, with the characters and settings she already knows so well. The self-righteous subtext to that sentence is “while I always write something new, on the spot, pulled completely out of my own ass in the moment, hemorrhoids and all.” Oh, sorry. Well, what can I say? The words just flowed out of me.

    “Naturally stoned” and “The words just flowed out of me” are cut from the same cloth. The kind of cloth you get in the bargain bin at a going-out-of-business fabric store. It looks great when you get it home, but then you wash it and you see all the holes.

    =============

    P.S. I know I have a lot of typos and misspellings in these blogposts. I don’t spend much time writing, editing, or proofreading, and it shows. Sometimes I feel chagrined about my many errors, but honestly, my eyes and brain don’t work as well together as they used to. Rather than beating myself up for getting old, I’m considering these posts as less like snappy witty pithy snarky prose and more like therapeutic poetry. WYSIWYG. Thanks for being here.

  • I dropped a monkey wench

    The writer’s group was on a roll this week. Every word ended in ch. The hardest word for me was wench. Twenty minutes isn’t enough time for me to really think about how to spin the word into something that doesn’t make me want to scream. I’m not a writer of dragon elf dwarf fantasy stuff. There’s a name for it. High fantasy, I think. It’s not my genre, so I had a hard time. Not one of my better contributions.

    One the bright side, I guess, if you can call it that, is I got all five words into the first sentence. I probably should have stopped there.

    Watch

    Drench

    Flinch

    Wench

    Quench

    I watched the drenched wench flinch from the thunder as I was quenching my thirst with a Gatorade under a creosote tree. Thunderclouds had boiled up out of nowhere. Neither one of us made it under cover in time. That’s what happens during monsoon. If you don’t get hit by lightning, you can expect to be washed away in a flash flood. If you happen to make it out of the rushing flood, you can expect to be blown sideways by a 60-mph wind gust. If you are out walking near utility poles or trees when all this happens, you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye. If you survive, wait ten minutes. The skies will magically clear. The wind will die back. The river will soak back into the sand, taking the armies of tiny frogs with it. If you can wait ten more minutes, the puddles on the asphalt will evaporate. The air will simmer until it’s back up to 100 degrees where it started, more if you count the humidity. In about twenty minutes, it will all be as if it had never happened. Until tomorrow afternoon when you can do the whole thing over again. The wench waved and rode away on her bike. I’ll be out on the path tomorrow, just in case the wench rides by.

    See what I mean. Wench. Ugh. Maybe I should have made Wench her last name. Judy Wench. Ha.

    One of the writers in the group has a connection to Arizona. He said, “Tucson!” after I read my thing. I said, “Right!”

    Monsoon is happening in Scottsdale. I don’t miss the heat of desert summers. I do miss the energy . There’s nothing soft about that climate. The desert is harsh, but harshness has its own beauty.

  • How much longer?

    I’m tired of the madness. Too much anger, too much fear floating around in the zeitgeist. Not to mention smoke. We have clear skies here in the Willamette Valley. Lucky us. Not so in other parts of the world. It’s beyond lunacy to think that smoke stops at political borders. Kind of like you can turn on a faucet and let water flow from Oregon to California. It’s a special kind of purposeful hatred and lust for wealth and power that allows such delusions to propagate and spread like a plague of explosive diarrhea.

    My life here is idyllic compared to what some people are experiencing in other parts of the world. It’s beyond description how messed up things are. My brain is locked in an endless loop of WTF. What seems so obvious to me some people would kill me for. Now there’s a sentence for you.

    I’m past apologizing for being American. Embarassment and humiation are mere specks in the rearview mirror. I drove my metaphorical car off a cliff and now I’m neck deep in despair, sinking like the rock I’ve been trying to drop for thirty years.

    It’s time to make amends for our oppressive violent destructive self-centered oligarchical fascist behavior. Sooner or later, we are going to have to pay up. A couple collapsed skyscrapers might not be enough. I don’t want to see anyone suffer but collectively we will have to pay that piper who keeps coming around with a baseball bat.

    We get what we deserve.

  • Throttle it from behind

    I usually blog on Sunday. It’s rare that I miss a week. I probably missed one or two when I was on the road but I had a lot to write about then, so I made it a priority to fire up the laptop and drain my batteries telling the world what I was up to, whether the world wanted to hear it or not. The good thing is, few people know this blog exists, so if I miss a week here or there, the blog police won’t be coming after me.

    I don’t remember why I missed last Sunday. I’m sure I had no good reason. Probably because I was busy indulging my addiction to Chinese historical dramas. I tell myself I’m learning about characters, plot, pace, and costumes. I’m really avoiding my writing project.

    I don’t know if I have mentioned my part-time job as adjunct faculty at a for-profit online university in the Midwest. I’m in the Doctoral Research department, which means I help usher doctoral candidates through the program. I’m on sixteen committees now, and I’m Chair for eight. That’s a lot for me. The good news is several people are working on their final chapters. That means after their dissertations are approved, they will go through the traditional but meaningless ritual of defending their work with an uninspired PowerPoint deck. After that, we call them “Doctor” and send them on their way.

    In the earlier incarnation of this blog, I complained a lot about for-profit higher education. I was (and still am) qualified to pick that particular bone. I “taught” at a for-profit career college for ten years while I simultaneously worked toward a doctorate in Business Administration (focus in marketing, a poor choice) at a for-profit online university. Two views of for-profit higher ed gave me deep insight into for-profit education. The main take-away is that it’s a mug’s game for students while making owners rich.

    Anyway, here I am “working” for a for-profit online college. If you know the plight of adjunct faculty you know that no matter the business structure, adjunct faculty are a dime a dozen. That means they are overworked and underpaid. I get paid a flat “wage” per student per 10-week term. No matter how many hours I spend reviewing papers, I get paid the same amount per student per term. Not only that, paydays for adjuncts in the doctoral research department happen four times a year.

    I cope by mentally separating the work from the income. What else can I do? I’d fall into the black hole of resentment if I started thinking I deserve to get paid by the hour rather than by the student. I try to do the best job I can and not think about the money. Although I admit, I am aware when paydays roll around.

    The pace at this college is grueling. At the university I “attended,” we finished the course work, muddled through the comps, and then began the dissertation sequence. I was ABD for quite a while, and when I mean quite a while, I mean almost three years. (Can I blame an adjunct Chair who went AWOL ?) Anyway, the point is we finished the 5K before we ran the marathon. At this college, the students take the coursework while they work on their dissertation chapters. That means they are insane from the pressure.

    My job is part reviewer, part editor, and part cheerleader. So far I’ve had one student drop out. She said she enrolled because she was bored.

    Meanwhile, I keep chipping away at my writing project. After writing the last one, I now understand my process: Don’t arouse its suspicions by looking too closely, sneak up on it and catch it by surprise. Force it to give up its secrets before it realizes what is happening and slams the door in your face. Keep knocking, and while it’s wondering if it should open the door, climb through a window and throttle it from behind.

    So far my strategy is working.

  • This land is not mine

    Almost 30 years ago, I was standing among a large group who were singing “This land is your land.” (No way would I ever sing with other people, but that’s not important.) As I looked around the crowd, I noticed the people around me were White. It occurred to me that this land is neither mine nor theirs. We White folks have past the point of trying to ‘splain our way out of the mess we’ve made since we set foot on this unlucky continent.

    Independence Day is a good time to remember that even now, not all people in this country are free. Some people are growing less free by the minute.

    I try to blog every Sunday. I didn’t blog yesterday. I didn’t feel like it, so I immersed myself in a Chinese romcomdrom. It’s my drug of choice these days, to get lost in a story and escape the sad reality of the failing American experiment.

    I don’t give in to despair but neither do I imagine the precarious survival of democracy is just going to happen, like some sort of force of nature, the unstoppable march toward justice. As a White person, I have no claim to be part of America’s historical progress toward justice. For my part, the only thing I can think of today, besides being kind, is to stay out of the way and not make things worse.

    Speaking of marching, the turkeys are back. They were busy hatching chicks in early spring. Now their parents are introducing their offspring to the tasty treats in my backyard. The kids are young teens now, audacious feathery chunks digging up the grass. The parents split the chore of maintaining security, one leading, and one following. There’s not much danger in our yard. Cats won’t mess with turkeys, squirrels and crows don’t care, and the one dog big enough to cause trouble is lazy and stupid. Good personality, though. Similar to some people I’ve met over the years.

    Summer in Northwest Oregon is usually dry and mostly sunny. Like so much of the country, we are in a drought. The grass in this yard is green when it should be brown because sprinklers pop up for 20 minutes every morning at 5:00 am. I don’t care about green grass. However, I’m guessing that source of water is important for all kinds of critters in the neighborhood.

    Speaking of critters, two skinny teenage cats came to visit me last week, one solid gray, the other solid black. They might have been siblings. Friendly, not feral, which made me think they had homes somewhere. They had skin problems, though, which suggested they weren’t receiving good care. I spent a day and a night fretting over how I could help them. I called the local animal control and a local feline rescue place. What I learned is that the only action they would take is to spay or neuter them and then return them to their territory. Ear mites and scabies and all.

    For a few minutes I contemplated paying for care myself. Then I realized that was a bottomless black hole of financial and emotional insanity. Cats are allowed here in this apartment but the pet deposit is steep. I wouldn’t be able to afford it. Not to mention the ongoing cost of care and feeding. And not to mention the fact that they weren’t my cats. After dreaming about them all night, I woke up and realized I could not get involved. I closed my blinds.

    Since then I haven’t seen them. Maybe one glimpse for a few seconds, in passing. As if they picked up my vibe and decided I wasn’t an easy mark after all. I’m sure someone else is feeding them. Probably they have feeding stations all around the neighborhood. I feel stupid and also a tiny bit abandoned.

    I still have the turkeys, though!

  • Brain shrinkage

    My brain might be shrinking to fit my small town home. Is that how it works? The brain expands when you go traveling and shrinks if you stay put? Could it be the further you go, the bigger your brain gets? And conversely, if your world shrinks to the size of a pinhead, does your brain shrivel up to fit?

    By that logic, if I were to be launched into outerspace, it’s possible by the time I got to Mars, my brain would have exploded the spaceship. Oops. So maybe my premise doesn’t hold up. As a thought experiment, this one is sadly lacking.

    Speaking of sadly lacking, it’s time for another contribution to the literary world. Here are the five words for this week:

    Suppose

    Turn

    Mastery

    Acrylic

    Fifteen

    There were six of us at the meeting, so I was excused from tossing out a word. FYI, my word would have been zip. Either that or fizzle.

    And here is what I wrote (sans typos):

    Angie’s parents confronted her after school. Her father said, “Angie, now that you have turned fifteen, we think it’s time for you to choose a profession.”

    Angie scowled. “But Daddy, you know I was meant to be an artist. It’s my life’s calling, my true northstar.”

    “I suppose you think you have the right to freeload off the backs of hardworking citizens?”

    “No, I just think artists are unique. I was born to paint. “

    “So you are saying that your art is the most important thing, more important than earning a respectable living doing honest work?”

    “But art is honest work, Mom. It’s just a matter of time before I have truly mastered oil painting. Acrylics are next. My teachers say I’m very talented.”

    “We are calling in the authorities. We will abide by their decision.”

    The next day three members of the citizens committee visited. 

    “So, Angie you believe other citizens should support you while you pursue the frivolous life of an artist?”

    “Art is not frivolous!”

    The committee members did not look impressed. “Explain to us, please.”

    Angie described her artistic process, how when she was in the flow, paint simply flowed from the tip of her brush. Colors emerged like butterflies glistening the sun. She was born to be an artist! There was simply nothing else she could do.

    “You couldn’t be perhaps a hair stylist or a floral designer?”

    “No!”

    “Thank you for your honesty. We have made our decision.”

    The committee members took Angie by the arms and marched her out to their gray utility van.

    “No, what are you doing? Where are you takking me? Mom, Dad, stop them!”

    Her parents looked on with sad expressions as she was thrust into the van. A few minutes later, the van arrived at the top of the mountain. Angie had never been there before. As they invited her to step out of the van, she admired the sunset over the distant hills.

    “I’d love to paint this. See how the gold edges the clouds? Isn’t it beautiful?”

    “One last chance, Angie. Wouldn’t you prefer to be a manicurist? Maybe a makeup artist?”

    “No! I was born to be an painter! There’s no greater calling in life. I would die for my art!”

    The committee members shook their heads. One grabbed her arms, another grabbed her legs, and one took photos. “For our social media page,” he said. “To deter other artists from making the same mistake.”

    “No, stop! What are you doing?” 

    They swung her, one, two, THREE and threw her over the cliff.

    Angie fell a long ways. Something in her back snapped when she landed wrong. 

    “Ow,” she said.

    “Who is that? Angie?” said a voice from behind a rock.

    “Becky? What are you doing here?”

    “I wanted to be a poet, but my parents said no. They didn’t even call the committee. They brought me up and threw me off themselves.”

    “Hey, quiet, you two, I’m trying to compose a song over here. I need to concentrate. It takes more work because I can’t move my hands.”

    Angie moaned as best she could. “Are we destined to die here then?”

    Becky sighed. “My mother said that’s the price we pay for creativity.”

    Perhaps a little too close to home.

The Hellish Handbasket Blog

Self-expression on a stick

If you lived in your car, you’d be home by now

Receive the latest blogpost in your email inbox using your favorite RSS reader.

(c) 2025 Carol B. The Hellish Handbasket Blog