over the cliff

Here are the lyrics to what I’m listening to right now.

*Han bun doh nan nul leul
ee juh bun juk up suh
oh jeek geu deh mah nuel seng gak kee neun gul
geu lun nuh neun moh yah
nal ee jut duhn guh yah
jee geum neh noon eh suh noon mool ee boh yoh
beh sheen gam neuk gyuh

nul chah jah gal guh yah seng gak heh ssuh nan nan jal moh leu geh ssuh seh seh sang ee deul goh ee neun jee geum neh noon eh neun nuh bak keh muh jee
kal mah lee up suh gal soo doh up suh noon mool doh up suh neu keem doh up suh
neh op peh suh ee neun nal bah lah bwa ee lue keh nul wee heh sal lah ee neun nal

*yak sok dwen shee gan nee wah ssuh yoh geu deh ah peh ee ssuh yoh doo lyuh oom eh ool goh ee jeeh mahn
noon mool ee dak gah joo uh suh yo geu ddeh neh sohn jab bah jo ee luh nal guh ya ham geh heh joon geu deh eh geh henbok geul

Chorus:
noon gam goh geu del geu lyuh yoh maeum soh geu del chah jah joh nah leul bal kyuh joo
neun bee chee boh yoh young won han henbok eul no chill soon up jwuh geu deh nah
boh ee nah yoh nah leul bool luh joh yoh geu deh gyuh teh
ee seul guh yah nuh leul sarang heh
ham geh heh yo geu deh leul young won ee

Repeat *

Chorus
noon gam goh geu del geu lyuh yoh maeum soh geu del chah jah joh nah leul bal kyuh joo neun bee chee boh yoh young won han henbok eul no chill soon up jwuh geu deh nah boh ee nah yoh nah leul bool luh joh yoh uhn jeh lah doh ee jeh ma eum eul yul luh boh wah yoh ah peh neh gah ee ssuh yoh nah leul bool luh joh yoh geu deh gyuh teh
ee seul guh yah nul leul sarang heh
ham geh heh yo geu deh wah young~ won ee

First person to name the song gets a cookie.

Dear Highway 70, I-40, I-24 and any other roads I happen to traverse,

In a matter of days I will be upon you, lugging behind me a 400 lb+ trailer filled with all of my precious possessions. My computers (laptop and desktop), printers, books, CDs, DVDs, DVD player, 10 year old Television still in prime working order, my grandmother’s china, my grandmother’s old Kitchen table, my desk that I got from Target for a rather cheap price and I’ve been very happy with it, pictures in frames both artistic and snapshot, the watercolor easel I bought before the car accident and haven’t really used since, my grandmother’s recliner that may be covered in fleas right now so I’m fumigating it, and all the other knicknacks and items I need to make life comfortable.

The point is, I don’t want you breaking down on me. No jack-knifes, no unnecessary road construction, no signs and cones where road construction used to be but isn’t there anymore and slows down traffic for no good reason. No deer, no bears (yes we have bears in NC for those of you who don’t know), no dogs or small children. No detours.

And even though you may not be responsible for the drivers, I want you to make sure they behave. Since I’m only going to be able to drive 23.7 miles per hour while getting 16 gallons to the mile, I’d like to make sure I don’t have some damn yankee in a little red sportscar right on my tail honking his horn and flipping me the finger. I’ll slam that brake and let him ram right into me. I’ll do it. I’ve survived one car crash, I can do another.

But I think we already covered the jack-knife question.

Anyway, I’d also appreciate it if you could actually get rid of all the trucks on the road between here and Carbondale. They make me nervous, you see and I’m going to already be nervous pulling that U-Haul so anything you could do to make my life just the teensiest bit easier… well I’d sure appreciate it. Thanks ever so much for listening.

Yours truly scared shitless,
Hel

Before I forget the entire trip, there are some things I meant to post but haven’t. So I better start.

###

Part of me knows I am in Africa. The part that wakes up each morning before dawn and hears the lions roaring. The part that spills orange juice down a crimson tank top already splotched with coffee stains and tree sap. The part that has to jump out of the path of rampaging monkeys begging for a piece of fruit or two, and failing that, endeavor to steal it.

The part that doesn’t know is sleeping. It’s waiting for the credits to roll or the alarm to ring so I can wake up. Get dressed. Walk to class. Go to work. Watch Out of Africa. Go to bed.

My brother arrived in January and isn’t quite used to the accommodations my parents and I procured. He went from tents and hostels to feather beds and private plunge pools. The baboons like the plunge pools. I tried it once but the water was too cold to get used to. But just for a moment I stand up to my chin in icy African water, breathe the African air, sip an African cider and watch the Kingfishers. The elephant fence below keeps the elephants out, but not much else. Leopards, monkeys, and anything else with an inclination can come right up and join me if they so desire.

They don’t. I’m almost disappointed.

Disappointed or not, I am in Africa. And the part of me that doesn’t know it will wake up when I’m on the plane and eating peanuts. It will sift through the memories before the rest of me falls asleep and forgets the coldness of water, the roar of lions, and the taste of mango juice at dawn.

Sometimes we broke the silence with laughter. The pill box that Uncle Ed bought had a funny voice that said “It’s time to take your pill. It’s time to take your pill.” We liked to imitate it. I can’t remember the names of the medications. They all looked the same. One put her to sleep, one was part of the chemotherapy, another we stopped because we thought she was allergic, some she took several times a day, some she only took on days we took her to the hospital.

“It’s time to take your pill. It’s time to take your pill.”

If you took your pill early, it didn’t know it. “Time to take your pill.” Sometimes the nurse would give her a pill and set aside the pill box. “Time to take your pill.” And we had to run around the kitchen trying to find it. “Time to–”

Time to go to the hospital. Time to log the days events in the little blue journal. 5 kids in and out each day. 2 nurses. Or was it three.

Time to switch shifts.

I started working at my Aunt’s dental office in October. Mema called and I scheduled her an appointment to get her teeth cleaned. Then she got sick. I asked Mindy if I should cancel the appointment.

“Just leave it for now, if she’s well enough she’ll want to have her teeth cleaned.”

Since Ed was the one who prescribed all the medications, we kept saying that we were going to write him out of the will. All he’d get was the annoying voice that said, “Time to take your pill, time to take your pill” which really only meant it was time for another day of sleep and nausea and recording what she ate and didn’t eat and if she took all her meds.

Not all of the pills went into the talking box. The ones she only took occasionally (need sleep? can’t eat? head hurt?) went into a ceramic dish on the kitchen table. Mindy spent her lunch break popping the tops out and later someone would pop them back in so she’d have more to play with the next day.

On one of the better afternoons, Mema sat at the table with us. She wanted to know where all the pills came from.

“Ed prescribed them,” we said.

“Ed…” she took a breath. They were ragged by then and some days she couldn’t wear both sets of implants in her mouth. It was hard to understand her. Harder still to watch her lips flop while she mumbled. “He’s my favorite doctor… when I’m not sick.”

We laughed.

“Time to take your pill. Time to take your pill.”

We added the dish full of pill bottles to Ed’s inheritance.

Before things got bad, when we just knew she had a tumor, we took her to the hospital for tests. They gave her a pepto bismal milkshake.

“It’s not even cold,” she said.

They made her drink two glasses of it.

“Why?” she said.

“It’s for your chest x-ray.”

My mother explained that Ed was convinced that the brain tumor was merely lung cancer that had metastisized in her brain. He was convinced that smoking was what was killing her. It wasn’t a brain tumor. It was lung cancer. It had to be.

“He’ll be so disappointed,” Mema said as she took another sip.

The x-ray came back clear.

We added ‘pink stuff’ to Ed’s inheritance.

Mema kept getting sicker. I took the dental appointment in her place. They gave me earphones so I wouldn’t have to listen to the scrape, scrape, scrape of instruments. As they plopped down against my earlobe the air rushed out taking with it the distant echoes.

“It’s time to take your pill, it’s time to take your pill, it’s time…”

I move in a week.

The apartment is quiet. Demos is staying at my parents’ house in New Bern because I’m trying to get rid of the fleas he brought here. I’ve flea bombed, attacked them with spray, but still they flock to my ankles like I’m some sort of fucking Noah’s ark.

There are glasses and plates to wrap, books to pack and label. Furniture to be moved, electricity to turn off, elecricity to turn on, phone lines to disconnect, cable companies to deal with. A trailer to haul up a mountain, down a mountain. Unpack. Organize. Decorate.

Lately I’ve been thinking more and more about Mema. A lot of things have happened that I would’ve told her about. She would’ve offered me coffee or tea. Ice cream. Chocolate if I wanted it. Sissy would’ve lain on the floor and periodically lifted her leg to feebly swat at a bug or itch. I would’ve sat in the chair I’m sitting in now, at the table on which my laptop is resting. She would’ve nodded and smiled, taken a drag off her cigarette and said “Now what do you know.”

The phone would ring. It’d be an aunt or uncle. The conversation would last no more than a few minutes; it doesn’t take long to chat when you call often.

I never did. I called when I had news, which was rare.

I called when I got in from a long car trip. Promised to come out and see her, spend the night to wake up to coffee and eggs and bacon and chocolate cake if I wanted it. The only times I ever ate breakfast were at her house.

During the long pauses while I fingered the wood grain on the table and she worked on the daily jumble, Sissy would shake her head and jingle the rabies tags. The water would boil. Coffee is ready. Or tea. Or chocolate cake if you want it.

Before I ever sold a poem, or got into grad school, my mother stood at my door and told me the MRI scan found something. Not Alzheimers, which we feared would suck away her memories of us one by one like a lazy ant eater.

A tumor with wide thin wings as if it could flit off the page and out the window. 6 months or less.

It was less.

Before I ever sold a poem to Strange Horizons or was offered a teaching assistantship at SIU I spent the night in her guest bedroom. I had a job interview the next day. Not something I wanted, just something I needed to pass the time. My father thought I should be doing something more constructive than taking anti-depressants. She wasn’t dying yet. Just sick and a little forgetful.

Mema always had the softest pillows. Thick and fluffy and squishable. The bed in her guest bedroom used to sit on the second floor in a room by the secret stair case. It wasn’t that much of a secret but the tiny door was enough to remind you of Alice in Wonderland if you were still child enough to think of such things. Back then Mema’s was a place between travels. A place to go when you weren’t quite ready to go home yet and felt like running into family, drinking coffee, and eating chocolate cake if you wanted it.

The pillows and bedding were moved to the new guest bedroom, new house. A place she bought when Daddydoc died and the memories scratching at her consciousness became too much.

Sissy’s rabies tags jingled as I checked the alarm clock again and again. Interview in the morning. For a job I did and didn’t want allatonce. News to tell Mema. A reason to call. A thing to talk about in the long pauses between phone calls and jingling tags.

Sissy’s claws scratched the door and she whined to be let in, let in, let in. I didn’t want to let her in. I wanted her to go back to Mema’s room and pretend that no one was sick, no one was dying or waking up in the middle of the night confused and wondering where the dog was. Sissy whined and whined but I was on the second floor dreaming about the secret stair case and counting the hours before I could get up, walk downstairs and find four tablespoons of Cafe Vienna sitting in a mug, waiting for the water to boil.

I sold “Aliens Built Table Mountain” to Dreams and Nightmares. So…giddy…

I’ve been running around the internet announcing it to the Hatrack forum, Codex, Rumor Mill, and even two random forums that have nothing to do with writing.

I wonder if one day I’ll be all cool and professional and not dance around like a kid at Christmas every time I manage to sell a poem.

…I doubt it.

P.S. Oliver rules for being super supportive and excited for me. I know that when he starts selling tons of short stories, he’s going to have to watch his back. I’ll stab him. I know it. (Don’t judge me, Scorpios are supposed to be jealous bitches :))

The other day I woke up, rubbed my eyes, and then freaked out.

They didn’t tell me exactly how long after the surgery I could rub my eyes, but when I opened my left one and things were fuzzy, I was convinced that I’d somehow jostled the flap and permanently compromised my vision. Fortunately, I was wrong. But it was scary for about 2 seconds.

My cousin Paige is in her 9th month of pregnancy and has barely gained any weight–well, except in her stomach. It seriously looks like she’s just walking around with a basketball stuffed up her dress. Life is so unfair. Her mother even took a tape measurer and wrapped it around Paige’s waist, convinced that for once in her life… Paige would be rounder. No such luck.

I started reading Peter Pan although I think I also read it in 7th grade. The weird thing about it is the strange word choice that Barrie employs. Sometimes I have to read over a sentence several times thinking ‘Is this some kind of typo?’ And Tinker Bell is SUCH the little vindictive, jealous, mosquito sized bitch!

I love her.

It’s been really hot lately.

From a chat conversation tonight:

Kai: “I wanna read about a whole bunch of peasants aided by an incontinent wizard and a dragon with halitosis rising up against an oppressive system and seizing the means of production! Weavers Unite!
Kai: Blacksmiths Demand Equal Pay For Equal Work! Cowherds equipped with creches! Organize! Strike! Make swords from ploughshares”

Fin.

So I got a poetry rejection today for ‘As Beauty Sleeps’. In one way this is good: I revised the poem, making it tighter and clearer so the version that SH had (and rejected) was the not so good one. And in the other way this sucks because rejections never make you feel good. Well, except from the one I got from Ideomancer re: Cockroaches. That one was sweet.

On that note, I haven’t heard back from the two other markets to whom I sent poems it’s been over a month for both. Although that should mean I hear from them soon. Right?

Anyway, as soon as I got the rejection I sent off another poem to SH. Another fairy tale poem.

*crosses fingers*

Okay, I get a lot of spam comments on my blog and the way to delete them en masse is to use the mass edit mode, check the ones that aren’t spam, invert the selection and delete. Well unfortunately I kindof hit delete before invert and just deleted the last 8 comments that were posted.

So sorry Oliver, Fufu, Kris, and Skyler. I’ll try not to do it again.

I get irritated and irked by everything now. People’s voices, their opinions, their stupidity, their tastes, feeling defensive, feeling attacked, feeling like I should aplogize for getting defensive.

My cat, my mother, noise, quiet, poems I’ve written, poems I haven’t written, lack of responses on submissions, worrying about whether I should query, how I should word a query, deciding a query isn’t worth it, repeat cycle.

Maybe I’m tired, maybe I’m stressed, maybe this is normal, maybe it’s not.

I am terribly vexed.