Flowerdy Things

 

Jim Morrison Couldn’t Ponder The End More than Me

Oh, in all my grouchiness, I forgot to tell you how it ended up. You know my prediction was it would come in at 15,000 words. Actual word count was just over 18,000, putting the whole thing at about 82,000 words, give or take.

Right now, it ends like this (note, it’s not all in second person, but, in keeping with the working title–Remind Me of the Dreaming Dead–I want to make reading the book feel kind of like having a strange dream, so I’ve been trying to move the reader around in dreamlike ways. This is the point where you move into Sue.) :

He finds you asleep in a cedar glade, purple flowers polkadotting the sunny spots around you. He sits next to you there, mirroring the arrangement in our world, and he begins to tell you a story.

What is the story that the living can tell the dead to bring them back?

I don’t know. He leans in close to you and tells it so softly I cannot make it out. But it must be something different than the stories we tell now aimed to resurrect lost times, lost people, lost causes.

And whatever it is, I note that you don’t tell it to him in 1910.

Perhaps it’s because the ending is sadder than you expect.

It’s hard to tell you how writing something like that feels. It might not end up being the right thing for the book. There are a lot of revisions ahead. And I might change my mind about how well it works. But right now, it feels really good. Like I wrote something better than I thought I could.

The Mystery of the Dog

She appears to be fine, except for the poop I found on the kitchen floor. Her eyes are a little glassy from the Benadryl and she’s definitely acting a little stoned, but otherwise, appears to be fine. I will wait here for the next round of needing to go to the bathroom.

And Now I Feel Distracted and Bad

I yelled at the dog before I left. I just can’t concentrate for thinking that she’s probably at home shitting all over the place.

I think I’m going to try to pack up and go home.

If You See Me Coming, Better Step Aside. A Lot of Men Didn’t and a Lot of Men Died.

Finally, finally, I was getting a good night’s sleep when the damn dog got diarrhea. I’m not even shitting you. Um… yeah, I should delete that and make another word choice, but I’m leaving it as a testament to my state of mind. Up at 4, up at 5, up at 6.

And I have a headache, because of the stupid weather.

Plus, I’ve decided that I’m pissed at the bike lanes. Honestly, fuck the bike lanes on Clarksville Highway. When was the last time you ever saw a bike rider on Clarksville Highway? Never. They ride Old Hickory Boulevard and, until motorists started running them down, Buena Vista. Why don’t we put bike lanes where the bike riders ride?

Plus, the bike lanes go from Briley to the top of the ridge. Through only residential. People who ride for fun aren’t going to use our bike lanes yet, because they don’t connect to anything.  And residents aren’t going to use them for bike riding, because they don’t go anywhere. If you want to ride your bike to the pharmacy or the store, there’s going to be a stretch without bike lanes.

But people are using the bike lanes. To walk or jog in. So, obviously, what we needed were sidewalks. And, yes, I get that sidewalks are more expensive than bike lanes, but it irks me that they gave us bike lanes having to know–if they’d done any kind of reconnaissance–that we have more walkers and joggers than bicyclists. So, now we have a situation where the pedestrians still don’t have an optimally safe way to get up and down Clarksville Pike, because it’s so close to traffic and we need to share that tiny lane with any bicyclists we might get, and bicyclists don’t have an honest to god bike lane because all the pedestrians are like “Finally! A slightly safer way to walk around the neighborhood.”

And yet, this is a “victory” for a “healthy Nashville”! It’s like Mrs. Wigglebottom being all “But I got you up instead of just shitting on the floor!”

Yes, but…

Plus, whenever the firefighters get around to smooching me, they have to park in the driveway because heaven forbid they block the precious bike lanes and those trucks are heavy. And they have to take the trucks wherever they go when they’re on duty, in case there’s a fire. And they can’t come by here when they’re not on duty because the giant pants are the whole point. And did the city or TDOT or whomever run a new surface of asphalt down my driveway to accommodate the firetrucks now that they can’t park out front?

No. No they did not.

But the nice thing was that Tony’s opens at motherfucking six in the morning. I swear, Tony of Tony’s Foodland, I don’t know who you are and it would suck to be your employee because you open at motherfucking six in the morning and you’re open for a little bit on all major holidays. But my god, this morning, when I needed Pepto for the dog at six in the fucking morning, and I drove up there and you were open, I could have made out with every single one of your employees. I wanted to weep in the checkout line.

God bless Tony of Tony’s Foodland. I pray that someday the bike lanes go clear to your store.