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Tag Archives: family

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like…

26. A photo of you at Christmastime. 12/24/1979. An unhealthy addiction to video games is born.

34 Christmastimes have produced a bunch of choice pictures. I debated sharing one of the photos from my awkward years – long hair, baseball hat, bad skin, ugly sweater, stone washed jeans, high tops, etc. – but I have a particular love for this photo. We’re in Pittsburgh at Grandmommy and Granddaddy’s (Mom’s parents’) house. Dad and I are playing my brand new handheld baseball video game (well, it was all LEDs and beeping noises, but still) on Christmas Eve. I am wearing my brand new “Mork” suspenders. I dig the closeness, the father-son nature of this picture. Not pictured is a bigger family bond — my Jewish-raised-then-Unitarian-living father celebrating (in a secular manner) Christmas with his wife and kids and his wife’s parents. The year before is even more interesting: Grandma and Grandpa (Dad’s parents) also joined us there. 2 Jews, 2 Presbys and 4 Unitarians, all getting together and hanging out.

Well, it’s just kinda cool.

Word count: 42,302 (84.6%)

Here is the brand new beginning of the novel, required to round out what will eventually become the end of the story.

The cicadas are here, hovering about my head, mating on the wing, getting ready to die. I am too, I suppose. Getting ready to die, that is. I wish I could say I had a good run at it, but that just wouldn’t be true. It would be nothing more than a comforting lie, an attempt to placate myself at the very end. It would serve no other purpose but to make these last few weeks, or days, or minutes — there’s no telling how much longer there is — more bearable.

Family

9. A picture of your family. January 8, 1978. "A Family Portrait"

Another tough one. Raises questions of what family is, and so on and so forth. Back when I was 2 and a half years old, it wasn’t so complicated….

The novel, if that is its real name, has gotten weird. From mystery-of-an-ethereal-candleholder to zombie/cicada story to now….some sort of Mark Leyner-esque megalomania-filled rant…. But, I wrote a couple thousand words today. Next year? Back to historical fiction. Or another Baywatch novel. Easier to keep on track.

Words: 20,639. Here are 348 of the more ridiculous ones.

“I do not sound like him,” Therese protested. “His ‘they’ is a non-existent shadowy cabal made up of elected officials and corporate bigwigs. His ‘they’ is the product of watching too many movies, playing too many video games, and smoking too much dope.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed. “I stopped smoking dope years ago. It made me paranoid.”
“Well, I think it stuck, Arthur. You’re obviously delusional.”
“Delusional? Me? Just because I think there are better ways to run a business? And because I think — no, I know — that while it appears that we live in a democratically governed free market society that there are actually five people — Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, the cryogenically stored brain of Dick Cheney, and Wesley Thomas, a 53-year-old farmer from Akron, Ohio — that are secretly in control of everything?”
Paul added, “You also think that all the hot sales assistants want to sleep with you.”
“Alyssa totally does. She told me so last Thursday.”
“I think that must have been a dream.”
“No, it was definitely real. We were walking down the street and she said, ‘Arthur, I need you to make me a woman.’ And I said, ‘Alyssa, I’m not God. I can’t just make you a woman.’ And she said, ‘No, stupid, I want you inside me.’ And I said, ‘You mean you want me to like climb inside your skin.’ And she said, ‘No, dummy, I want you to take me to bed.’ And I said, ‘But it’s only 11:30, you can’t possibly be tired yet.’ And she said, ‘No, you idiot, I want you to have sex with me.’ And I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I knew that’s what you meant.’ And then all of a sudden, we were in Detroit, only it wasn’t really Detroit. And she turned into Hilary Clinton. And there was a talking rabbit. Now that you mention it, that was probably a dream.”
“Probably. That’s a good one though.”
“I have to remember to write that down in my dream journal.”

A Dream…

Dream:

At some family function. Eating dinner with Dad, Joyce, Debbie, Lisa. House is crowded and suddenly 10 or 12 more people show up, including Greg (with some bizarre facial hair.) Debbie immediately asks Greg if she wants to see David’s new car. They go out the back of the house, I go out the front. Hear a little kid call Greg’s full name and feel jealous that one of my nieces knows him somehow better than me. Into car, driving down Central Street (and this is where it gets good) going too fast, my legs won’t move, I can’t stop the car, my face is numb…. and a van is pulling out in front of me.

And that’s when I wake up.

Gee – could this be at all related to the careening-out-of-control project I’m working on? Maybe? Huh?

Am I at all refreshed from my nap?