A Winter's Tale

Cheryl Oreglia

"I am... a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles." Winter's Tale

Today started out in a deep fog, both within, and without. The drive to work took extreme caution, I was unable to see anything beyond a few hundred feet (my best guess), the landscape seemed to disappear behind an inexplicable dense mist, right out of Stranger Things. It was freaking me out. The good news is traffic was light, speeds slowed, and most drivers were intensely focused. Total bonus, I arrived at work five minutes early. 

The weather often masquerades as my personal prophet, calling me back to myself, offering an intrinsic wisdom all it's own, and much to my despair, mirroring my personal disposition. The fog, lack of clarity, the missing landmarks that usually dictate my direction, if not my sense of place and well-being, are simply gone. I’m a little lost but aren't we all? Life is not stagnate, it moves, adapts, reconfigures. The minute I get attached to a person, place, or thing it disappears (sometimes physically), but most often I’m no longer able to see it in the same form of which I'm accustomed. Nature teaches me to detach and I don't like it one bit. I'm innately opposed to change, weather permitting, I would wear the same outfit every day. This is not something I put on my resume but clearly note worthy as a writer. 

“The darker the night, the brighter the stars,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When I think about the crazy weather patterns currently bombarding my state (California), the relentless storms, widespread flooding, and most recently the erosion of an emergency spillway at the Lake Oroville dam. This spillway is a pathway for excess water to drain when the reservoir is filled to the brim, designed to keep the dam safe from being over-topped by water. (Don't I wish we had the same spillway for the deluge of hostility currently flooding my social media accounts.) This is the first time the spillway has been put to use since the dam was completed in 1968. It peaked my interest in an odd sort of way, so I snooped around, and discovered nine unforgettable events that happened in 1968, at the exact same time this precautionary spillway was being created, a spillway designed to manage the overflow of unprecedented "weather," so to speak. These events changed the history of the world and I believe they are worthy of our collective view today.

1. North Korea captures the USS Pueblo
2. North Vietnam launched the Tet (the holiday when the north and south honored an informal truce) offensive against the United States and South Vietnam
3. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee
4. Robert F. Kennedy assassinated in Los Angeles, California
5. Boeing introduces the first 747 "Jumbo Jet
6. Richard Nixon became the thirty-seventh president
7. U.S. athletes take a stand at the Summer Olympics
8. "Star Trek" airs American television's first interracial kiss
9. Apollo 8 is the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon

Oh my, oh my, "the more things change, the more they stay the same," Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. We have yet to overcome racism, defuse global hostilities, harness technology, mediate political conflict, or curb gun violence. We're in the middle of a political shit storm which drags me right back to the scriptures. “A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that is was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, 'Teacher, don't you care if we drown?' He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, 'Quiet! Be still! Then the wind died down and was completely calm." [Mark 4] Prophets appear (or wake up) when chaos peaks because we're in need of new direction. Jesus rebukes the disciples for their resistance to his teachings and lack of faith. "We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now," Martin Luther King warns. The wisdom of prophets is often realized long after they suffer intense opposition and premature death. When will we wake up?

The headline today reads “A nation divided by weather.” I think our divisions run much deeper than the weather, Martin Luther King teaches, "I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight... that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word." The challenge he puts to us all is one of personal integrity and faith. Will we ever be culpable of calming our own storms?

“Rain makes me feel less alone. All rain is, is a cloud- falling apart, and pouring its shattered pieces down on top of you. It makes me feel good to know I'm not the only thing that falls apart . It makes me feel better to know other things in nature can shatter.” ― Lone Alaskan Gypsy

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BACK JACKET HACK-JOB #15: HEARTBURN

Welcome back to ATB's renowned, recurring, book review, BACK JACKET HACK JOB! Cheryl Oreglia here, and let me just say I am horrified, I mean honored, to be the writer for this memorable fifteenth installment. I confess it gave me heartburn. So in honor of Thanksgiving, anxiety, and multiple deadlines I offer you a new back jacket hack job for the famed novel by Nora Ephron, appropriately entitled Heartburn. It's just too perfect. Right? Hack away I will, with a neutralizing look at indigestion, infidelity, and key-lime pie. And yes, I get paid by the comments, so do be generous.

Rachel Samstat is mad.

Heartburn might be the result of Ephron's real life experience of infidelity, but this book is full of witty euphemisms about life, and in spit of it all she keeps her sense of humor intact. It's a story about a husband who goes out to buy socks every evening but comes home empty handed only to say, "You would not believe how hard it is to find a decent pair of socks in this city." It takes Rachel four weeks to catch on. This is life. I sometimes feel I am the last to know what my kids are doing, why my dog is looking so guilty, and who keeps leaving packages on the front porch. But I persevere and so should you. A writer always gets the last word.

Rachel Samstat fights back.

Infidelity is horrible but Ephone spins her experience into a gut wrenching comedy. She is bold, honest, and refreshingly real. Who hasn't been deceived, heartbroken, and dubbed the idiot? I can relate, "Thelma Rice, a fairly tall person with a neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb and you should see her legs, never mind her feet, which are sort of splayed." Ephron brings the other woman "Thelma" brilliantly to life, repeatedly harping on her oversized nose and ugly feet. This is how writer's deal, "everything is copy."

Rachel Samstat wins.

Key-lime pie smashed in the face of her adulterous, insouciant, hack job of a husband is how she ends the relationship for good. Bravo Nora Ephron. She will not go quietly into the night, "If I throw this pie at him, he will never love me. But he doesn't love me anyway. So I can throw the pie if I want to. I picked up the pie, thanked God for the linoleum floor, and threw it. It landed mostly on the right side of Mark's face, but that was good enough." A win is a win. Sometimes the only thing available to right all the wrongs in the world is pie. 

Heartburn is a must read, available at Amazon, it might be worth the purchase just to see the drone. Just sayin... 

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California Dreamin

California is home for me, I have traveled her roads for decades, and fallen for her arrogant elegance. The shape of her body bent, like the joint of an elbow, resting on an easy chair. California is hip, she's got ocean front, and laden with fleshy produce. I'm in my autumn years so I've adopted the fall as my own. The weather outside is crisp and cool, which makes me grateful for the intermittent presence of the sun. It must be the bright illumination juxtaposed against the dullness of the season that draws me into a reflective pose (a nice way to say I'm post menopausal and no longer watch what I say)  I love to sit in the fall, perched on the edge of a hearth, gentle fire warming my back, staring out the window of life. I’m enamored with the glory of the season, with the prospect of multiple celebrations, and universal good cheer.

I have a comfortable lifestyle, when held up to the deficiencies in the world, I live like a queen (of a small country), without the help, trust fund, or press secretary. This year you can't help but notice the widespread suffering in the world, whether self inflected, or structurally inescapable. How do we render this situation? I feel impotent when confronted with the enormity of it all, the prospect of real change fills me with a corrosive fear, which hinders my ability to move. I'm always trying to find my way back, back to a childhood I've no doubt idealized in my mind, to a time when the vulgarities of the world seem distant and vague. Now they're splashed across a forty-two inch screen, in high definition, and my parents no longer shield me from the R-rated stuff. As a responsible adult, I've decided I have two options (keep it simple), I either act out of love, or I act out of fear. This much I control. I'll admit it's a challenge to respond from a place of love all the time, even part of the time, but this is my California Dreamin.

In my narrow little world I'm currently pummeled by seasonal distractions. Acts of love seem at time impossible. It’s the end of the semester. There are projects, papers, and presentations to grade. I have to meet with disgruntled parents, wrestle missing work from half my students, and post grades. On the home front there is food shopping with lines as long as airport security, the unachievable Martha Stewart table, the oversized bird in an undersized oven, lumpy gravy, and the inescapable fact I'll run out of butter in the middle of dinner. If I gave all my students A's, used paper plates, and served Kentucky Fried Chicken I could be as loving as my husband, who's enjoying a cold one, and watching the game. It is much more likely I'll loose it just before the first guest arrives, somehow scrap myself together, slice up the bird, whine about the dishes, and wake up five pounds heavier. But is there another way?

"The more things change, the more they remain the same." Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

California is where I was born but Hollywood, Silicon Valley,  Disneyland, and Napa Wines also claim birthrights. I remember listening to a final interview with Steve Jobs of Apple Computer. He was an extreme sort of guy and I was always intrigued by his creativity. He seemed obsessed with work, perfectionism, but he changed the world with his unique vision. At the end of his life when considering death he said, “What I can bring is only the memories precipitated by love.” I don’t know if he really thought he would be able to access his memories after death, but clearly in life, he thought this important enough to mention. If nothing remains but our acts of love what a world it would be. Maybe this year I'll solicit some masculine help in the kitchen, enjoy a cold one by the fire, and forget the idea of a perfect table. This is my California dreamin. Happy Thanksgiving all and may our love reign.

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The Edification of Horror

In honor of October and things that go bump in the night, I'm writing about the times in my life when I was scared shitless by horror. I admit, I was inspired by Stephen Kozeniewski's recent post on different types of horror, and my love/hate relationship with this genre. Dredging up the past was painful, it's like visiting the gravestones of long buried fears, exhuming them one by one, and contemplating the edification of horror. 

"From goulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night Good Lord, deliver us!"

The first movie that I had no business watching was The Bad Seed staring Patty McCormack. I was maybe nine or ten years old, I already had a dysfunctional fear of the dark, and this movie only served as confirmation. It is the story of a young girl who was born bad to the bone and I'm not talking 'mean girls' here. She is a self indulgent little girl, who looks and acts like an angel, so no one suspects she is capable murder. Her behavior is so unsettling it had me questioning the very nature of my most trusted companions. Eventually we find out her biological grandmother was a psychopathic killer. The movie suggests killers are genetically determined and the thought that this could lead one to kill without remorse is troubling. I remember glancing sideways at my angelic sister and wondering if either of us had a dark side buried deep in our genetics? I slept with a nightlight for several years, okay, until I got married.

The next horror movie I got talked (coerced) into seeing was The Exorcist. My best friend promised, "It's so ridiculous it could almost be considered a comedy." A scream, I'd say. It was released the day after Christmas in 1973. I was a young teen by then, barely over The Bad Seed, and now I'm confronted with a possessed teenager, and two determined priests. Most of the movie involves these priests trying to exercise the devil from a young Linda Blair who does an amazing head spin, floats in thin air, stabs her vagina repeatedly with a cross, and barfs green slim. It is the most horrifying, disturbing, immoral film I have ever seen. I spent most of the time with my eyes closed fantasizing about the beach on a warm sunny day. I was completely traumatized and perhaps this is the reason I became a Catholic. This movie introduced me to the idea that an innocent person could unwillingly be controlled by an evil presence. Who writes this shit? I thought this would be the end of my short horror movie career but it was not to be. 

I started dating Larry in high school, when he finally got his driver's licence, I was promised popcorn, ice cold soda, and a great movie at the drive-ins. I wanted to appear sophisticated and maybe a little dangerous so I eagerly agreed. When the title scrolled across the screen, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I turned a few shades lighter, the nausea came later (Linda Blair style). I spent most of our date on the floor of the truck and if that wasn't impressive enough I screamed right through the chain saw scenes to drown out the sound. If not for his adorable curls and sweet disposition (haha) this could have been our first and last date. The movie is about two siblings who are attacked by a family of cannibalistic psychopaths while visiting the grave of a grandparent. I feel compelled to mention meat hooks are involved. The movie is so unbelievable the trauma is actually minimized, if that is even possible, and the fact that I fit comfortably in the foot space of a truck is pretty damn impressive. 

I have to admit, my forth exposure to horror was intentional. It was early December, 1983, in my first month of marriage. Larry could not believe I hadn't seen the "iconic" movie Psycho, a pretty descriptive title, but I was naive (in love). So we snuggled together on our second-hand couch and settled in for a horrible experience. I had to get up and pace it out in the hallway a few times but I made it to the end. This movie explores issues of mental illness, identity, and showering in hotel rooms. It does not end well. Of course there was a storm raging outside, we lived on the outskirts of Portland Oregon, and I didn't sleep a wink that night. A few nights later, still feeling spooked, I went into the bathroom to wash my face before bed. Our bathroom was located in the middle of the apartment with no exterior windows. It was very dark. When I pulled back the shower curtain to reach for my washcloth, I encountered a strange man standing in my shower, holding a butcher knife. I screamed bloody murder, popped a few veins, and I'll only admit this to you, I peed my pants. Larry worked for Proctor and Gamble at the time and he 'borrowed' a life-size, full color, cardboard display of a man pointing to the shampoo aisle. He cleverly duck-taped a kitchen knife to the raised hand. He thought it would be hysterical to surprise me with this unexpected guest. I tore that display to shreds, slammed the door to our bedroom, after throwing Larry's pillow in the hall. He slept on the couch until about 2:00 am when fear outweighed my anger. What a comedian. 

I avoided horror movies for at least another decade. Then it happened one night, almost organically, when I was all alone. Larry was traveling for business and I just put the last kid to bed. I switched on the television and the movie Halloween was just starting. I was a full fledged adult for goodness sake and my sister lived only seven minutes away. How bad could it be? The movie is about a psychopathic killer who returns to his hometown for a killing spree on Halloween. Trust me when I say it builds, and perhaps you'll understand why I called my sister late that night, and demanded she spend the night. She was eight and a half months pregnant, but she waddled over with her overnight bag, and climbed into bed. That's my sister. Her water broke in the wee hours of the morning, Larry's side, karma's a bitch.

So that is my walk down horror lane and one that I hope to never repeat. I decided in honor of October I would read a scary novel instead. Since this post was inspired by Stephen Zoeniewski, I decided to try one of his novels. Billy and the Cloneasaurus should be arriving any day. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes...

Love to hear about the edification of horror in your life. Join me in the comments?

Itching for more? Visit me at Living in the Gap a lifestyle blog minus the horror.