Creation


When Gaia was just a child, she and her siblings loved to dance around their father, chasing each other in wider and wider circles. She would throw stardust in her father’s face and giggle as he feigned anger, puffed up his cheeks, and incinerated the dust with one breath.

Sol told his children that he loved them all equally, but Gaia knew that she and her father shared a special bond. “Gaia,” he would whisper in her ear, “You are exceptional. I know you are destined for great things.”

As she and her siblings grew older, they ventured farther and farther away from the safety of her father’s arms. Mercury, the baby of the family, still stayed close to home, but Neptune, who had always been erratic and emotional, drifted the farthest, preferring the cold of nothingness to the warmth and companionship of his family.

And though Gaia’s siblings were far from each other, they would wink and wave to her as they danced through space; she would wink back to them, singing a song of love and joy across the void.

Sometimes, though, as she danced across the vast blackness of space, she found herself all alone. She cried tears of regret that she had grown older and wandered away from the bosom of her family. Those tears ran down her cheeks and gathered themselves between her bosoms, falling into the cracks and crevices of her body, and for the first time, Gaia saw the reflection of her father in the pools of water.

She called out, “Father, I miss you!”

Sol burned brightly in the darkness, but said nothing.

“Father,” she called again, “why are you so far away?”

Again, Sol was silent.

Finally, Gaia cried out in frustration, “Why must I be so alone?”

Sol sighed. “Oh, Gaia,” he whispered, too quietly for her to hear, “you are not alone.” And although he knew it would probably make his other children jealous, he blew a warm kiss directly towards her.

A few minutes later, the kiss made its way to her cheek. She touched her cheek and suddenly knew what she needed to do. She put her arms around herself and recalled all the love she had for her family. Her strong heart beat faster and faster, and electricity began to flow through and around her hands.

Lightning flashed between her hands in the sky and the pools of water on her body.

And then…something HAPPENED.

Gaia felt it deep down inside. She felt different. She was more than just a daughter of Sol. She had created something.

She stared at her body. Nothing really seemed that different. The salty tear-water was rocking back and forth as she danced through space. But then, she saw something gleaming: something new, something very, very small, way down in the depths. “I think…I think it’s moving!” she said in horrified fascination.

And it was. It was life.

A life.

Alive.

Not only was it moving, but it had begun to multiply. And there became more of them, and they kept changing form and shape, becoming increasingly diverse in their living, eating, and mating habits. Some of them swam around in the oceans, but others crawled out of the oceans and began to live and move on her body proper. Some didn’t move around at all, but dug their feet deep into her body and stretched their arms up-up-up towards her father.

And so she continued her dance of joy across the void, ever circling her father, full in the knowledge that no matter how far away she was from her family, she would never, ever be alone.


This week’s Indie Ink Writing Challenge came from Wendryn, who gave me this prompt:

Write whatever you like, but include this line: “I think…I think it’s moving!” she said in horrified fascination.

My prompt went out to Kerri, who did a fantastic job answering it here.

Slow Dance

“We need to find you a boyfriend.”

This was me pre-braces, circa 1984-5. I can't find any REALLY awkward-looking pictures from that time period, but maybe that's a good thing.

It was the fall of 1986. Earlier that year, the space shuttle Challenger had disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, and Halley’s comet had reached its perihelion. I was 11 years old, going on 12, and had just started the seventh grade. My gangly limbs seemed to grow faster than my body. I wore braces and glasses, and my frizzy brown hair had a mind of its own. Never mind the fact that I played first violin in the orchestra, attended GATE accelerated classes, and couldn’t get enough of Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels. You guessed it: I was a nerd.

“Who, me?” I glanced at my new friend. Rose and her father had moved into a house down the street a few months earlier. She went to Hoover Middle School, just like me, but she was far more sophisticated than I. We ran in completely different social circles at school, but when we were at our houses, away from school, we got along just fine.

“Yes, you. Don’t you want one?” She held up her hand to her face, palm facing me, and began gently blowing on her newly-painted blue fingernails.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I picked out a bubble-gum pink polish from her collection and began to paint my own fingernails. I always kept my fingernails short to play violin, and I was dismayed to notice that my stubby-fingered manicure paled in comparison to her graceful, slender digits.

“What kind of boy do you want? I can get you anyone,” she boasted.

“Uh…I don’t know.” My mind lept to Richard, my first crush, but I quickly tossed out the idea. I had come on a little strong the previous year, and now he wasn’t talking to me anymore. Okay, so I’d named my pet rabbit after him and drawn lots of pictures of him in my notebook. In hindsight, maybe that was a little creepy.

The only other boy I really knew was Gabe, a scrawny pipsqueak of a kid who was in my English class. He had a ready smile for anyone and liked to make fun of our English teacher, which made me giggle, but…well…he wasn’t exactly dreamy.

“Well, let’s see…” she paused, mulling over what must have been her extensive mental Rolodex of single boys. “Do you want a virgin or a non-virgin?”

The question took me aback. Were you supposed to pick out boyfriends as if they were bottles of olive oil at the grocery store? “I…er…”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “I think you’d be better off with a virgin. That way he won’t pressure you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

This kind of conversation was a little beyond my comprehension. I had only just begun to read ‘Teen magazine, which touched on issues of sexuality, but only in an abstinence-friendly kind of way. I had not much contemplated being kissed, much less that there might be something else to do after the kiss.

But I could tell Rose was determined to set me up. “Um. Okay,” I said, as I watched her frosty glossed lips curve upwards into a smile.

“Fantastic! I know just the guy.”

At homeroom the next day, the tinny voice over the loudspeaker announced that Hoover would be holding its annual winter dance in two weeks. Rose looked over her shoulder at me and mouthed, “This is perfect.” Embarrassed, I looked down at my textbook and pretended to be studying math.

At this point in time, the entirety of my romantic world view was informed by Judy Blume books and movies like Sixteen Candles. All I knew was that a dance would mean that I might meet that special someone, and I would have to dance with him. Maybe even slow dance. How would this even work? Was Rose going to invite this boy to our school dance? Was he going to pick me up and take me there on his bike? Or would we have to take the bus? What if I didn’t like him? What was I going to wear?

Endless questions swirled in my mind for the next two weeks. Rose was swept up in her own preparations and had no time to talk to me, even after school. And then, the morning of the dance, Rose slipped me a note in homeroom. I opened it to find these three hastily-scrawled words:

“HE’S NOT COMING.”

Crestfallen, I glanced at Rose, who was studiously avoiding my gaze. I thought I should feel sadder, but somehow I was okay with not meeting this mystery boy. Truth be told, I had been a little frightened of meeting him.

I decided to go to the dance and just hang out with my friends.

The winter dance was held at the gym of the school, just as you might expect. There were some balloons and streamers decorating the walls, but it still looked and smelled like the gym. The lights were dimmed and a DJ was set up on one side of the room. Kids were mingling, but not very many were dancing. Everyone seemed a little too scared to actually get on the dance floor.

I did a little bit of bobbing up and down to the beat from where I was standing, but mostly I looked around to see what everyone else was doing. Rose was in the corner with her circle of friends, laughing loudly. Only two of my nerd friends were there, and they weren’t dancing, so I felt a little exposed.

I saw Richard on the dance floor. I waved at him, and he half-smiled and turned away.

I swallowed and felt my cheeks getting hot.

“Hey, how are you?” a voice said behind me.

I turned around. It was Gabe. Skinny Gabe with his crooked teeth. He was smiling at me.

“I’m okay, I guess.”

“I can’t tell if you are dancing. Are you dancing?”

“I don’t know.” I smiled and shrugged as I bobbed to the music. “This isn’t dancing?”

All of a sudden, the song ended, and the next song that came on was “Open Arms” by Journey. The piano/synth introduction played out as many of the kids fled the dance floor. Gabe held out his arms. “Do you want to dance with me?”

“Um. Okay.” I took his hands.

It was awkward. We didn’t know where to put our hands as we swayed to the music. Gabe kept making jokes about how silly the other kids on the dance floor looked, and I tried not to think that we looked just as silly. I didn’t really feel like leaning in to him the way they did in the movies, and he didn’t make any moves to pull me close.

After the music ended, he waved goodbye to me and went to talk to some of his other friends. I joined my nerdy friends at the side of the room, and the dance was over soon afterwards.

Gabe never stopped smiling at me in class, but he never made any attempts to go out with me either. I think neither of us was ready for that kind of commitment, but we both wanted the experience of dancing a slow dance. And I don’t know about him, but I’m glad I got to do it with someone that I trusted.


This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from Runaway Sentence, who gave me this prompt:

open arms. not the journey song. unless you insist. ah, it’s up to you.

Most of what I wrote here is autobiographical. I had to change up some of the time frame to help with the storytelling, but essentially it’s all true.

You can read FlamingNyx’s response to my prompt here before the end of the week.

Indie Ink, Baby!


My piece, “Dark Highway,” which I posted here back in March as a part of the Indie Ink Writing Challenge, has made it to the big time! I’m a featured writer on Indie Ink today, so go over there and check it out!

Also: my friend Steve’s artwork will be featured on Indie Ink tomorrow, so clearly they have good taste. Be sure to go there today, tomorrow, and, well, heck, every day!

Yin/Yang

Artwork by Pawat Kongkoonchat

You think you know me, but you really don’t.

My name is Ed Yin. I was born right here, in Oklahoma City. I was raised by strict parents who expected a lot from me. I was one of the only Asian kids in my class, and I got ridiculed for the way I looked all through grade school. It was a tough way to grow up, but it made me a better person, a stronger person. And before you ask: no, I don’t speak Chinese. I’m an American. I speak English.

The reason I’m here, in front of this abortion clinic—this house of death—is to tell all of you that I will fight with every fiber of my being any law that allows women to murder their unborn children. I see those folks on the other side of the street waving their “pro-choice” signs, and I say to you: this is not a question of choice. If I choose to do so, I could kill any one of you. I’m a trained EMT. I have plenty of empty syringes in my truck. But I don’t do it, because it would be morally wrong, and nobody, not even those testosterone-riddled she-male freaks over there, would argue with me.

Do you hear them now? They are chanting about rape and incest. Well, I’ll tell you what: there are lots of things that we all have to do, things we have to hide about ourselves, just so that we can peacefully coexist in this society. If a girl was raped by her father, that is certainly a tragedy, no question. But it’s not the fault of that poor baby. That girl can get through it. I think we coddle our citizens too much these days. All of a sudden, everyone has neuroses, and more often than not, these “conditions” are just hypochondriac fantasies created by psychologists to keep themselves in business. We never had problems like this 60 years ago. Back then, if a tragedy like that happened to a girl, she would get through it. She would get stronger. And she would bear that child to term and give it to a loving family if she didn’t want to raise it herself.

You want to talk about ridiculous neuroses that these people are trying to legitimize? Look at homosexuality. I mean, sure, every guy fantasizes about having sex with other men. You just bury that urge, though, way down deep, because it’s not natural. Sex is for procreation, and if you are going to do it, you should do it with someone of the opposite sex, in order to create life. Not to MURDER BABIES LIKE THAT BITCH WALKING TO THE CLINIC RIGHT NOW!

Sorry, where was I?

Ah. I see you guys are ready for me to step down and let someone else speak. Okay. Before I go, I just want to say one more thing.

You may look at me and see a Chinese-American guy in a suit and assume I’m some sort of banker or accountant. I’m not. Here I am at this pro-life rally, so you might assume I came here with my church group. I don’t even have a church. I just know there is a higher power, and that He put me on this earth to save lives. I do that every day at my job, and I’m trying to do the same with those babies right here, right now.

And you may look at those women across the road and think they don’t care about babies at all, and all they care about is their “rights” as women. But maybe they aren’t what they seem, either. Maybe some of them have come to be educated about the abominable acts that this clinic commits. I came here to reach those people. I came here to save lives.

You may think you know me, but you really don’t.


This week’s Indie Ink Writing Challenge came from Peter, who wrote:

Write something that your exact opposite would write.

I had so much fun with this challenge, because I had to figure out what the exact opposite of me was! I mean, I have so many traits that don’t have exact opposites (what, exactly is the opposite of an opera singer?). I ended up putting together a grid (see below) that would help me figure out what kind of character my exact opposite would be.

Once I had in mind this guy’s likes and dislikes, and the things that made him tick, I had to let it simmer in the back of my mind overnight. And, boy, did I have some crazy dreams last night! But once my mind had really developed Ed’s character (and his name! I did actually dream his name), I was able to write the piece itself pretty quickly.

Trait ME MY SHADOW
Gender Female Male
Ethnicity 3/4 Caucasian; 1/4 Asian 3/4 Asian; 1/4 Caucasian
Marital Status Married Divorced
Sexual Orientation Heterosexual Homosexual
Religion Agnostic (with a side of Wiccan) Gnostic (with a side of Mormon)
Politics Liberal Democrat Conservative Republican
Sports Zzzz… Gets scores of every game automatically via text message
Entertainment Geeky/nerdy stuff like Star Wars, Princess Bride, Dr. Who, and anything related to Joss Whedon Bill O’Reilly, anything on Fox News, anything written by John Grisham
Myers-Briggs Personality Type INFJ ESTP
Profession freelance opera singer full-time EMT

My challenge went out to Catherine, who will answer it by the end of the week here.

Face Lift

I’m playing around with the look of this blog, folks, so don’t be alarmed if the themes change around a few times in the next week or so. And feel free to let me know if you like or dislike a particular look!

Pick-Up Artist

“Pardon me, miss?”

“Yes?”

“Your legs…”

“What about my legs?”

“Well, I was just thinking they must be tired.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because they’ve been running through my mind all night long.”

“Are you kidding? Did you really just say that?”

“What?”

“Did you actually just try to pick me up with that cheesy line?”

“Is there something wrong with trying to make conversation with a beautiful woman?”

“No…I guess not, but—”

“I mean, I’ve got to say something to break the ice, don’t I?”

“But did you have to say that?”

“What’s wrong with what I said?”

“Well…it’s just not exactly appropriate.”

“Why not?”

“Look around you. We’re not in a bar.”

“Oh, so I have to be in a bar in order to talk to you?”

“No, but—”

Photo by Felix Davis

“I don’t get it. Why do you make it so hard for us?”

“Me?”

“You women. All of you. If a man approaches a woman at a bar, he looks like a jerk. If he tries to make conversation on line at a coffee shop, he looks like a creep. If he hangs back and waits for her to make the first move, he looks like a wuss. What am I supposed to do?”

“I still don’t think—”

“I’m just tired of trying to put myself out there and continually getting shot down by uppity cheerleader bimbos who think they’re better than me.”

“Are you calling me a bimbo?”

“No, no, not you! I’m sorry. I know I’ve messed this whole thing up royally by now. Maybe I just don’t have anything to lose anymore.”

“It’s okay. I’m actually a little flattered, to be honest. I just…well, I think you might need to do a little reconnaissance first.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, first of all, you might want to think of saying something a little more appropriate to your location.”

“I already told you, I really don’t think I have to only go to bars to pick up women.”

“No, no…it’s just…well, take a look around you. Where are we?”

“A hospital.”

“That’s right. Not exactly the most conducive place to romance.”

“I thought this would for sure be a place to find desperate…er…women who might need a little cheering up.”

“Well…um, okay. But there is one more thing you missed before you came over to speak to me.”

“What’s that?”

“Think about it. You mentioned my legs?”

“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

“I’m in a wheelchair.”

“So?”

“Take a closer look. I don’t have legs.”


This week’s Indie Ink Writing Challenge came from The Onion, who gave me this prompt:

write about whatever you like, ONLY using dialogue.

My challenge went out to Andrea, who will answer it by the end of the week here.