Athens, 9/12/2014

My husband Alan and I left JFK airport at 6PM Thursday evening for the 7 hour flight to Amsterdam. I was in the window seat and saw sunset over the Atlantic before deciding to try and catch a little sleep on Alan's shoulder. Alan can sleep under almost any conditions and had already been napping for half an hour. The plane's cabin lights were dimmed, making conditions a little easier for me. Normally, I can't sleep at all on airplanes, but the flight was fairly smooth and it was after midnight according to my circadian clock. I was beginning to drop off into sleep when Alan's arm jerked, his arm going to sleep from pressure I'd put on a nerve in his shoulder. I looked around, groggy, and saw something out of the window in the peripheral vision of my left eye.  Unsure of what I was seeing, I opened the window shade to get a better view.

It took me a few seconds to register what I saw out on the horizon toward the southern tip of Greenland. Green bands of ghostly light undulated, pulsated and flared. Aurora borealis. I'd never seen it, but viewing it had been on my list of things to see at some time during my life. The possibility of an opportunity existing during this flight hadn't even crossed my mind. I stared at it for a few minutes while a broad grin broke across my face. I woke Alan so that he could see it, too. We took turns leaning forward to look out of the window. I thought about taking photos but the dim light from the airplane's cabin would have made the aurora appear as a fuzzy and indistinct smear. Its appeal came partially from the color and partially from the shifting bands of light, so instead of trying to capture it with a device bound to be inadequate to the task, I kept watching and marveling at the phenomenon until it winked out suddenly.

As dawn broke over the North Sea, I saw short towers of cloud crowding its surface, beneath which small pinpoints of light dotted a deep grey surface in an earthly mimicry of the twilight sky. These were the floodlights of oil rigs drilling into and mining the seafloor. Thirty minutes to the east, Amsterdam itself was like a patchwork quilt of greens and browns, full of farms, its earth rich and loamy. "Oh, look," Alan said near my shoulder as we watched the land pass underneath the jet. "There are the tulip and wooden shoe farms!" I groaned.

Schipol airport was open and airy. All of the souvenir shops had tulip bulbs and wooden shoes, to my dismay.  By the time we walked from our gate to that of the connecting flight, it was time to board. Athens was a three-hour flight away. On board, the aisle seat in our row was taken by Georgio, 80, who was going to Athens to visit family, among them a new niece. We began talking when he saw Alan studying Greek from a textbook.

"You think you can learn that language?" he asked.

"I'm not doing too badly," Alan said. "My wife has been doing better with the language than I have."

"Iste Elenas?" I asked the man. Are you Greek? He nodded and said yes, but indicated that it was a long time ago. He was now and had been living for a while in Washington DC. He told us about his fishing business, and said that we would find that the fish we'd have in Greece would taste much different than that we'd had in the States. He asked where we were from. We told him that we lived on Long Island. He said that he had once lived in Seaford, and then proceeded to give me a recipe for spanikopita, which included baby spinach, fennel (anise he called it), green onions, olive oil and not butter on the phyllo, plus egg to coat the top. ("Use Dodoni cheese; that is the best kind!") He said "ya sas" ("Your health") was a phrase the older people liked better than the more contemporary "ya sou" or "ti kanete".

Thunder pealed on the way to Syntagma square (by bus, 10 Euros), but no rain came from the cumulus clouds. The air was hot and humid. The countryside looked like northern Arizona but felt like Florida.

Alan's method of battling the effect of jet lag is to forgo sleep and drop off items at the hotel, then go out and hit the ground running. We got off the bus at Syntagma Square and walked 10 minutes until we found Electra Palace hotel with help from a waiter at the Only 1 taverna, who invited us in. We had bags with us which we wanted to drop off, so we said we would be back. We unloaded at the hotel and showered to wake up, then returned to the taverna. I had a salad and iced tea, Alan had souvlaki, all were good if not remarkable. We headed to the national gardens, then back to the agora, the metropolitan cathedral, up towards the tower of the winds at the foot of the acropolis. Another taverna proprietor waved us in and we elected to stop for a bite while we watched the setting sun warm the colors of the stone's face at the base of the temple.

I did not think I would like retsina, having been told that it tasted like turpentine, but when I tried it, I found the wine pleasantly dry and possessing a faint piney character that quickly grew on me. It accompanied another tomato and cucumber salad and a side of bread with spicy cheese dip. My brain was beginning to cobweb over from fatigue. I had been awake almost 48 hours. I watched the tavern waiters and proprietor also work the passers-by. Their eyes scanned tourists' and locals' body language and facial expressions. They interacted differently with tourists, trying to coax them to a table. I suppose the locals knew whether they felt like stopping into this particular tavern or not. If the tourists passed on, the staff would sometimes joke with each other about this one or that one, mostly regarding the women. I could tell when they were teasing each other about the women even though I had no real idea what they were actually saying. My Greek wasn't good enough for me to have that level of comprehension.

We started back to the hotel at some point around 7P but quickly became lost in the maze of the agora, an area within the Plaka where goods were marketed much as they had been for thousands of years. I was mentally exhausted and the fatigue was showing on Alan as well. Neither of us was very good at helping each other find our way back and we got irritated, but eventually pulled ourselves together enough to navigate the agora and get back. After another shower and a quick email to let people know we were in Athens, we collapsed into bed at 10PM.

What's the best way to start writing a great short story?

http://graemeshimmin.com/how-to-start-a-story/

What is your favorite kanji and why?

A Quora question, answered by Gilberto De Melo

Not only it is a nice looking character but its underlying meaning is also beautiful.

The top part is 羊 (ひつじ), which means "sheep". The bottom part is 我 (われ), which means "I".

Together, both characters are "lamb over me", which is a concept that came from Judaism, where lambs were sacrificed for the forgiveness of sins. It was also practiced in ancient China, where it gave origin to this character.

Meaning in English:
• righteousness
• justice
• meaning

 

http://www.quora.com/What-is-your-favorite-kanji-and-why

Scary Query

A query letter is supposed to be one page consisting of three paragraphs.
It is just like aikido, or haiku. Graceful simplicity.
Forever to master.

I have spent all day on a letter and am maybe brushing the surface of "adequate".

The sticking point I'm concerned with is this: Queries for non-fiction have a standard format which is different from the query for fiction. Word counts are generally included for fiction. If an agent (recommended for selling fiction to a publisher) is intrigued by the query, he'll want a "full", meaning the full manuscript. Not several sample chapters. The whole thing.

The project is itself fiction, intended for a market dealing mainly in non-fiction. How do I query this project?

It's a chimera.

QUERY-LETTER HAIKU

The hook, bait and set

Story synopsis follows

Author bio. Thank.

Dojo

I skinned my right knee pretty well three days ago. I haven't had a skinned knee since I was nine years old. It stings like hell when I pour hydrogen peroxide on it, and hurts again when anything brushes against it. I'm not putting a band-aid on today, thinking that if I let air get on it, that will help speed the healing.

My intercostal muscles also ache anytime I laugh or cough. I'm not sure what the cause of this is, but I suspect the repeated falls and the rolling around I was doing, both backwards from a standing position and forward, obliquely along my shoulder. I haven't rolled around on the ground since I was six. I have also had to acknowledge the tiny muscles along the sides of each toe, because these ache too from standing as high as I could on said toes while arched over deeply backwards.

On top of all this, the nail of my right great toe is almost split down the center. This happened during the backrolls. Someone standing near me at the time said they'd heard a crack! and thought it was my wrist. My wrist was just fine. I found out once I got home that the toenail suffered a structural failure. I had (had) done a nice at-home pedicure the week previous but, oh well.

These injuries were sustained during the martial arts training I began two weeks ago. Iaido on alternating Sunday mornings, Aikido on Wednesday and Thursday evenings and Friday morning, and T'ai Chi on Wednesday evening before Aikido. I had considered learning a martial art for some time, but never felt strongly enough to make the commitment. I didn't know what styles I was interested in or how much time I could devote to practice. In a fashion typical of me, I finally decided to pull the trigger and start my new study by visiting an Iaido instructor recommended to me by a colleague and experienced martial artist. Several days later I also checked out another dojo offering different training, and since I liked all of the options so well, I decided not to decide by committing to the study of three different styles simultaneously.

When new skin grows to cover the wound on my knee, it should be just a little tougher and better prepared for the knee-walking exercises called shikko. Practice at falling properly and returning immediately to readiness will guard against injury; a lifelong utile skill. Previously under-used musculo-skeletal structures are stressed, strengthening in response. New neural pathways form as foreign terms and phrases are dis-assembled, analyzed, recalled and learned.

I'm clumsy and un-coordinated, especially compared to the more advanced students and the sensei, flowing gracefully from one position to the next in his pleated hakama. "Ai hamni," Sensei says. "Stand with your right foot forward. Your other right foot. Turn tenkan." He smiles and says, "Turn tenkan the other way." Somehow I make my partner into a living origami figure that crumples solicitously to the mat. During my turn as uke, the one who "receives" the technique being learned, I try to roll without square edges. Another woman approximately my age or older encourages me and tells me I'm good at rolling. My body isn't convinced but I thank her anyway. And sometimes when I'm executing technique on Sensei, he laughs as I pin him on the mat. I hope it's because he is experiencing joy at the eagerness of an attentive student.

I'm not even 6th kyu. I have no rank whatsoever. Everything I absorb, attempt, succeed or fail at improves my technique. From here I have nowhere to go but up, and it's a good feeling.

Escape (excerpt)

I’m on the road heading north from south Florida to Gainesville. My heavy old car floats at sixty-five mph along a back road route, fly windows open, air rippling my T-shirt. In my haste to escape Gainesville, I may have helped kill my best friend. I didn’t attempt to hide anything. The evidence of my guilt is there. The detective I’ll meet in another hour will know that I intend to clean up what I can. It’s mid-June now. Spring had been warm. I may present a self-defense plea.

The apartment complex where I lived with Gary is in the northwest section of the city, near the Koppers creosote plant. When prevailing winds are from the south, the air smells of pine straw and neighbors’ cooking. Otherwise the scent of creosote is pervasive, as though we’re surrounded by telephone poles and not tall loblolly and longleaf pines. The apartment complex is made of two-story and half-empty brown cinderblock box structures. A small parking lot sits at the front entrance. It is large enough to hold perhaps twenty cars, but most of the tenants are welfare recipients and few of them own a car. I am one of the car owners. 

The people at the complex are afraid of my car. It’s a four-door 1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass. The man I escaped from Gainesville to calls it “the voodoo Cutlass”. Its paint has faded to primer gray. A year ago, a friend’s mother took me in to live with her so that I could attend college. She had mauve curtains in her house and dust ruffles on the beds. She ended her evenings by smoking one menthol cigarette and drinking one glass of wine. Rent was my housework and cooking. I repaid her after a few semesters by starting to smoke her menthol cigarettes and taking a can of black spray paint to my faded Cutlass. I painted tribal-looking geometric designs and original motifs all over the body. My motifs did not harmonize with her mauve curtains and one glass of wine per night. A month after I’d painted them, she kicked me out and I went to live with Gary in apartment #9.

#9 was a standalone two-bedroom one-bath unit in the apartment complex. It faced a row of the two-story units like a condemned man facing a firing squad. There was a laundry room adjoining our unit, equipped with one washer. Its agitator was coated in a thick floral-scented frosting of everyone else’s detergent, powdered and liquid types mixed. The dryer made every resident’s clothes smell alike, with top notes of fire hazard, thanks to a long-lost lint screen. The washer and dryer were often used by passers-by and other transients as surfaces to sit on while illicit substances were smoked. Any persons passing our kitchen window en route to the smoking lounge felt compelled to look in out of curiosity. 

One quiet evening I arrayed a line of empty beer cans along the sill of this window and took target practice from the living room sofa.  I had a long-barreled Crossman pellet pistol, and was loading pellets one at a time, pumping the chamber twice, lining up the sights and firing. 

Pf! 

A can recoiled and clattered from the sill. I reloaded, pumped twice, aimed and fired. 

Pf! Down went another can. Six cans fit across the sill. Four more to go. I was inserting another pellet into the breach when suddenly there was a face at the window, eyes rolling around and checking the place out en route to the laundry room. I raised the pistol and sighted between the eyes. The eyes got real big and the man apparently didn’t care for one particular content of the apartment, that being me.

Our front door was hollow construction, and only a little sturdier than an interior door. The dead bolt seemed to be present more for show than any real ability to keep a determined burglar out. On another quiet evening, Gary and I had archery practice. An old cartoon poster of President Nixon and Spiro Agnew in Greyhound bus driver uniforms hung on the front door. The caption underneath read “Leave the Driving to Us”. We strung my old archery bow and fired arrows at the poster. They penetrated the door easily but stopped halfway through because of friction. When we retrieved the arrows, we saw that the holes looked enough like bullet holes from the outside to be of possible benefit as a burglary deterrent. They remained unpatched.

We took rides to Paines prairie and walked the trails after heavy rains, looking for artifacts. Everywhere outside Gainesville had been or still was either pasture or farmland. The dirt trails yielded up their cow bones and we dug around for more. What we found we took back home, cleaning them of tiny roots and dark brown loam clinging to the surface. Red clay had worked into the tiny holes and spongy bone crevices. I built a kinetic sculpture from the bones, painting stripes and spots on the flat bones before hanging it outside just above the door. The other residents took a wide berth around our unit.

I arrived at the Gainesville police station in the mid-afternoon. The woman who had called me up one evening in tears over the bad news told me that Detective Cooper was the investigator. I asked for him at the front desk. He greeted me in an expressionless professional manner and took me to a small interview room. We sat across a table from one another while he asked me questions. I saw that he had little rubber bands at the back of his mouth. They were distracting. Watching the rubber bands stretch and retract back there was fascinating. Could one pop out and hit someone in the face during an interview? I wanted to be doing anything other than what I was doing just then. And this was going to be the most pleasant part.

He asked me who else had a key to the apartment. I said I didn’t know. 

He asked if I knew of any drug use or other illicit activity going on at the apartment. I said I had suspicions but didn’t know. 

I was briefly disoriented when I got into town and tried finding the street to the apartment complex. It was late afternoon, and I had been sure that I would get lost or turned around at least twice anyway. I hadn’t been in this area for six years. A college town can change completely in six years for people who don’t live there. I drove slowly up the street towards the apartment entrance and parking lot, my windows down in the warm, humid air, tires crunching over a deteriorating gravel road as blue jays screamed from the trees. The car had no air conditioning, and the day was warm. At two hundred yards out from the apartment, an odor completely new to me probed deep into the base of my brain and prophesied to me the futures of all mankind.

Sweetish, wet and foul, it admixed with the scent of creosote to coat a tarry black and sticky outlook onto an entire neighborhood. A large fly raced past my open window towards the apartment. Just before I got to the parking lot I could see the standalone unit, every door and window open, profusely weeping air from fans on high settings placed in every orifice.

Tatters of yellow police tape fluttered from pine trees in a broken line around the apartment perimeter. I pulled into the lot, parking next to a newer silver Honda. I assumed that this car belonged to Gary’s dad. Gary had been his firstborn and only son. I got out and shut the heavy door. Inside, the apartment was in a familiar yet sinister disarray. In an office which had once been a bedroom which once was mine, what remains of Gary covers the tile floor, and is itself covered over by a plastic yellow tarp.

I am a plastic yellow coward.

Review: Nameless Corporate Workplace

PROS: Chances are good that your co-workers will not contribute to a future need for anti-anxiety or other medications. Most of your co-workers will try to be supportive. Generous vacation time as compared to other employers. You will need it, but you will also be discouraged from taking it!

CONS: Management. Most job stress is needlessly caused by incompetent and insensitive management, widely-viewed by employees as having been promoted to their current positions by virtue of political favor and/or damage mitigation. Firing most of them would improve many stubborn issues almost overnight. They’ll try to blame employees for the various failures and unmet goals, but since employees are micro-managed and not trusted to think for themselves, all train-wrecks start at the engine.

At typical workplaces, holding a door open for someone steps behind you in a hallway is viewed as a simple courtesy. At this plant, however, courtesy extended to certain managers will gain you a rebuke. “Don’t wait and hold the door for me; you have work to do!” The five seconds winds up being used to poison attitudes, not get anything additional done. This is the kind of short-sightedness exhibited on an almost-daily basis.

The remainder of the job stress is caused by the constant need for fire-fighting. Priorities shift by the hour, making planning one’s day or anticipating project time allotments almost impossible. 

People are not valued, and their experience is not valued. I heard a top-level manager say this explicitly as he was walking down the hallway past my cubicle, talking loudly on his cellphone, undoubtedly to another high-level executive. Predictably, this piece of work was eventually promoted. “If you’re not happy here, there’s the door,” was the keynote delivered by the piece of work at of one of our employee meetings. 

This is not a career move. Management has their turf well-protected in an ever-circling Charybdis of transfers and promotions, adulterated with outside acquisitions, while lower echelons stagnate and struggle for crumbs thanks to performance reviews kept mediocre by the standard of absolute perfection held to “everyone else”. A lot of lip service is paid to talent management, but people with actual talent learn quickly that this is not where they should be, and those who want to gain more talent are either going to wait in vain, or have it go unrecognized.

There is a company picnic, however. It is held on-site, and therefore has to be made as safe as a four-year-old’s birthday party to avoid any potential litigation. Budget cuts may mercifully euthanize this affront to good times. Employee’s families are never invited to attend any company functions whatsoever, which is a lost opportunity to humanize the workforce to their management overlords. Fun is generally disallowed and viewed with suspicion. When management figures out how to put fun on trial and burn it at the stake, they will.