TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Milk Abusers Anonymous - Paul Nachbar

Awakenings 1 - C.L. Frost

The Purple Berry Tree - C.L. Frost

Practice Session # 306 - C.L. Frost

Matchmaker - C.L. Frost

Empathy, Compassion and Blame - Paul Nachbar

 

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Milk Abusers Anonymous - Paul Nachbar

 

A young friend of mine recently learned my deep, dark secret, which for many years I had hidden under layers of denial...It's almost too humiliating for this netizen, member of various prestitigous societies online, and the editor of three wacky
anthologies to admit this..to come out of the closet with such a profound issue.
In fact, it is only with assured support that I can bring myself to inform this so kind
and lovely though disparate group that I am....a milk abuser. Indeed, that I have been one for many years.
   And so, kind members of Milk Abusers Anonymous, I pledge myself to this group and to the Higher Power which guides everything. I will tell all, I will tell all...despite the shame, guilt, fear and humilation. How for so many years, decades in fact, I hid this vile habit from friends, family, my coworkers and even my beloved doctors.
And how, over this long period --punctuated by brief eras of lucid abstinence--I
truly wasted my life over such a vile substance....as milk. Alas <sniff> a truly
wasted life, for milk has been my ....downfall.
   Here have I avoided reality, responsibility, discipline ,sincerity, honestly, authenticity, goodness, purity, conformity, organization and clarity in the tense,
addictive, passioned and impained search for more...and more milk. And of
course, though I cannot bring myself to share the specific details of this pain,
from milk of every possible source. Yes, yes...it is shameful, I know. Yes, yes,
it is tragic. And has led to so many terrible things, so many shattered relationships,
so much deceit and lies and horror.. A milk abuser..What a loathsome thing..
what a terrible unforgivable thing..
   Please..please ..forgive me. I knew not what I did. I am trying very hard here..
I really am...this is so difficult for me to talk about...I am trying very hard here
to keep a straight face. Amen
And may the forces that be be with you.
Blessings..
 

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Awakenings 1 - C.L. Frost


Mother's gritty voice, from the kitchen just beyond the archway,
stopped her; Claire clutched the banister, one with the eavesdropping
shadows.

"Well, you have to preserve their self-esteem; that's what all the
books say", the gritty voice gargled. A coil of smoke unraveled
into a gray veil over mother's face; clouds of earlier smoke lingered,
muting the yellow light into a bilious choking haze.

"Hmm," the man grunted, his back a murky silhoette in the smog.

Earlier that evening, Claire had danced into the kitchen, caressed
by the aroma of simmering spaghetti sauce, the golden light twinkling
off brass lamps, and her teacher's praise. She hadn't colored
completely within the lines, hadn't drawn uniform patches of color as
the older kids were able to do. But she'd copied from Christine, the
best artist in the class, drawn scalloped circles for the clouds and
foliage, added billowy pink curtains to all the windows, and it was
good. The teacher had said so, had tacked her picture in the center
of the bulletin board with a gold star beside the yellow sun.

"Look what I made!", she exclaimed as she lept into the bus.

"Ah, let's see, "the old driver drawled, "Very nice; you're a real artist."

"Look what I drew!", she shouted as she clattered into the house.

"Don't slam the door, " her mother growled. "And hang up your
coat."

"Look at my picture!", she sang a few minutes later.

Mother glanced fleetingly at the neighbor lady and crushed her
butt.
"OK, let's see," she sighed.

"Oh, honey, it's marvelous!", the neighbor lady caroled as she
squinted through her bifocals. "If you were my child - why, I'd put it
in a frame and hang it in my living room right over the sofa!"

"Yes, very nice," mother grunted. "A gold star too, the teacher
liked it. Yes, very nice indeed.....why don't you tape it to the
refrigerator, so that everyone can see."

Mother lit another cigarette, waving it like a baton as she turned
to the neighbor lady.
"Like I said before, "she muttered, "I'm all againt this new
zoning. I don't care how much revenue it brings in, it'll bring in
the riffraff - trailer parks and modular homes that fall apart in 10
years. It won't be a nice quiet town anymore, you'll see; we'll have
to worry about bikers and beebee guns and ....."

Claire had pressed each strip of scotch tape carefully along her picture's margins, each aligned parellel with the freezer's sides and
top.She'd pushed the brashly yellow and screaming red magnets far to
the right,where they wouldn't clash with the timid pink of her breeze
ruffled curtains. She'd pushed the calendar, with its grimy winter
sky etched by twisted branches, down, far from her lawn of sun stroked
clover. She'd scrubbed away fingerprints with her knuckles and
scratched away a streak of dried tomato juice as the adults jabbered
about something boring, something she couldn't hear anyway as she
soared into the sky's unblemished blue. Gleaming white porceline
sparking gold highlights, the sweetly lulling scent of brewing basil
and the hum of contralto voices murmering incomprehensible nothings
had framed her latest creation.

Now Claire, heavy from so much pasta, shuffled towards the archway through the shadows.

"So," the gritty voice continued, "If you want them to be confident later, you've got to feed their self esteem when they're young. Dole
out some praise when they try hard."

"Mmmmmm". A rumble from the silhoetted back.

"So, even if it's not an A+ performance, you've got to encourage
them. The books say that low self-esteem is the biggest cause of
depression in America today -"

"Look, Jeanne," the man interupted, "Why don't you just forget all
that crap? Who ever heard of parenting by recipe?; isn't there some
instinct involved?"

Claire stole closer. A snake of smoke meandered through the
archway, tickling her nose.

"What I'm trying to say, if you'd listen, is that I don't like the
thing any more than you do." Mother's coffee cup clattered shrilly
against the saucer. "I don't like looking at the kid's scribbles
either. So, we'll just leave it up a day, the self esteem thing.
Then we'll take it down tomarow; she won't even notice."

Encased in smoke, Claire coughed; she couldn't supress it.

"Oh, there she is!", mother stammered. "Uh, I was just telling
your father all about your lovely picture. Right, Sam?"

Claire turned towards the refrigerator, popped open the door and
stared at the shelves. The air in the room seemed so heavy and thick
with words, muggy with warm phrases and the vapor of dissolving
promises, putrid with praises that crumbled to ash like the silvery
smoke. The cool refrigerator air felt refreshing against her sweaty
neck.

"Are you looking for something, honey?"

Claire held up a Coke. Squinting over the can as she sipped, she
noticed the glazed eyes above a lipsticked smile, the jiggling knee
beneath the elegantly arched wrist. She memorized the slump of her
father's back and the parched folds sagging under his hooded
turtle-eyes as he grunted through his part. She wondered when his
body had begun folding in on itself, and when her mother's face had
split in half, the bottom fixed in a pink smile while the top shifted
between frowns and squints and laser stares; she wondered when legs
had begun talking more honestly than the mouth. What she wanted couldn't be held up, couldn't be described to these people,
couldn't be found in this room, perhaps couldn't be found anywhere at
all.

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The Purple Berry Tree - C.L. Frost

Nancy lived up the block, behind the scratched door which was behind
the stacked tires, the rusted bikes and the wet mattresses with
springs sticking out like spikes.

The purple berry trees lived everywhere on the block. Mother said
that they were only bushes, but they loomed over me, their thousand
dust-coated berries dangling like Xmas balls. When I plucked one and
squashed it between my fingers, purple juice streamed down my palm and
painted my arm violet.

"Don't go near that Nancy," mother said, "She's a bad influence. I
don't want to hear that you've been playing with her"

"Don't do that," mother said, when I squashed the purple berry.
"You'll stain everything you touch, that stuff'll never come out".

I skipped towards Marie's house, just up the block. Warm sun, bugs
buzzing in the haze, the faint scent of distant lilac, cars belching
heady fumes. A day for swinging, kicking up dust eddies as we ran,
then forgetting what we'd done. I knocked on Marie's door. Knocked
again. Waited and knocked again. No answer from any of the 8
sisters. I crossed the street to the purple berry tree in front of
Nancy's house, and to Nancy.

We shuffled in our sneakers, jumped over the cracks that would break a mother's back, then began plucking purple berries. No words; just a
single glance upward, then the conspiratorial act. We each crushed
one berry underfoot; purple seeped into the hot cement. Then we
grabbed handfuls,scattered these over the pavement, and hopped in
place atop each. Handful after handful, plucking the tree barren.
The purple specks joined to form purple splotches. Splotches joined
slotches to make a purple figure, a primitive purple man with a blotch
head, a big purple belly, and streaked legs. The purple juice would
never wash out. The purple man, born of the purple berry tree and the
first creation by me and bad Nancy, would lie there through rain and
snow. My first mark upon the world would live until bulldozers came
to kill the sidewalk, perhaps live longer than my my mother and all
her warnings about purple berry trees.

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Practice Session # 306 - C.L. Frost

In that other room, water hissed into the sink, a newscaster's
baritone jabbered with staccato urgency, a coffee cup chimed on impact
with its saucer. Below, in the dark damp cellar, the furnace groaned
awake. Claire pulled the bench closer to the organ; its legs
scratched plaintively across the floor boards and a hinge somewhere in
its casing whined. Seated, she clicked the little black switch to
"on", then chipped at tan grime encrusting a key as she considered
whether to hit the "vibrato" or "tremulo" tab, whether to hear her
scales rise from a lusty french horn or fall like silver tears from a
pleading piccolo. Whatever she did, the electronic notes would sound
plastic, as though coated with textureless vinyl and stinking of the
factory.

"I don't hear that organ," mother yelled, as she did every night.
"What are you doing in there, staring at the walls?"

The organ had been a comprimise for a kid with no musical
ability; Mother had declared "I know you don't have any talent here,
you'll never have *my* keen ear. But you'll thank me for the lessons
when you get older and need to entertain people". It was a compromise
between a mother's conviction that all children should learn to play
an instrument and a kid's reluctance to practice. The organ,
supposedly not requiring the acrobatic fingerwork of a piano or
violin, had been placed in the least distracting room of the house -
what Mother called "the den" but what the kid called "the room of
shame", "the room of emptiness", the "hollow room". The four blank
walls, sallow in light filtered through a stained lamp shade, closed
around the organ; the throw rug was frosted gray with years of dust.
Mother talked of someday paneling the room with oak planks, bought
cheap from an aging artisan and carved with designs of wandering
vines, but these, dropped in a basement corner, had been softened by
creeping moisture long ago.

Claire pushed the "flute" tab and poked her way up the scale,
pecking especially hard at the stuck keys; the sounds seemed stale, as
weary as the drab yellow light. The furnace gurgled and moaned as it
belched hot fumes through the vent; cigarette smoke crept under the
door, its prickly scent rising to mix with the clinging stench of
mildew and hot oil. Claire trudged back down the scale, pausing to
graze her fingertip over patches of grit. Then she reached behind the
music stand and quietly pulled the palmistry book from under stacks of
score sheets.

"Palmistry, How to know people through their hands," she read.
The gilding had chipped off the title, leaving pale tan
words embossed
in a faded green canvass cover smudged with grease and sticky spots
from months of being read by the organ. She cracked open the spine,
wedged the book into her lap and scanned a page smeared with grape and
cherry fingerprints.

"The mount of Venus lies at the base of the thumb; those with a
strong mount of Venus are drawn to the romantic.". She winced. Her
own mount of Venus bulged and she had no interest in gooey love
stories. And her mount of Mars, associated with warfare and
aggression, stood out plumply, even though she ran from the school
bullies. Father had always said that palmistry was mumbo jumbo, a
farce just like her weekly music lessons.

"Where's that organ music?" Mother bellowed. "Those lessons cost
money and I'm not paying for nothing. Miss Dutton says you haven't
shown much progress."

"I'm playing, I'm playing," Claire stuttered back, "It's just hard
to hear over the TV".

The furnace sputtered to a stop. The smoke hovered in horizontal
wisps; TV voices mumbled monotonously; the shadow of her raised hand
loomed as tall and dark as a sentry against the bland wall. She
wished that the practice hour were over - wishing her life away,
mother would say; if such wishes were granted, she'd be an adult by
now, and dead by the time she'd otherwise be voting age.

"I don't hear anything," the husky voice called.

"Ok...OK," she sighed.

She reached behind the music stand again, quietly pulled a small
tape player from under the sheets, popped in the casette she'd hidden
in a pocket, and pushed "play". Sunday's practice session, 60
plodding minutes of scales, wailed from the speaker. The hands in the
machine fretted up and down the keyboard, toppled into wrong notes and
stumbled through reruns as she read.

"Those with a strong mount of Mercury are verbal, clever, and
expert in the arts of deception". She glanced at the fleshy cushion
under her little finger, almost as plump as the pad by her thumb.
Clever at deception, clever enough to know how to use a tape recorder,
she smirked, then returned to her reading and her lesson
 

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 Matchmaker - C.L. Frost

"Romance",Anne thought,"Is highly overrated." Those red roses
might be pretty, but she had 5 bushes out back - and those didn't shed
petals all over the countertop; when they shed, the wind swept the
debris away, did her housecleaning for her. She was supposed to
appreciate (and get the hint from) the black lace underware that last
guy brought, but she really would have preferred dremel bits; if he
know her so well, as he was proud of declaring, why did't he know that
she was a wrench wench? And then, there were those interminable
conversations, better over the phone where drear dearie couldn't see
that she was sketching bats at war, of "Do you love me?; do you
really, really love me? Say the words, I want to be sure that you
really, really really really love me....."

Now that Wanda woman was after her again. "Don't you get lonely in
that house, all alone? Don't you know it's not healthy to be all
alone?". The Wanda woman was always out there, raking leaves or
pruning the sidewalk hedges before the frost; Anne heard from her
whenever she checked her mailbox or climbed into the car. "There's a
guy at work, single, your age, really nice with thick dark hair; I've
told him all about you, how lonely you are...."

But did she want a man, even the good man who's hard to find?
She'd have to shake her horsehair out of its habitual bun, scrub her
scalp free of dandruff and curl the split ends. A man could get away
with a $10 crew cut. Her own father had worn hair blotched orange and
gray, with jagged edges in back, to work. He'd bought dye to hide the
gray, applied it haphazardly without reading the instructions, and
rinsed it off when he'd grown bored with waiting. "The right side's
orange and the left side's gray", Mother had exclaimed, "You can't go
out like that!". Coppertone orange. But father had glanced in the
mirror, said "Looks fine to me" and driven to the lab. Mother, who
always looked meticulous, had complained "Why should I cut his hair,
play barber, when he never even combs it?" And Anne had thought "He
doesn't, I never noticed". "Why," she asked herself now, "Couldn't a
woman be more like a man?"

"His name's Bill," Wanda had whispered yesterday, "He owns the
video store - his own store, and he knows all about videos. And funny
as all get-out, I told him to expect you around 8."

Anne sighed. Hopefully she'd find that long suede skirt in her
thrift shop bin; otherwise, she'd have to shave her legs. Hopefully,
she'd find a matching blouse in one of her piles. She hadn't gone
clothes shopping in years - too lazy, cheap and practical. She'd even
once calculated that, if her weight didn't change, she'd accumulated
enough thrift shop clothes to last her until she died. Some of those
$1 sweaters might be frayed and stained, but everyone would blame the
scruffiness on Alzheimer's, not on her. They'd probably just see the
wrinkles and not notice anything else at all;old hags got dismissed,
became invisible and free in a land of hallowed youth denying any hint
of mortality.

"And dress nice,"Wanda had added. "Bill's got good taste. He's an
artist on the side and you know how artists are - like color,
something unique."

At least the shoes wouldn't be a problem, Anne thought. She'd do
what she'd done for that New Year's party - spray paint them. For New
Year's, she'd sprayed her flat slippers and a pair of pantyhose gold;
tonight, she'd spray them with Premium Decor colonial-red decorative
enamel. The enamel was meant for metal and wood but had stuck well to
leather so far. If all the layers of paint started peeling away
before she met this artistic Bill Somebody, she'd tell him that the
splattered look was the newest fad in Paris; you just wait and see,
Bill Somebody, next year this will be the rage in New York. He, being
someone who liked the unique, would appreciate the novelty.

Makeup? She'd thrown away those Revlon kits that her mother sent
her routinely at Christmas. Staring at her mirrored sallow face, she
imagined talking to Wanda. "Wanda dear," she'd drawl while poking her
foot into a pile of papery tan leaves, "Once I flashed my toothless
grin, he forgot that I wasn't wearing lipstick. Besides, he was
already too busy stroking my hairy legs, soft as a dog's paw with all
that fur and him being a natural man. And he really appreciated how
practical the hair was - stopped ticks before they could crawl up to
warmer darker private parts."

She placed the red shoes next to the suede skirt and a crimson
blouse scrounged from the dollar bin. The colors would match in
candle light. And that, she nodded smugly, was as good as it got from
a woman who had her own roses and could entertain herself anytime by
exploring Home Depot.

-------------------
He couldn't fire her. She was so reliable, arrived on time even
during a blizzard, could file away videos even more efficiently than
he could. But Wanda was afflicted with verbal diarrhea. Thought in,
comment out, and everyone had to live with the stink.

"So Bill," Wanda yapped, "Why don't you have a girl yet? I keep
telling you - a nice looking guy like you should be working on
children by now, not living all alone with his 2 cats, 2 chihuahas, 1
hairy mut and 5 hens. And why do you wear sweaters with gold threads
in them? Don't you know that this is a *conservative* town, only 2
Democrats registered in the whole county?"

She doesn't know what I have at home, Bill smirked to himself. A
hot-pink feather boa, a silver sequinned shirt that jingled as he
shimmied at the New Year's Eve ball. And his hair hadn't always been
neatly cropped at the nape of his neck; that had been a concession to
the Republicans and his role as respectable shopkeeper.

"So," Wanda squawked for all the customers to hear, "I decided to
do something about it, if you wouldn't"

"Hmmm...what?"

"I decided to shop around for a girl for you," Wanda exclaimed
proudly. "Now, I know you don't like the cheap ones, a guy with your
taste. No fake boobs or silicon lips for you. So I found someone,
and right next door! She's a little plain, but she's got depth. Oh, I
know what you're thinking - how can a bigmouthed booby like me see
depth? Well, I'm not as shallow as you think. I see things, I see it
in her eyes. She'll be good for you, kinda grows on you...."

Like mold, Bill thought. If only Jay were eavesfropping, playing
fly on the wall; tonight, when they lay together like spoons under the
plump eiderfown quilt and the blue light from the faintly murmering
TV spilled over them, he'd tell Jay all about it.

"I told her to meet you here tonight," Wanda continued. "Tonight -
that way you can't run away. You have a date. Her name's Anne."

Jay would want to hear all about the plain girl with real breasts
who was sent to save Bill's soul. If this Anne was quiet, knew what
had to be kept secret in the village, he might tell her about his past
as a beauty queen, about how he'd starred as Miss Gay Louisiana in his
youth and played Diana Rossetti dancing to "Stop, In the Name of Love"
at an AIDS fundraiser. The boxes filled with stage make-up were still
stacked on his top closet shelf - enough creams, blushes, fake
eyelashes and eyebrow pencils to make anyone look any age and any
race.

"But don't you have a different sweater?" Wanda barked, "One that
doesn't have *gold* in it? A thick brown wool one? Or...with your
build, you'd look spiffy in a turtleneck"

If Anne liked the gold weave in his sweater, maybe he'd give her a
sneak peek at his boa. If she liked the boa, maybe he'd show her his
collection of fur collars, including those vintage minks from some
grandmother's attic, with pasted-on glass eyes above a real mink mouth
that clamped down on a real mink tail. If she liked the minks, maybe
he'd drive her all the way to the mall for a real girls' night on the
town; if she was also a mall junkie, as addicted to plumes and sparkle
as he was, they'd pick through clothes until the lights dimmed and a
security guard hustled them out.

A spiffy brown turtleneck? One of his "get down and be dirty in"
work sweaters, now splattered with teal and yellow from housepainting,
had once been pure brown. He and Jay had planned for a quiet night at
home, savoring Jay's home cooked spaghetti while mellow blues drifted
softly over them; when Wanda left, he'd have to call Jay and listen
to him snicker. And Anne would probably just be a village girl;he
probably wouldn't even be able to greet her with his "Hello, here's
everything about me" speech about how his fluffy mut was mothered by a
keeshond who was raped by a golden retriever and about how he'd named
his guard-dog chihuahas "Killer" and "Spike",

He sighed. He'd have to wait, as twilight dimmed into night,
dutifully obeying the orders of his employee
 

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Empathy, Compassion and Blame - Paul Nachbar

One of the issues which, now that I reflect upon it, has been a very deep one for me most of my life has been the distinction between empathy and compassion and the related issue of blame. I would be curious about other peoples' thoughts on this matter too.
Now, of course words have very slippery meanings and one person's empathy can be another person's compassion. I guess there are people who say and sincerely mean to say that they are without compassion and/or empathy or that such qualities do not really exist in the spectrum of human emotions and motivations. I am not sure here, however, if argumentation gets one anywhere with this issue. In fact, it seems
that this issue is somewhat analogous to the way different people perceive and
feel differences in temperature. From some 'points of view', for instance, a temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit might be quite warm; from other 'points of view' it might be nearly frigid.
Humanity does fight among themselves --or , of course ourselves---and fighting is of course a big part of history, not to speak of contemporary reality. But of course we are not only fighters, else we probably would not have invented the concepts of empathy and compassion. Well, yes, of course, some people do 'fake it' but it seems highly improbable to me that 'everybody fakes it' towards some devious
ends. I might add here that "fighting" about the definitions of empathy and compassion or regarding who is suitably empathetic and compassionate and who is not---which occupies, it seems, much space in high IQ dialogues- does not seem to be able to be so readily reduced either. Obviously we fight, we take sides and because we take sides, our enemy, whoever that is, is to blame. But we also have another side, which is confusing to ourselves and perhaps even confusing to our
enemy, who is sometimes though not always of course just a so-called enemy.
I mean, I dont' mean to be too optimistic here, because I'm not..
Empathy of course seems like the stronger or more intense partner of compassion.
Well, it seems that way from the dictionary definitions I've found online and perhaps
what I've experienced in my life. To say that one actually feels what another feels,
which is the claim of at least some empathy, seems to me a stronger statement
of a certain type of emotion than saying that one is compassionate, which seems
to presuppose a greater distance between oneself and the object of one's empathy
or compassion. Again, I'm not sure if there are many hard and fast rules here,
because "infinite compassion" seems to be the goal of certain types of relgious
faith, sentiment and aspirations..
I am not, as you might know, an especially religious or spiritual man, though I do , naturally, have an imagination and a fairly big, though sometimes disorganized one at that. That is, although I do think of the concept of God --well, for and against--
I think more about Man.And here, I think, I reached a somewhat sketchy conclusion tonight: that it is possible to blame humanity or human nature per se---unless,
of course, one is advocating or fighting for one particular group against another---
but it is not so easy to really blame individuals per se for almost all of the things they do , that is, granted a relatively full knowledge of all the factors which went into their
so-called "behaviors" and exactly how their "situations" may be like and unlike
one's own. I am not going to try to prove this, because I am also not a big believer
in philosophical proofs outside of the realm of logic and mathematics-like philosophy;
I just state it as a tentative conclusion about my own species.
Here again, I could say--and often do--that the species is lacking in one thing or another or has too much of one or another quality--and is hence deficient. Or, to put it more bluntly, I do have my misanthropic moods, despite my basically sociable
character. But what do these lead to? Not much of course, since I really do not wish harm upon my own species on any grand scale or myself on a more minor scale.
Thus, I grant myself the right --and especially among my friends on and offline--
to have those moods, which are nearly inevitable and not, among friends, to be
papered up with wrapping paper and covered with bits of tinsel--though I guess
there is a time and place for that too.
So I'll just conclude I guess with a small self-evaluation of these three "traits":
empathy, compassion and blaming---hoping that somebody out there joins me in
this discussion. That is, I probably am on a balance more compassionate than
truly empathetic. And I'd add here that I have leaned more towards defining myself as
empathetic than "merely" compassionate because of the various types of blame
that I have received over the years. Then I'd add, finally, that I have also "blamed" ---and harshly blamed ---though often only or mainly the sorts of people who apparantly have blamed me or who saw me as less than a complete human being, also equipped with as much natural compassion and empathy much as they possessed. My wiser self --kind of a recent addition I suppose---shows that in those rare but extremely painful cases where I had my share of battles over such subjects, the 'enemy' was no more or less INTRINSICALLY blaming,compassionate or empathetic than I was. This I have learned through a long analysis of some of these conflicts, of all the "information" I received about their causes and perhaps as I said, from the drop or two of wisdom which have accumulated over time.
But unfortunately, wisdom alas seldom seems to prevail, whether among or inside of individuals or among those larger groups we have formed, including tribes, races, religions, ethnicities, businesses and other corporate bodies,nation-states and blocs of political and economic allies. Much to my regret...




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