CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC ABOUT THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX by Kathryn Merrifield

Cautiously optimistic about thinking out of the box – not sure you can be a novelist and follow either one of these principles – stupid slogans that came to be when I was working in entertainment and book publishing, both over-used and as uncreative as the warning within.  I wonder if anyone actually thought they’d be hopeless, stuck to the confines of Twitter word counts and Facebook special parameters that require fast-food style thought, little investment and zero attention.

It can be effective if one is learning how to create clever ads.  It can be effective to share blips of dialogue and announcements once sent on paper via truckload mail.

(Speaking of which, damn, those postal workers work 24/7 now!  The red, white and blue is such a different take on going postal.  Completely defies jammed creativity slogans, trumped by “Work-Your-Ass-off-Ism.”  Out on the road on a Sunday… to deliver bills and junk mail.  Really, people should deliver more human mail.  Send a card to someone now!)

Anything long is short and the hope promised with cautious optimism has a reach truncated by fear.  Cautious optimism isn’t possible.  Thinking outside the box – necessary.  A coffin has a shape similar to a social networking platform.  Our longer modern lives have somehow burrowed us in this cyanide capsule for the brain.

(Writing for social media posts is fun, but it’s placebo for the fiction writer.  Add a bit of paranoia and someone out there is also stealing all of your ideas.)

If you’re that cautious likely the true fear is accountability.  I was married to that fluffy pillow of thought so I know, and the certainty that it could smother me in my sleep.)

Someone will undoubtedly come up with a pill to absorb the classic novels.  What a time-saver! Absorb all of Moby Dick or War and Peace in this one little pill that holds granules of literary treasures.  It’s the Alice in Wonderland for English literature – less invasive than the regular cerebral upload and covered by most healthcare plans.  Guaranteed to allow you to think out of the box AND impress your friends.  Quick acting in most cases, side effects could include muttering that resembles Tourette’s Syndrome, blindness for an unspecified duration, ticks, or involuntary convulsions, or seizures caused by the intense absorption of intelligence via words into the blood stream.  Overdose can also lead to years of hermetic isolation that researchers attribute to the actual time necessary to read the ingested tomes of literary excellence.

The clear message here is to read between the pages and the lines of big things.  Words are nothing to be afraid of.  They can be your most reliable friend that offer hope by telling the truth.  I’d like to think that will keep me out of the box for a while. 

Or, at least save me from future rants like this.

EASTER MUTATIONS by Kathryn Merrifield

So, this morning as I retreat back to bed after the Easter baskets have been officially breached by three kids, only to discover that the stupid Costco prepacks had the nerve not to include one single chocolate Easter Bunny!

Maybe Costco realized that the Easter Bunny didn’t want anyone to eat its image – only the repack did include and disproportionately (as with all Costco’s lifetime supplies of all things material, stands) offer, a very large bag of rabbit-shaped jelly and sugar granule-covered candies.

Who is the Easter bunny anyway, but some mutated rodent that somehow enters my home when I’m sleeping as though it seeped through the walls or a rodent-hole, delivers full baskets of what anyone today would consider manufactured poison, then randomly places hard-boiled and decorated eggs around the yard to be hunted and found and also horded by the greediest and most competitive of seekers? 

I’ve offset the timing of the Easter egg hunt for a while blaming the neighbors who don’t yet want to wake to screaming children.  Partly true.  I need more time to wake.

Opening the Easter baskets was accompanied by more religion questions that tend to be vaguely answered.  Leo’s genealogy project required tracing his ancestors, and I’m assuming that’s where his attempt to try to understand the relationship with God, Mary and Joseph, since Jesus is also God.  He said that Mary came first, which, of course I liked, as it supports Gaia and women as creators.  Only issue here is that if God came first and Jesus gets to use God’s name, it carries with it the notion that Jesus can do God’s work, therefore making it the first reported case of nepotism recorded in history.  If not the first, the most renowned. 

Somehow we landed on the spelling of words.  Luke is compelled to destroy all dictionaries because, he said, it’s easier to look up words on the internet as the dictionary lettering is too small and the definition too complicated.

Leo asked how to spell the word donut.  I told him, “D-O-N-U-T.”  He argued that it was spelled, D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T.  We talked about phonetic spelling, and how the English language makes it impossible to spell but allowed for spelling tests to be given because if all words were spelled phonetically, as they sound, then no one would have to work at spelling.  When he asked who makes up the spelling of these words, I told him it was probably someone like him who wants to rename our foster dog.  Her shelter name is, “Spring,” 

Leo’s rename preference is, “Douglas.”

And that is why I prefer conversation with my three children over conversation with anyone.

I also know that the Easter bunny, if it’s anything, is really a mutated bunny responsible for pushing that large slab of rock out of the way so Jesus could get out.  Alternatively, it’s to ensure that we’d both have an occasion to get together, eat, and have something to talk about besides weather.

We also really like comic book characters here.  And since Thumper is the only other popular rabbit in American lore, bunnies are the making of extreme sports.  But more on that later…

BOHEMIA, CT by Kathryn Merrifield

“You’re so Bohemian,” said my friend, hosting a second-grade, all-boy birthday party at her home.

Today, I received a compliment.  I had to do a little research to make sure.

I  live in Greenwich, Connecticut.  It’s still new and I still miss New York even though it’s just one exit away.*

OMIT FOR BLOG:  Yay, divorce.  Booo, that I’m still not in California and tethered to a fifteen mile radius by a former spouse who does little more than completely suck.  END OMIT

Bohemian?

Isn’t that, like, hippy?

“I just don’t care.  I like to help the dogs,” I said.  Friend was referring to my ability to take in the most adorable puppy I’ve ever seen, then turn her over to a family to adopt two weeks later… just as I was getting attached.  This one is a sweetie and I can’t keep her because I’m renting and I’d never want to surrender a dog because of a prohibitive living situation in the future.”

Bohemian?  Isn’t that somewhat like, Nomadic?  According to the real, bound dictionary that I still own:  that means I’m either an inhabitant of Bohemia or that I live and act without regard to conventional rules and practices. 

“You’re not neurotic like the us,” she clarified.

People in the Northeast was what she meant.  She must have met my former in-laws.

Friend sees this as an asset so it’s okay. 

I’m not particularly Bohemian but maybe I appear to be now.  Perhaps it’s time for a haircut. 

After all, I’m forty-six and not entirely certain when the hair is too long in an era where everyone is young forever.

So, does that mean I’m a forty-six, year-old undecided, uncommitted Will-O-the-Wisp?  No, I have plenty of commitment in my life.  And, no, I showed up to drop off and pick up and I have a dog that I want to keep but can’t because I’m a renter.  This rescue is the most adorable in all the land… if one day she stops barking and alpha-ing our adopted cat, “Tink,” lower on the totem pole., she could stay  I wanted her to stay with us.  She’s smart – moreso than Donald Trump because she (and all sentient beings) has a statistically better learning trajectory and absolutely no incentive except to be liked.

The dog isn’t bohemian either. 

But, I’d also like to live in a commune, with five kids of my own in a cooperative, helpful parenting environment, like one I heard of from a former hippy friend.  People help each other and… appear to be Bohemian hippies because there is zero personal gain apart from connection.

“Bohemian.”

“It’s because I’m from California…” and I just don’t care about things that don’t matter, I told Friend.

In the end, puppy smell is a lot like horse smell.  If you’ve spent time with horses, you know, there’s a freedom in that smell – not a particularly good smell, but an earthy one.  Grounding.  Familiar.

So there are two of the infinite list (jest) that I miss from home.  I used to have borderline OCD in all matters of work and schedule.  Life beat that out of me in the way it does to every single person (though every single person won’t tell you it has).  Not caring can also mean love.  Not caring about stuff can mean that I want more room for my people and my furry friends in my life.  Dogs that smell and demand every last second of your attention.  Cats that overeat and throw up.  Kids that are loud.  A little girl that needs a hug at every moment she’s close enough to do so.  Boys that have bad aim for the toilet and need to be set free into the dirt.

Bohemians can dislike dust and laundry yet still like a full closet of clothes and wide open windows.

Bohemia, Connecticut.

Home for now.

* Mostly I think I like saying I live in New York.  New York has some ego in it, like it or not.  Like it less, that I’d still rather be in my beautiful California.  Home is always more home than now home.