Homeless Homeowners

It is possible to own a home and be homeless.  We're about to do it!  Here's how:

We do not have enough money to get a decent mortgage for a decent house.  We were also too poor to carry cash to a city tax auction and compete with contractors and "investors" for dregs.  We are, however, clever enough to dig into the system and buy a city tax auction house outside of the auction so we could prepare and get a personal loan to pay for it.  We are also persistent enough to make it work!  However...

The city said the house was in "normal" condition.  It is not.  The city said they had NO inspection reports, they said they did NOT go inside, and they could not tell us anything about the property.  We can tell them that there is no plumbing, no heat, no doorknobs, a roof that needs complete replacement, and a back porch that is dragging off the back of the house.  We have also found out that the only reason the home was boarded over was because of neighbors begging for it--for years.  Lesson learned: the city knew the condition of the house, they let it get worse, and they had the nerve to ask for any money for it.

We love our house!  We spent all our first months, from September to December, cleaning out the garbage, attempting to get contractors to give us estimates, and bringing over boxes of our stuff we won't need right away.  We tried to apply for the grant that would get us just about everything we'd need to fix the house and live in it, but you have to live in the house to get the grant.  ?!?  After a HUGE struggle, we got special house insurance for a house that was being fixed up that was cancelled after a month because they said the house needs to be fixed up and we need to live in it.  ?!?

So we're now renting our apartment, paying for a personal loan, and paying taxes on our house.  We haven't been to the house in over a week because temperatures are less than 10 degrees, and, as you may remember, we have no heat.  The struggles of low-income people to make it out of their low-income living conditions is real.  Really real.  Because what happens when we can't afford to rent?  We use up all the money we've managed to save for fixing our house.  We can't move in if we can't fix it.  We can't get a home equity loan or house insurance or a grant until we live in it.  What do we do?

The plan: visit the department that manages the grants and tell them we're about to become homeless homeowners unless they put us on the grant waiting list (yes, there's still waiting!)  We look to rent a scary-cheap apartment in the same city as our house.  We wait until the temperatures go to above freezing, go back, keep cleaning, keep moving, try to fix more windows, try to remediate the basement ourselves, and maybe even try to dismantle the back porch ourselves.  In the meantime, keep plugging along, trying to increase our income.

Homeless with a home.  In 10 degree weather (lows below zero.  Fahrenheit, in case you were wondering.)  How does it happen?  People like us struggle to get up.  How will we make it work?  Through ingenuity and persistence, like we've always done.

Ordinary Day

It's always an ordinary day.  Seasonal weather.  Routine morning.  Breakfast, shower, pack up for work, get in the car, go.  Regular traffic.  A slow pedestrian.  A four-way stop that irritates.  A slow truck.  Cows.  Cup of tea, still hot.  Reviewing the work to come, watching the road, thinking of turning on the radio.  Normal.

A patch of ice.  A car running through a stop sign.  A suddenly stopped truck.  These are the things that can throw in a bit of panic, but they are easily overcome.  Or it's a traffic accident.  Automatic systems kick in and the heart beats faster and steps are taken until it's normal again.

But when it's not really a normal day, that's when there is cognitive dissonance.  Those are the days that separate people into categories they never even knew existed: Survivor, Victim.  Hero, Human.  Searcher, Lost.  Witness, Runner.

Ready Player One Movie Opening

OPEN: An ideal, ivy-league-style SCHOOL.  Wood paneling, polished floors, statuary, paintings, etc.  Rooms and rooms of learning--seeing inside some appear "normal" and others fantastic--just a glimpse, enough to see it's "futuristic".  A bell rings and clean, good-looking STUDENTS flood the hallways.  Most either go to lockers and then out the nearest door, or they just leave.  It sounds busy, like you'd expect in a high school.  Perhaps unnoticed, there are several boys and girls who are dressed exactly the same--plain black t-shirts and jeans, black Converse sneakers.  Above all their heads, ghostly, float their names in boxes that point down at them.  Lockers look normal, if extra-deep.  WADE WATTS, a teenage boy in the plain clothes, is at a locker.  He is good-looking if a bit nondescript.  Opening his knapsack, he taps on book icons that reappear floating over the top shelf of his locker.   His backpack appears lighter with every tap.  The locker slams and an even better-looking boy in fancy clothes is behind the door, several friends behind him.

**interaction just as in book**

STUDENTS leave quickly and the HALLWAY quiets.  WADE walks slowly to a door.  Just outside a couple STUDENTS blink out of existence.  WADE walks beyond the school grounds and keeps going until he is on rolling, beautiful green hills on a gorgeous fall late afternoon.  Empty of people, there is a gentle breeze, forest in the distance, blue skies with just a few clouds.  WADE sits on the hill and watches for a while.  He sighs, reaches up, logs out.

Suddenly, WADE appears on the floor in the corner of a noisy, dirty laundry room.  It is dark grey inside and out.  It is cramped.  WADE is no longer good-looking.  He appears a little younger than before.  He is overweight and looks unhealthy.  He has acne, he is pale, he is dirty.  WADE is wearing dirty, patched clothes.  WADE pulls off a plain-looking set of goggles and worn-looking gloves.  He puts them lovingly into a vintage metal Star Wars lunchbox.  There is the sound of fighting, shouting, sirens, music, television, and more.  WADE tucks the lunchbox into his knapsack (a filthy, sewn-up version of the one he has in school) and pulls himself into a ball, shivering a little.  A fight on the other side of the thin wall is disturbing.  WADE pulls out a beat up laptop and plugs in headphones.  He watches Family Ties.  The sound of theme song is first nice and loud, comforting; WADE smiles, wiping his eyes.  The camera pulls back and as the song fades out for the audience, the fighting fades in.  We see the relatives and renters who live in the trailer, many plugged in, some doing drugs.  The camera pulls back and back until we can see the STACKS: mostly trailer homes with some RVs or vans mixed in.  Lots of sounds and sights of extreme poverty, drugs, crime, economic and ecologic devastation.

NOTE: the characters are all real actors.  There will be three WADE actors:
YOUNG WADE: overweight, short, acne, normal, but not overtly attractive.
OASIS WADE: tall, good-looking, fit.  Has same general coloring and the idea of real WADE, but an ideal WADE.
OLDER WADE: taller than YOUNG, very fit, acne gone, normal, but not overtly attractive though better than he was, extremely pale and devoid of hair.

CONTINUATION:


Pulling back from the STACKS, you get a view of the further devastation.  The trailer homes, in multiple neighborhoods, surround an over-packed, poverty-riddled, energy-lacking city.  The roads do not have private vehicles, and many roads are overgrown and crumbling back to nature, some with homeless living in lean-to shelters or makeshift tents.  The only vehicles are buses with solar panels, and even those are patched together.  Pulling back further, there are dead zones from ecological disaster and abandonment, and, even further, some US cities have been destroyed (either crumbling and abandoned, burned, or nuked and are cordoned off holes).  Pulling back further, the ash-filled, polluted sky gives way through the clouds to blue, then up to a cluttered layer of satellites, abandoned space program paraphernalia, and rocks.  Pulling back further, only starfield is visible.



The actual starfield seamlessly transforms into an old video game starfield--opening credits roll over decades of video game scenes.

AFTER OPENING CREDITS:
WADE wakes early in the LAUNDRY ROOM.  He powers up just the laptop (not the goggles and gloves) to scroll through old family pictures.  He stops at one of his mother and father: a selfie his mother took with his father holding a hand on her pregnant belly.  They look thin and dirty, but smiling.  He has a FLASHBACK to his childhood (**if flashbacks are used, there will be one more WADE: a little kid who is thin and dirty**.)

FLASHBACK: LITTLE WADE is sitting with his MOTHER on their filthy, old, torn couch in a dark single-wide trailer (at the bottom of the STACKS).  There is a cardboard box labeled **FATHER'S NAME** on a dirty coffee table also strewn with take out food containers, pop bottles, and subtle drug paraphernalia.  She is showing him the same picture of his father on her phone, scrolling to it through a couple other pictures.

MOTHER     This is your daddy, Wade.  He loved you very much.  (She pauses to hold back tears.)  Your daddy's the one who named you, you know?  (She reaches into the box and pulls out some superhero comics, including Spiderman.)  Like Peter Parker, you know?  "Wade Watts".  The first letters are the same.  Like you're a superhero, because you are.  You're my little superhero!  (She tickles him and they laugh.)  Come on (she drops the comics back into the box), it's time for you to play your games.  I gotta go to work.

MOTHER puts WADE in old fashioned VR goggles and little gloves.  She logs in for him via an old laptop and sets him more firmly on the couch.  Before putting the large headphones over his ears, she whispers to him.

MOTHER     (whispering) I love you, Wade Watts.

WADE     I love you, Mommy.

As WADE's hands lift and make passes in the air as he plays, MOTHER stands, pockets some drug paraphernalia, and is already taking down her hair and unbuttoning her shirt.  She exits to the next room and closes the door.

WADE takes off his headphones and goggles so he can look in the box of his father's belongings.  He finds more pictures that show his father was very young, his mother was very young, they were very, very poor and struggling.  He finds pictures of a happier, younger father with his own family in a suburban home.  He finds notebooks.  He finds an obituary page filled with listings, all who died of influenza, that includes his grandparents together.  Finally he finds a newspaper article about his father being killed while looting during a blackout.  As he's looking, he begins to hear his MOTHER making sex noises in the other room, as she is an online escort.  WADE puts the papers away and his headphones and goggles back on, turning up the volume to drown out the sounds.


CONTINUATION:

WADE comes out of this flashback, scrubbing his wet eyes with the end of his sweater sleeve.  At that moment, his AUNT enters, carrying an armload of filthy laundry.  She is thin, with sores on her face.  She starts the process of doing laundry and notices WADE, frozen in the act of trying to cover his laptop.  The AUNT's eyes widen and she bellows for her husband.

AUNT     **NAME**!  NAME!  Get in here!  The little asshole's got a laptop!

WADE     No, Aunt XXX.  Please, I need this.
AUNT     You owe me and your uncle, for taking care of you.
WADE     But you get my food vouchers...

UNCLE enters and stands at the door, unseen by AUNT.  He is also filthy, tattooed, wearing a shirt that shows off his muscles and track marks.

AUNT     NAME!

UNCLE     What!
AUNT     Wade's got a laptop.

WADE surreptitiously executes a program that deletes all of his information off the laptop.

UNCLE     Hand it over, freak.

WADE     Just a minute...

UNCLE enters fully, flexing and making a fist.

UNCLE     Now!

WADE just manages to let go when his UNCLE yanks it from his grip.  AUNT and UNCLE smile at their fortune.  AUNT speaks as they both exit.

AUNT     Let's see how much we can get...

WADE crouches for a moment longer, then packs away the rest of his belongings with one eye on the door.  He opens a window and climbs out onto a metal rail that helps hold the trailer home onto its perch near the very top of the stack.  WADE looks out and sees desolation in the still-dark, grey morning.  A cold wind whips at his clothes and too-long hair.  WADE pulls his pack all the way on and shuffles sideways holding onto a rope he tied onto the metal to help him escape on this more dangerous route.  WADE makes it to the end where he can climb down the scaffolding, and he does.

Along his climb, he sees men, women, and children plugged into their computers, wearing old goggles and gloves.  Some only have huge computer screens showing scenes of shopping or entertainment, some violent and/or vile.  No one is moving much, and no one is very fit--either over or underweight.  WADE stops at one window where the scene is a bit more homey and decorated in an old-fashioned, grandmotherly style.  There is an old sofa with an afghan, doilies, kitchy pictures on the wall, many cats, and a TV showing an evangelical Christian service.

CONTINUATION

WADE taps on the window.  An old woman, NAME, enters, sees WADE and smiles.  They both wave and NAME opens her kitchen window.

Interaction is same as in the book.

As WADE climbs down the stack, it gets darker and darker.  Dirtier and dirtier.  The bottom is filled with litter, dirt, and mud.  All the drippings and grossness of being at the bottom of a vertical trailer park, plus a few hulks of rotting vehicles, pushed to the side and used for other purposes.  Paths lead through the stacks, and WADE keeps his hood up and his head down, but his eyes wary.  People lurk in the dark, selling drugs, selling themselves, looking for a target, or looking at absolutely nothing.

The stacks get a little shorter and the path opens up to a junkyard, filled with the other vehicles that were towed away and piled up to make room to build the stacks.  WADE looks around furtively, then hurries into the junkyard, taking a winding path.  Sure he's not been followed, WADE pulls a key out from around his neck, takes one final, hidden turn, and slides up to the back of a Ford Econoline van with blank back windows and framed all around with other junk cars.  The top of the van has been saved because the vehicles on either side were just a little taller than the van and a vehicle on top was dropped sideways, balanced on the side vehicles.

WADE unlocks the back, climbs in quickly and quietly, and shuts the door.  It is completely dark, but we hear WADE pick up a crank-powered flashlight and grind it into use.

Ultrasound

The ultrasound room is dim and has the low, gentle hum of equipment.  The exam table is covered in cloth, not paper, and patients get a pink cloth gown.  The technicians are soft-spoken and reassuring.  They also have no news to give because the images are sent to a doctor to read, somewhere, in an office.  It is warm, comfortable, and quiet.

Inez and the Good Life

When did Inez still have a chance at a good life?  It was definitely before she was hit by the car that injured her back and put her on hydrocodone.  It was before her father died as a result of "an altercation" at age 74.  It was before she divorced her husband.  It was before they lost their house on South Street.  It was before they sold family land in South Carolina to a paper company to pay their bills.  It was before she dropped out of community college.  It was before she got pregnant.  When did the chances for a good life stop, or was it that she stopped seeing them?

Autonomous Vehicle

An autonomo slowed down when it sensed Kate walking and pinged its mandatory after midnight inquiry.  Kate slashed down with her free hand and the vehicle continued on its way, probably back to its charging station for the night.  She hoisted her sliding pack back into position and cinched the straps over her shoulders.

A Sky Full of Ships

The stoplights blinked red, reflecting in the standing water on the cracked pavement.  A v-shape of at least a dozen ships whined by overhead making Anna's inner ear itch with subsonic sound.  She fought the urge to look and fought harder the urge to run.  

House Hunting Discoveries

When you look at houses for sale in our price range, which is low, you can see how people live in poverty.  Most of the houses are rental properties being sold by the landlords.  The descriptions include phrases like, "Investor's Dream!" and "Money Maker!"  Often they tout how much the tenants are paying, how much they would love to stay, and how much more you could charge them for the privilege.  My "low price range", by the way is less than $50,000, and usually much less.  If it goes under $20,000, however, tenants are usually no longer in the pictures, and you rather get description phrases like, "Ideal Fixer-Upper!" and "Choose Your Own Walls!" and still, "Investor's Dream!"

Looking at the pictures of these houses, aside from the trickery and outright lies realtors and homeowners are trying to push, you see the lives of the poor who are living in a house that may soon be yanked out from under them.  You see chairs surrounded a space heater whose vent has blackened the wall.  You see kitchens and bathrooms crammed under the eaves of the attic because there's another apartment crammed into a space that should have been for storage.  You see stoves in front of doors and windows.  You see futons or just plain mattresses for beds.  You see cheap metal and plastic clothing racks tilting with hangers.  You see fourteen toothbrushes in mugs in the bathroom.  You see four loaves of bread, ten boxes of cereal, and six bags of various cookies on the refrigerator, the microwave, and the counter.  You see cheap, hollow-metal tube furniture.  You see a 50" television covering the front window, and the TVs are always on Maury.  You see painted paneling.  You see grey indoor/outdoor carpeting in every room.  You see sloppily painted tan walls with grease marks at head and hand level.  You see gap-riddled, cheap, plastic flooring made to look like wood.  You nearly always see words on the walls: "Family", "Love", "Dream".  The toilets are open.  There are tubes and jars and jugs of personal products on the dressers.  There is laundry in every room.  Plates with food in the kitchen, on the coffee table, and in the bedrooms.  A slightly surprised child staring into the camera, wondering what it means that this person has been photographing their home.

Daddy, I love you, please don't die.  Please fight and get strong and live.  Please fight through it to come out and have a relaxing old age.  Please stay with me so I can visit more often.  Please stay long enough to see proof that I made it okay.  Please stay long enough for me to help support you and Mom.  Daddy, don't go.  I'm not old enough.  I'll never be old enough to lose you.  Please fight.  I've already missed you so much because you're far away.  I've already needed more time and if you go I'll never get it.  I'm selfish, but I want you to live.  You should have a relaxing old age filled with buffet breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.  You should enjoy every moment and not have to wonder if you'll have enough water or money or propane or gas for the car.  You should have a real house.  You worked so hard, you deserve to have a wonderful decade...or two...at the end.  Daddy, I miss you.  I love you.  I need my Daddy.  I should be able to take care of you.  To give you a vacation.  To give you a new car.  To give you dinner.  To bake you chocolate chip cookies.  To do you "a flavor" and get you ice cream again.  To watch Shirley Temple and Marx Brothers movies.  To read the Sunday funnies.  Please don't be lonely.  I am here.  I will keep you company.  You won't be alone.  I'll go with you.

I wanted to call today, but thought it was too soon, or that I might disturb you, or that I might interrupt you and Mom.  I will call tomorrow because I can't stand it and I'm so scared I'll miss you.  You'll never see this here, but I still shout it to the Universe: I love you, Daddy!  Thank you for my life and the part of your life you gave me.  I am grateful.  I am not done.  I can't lose you yet.  Not yet.  Please stay.  Please.

How to be Poor and Buy a House

Cash-poor people can buy a house.  It's a struggle, and many routes easy for those with money are closed, but if you can be patient and be okay with a house not-quite-of-your-dreams, you can do it.  I know because we finally did it ourselves.

I've read plenty of "inspirational" stories of people with "no money" flipping houses and getting rich, but their version of "no money" is not really no money.  They have a house they sold, or stocks they sold, or money they could borrow from family.  We had no house to sell, no major savings, and no family who could lend to us.  We pursued several avenues to a house, and while any could have possibly worked, only one finally did.  We tried:

• City auction
• "Homestead" housing
• Traditional bank lender
• Specialty "low-income" lender
• Asking to be given a city-owned house

Each of these paths had problems, but sometimes they have worked for other people so we tried them all.  To see how you match up with our personal version of "no money", you need to know our details:

• We make less than $25,000 a year and we need just about all of it to live (rent, food, gas, utilities, etc.)
• We have approximately $5,000 in money we can liquidate to cash (not IRAs, which I refuse to touch!)
• We have no debt--no credit cards, no car payments, no loan payments of any kind.

I understand others may be in more dire financial straights than we are, but you can see we are not in a position to lay down big bucks, nor do lenders offer us much in the way of a mortgage.  In the end, it was the "simple" use of huge balls of brass that got us a house, and even more gigantic balls that helped us to make it habitable.  The only way we got our house was by asking to have it from the city.  It had no plumbing, missing radiators, a leaking roof, and a back door that was wide open.  It was filled with garbage, including a stairway used as a feral cat litter box.  The first floor toilet was broken--in half!--and the iron fire escape was pulling free from the back of the house.  The sofits were see-through with rot and it was in a questionable neighborhood.  We asked for it.  We got it.

We cleared out the garbage, secured the doors and replaced broken windows, put a tarp on the roof leak, and lived without water or heat.  We couldn't afford to rent and fix a house, so we had no choice.  Our relatively low rent was to go to repair savings, and in the meantime, we were on a one-year waiting list to get a repair grant that could fix our roof.  We polished up our brass balls and started asking for free to cheap renovation help.

Obedience

She didn't know how old he was, but he was in school, so he was older and knew things.  He wanted to play doctor in her tree fort, and she loved to play doctor so she went with him.  He had his "doctor's tools", which were a couple of dark grey landscaping rocks from around her house.  She was good at following directions and was proud of it.  She lay down on the wood floor of the fort, only the top of her blonde curls to be glimpsed through the doorway, should anyone look.  Her brother was friends with his brother and they lived just a few houses down.  As directed, she pushed her shorts and underwear down to her ankles and lay still, arms at her sides, while the examination began.

Psychic Ear Ringing

Hendrick's left ear was ringing, but he refused to pick up.  It had taken years of diligence to learn how to block out the feelings, and sometimes images, that accompanied the ringing, but he had managed.  Unfortunately, his left ear was also the ear upon which sat the headset's cushioned speaker, and his ear's own ringing muffled the client, who had just begun to describe a computer problem.

"I'm sorry," Hendrick interrupted, "but could you please repeat that?"

Meth Lab Arson

Sirens by themselves tend not to disturb us anymore.  Now it takes a combination of sirens plus the rev of multiple engines, or our living room being bathed in alternating colored strobe lights.  We finally paused our movie, an early 1970s futuristic German movie about computers where there were long shots of people not looking at one another and faces reflected in mirrors, to look outside.  The alley behind the houses across the street was bathed in headlights, which was the only reason we saw a plume of dark smoke.  A house that faced the alley was burning, which was enough for us to put on actual clothes and shoes to go look.  It seemed like the whole neighborhood had waddled down to ogle the destruction.

Abuse Dynamics

I swore I'd never be the kind of girl who ran behind her boyfriend, crying.  Where the boyfriend stomps on ahead, brow lowered and thrust forward, lips compressed, dropping the door on the girl as she stumbles along, begging for him to stop and just talk for a moment and she's sorry, even if she doesn't know why, and if he would only give her a chance.  The kind of girl who would sob that she wished he would stop and talk, while at the same time knowing and secretly dreading his dead-stop and one-foot pivot, rounding on her like a bear, pointing his finger or even raising his fist.

Loving Siblings

"What makes you think I don't love my brother?"

"The way you talk about him."

"And what way is that?"  She finished pouring and set the kettle back with a clunk.

"You're always telling me stories about how awful he was to you.  How awful he is to you."

"Yeah, and he's my brother, so I can say he's a jerk and still love him, can't I?"

"I wouldn't have thought so."

"Well, I do.  He is a jerk; he is my brother; I love him.  You, however, can have no opinion."

Outliving Old Friends

An old woman creaked onto the bus and lowered herself carefully into the first row.  Halle sat a few rows back and wondered what it would be like when her first friend died of old age.  Unless, her mind wandered towards the idea, she would be the first.  She made herself long-lived and killed off her friend Nora at the age of 89, which she felt was pretty good.  You can't complain if you manage to hit 89.  Halle imagined herself mourning each of her friends, wearing black to their funerals, and being patted for her losses as everyone she knew dropped away into time.

Wilson on Erie

The sea of grasses stretched out to the real sea, invisible beyond the line of curving trees, but sensed with sound, and smell, and taste.  The grasses mimicked the sea waves without the finishing roar on rocks, crushing them into sand.  A gull cried above the hissing rushes and circled away.  Lena watched him disappear.  She watched the grasses undulate.  She stood as still as one of the grave statues behind her.

Weird Kid

When I was a kid, I wanted to have some sort of debilitating disease, like polio, so I could wear leg braces and have those arm-cuff crutches.  I drew pictures of myself in a little memo book, the kind small enough for a pocket and with a plastic spiral on top.  I drew myself wearing a numbered jersey, a thing I never owned, legs strapped into braces, arms locked into crutches, and smiling hugely.  What did my therapist think of that when I confessed to it?  She thought it was because I wanted to be pitied and coddled.  I stopped seeing that therapist because that analysis was so very wrong.  I didn't have any psychological training, I was the one who cracked up at work, I was the one who drew myself as a cripple when in reality I was physically normal, and even I could psychoanalyze my childhood daydreams.  I wanted to have a debilitating disease not so I could be pitied, but so I could overcome that disease.  I wanted to be heroic.

Common Ground 2

It was like a rope went from Amanda's heart to a boulder beneath her feet.  It was tight and strong and she felt like she couldn't move.  Every thought that would have taken her in a direction was tugged back before a step could be completed, her imaginary foot hovered, struggled for a moment, then came back to keep her still, over the boulder.

She thought to move away, but the boulder filled with dollar signs, and she came back.

She thought to clean up, but the boulder filled with question marks about where to start, and she came back.

She thought to read, to nap, to surf the internet, but the boulder filled with guilt, and she came back.

Amanda's mind bounced back and forth, and she raised her foot every time, even when the thought had already proved fruitless, and the short, thick rope bound to the immovable boulder made her come back.

She felt her thoughts panicking, which she knew by experience was followed by a panting, grey hopelessness and, as predicted, tears already pricked her eyes, but a new thought came.

She thought of freedom.  Of sky.  Of lightness.  This time, the boulder did not fill with memories to drag her back.  It did not fill with a to-do list.  It did not fill with guilt.  Amanda thought of freedom without any specific "how" of getting it.  She thought, and she gasped when the rope snapped.

Common Ground 1

The phone ringer was on too loudly, but Claire didn't want to miss the phone call she didn't want to have.  Claire and James both startled out of their nap, but she was on her feet and answering even as James groaned and rolled over.

It wasn't the call.

Claire felt sick anyway and pushed memories and sadness and worry down deep again as she hung up on a telemarketing robocall, cursing them for scaring her.  Irrationally, she wanted to write to whatever company it was to tell them it was cruel to call her uselessly and make her think her father may be dead.  She pushed the thoughts away again and concentrated on blissful ignorance.

Inspiration #15

Dr. Laurel set up his equipment in the corner of the padded isolation cell.  They moved M. to the padded cell because they were not sure how he would react to the playback of his professional recordings, made before his psychotic break.  Early in his confinement, they had him in a padded cell for his own safety, but after some additional, unclear psychic trauma, M. has been placid.

The doctor was well aware the "M.", as he was now known in their notes, had been a renowned psychiatrist before his illness.  Dr. Laurel was deeply invested in M.'s case, not only because it was a mystery, but because he had written several papers based on M.'s extraordinary work.

Inspired by the final short story in the slipstream fiction collection, "You Have Never Been Here" by M. Rickert.  "You are on the train, considering the tips of your clean fingers against the dirty glass through which you watch the small shapes of bodies, the silhouettes on the street, hurrying past in long coats, clutching briefcases, or there, that one in jeans and a sweater, hunched shoulders beneath a backpack."

"You Have Never Been Here" will disturb your perceptions, which I think is the basic premise of slipstream fiction.  I read and reread the ending paragraph because it's so fascinating.  Overall, a cool collection of stories that are not quite science fiction nor are they quite "regular" fiction.  Worth a try if you like 'em weird!

Inspiration #14

Every blackout was the worst blackout.  This time, Bill woke while still awake and moving, which was much more disorienting than waking while having been asleep.  It was like he was a passenger in an unwieldy and unlikely ship, listing to port then to starboard, lurching over waves and landing in the troughs, only luck keeping it from capsizing.


From the second to last short story in Feeling Very Strange called "The Lions Are Asleep This Night" by Howard Waldrop: "The white man was drunk again."

Inspiration #13

It wasn't lucky to have a rose with thirteen petals, and no one would buy a rose that had them.  Nor would the thoughtful superstitious buy a rose with more than thirteen petals because, they argued, the petals on the outside could wither and fall off leaving thirteen petals.  Bad luck.

Because of this superstition, Simon spent mornings plucking petals off of roses.


Inspired by the first line of Theodora Goss' "The Rose in Twelve Petals" (which is a fascinating take on Sleeping Beauty.)  The opening line:

I. The Witch
This rose has twelve petals.

Inspiration #12

One of the most heart-wrenching situations is to be a person with a dream and the drive to be a clown, with absolutely no talent.  Not even the talent to be a talentless clown, who can elicit laughter through bumbling.  Only the kind of clown who is confused for a homeless person, who elicits only pity, and who frightens the very young.


First line inspiration from "The God of Dark Laughter" by Michael Chabon: "Thirteen days after the Entwhistle-Ealing Bros. circus left Ashtown, beating a long retreat toward its winter headquarters in Peru, Indiana, two boys out hunting squirrels in the woods along Portwine Road stumbled on a body that was dressed in a mad suit of purple and orange velour."

Inspiration #11

At first, the government didn't acknowledge the protests, but when women began meeting in larger and larger numbers, they began scoffing.  Scoffing is always first.  Second comes delegitimization, which burned out after the effects of the larger numbers of women protesting were impossible to ignore.  When delegitimization no longer worked, undermining was increased.  Undermining involves spreading of rumors; in this case, that the women weren't protesting on their own, but rather that they were being supported by members of the opposition party, foreign governments, terrorists, or even aliens.  However the protests had grown too large for undermining to work.  The government hadn't counted on the protests lasting so long or engaging so many.  They had no step after undermining, but they did have a leap: bombing.

First line inspiration from "Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes,' by Benjamin Rosenbaum" by, indeed, Benjamin Rosenbaum: "On my return from PlausFab-Wisconsin (a delightful festival of art and inquiry, which styles itself 'the World's Only Gynarchist Plausible-Fable Assembly') aboard the P.R.G.B. Sri George Bernard Shaw, I happened to share a compartment with Prem Ramasson, Raja of Outermost Thule, and his consort, a dour but beautiful woman whose name I did not know."  A neat story on the surface with a deep layer underneath.

Inspiration #10

On the first day.  Usually a "Humph" or "Hmm" or even a "Ha" followed by a quick up-snap of the head and scan of the faces in the room, searching for one with dark, hollow eyes, dramatically punctuated with thick slashes of eyebrow above and a thin, sad smile about to form the word, "Here."  

Inspired by the first line from "Bright Morning" by Jeffrey Ford: "If there is one thing that distinguishes my books from others it is the fact that in the review blurbs that fill the back cover and the page that precedes the title page inside, the name of 'Kafka' appears no less than eight times."

Inspiration #9

My grandmother remembers when they still had deliveries by people, right to where you lived, and it was provided by a nationwide system.  Every person agreed to pay what they could once a year in exchange for big projects and services like that, which they could never make work on their own.  Incredible.

Inspired by first line of "Lieserl" by Karen Joy Fowler: "Einstein received the first letter in the afternoon post."

Inspiration #8

Neil thought he was being punished.  Perhaps for not giving to the less fortunate.  Perhaps for touching himself.  Whatever it was, the situation was not his fault.

First line inspiration was rather specific this time!  From "Hell is the Absence of God" by Ted Chiang: "This is the story of a man named Neil Fisk, and how he came to love God."  Chiang's story is a fascinating exploration of all the ways people love God, especially the ultimate love of God, which is incredibly depressing.  The feeling I get from this story is quite a bit like the feelings I got from the required readings as an undergraduate English major and I'm glad I don't have to write papers about them anymore.  If you want to recreate this feeling of vaguely understanding the reasons why a reading should give you a sudden sense of the futility of life, or if you'd like to give your religious faith a test-shake, read this story!

Inspiration #7

A spot of blood under the skin on the right palm on the Mount of Venus, if you are right-handed.  If you are left-handed, there seems to be equal chances of the spot of blood appearing on either your right or left hand.  The Mount of Venus is the meaty part of your palm under your thumb.  That the blood spot appears there first is only significant in that it does not, in fact, appear there first, but it is, rather, the first visible sign.  By the time there is a spot of blood on your palm, your body has already internally begun transformations of which you have been, up until then, blissfully unaware.

Inspired by "Exhibit H: Torn Pages Discovered in the Vest Pocket of an Unidentified Tourist" by Jeff VanderMeer: "(Note the blood-red discoloration in the lower left corner.)"

Inspiration #6

After an hour, the repetitive music from only served to emphasize Kit's frustration with her failure to clear the final level of the game.  Most Atari games didn't even have "save" points, but one saving grace to Pitfall II was that there was a crossing about midway that meant a death would only take you back that far, instead of to the beginning.  The first half was already so difficult that Kit refused to give up, which would mean turning off the game and losing her spot.  Instead, she cranked the volume knob on the Zenith console far left and played instead to the sound of the black, single button joystick creaking left, right, up, down, and occasional "whoosh" of the boiler.

First line inspiration from "Sea Oak" by George Saunders: "At six, Mr. Frendt comes on the P.A. and shouts, 'Welcome to Joysticks!'"

This story was my absolute favorite from the Feeling Very Strange slipstream anthology.  I would love to see it turned into a short film.
 

Inspiraton #5

My brother was constantly being taken advantage of by other kids.  Not for money or his lunch or test answers, but rather for attention and, I guess, friendship?  Affection?  I can't fathom exactly why any of them did it, but no kid did it in conjunction with another, so it must have been some innate need to have a friend who you never considered a friend.  My brother was that kid little jerks like to make their temporary friend and do questionable things together, like build a pipe bomb.

Inspired by "Light and the Sufferer" by Jonathan Lethern: "My brother showed me the gun."
This was another of my favorites from The Slipstream Anthology.  Really interesting idea that, I think, epitomizes what "slipstream" is as a (possible) genre.  (I said "possible" because it seems as though the genre status is still being debated.  At least, it was still debated in 2006 when this anthology was published!)

Inspiration #4

A mass grave was found in the Gundersons' backyard when Harry's Pools had only halfway dug their dream kidney-shaped in-ground.  The discovery put the kibosh on hopes for a sparkling, sun-drenched summer basking on nylon and aluminum chaise lounge chairs.  While Lauren and Steve decided who to sue, an archaeological team had the front loader backhoe removed and replaced the heavy-handed scoop with the tiniest of shovels, the teeniest of picks, and regular-sized toothbrushes.  Steve swirled the ice around his rocks glass and stared through the patio door at the dusty brown figures ruining his plans.

Inspired by "The Specialist's Hat" by Kelly Link:
"When you're dead," Samantha says, "you don't have to brush your teeth..."

Inspiration #3

Mutants aren't nearly as interesting or as much fun as movies have led people to believe.  Amil dropped a coin he could ill afford to give away into a beggar's cup because the beggar had a dog.  He wasn't proud of himself, but while he could brush off pain to humans, pain to animals was intolerable.  The beggar's too-thick tongue didn't allow him to speak, so he had apparently trained his dog to tap a paw on a scrap of cardboard upon which was scrawled, "THANK YOU" in thin, crooked hand.

The mutant beggar made Amil think back to mutant superheroes; while tragic and misunderstood they were still heroes with powers, each more dramatic or frightening than the last.  Real mutants had twisted DNA, either before or after birth, that didn't cause them to be super-human; they became less desirable as human.  Mutants' DNA twisted and turned from humanity, and humanity, abhorred, turned from them.

Inspired by "The Healer" by Aimee Bender.  "There were two mutant girls in the town: one had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice."

Inspiration #2

On the morning of her sixth birthday, Bennie flung open her curtains to reveal a grey bank of thunderous clouds.  The eerie light turned the newly opened late spring leaves an unnaturally dark green with shadows that clung beneath.  The grass glowed.  Bennie felt rather than heard a rumble that made her bones vibrate.  The birthday girl smiled, a sparkle in her eyes that matched the grass.  Today was the kind of day where Things Happened.

Inspired by "The Little Magic Shop, by Bruce Sterling.  "The early life of James Abernathy was rife with ominous portent."  This was one of my favorites from Feeling Very Strange.

Inspiration #1

I open my eyes, and it's dark.  I am leaning forward, my head between the seat in front of my and the plastic between the airplane windows.  While I am still bent forward, I feel for my backpack and am glad to find the strap still hooked around my right foot where I looped it when the masks dropped.  I sit up, back creaking, one vertebrae at a time.  My head hurts and I feel slightly sick.  I touch the left side of my forehead and it's numb and swollen.  I also realize that gravity isn't holding me in my seat, but rather it's pulling me forward.  Blinking, I can tell the plane it at a steep forward angle, creaking, popping, crackling, hissing, chirruping.

Inspired by "Al", Carol Emshwiller, "Sort of a plane crash in an uncharted region of the park."

Blog Commentary: How to Get Unstuck

I know what I wanted to do with "John", but I'm stuck.  I promised myself I'd finish some stories, but I only finished the one, and now with "John" since I'm stuck, I'm not doing ANYTHING.

Story of my life right there.

If I don't know what to do, or am even just unsure, I get stuck and abandon whatever it is.  It lurks in the back of my mind and makes me feel guilty and useless and frustrated and sad.  Ugg, sucks to be me, right?  Unless!  Unless I get desperate and see there's no hope, which can sometimes spur me on.  After all, if there's no hope, I really can't mess up then, can I?  Then if doesn't matter what I do because any action will work.

*sigh*

Desperation this time is that I want to be a writer, but I don't write, which makes me sad (and guilty and useless and frustrated.)  I'm getting myself unstuck this time by changing what I'm doing because any writing is better than no writing.  If I won't finish "John", I'll go back to my original idea: starting stories.

This round, I'm using a book of short stories I just finished as inspiration.  Each day (or near as) I will look at the start of one of the stories from this anthology and use the general idea as inspiration--whatever it makes me think, I'll use it as a story start.  I'm NOT copying the opening line; I'm simply using it for inspiration (I'll add it to the bottom of each as proof and credit.)  The book I'm using is called Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel (2006).  Slipstream is...intriguing.

Let's see if this tricks me into being a writer again!