Category: miscellany

Love in the Time of Covid-19

It’s not all toilet paper and hand sanitizer, you know.

 

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

—

Today I reluctantly rose from bed, put some mismatched clothes on my body and headed out. The roads were unusually empty. Stopping at my neighborhood grocery store, I parked and hopped out of the driver’s seat.

Behind me I heard, “Hey! Is anyone coming?”

Assuming this was not directed at me, I leaned into my car to grab my wallet and heard again, more insistently this time, “HEY! Is anyone coming?”

Realizing this was in fact directed at me, I whipped around to see a man in a very new and very shiny cherry red Mustang. He pointed as if to show me that he couldn’t see around the large Amazon delivery van that was parked next to him, and was wary of backing out in the tightly packed parking lot.

“Oh sorry,” I said, and turned to look, the morning sun blinding me as I did.

Shielding my eyes and with a pirate’s squint I said, “Yeah, it’s okay, come on back.” I stood there waving my hand and muttering encouragement while he maneuvered his pretty vehicle through the obstacles. “Yep, keep coming. Yep, you’re good.”

Finally, the driver straightened out the wheel and put it in drive. While pulling away he yelled out the window, “Thank you! I love you!” revved the engine, and was gone.

I stood there for a minute with a perplexed look on my face.

Then laughed.

Then went inside the store. Chicken salad was my goal.

Photo by Nicola Fioravanti on Unsplash

—

The encounter and the sentiment stuck with me. I could easily write it off as a funny but odd human moment often found in city living. One of those “See, people aren’t so bad” kind of thoughts.

Inside the store, I walked down the toilet paper aisle (the most express way to the deli counter) and saw boxes stacked up. I saw my fellow citizens wearing face masks. I sneezed into my elbow.

While washing my hands for the umpteenth time today, I realized that a funny brief moment of human compassion had all the more resonance today. Right now.

It’s easy to separate: me vs them, you vs me, us against them all, but times of crises have a funny way of bringing people closer.

We’re all in this together. We’re on the same team. It’s us against a virus. We’re all scared. We’re all uncertain. We all just want to have a nice day.

And so this shouted “I love you” from a stranger was about the nicest start to an otherwise beautiful early-Spring day.

I did not shout anything back in that moment, so stunned was I by the declaration, but you know what Red Mustang Driver? I love you too.

Love, love, love. Maybe the Beatles had it right? Love is all you need.

But just in case, wash your hands, don’t touch your face, get some sleep, stay hydrated, and wear your seatbelt.

For when all of this is over and you are mad because I root for the wrong team, vote for the wrong person, or say the wrong thing, just know that I’ll still love you in my own Red Mustang kind of way.

—

This item first appeared on Medium, find more of my work @karenfayeth over there

A Moment Matters

And So Does Kindness


 

Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash

—

It’s morning and I’m waking up rough after some really painful dental work. I’m running late for work but I’m trying to stay calm and just get there.

I’m traversing a road that is something of an unofficial border. On one side is a series of slightly rough neighborhoods where gentrification is coming hard and fast. And painfully.

The other side is the “good” side of the road (scare quotes used intentionally). Gentrification has already arrived to this side of the road, for both better and for worse.

I stop at a red light at a major intersection. I am first in line and there is a long line of cars behind me.

“Who Can It Be Now,” plays from the oldies station on my radio. A popular song from my high school years is now an oldie. Don’t get me started.

I tap my thumb on the steering wheel and hum along when to my left, a local denizen, a gentleman who has seen better days, enters the crosswalk taking something of a slanting route over the white lines.

In his hand he’s carrying an open tall boy and holding it close to his chest. He’s smiling, though his face and his skin looks like he’s seen some things.

I am alternately like “right on!” because why not beer at almost nine in in the morning? Then “oooh, damn” because beer at nine in the morning possibly means chasing a few demons somewhere around nine o’clock the night before.

But I don’t know this guy’s story, so I don’t judge.

As he ambles amiably in front of the grill of my very old and very tired car in the center lane, in the right lane an oblivious driver in a black Mercedes whips right into the crosswalk, intent on turning right and doing it right now, and damn near hits the guy.

Our beer drinking friend pulls up short, steps back and slightly bows, waving the Mercedes along. It pulls out in a huff, if I can attribute huffiness to a car.

Then the man in the crosswalk turns to me and smiles a lopsided smile and waves. I do what any decent member of the human race should do, I wave back. I briefly entertain a “I should not have done that” thought because I have learned through enough years living near and in big cities that sometimes it’s just better not to engage.

But I was wrong for thinking that. As I wave, he smiles a little wider, peers around the corner of my car to be sure the coast is clear, then makes his way safely to the other side of the road.

My light turns green and I drive on, thinking about the guy, this city where I now live, the ever growing division between rich and poor, and the implications of gentrification. I also think about how delicious the lemon scone sitting in the passenger seat is going to be when I get to work and gobble it up.

I get to the place of my employment, find a parking spot, quick yank the parking break and start my day. Something about the man with the tall boy sticks with me and I can’t quite figure out why.

One thing I know for sure is that I have to write about it, to capture the fleeting moment and memorialize it for myself as much as for anyone else.

And so I have.

—

This item first appeared on Medium, find more of my work @karenfayeth over there.

Be It Resolved That…

A Protest in Support of New Year’s Resolutions

 

Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash

—

We the People of this fine, if difficult, world do hereby declare the following:

Whereas the arrival of January 1 brings about common and repeatable feelings of post-holiday food guilt, and;

Food guilt is a bad feeling, man. And;

The People of all age, gender identity, race, creed, religion, capabilities, shoe size, and personality like to look cute and feel good about themselves, and;

Whereas bad food tastes good and good food tastes bad;

And whereas, one of the best bad foods in all the world is donuts,

Therefore, be it resolved that:

From this day forward, donuts are to be considered a vegetable.


Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash


In all dietary trackers on line, in apps, including the non-caloric and overly complicated ways to track food like points, stars, thumbs up, macros, smiley faces, carbs, fats, sugars, fibers, what have you, donuts will now carry the same nutritional profile as a half cup of shredded carrots.

Henceforth, all human bodies will receive and process the ingestion of a donut as if it were carrots. Bodies are no longer to react to the wheat, sugar, fat and/or salt of donuts, rather donuts have become and will remain health food, for the duration.

Supermodels will now have bowls of donuts at every fashion event and remain flawlessly size zero. The Olympic teams of all nations shall provide donuts on the training table and new world records will be set. The greatest minds shall be provided a never ceasing stream of donuts and scientific progress will reach new heights.

No longer shall the humble and delicious donut be the subject of both lust and scorn as it is now freely edible as a vegetable.

No longer shall we dine of the forbidden pastry and lament the caloric intake. Now it’s as if we had a salad which is guilt free and boastable. “I only ate a salad today, what did you eat?”

No longer shall Nancy from Accounting cut a donut in half and then fourths and then eighths and nibble saying, “Oh I really shouldn’t but I just can’t resist.” She will gobble down the entire pastry and take two more and not lament to her cube-mate how “fat and ugly” she feels. She shall instead feel smug in the fact that she ate carrots like a good girl.

No! We shall all rejoice! Donuts shall flow freely in the streets. All shall partake of the donut and we’ll become a healthier society by eating so damn many vegetables.

New Year’s Resolutions shall not be considered broken by the ingestion of one or eight donuts as they are all delicious frosting and sprinkle covered vegetables.

Yes! Donuts are health food and together with a little work and a little focus we can become the healthiest society on earth.

Today donuts, tomorrow beer!

Please sign my petition to show your support.

—

This item first appeared on Medium, find all my stuff @karenfayeth over there.

Do You Have To Let it Linger?

Word Sprints for Writer’s Block, With Apologies to the Cranberries

My word of the day is linger. This word was given to me by the good folks at RandomWordGenerator.com, a place I visit when I need to do a word-based workout.

Like running sprints or doing calisthenics, allowing the fates to give me a word then writing something around the 750-word mark is how I keep the literary muscles supple and smooth. (This as my post-holiday actual muscles are quite lumpy and stiff)

Today I was in the bath, where I do all my best thinking, and realized that I hadn’t written anything in days. And days. It’s fine, I have plenty of good reasons for this, but wanting to get back in the saddle and bereft of any really good ideas, I got out, dried off, and hit the random word site.


Screenshot from RandomWordGenerator.com

The rules of my game are: I have to take the word given to me, or in the parlance of golf (a game I know nothing about) I have to play it as it lays. No repeatedly hitting the “Generate Random Words” button to find a word I like. Nope. Get the word and get to work.

So linger it is. As in…don’t linger, get to writing. Boom, done.

Well not really.

The first thing I do is Google the word to see what’s what. Read a definition, see where the word shows up, find some sort of context or concepts around the word that provide a creative spark.

Of course, one of the top hits for linger was that angsty song from the Cranberries that was everywhere and all the time in 1993. A song I once liked but was ruined for me by a coworker who told me the story of her boyfriend standing outside the bathroom singing it loudly while she was doing a number two.

Do you have to let it linger? Well, when it comes to a poo, sorry, it can’t be helped. I can light a match?

Now I can’t think of that song without that memory. So let’s not linger on that to write about, eh?

Next I navigated my way over to Unsplash to see what they had to offer under the heading of linger. The pickings were, surprisingly, slim. Same with Pexels.

Pixabay didn’t have much that I thought fit my own interpretation of linger, but did offer up this very cool photo:


From Pixabay, and the license states no attribution required

I have no idea what’s going on there, but I have never seen a Zen stack made with ice, so there’s something new I learned as I lingered over the Pixabay site (a stretch there, stay with me).

Though as I look at the photo, I wonder why the photographer didn’t get behind the ice to try to get the low golden sun lighting up the slices. It’s a beautiful photo but I feel a missed opportunity.

Unsplash did offer up this one under the tag linger, which, uh…that’s not lingering. That’s walking very fast.


Photo by Chiến Phạm on Unsplash

Lovely photo, nice composition, just not my idea of a good ol’ fashioned linger. So that’s irksome.

Back to the Google, this time I navigate to Wikipedia and try my luck. It’s there I learned that there is a city in Luxembourg named Linger. The population of 577 means the Wiki entry is quite brief, in fact just a stub. So I had to linger over this idea for a moment.

I’ve always really loved towns with weird names like Hell, Michigan or Sandwich, Massachusetts. I mean, I could write a whole story on the weird town names in New Mexico, where I grew up. Actually, that’s not a bad idea, I think I will tuck that story idea away.

See, lingering over Linger, Luxembourg got the ol’ juices flowing.

This random word thing is an almost no-fail writing exercise for me. There are plenty of things that the word linger can introduce into the post-bath, post-holiday brain.

Granted, linger is a pretty good word, lots of ways to go with that. I do occasionally get words that are clunkers and try to make the best of them.

Well, if you have made it this far, I thank you for reading through my writing exercise to ease my writer’s block. Maybe this is helpful in some way? Perhaps if you also have writer’s block, you will stumble across this lingering little story and linger over your own ideas, hit the random word generator and then linger over some fresh, piping hot ideas of your own.

I’ll have you know that the word “own” was word 758.

See? Knocking out 750 words is just as easy, or rather just as difficult, as that.

Let The Sun Shine

On your soul, and other parts

 

Photo by Masaaki Komori on Unsplash

—

After finishing a big meal at a local Chinese restaurant, along with the bill came a few fortune cookies.

I should pause here and say that I love fortune cookies. Not only the crispy sweet treat but also the slip of paper inside. I have many faves tucked into my wallet, taped to computer monitors, and floating around my desk.

I love the jokey fortunes, the sort with sharp wit, even the solemn words. I love it all. Yes, I’ve even bought lotto tickets with the lucky numbers on a fortune cookie fortune. Didn’t win, didn’t matter.

But on this day, when I cracked through the sweet cookie shards and unraveled my surely personal fortune inside, I was left puzzled.

Photo by the author, ©2019 Karen Fayeth

Let the sun shine on your soul? Not be be pedantic, but…how though? How does one get sunshine into one’s very soul?

Later that same day, I noticed my cat lying flat on her back letting a sunbeam from a nearby window warm her tummy, and I thought maybe she was on to something.

I tried standing outside facing the sun. I thought sunshiny things. Googling the phrase found me a fellow kindred spirit on Yahoo Answers from six years ago asking the same question, and who received some pretty lame responses like:

…live happily and lighten others in your lifetime with your joyfulness

Is that it? Do I let the sun shine on my soul by being happy and joyful? By actively brightening other’s lives? I’m not sure that is correct, actually.

Shine the sun on your soul is an imperative. It asks me to take action, and that would be more in line with the bit of advice quoted.

LET the sun shine on your soul, as the fortune says, is more passive. It means allowing something to happen. To get out of the way. To raise the window shades and allow that sunbeam in to warm your furry (or not-as-furry) tummy.

As I type, I am recalling a recent day when I was staring deeply and meditatively into the fridge, willing something delicious to appear (such as, but not limited to: Chinese leftovers) when I felt a distinct warmness on my buns. The back of my front. The sittin’ parts.

Fearing I’d backed into the oven, I whipped around to realize it was the warm late morning sun toasting my personal dinner rolls. It was nice. Like a loving and warm unexpected, but not unwelcome, caress. Ol’ Mr Sol may not have been shining on my soul, but it certainly cheered me up a little on a cold winter day.

Is that the answer? Is it both as simple and as complicated at that? Step out of the shadows, throw open the windows, and warm both your ‘tocks and soul in the rays of that bright gaseous star? Both figuratively and literally.

Is that really the path to a better life?

Hell, I don’t know. I certainly don’t have the answers.

And now I’m craving potstickers.