Skewed View

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-11-19T20:00:00.001-06:00

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-10-01T21:15:00.001-05:00

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-09-24T21:44:00.001-05:00

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-09-17T21:02:00.001-05:00

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-09-10T20:34:00.001-05:00

Rainy Evening at the Coffeehouse

2009-09-09T18:51:00.001-05:00

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-09-03T20:42:00.001-05:00

Never turn your back on the deacons.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-07-30T21:12:00.001-05:00

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-07-16T20:23:00.001-05:00

The Spy With Good Intentions: More

2009-07-15T20:25:00.001-05:00

Walking again. Always walking.

I own a car but I never use it. The last time I parked it, down in front of my building, I did the best damn job of parallel parking humanly possible. In tight – right next to the curb. Perfectly spaced between the other two cars, fore and aft. I’ll never be able to duplicate it, so I’ve not moved the car since then. That was in 1998. Sometime in September.

The night air feels sharp against the exposed skin of my face as I meander down the midnight sidewalk. I suppose it doesn’t really feel sharp. Mostly it smells sharp. Like bad cheese. It’s as if we’ve been slathered with a great cosmic goop of rancid nacho sauce. Sans jalapenos. It’s a smell you never get used to – an underbelly kind of a smell and I’m smellin’ it now.

I walk alone.

In the night.

I scamper occasionally, from street light to street light. I’m not a daylight scamperer – by no means. But sometimes at night it’s ok. I’d rather slither, but I don’t have the hips for it. Spies really should be able to slither, but I’ve never mastered the skill. That’s not to say there aren’t skills that I excel with. There are. Lots of them.

I can kill you with a croissant. Kill you dead. With a croissant and a knife, to be perfectly truthful, but the fact remains that buttery, flakey, French pastry equals you dead and bleeding if you’re not careful. It’s one of my skills. There are others.

Like the fact that I can talk to animals. Did you know that? I can totally converse with the entire catalogue of earthen fauna. I plan to start working on the flora next week. The animals never talk back though. Quiet people, these animals. Not a lot to say. But I can talk to them. Oh yeah, I got lots to say to them.

Tim the Elevator Operator is kind of like that. I talk to him all the time. He can never think of anything to say in reply. Poor Tim.

It must be really hard to have such a boxed-in existence like Tim’s. Up. Down. Up. All day long. Well, maybe not all day long, because I know for a fact he works all night long and if he worked days, too, he’d never sleep and let me tell ya, lack of sleep does things to a person. Weird things. So yeah, Tim probably sleeps during the day. I wonder if he’s a vampire? A vampire elevator operator.

Vampire slaying is another of my skills. Tim better be careful. I have a cache of tooth picks that I keep in my jacket pocket. I like to kill ‘em slow.

Slow. Slow steps on the sidewalk. Stepping down towards the corner. Three-Finger Monte will be there. That’s what I call him. Because he’s got three fingers. Well, there are ten, total. But he’s only got three on that one hand. Not counting the pinkie.

Three-Finger Monte is my contact. My connection. My window to the underworld. He keeps me apprised of whatever is going on that needs handling. I’m a handler. First class. Not like the mail, but more like the dinning experience. That kind of first class.

What’s up? That’s what I say. He will say something like ‘things lookin’ hot over at the warehouse’ or ‘shipment coming in. The docks are your best bet.’ We don’t need details. We’re idea people. Facts are for sissies. Facts are for people who are afraid of reality.

Once I get the take on things from T-FM, I’ll probably saunter over to the other side of the street. I’m really more of a saunterer than a scamperer. Saunter is the poor man’s slither. I have to work on the slither. I need some roller skates. The kind with the key. The ones that will fit over my high-heeled black leather spy boots.

The other side of the street holds it’s own possibilities. Things look different over there. More shadowy. Deeper. Shadows don’t scare me. I pretty much am a shadow. Except for that pesky third dimension of mine. But I can flit around just like a shadow. I hang out in the dark but I need the light to function.

Not a lot of light. Just enough.

The Spy With Good Intentions: More

2009-07-15T20:18:00.001-05:00

Walking again. Always walking.

I walk alone.

In the night.

Tim the Elevator Operator is kind of like that. I talk to him all the time. He can never think of anything to say in reply. Poor Tim.

Vampire slaying is another of my skills. Tim better be careful. I have a cache of tooth picks that I keep in my jacket pocket. I like to kill ‘em slow.

Not a lot of light. Just enough.

The Spy With Good Intentions

2009-07-14T21:28:00.001-05:00

Technorati Tags: fiction,spy,mystery

I was thwarted again. This time by an accidental circus.

The circus is never accidental, you might say, but you’d be wrong. This circus was an impromptu compilation of the sublime and the absurd; the kind of thing that happens every night in the spy world. And I should know. I’m a spy. A spy with good intentions.

What exactly are my intentions?

Well, I’ve never really been sure. But they are good. Altruistic even. I’m not one of the bad guys. They are always so poorly lit. I have no problem with noir lighting, but the good guy always gets the better end of that deal. Also, I have a better hat. The bad guy fedora is always sort of slouchy and malformed. Mine is crisp and well creased. And purple.

I only wear it at night.

It’s night now.

The sun hadn’t quite set when I left my apartment. I live high in the sky, but Tim the Elevator Operator always brings me back down to earth. Tim never asks questions. Hell, he never even makes eye contact. But I’m pretty sure he’s curious. He’s not a bad guy, but he’s one of those peripheral characters that could go either way. I smile at him – a smile that I feel certain conveys more mystery than Tim can handle. He wants to know – I can feel it. But I’ll never tell.

Tim will be one of those that they’ll interview in the aftermath.

“Yes, this is where she lives,” he’ll say. (Maybe catching his breath and then correcting himself: “lived.” Maybe not.) “I always knew there was something different, something mysterious, about her. But I had no idea that she was a spy.”

Yeah, that’ll be Tim. I’ll laugh at the TV when I see the interview on the television over the bar where I’m drinking a Tom Collins. The bartender will eye me with that same sort of curiosity that Tim has. Maybe I’ll wink at him over the rim of my glass. A knowing wink. A wink steeped in mystery.

Maybe not.

Once I hit the street, I tuck the collar of my trench coat a little tighter around my neck. The wind is cold and the rain sheeting its way to the sidewalk, washing it clean of the detritus of urban existence.

Well, that’s not really true. I’m wearing a trench coat, sure, but it’s May and one hardly needs it now. The wind is blowing but there are no clouds, no rain. There should be rain, but there seldom is. Probably an international cabal of monomaniacal meteorologists has commandeered the city’s rain and is holding it hostage. No more rain, drizzle or fog until we meet their demands. Funny that we’ve not been notified of the demands yet. What are they waiting for?

I made my way down the avenue, headed for my favorite all night diner. We don’t have those in the Southwest – back where I came from. All your eating has to be done by sundown or it’s just too damn bad. But in the city, hunger never sleeps. Burgers and fries available around the clock. I still feel guilty about it – eating after midnight. I do it sometimes, but just because I am edgy and live by my own rules. I step to my own drum. I don’t need your empty conventions.

The diner is empty. For the moment. I take a seat in the back, where I can watch the door. No tellin’ who’ll be coming in or what they’ll be looking for. Whatever it is, I’m prepared. That’s my job – being prepared.

I’m prepared for earthquakes, robbery, and 382 different forms of pestilence. I am all set if we have bombings, extra thick fog or rampaging rapists. I can handle it. I know the zig-zag run. I cannot be stopped.

A gun? No. Don’t need it. I live by my wits – my own special brand of chuptzpah. I can’t spell it, but I can sure as hell live by it.

The waitress is asking for my order. I know she’s curious about what I’m wearing underneath the trench coat. Wouldn’t she be surprised? She’d never suspect my crimson velour jogging suit – the color of dried blood and the texture of short, soft fur. Too bad sister. It’s mine and I’m not likely to share. The pants are a little bit hot where I have them stuffed into the tops of my knee high, high heeled leather boots. I can feel sweat run down the back of my knee.

I order. Frito pie.

Then I call her back and change my order. This is the city. The coast. The not my home. Their chili will have beans.

Blasphemers.

I get a cheeseburger instead. With tator tots.

It’s gonna be a long night. The city never sleeps. I’ll need my strength.

Don’t be afraid.

Drive Friendly

2009-07-11T14:27:00.001-05:00

My parent’s dog, OB (Other Brother), had been giving me the sad puppy dog eyes for the past two days. I’d tried to explain that 106 degrees at 5:00 p.m. meant there was no way I was going to take him for a walk. However, one of the best things about our weather here, other than the fact that “it’s a dry heat”, is that it cools off completely once the sun goes down. One hundred and six by day, a gorgeous moon-drenched sixty-eight degrees in the dark of the night.

So, as soon as we had breakfast this morning, I gathered up the leash and we went for a walk.

One of the other nice features about this part of the world is the general aura of friendliness that is characteristic of small-town society. We all know that anytime you pass a pick-up on the road, the driver will give you the one-finger-wave. And it’s not even that finger. When you’re in line at Wal-Mart with only two or three items and the lady in front of you has two carts full of groceries that will feed her family for the a couple of weeks until the next payday, nine times out of ten, she’ll tell you to go on ahead of her. People are just nice to each other, most of the time.

As the dog and I made our way down the street, we came within a half-block of a group of snarly-looking bandit wannabes sauntering down the street. I was kind of surprised to see them out and about at 9:00 a.m. They seemed the type who’d still be sleeping it off at that hour. As we approached they began to swagger and holler, “Buenos dias, chica!”

Good morning, girl? Spare my blushes.

I don’t mean to imply that we don’t have our fair share of really worthless individuals out here. Just yesterday, at the office, we were discussing one of those people. He’s on probation for trying to force his mother to give him a blow job. He claims it never happened and his mother is lying. She claims this wasn’t the first time, it was just the first time she had to courage to actually report it to the authorities.

The general consensus was that your momma may hate your guts -- she may throw away your comic book collection, burn you with cigarettes, try to starve you, call up your ex-wife and ask her to move into your old bedroom or just plain beat the crap out of you. But no momma, no where, is gonna lie about her son trying to force her to do that.

There are some really awful people here.

But thankfully they’re not the norm. I’ve lived in west Texas all my life, so I never realized how unusual our culture of amiability was until I was teaching drunk class one day. One of the “students” was a guy recently arrived from Los Angeles. One night he observed how friendly everyone was here.

“Even your punks are polite!” he said. “I took my mother to the grocery store and a group of gang-bangers were coming in as we were leaving. They were thugs, just like you’d see in L.A. But they held the door for my mom and called her ‘Ma’am’!”

Technorati Tags: texas,probation

Friday Cemetery Blogging Would Be A Deceptive Title

2009-07-09T21:33:00.002-05:00

Wow. A big blank computer screen is possibly even more daunting than a blank sheet of paper. But, I’ve been keeping up with my 30 minutes worth of writing each night so far this week, so here goes.

I’m staying with my mom for two weeks. She lives in the suburbs, about 30 miles from Fake Cow. My brother will take over as temporary care-taker when I am done and stay with mom for another two weeks while Dad spends four weeks at SMU for his job. Can I take a moment to grouse to those of you who work in Methodism? Online education, people! C’mon! Four weeks worth of onsite training for the Course of Study? Dang. My husband is working on a PhD and he doesn’t have to do that much in-person class work. Four weeks a year? Four?

~shoves soap box back underneath the couch~

Anyway, I left my external drive that has my cemetery pictures on it at home, so no cemetery blogging this week. Hopefully I’ll get going with that again next week. I’m having to dig through old material to see what I can find because my camera is in the hospital. It’s been there since May 15th. It will be there for at least another month.

All to fix a broken flash.

Can I get a kleenex?

We’ve taken a vote at work and decided this has been a weird damn week. Every one of us has pitched at least one screaming fit at someone and there has been a profusion of mothers that we’ve had to deal with this week. The mother thing is mostly Mindy’s fault. She’s got two or three of ‘em calling her and me and anyone else they can get in touch with and complaining that someone has mistreated their poor, darling baby boys. I usually just remind them that it’s called adult probation for a reason. They never really get it and our conversations usually end with me telling them we have no obligation to give them any information and that we will not accept any further communication from them. Then they say, “Yes, but –.” That’s when I hang up the phone.

I hate mothers.

Not mine. And probably not yours. But mothers in general.

I would retire early and open up a photography studio, if it weren’t for mothers. Weddings are bread and butter for most photographers. I have no problem taking wedding photos, but I refuse to be in the same building with the mothers. I think my Mutha-Free Wedding Photo Policy is probably going to be a real hindrance to me earning a living at my chosen second profession. So, I’ll stick with what I’m doing retire somewhere around the ripe old age of forty-eight and maybe then I can afford to open up Skewed View Photography – 100% Mutha-Free.

(The first time I ever took wedding photos, I was still in college. It was a home wedding, on the back deck of the double-wide. I trailed along behind the minister (yes, there was one) most of the time, shooting whatever they told me to. The minister finally got the mother of the bride to sit still long enough to help him fill out the marriage license. It took a while because she was having difficulty recalling her daughter’s current last name.)

I Swear It’s True. But you knew that…

2009-07-07T22:53:00.001-05:00

My friend C is a church secretary. That means she sees some of the same people I do on a regular basis. Unfortunately, she has the added burden of being diplomatic in her dealings with them. She sent me an email today that made me laugh so hard I cried. Cried, I tells ya! Here is the story:

This morning C and her co-conspirators were buzzing around the office doing churchy things. Their offices are at the top of a little flight of stairs that bottoms out at a street door. A gawd-awful buzzer attached to that door blasts like a chainsaw with a chest cold every time it’s opened. It’s just like going to visit the inmates at the prison. (If this were a prison, C would be in charge of “the picket”. And she would be wearing a seriously unattractive uniform which would match the seriously unattractive personality adopted by your average prison guard. Thankfully, this is a church not a prison and C has a great personality to match her outfits.)

Anyway, late this morning, the buzzer went off and annoyingly heralded the arrival of a visitor. The visitor was a woman who requested help with gas money. The request was passed on to one of the ministers, Rick. I’m sure those of you in the ecumenical industry all have your policies for dealing with these requests and I’m betting very few of you hand over cash. This church doesn’t either. So Rick told the woman that he would meet her at the convenience store a couple of blocks away and see that her car was filled with fuel.

As he left, he had the strangest feeling that he was not alone.

The woman drove along behind him in her car. Behind her was a long line of cars, all seemingly following their every move. It was decidedly odd.

They made the short trip to the gas pumps. It was there that Rick noticed the hearse and a police car waiting at the intersection. The funeral director was “pitching a fit” and the police officer was pacing the intersection, shaking his head.

Rick took another look at the line of cars.

The woman who needed gas turned out to be the first car following the hearse in a funeral procession. They had been on the way out of town to a cemetery 15 miles down the road when she evidently rethought the fuel efficiency versus length of trip and decided she needed gas money. She made a quick and admittedly resourceful detour and managed to drag the rest of the mourners along with her.

Rick got the car gassed up and sent them on their way, all the while convinced he was being punk’d and no doubt scanning the surroundings for Alan Funt or Ashton Kutcher.

I think C is still laughing.

Still Here!

2009-07-06T21:02:00.001-05:00

I'm still around, but I've been out of the writing mood for a while. Still plenty of fun stuff going on in my world, but writing it down has been a bit of a chore lately. Therefore I'm going to try something different.

For the next couple of weeks, I'm going to write something - anything - for at least a half-hour a day. We'll see what happens. May post some of it, may not. Just have to wait and see. In the meantime, if you're interested in seeing what else is going on in my spooky world, feel free to follow me on twitter or facebook. Just search for spookyrach. (Please add a note with any friend requests, letting me know that you're a blog reader. Unless you are some sort of psychopathic probationer or under-achieving stalker trying to get information about my oh-so-boring personal life. In that case, please include a death threat or something similar along with the friend request.)

So, here goes for tonight…

I’ve fallen down on the unicycle practice for the past couple of weeks. No pun intended. However, last Thursday a member of the local constabulary stopped by the office to collect some information on a guy they are looking for. When he saw the unicycle resting against the hallway wall, he mentioned that his ex-wife is an accomplished unicyclist. He admits the fact that she mastered the skill and he could never learn royally pissed him off. After inquiring about my progress he suggested a different learning approach. Instead using my hang on to the door frame until working up the courage to let go and start pedaling plan, he suggested I get two sticks and use them like ski poles to balance until I get the hang of it.

This sounds like a really good idea.

Granted, it came from a man who was never able master the single-wheeled peregrination.

But, consider this! A pair of crutches would be the ideal height for this purpose. And, if I’m not particularly successful – as may well be the case – I’d be properly equipped for recovery. Someone suggested I make a run over to the Salvation Army Thrift Store and secure a pair from their Lourdes-like wall of discarded medical paraphernalia.

No need for that, though. Jackson’s got plenty of them that I can use. (Have I mentioned he used to play football? Lots and lots of football? Followed by years of orthopedic surgery?)

I’ll let you know how it goes. Provided they have wifi at the hospital.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-06-18T21:51:00.001-05:00

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-06-11T22:51:00.001-05:00

Don’t ask. I don’t know.

NOT a Bucket List:

2009-06-08T22:28:00.001-05:00

There are some things I’d like to learn. I’ve kept a list of these semi-essential skills for years. So far, it consists of:

Eating with chopsticks – Learned!

Karate – Learned! (With somewhat mixed results.)

Fencing -

Riding a Unicycle -

And this week I’ve added something new: Reading Tea Leaves. I mean, they’re there – why not do something with them? And they do sorta look like they would know stuff.

So. I’ve known Ester for SIXTEEN years. Sixteen years! Longer than I’ve known Jackson, the kid or most of you. I thought I knew her well. But it turns out she’s been keeping a dark secret from me.

Well, not necessarily a dark secret, but a secret nonetheless.

Ester owns a unicycle!

Can you believe it? And can you believe that she never, ever mentioned this in casual conversation? We have some odd conversations, y’all – you’d think it would have come up. For example, at lunch today we had a communal recital of the lyric poem “Copacabana” by B. Manilow. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary and no one batted an eyelash. You’d think that in this sort of environment there would have been a point in the last sixteen years that the phrase “I have a unicycle” would have been the perfect segue. But no. Not until now.

She’s letting me borrow it!

I told Jackson and Katie I was going to learn the unicycle. There reply, in unison, was “"NOOOOO!” Katie said “You’re so going to end up in the hospital, Rachel!” Jackson said he would be glad to take me to the emergency room because he wants to the see the look on the doctor’s face when I tell him that all my broken bones are due to “a unicycle accident”.

Unbelievers!

I looked it up on the internet – googled “how to ride a unicycle”. All the sites seem to encourage “recruiting a couple of friends” for help. I told Ester and Mindy they were elected. They have agreed, but say their involvement will be limited to dialing 9-1-1. They fully expect me to be unable to operate a cell phone following my first riding attempt.

Doubting Thomases!

Ester’s son brought the unicycle to work today. HE didn’t make any wise cracks. I’ve always liked that kid.

Rose and M2 just rolled their eyes and refused to have any part of the coming apocalypse.

The boss kept walking down the hallway and laughing uncontrollably whenever he passed the unicycle.

Bebo stopped by the office to see Mindy while I was in court. Rumor has it that he pointed at his mother and said “YOU are gonna get hurt,” then pointed at Ester “and YOU are gonna get hurt and SOMEONE is going to be mad!”

I have no idea what he’s talking about.

I’ve decided to that the office hallway is the best spot for my initial unicycling lesson - which will commence tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. (Mindy claims she’s bringing her camera.)

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-06-04T20:04:00.001-05:00

Last week I discovered that more than a few people get kind of antsy when I forget to post a cemetery picture. Sorry about that! How’s life for you? Things are busy here and I’ve been spending my free time doing a lot of drawing. And watching thunderstorms. This is our “rainy season”, such as it is. Thunderstorms almost every night for the last couple of weeks – very cool. In fact, it’s thundering right now…

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-05-21T20:35:00.002-05:00

In which "The Look" rears it's ugly head:

2009-05-18T09:09:00.005-05:00

Katie is starting the last two weeks of school. I've been really impressed with her school this year. The principal has done a great job and puts a lot of emphasis on making a positive difference in the community. The teachers have been drama-free and have done a fantastic job of motivating the kids. Well, at least one kid, anyway.

Katie wanted to get to school early this morning to see one of her friends, so I took her with me. As we careened down Date Street, she was lamenting the fact that she has six semester tests coming up next week. It could have been worse - last semester she had seven of them. However, she doesn't think they will have a test in Service Learning - a community service class she's been in this semester.

"What? No test?! Couldn't they test you on recycling or something?" I asked.

"No! We didn't study recycling in that class. We studied it in science. We had to learn the three R's of recycling," she told me.

"OH! I know those! Reduce, Reuse, Reanimate!"

"No! It's Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. What's reanimate?"

"It's like when you take a dead body and bring it back to life. Sort of. You re-purpose it into a zombie."

It was at this point that I got 'the look'.

"Rachel! You are really kinda weird."

I grinned.

"No, let me rephrase that. You are REALLY REALLY WEIRD!"

"Zombies are a valid form of recycling," I grumbled.

"Zombies DON'T EXIST!"

"You say that now," I said. "But just wait until one is gnawing on your thigh bone and see what you have to say then!" I looked over at her. "Brains! Brains! Brains!"

If she keeps rolling her eyes like that, one of these days they're gonna get stuck up inside her head.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-05-14T20:31:00.001-05:00

Evidently this was the stock car racing cemetery.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-05-07T21:19:00.001-05:00

I took this photo while I was in San Antonio a few weeks ago. I was wandering around a tiny little urban cemetery, lamenting the plight of the dead in tiny little urban cemeteries. Since they don’t breathe, mabye the dead don’t mind the exhaust fumes gathering at the stop light. And since the don’t hear, maybe they don’t notice the heavy machinery about thirty-six inches away as it excavates for an office building or a gas station or something.

Any way, I really didn’t see much of interest, but I took a few half-hearted shots. This was one of the last stones I photographed and I took this shot because of the unconventional inscription that listed both husbands. I snapped the pic, then went on my way.

But I never read the small print. Not until a week later, after I’d returned home. Turns out this is one of the most incredible tombstones I’ve ever photographed.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

2009-04-30T20:52:00.001-05:00