Intro rewrite 2

I have always adored water lilies, but that adoration does not come from the appreciation of their beauty and quiet elegance. I do not love them because they are in full bloom during the month of my birth. My affinity for the flowers that rise from the muck to burst at the surface goes deeper than that. Catching just a glimpse of them unravels the present and brings me back to happy childhood moments. They've become the representation of simplicity, humor and kindness. They are the visual embodiment of a man who taught me that life is a garment you wear out, to live the way water lilies do, with our faces to the sun, rolling with the current underneath.

Graf #8

After reading some of the cause essays, I found myself both taken aback and delighted by the amount of disclosure and vulnerability presented. My husband always reminds me, "not everything is personal!" and I always disagree. I think it should be if it's going to mean anything. The human element is always personal and I found that each essay had a common humanity. A common theme of emotions and experiences being expressed, albeit they were dressed in slightly different clothes and those clothes had slightly different wear. Despite our differences we are all made of fear, love, anger, aspirations. As simplified as it may be, I wonder if the wise men had it right. When you look at one person, you can see every person.

Intro 2

The sun was never directly overhead when he'd steer the canoe toward the lilies. I remember this because the water always looked black instead of brown. I'd see them floating the way I always thought tree ornaments hung before I caught my mother with the wire. I understood later, when the imaginations of childhood wore thin, that he didn't make them for me. He only plucked them, gently, so the paddle would not crush any. He'd turn around on his wooden slat, the canoe swaying with his motion, and hand them to me. "They are all perfect," he'd say. "Especially this one," to which he meant the one with a missing petal or two and bugs feasting at the middle as it rotted.

rewrite Intro 1

Water lilies have always been auspicious and meaningful to me. They have always been reminders, symbols, of a precious childhood and the people I adored within it. Their stenchy musk has always turned pretty at my nose because of what it conjures up in my head. A man with a huge buddha smile, a voracious appetite for life, and a simplistic humor that could make wise men blush. He may have turned into a water lily, if my mind's eye could have it's way. Calm at the surface, rolling with the current underneath.

Intro 1

I always thought a fish might come nibble at my fingers if I laced them through the water long enough. If I had the patience to keep my hand semi-submerged in the cold. If I had the fortitude my father always talked about. I learned slowly the salt of my fingers didn't compare to the desire for desperate, wriggling worms pierced through with a hook. I'd turn to look at my father at the stern, sitting on a life jacket, patches of dark spots on the thighs of his jeans where the water had spattered from the paddle, left and right, right and left. He'd smile and tell me that only loved little girls were allowed to leave the house with the rise of the sun. Only adored little girls sat in the middle of the canoe to trace the ribs with her fingers, the scent of Iranian coffee on the breeze. "You must be quiet," he'd say, "the little creatures we're after are more shy than you." His friend, his brother, would smile at the bow and lead the way.

Graf #7

The bar stool, at 6 o'clock to the bartender, was never taken by anyone other than him. It had a reserved sign whom anyone who knew anything about basic bar etiquette could read. It said that only a certain kind of lush was allowed to sit there. The kind where the bar stool was more like the couch and the bar itself, more like home. And some people simply don't leave either of those places. Not for very long, anyway. He came in every day at 10:30 am, half an hour after the bar opened. He'd walk in, which was more like an exhausting saunter only people who carry all their weight in the gut have, and reach for his tap beer as soon as he was in arm's length of it. A dry stout, Guinness preferably, placed gently so as not to ruin the head.

I asked enough questions about him to have written a biography if I'd ever gotten any real answers. Who is he? Why is he always wearing the same worn denim jeans with the hole over the right knee, gaping wide like a dead fish's mouth, and a leather jacket that no sane person would wear all summer? What does that tattoo on his left forearm mean, the one that looks suspiciously homemade? Does he have a job? Does he even have a freaking name? I would've believed our boss wasn't obviously cheating on his wife before I'd ever believe the bunch of horseshit my coworkers shuttled between them.
"I heard he was in some really big war, you know, like Vietnam, and he carried a dead man who had both legs blown off on his back for two weeks," one would say, which was a really popular theory.
"I heard that tattoo came from one of the prison guards he was having a sexual affair with after getting out on parole," came from another.
"Maybe the sexual affair part is true, but I know for a fact he's really a millionaire with split personalities and ends up getting in trouble with the law when he blacks out."
And, the most unbelievable of all, "A friend told me they heard someone say in the grocery store that he lives with his dying mother who invested really well and is living off her income while he takes care of her." We all knew that last one was pure fabrication. Maybe.

Eventually seasons changed and not a single one of us were any wiser. We'd tried grilling him a few times, sometimes casually other times fiercely, and he'd always smile and talk about how Maine had really lovely seasons. Sometimes he'd strike up a game of darts with a fellow bar stool babysitter and they'd nurse their beers together in silent comradery. Mostly, though, he sat with the darkest sunglasses on I'd ever seen and eavesdrop on the conversations between drunk girls and smile. Eighteen months later, Thanksgiving day, after having become as permanent a fixture as the taps themselves, he didn't show up. His Guinness, with the most beautiful frothy head, sat alone and grew warm. The story goes now that the Guinness sat for three days in that one spot, but like all stories, people embellish. It really only sat for one because the boss didn't want fruit flies. We hoped his mother hadn't died or that his other personality hadn't gotten him in trouble again. Mostly, we hoped he was spending the holidays with his prison guard lover and getting a new tattoo.

Graf #6

"This is for everyone who ever Googled themselves and didn't find any answers!"

This was the first thought that came to my mind while, and after, reading about isearches. Apparently, I linger on thoughts that I think are funny, and more importantly, thoughts that I think are funny and that I came up with. It really doesn't matter if anyone is there to hear it. I can appreciate good humor alone, thank you.

Which would be a great isearch, if I understand it correctly, that is. I'd like to find out why I have an innate solitary nature. Is it a handicap or a gift? Can a handicap and a gift arise from the same source? I do enjoy others' company and very much so, but it has been more of a learned response. Like Pavlov's dog but without all the weird, dramatic innuendos. I know I'll get fed from social interaction. Smile, be kind, and eventually you will find a kin.

This leads me to another great isearch topic. To find out why and how I associate so many things together, things that may not have an obvious correlation otherwise. As my husband says, "stay on one topic!" but how can I when it is all connected? The thought of one thing fires colors, sounds and textures in my brain and I instantly jump the tracks and follow. Another association? I'm the butterfly flitting about from flower to flower and to me it all makes sense.

(All this for an isearch response?) Yes.

I'm definitely intrigued by the isearch concept. If I understand it correctly (why do I keep questioning that?) than it is quite different than the drivel taught in highschool and earlier. "Know thy subject, know thy subject" was like a mantra for any well-written report. How will we know our subject when there is absolutely no experience involved, and more than likely, not even a hint of curiosity either?

I believe the quote when it says "write what you know." But, if that doesn't work, write about yourself and find out all the things you don't know. Then put all that in a book and become David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs who seem to do isearches with every word they publish.

Graf #5

See how she has started again and again on this assignment? See the way she's been chewing at her bottom lip, watching the clock go by, vowing not to get into that warm bed that's been calling to her until it's done? See how the tendons in her right wrist bulge and twist and shimmy as she scrawls illegible letters and punctuation, how her elbow occasionally knocks against the armrest and she doesn't even notice? She thinks I don't notice, that I only dutifully fulfill my obligation until I dry out or go empty and then she'll throw me away, disappointed. She'll get another utensil, pissed her concentration was interrupted, and she'll make the ink bleed out of it the way she tries to make words come out of her.

There is no telling her that sometimes ghosts just won't give blood, that a story just isn't there or that a sentence can't be pulled from thin air. She keeps pushing, though, she keeps pushing, her scratches against paper reminding me of a desperate cat clawing to get in. The way she keeps going I know she can smell it and now I remember she told a friend over coffee once that it smelled like Christmas pine needles, New Year's candles and a new baby all at once.

But what is it? What does she sit down and search for until her back aches and she's forgotten what food is? When I am with her, jammed in a pocket or tapping against her thumb while she pauses just long enough to bring her head up and surface for air, I can hear her talking. This conversation, the conversation of self-to-self, the sacred confessional, I am privy to and she is unabashed about speaking out loud. Speaking to herself, alone, unaware and unconcerned because this needs to come out. Whatever it is is not for tools to understand but is only for hearts to know and I can see from the slight sheen on the forehead that this is the kind of work that only hearts can do.

And what is she saying? She's saying that sometimes writing is pretty shoes that do not fit right, that hurt, but she'll mold herself to them to pull off the look. And, other times, maybe secretly even most of the time, the words flow freely like blood from a freshly field dressed deer, ready for the eating.

Graf #4

I am a twenty four year old, pale-skinned, hook-nosed, first generation Mexican-American whose paternal grandmother has disowned because of my "half-breeding."

I am daughter to a woman who was pregnant with me when she was finishing up her Bachelor's and now believe that's where my extreme thirst for knowledge came from. I sat with her for nine months and listened to the professors lecture. My mom thinks I heard everything.

I am the younger sister, by seven years, who shares a mother but not a father, and grew up in a house where that was a simple technicality that never influenced how we loved each other. My sister is not my half-sister, she is my sister and my dad is not her stepdad, he simply is dad.

We grew up as a Jehovah's Witness, an embarrassment at the time, perhaps only a topic of social awkwardness now, but an experience that has ultimately shaped my life and beliefs.

I am physically small, being only 5.2" and, even after gaining 15 pounds since addressing a Vitamin D deficiency, I am still petite at 120 pounds.

I have scars from several surgeries, one to remove a black-as-coal appendix, another to diagnose endometriosis that may eventually lead to a total hyterectomy and two more when I was twelve and fifteen to fix a genetic chest defect.

I engage in intellectual love affairs with anything that makes me think, wonder and question, and I house a fascination for the odd and unexpected. I particularly enjoy reading (anything, everything) art, music and a well-brewed cup of hot coffee with enough cream to make anyone else cringe.

I like to go to random, hidden-in-a-hole thrift shops or used book stores where I enjoy running my fingers along the dusty sweaters and cracked spines. I daydream of who once owned them.

I like to go to bars, dark, questionable bars, where I sit alone and watch the bartender spin bottles and drinking just enough, that perfect amount, for the world to turn smooth and silky. My husband hates this particular trait because of the implications of danger, and I get tired of my gender being a handicap.

I live with, and deeply love, my husband, more than twenty years my senior, who loves and accepts me more than I could reasonably ask anyone to.

A good portion of my time is spent at work, in a rehab and living center, where I take constant physical and emotional care of the elderly who are demented and dying. I view them as my second family, which I know is a dangerous game my heart plays, but makes me damn good at what I do.

And, always, as soon as I wake I begin thinking, thinking, thinking, a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas that does not end until I lay my head down to dream in bright, rich, vivid colors of houses I've never been in, sitting in furniture I've never seen, a life I might not live.

Graf #3

Graf #3

Inventory of my bedside stand:

5 books -
The Energy of Prayer written by a Buddhist monk named Thich Nhat Hanh
Fire to Fire, a book of poetry written by Mark Doty
Ethics for the New Millenium written by the Dalai Lama
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
The Holy Scriptures

These books precariously rest on top of 4 magazines -
Ode, magazine for intelligent optimists, the Laughing issue
Women's Health, emphasizing a total body workout in 60 minutes
Bitch!, dedicated to feminists,
Fitness Rx, this one touting a fine routine for the "rear view"

Next to the stack of magazines and books -

a sage green bowl found at an antique store, once housed floating candles, now housing -
cell phone charger
cell phone, plugged in
Carmex chapstick
pomegranate nail polish
Well-Being cards
Lavender hand and foot cream
a bar of oatmeal soap, unused
remote control, lost and found several times a night
Clif energy bar

Next to bowl -

a small, cylindrical bamboo lamp
a digital voice recorder for random ideas that pop in my head and keep me from sleeping
receipts with illegible writing on the back
a petite, 100% recycled, notebook to jot down dreams
an old, torn copy of Roget's Thesaurus
a bottle of tap water in an old Fuji bottle
a copper and leather bookmark with the engraving "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." -Anais Nin


Well, the books have interesting titles, but, what twenty-four year old honestly reads that crap? The Bible next to a book written by a monk? Now, this is confusing. Is she confused? Searching for herself? Maybe she's found the balance between two beautiful traditions and has incorporated both of them into her life. Does that make her a hypocrite? No, perhaps not, it just makes her complex, and maybe she'll be a searcher all her life.

The magazines give quite a clue. Fitness, feminism, spiritualism and intelligence. We must be getting closer to her core. But, an energy bar, oatmeal soap and wool socks? Wool socks are understandable. Maybe she likes to keep her feet warm while she sleeps. But food and soap? Must be a quirky little thing, in love with scents and textures, with thoughts that wander all through the day she must write them down to empty her head.

Graf #2

“If I have a stroke, you fools will be dancing all over my corpse, I just know it!” Mr. Hooper yells.

When Mr. Hooper yells and opens his mouth to exhale syllables, spittle flies out. If he allows you to violate his personal space long enough, you can smell his breath. Always of stale cigarettes, old coffee and an accumulated bitterness. Before every class, perhaps due to an encroaching senility, he begins his lecture by accusing all of us that we're conspiring to kill him.

“You little pukes are gonna put a microwave in this classroom one day and kill me, I just know it!” He yells. “You all know I had a pacemaker put in last year and you'd like nothing better than for it to just..... stop!” He sputters out the last word, a chugging engine desperately trying not to stall.

Yes, we all know. He is so thin and skeletal the roundness of his pacemaker bulges beneath his clavicle, on the left side. Sometimes, subconsciously, he will grace his dried, crooked hands across it.
I'm sitting in the back, with my head shoved in a tattered copy of The Bell Jar, snickering and looking around the room to find an unoccupied outlet. There are none.

I mention this to him and he scoffs, "Well, I suppose I won't be dying today. You little shits. Now open your book to page 178. And hurry. I could be dead before the end of this class."

Mr. Hooper has retired four times. Each June he vows never to come back, that he's done teaching English and now his only want is to read Keats by the fire. I have the distinct feeling he dreams of dying in his sleep after reading A Thing of Beauty.

Yet, every fall, Mr. Hooper returns. It's expected now. They've given up attempting to fill his spot when he threatens to retire again. They don't waste the ad money. There seems to be a silent agreement that he's simply too old for it to be worth disputing. The consensus being that pretty soon he'll retire from life altogether and not even grumpy, irate Mr. Hooper will work up the energy to roll out of his grave come fall.

He's not the worst teacher, by any means. He quite fascinating, actually, even though some of the less appreciative students would rather eat glass for lunch than write another essay on an e. e. cummings' line, such as his favorite "...for whenever men are right they are not young..." I suppose that would mean Mr. Hooper is very, very old.

He's an eccentric soul and I love him. He is the pear I bite into and find I just swallowed half a worm as well, and the taste is intriguingly acceptable. He terrifies and amuses simultaneously. Like good writing. One day soon Mr. Hooper will drive his baby shit colored vehicle away from the school with every intention of coming back to harass his next crop. He will not return and I will read A Thing of Beauty at his grave come fall.

Graf #1

These hands are for different purposes. They are left unattended and ignored. They are meant to work and to work hard. They are allowed to remain chapped around the fleshy pads from constant snatches of alcohol wipes while on the run towards the next patient. Nails cut short. Nails cut often. Every nick and cut addressed as a possible means of passing or obtaining infection.

These are nursing hands. The femininity suggested by the delicacy and length is only the packaging to the much more brusque and socially unspoken tasks they attend to.

Today, these hands pulled up the stockings of a fat man too winded to bend over. Today they held a woman's head while she vomited due to aspiration of a soggy piece of carrot. Today they washed a woman's breasts and vagina because she has forgotten what her hands are for. A hundred little tasks. Pour medications, deliver, attend to any bodily function occurring at the time, turn around, pour medications.

Sometimes, these hands will cradle a phone against my ear to listen to a family member scream obscenities out of frustration or making keening wails as we discuss funeral arrangements.

These hands have occasionally been known to thrust out wildly to grab at any article of clothing possible as a patient begins to fall. These hands can override my brain and the training it's incurred, the logic that tells me I could get hurt by preventing someone from going down. These hands just can't seem to swallow the idea of a face making contact with the floor if they can grab for something, anything.

And, at times, at the most perfect and luxurious times, these hands have slipped themselves into the hand of a patient as we walk down the hall together, these hands leading them to find a room that they will always lose.