The Headless Phenomenon (or The Really Bad Photographer)

Call me old-fashioned...

but there was a time when a picture like this 

meant one of a few things.  Please choose the best answer.  

The photographer:

a) was short

b)  found the bride's secret flask

c) was the groom's zany, laugh-a-minute Uncle Morty (pull my finger, kid)

d) wasn't a photographer at all

e) all of the above

If you chose a, b, c, d or e...you'd be WRONG!

Unlike the Headless Horseman...

or the Headless Chicken...

the Headless Human is an ARTFORM 

in Picasso-esque photo wizardry.

But before you mock this creative genius, just think about the possibilities.

Imagine, if you will, the usefulness of such art in the hands of a certain segment of the population:

*Living in sin and can't find a way to tell Mom & Dad?

*Lost your wedding photos in a freak vacuuming incident?

*Want to show your ex that he/she is soooo yesterday?

THE INSTA-WEDDING

Just download pics...insert heads and...VOILA...

Instant Bride & Groom

Instant Groom's Family

Instant Bride's Family

Instant Bridesmaids

and you guessed it...Instant Groomsmen.

Instant Aunt Greta

and Instant Revellers.

The only humans exempt from this headless atrocity are...

The Children

with their Cherubic Faces! (thank heavens)

But just when you think this will be a FACELESS, HEARTLESS, HEADLESS BLOGPOST...

even Picasso couldn't have captured SOUL like this...

or MIRTH like this!

Moral of the story: Don't forget to INSERT the heads.

It wasn't a fairytale...

We are all a little weird and life's a lttle weird.  And when we find someone who's weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness, and call it love."  Dr. Seuss

     Once upon a time, there was a young maiden, skin as fair as an April dewdrop.  She lived in a castle high atop a hill, deep within a turret of her own imagining, whose apex reached high into the clouds, keeping her young and untainted, for she could not witness the world through her milky-white window.  
     Distraught, was she, for, though she loved her home and the winged creatures who brought birdsong to her perch each morning, her heart knew that there was more, so much more, awaiting beyond the castle walls.  
     Against the King's wishes, she set out one day, barefooted and dreamy, lowered from the turret window by her four-footed companions, unsure of what awaited her below the whispy canopy of cloud.  
     

     
     Far beyond the castle, in a kingdom just beyond the river, there lived a young apprentice, tawny and rugged, having labored in the fields of his kingdom.  His eyes were bright and curious, for, as the horizons disappeared over the endless golden fields, he knew, for certain, that there was more, so much more, awaiting beyond his kingdom borders.  And so he set out, in search of what he did not understand, but felt compelled to find.

      The fair maiden was transfixed with all that she saw.  She ran barefoot through the meadows, swam in pools of water and sang melodies to the creatures she encountered along the way. 

     The young apprentice, too, spent his days wandering the hi-ways and bi-ways, skipping stones in the brooks and gazing up at the stars.  Little did he know, as his face was turned up to the fullness of the moon, that a maiden would cross his path, lost in the enormity of the star-filled sky.  

     Their worlds would collide.  They lay there until dawn, until the fog cleared and the scent of jasmine filled their lungs.  The young apprentice reached for the young maiden, took her hand and led her to the edge of the meadow, where the horizon could be seen just beyond the heather.  The maiden smiled at him, and they set off, seeking whatever lay beyond, in distant lands...together.

          It wasn't a fairytale, but it had all the makings of one.

      

Of Four Letter Words and Other Happy Things

    

     "How's this job coming?"
     His left eye is clamped tight shut, channeling vision through his right into the lens of a hydrometer.  "This guy's coolant's too weak."
     "All right."  I suppress the urge to tell him that his 'Buick's not all the way in the garage' for the second time today.  He seems to appreciate the added air conditioning in the nether regions.  "But how long will you be?  You've got plugs to do on a Ford pickup and only 2 hours left in your day."
     He peels his eyeball from the lens and glares at me like I've just loosed a stinker in church. 
     "Aw for cripes sake!  Give that job to Gil.  Damn Ford's are gonna drive me to drinkin'...heavier."
     "Job's in your slot.  Gil's fighting with an alignment.  Customer wants his truck by 5.  I'll call this customer to see if she wants her coolant spiked."
     Kachang...kachang!  The raw impact of solid steel on steel cracks in my head like a detonation in a bell factory.  I clamp my hands tight over my ears, rolling my eye balls back into their sockets, while Quasimodo takes another swing at a rebellious rotor.  
     "Really?" I exclaim into the racket, my voice dissolving into a million splinters and dropping at my feet.  "You could warn a person."  Kachang...kachang!  
     In bay 3 Gil has commissioned the air gun at mach 1, breaking the sound barrier and any crystal that may have the misfortune of being within 100 feet.  Together they sound like a redneck symphony.
     I seek refuge in the office.  If they're trying to get the boss from breathing down their necks they know how to do it.  
     The office door swings open and Walt shuffles in.  By this time of day he's covered in greasy splatters and tire tread marks.  I often muse at how he can look like he's been run over by a truck...every day.  
     He grabs the waiting keys and slaps a work order into his clip board.  "Son of a freaking bocce ball, gold damn plugs..."  The colorful expletives follow him out the front door and into the parking lot, leaving a thick black ooze behind him, lingering like the stench from a sewer back up in spring.
     "Walt is feeling rather loquacious today.  What's got his knickers in a knot?"  Cody is talking into the computer screen, his generation Y fingers moving on the keyboard faster than humanly possible.  
     I smile.  Having grown up in this shop and spending a few years himself in the automotive trenches, Cody had learned to knit together a few experimental rows of superlatives himself.  Still, as a service writer, a few slip in here and there when the necessity for a 'bring it home' adjective arises.  Knit, knit, knit, purl.       
     We never forbade the use of bad language at home.  If we had, their father would have had a bar of Palmolive in his mouth on more than one occasion.  What seemed more effective, at the time, was to inform our kids that people who intersperse truck stop language profusely throughout their sentences come across to their listeners as Kindergarten drop-outs.  Knit, purl, knit, purl - or more appropriately, knit, hurl, knit, hurl.
     If you want to shut the potty mouth up (and everyone does), use intelligent words.  It'll throw them from the vulgarity train onto their cocky keesters real quick.  
     "Plugs on a Ford F150."  I respond.
     "Aah.  Damn, that's too bad."  
     "Yup.  For all of us."
     Working in a world of kinesthetic males performing gruelling, sweat-inducing tasks means frequent releases of oral diarrhea and lingual gaseous explosions.  After a while it begins to take on its own vernacular.  
     Occasionally I slip and, for a fleeting moment, sound like one of the boys.  It's like living with an Aussie.  Eventually you're going to start to talk like one, mate.  And that's okay.  Outside of the profanity and belches that break the needle on the richter scale, they're just good old boys.  
     I'm a little out of my element in their world.  But when they slap me on the back or email naughty pictures to my inbox, I can't help but grin.  Sometimes its alright being 'one o' the boys.'

     

The Pollyanna Principle

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the

 world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to 

plan the day."

For years I've been trying to draw a line in the sand but the tide comes in and washes it away.  Sometimes a fair west wind bends down to blow loose grains over it and covers all traces of its existence, fragmenting my desire for juxtaposition.  How am I supposed to objectively analyze and separate when the line keeps disappearing?  

Our world is a complex web of goodness and heinousness and each day, as a citizen of it, I have choices.  The goodness is the easy part.  It's what to do with the heinous that troubles me.  

My line in the sand would separate the "fear, fight and worry" instinct in me from the "ostrich" instinct: a head in the sand keeps you blind to it all.  How does a body know on which side to stand when the line keeps drifting, disappearing from view.  

I naturally gravitate to "ostrich", or at least suffusing the ugly with rose colored glasses.  Not always safe or realistic but it makes me feel good in the short term.  In reality, I can be a lot like a child, covering my ears and "la la-ing" loudly, hoping it will all go away.

On the other hand, fear can stimulate anger which, in turn, should stimulate positive action.  But where is that line?  How can I strike a healthy balance?  

Many days the voice of the doomsdayer closes in on me, like walls in a night terror - economic collapse, the imminence of a world war, political deceipt and corruption, big corporation control, environmental destruction, my children's world going ass over tea kettle.  

I don't have the answers yet.  I listen ever so carefully to my heart and my head - they usually disagree.  So I wait, rose colored glasses propped vigilantly at the end of my nose. And I look in the rear view, believing that, in the end, goodness always prevails and something fortuitous can arise from the smoke of any situation.  

Call me a dreamer, but I happen to be an optimist.  I don't believe in arbitrary happenstance or a capricious god.  I believe in humankind.  Life is too short for anything less.

DEAR DIARY

The prospect of reading someone's diary can be titillating, perhaps a little brassy and reckless.  There's a boundary that one crosses opening the cover to unearth another's deepest, darkest secrets.  It's like digging around in your mother's underwear drawer; there's some places you just don't go! 

Sitting here with this diary in my hand feels all wrong.  I don't know her anymore, do I have a right?  I made a vow to myself years ago that, if ever I stumbled upon someone's diary, I would NEVER read it.  Maybe that's why my hands are trembling now.  Do I?  Don't I?  

I peak gingerly at the first page, just to confirm my suspicions.  This is indeed a diary - first page entry dated June 28, 1976.  The handwriting is tiny and swoopy, with little hearts for "i" dots.  I hardly recognize it.  But then why would I?  It was 37 years ago.  

I don't even know at this moment why I've dug it from its covert location, deep in the recesses of my steamer trunk where a collection of relics languish, awaiting a day when they'll become relevant again.  And why am I afraid to dive in?  I'm not sure I want to resurrect all that stuff again, that's why.  What if I don't like who she was?  Perhaps I've allowed a level of post-youth memory loss to cloud those turbulent years.  Neuroscience would have a name for it: Post Youthful Stupidity Dissociative Condition.  A condition not intended to be messed with, I'm sure.

Against my better judgment I begin to read and I'm pulled in like a psychopath to his next victim.  It's hard to read past all of the boo- hoo-ing and woe-is-me.  Was life really that hard as a 13 year old in the funky, flower-child days of the 1970's?  And then it gets interesting.  I strap myself in - this could be a wild ride.  

Dear Diary, it continues, as though powwowing with a confidante.  The pages are laced with details of all of those impetus moments, the events that set the stage for maturity: boyfriends and break-ups, parties and concerts, friends and fights.  She takes me on a journey that I didn't know I wanted to return to.  

At times I wince.  She really did lead that boy on.  It's no wonder he followed her around like a hyena on the prowl for years to come, burning her initials into his forearm, not knowing when to give up the chase.  

At times I'm saddened, realizing that her high school education collided with a time in her life when she had such a blatant disregard for anything cerebral.  "You coulda been a contenda, kid,"  I remind her.  

And then I smile, the roller coaster peaks and the butterflys set in - she's found love.  Young, idealistic, unobstructed love.  Of course, its not all uphill from here but her entire attitude swivels around on its axis, and she's focused outside her self-absorbed center.  Hm, funny how certain people can do that to you.

I turn the last page and I'm glad I read it - apart from the parts that should have remained latent in my memory's vault of Lost & Forgotten Things.  And I don't feel guilty.  I realize now she wrote it for me.  She wrote it knowing that, way far away in the great somewhere, I'd find the diary again and relive it.  She was a part of me, afterall, and to disown her would be denying her an earned and merited place in my life.  

The Graduate

    She stood defiant, her stubborn little hands resting on her hips, standing off against the person who'd given her life.  "No!"  She exclaimed, planting her size 2 feet a little more firmly.  I couldn't let her win - could I?  I'd raised two sons and never reached such an impasse, never faced such a collision of wills.  
     "It's a girl," the nurse, Debbie, stated as she plopped the little wet bundle into my waiting arms just years earlier.  "It's a girl," my husband echoed from beside the labor bed, a silly grin stretched across his face.  But what does one do with this knowledge?  She came with no guide, no manual, just the fact that she'd wear a different color.  At least, that is, until SHE decided otherwise; that my perception of girl was waaaay wrong and that she'd train me to think like her; not her I.  

     She became the apple of everyone's eye.  Her big brothers - 6 and 9 years older than she - took the charge of menacing body guards, defying anyone to put a crumple in her crinolin.  Her daddy too, so enamored with the cherubic face and whispy blond curls, carried her weightlessly on his shoulders, like a princess on a litter, challenging the world to take notice - "She's my girl!"

     

     She was his girl.  Stubborn and willful as the day is long.  By 4 she'd outgrown my idea of dresses and hairclips and demanded to fashion her own ecclectic ensemble.  By 6 she was marching out the door, independant and strong, getting on the school bus all by herself.  By 11 she won the puppy that the boys never had.  And by 13, well...we all stood and held our breath.  Puberty...!

     Then something happened.  Something only the benevolent gods would understand.  She softened.  She asked me for fashion advice (off of the basketball and volleyball courts).  She began to dabble in femininity and mellow like a fine wine.  Daddy was right all along.  Her strength of character would become her greatest ally, buffering her self-worth from the hurtful hazards of youth.  

     Today she's reached her first big milestone, morphed perfectly into the woman that she alone was determined to create.  I wish I could say it was me who laid the path for her.  But only she knows where she's going and how she'll get there.  And on this graduation day the stars continue to align..

                                                        winking their favor upon her

fortifying her with friendships

and giving us reason to sigh...she's our little girl

and she'll go far!

Memoir of a Fateful Summer

     I remember her eyes best of all. They were paisley. Not paisley like the pattern, but the colors - brown and green and gold in mottled swirls of iris. She liked Cheezies, I could tell. Her paisley eyes flitted from the back of the green vinyl seat to the shiny orange cellophane in my hand and then back to the seat again. I held out the open bag. She blushed and one corner of her mouth twitched upward. Her hand followed her gaze and she reached in, methodically, emancipating a single powdery Cheezy from the bag, looking down at her bruised knees as she silently popped the treasure into her waiting mouth. I popped another into mine and, in unison, our cheeks collapsed as we sucked the cheese treats till they disappeared on our tongues.

     That's how we became friends. It was a silent friendship, mostly. A mutual, introverted, wall-flower friendship. We spoke in rhythms and movements and rituals. Like the Cheezies ritual, which took place every day after that for almost two weeks, at three-thirty pm on the bus ride home from swimming lessons. I didn't know her name yet. I wouldn't learn her name until later, when it was too late.

     It was 1972. The orange bus lumbered along Highway #52 like an old locomotive in the fever of the August sun. Heat waves danced on the highway in front like fairies, stealing away the mirage pools just before our tires could make a splash. I sat in the front seat with my new friend, both of us too awkward to push past the imposing faces behind us to a more venerable spot. In the front we'd be the first to arrive.
     I'd never particularly liked water, or pools, or instructors who insisted that your head must break the water's surface to become a proficient swimmer. Just last summer I'd invented five ways to be sick during swimming hour - one for each day at junior camp. The camp counselor and my mother must have collaborated, because here I was - my first summer in swimming lessons.
     My fingers curled around the quarter in the pocket of my pink polyester shorts. It was small recompense to get me on the bus each day, swimsuit and towel in tow. It was the purchase price of a bag of vending machine Cheezies and a new friendship.
     Chlorine kissed our noses as we disembarked. I liked the smell; it was a clean smell and it drew me willingly into the confines of the first open change stall. I exchanged glances with my friend before swinging the teal-painted door shut. She would wait there while I changed then I, in turn, would wait for her.
     My feet danced lightly on the cold, cracked concrete as I pulled the tie dyed T over my head. I lay my clothes neatly in a pile on the bench. She would stack her outerwear on top where they would await our return. There was a distinct disparity between her and I, although only superficial. Placing her generously patched and fraying clothing on top of mine, I reasoned, would reduce the likelihood of change room thievery. I double checked the pocket for my quarter.
     We moved out into the open pool area like Flossie and Freddie, the Bobbsey twins, holding hands, close at each others heels. This was where the chopping block came down. We could no longer ride shotgun from here.
     Edging in gently next to another girl in roll call line, I pulled my Josie and the Pussycats towel tighter around me. The breeze was cool and, as the goose bumps rose on my calves, I imagined the prepubescent hair on my legs standing on end like flags in a windstorm. I dropped the towel a little lower.
      “Debbie? Gloria? Jeffrie? Brenda?”
     Our instructor checked each name off her list. I glanced around the pool for the familiarity of my friend. She sat on the concrete at the far end of the pool, knees bent up to her chin, shielding her from unwarranted attention to her faded, stretched out swimsuit. Her class hadn't started yet. She looked like a dusty, bygone china doll.
     “Okay class, jump into the water and give me ten bobs.”
     Bobs. Why must we always start off with bobs? I slipped silently into the tepid water and turned my back to the instructor. Holding my nose between pinched fingers, I bobbed, my face never fully breaking the surface. Somehow, miraculously, I was the first to achieve ten. I turned to watch the others, still bobbing, luxuriating in the feel of water in their eyes, noses and mouths, on top of their heads, in their ears. They were sea creatures and I a ground mammal. I bounced on my tippy toes, up and down in the water, enjoying the feeling of buoyancy. Perhaps my pretty floral swimsuit would distract them all from my inadequacies.

     By the end of the first week I'd come to realize that not all instructors were required to get wet in order to be swimming teachers. My instructor, Margie, was that variety. I wondered what possessed her to put on a bathing suit before leaving the house in the morning. She could have stayed in a housecoat for all the effort she put in.
     “Not like that class, like this.”
     We would stop and rub the moisture from our eyes as she'd demonstrate – poolside – her arms drawing on great heaps of air, balancing on one leg while kicking like a dolphin with the other. She looked like the perpetual motion drinking bird my dad kept on display as a conversation piece at home.
     Each class would eventually end with a race to the pool steps, a clamber back to our reckless summer lives, free of tutelage and responsibility.
     I was usually the first back to the bus, reserving “our” seat and waiting while the others returned in twos or threes. Eventually my friend would board, her brown hair tangled and dripping. It was no great feat for her to find me on that bus, we were parallel personalities, kindred in so many ways, drawn together like opposing poles. We came from two different worlds and found a solidarity in this new one.
     We knew nothing of each others lives, not even a name. We shared Cheezies and trivialities. Perhaps too many details would muck up the mystery and the vulnerability of what we had. I didn't question it then.
     The last day of swimming lessons finally arrived but something was different. Everything was different. My friend was not on the bus, not in her usual spot, not smiling her crooked tooth smile as I plopped down in our seat. Her spot was cold and it left me cold as I shuffled in. Perhaps she missed the bus and her parents would drive her in.
     My friend did not arrive. She was not there to safeguard the change room door, shadow me to the pool or share a celebratory bag of Cheezies on the way home. She was not there as her instructor called out her name, not there to collect her badge. I wished in that moment I'd known her name. How would I ever find her?
     I lost myself over the next few days in the hot, hazy summer cycle of play and boredom. Then suddenly I saw her. Not the way I'd expected; not waving from a passing car, or skipping with a group of friends. It was an image; a likeness looking back at me in black and white familiarity, the face that drew me to the newspaper on our kitchen table. She stared back at me from the front page and for the first time I learned her name; Renata.
     Renata Wiebe, the newspaper stated in tiny font underneath the picture of my swimming lesson friend. She looked happy, completely unaware of the large, bold faced letters above her threatening to squash her from the page.
     Gruesome Slaying Shocks Community. I didn't understand. Found dead Friday morning...nearly decapitated...father used a butcher knife. Was this a joke? Lost his job just weeks prior...family was soon to be evicted from the home they'd been renting...Renata was eight years old...mother and younger sibling safe in police custody.   

      My mother entered the room and drew next to me, brushing my bangs from my face. She swept the newspaper from the kitchen table, away from a young girl's curious eyes.

     “Don't you have something to do? A friend to go play with?”
     I shook my head. I wanted to tell my mother that Renata was my friend, that we both liked Cheezies, but the words wouldn't come. I wanted Mother to say that the paper had made a mistake, but she flipped it over on the counter top, front page down, smiling a worried smile. A worry that sits behind a mother's eyes, fretting over the world her child must grow up in. Fretting over another degree of innocence slipped away, victim to a dark and hungry reality.
     I curled into my bed and watched the sunlight dance on the purple bedspread beside me. Closing my eyes I tried to be there, in her last moments, in her house on Second Street. But I was lost; I couldn't find my way through the unfamiliarity of this foreign place, a land so barren, ugly and bereft of humanity.
     I thought, instead, of the wind in our hair as we won the battle with a jammed bus window, wobbly fountain pen tattoos scrawled onto our arms, and giddy giggles behind pursed lips as we kicked a rotten apple core toward the bus drivers unsuspecting feet. I thought of Cheezies.