Fly-fishing for girls: expectations

Fly-fishing for girls: expectations

The 'flies' in fly-fishing are not reel.

I imagine, regular fishing--the expected

piercing of an animal smaller than the one you wish

to hook dangling from a line,

bait soaking in the water long enough to elicit a bite,

the bite that snags the barbed-hook,

giving a quick puncture, a tear in the lip,

and, perhaps, a slight snack swallowed

by the large animal

before being dragged

against the current

and into the air.

"It's not like that, Hun."

Imagine

securing a bait-fly to a barbed hook:

the silky wings, now crunchy in death and dehydration,

turn to falling confetti

towards the bottom of the boat

the very moment pinched by fingers

to lift him from the container;

his tiny body shreds

as the tip of the hook begins to pierce the abdomen,

and long before it ever reaches the thorax,

the shape is mangled

and becomes thick goo between the angler's fingers.

"No, Babe, we 'tie flies.'"

Imagine

tying knots in line

in ways clever enough to create loops

in which to place a fly,

and pull with such skill, ever so slightly,

to fasten that fly to the end of the line.

Instead, his fly-head is decapitated as the line cinches tight.

"Aw Darlin', there ain't no flies in fly-fishing!"

My Angler,

he hooks

pompoms, feathers and fuzzy things

in the line

with knots and bows

only to look like flies.

The fish are impressed.

journal updates: Summer 2010.

Recent updates to my hand-written journal contain only this: scraps of papers, notes, post-its, business cards, wristbands, leaves. The only written words are those enough to identify the objects, the places they were collected, cryptic explanation, and the names of the people I was with. All dates are approximate.

hole

maybe you're one of those people with a little hole in your heart, and it has always been there. and your whole life you search. and then one day, when you die, they say: "[ ] had a hole in his heart his whole life. But no one loved love like he did. Isn't it ironic?"

and of course, it won't be ironic at all.

Young animal

Young animal,

you are born naked

for want of man.

believe

I believe that 'believe' is a word that can be used to express whatever it is that is important to you.

I believe in writing credos in pencil.

Core Roots

I have maintained the same core group of friends since sophomore year of high school. Nine years later, I'm interested in growing without them. It's not that they are all that bad, rather, I'm not as much like them as maybe I once was. I've changed, I've grown, and I want to see the people around me also change and grow for the better. Endlessly. This group is static.

As a houseplant grows for years in the same container in which it was born, the roots reach the edge of the plastic confines, turn in on themselves, and begin to form a mass, a 'root ball.' Overtime, the root ball begins to strangle itself, chokes and kills the plant itself.

The group has become a root ball, a clusterfuck of incest and lies, heartbreak and cancer, known secrets and public shames. We know everything about each other; we can predict each others' emotions and goals, successes and failures. The group has become an entity in and of itself . Judging, engorging, lusting, hating, shaming, suspecting, cheating, enabling. It's choking itself. We're choking each other.

I can watch it all happening as if I were in the greenhouse starring into the pot. I'm not so embedded that I cannot take a blade and cut away the roots that are mine, transplant and move on. And so I will.

Story starts.. ideas in my head, inspired by my day.

-It's almost perfectly natural that the young funeral director would step outside the front door of the funeral home to fetch the morning's news at the exact moment the fire trucks and ambulances, all lights and sound, raced north past her on Main St.

"The first time I stopped by, I met another woman here..."

"Yes, a woman about my age?"

"Yes, she was lovely."

"Ah, yes, that'd be Jane. A wonderful woman. I was good friends with her husband. He died, oh, 5, 6 years ago now... we've been taking care of her ever since."