Kate Raynes's Blog

I remember that first September weekend when the rains began, the way we giggled with excited urgency as we ducked our neatly coifed heads under waterproof hoods and ran in hope-filled flip flops across the busy street, pointing out soggy convertible drivers who'd been overly optimistic.

By October's end, when children in waterlogged princess dresses slogged forth in search of sweetness, leaving parents at the curb clinging to one another in circular huddles beneath too-small umbrellas. "What troopers," we admired from the protection of our dark, dank living room.

November brought the winds.

We passed the time marveling at raindrop trajectories. The odd angles and tympanic symphony made for hours of entertainment. "Pass the turkey" became a euphemism for "I have been cooped up in this motherbleeping house with you for 3 months, stop hogging the goddamned plate before I turn these potatoes into projectiles."

Then came December. Ah, December... Sometimes freezing sleet, sometimes snotty slush, we never knew. But it mattered not because we had each other, we had gaudy, colored lightbulbs on knotted strings, we had illuminated plastic animals to throw on what was once our lawn.

​In January, you took off for the mountains in search of high altitude snow to hurtle yourself down. "Good riddance!" I exclaimed, as I pulled the covers over the matted dreadlocks of my unwashed skull. I read a book by the light of my own glowing-white flesh.

In February, we bought snorkels. We told the salesperson at REI they were for a tropical adventure, but we could tell by the look in her deadened eyes: she knew the truth.

The rains of March went wholly unnoticed, but only because our lives had come unhinged. It was as if the universe had waited until we reached the dreary depths of despair before unleashing the fury of ten thousand evil curses upon our persons. And our persons' persons.

But we prevailed. Oh yes, we did. We held up two middle fingers to those neverending clouds, reveling in our victory for making it to April.

​And still... it continues to fucking rain.

Photo by Greg Schroeder Though the onlookers turned out in droves, you could see it in their eyes, no one would be losing sleep over the death of yet another Cliché. You couldn't throw a stone in this town without hitting one. To be honest, I hadn't met a Cliché I didn't want to kill.

Simon was a bad egg, certainly not the brightest bulb in the box. The whole lot of them were crazy as loons, but Simon stood head and shoulders above the rest. Sure, I'd flirted with a few Clichés in my time, who hadn't? Maybe I was guilty of tempting fate, only time will tell. 

It wasn't until he showed up at my door one night with that deer in headlights look of his, drunk as a skunk and bent on revenge that I saw the light. He told me he had a bone to pick. I bit my lip and let him speak his peace, but I should have known it would be the same old story. He claimed I'd taken him for a ride.

I was pregnant as a house with the fruit of his loins, you'd think he owed me a little more respect. Instead, he had the nerve to accuse me of a romp in the hay with his twin brother. As though I needed another Cliché in my life! That takes the cake.

There was hell to pay that night. I cleaned Simon's clock. Gave him a taste of his own medicine. He took off like a shot, but hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. In the end, I made short work of him. There's more than one way to skin a cat, I've found. So I bit the bullet and shacked up with his brother, just to drive a nail into the coffin.

And now to make matters worse, I've given birth to a brand new Cliché. He's bound to be a chip off the old block, but what can I do? Can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I suppose that's just the way the cookie crumbles. 

These damned Clichés will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Photo by Stephen Bowler
​Autumn came to us, Hell-bent
all flame and ash and fiery intent
wicking life away
wiping clean the bones
to start afresh, only
not yet... not yet

In 1961, NASA plastered promotional posters of Ham the Astrochimp all over the country: Ham dressed in a tiny space suit, Ham waving an American flag, Ham striking stoic poses after his 16.5-minute suborbital space flight. This stands out in my mind only because, in one of those photos, Ham bore a striking resemblance to my Uncle Owen.

The image captured an expression of utter bewilderment as Ham peered out through the bubbled windshield of his miniature monkey-sized space capsule just moments after splashing down in the Atlantic. His face still held the effects of experiencing zero gravity, followed by g-force acceleration, followed by positive buoyancy in ten-foot swells with high wind gusts. Uncle Owen possessed that same expression, no matter the circumstance.

Every Saturday when Uncle Owen arrived at Little League practice to pick me up in Ma's prized VW Bug, all I saw was Ham the Astrochimp, mouth ajar, a befuddled gaze pointing in two directions simultaneously, neither of which was the direction he was driving. A mustache crept down from his nostrils, curling around his lip like an expiring caterpillar. The lenses of his eyeglasses were so thick they threatened to ignite his face whenever they caught the slightest glint of sunlight. To avoid combustion, he would often drive backwards, away from the afternoon sun, using only the rearview mirror to steer.

I could never understand why Ma hated me so, sending Uncle Owen like she did. I'd duck below the dashboard the whole way home, praying no one would spot me.

Uncle Owen was Ma's brother. He'd lived with us since I was six, when Grandma kicked him out of her house. Even at forty-two, he was ill-prepared to leave the nest, but of course no one could blame Grandma for ejecting him. Why Ma took him in was beyond me. Perhaps she thought I needed a male role model, but this was not the way to go about it.

​From Uncle Owen, I learned how not to approach members of the opposite sex. I learned that the lint in one's bellybutton need not match the sweater one wore. I learned that earwax could in fact be used as a sculpting medium.

From Uncle Owen, I learned that evolution sometimes steers in reverse.

Photo Credit: r.nial.bradshaw
In the fourth grade we spent most of our time and energy watching the skies, praying for rain clouds, lining Mary’s front yard, sidewalk, and driveway with Dixie cups, performing intricate rain dances by the light of the moon. When the dances failed to work, we became more creative, choreographing sacrificial rituals of stuffed animals, laying out offerings of flowers, candy, even our mothers’ favorite bras in an effort to appease the rain gods. 

Someone had told Mary rainwater grew boobs. 

Storms at the Hastings’ house resembled frat parties, the two of us running wild, wet t-shirts clinging to our skin, chugging cup after cup of rainwater in a mad drinking contest. 

By the time middle school started, Mary had her boobs. Two magnificent mounds rounding quickly into orbs of perfection. She would stand before the mirror, shirt off, as we regarded them with solemn awe. I doubled my rainwater consumption, but never caught up. Fortunately for me, Mary was a gracious victor, answering all my questions on the particulars of boob ownership and boob maintenance.

We remained close through the years, yet our careers, marriages, children, the general business of adult life gradually filled the space between us. We drifted out of touch for perhaps a decade or more.

It wasn't until the age of fifty-five that Mary called me. She had news. I rushed to her side, honored to be the one she had thought to contact. Honored by her selflessness and her willingness, once again, to share such a personal, intimate circumstance. To answer all my questions.

I didn't see two middle aged women staring back at us from the hospital mirror then. I saw two young girls still summoning the rain gods, our solemn awe this time directed at Mary's flat, scarred chest. Despite their obvious absence, despite their painful loss, we celebrated. 

She was a victor once more.

Photo By:  Greg Schroeder
Each morning, Henrietta headed to the fire escape in her hot pink housecoat and helmet of curlers to check her trap for cats. Any that she found she would promptly shave and release. 

It seemed to Henrietta that everyone in her apartment building had a cat. And for some unknown reason, each and every one of them sought out Henrietta's fire escape. Loose fur hung from the metal slats and screws in unsightly, untidy tufts. If there was anything Henrietta couldn't tolerate, it was untidiness. She soon set out to correct it with her trusty Norelco clippers.

Much blood was shed in those early days. All of it hers. In an effort to avoid further injury, Henrietta devised a cat shaving sling fitted with four miniature mittens. She would lure in her victims with tiny cat pancakes. 

At first they'd been clean shaves: head, body, legs, tail, done. After some time, the shaves became more an art form. Each new cat was a blank canvas, calling out for spirals, presidential portraits, geometric shapes. Still, the cats kept coming. Never the same cat twice. A relentless, inexorable, merciless parade of fur.

Henrietta began crafting pithy notes to her neighbors. "Wash Me" or "Wanted: Better Owners" sheared in painstaking calligraphy along the back, sometimes down a flank if the message got too wordy, or the cat too small.

Management newsletters became more frequent and increasingly urgent. A lynch mob formed to find the culprit.

"You'd think I was doing them a disservice!" Henrietta told a tabby as she fired up the clippers.

No sooner did she buzz down its spine than the cat broke free of its sling and mittens, shimmying up her housecoat to the top of her head where it circled her curlers like a cyclone. Shreds of Henrietta's hair rained down from the balcony to the mob of tenants below, blowing her cover. 

It took a moment before anyone could discern what they were seeing on the balcony of Apartment 3C. At first it looked as though a woman's head had caught fire--she was dousing it with a bucketful of water, screaming like a banshee, her top lip stuck to her gumline in a menacing grimace of bared teeth as she ran in tight circles.

When at last the drenched and shorn tabby leapt into their arms and Henrietta's true identity was deduced, the crowd broke out in cheers and a roar of vindictive laughter. No further punishment was necessary. The cat had rendered Henrietta as bald as a thrice-licked Tootsie Pop.

Photo by Mary Ellen Mark
And he let the water envelop him, let it drink him whole, his spirit sinking  with the weight of a thousand stones while his mind floated aloft, searching. He looked for his father. He would be soaring there now, Rami knew. He would be mingling with the clouds that danced in the heavens, weaving diamonds into black silk crepe to drape across the sky for the son he'd left behind. He had promised Rami that.

Look to the heavens, Prakesh had whispered.

Rami waited. He did as he was told, obedient as ever. Even through the months of heaviness, while Prakesh withered like a gohkru flower in a drought, Rami listened and obeyed. He ladled broth and water into a mouth parched and cracked, sponging chilled rags on a fevered forehead chiseled with ill-fated prophecy.

He wore his loneliness now like a waterlogged mundu, clinging to his flesh. The world felt too big for him. The water too deep. 

But still he waited, soaked to the bone, bathing in the light of each dawning star.

Photo By:  Greg Schroeder
Millie vacuumed up the stinkbugs and dandelion puffs from the carpet, wondering if it was time to move. She paused to flick a cricket from the sofa cushion. Unwanted house guests could be so intolerable, particularly those from her neighborhood, they were all a bunch of animals.

A squirrel couple from down the block had once invited themselves to tea. Millie had a very low opinion of squirrels in general, but these two were an especially rowdy lot, swinging like monkeys from every stick of furniture, stuffing their cheeks full of appetizers. She wasted no time in showing them the door. They seemed unable to find it themselves.

Still, they were no match for the dogs. Like drunks on holiday they were, lifting their legs on everything in sight, always putting their noses in the rudest of places. She caught one of them attempting to hump her sister-in-law in the backyard not a week after she'd moved in. Some housewarming party that turned out to be. 

To their credit, when caught, the dogs had looked absolutely mortified about their behavior and had tried to make up for it by setting Millie up on a blind date with the gentleman across the street. It was just Millie's luck that he'd turned out to be a real snake in the grass. Judging by his personality, the guy must have lived his entire life under a rock. He spent the evening coiled up on the cushions, spewing his venom about the sub-par quality of factory-farmed eggs, then began threatening her in her own home. Things got so heated, Millie felt she had no option but to call the police. It was fortunate for all of them that he'd turned out to be unarmed.

Photo By: Agenzia Immobiliare Giuseppe Zanussi
Penny found a fresh perspective to be of utmost importance. She viewed each landscape with a new pair of eyes. On this day, for instance, she roamed through the heartland bespectacled by a pair of wizened carp.

Upon first peek through these parched orbs, she was privy to a wondrous world, swimming in mystery. What were these amber waves before her? Liquid gold was all she saw now from what once was a mere field of wheat.

She was overcome with an urge to plunge beneath its surface. To dive, to glide, buoyed by a beauty never so perceptible as it was at this moment. She dipped one tentative toe, then submerged fully. All anxieties washed away and she breathed in her surroundings, gulping grain in straining mouthfuls. 

Down, down she dove, turning the dirt with a spiraling stroke, leaving seeds sown in her wake. From her path rose a bounty.

She was life, sustained. Her journey had meaning; her world, a purpose.

And as she surfaced, so too did a new appreciation.

Yet, despite a revelation so profound, something seemed a bit fishy. Penny couldn't quite put a finger on it... 


                                                                            ~~~~~~~~~

   "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust

Photo Source:  Unknown

You entered this world
backwards,
toes pointed toward the light,

Kicking clouds of ambiguity 
clear from sight,
and adorning your ankles with bells.

Like a turnstile in Hell’s hallway,
your compass needle spun,
but you needed no direction, save for one.

Blinded by a confidence
that wasn’t borne of common sense,
you set out on a journey 'round the sun.

Your roadmap,
blank as canvas,
was an abstract work in progress.

Was it ego?
Was it genius?
No.

T'was hunger
spurred you on,
and so,

You gorged like a fat kid on Hamburger Day,
then purged,
and gorged some more.

You left crusts in your wake,
crumbs on the floor,
a mess of glory smeared upon your face…

Then you left.
You left.
You left this place.

Still a fledgling
with unfeathered wings,
you jumped before we knew--

Cut the tether
that dared anchor you,
and finally, you flew free.