caleb walker

cleaning house

I don't know why I haven't done this before, but I just had typepad show me all of the posts I started but never finished and posted. Here they are, still unfinished, but posted.

Nov 24, 2005

Posting has been light, I know. Instead of blogging I've been reading and writing stories for the class I'm taking, pecking away at NaNoWriMo (more half-heartedly ever day), and working hard at my new job. KR and I have been watching Six Feet Under and Homicide on DVD (thanks to NetFlix), and this morning I made a pumpkin pie. KR made a venison lasagna for Thanksgiving dinner, and we had a couple friends over for a card game we play that always results in therapeudic yelling and cursing. I learned how to use a neti pot.

A neti pot is a little thing you fill with salty water so you can pour it into your nostril. The water flows through your entire head, scouring your sinuses and your cortexes and your head cheeses before dribbling out your other nostril. Jim demonstrated and it looked pretty easy, except his eyes were watering when he was done. Leaking sinus bath water, no doubt. I took my turn, though, and stuck my head into the bathroom sink and poked the pot's spout into my nostril. Water went in, but not out. I came up snorting, and yes, my eyes were watering. It was the same sensation as when you jump into the water and scoop water into your nose.

Oct 27, 2005

I grew up in a musical house. My mother was (and still is) a church musician and played piano, organ, handbells, etc., and sang. I took to music as well. I played trumpet in school bands and took piano lessons (but never went very far with them). The music in the house included my mother's recordings of organ and classical performances. My mother sang songs from musicals around the house. (I still get the shivers when I hear "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess.)

Then one day my younger brother signed up for the Columbia Music Club and a dozen or so albums showed up in the mail. I remember being horrified at his selections, though I don't remember what they all were. The only one I remember was Pink Floyd's The Wall. Satanic, I thought, as I peered at the drawings inside the fold-out cover. But on my first listen, my mind was, if you'll excuse the expression, blown.

Oct 3, 2005

For years I've been working on replacing the decrepit wooden cellar doors at the back of the house. They look like they are about 80 years old—they could be original equipment. By "working on" I mean I've spent years knowing that the doors need to be replaced, building up the necessary mental energy to act, going to the Lowes Depot to inquire about buying the kit, ordering it, picking it up at the store, and figuring out what to do with it.

I now have the equipment, the materials, and a plan. Removing the old doors was easy and satisfying. Chasing the ginormous spiders and bugs out of the stairwell made my skin crawl, but it was also satisfying. The kit does not fit the foundation very well, so I figured I would mount a wood frame on the foundation, on which I would attach the metal doorframe. Yesterday I bought the lumber, a big-boy drill, and a masonry bit and went to work. I got one hole drilled and another started, and quit for the day.

Not great progress, but I hope that, once I figure out the process, it will go quicker. Everything I did, though, just created another set of decisions to make. Should I drill the holes in the boards or in the concrete first? I chose concrete, then realized that I would then be unable to drill the holes in the boards to accurately match up. So I drilled the rest of the holes in the wood and started hole number two through the hole in the board. Then I realized that I could not countersink the holes after I had drilled them.

This is why I am not a handyman. Every decision was a crap shoot. I could have tossed a coin and had results as good as sitting on the cobwebby steps and thinking through the possibilities myself for two hours. Nothing is easy. [It is now January and the doors are in that same state of unfinishedness. This is why we pay professionals to do these things.]

July 13, 2005

Foreshadowing is hinting at something that will happen in the future. So aftershadowing should be seeing hints of something that has already happened. Right?

Yesterday morning I saw a dead boy in a tree. Later that morning I realized I had a meeting and I needed files I had left on my iBook at home. So I walked up the hill to my car. The site of the suicide had been cleared and it looked like nothing had happened. I stood under the tree and saw nothing unusual. Nothing on the ground, nothing in the branches. Then I went to my car and went home.

I grabbed the files and headed back to the office and saw aftershadow #1. Trucks were parked in front of a neighbor's house and young guys holding chainsaws were standing in his trees. The sight of a few guys tied to the branches was quite evocative.

I didn't get my old parking space when I got back, so I ended up quite a ways away. Feathers were on the road. I saw no carcass, but black and white feathers had been scattered all over the road and grass. I picked one up and keep it in my car.

July 5, 2005

Funny how decisions are made for you when you're too lazy to make them yourself, Caleb thought. He fought to hold eye contact with his boss, though what he mostly wanted to do was flee the office. He held his pen over the report he had brought with him. Mason wanted to talk about the latest edits to the document, Caleb had thought, but instead Mason started to explain the financial difficulties the group had come into lately. "Lack of members signing up," he said. Caleb heard "Expiring contracts... in the red... provost insists... hate to lose you... and three or four others..."

Caleb had been thinking about leaving for some time. But there had always been the promise of an improved situation in this position. A new office, a new development process, and better-defined roles had not made him any more comfortable. He loved the freedom of working on campus where he was able to do a good portion of his work at a nearby coffee shop or in the university library. He took mid-afternoon walks to clear his head. So the last year had been marked by a constant wavering between wanting to leave and wanting to stay.

But that decision was now made for him. It was a relief, really. Mason finished by asking, "Do you have any questions?" Caleb's attention snapped back. He realized he had heard little of what had been said, but he did not care.

"Yes," he said. "May I go now?"

May 2, 2005

KR and I signed up for Netflix a month ago, and good movies are rare enough that we're renting tv series (we don't have the cable, you know). We were watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, season one, disc one, and I realized something: I live in a jokeless sitcom.

It's one of those laugh-track shows where the dumpy guy has a hot wife. I'm a better-looking Jim Belushi, a smarter Ray Romano, a thinner Kevin James. I'm god-damned Larry David with more hair. My show is one where every week the dumb-shit husband says something stupid or gets caught doing something childish, then gets all egotistical and refuses to apologize. The only reason the couple stays together long enough to come back next week is the hot wife's willingness to forgive.

Last night I asked KR if what Larry David said to his tv wife in the third episode would work with her and she said maybe. [I have no idea what he said to her now.] I'm taking notes from now on.

sarah on the bench under the clock

She sat on the bench under the clock, as expected. She had told Caleb to look for her there in her last email. He stood back for a moment to check her out. They had never met face-to-face. A few pedestrians passed by. He and she were the only still ones on the corner. She wore a floppy-brimmed hat that shaded her face, and a thin floral dress that moved in the light breeze. Her legs were crossed and her hands lay in her lap. She sat so still that he strained to see if her eyes were moving. But they were hidden in the shadows. He approached.

"Are you Sarah?"

She looked up but did not smile. "Yes."

"I'm Caleb. Where do you want to go for lunch?"

"Go where? You're who?"

Caleb stepped back. Wrong Sarah on the bench under the clock.

note

I've never deleted a post before, but I reread this one several times after posting it and hated it more each time. It's gone. It was a Caleb story about a suicide note, based on a prompt from Once Written. (I wanted to keep that link.) I swear I won't make a habit of deleting posts.

if

Caleb sat in a vinyl chair, one knee bouncing, heart racing, lungs sucking in short breaths. His left elbow sat on his left knee, keeping it from dancing with its partner, and the left hand supported his head. He stared through the front plate glass window, the inside of which had "Hot Metal Ink" painted on it in reverse. He was there voluntarily, he reminded himself.

An old man wearing a fedora and a shabby jacket and tie shuffled past the window. He looked like the type who had an achor inked on his forearm, Popeye-style. Or a smudgy naked lady.

Through a curtain toward the back of the shop a metallic buzzing ceased. The silence was jarring. The curtain separated and a young woman wearing a silver ring in her lip came through. Her shiny black hair was pulled back from her neck, which was red and raw with a fresh decoration on it. It was a circular Celtic knot design, fairly small, but incredibly detailed. She was followed by a shaved-bald boy (what was he - twenty? twenty-one?) who was tearing off a pair of rubber gloves. His arms were multi-colored. While the girl found her wallet the kid checked a book at the front desk and said, "Caleb? You ready? You can go back. I'll be there in a sec."

Caleb stood. His knee continued to shake as he stood. He went through the curtain. There was a chair and a wheeled stool. He sat in the chair; it appeared to be for the victim. He heard the bell on the front door tinkle, then the kid slipped through the curtain and sat on the stool. "How's it goin'?" he asked.

Caleb answered truthfully and at length. Needles freaked him out, he said. No matter how hard he tried, nor how hard he tried not to try, every time a doctor or dentist stuck him with a hypodermic, his blood pressure dropped to zero and he felt faint and hot and cold and embarassed. In order to avoid needles he stayed healthy. He was nervous as hell about this, he said. Part of him wanted to run through the shabby curtain and through the belled door into the street.

After a short pause the kid said, "Dude, why are you here?"

Caleb said, "Have you heard about The Skin Project?" The kid shook his head. "An artist wrote a story and she's asking people to tattoo one word of the story on themselves. So the story only exists on the participants. It's not written anywhere else. I thought it was a really cool idea. So cool that I wanted to participate."

"Even though you don't really want to."

"Yeah, but I'm trying to convince myself that my desire to overcome my fear is greater than the fear. I'm trying." The kid nodded. "I asked her for a short word. She gave me 'if.' That's kind of appropriate, I think." Caleb handed the kid a piece of paper with "if" printed on it in a serifed font. "Can you do that?"

"With my eyes closed," he said. "And yours too." The kid took the paper and set it on the side table with his other instruments. "Tell you what. This isn't standard, but do you want a shot of something to calm you?"

"A shot? Like anesthesia? Don't you just have a valium? I'd rather not have the shot."

The kid laughed and Caleb saw a glint of light shining off the kid's tongue stud. He swiveled on his stool and reached into a drawer in the table. He turned back with a half-full bottle of Cuervo tequila in one hand and a shot glass in the other.

"Oh yeah," Caleb said, and poured himself a shot, downed it, and poured a second. "To 'if,'" he said, and slugged the second one. "No offense, but I'm not going to offer you one." He handed the bottle and glass to the kid. Caleb said, "Just do it." He yanked his sleeve up past his shoulder.

It still hurt like hell. To distract himself from the sharpness that jolted through his arm into his skull and ricocheted through the rest of him, he focused on the deafening buzz of the needle and told himself that it was an electric razor, a mechanical bee, Jimi's guitar - anything but what it was. Still, Caleb made the kid stop whenever he felt faint so he could drop his head between his knees and regain his composure. Finally, ten minutes or ten days later - Caleb had no sense of time - the kid scooted back and swabbed Caleb's shoulder with a dripping gauze pad. "Done," he said.

Caleb opened his watery eyes and swiveled his head around to face the kid. "Really? You don't want to keep going?" He looked at the word on his arm. The if was red-hot, radiating heat and light, illuminating Caleb's face. "Cool," he said.

(the skin project)

swap

The bus was full that morning. The mass of commuters had even shoved to the back of the bus where Caleb sat. He had shuffled his feet apart to allow a man to stand in front of him, so now one of the man's feet was planted between Caleb's and the man's leather shoulder bag crinkled the pages of the book in his lap with every movement of the bus. He looked up from his book to the faces around him. From the corner of his eye he saw the profile of the young woman sitting next to him. She held a physiology textbook in her lap, opened to a chapter on muscular functions. The woman on his other side had iPod buds in her ears; Caleb could hear the raspy beat. The man sitting opposite him was reading a hardcover book with its paper cover removed. Something about it looked like a novel. A magazine subscription card rested in the pages' gutter - a low-budget bookmark.

Caleb fingered his own bookmark, a photograph of a flying flock of birds that he had sliced from a card announcing a gallery opening. He had used it for years, trimming its edges as they became soft and bent. Caleb leaned forward, but his shoulder met with the swinging leather bag and he sat back again. He tried again. He leaned forward and to the side, and said to the man across from him, "Excuse me."

The man looked up and his eyebrows raised. "Hm?"

Caleb held out his bookmark. "Would you like to exchange bookmarks?"

The guy glanced at his own and seemed confused. "Why?" Caleb saw that the man thought he was a nutjob.

"I don't know. I've had this one for a long time and thought I'd like a new one. I'll pass yours along to someone else after a while."

The man's eyes defocussed as he considered Caleb's offer. "Okay," he said finally. They reached into the middle of the aisle and made the exchange. The other passengers ignored them. Caleb sat back, slipped the magazine subscription card - for Wired - into his book, rang the bell to be let off, and walked the rest of the way to work.

Updated because I hated the ending.

in the hallway

Caleb held his empty mug in both hands as if it were full as he walked to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. He passed his manager, Steve, talking frenetically with a colleague near the elevators, motioning with his hands, pointing his finger, making fists. Steve broke free to say, "Caleb, I need to talk to you." Caleb said, "Sure," and continued down the hall until he was brought up short by Steve's hand on his sleeve. "I mean right now." Caleb put his coffee plans on the back burner.

Steve turned and strode down the hall at top speed - away from the kitchen and the coffee. He said, "I need you to do me a favor." Caleb followed a few steps behind, unable to keep up. His normal pace was a bit slower than most people under normal circumstances.

A favor. Caleb was by now several steps behind Steve, and he was having a hard time hearing Steve's lightning chatter. Caleb spoke up. "Steve, why don't you walk with me if you want to talk with me?"

Steve didn't slow, but turned and said, "You need to keep up."

"No," Caleb said. "If you need to talk with me, then you need to accommodate my pace. When I need to talk with you, I'll keep up with you. But you need me now, so we go at my pace."

Steve stopped with a perplexed look on his face. Caleb caught up with him. Steve tore into his chatter once again as they strolled down the hall together.

caleb intro

I have wanted to start writing fiction again. I have wanted to make this blog a more interesting place. It's two great tastes that taste great together! I will try to write a short fiction bit every day or so, starring a character I'll name - oh, let's see... Caleb Walker. Longtime readers might remember reading a few stories featuring Caleb posted some time ago.

one sentence

Caleb braked to the end of a string of cars, a face framed in each side-view mirror - all those profiles and full frontals - and watched tree-shaped clouds sliding behind cloud-shaped trees until the light greened, so he continued driving over the recently-scraped road, its woogly grooves pulling the car slightly from side to side - it felt like taking a drunken walk - and here came an old mottled sedan whose wide bench front seat was filled by a fat man, as if he had risen like bread dough to fill the space, and on Caleb went, through Squirrel Hill, finally getting out of the car alongside the Schenley golf course’s 18th fairway, locking the nurse-green door, and kicking through the buckeyes along the golf course and past an old Chinese couple putting on the 8th green.

the caterpillar and the spider

Caleb counted the steps down to the basement. Each footfall onto a wooden step had a little give to it, but number twelve was solid--the concrete basement floor. Double feedback, double safety: the feel of each step, plus the count. He shivered past the humming dehumidifier. After loading the washer with his whites he turned to go back up the steps, two at a time, to escape the cold and damp. But he caught a slight motion at ankle level in the corner of his eye. A wooly bear caterpillar was dangling along the side of a plastic bucket, caught in a spider's web attached to its rim.

He knelt, leaning against the vibrating machine to keep from touching the linty floor. The caterpillar, covered with clumps of lint and web, squirmed and twisted. A spider, dwarfed by the wooly bear, sat on the bucket's rim, watching. Caleb sat against the washing machine, watching.

What had happened? Maybe the caterpillar had become entangled just a second before. Maybe the spider had already been on it, but retreated. Maybe the spider had already administered its bite and it was just waiting for the caterpillar to stop moving. Caleb couldn't tell if the webbing on the caterpillar had been put there by the spider, or if the caterpillar had covered itself by its squirming. Caleb suspected the latter, since the webbing was so dirty. He waited for a few minutes, but nothing happened; the spider continued waiting as the caterpillar continued twitching and wiggling.

"Enough of that," Caleb said, and reached out to pluck the caterpillar from its tether. The spider raised an eyebrow and bared its teeth at Caleb. He dropped the wolly bear onto the floor a few feet away from the bucket and picked the larger bits of web and lint from its spiky fur. It stopped moving as soon as it touched the floor.

Caleb looked at it closer, but didn't know what he was looking for. Did caterpillars breathe? He couldn't even tell which was its head-end in the dim light. With a sense of well-being from having saved the life of a fellow earth creature, he went upstairs.

A half hour later when he returned to change loads he noticed that the caterpillar hadn't moved. He poked at it with a finger. He rolled it over. It was lifeless. The spider was gone from the bucket. He picked up the wooly bear and walked upstairs with it, then outside. He placed it carefully on the ground in the herb garden next to the house, then went back down the twelve steps to tend to his laundry.

a winter tale

A car pulled into rush-hour traffic. It was covered in snow, with little holes worn through on the windshield where the wipers were able to scrape away the frozen slush. It was a miracle the driver could see anything. But he had cut right in front of Caleb. The driver could, of course, see nothing, so it was actually a miracle that he didn't cause a nasty accident. As it was, Caleb slammed on the brakes and cursed, causing a string of drivers behind him to slam on their brakes and curse.

At the next red light he stepped out of his vehicle and approached the car with a scraper in his hand. He had time to scrape the car's windows clean and return to his own driver's seat before the light turned green and everyone continued on their way.