vitamins for shaky fingers 

I wrote carelessly, forgetting all I’d learned from “Elements of Style.”

Penned a short story about thugs that were drunk on luck and home-made  dandelion wine, which had replaced their egos with a statue of the Buddha that began:

“I was experiencing glandular swelling.  Wore a pompadour and a cape in those days.  Very few people befriended me.  Mighta  been cuz I was still sucking my thumb at the age of twenty-seven.”

It wasn’t Tolstoy, but at least I spelled everything correctly.

The critics said it was schtick.

I got carpal tunnel from writing that f*****g story!  How could it be schtick?

When my girlfriend read it, she was sure I had based the female protagonist on her.

“This woman wears a caftan,”  I said. “You don’t even own a caftan.”

The next day, there was a message from her on my answering machine:

“You know how fragile my psyche is…it just doesn’t look good or feel good. So anyway, experiment, explore, play the field, enjoy.”

I was knocked down, upset, unfastened.

I shouldn’t have stopped writing, but I did.

Couldn’t find my theme, my voice.

My form disconnected, my content deformed.

I dropped to my knees and started to dream.

Somebody was crying.

Somebody else was yelling.

I was driving a black Chevy Impala and no longer felt like an early spring flower.

That’s when I realized that it was called a Complex.

In other words, I was getting all crossed-up.

A vertical line sometimes stands for continuous ecstatic love.

 

A horizontal line sometimes indicates a temporal process.

And that it takes an eternity to make me despair.

Reviews

[roarke]

Vertical and horizontal lines… my lines look like they barely escaped a gang fight with chains and switchblades. And the saying: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes shtick is just shtick. Inside and outside the lines, inside and outside the box, inside and outside the head…. And Philip, ya gotta stop dating Marsha…..

[Philip Gaber]

Ha ha ha! I will stop dating her as soon as she stops making me her world-famous Chicken Fricassée, which was Abe Lincoln's favorite chicken dish. I don't love it as much as Abe, but Marsha at least adds herself to the recipe. ** wink wink nudge nudge **