Fiction: the missing paragraph

Napoleon, after I edited out
The Paragraph

My mother was so complicated and so sweet; so strong an energy blocking any normal trajectory of a life (my life, specifically) and yet so supportive in other ways.

She loved my short stories. I know that alone makes friends, some writers, gape at me with envy. Let me have something, already.

As I've mentioned, I didn't start writing poetry until I was in my forties and by then my mother was well into her self-inflicted thirty-year march to death (a Christian Scientist's preventable death).

But I began fiction in my thirties, after I started teaching (thus ending ne-er-do-well-dom, at least for a time). My novel The To-Do List Manifesto, which I've rewritten enough times it really could be published, is dedicated to her. Today I thank her. She saved every story of mine up to about 1989, all of them typed. 

My sister sent me the batch after Mom died in 2001. I'd forgotten, and just chanced on the box yesterday. (I'm debating whether or not to hold onto two scrapbooks and that box was under the two scrapbooks.) I thought I'd lost work and now, ta da. I also thought I'd lost a paragraph that haunted one of my stories, first titled "Problems," finally titled, in 2010, "Napoleon on the N-page" and published in ragazine.cc (Nov-Dec 2010).

A friend used to call it "The Paragraph:"

It was a big deal when I finally dropped or edited out The Paragraph. I now see it begs for a few deletions, periods or at the very least, semis.  But it is a tumbling leaf in autumn, something to admire, in my mind. The world seems to have managed, the fiction world, the greater world. Would Julien Assange not be facing trumped-up prosecution if I'd published this paragraph?  Would the common cold be, by now, a thing of the past?  Would infinitives split like geodes to reveal gleam and glitter?

We'll never know but at least the paragraph gets a little life on the shelf of today's posting.

It is the uncertainties, perplexities and difficulties of life that haul our spirits to the depths, that cause us to wallow in mire at the merest of disasters, and the removal of these leaden weights, these dark transmuters of our native golden selves, is the aim, the desired success of many people, each of whom employs a means, perhaps unbeknownst to them, and this search for an elixir of inner peace, this methodology of the psyche's self-purification, if you will, is what Vina was trying to discover, to isolate as would a scientist seeking a remedy, and her initial approach was to observe her milieu, to look at her friends' problems.

Fiction: My story "Napoleon on the 'N' Page" is published in "ragazine" + N.Y.C. voting scandal



couch courtesy of ragazine.cc;
for all I know it belongs to editor and entrepreneur,
mike foldes (no flaneur he)

 The good news:  My story Napoleon on the 'N' Page

It's a good news/bad news posting.  The good news is that "Napoleon on the 'N' Page," a short story of mine, was just published by ragazine.cc. 

It's set in L.A.  I remember going to Taix on occasions and ordering "poulet in a wine sauce and a basket of sourdough rolls served with sweet butter squares so cold, they alone could have defeated Napoleon’s army on its famous retreat from a numbing Russian winter."

Vina is trying for the impossible--to create of list of her friends' flaws that will make it possible for her to understand romance.  The first paragraph:

Sprawled on a Salvation Army Thrift Store couch dusty enough to hide advancing troops, Vina turned to the ‘A’ page of her address book, Anne Adams, a late-in-life dyke with a cleavage like heavy gears rolling, four children and conservative relatives frowning down both aisles of forsaken vows. Her ex-husband avoided his children who reminded him he’d been left for a woman — although every so often he complained about his children being raised by a lesbian.

Click here to get to the story in ragazine.cc.
____________
The bad news:  New York City Board of Elections Voting Debacle

Chaos

The bad news is excruciating. New York's Board of Elections has managed to confuse and degrade the voting process.  It really could take a while to recover. This is New York City. Hello? Kind of wealthy and powerful and supposedly full of talent?  I don't mean to make this about my feelings, but I just voted and feel defeated.

I could barely read the ballot--and I haven't yet had to use large-size print books.  It's now a paper ballot we carry into a silly fake booth, then squint over. Yes, magnifying glasses were provided.

If there hadn't been so much hubbub about the problem I'd have missed the two ballot issues on the reverse side of the ballot. Not only hard-to-read, the ballot is unclear.

I almost didn't vote for governor (Cuomo) because I missed that box first-time out. Fortunately I double-checked my work. 

I then hand-carried my ballot to the next stage.  As people have been complaining was the case, my vote was exposed to crafty eyes. My destination was an expensive set of giant printer-like machines into which I fed the paper ballot. Anyone work in an office? Anyone known a printer to jam?

The process used to be one-step, at least for the fully abled.  The ballots were large, readable, and voting was completely private.  No more.  It's no easier now for voters who aren't fully abled, either.

As I cast my vote I chatted with another voter.  That didn't use to be possible and shouldn't be. We spoke of what people of color and women have had to go through, still go through, to vote--and now this.  Tomorrow I'm contacting the League of Women Voters.