Sometimes I Pretend It's Seaweed - Marcia

I have let the roses grow up over the window where I sit to write. The big climber blocks the view of Jerry’s driveway and Earl’s garage. This way I can’t watch George making his way past with Lucy the beagle, Beth walking by with Bailey the corgi, or sullen teenagers in black hoodies and cigarette-leg jeans, moping along wishing they were smoking and could actually ride the skateboards they carry under their arms. I like the emerald green lozenges of light, and the way they juxtapose with the bare branches of the Liquid Amber. Sometimes I pretend it is seaweed and I am underwater.

Any writing I do now is fragmentary, like the small green rose leaves. Bits of beautiful spangled foliage, but mine aren’t attached to any stem, they flutter around and disappear. But just writing helps me feel connected to something greater than myself.

I have about ten minutes before my horde comes home. I have to decide whether to eat a taco, try to write my blog, go to the gym, put in a load of towels, or head to Safeway to buy the New York Times Review of Books. Every Sunday I say I’m going to do this. I never do. I decide on the taco.

My young writing was all angst and sex and the desire for love, my writing now is all neighborhood and kids, and in some way is less embarrassing. I write directly from life. I don’t have time to invent anything.

I am the techno-tard in this group. I never read email, have only checked out one old flame on My Space, have no idea who to Google, and have never sent a text message.

I am being forced into this century by my persistent writing group. Secretly, though, I still write on an old Underwood. It is my favorite thing to write on or with. The feel of the keys is so silky and cool and solid. I love the ratchet and ding of the return. Results are immediate, concrete, black and white. Work never disappears, is accidentally deleted, or eaten by a virus. The shadows of the rose leaves fall across my black and chrome baby. Saying come to me, be writerly. It makes me want to write just to feel the keys beneath my fingers, and watch the inky letters punch their way onto the paper.