The President's Fitness Test. An annual event of anxiety and entertainment that amped up the usual mood of gym-class through my youth.

The opportunities for hilarity –– always close to hand in a mixed-gender high-school class where the gym teacher had a tendency to turn nearly purple with emotion when anyone did anything vaguely teenager-esque –– were legion.  I don't remember much pantsing going on, but there was definitely some flatulence (both inadvertent AND deliberate), and the odd fainting.

My buddy, Judy Hall –– she had green eyes and lived in the farmhouse that my great-great grandparents once owned –– was a wiry farm kid, astonishingly fast with the sit-ups, always in the top rank. My own best skill was hanging on. I could suspend myself overhand for what seemed like ages, thinking about something else.

Which brings us, by a wide-ranging path, to a writing warm-up.

*No surprise, since the country grows ever less fit, that the test was discontinued in 2012.  

Story #1
His husband said it over and over: Damont couldn't take a picture to save his life. And this one, the last image on his trusty GoPro, was no exception.

According to several witnesses, Damont was attempting a selfie, holding the camera at arm's length, squinting into the sun. Possibly hungover –– he was vacationing in the Keys with his family after all –– his hand wavered visibly, so his last expression is lost to us. 

And then came the curious chain of events that led this tourist from Detroit to his unlikely demise at the fangs of a spray-painted king cobra on the beach in Key Largo early one Easter morning.


Story #2
"Ain't that the truth," Theresa said as she snapped the picture. 

Susan snorted dismissively, but Bobbi laughed with her usual abandon, one big hand on the straining knot of her sarong, the other inching down her sloping belly. Catching her breath after a long minute, Bobbi managed to wheeze out, "Falling! Coconuts!" 

Theresa shrugged, but Susan could tell that she was inwardly pleased. Theresa played tough, but the woman loved an audience.

"Cuckoo for coconuts over here." Theresa made as if to order drinks from the non-existent pool-boy. Bobbi was inching the sarong back up her formidable front and didn't hear the quip. Susan pretended she wasn't listening. You couldn't just give her the laugh. 

"Ooh, look!" Bobbi said, pointing with her free hand. "Freaky pool float!"

Later, Susan thought it might have been the funniest and most gruesome thing any of them ever said, but then Theresa was running into the water, yelling "Call 911! Call 911!" in her paramedic's voice, and Susan was pawing at and then upending her straw satchel, trying to find the goddamn phone. 

Horses on the beach.  

It's kind of a dream vacation activity, especially for those of us who resented being called horse-crazy even when that shoe actually fit...

This photo and adventure came from CPonies.com in February of 2019. That's me with the goofy hat by the Skyway. My sister (not a horse person. funny story.) in the ball cap. Her friend KB just off the right ear of the horse in the foreground.   

But rather than report about it (big beautiful horses, dreamy setting, DOLPHINS!) let's just rift off it for a writing warm-up, shall we?

Story 1 – Shallop

I named him Shallop.

You know, for the boat, but also because of galloping, which is what I thought we would do all the time, non-stop, from morning till night.

I also thought that my very own horse –– not My Little Pony, but  –– would be more affectionate, like a dog, but they are not the barking, panting, paws-on-your-trousers animals.

The affection of a horse is more like an ungainly boat bumping against a dock. Shallop would sidle right over me, trampling toes. He left dusty and slobbery streaks on my clothes and sideswiped me with his enormous face. He habitually covered himself with mud for me to brush. He would sometimes not allow himself to be caught.

But we galloped, and his long mane rippled and the sound of his hooves was like thunder. 


Story 2 –– Horses in the Sea

They were not making the crossing between Assateague and Chincoteaque.

They were not straying from the tidal flats of Neuwerk.

​They were not navigating a deep patch in the marshes of Carmague.

They were swimming on a beach somewhere while others were adrift in snow. They were scented with horse and coconut oil. They had nothing in their heads but what came in through their ears and eyes. They were riding and swimming and the air was soft with salt.
​

Some warming-up exercises from my writing day.

But in light of that impulse to cut things up and sew them back together in a pleasing form, today's writing prompt takes some random words and puts them into a story pattern:

Random words: relation, requirement, region, role, reaction, revolution, ratio.
The pattern:  (character+needs+action)

Story 1
Everything looked tiny from the sky that time of day. The ratio of tree to shadow all out of proportion, as if the shadow had overthrown its role. She felt the idea take hold, that a revolution was rolling across the surface of the world. That long, branching shadow was just then throwing a tree into existence against the burning disk of sun.

The crackling of her headset recalled her to the reality of the chopper, the dry air and the dust, the possibility of light glinting off something lethal on the ground below her.  

"Barnett! Two clicks!" 

She nodded and took a deep, steadying breath. Without consulting the laminated instruction sheet clipped to the seat-back, she ticked off the safety requirements again. She snugged the buckles, threaded gloved fingers along the straps. This time, she swung her legs to the side and let her boots meet the skids. 

"Barnett, I am counting in four, three, two ––" the horizon took a quarter turn, and she punched the release on her seatbelt. Gravity loaded as the chopper rose away from her. The chute deployed, and she bounced lightly in the harness in the middle of the air.

The toggles felt like reins, she thought, and the wing was like a horse racing downhill. Shit, she was flaking out. She was a target waiting to sighted. With an effort, she lined up a particular tan formation of rock with its own long shadow and urged the horses to gallop. 

The gritty sand rose to meet her, and she landed running. Hustling the wing into the pack, she didn't spare a moment looking into the hills. She trotted up the narrow ravine for fifteen minutes, the only sound her boots and her own pulse like a snare drum in her ears.



Whoa. That's a surprise. Sometimes the scraps turn themselves into something unexpected.

​I wonder if it's Afghanistan or Mars. Why is she solo? I may return to this one day, and I thank you for joining me in my rhetorical calisthenics. 

Trachinotis carolinas. Characterized by small silvery scales, forked tail, related to Jack-fish but highly valued for eating. ​

A Fishing Story –– Version 1
Caught me a biggun.  Though he had me whupped, but I turned the tables on his bipedal ass. Bootless meet toothless. How do you like them airless apples? Huh?  Swim like a fish much?

All he had to do was let go, but it's greed what catches em, every time.  Sparkle sparkle! Just let go and get back to your spot, but no. Gotta cling. Dunno why it's called landing when you reel one in. Land's the one thing they ain't much of in that situation, if you know what I mean. I figure he'll eat pretty good, give him a few days.


A Fishing Story –– Version 2
A short list of ways I've avoided writing today:  rearranged the fiction bookshelf, cleaned my stainless water bottle with bleach, followed by cleaning the bottle-brush. With bleach. Made a few calls. Perused Writer's Digest. Bootlessly researched a specific twitter from a specific Twit. Cleaned the keyboard with rubbing alcohol and q-tips. Listened to samples of Billie Martin's songs on iTunes.  Decided listing my excuses was nearly as good as writing anything. Words are words when you are trying for a daily word-count.

A Fishing Story – Version 3 
Swimming, swimming, swimming, biting at a shrimp.
Shrimp has sharp –– ow!
And damn! What the hell?
Swimming swimming, vaulting into air.
Tractor beam or something yanking.
Don't beam me up.
Swimming, running from the grasp.
Caught.

Writing is not exactly like playing professional football, but sometimes it feels like it.

Stretching and warming up.
The tackles and the ice-baths and the bruises.
The snail's pace forward.
That.bossy guy in stripes on the sideline demonstrating –– incorrectly, as it turns out –– how to perform the hokey-pokey.  

But fer reals, like any would-be linebacker, a writer has to practice and run drills. Here's my own little practice session. Omaha! Omaha Seventy-Eight! Set! Hut! 

Story 1
He woke to the familiar cathedral space of the pavilion. He smelled frost in the air and made a careful effort to roll in place on the cardboard, not wanting to let cold air into his sleeping bag. 
     If he waited maybe half an hour, there would be bitter coffee to warm his hands and burn his mouth. But if he waited too long, someone would hustle him along and there would be no coffee at all. Perhaps it was time already. He braced himself and then slid himself from of the cocoon of warmth, keeping his sock feet on the Ollie-Ollie-Oxenfree safety of his little bivouac. He stretched, feeling the crackle of his joints and an unpleasant stretching of his skin.
     He was not old –– no one would call him old –– but life on the road had weathered him. Only a few silver threads showed in matted hair, but chalky patches of callus punctuated his corners, showing like mushrooms at his elbows and knees. 

Story 2
In semiphore, the universe was telling him to cash in his bonds, sell his Persian rugs, set the birds free, and dispense with personal hygiene.
     Things were happening. An electric crackle at the edge of his hearing and the way the flags snapped in syncopation? It was all coming clear. They were directives, acronyms spelled out in flags, commands that he could not ignore. 
     He'd been waiting, he realized now, for his whole life for this. He found himself holding his breath, counting steps, feverishly translating phrases into Latin and then Spanish and then back into English. The sense of impending moment, like a cresting wave arrested briefly by the shutter of a camera, arched above him. The heavy perfume of orange blossom intoxicated him with sweetness.
     He woke to the familiar cathedral space of the pavilion. He smelled frost in the air and made a careful effort to roll in place on the cardboard, not wanting to let cold air into his sleeping bag.

  

So. Much. Happening in this photo.

All to the good: Let it be fodder for the imagination.

Story1
Absenthe, she tended to remind herself, does not make the heart grow fonder.

Her thoughts slid, like the needle finding its vinyl groove, to her long-ago college adventures, already three generations too late to know about the real Absenthe. A young dreamer 80 after the green fairy flitted through fin-de-ciecle Paris. In French, la fée verte, the fairy who inspired and drove artists mad. But maybe that was just the wormwood talking.  

She knew the flavor –– anise, of course, always licorice –– and she knew how the emerald-green liquor clouded into the color of a mint milkshake when mixed with water.  

"Give a chap a drink," they used to call across open space to one another, college kids with a yearning for Hemingway's sort of possibilities.

"Isn't it pretty to think so," was the correct response. A bit of self-conscious whimsy. A pose. Ersatz nostalgia with a wink.   

They usually ended up with beer. It was cheaper and plentiful, and it was only much later that anyone laid hands on the heavy glass bottle that held a genuine green fairy.

But they were just college kids afternoon-drinking then, hoisting glass mugs of yellow beer, waxing gently ironic about their dreams.

She shook her head as she trudged along, and then caught the eye of a young person –– boy? girl? not that it mattered, a slim figure dressed entirely in black who probably thought she was a crazy old bat. Far ridere il polli.

She felt her shoulders rise in an exaggerated shrug and quickly added a neck roll to make herself look less ridiculous.  Wormwood, she had been thinking, artemisia absenthium, a medicinal bitter herb.

Stopping to catch her breath and shift the shopping bag from left to right, she considered the plant. Silvery leaves dried like sage, with the scent –– what else? –– mildly licorice-scented.  If she remembered her Culpeper's Complete Herbal (circa 1653), and she did, "This herb is good for something, for God made nothing in vain."  

She expelled the irony in one sharp exhale: "Or anyway, Isn't it pretty to think so?"

"Years ago," wheezed the oldster, arthritic knuckles whitening on the handle of the deluxe walker. "Years ago, artists had to use rubylith to separate each color for a color print."

Honking into a worn handkerchief, the dusty wheezer raised watery eyes and continued. "Hours I spent over a drafting table, X-Acto blade in hand, separating colors. The eye-hand coordination alone --!"

After a long pause, the lecture continued. "It took years to learn the tricks of the trade. Nowadays, all it takes is a ninety-nine cent app. Putting artists out of business. I don't know how they make a living any more."

Yeah, artists mostly don't make a living.

In honor of all of us antiquities who remember cutting ruby to separate colors, here's a timelapse video of the Rubylith process...

But those 99-cent apps are really fun:

In this highly digitized age, it's nigh on impossible to grasp the amount of work that went into, for instance, the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. This link describes the Technicolor process.

Such an effort to give the viewing public ruby slippers!

He probably needed to warm up before tortoising. Today's writing prompt comes all the way from the Galápagos.

Pranayama

He tried to still his thoughts.

Circular breathing.  He counted in with the breath: one-belly, two-ribs, three-shoulders. He attempted to send his breath into the interstitial area, wherever that was––!  And then out again: shoulders-one, ribs-two, three-belly. And pause.

He was happy to pause. He could out-pause anyone. Not that it was a competition.

The instructor went on, and he decided to keep pausing. He'd hold still, he figured, and then nip back in next time.

Like Arlo Guthrie, he'd just wait for the chorus to come around again. Circular breathing was frustrating and difficult, but the practice was only forty minutes out of a day.

Ah, there it was: Inhale. He did, trying to make the breath open first his belly, then ribs, and finally, shoulders. Or what would be shoulders, had he any. Ribs? His ribs were fused into carapace, and everyone knew a carapace didn't –– shouldn't!–– flex. And what chance did his belly have against the dusty plastron? He lived inside a shell corset, and he might just as soon ask his breath to give him wings.

He recognized the monkey-brain resistance and focused on the air moving through his sinuses. He sipped the air in and ahhed the breath out. His eyes closed. In. Out. In.

The class finished and the day turned into night before he opened his bleary eyes again. The night was absolute, fog blotting out the yellow streetlights and the stars alike. Damn, he thought. How long was I out? I wonder what year it is.

​       I was in charge this year, and I knew what sorts of things I wanted for us on Christmas morning. Since kindergarten, I’d wanted a decorated tree in the house with presents under it. I wanted good things for my sister and me to eat –– no greasy goose, no stringy turnips, no heavy spoon-bread.

​      And I wanted “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and “Jingle Bell Rock” –– the silliest of the Christmas songs –– playing on the radio, loud.

       So as my sister was forever advising, I made a plan. When the two of us got up late and ate cookies for breakfast with the radio playing popular carols full blast, my sister would open first the small, heavy package of batteries, then the leather-bound old book I found for her at a rummage sale and finally she’d tear the wrapping off the big, rattling box of Operation by Milton Bradley. I’d taken the trip to the Sears store in Watertown with one of my baby-sitting families, so I was sure she’d be completely surprised.

       After presents, we’d eat more cookies and play Operation until we were ready to eat the cold sliced ham and mashed sweet-potatoes and pumpkin pie I’d made for dinner.

       I was happy that night. On Christmas eve, with the wind whispering around the corner of the house, I did not feel lonesome. I made Christmas cookies and refilled the tea-kettle. I brought in extra loads of firewood to save having to go outside the next morning. I snipped paper snowflakes to hang in all the windows and considered the many advantages of my sister’s and my solo state. When Viv came home, I was happier yet. She kept her pea-coat buttoned when she came in and she dashed upstairs with her hands in her pockets, clutching something lumpy under her coat. From upstairs, she shouted, “Will you start me a pot of tea? Peppermint?”

       I made the tea slowly, with a lot of extra scrapings and clankings so that if Viv were making any noise, she’d know I wouldn’t be able to hear her. When she came downstairs, she dunked cookies into her tea and admired the tree and the decorations.

       I think it snowed a little overnight that Christmas. Or anyway, it felt like it had snowed for that first Christmas: a light, beautiful blanket of white covering everything outside the windows. Perhaps I’m making the memory prettier than it was, but I remember the field being as picturesque as a Grandma Moses scene.

        On Christmas morning we slept in a little and when we made our way downstairs, we each had gifts tucked under our arms. My sister –– contrary to every Paris-edition-Vogue-influenced particle of taste –– produced an extravagantly wrapped package of pastel day-of-the-week underpants for me. In the autumn, when I told her about how all the girls in my gym-class had day-of-the-week panties, she said it was the tackiest thing she had ever heard. Her scorn hadn’t really changed my wanting them, but I hadn’t mentioned it again.

       Still, sometime between then and Christmas, she’d made the trip to Woolworth’s in the face of her own sense of fashion. She also got me a sleek and expensive Koh-I-Noor technical pen, which I knew for a fact I had never mentioned aloud. She must have noticed me silently fingering it at the art-supply store in Watertown and gone back for advice, because the pen came with two bottles of ink and a tin of horrible-smelling cleaning solution.

       ​Viv and I stayed in our pajamas all morning with the woodstove pouring off heat, drinking cup after cup of hot chocolate and eating cookies. We sang along with the radio, making up a silly dance for the various versions of “The Little Drummer Boy” that kept playing.

       ​Viv was unbeatable at Operation, as anyone could have predicted; she took out and replaced the breadbasket piece four times in a row before Sam’s red nose lit up.
​
       Later, when Viv had curled up on the couch and stuck her nose into the dusty old book, I filled the ink reservoir of the technical pen and then applied its unforgiving pinpoint nib to paper. I sketched my sister with her hair messy and her sock-feet drawn up to her butt on the saggy old couch, I sketched the fat little Christmas tree beside her, each needle of the pine tree a tiny, single, scratch of ink.