Five minutes to order a latte
And then you demand a bowl.
Steel wool hair.
Your ringtone is Mr.Roboto.
I leave quickly by the back exit.
© Speranza
Shaken not Stirred
Introspection . Nostalgia . Writers . Writing
The Other Martha
On January 3, 2016 by Speranza
I just finished listening to an archived interview with hard-boiled wartime writer and activist Martha Gellhorn on the radio and hearing her cultured, richly intellectual way of speaking casually expand on the exciting yet pugilistic life she led has made me feel equal parts impressed, intrigued and unsettled.
Impressed and intrigued because she led such a fascinating, unpredictable and often dangerous life and unsettled because this is a heady cocktail of everything I am not.
I have none of her wanderlust, her confidence or that driving need to be combative (most recently I couldn’t even play a competitive board game at Christmas lest I offend the land occupiers who were good friends!) yet I continue to pretend that had my life turned out differently, I might have been a kick-arse journalist.
Really. Really? I need to shut this fantasy down and resolve to confine myself to writing at least half-way regularly at my middle-class desk where I can safely blog to an audience that rarely exceeds 2 digits … what the heck would Martha say about that …?
I cannot bear to think of it.
Strangely, it’s a truism about myself that I’m often extremely attracted to clever outspokenness as a trait in other people – Noel Gallagher, Denis Leary, Richard Dawkins, The General – but I abhor it in myself; of course, I should also clarify that boorish, uncalled for outspokenness can veer very closely to let’s just say something else, and I have never found someone being a complete asshole even remotely attractive.
Childhood . My Fiction . Writing
Hounds-Tooth
On November 1, 2015 by Speranza
A tiny slit of light creaks through the ill-fitting wardrobe door even after it clicks shut behind me. Under different circumstances to these I might feel self conscious, or perhaps unbalanced. But the pain of loss has driven me here, and I care nothing for such thoughts. The coat hangers move quickly under my touch whining the screech of steel on steel, till at last I find what I want. It slips around my shoulders easily, enveloping me in its scent and at once I breathe in a thousand memories. The smell of spearmint gum still lingers in the pocket, and the faint tang of old-fashioned shaving soap comes up to me from the warmth. This coat is a traditional hounds’ tooth tweed, but worn soft and the lining still glows cheerfully, a dull vermilion red like the inside of a magicians’ cloak.