Month: November 2004

A lot has been happening in my life lately, but I’m not eager to comment on it. Just keep me and Megan in your prayers.

Guess what came in the mail today: Widescreen Special Edition Two Disc Spider-Man 2 DVD. Preorder rocks. I know what I’m watching all night.

Make sure you tell her every day
how beautiful she is
she never says it herself.

Make sure she lets you see her paintings
or her poetry
you’ll learn volumes about her
from what she puts on paper
or canvas.

Make sure you never forget
she’s a person
she’s been hurt
and yet
she’s survived.

Make sure that, at least once,
you trace her face with your hands
as she stares up at you
head in lap
elated
at three in the morning.

Make sure that you catch her lies
(she smiles and looks away when she does)
or they will get out of hand
though she usually doesn’t mean to.

Make sure that, at least once,
you tickle her under her chin
though she will fight and claw you
it is totally worth it
to hear her laughter.

Make sure that, above all,
you act as her best friend
since she doesn’t have many people
she can trust
with anything.

Make sure you don’t let her
get away with things –
she never had anyone
to make her do anything.

Make sure you don’t take too many things personally
because she doesn’t mean them
she just can’t stop
doing them.

Make sure that
if she loves you
you love her back
you love her completely
you love
her ocean blue eyes
her golden hair
her shapes and curves
her self.

Make sure that
if she loves you
you’re worth
being loved.

I cannot look after her
anymore
I cannot be there for her
anymore
I cannot be
what I want to be
for her
anymore

I have to go away
to put distance in
to put time in
so I can heal
and recover
and fix myself
for whoever I love next.

My parents decided to put down a cat we’ve had for about 10 years. Rajah was a lovable, but annoying, orange-colored fat cat. According to some people in the family, Rajah was “my” cat.

Rajah had been very sick lately, and the Sioux Falls humane society was only going to put him down, so my father did the deed himself. Rajah has been a big part of this family. At first we thought he was a girl. Then he needed surgery on his tibia.

He shed. He liked to get in your face. He didn’t always smell good. He acted more like a dog than our dogs did. But, for all his annoyances, I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m not sure how much of an impact it’s having on me right now. I don’t deal well with change and death. Distance is nonexistance.

Dying is just being far away. And being far away is like being dead. Rajah is just far away. Too far to see or hear. Too far to call back to the house. But I know he’s in the backyard. A year ago yesterday, Father Ray went far away. Too far to offer advice or council. Too far to be a friend. But I know he’s at Blue Cloud. He knew Rajah. Maybe they are far away together.

Almost too far to love. Almost too far to remember.

Almost.

I don’t think many of you got the joke. If you had read the excerpt and then gone to

you would have seen that all that gory ridiculous stuff I made up to get you to go to the site and read it. You were supposed to think “Oh, that crazy Miles! What ridiculous stuff he writes! I’m not sure I buy it…” and then go to

and read for yourself. So, go read this time – I doubled my word count. Emily Dickenson is now in it. She plays the manic-depressive surgeon. Her scrubs are white.

Jenica Jencks arrived back at the nurses station about 10 minutes later. She had taken a shortcut which ran past a vending machine. She took this time to grab a soda, using her Hospital swipe card, then she continued to the main station, located near the front of the building on the same floor that Anthony was staying.

“JJ. You have Perdita’s chart?” called a burly voice from the main desk. That was Head Nurse Manuela Garcia, a slightly heavy-set woman of very distant Hispanic heritage. The only features about her that her long dead relatives might recognize included her slightly darker complexion and her tendency to speak faster than could be understood. Her hair was blond, her eyes were blue, and she didn’t know a word of spanish.

Jenica set the clipboard upon the desk and stared into Manuela’s eyes. Her sky blue eyes could not hide what Jenica saw there. Jenica walked around the front of the desk, the area where patients and family members were required to stand, and stood by Manuela’s side. Then, lightening quick, she plunged her right hand in between Manuela’s ample bosom. Her fingers spun, rotating with lightning speed, tearing Manuela’s clothing and quickly chiseling into the bone. Flecks of flesh and white bone fragments spattered Jenica’s face. Finally the sawing stopped. Manuela’s face was lit with terror. She was gasping with the loss of blood and shock, unable to move to protect herself or attack in her defense. Jenica walked to a drawer in the desk, removed an object, and returned to her artform. Then, with a permanent marker, she drew an “x” over Manuela’s heart.

Jenica considered the wound for a bit, then with a wry smile commented, “I thought it’d be smaller than that.” She recapped the pen and left the hospital.

Halloween this year was a sort of bust. I had expected certain plans, made certain plans, and then someone never showed up. So, deciding to not let it get me down, I attacked the art of Pumpkin Carving.

First, like anything, you look it up on the internet. The most widely used method (according to page hits) for carving pumpkins is to use a stencil. You print a stencil out at the library because the paper is free there, and you spend too much of your day there anyway. After printing out your stencil, or stencils, from whatever crappy site gives them out for free, you then hide them in your backpack and try to recall if the library hides those magnetic strips in their printer paper, too.

You get home, drop off your bag, talk to Haji for a while, and then head back out. If you go to Lewis you can buy 5 pumpkins. I had originally bought them as 2 for me, 2 for Megan, and 1 for both of us. So, I had to make three trips to my car, but, for a dollar a piece, they were a steal (ba dum bum).

Get home, and then haul just one of the pumpkins up. This was going to be the test / first pumpkin, as I had never done this before. You wash up the pumpkin, and cut the top off. Then you scrape all the guts out, so you have a nice hollow, freezing cold pumpkin. Wash your hands, and get feeling back as soon as you can. In the pause, go back and chat with Molly Brass and Bryce.

Then you have to decide which stencil will work best for the pumpkin. You place the sheets of paper upon the pumpkin, trying to decided between the Storm Trooper and the spider. Eventually you decide on the spider. The next step is to tape the spider stencil onto the pumpkin and then poke holes through the lines. Then when you pull the stencil off you have the outline (connect-the-dots style) of the spider.

Then you actually start carving. This is a delicate process. They make knives for this kinda stuff, apparently, but I had to use a slender steak knife. All in all, it turned out pretty good. If I had a digital camera, I would have pictures of these things, but I don’t, and, currently, they are moldy and rotten. When you’re done, you can find a nice place to store your pumpkin, place a candle inside, and let onlookers “Oooo” and “Ahhh” at your work.

I did four that night – a spider, a face, a sea turtle, and a cat face. I put candles in three of them. It was after my final pumpkin, when I decided to call it a night, that disaster struck. Here’s the story.

I had just gotten done with my fourth pumpkin, the kitty face. I took it downstairs, put it on the steps, put a candle in it, and came back upstairs, collecting the various things I’d left around.

I got up to the second floor stoop, and I decided I wanted to have that candle lit, so that, if anyone comes up here in the dark, they see the face in the light.

I try to light the candle in the pumpkin, but it doesn’t work very well. The match either goes out, or I can’t reach the candle, or I burn my hand. I have to come up with a different way to get it lit.

I try all sorts of different ways going through the eyes or the mouth, but then it dawns on me – I should use something else – light that and put it in the pumpkin.

So, I grab a kleenex. I stuff it into the candle and I light it.

It smoulders and burns and a lot of smoke starts coming out. Then, out of nowhere, this shrieking alarm goes off. As it turns out, the smoke detector is right above the door. It starts to scream. Over and over.

I run into the kitchen and grab the white dish drying clothe to fan the air away from the smoke detector. Then, when it stops for a spell, I try to blow out the fire, but it doesn’t work. In fact, it flames up angrily at me. It just keeps burning, and it’s starting to burn the pumpkin itself.

I finally try to tear the smoke detector off of the wall with my hands. The front panel comes off, though I just wanted to remove the unit. Then I see the battery. I grab it and it flips out of my hand and down the steps somewhere.

Of course, this whole time I’ve had the lights off to see “how cool a lit pumpkin looks”, so now I turn the lights back on. The fire still rages. I run back to the kitchen and grab a glass of water.

I get back to the pumpkin and dump the water in. This causes the candle to react. It bursts the glass container holding the candle, wax begins to pour out and into the pumpkin, and water flows out of the pumpkin’s open mouth and onto the floor.

Now the candle’s ruined, the pumpkin’s ruined, the floor may be ruined (it is stained blueish now), the smoke alarm may be ruined, and the smell of smoke is everywhere. I decide that I’ll leave the stairwell light on afterall.

Being somewhat shaken, I walk back to my tablet and recount the story to Molly and Bryce, who find it quite humourous (those sick, sick people), and pick up the rest of my pumpkin things. I move Megan’s pumpkin to the back cubboard area, along with my utensils, and then turn everything off in the apartment to go to bed.

As I lay in my bed, thinking about the events of the night, I recall that I own a pliars. A tool perfect for moving a lit match towards an unlit candle. That is, in fact, how I relit the candles for two more nights. The next morning, leaving for mass, I discovered the battery, set upon the window sill, next to the screaming, wax scarred, wilted pumpkin who caused all the mess.

“That’s what you get, boy. That’s what you get.” I heard no reply, and my steps echoed away.

Val Rausch has been elected to the House of Representatives by the voters of District 4, garnering 30% and 5,353 of the votes.