September 14
Cool air brushes my cheeks like a soft kiss from a good friend. The air smells clean, yet I get a whiff, just a hint, of decay. The tulip trees look tired. Then a flash as a white-tailed deer prances down the driveway into the lush woods. Reagan bounces after her.
Just another beautiful day in Madville.
September 23
I enrolled in a MOOC! The eight-week online fiction writing class with The University of Iowa starts tomorrow. And yes, I will work on Thornton Park.
But this past week, the introductory week, was all about priming the creative juices. One of the prompts was to make an inanimate object come to life.
“To Live By The Heart”
I wasn’t always a miniature dress form.
My life began long ago as a seed. I was planted in the rich, fertile soil somewhere in the Deep South in America. Nourished by soft, warm water and brilliant white-hot sun I sprouted. I was a fast grower. But before I knew what was happening, my flower was picked and processed. Spun, woven, and dyed.
My bones, the bodice and neck of my dress form, are a combination of recycled plastic and wood. Melted, tumbled and molded into a cookie-cutter form, then wrapped with the linen-colored cloth.
As soon as there were several thousand more just like me, we were arranged in a large cardboard box, shipped by cargo, then truck, to a large airless big-box store.
There I sat on a display shelf.
And waited.
***
I don’t know if other dress forms have a heart, but I know I do because every time someone looks at me or plucks me off the shelf, I feel flush with joy. You see, my heart rules my life. Because like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, I don’t have a brain. I don’t have a brain because I am headless. Why I don’t have a head is a mystery to me.
But then before another flutter from my overactive heart, a woman scoops me up into her warm hands. She doesn’t hesitate.
I am moving!
My heart hammers in my oh-so-tight bodice. Fear, my old friend, creeps through my wooden frame and envelops me. What if my cloth rips? Will she return me?
***
I now rest on a glass-top table in a sunny room surrounded by glass windows and a forest beyond. I wear a cotton ocean blue cloth long enough to wrap around my bottom with extra material to fan around my base.
A few weeks ago I got a head. A fish weaved out of dried palm is perched on my wooden neck, secured only by its flimsy fins. I have eyes now too, but still no brain. I can see the furry four-legged creature and the woman, my savior.
The four-legged creature prances around, back and forth. Annoyingly so. Sometimes it gets close to me, sniffing at my skirt, but the woman’s lips move and the furry creature backs away.
Each day I watch the woman sit at her desk. Sometimes she taps on a flat grey surface and talks to herself. Other times she stares into the screen. It is quiet in this new home. Occasionally the woman removes the wires from her ears. I feel a steady beat that pulses through the floorboards, the table, and up through my base to my core.
That beating makes me long to know what happened to the other dress forms. Where did they end up? Are they happy too? Is my life complete with only a heart and the warm sunshine on my wooden neck? Or will she one day buy me a brain?
September 19
I pulled up the gladiolus and lily bulbs, the blue grass and two other plants that never bloomed once I put them in the ground earlier this year. The begonias and impatiens look super healthy for now. In went a few mums and some heather. Next week I’ll tackle the boxwood’s and hopefully, hopefully, weed the iris beds for the last time! until I prune them next month.
September 27
Kentucky #SuperBloodMoon 2015
September 29
We finally got a much-needed drenching rain. And like that summer ended. The tulip and river birch trees are the first to shed. Gravity has its duty. Elvis has some work to do.
Hugs until next month,
Maureen