Phoebe Kate

What a drearily familiar event it’s becoming these days — celebs disgracing themselves.  Today, it’s one of our news media demi-gods that are fluffed with insufferable self-satisfaction who’s screwed up big time in the public eye.

Seems that Paula Zahn, who recently left CNN, kept a sex diary of her affair with a married multimillionaire and now it’s surfaced.  She claims that a sexless marriage with her husband drove her to this.  (A medical problem?  An emotional problem?  Ever hear of couples counseling?  Viagra?)        

The upshot of this sloppy little scandal that should never have been reported is that her marriage is kaput.  The Other Man’s marriage is kaput.  Her career in a family values-oriented society is iffy at best.  And the custody of Zahn’s 3 children (ages 10 to 17) now hangs in the balance.  We all know that inevitably the kids suffer most in these grotesque imbroglios created by adults who refuse to act like mature people.

Who leaves a paper trail like Paula unless they want to be discovered?  A sex diary at the age of 51?  Oh, come on. By this point in life, we’ve been around the block any number of times — what’s the big deal?  Does this presumably intelligent newscaster suffer from a case of arrested development that causes her to think and act like an irresponsible, solipsistic 14-year-old? 

Hey, either be tough enough to keep your secrets in your head where they belong or end your unfulfilling marriage in an upfront, dignified manner that doesn’t scar your children for life and make humiliating headlines for others to have to deal with. I assume she’s got a mother and a father and other kin out there who can’t be feeling very proud tonight…     

– phoebe kate

The old saying goes,”Clothes make the man.”  It seems to me that jewelry makes the woman.    

Women’s clothes say only very limited and not very interesting things about the wearer.  If our shoes are Manolo Blahniks, it only means we spent an exorbitant sum for them. 

Every season, designers and manufacturers dictate what colors and styles we will wear, whether we shop at WalMart or Bloomingdale’s.  This summer, for instance, those silly mid-calf pants are In — I couldn’t find a single pair of normal-length cotton or linen slacks anywhere.  Whether we like it or not, we all end up in pretty much the same uniform.  And if we don’t change our uniform when the styles change, we’ll be about as appealing as last week’s meatloaf in the back of our fridge.  

Jewelry, however, is a whole other story.  You buy a piece you like and you can wear it forever with impunity.  New and interesting designs appear regularly and new gemstones are occasionally discovered, but nobody feels compelled to empty their jewelry box of last year’s models to make way for this year’s, as we often do with our wardrobes. 

Jewelry never goes out of style and anything goes.  There are no rules anymore and nobody tells you what to do.  You can wear gold and silver pieces together.  You can wear strings of pearls and diamond necklaces with blue jeans.  You can wear rings on every finger and toe or just wear your engagement and wedding ring.  You can even have alternative ones of those  – different styles, gemstones and metals to suit your mood of the day.  Jewelry is made out of every substance — resin, plastic, wood, rubber, leather, fabric, feathers — and it’s all just fine.  Tiffany and others are now setting diamonds in sterling without apology.  Classic estate jewelry and the most modern geometric designs comfortably sit side-by-side in stores.  Everybody loves Southwestern turquoise and Native American motifs.  The sterling and gemstone jewelry from India, Bali, Indonesia and other such places are wearable from your casual lunch with best friends to cocktail parties with A-list people.

I can tell a lot about ladies from the jewelry they select to adorn themselves with.  Are you a string of pearls girl, even when you’re not dressing for the office?  How many bracelets do you dare to wear at one time?  Do you wear diamond studs or chandelier earrings when you shop at the supermarket?  Do you prefer a simple pristine gemstone pendant, a Cleopatra-style necklace or a sterling piece resembling modern art hanging around your neck?  Do you have an ankle bracelet?  Would you put on a fifteen-carat topaz ring to go to Burger King or would you save it for your cruise to the Bahamas? 

If I unexpectedly paid a visit to you at your house on an ordinary day, what jewelry would you have on?

– phoebe kate

For my fantasy dinner party, the ladies (living or dead) I’d invite, in alphabetical order with the reasons why:

–Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997)  She and I are distant cousins.  She was a breath of fresh air amongst the stuffy Royals and died way too young.  So much for fairy tale romances, eh?

–Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)  Reclusive and introverted, under-published and un-acclaimed in her lifetime, I’d like her to do a reading of her poems while coffee and liqueurs are being served.

–Dian Fossey (1932-1985)  Of Gorillas in the Mist fame and one of my biggest heroes.  Murdered in Rwanda, where she spent much of her life, she is interred at a site that she personally had constructed for her dead gorilla friends.  On her gravestone, the epitaph: “Nobody loved gorillas more…”        

–Jane Goodall.  Since I was a little kid, I’ve admired her dedication — a pale skinny little Englishwoman living for years and years in the hot, buggy African jungle to study chimpanzees.  Golly, that lady is tough. 

–Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. 

–Joan of Arc (1412-1431) Another fascinating young woman who died way too young.  The Voices in her head were right, historically.  Apart from being revered in France to this day, she’s also become a pop culture figure – much to her surprise and delight, I hope.  I promise not to have anything flambe on the menu…

–Mary, the mother of God.  Well, Jesus is on my gent’s guest list so I can’t exclude his mom (and I’m hesitant to include Mary Magdalene because no one’s really sure what their relationship was, no matter what Dan Brown says in The DaVinci Code.)  I’d like to get Mary off in a corner after she’s enjoyed a couple of Cosmos and ask what it was really like to raise that boy.  I can just hear her saying, “Oh, my!  He was a holy little handful, believe you me!”

–Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)  One of my favorite artists who said something that hit me upside the head one day when I read it: “I found myself saying to myself: I can’t live where I want to, I can’t go where I want to go, I can’t do what I want to do, I can’t say what I want to say.  I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted.”  I’ve been writing what I want ever since.

–Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994) We all saw the perfectly composed Outer Woman from the beginning of her fame to the end.  I’d like to get to know the Inner Woman.

–Rosa Parks (1913-2005) I want to give her a big hug and seat her at the head of the table.

–Elizabeth Taylor.  Oh, to see those violet eyes and all that fabulous jewelry up close.  Plus, anybody who said, “Now is the time for guts and guile” is someone I’d really like to chat with.

–Kay Yow.  Okay, unless you live in NC or are a big collegiate basketball fan, you probably don’t know the name, but now you do.  She is the coach of the women’s basketball team at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.  She has been battling breast cancer for years, and last season, she had a recurrence.  It didn’t stop her.  Though she needed a nurse at her side, an oxygen tank and sometimes had to be carried onto the court in a gurney, she traveled with the team and hardly missed a game.  Go, Wolfpack!  Go, Kay!

– phoebe kate    

Here are the gents (living or dead) whom I’d invite to my fantasy dinner party, and why they’re on my list.

In alphabetical order:

– John Cheever (1912-1982.)  I’d like to thank him for writing ”The  Swimmer” and so many other stories that inspired me to become a writer when I was just a little kid reading him in my parents’ copies of The New Yorker. 

– Bill Clinton.  In April 2000, when I was in Washington, DC for my father’s burial, my elder son and I happened to be standing on Constitution Avenue when the presidential motorcade passed by.  By a peculiar twist of fate, we were the only two people standing on that particular corner at that time.  Bill rolled down his window and waved at us and called “HI!” Now, that’s a good ol’ Southern boy.  Gotta love him.

–Johnny Depp.  My favorite contemporary actor.  I want him to attend in his Jack Sparrow attire, of course.

–Bob Dylan.  As a kid, I learned how to write poetry listening to his lyrics.

–Siddhartha Gautama.  The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are as much a part of my spirituality as the Ten Commandments.

–Edward Hopper (1882-1967)  My favorite painter.

–Jesus of Nazareth.  Considering the party invitations he got from the wealthy, powerful people of the day, he was clearly an A-list guest –charming, intelligent, charismatic, witty and a lover of good food and wine.  Do we ever think of God as a fun kind of guy?  I think we should.  

–Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)  Quotable quotes flowed from this man like nobody else I know.  ”I would only believe in a God that knows how to Dance.” “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” “You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.” “Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” “The great end of art is to strike the imagination with the power of a soul that refuses to admit defeat even in the midst of a collapsing world.”

–Peter Sellers (1925-1980)  My favorite actor of the past.  What hostess wouldn’t want Inspector Clouseau to fall into her punchbowl?

–M. Night Shyamalan.  My favorite contemporary  film maker.  People either love his movies with a passion or hate his movies with a passion.  I think he’s a genius.

–Socrates (470 B.C.-399 B.C.) After that hemlock cocktail, this man deserves a dry martini and a chance to chat with congenial people.

–Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) Such a short, sad, difficult, misunderstood life he had, but oh! those paintings!

–phoebe kate

I am a huge fan of flash fiction — generally defined as short stories of 1,000 words or less.  It is exceedingly difficult to write (I know – I occasionally write it.)  Every word counts because you’ve got none to spare.  In stories rambling on for 5,000 or 7,000 words, every word does not have to be perfect (they should be, of course, but probably only fellow writers will notice if they’re not.)  In a story of 500 or 700 words, however, you’ve got absolutely no room for error.  Every word has to be just the right one, otherwise your little tiny house of cards falls down very fast.

I learned to write flash fiction from a Beatles song, “Eleanor Rigby.”  I didn’t know that was what I was doing as a kid in 1966 listening to song.  I just thought it was a cool piece of music from the coolest band that may have ever existed on this planet.  Thirty years later, I left a career as a scriptwriter and media producer and decided to write fiction for what remained of my life, even if it meant making $0.  I began writing stories of the usual length — 10, 20, 30 pages.  Then I picked up some journals and anthologies that had stories that were only a page or two long.  I truly thought those brief, twist-at-the-end tales went out of vogue with O’Henry back in the 1800s.  I was amazed the genre still existed.  Even more,  I was mystified: how did authors manage to tell a complete story in so few words?  No matter how intensely I analyzed individual works, I still didn’t ‘get’ it.

Until I remembered “Eleanor Rigby” and listened to the song again.  In a few well-chosen words, John Lennon paints a definitive picture of loneliness and disconnection, and summarizes two tormented, futile lives.

Here’s the song, minus the chorus, written in story form, as it could easily appear in a literary journal:

“Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been.  She lives in a dream, waiting at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door.  Who is it for?

Father McKenzie writes the words of a sermon no one will here.  No one comes near.  Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there.  What does he care?

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name.  Nobody came.  Father McKenzie wipes the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave.

No one was saved.” 

Wow…

And suddenly I understood how to write flash fiction. 

I’ve been writing it ever since.  You can read some of it on the online journals Spillway Review and Flashquake  and 3711 Atlantic and Megaera and Vestal Review and Ghoti Magazine.

Above and beyond the fact these publications were gracious enough to publish me, they are stellar internet literary journals that deserve to be read for the excellent writing they feature, issue after issue, year after year.

-phoebe kate