What if? (revisited)

The other day I published a long collective list of "What if?" questions on Lost Paper: http://lostpaper.blogspot.com/

A few people had lists to send me, but they arrived after the deadline. Of course, I can't resist including these questions here & now.  

Thank you to:

Ann Wexler

Barbara Cartwright

Barbara Kane Lewis 

Linda Pope

Maryam Steele

Robert Sullivan

What if people had wings? 

What if day was night and night was day? 

What if spiders could talk loud enough so I could hear them? 

What if I really learned to love housecleaning? 

What if it stopped raining for a whole week? 

What if the sky was never blue, but always orange or grey? 

What if the birds lost their song? 

What if every time you heard thunder, you were granted a magical wish? 

What if she hadn't smiled?

What if he'd never told me?

What if it had really been a magic carpet?

What if there had been no sun that day?

What if you hadn't said you loved me?

What if the train hadn't been late?

What if I had been born on Jupiter?

What if you hadn't been born on Mars?

What if I never saw your smile?

What if glass didn't shatter?

What if that's all there is?

What if the moon turned into gorgonzola on hot summer days?

What if we could grow a garden in Ithaca all year long?

What if our neighbors didn't mow their lawns at 7:30 on Saturday mornings? 

What if hate was removed from our vocabulary?

What if guacamole-and-chips was added to the food pyramid?

What if I could make you love me?

What if I climbed to the top of Taughannock and saw the universe as I slowly spun around?

What if I read every single book in my house?

What if madras didn't bleed, would I still have my favorite blouse to wear and to cheer me up?

What if I could start all over again?

What if Superman was not deathly allergic to Kryptonite?

What if you loved me more than I love you for a change.

What if things were the way they used to be when I was younger — no cell phones, no computers, no answering machines — and only that amazing new invention, the electric typewriter, to be excited about.

What if I my mother hadn't been on that beach in Coney Island in 1933 where my father was picking up girls and showing off his muscles — no me.

What if I fed this little flame inside me until it grew big as a sky-high bonfire in my soul?

What if I stopped being shy?

What if I never gave in to stress ever again?

What if I started calling myself by a Super Hero name?

What if a sink full of dishes made me giggle with delight?

What if the sun and rain could feed me like a wildflower?

What if I'd made a whole other set of mistakes in my life — who would I be right now?

What if I'd never listened to bad advice?

What if I'd never fallen in love?

What if I'd gotten a good job after college, instead of chopping veggies in a vegan kitchen?

What if riding a bike didn't scare me so much — where would I have traveled?

What if I jump under the next waterfall I meet — will there be a secret passage through the stones?

What if I wasn't born a redhead?

What if I had learned to control my temper at five years old — would I be a saint right now?

What if I always let passion show me the way?

What if I never ignored the spirit animals that try to guide me?

What if I never let fear steer my ship?

What if I wasn't a writer (I hate to even ask it)?

What if unicorns and Bigfoot are real?

What if I never get out West again?

What if everything I hope for actually happens, and everything I fear never does?

Missing, by Maude Rith

I can’t find my diary

Not that I used it much

But I’m lost without it

Now I can’t write down a thought

Where are my quotations,

Records of the books I read?

That’s the only way I can recall authors’ names

I have a cover

But no paper

I’m trying to record one joy                                              

Each summer day

I’m on the edge      I get vertigo when I look down 

            I am

            lost.              

                                    

Portrait of Spike, by Maude Rith

Dogs can have floppy or pointy ears.

Cats’ ears stick straight up

When I see the Batman logo I think it’s a cat.                              

He sits at the top of the stairs

Seconds after I hear the bed-thump I look

Those ears pointing up

Taking in all

Striking the pose in brindle stripes

This year’s fashion but always in style.                                   

In rhythmic thuds he’ll beat to the bottom

Expecting something as we eat

Never put a cat on a diet.

It turned ours into a changeling

No fat happy cat he

Instead the green stare

The waiting, the resentful glance

The bad behavior now before

And after food

Spike. Pre-named

The SPCA prize.  Who has

the bigger job there —       

evaluating cats

feeling about for lumps                                                     

guessing age or Adam

the one who names the cats?

Our dog was named Aspen

“How do you shorten that one?”

A friend asked, “Come here Ass,

Come here Ass”

But Spike stuck.  He was a friendly cat, good-natured

Diplomatic with the others

Happy to look out the windows

Of his “forever home”

Could we have offered him that magic?

There he stood       small feet

Body erect stripes parallel and crossed

Tip of tail then head          moving.

But with the diet he sat before the counters

Seeming to stare into the middle distance

But really just judging the effort

How high to chew on the pineapple leaves?                      

How far to the skillet with egg scraps

She won’t share?

He grooms so much his back fur is thin

Half his belly chewed bare

“He’s alright,” my husband says

But I wonder.  Who is this being

I share my house with? What is

This creature prowling while I sleep?     

The Doubts of Unspoken Rules, by Diana Kreutzer

What is too much to share with a friend?

How do you know when you have shared too much?

What color combinations of clothes spill over the boundary of creative fashion and into the category of laughable, by those who judge such things?

What is the proper speed to eat in public so that you still qualify as being someone with good table manners?

At what point in a friendship is quiet time appropriate?

How much time is too much to be alone, before one is viewed as eccentric or hermit-like?

When do you start signing off your texts, e-mails, letters with "love" to your friends? 

When is someone considered a "friend"?

How much eye contact is allowed when you are alone among people you do not  know?

When do you decide to trust someone new in your life?

How many questions are too many to ask the tour guide, or bird guide, before everyone becomes annoyed with you?

How do you know that someone is interested in meeting  you and not merely saying "Hello! How are you?" to be polite?

Gab, by Vivian Relta

Gab: to chatter, banter, blabber, gossip

To gossip (a person who gossips), in Spanish, is chismoso(a), bochinche. 

In my culture, a gossiper or one one who gossips is almost always ascribed to women (bochinchera).  Woman and girl talk was considered useless chatter, blabber with little value. 

My childhood friend, Carmen, was a considered a bochinchera at an early age. She seemed to know a lot about everyone. For example, that Rosa got a beating last night after smart-mouthing her mother, or that my new, clean white sneakers came from John's Bargain Stores and not a real shoe store in Westchester Square. Carmen almost always told these stories behind the palm of her hand as she leaned into your ear, creating a momentary intimacy that could flip in a heartbeat. 

Our small group of friends liked Carmen, for the most part. She was funny, could dance real nice, shared her gum, and was known to beat up some of the boys on the block. She was a force of nature, I tell you. Carmen held a kind of power over us because we never knew if she was going to share a secret with us or about us. Sometimes when Carmen wasn't around, the rest of us would talk about her in low tones, calling her a bochinchera, a word we learned from the older girls, with a tone that dripped with accusation. 

Carmen was really no different than her older brother, Alex, a tall, lanky 10-year-old who seemed not to know that sentences could and should have a period at the end. But Alex was never called a bochinchero even though he told many a lie and tall tale in his day. A Puerto Rican boy, when he spoke on and on about whatever, it was never considered chatter or gossip. Rather, boy-talk was viewed as a good sign, a sign that he was practicing his God-given, DNA-driven, boy intelligence, and it mattered little if it was accurate or true. It was enough that he spoke it. 

A note from Zee: Today was DICTIONARY DAY in our Saturday Morning Writing Circle. When Vivian opened a dictionary to the word "gab" this childhood memory came right up. All of us in the Circle were so glad that it did!

Notula Nostalgiae, by Weiwei Luo

Once, back when it was socially acceptable to have blue tongues and sticky hands and stuffed animals whose names were derived from the formula of adding a y-suffix to whatever animal they resembled, I wanted to be a microbiologist. Which would remain the only hexasyllabic word in my repertoire for quite some time. I would travel far and wide, searching for rare specimens of bacteria and examining bdelloid rotifers under a microscope. Knowing about an invisible world that actually existed made me feel powerful, until the ghosts of the future chased those dreams back to Neverland. These ghosts became more real.

a note from zee:

It is with great pleasure that I share this piece with you today, in celebration of Weiwei Luo, who is graduating from Ithaca High School this month and will soon be leaving for Princeton University. She and I have written together for many years, in the teen group at the public library and in the word/play group at my studio. She wrote this delightful paragraph many months ago and I've re-read it frequently since then, taking pleasure in her words every time.

Little Altars Everywhere*, by Vivian Relta

Kitchen as Altar

Abuela's pilon (Grandmother's mortar and pestle)

created magical elixirs with

garlic, oregano, cumino (cumin), salt, pepper

transforming, transmuting

the ordinary kidney bean

or a freshly killed chicken

into a sacred meal.

The pots also played their part

seasoned over the years with her loving

attention and yes, food became God.

God became food.

And sharing this food around a simple table,

voices clamoring over and under each other,

love at high volumes is Grace.

Mami's Altar

As long as I could remember, there were always altars atop a chest of drawers in her bedroom. The altar was framed by images of the Sacred Heart of the Blessed Mother and Jesus Christ, who were always pointing to their hearts aflame. Today I realize all 3 of her children, all of us, were altars as well. Upon us, she poured her love, attention, discipline, light, prayers, water, food, medicine and laughter. Tending daily to us all the same, as she did with her altar in her room. There, too, she offered daily offerings of prayer, a lit candle, a glass of water and sometimes tobacco in the form of a cigar.

Many years later, when Mami died, a dear friend noticed I started buying black shoes just about every week. Black shoes of all types started to pile up outside my apartment door, as it was my habit to not wear shoes inside my home. She said I was walking through my grief. My pile of black shoes became an altar, of sorts, to my loss and remembrance of the one who first taught me about them.

  

*Little Altars Everywhere is the title of a book by Rebecca Wells