A commotion shook the waiting room. One\nof the men rolling a tire slipped on the floor and sent it crashing\ninto the Nativity scene. Figurines went flying everywhere, smashing\ninto metal rims and windows. The Three Wise Men splintered. The\nVirgin Mary pulverized. Baby Jesus was dead. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Writer looked up. He slipped off\nhis headphones. What the hell is going on? I’m trying to write\nabout the world but the world is interrupting me goddammit! <\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n He saw a young woman wearing threadbare\nwhite yoga pants and a black hoodie with the hood pulled over her\nhead as she slumped against the counter. The counter seemed to be\nholding her up. Two small girls wearing furry coats over\ncartoon-character pajamas rolled around on the floor behind her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The woman, stick thin, medium height,\nwas talking to a serious man behind the counter. The man was shaking\nhis head, and at some point the woman removed her hood and\nRapunzel-like hair, blazing red, fell down past her waist. As she\ntalked, she reached around and twisted her hair in a ponytail. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the Writer’s left a cleanup crew was\nsweeping up the Nativity scene and readying it for the garbage. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Writer kept watching the\nconversation but still hadn’t removed his headphones. The counter man\nshook his head more vigorously, his brow tightened, and the woman\nturned sharply to her children and said something stern to them. The\nWriter saw the woman’s face: narrow, hollow, angry, scarred, spent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She snapped back to the counter man.\nShe released the ponytail. Counter man eased away and she was alone.\nShe stood there for a few seconds then slid down to the floor. Her\nchildren crawled over to her and she embraced them. She was sobbing,\nbut not making a sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Writer set down his tablet. He\nremoved his headphones. He scanned the waiting room. No one was\nlooking at the woman. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was, now. He was staring at a pile\nof a family huddled together on the floor of a corporate tire center\nand it was Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A strange clicking<\/em> noise\narrested the Writer’s attention. He turned around and could see rain\nhitting the windows and freezing on impact. The temperature had\ndropped that one degree. In ninety minutes, virtually no one would be\ndriving the streets of Lincoln City except idiots and emergency\nservice vehicles. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Writer glanced at the clock. Almost\n2 p.m. He checked to see if his vehicle had been moved from the\nparking lot into one of the service bays. It had not. It didn’t\nmatter. He could slip and slide home. He only lived a few blocks from\nthe center, in a cozy cottage. Both the cottage and the Airstream\nafforded magnificent views of the ocean and the Writer spent mornings\nand evenings watching the waves with his coffee or wine. If the\nliterary mood struck him, and it usually did, he listed all the\nmetaphors the ocean provided his writing. New ones arrived every\nmorning on the incoming tide. They sold like hotcakes to the Druid\nand Sufi magazines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He stood up to leave. Warranty service\ncould wait a few days. He gathered up his things and headed for the\ndoor. The Writer would have to pass mere inches from the the pile to\nleave. He checked out the waiting room. Fox News was outfoxing\nAmericans with a stacked fox to hate other human beings. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Writer began walking toward the\npile. The pile didn’t look up. They usually don’t. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no metaphor in the pile. It\nwas a pile of an Oregon family. An Oregon family teetered in a\ncrisis the Writer couldn’t possibly understand, but he did know how\nto employ the precious verb teeter<\/em>. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n But as a writer he was supposed to try\nand understand the pile. A writer can’t begin to try unless he or she\nengages with the world, and not just with sentences. Curiosity.\nConversation. Move. Movement. Write it up later or not. Do it to give\na shit, not for the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doesn’t a human pile right in front of\nyou demand action? At the very least, curiosity? Who gives a shit\nwhether you’re a writer or not? Act. It’s Christmas Eve for\nchrissakes! Act like it’s Christmas Eve every day of the year! If we\nall did that, it might be Christmas year round and people wouldn’t\nwant to kill themselves at Christmas. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dickens had his ghosts. Saul had his\nshining light on the road to Damascus. The Grinch heard Whoville\nsing. One Oregon writer got his epiphany when his wife called him out\nfor being rude to a checker in a grocery store. The checker was being\na decent human being and talking to an elderly woman, making her day,\nand therefore holding up the line. That irritated the writer. His\nwife kicked his heart’s ass and he never again acted rude to a\nchecker for being a decent human being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No outside intervention was coming to\nthe Writer, supernatural or otherwise. He would have to discover it\nwithin. If it wasn’t there, he would have to make it up from scratch,\nwith the ingredients at hand, with no recipe to guide him. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n What were those ingredients at hand? \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A commotion shook the waiting room. One of the men rolling a tire slipped on the floor and sent it crashing into the Nativity scene. Figurines went flying everywhere, smashing into metal rims and windows. The Three Wise Men splintered. The Virgin Mary pulverized. Baby Jesus was dead. The Writer looked up. He slipped off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5576"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5579,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5576\/revisions\/5579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}