The Third Law Of Motion.

Harker took me to a room that was devoid of everything except for a wooden stool. On top of it sat a slender vase. In it was a delicate, yellow rosebud.

            “What’s this?” I asked.
            “It’s your target,” Harker replied.
            “This isn’t much of a target.”
            “On the contrary. It’s a huge target.”
            “Why do you say that?”
            “Because the rose is not your enemy. You have nothing against it, and it has nothing against you. So that makes it very important to the mission ahead.”
            My first instinct was to defer to him. He was older. He was my father. His knowledge of the world was vast and true, but this didn’t feel right. Did he really know the full extent of my powers? My eyes returned to the rosebud.
            “So I gather that you want me to destroy it,” I said.
            “On the contrary, Lady Abby. I want you to open it.”
            “Open it? What would that prove?”
            “In order to fully control the power within you, you must not only be able to conquer your enemies, you must be able to control the most subtle things in life. So go ahead, Lady Abby. Open it.”
            “How? How do I open it?”
            “Anyway you wish to. Heart will help you.”
            I had almost forgotten about Heart. She sat loyally by my side waiting to do my bidding. Could this blade of destruction really help me manipulate the beautiful flower in front of me?
            “Draw Heart from her scabbard,” Harker instructed. “Hold her in front of you. Point her at the rose. Then say to yourself: Wish. Dream. Want.”
            I drew Heart. She sat comfortably in my hand. It all seemed a little silly, but I did as he instructed. I pointed her at the rose, closed my eyes and concentrated.           
            “Wish. Dream. Want,” I said.
            “Do not close your eyes,” he said. “You must face the delicate and the deadly equally. Do not say the words out loud. Let them flow from in your mind. Think of this as a battle, Lady Abby. Think of this as a battle with beauty.”
            I raised Heart and aimed her at the flower. I tried to set my mind to purpose.
            “Wish,” I said to myself. “Dream. Want.”
            Nothing happened.
            I looked over to Harker. He nodded slightly and said, “Again.”
            “Wish. Dream. Want.” The words rattled in my mind. Nothing.
            “Tell Heart what you want. She will do your bidding if you are worthy.”
            Worthy? Was I worthy? I thought the words again. This time I focused them on Heart. Not all of Heart just her tip, the business end of this experiment.
            Nothing.
            “Again,” Harker said.
            I did as instructed. Wish. Dream. Want…. Heart began to glow. Rolling colors of the rainbow ran through her over and over and over again. Then the tip turned golden. It seemed to…
            …Shimmer….
            My eyes went to the rose. It was swaying back and forth as if caught in a breeze.
            “Control yourself,” Harker cautioned. “Open the flower. Do not destroy it.”
            It was already too late. Harker’s words had hardly left his lips when the rosebud burst apart with a loud “poof”. To this day I still remember the hurt. I had killed a great beauty. It was a metaphor for my life.
            Trig came from my left. He plucked the stem from the vase and replaced it with another bud. This one was pink.
            “Again,” Harker said.
            I pointed the sword. I repeated the words. Heart began to flow with colors. Her tip glowed golden. The flower evaporated before my eyes. I was filled with anger and sorrow. How would I ever do it?
            “Calm yourself,” Harker said. “Anger and frustration will not help you. It will only cause more havoc, and it will not help you in a time of crisis. We have plenty of flowers, Lady Abby. They grow wild in the Territory as you will soon see. Think of these few as sacrifices for the greater good. Calm yourself. Focus on the task.”
            We went through a dozen. Two dozen. Maybe more. Each time I would destroy a bud, Trig would appear with another. I wasn’t manipulating the flowers; I was executing them. How it saddened me. But I heeded Harker’s advice and forced myself to focus even though my head was beginning to ache and my arm tired from the strain. Then, nearly two hours into my training, something amazing happened.
            This rosebud was once again a yellow one. It was as if my task had gone a full circle. I focused. Heart reacted, but this time a slender slit of light emanated from her tip and slid to the rose. At first I was certain this was the end of it. The beam of light seemed like death, but that’s not what happened. The only word I could think of was that it tickled the rose. Tickled is not right, but I lack the ability to describe the interaction between myself, Heart and the rose properly. It began to slowly rock back and forth. For a moment I was certain it would gain speed until it flew apart, but that’s not what occurred.
            It opened.
            Graceful, radiant petals reached out to me then spread their wings. The beauty humbled me. Heart fell away from my hand and floated beside me. I couldn’t move; the rose had me in its grip.
            “So there you have it, Lady Abby, The Lady of the Rose,” Harker said with a wide smile. “The power to destroy, the power to bring forth the beautiful. It’s in your hand, in your mind. The ability to save Haven is within you.”

An edited scene from my novel, “The Lady of The Rose”

I woke up this morning thinking of Newton’s Third Law of Motion. It goes something like this: “For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.” I didn’t learn this law from a science teacher; I learned it from a black and white sci-fi movie one Saturday morning at the Bal Theater “Kiddie Matinee”.

Like most “monster movies” of the fifties, a giant bug tearing up a metropolis was usually caused by mankind’s obsession with blowing things up. In most cases it was linked to atomic bombs which at the time were being liberally tested out in the Nevada desert and the deep recesses of the Soviet Union. Atomic bombs, it seems, caused ordinary animals to mutate, or in the case of the aforementioned movie, caused part of Antarctica to melt exposing a terrible demon that had been safely encased in ice for millions of years. At the time, it made perfect sense to me, but I would not fear. The great B actor John Agar would find a way to kill it by the movie's end.

I love Newton’s nifty little law. Though now quite as grand as “things in motion tend to stay in motion” which could warrant a blog post of its own, the third law explains precisely how life and the world works. A decade later my 60s self would call it Karma. The Bible says you “reap what you sow”. It’s all the same thing. If you do something, be prepared for the consequences.

As a writer, I have always kept this in mind when creating a story. The scene from “The Lady of the Rose” I’ve included above is a perfect example. To unfurl the power of beauty, a few rosebuds have to be sacrificed.

Or something like that.

The fact that Trish and I had two children and now three grandchildren is also an extension of that process. We put into motion a series of events that will go on and on for generations to come, even as we are part of the process from generations past. Everything in this world is linked together in a third law of motion sort of weird way. We are all just a series of reactions to events that go all the way back to the Big Bang.

What action caused me to get cancer not once but twice? Beats me. At least God or whomever is controlling the universe could have given me a cancer that I could sue someone for. Get a little cash to ease my suffering, but it hasn’t been my fate. I am left wondering who the f**k did I piss off? All I know is that my illness if further proof of the universe's cockeyed plan for all of us.

I’ve been day dreaming of a town in early evening, but darkness hasn’t quite taken hold. It’s raining. The welcoming lights are on in the stores that line the street. Cars are inching by, going with the grace of the Third Law toward their homes. There are a few people on the street under umbrellas. I watch aloofly from an invisible corner. The air is cool with a hint of ozone. Life is as it should be. Dinner is waiting. It goes on and on like a great wheel forever….

           

Carol

My sister, Carol, passed away on the eighteenth of August. It was not unexpected. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer five years ago, a vicious disease that carries an inevitable death sentence. Carol was five years older than me. She would have been seventy this Christmas. I don’t wish to dwell on her death, nor do I wish to recount all the details of her life. Like everyone else who comes into this world, it was filled with both joy and sorrow—good times and bad. Let’s keep that story secret shall we, hidden within the memories of those who knew and loved her. I want to speak to you of her spirit and what she meant to me.

There were four children in the Teves household; six people living in a small home with one bathroom in San Leandro. My brother, Danny, is the oldest child, ten years older than me. My sister Susan, eight years my senior, was three years older than Carol. I grew up with the disadvantage of being the baby of the family. There were things going on in my family that I was blissfully unaware of. By the time I became cognizant of our family dynamic, Carol was already into the double digits, a girl blossoming into a young woman….

Ten days before she died I went to see her. She was in bed and was deteriorating so rapidly it shook me to my core. I sat beside her, held her hand, now so fragile in mine, and wept. Carol and I had discussed the possibility of an afterlife. She didn’t think there was one; I wasn’t so sure. Through my tears I said to her, “Carol, if there's a place we go to when we die, I swear I will find you.”

Carol was uncommonly beautiful, a fact that was mostly lost on me as her little brother. She was, after all, my sister, and I didn’t see her as anything special. It wasn’t until years later when I saw a photo of her as a young woman that I had my “oh my God!” moment. Carol was, as we used to say back in the day, a fox. She had silky black hair and green eyes, the only member of our Portuguese family who didn’t have brown. Her green-eyed genes heralded back to the Azores, the islands of our ancestors. When you looked into them, you saw both beauty and a hint of the past.

My dad used to call her firecracker, a reference to her fiery personality. She had her opinions, and even as a little girl, she made her thoughts (and demands) quite clear. She was on occasion frustrating and hard to handle. I have fractured memories of verbal battles she conducted with our parents with regularity. She married her first husband, Ron Roach, and was out of the house when I was only fourteen, not enough years to be with her in the same home in my book. I used to have these crazy dreams that she left her husband and returned to me. But that never happened.

Of all my siblings, I was the closest to her. We had the same outlook on life, a complicated brew of irony, practicality and sarcasm. We both loved to read Stephen King novels and would talk endlessly about the latest one on the phone. The two of us always loved a good horror story. I will never read another one of his novels without thinking of her.

Carol was famous for her Christmas Eve celebrations. It was always at her home and was the closest thing we Teves’ had to family tradition. When she moved, the gatherings moved with her. I will always miss those winter evenings together that spanned so many years. The Teves and Roach families were together as one. Our children were young and life still had possibilities.

After Ron passed away, Carol was introduced to a man named Dave Victorino. Dave is a big guy, and the first time I met him I suspected he might be a gangster, but he was the furthest thing from that, our dear Dave. I had the surprise of my life when he asked me, the youngest brother, for my sister’s hand in marriage. I said yes, and he never gave me any reason to regret that answer. Their marriage was all too brief for two people so much in love. Dave cared for her with devotion and amazing grace until the very end….

Five days before Carol passed I went to see her again. This time I was prepared for the sight, and I did not weep. Instead I sat with her and talked for two solid hours about anything I could think of. Carol really couldn’t speak, but she could understand me. I once again told her we would try to meet again on the other side. Her eyes briefly opened and she said, “In Poipu”, the location of our home on Kauai, the island of our birth.…

When Carol was a little girl she couldn’t pronounce her name. Carol came out as Kakki. That became her nickname throughout her childhood and beyond. I remember calling her that when I was young. The beginning of her email address was KakkiCarol. So I leave this post with these words: I love you Kakki, Carol, my beloved sister, and I promise I will see you again.

Protector of the Language

Because school will soon let out for the summer break in a week, I have been preparing my Intention Statement. Haven demands that all its 1203 citizens be proficient in some skill brought to the colony from Earth by the original settlers. It is essential for our survival. Since I am the granddaughter of the mayor, I am expected to dream big. Maybe become a scientist, doctor, or some other core profession needed for Haven to prosper. Some have even suggested that I might be the mayor someday. This was stupid. I have no such ambitions. I told Grandfather that perhaps I’ll become a carpenter, a noble profession essential to the colony. He just looked at me, his glasses perched at the end of his nose, and said nothing. Guess I will not be a carpenter.

Anyway, Grandfather knows very well that my first love has always been words. That’s why he gave me this beautiful paper. In my Proper English classes, I have always received perfects. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll become a Protector of the Language and pass my knowledge of the English language to a younger generation.

I suppose I will marry someday. Every woman is expected to help seed Haven, whose population is stable but never seems to grow. (Maybe this is about to change. Mrs. Lester recently had triplets.) But that is a long time away after I have made my choices and the boys finally become men. I’m hoping that my trip to the Big Outside will help me decide which path my life will follow. Until then, I will prepare for my trip and dream of its possibilities.

                                                           From my novel, “The Lady of The Rose”

In my novel, “The Lady of The Rose”, my young protagonist, Abby Henry, says that someday when she gets older, she might become a “Protector of the language”. On her Earth Colony, the planet Zakura, somewhere in the faraway stars in a settlement called Haven, there are those whose duty is to keep the language pure. It seems to me we have no interest in doing this on Earth.

For a lot of years, I have marveled how weird politically correct expressions pop up now and again and how ridiculous they sound. It all started many years ago when they started calling garbage collectors “sanitation workers”. Then it moved on to calling a “chairman” a “chairperson” which is okay with me, but then they had to take it one step further calling the leader of a committee a “chair”. Whenever I hear that, I vision a nice comfortable wingback chair. How about you? 

The bottom line is there are certain segments of our society that love to twist the language into something they deem less hurtful to anyone that might possibly be offended by the truth. That’s why “illegal aliens” became “undocumented immigrants”. Now the sci-fi writer part of me does prefer that “aliens” be real aliens—like from outer space, I mean.

 Now I don’t want to get into politics—I don’t want to offend future book buyers—but let’s just say a lot of these people like to shop at Whole Foods Markets.

 These people never go to a class, they attend workshops. I always envision a lot of wood chips on the floor while they study modern literature. After the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco, all of a sudden the word “infrastructure” popped up to describe the rumbling highways and bridges in the earthquake zone. Then the word was broadened and used in various other ways to describe anything and anything that might need a little work. Using it to describe the political infrastructure is one of my favorites. They loved that word for a few years before, thank God, it began to fade.

 When the letter “e” started to be used to describe anything on the internet from email to ecommerce to esex, every freaking commercial on television used it over and over again. Then there’s the word “green” to describe anything that might possibly save energy. Green this, green that. Green leaf emblems in the back of cars. Thank God that’s over with.

My favorite expression of all time was when the Mayor of Detroit called community gardens a“multi-diversity empowerment zone.”

Speaking of which, the word “diversity” had a long successful run and made me think evil thoughts.

Then there’s the global warming vs. climate change switcheroo that depends on the time of the year and the weather to determine which expression is used. Make up your minds, for God sakes. Here’s an idea: every fall when we turn back the clocks for the winter and change the batteries in our smoke detectors, we call it climate change, and in the spring we call it global warming for the hot summer.

Right now the word the currant word of the moment is “sustainable”. If I hear that word used one more time I might go mad.

Then, a couple of weeks ago I was listening to a story on an all-news San Francisco radio station about people who have to get food from a food bank. Now don’t get me wrong, food banks are a necessary and noble thing in our society, but when they refer to those who use their services as “food insecure” I want to vomit.

I wait with anticipation for the next mangling of our language. Abby Henry dreams of being a protector of the language. I fear that here on Earth, it’s too late.