Verbatim

Cassy McClay had been training for the lemonade derby since she was four years old. Every Saturday she went down to the hardware shop, out back to the little shed where the Foxgaiters let her store her racer. It barely fit in the little space with the sheet on top, so she'd drag it out into the yard to make her changes. A new feature here. A new toggle there. She doted on that boxcar and she gave it all of her time. She spent years growing into the perfect soapbox champion, building just the right machine, practicing driving, timing her trials, and most importantly: focusing her mind, mentally preparing herself for a success of true value. Unbeknownst to her, posters go up down on the city hall notice board. These are copied and circulated, walked and stapled down the path of the city, and four days before Cassy's first eligible event, she reads one. It says:

LEMONADE DERBY CANCELLED

(Muffin Parade in the works)

~~~

MY POGS, MY POGS, MY POGS!

I CAN'T, I WON'T LOSE THEM

~~~

I CAN FLY, I CAN KEEP FROM CRASHING

I CAN STAY UP THERE, OFF THE GROUND

~~~

What happens when someone uncompromising comes up against the world?

They lose, of course. That indomitable spirit, thinking to impose its will, will be snuffed out in its first breath. It will be bent by indifference. It was not meant to be personal.

The world is hard. In a will of the unyielding, the world wins.

This is why everyone makes little compromises to survive. Small stuff, like delaying a household repair. Staying in instead of going out. Stifling a remark, or paying more to avoid exercises in futility.  Letting go of things, and thoughts, and people. It's all compromise, and nobody likes a compromise. Compromises leave everyone unhappy, not a soul getting what they want.

But since everybody wants what they want without reservation, compromise offers a third way.  It's the survival button for all human affairs, and one that every opposing side wishes didn't exist. Without compromise, everyone could be true to their heart and instincts. They would be free, before they were destroyed.

Compromise means what is gained and what is lost. Every hard decision, and there are so many hard decisions, is a new piece to give away of oneself. Every tiny sliver is a sacrifice. Each gain pales in comparison to its loss. Until eventually the gains are so small, and all of your history feels lost, and you're compromising for the single privilege of surviving. At this point, the uncompromiser breaks. There is always a level lower, and when the descent is too hard to bear, sometimes compromise becomes less intolerable. There is no reward for standing up against a thresher, beyond the making of meat. 

Have firm convictions, they'll say. Don't compromise on your beliefs. 

They should add: except to the world. Compromise for the world. In its path, it does not care if you yield.  

The plants in my apartment show signs of a hard early life. The palm against the sofa, for instance, has dried tips, cracked and yellow-brown. The base of my philodendron is empty earth. All of the leaves that first started there I plucked when they turned not only yellow, but wrinkled and thick, too. My orchid is across the room. Its twisted spindles once supported the many-months-gone flowers. Experienced plant givers learn to trim these away to help the plant growth. I left mine to fossilize. Whether it's the half-brown and broken base tendrils of my windowsill succulent or the denuded trunk of the balcony tangelo tree, my plants display how they once suffered at my hands. I won't strip them away, because damaged parts as they are, they are part of each whole plant. 

In bungling each plant's first weeks, negligence wasn't the culprit. I didn't hurt them out of misplaced anger. I didn't overwater them for science, or leave them thirsting because I rarely came home. I brought each plant into my home with intention. Then I let ignorance and affection go to play. 

When I noticed the earliest signs of my malpractice, I panicked. What had I been missing? I tried to guesswork solutions to revive each plant. Move it to a different spot. Water it twice as much. Stop watering it for over a week. Dust the leaves. Sing to it. As you may imagine, these constant shifts in treatment did not help the plant. The yellowing worsened. I pricked and preened so frequently that only one option was left: to take a hands-off approach.

Then each plant had time to grow some roots. I started testing the soil moisture. I watered it two times a week, small amounts. And the whole picture of each plant is mostly green. They thrive. They're lush. They support their weight well. But the signs of their early stresses are all present, if you know how to look. They suffered, once. Before I learned to listen to them. When they didn't know how to be understood. 

And if my history, inept and embarrassing, is displayed for all to see: so what? At least it shows I'm growing. At least it shows the plants are growing.  We've all survived a bit of a messy backstory. We're all still going. 

Sometimes, maybe that's enough.  

Today I'd like to try a little experiment. I'm going to write (and edit) on the same short prompt for five minutes each while listening to varying types of background music. My curiosity? Whether the style of each musical genre will influence the writing.

The prompt:

Theodore White discovered paper on a Tuesday afternoon. 

1. Fantasy Background

Theodore White discovered paper on a Tuesday afternoon. It had been a big house, and no one ever saw little Theo when he wandered off among the scattered hallways. He often discovered things, off on his own. These items ranged from a tortoiseshell button tucked beneath the fraying carpet in the towers to the petrified banana roosting in the fourth-West basement. 

2. Miles Davis (Jazz)

Theodore White discovered paper on a Tuesday afternoon. It had been a big house, and no one ever saw little Theo when he wandered off among the scattered hallways. He often discovered things, off on his own. These items ranged from a A tortoiseshell button tucked beneath the fraying carpet in the towers. to The petrified banana roosting in the fourth-West basement. None of these things had ever surprised Theo, because what was an old house for, if not secrets?

But the paper was something different altogether. If buttons and bananas were Theo's rubies and diamonds, the paper den was something like a pirate's cove. If not for the paper itself, the room would have been cavernous. Down the fifth hallway and past the second corridor the room had been. The door was a deeply smoothed mahogany, softened by generations of hands. Theo's eye had been caught by its purple crystal handle, but its barely-there engravings were his true fascination. 

3. 90's Skate Punk

Theodore White discovered paper on a Tuesday afternoon. It had been a big house, and no one ever saw little Theo when he wandered off among the scattered hallways. He often discovered things, off on his own. These items ranged from a A tortoiseshell button tucked beneath the fraying carpet in the towers. to The petrified banana roosting in the fourth-West basement. None of these things had ever surprised Theo, because what was an old house for, if not secrets?

But the paper was something different altogether. If buttons and bananas were Theo's rubies and diamonds, the paper den was something like a pirate's cove. If not for the paper itself, the room would have been cavernous. Down the fifth hallway and past the second corridor he'd found it. By then he'd had a chance to search through cabinets and closets, cobweb-bedecked bedrooms and countless passages. He'd stumbled on the room quite by accident, and only weeks later would he learn of its contents. The room's door was a deeply smoothed mahogany, softened by generations of hands. Its purple crystal handle caught his eye, but its barely-there engravings were his true fascination.

Theo continued to wander the house, but he kept returning to the door. Every week or so, he would ply a new tool on its handle. He was nervous about shattering or breaking the old handle. For this reason, he always restrained his efforts. It wasn't until the third Tuesday when Theo's newly-acquired lockpicking skills struck gold. He had been picking distractedly, his thoughts elsewhere, when he heard a gentle click and felt the door push slightly inward. 

4. Chopin (Classical Music)

Theodore White discovered paper on a Tuesday afternoon. It had been a big house, and no one ever saw little Theo when he wandered off among the scattered hallways. He often discovered things, off on his own. These items ranged from a A tortoiseshell button tucked beneath the fraying carpet in the towers. to A petrified banana roosting in the fourth-West basement. Four brass keys. A red-backed comb. A springy patch of moss under a trickle-broken skylight. None of these things had ever surprised Theo, because what was an old house for, if not secrets?

But the paper was something different altogether. If buttons and bananas were Theo's rubies and diamonds, the paper den was something like a pirate's cove. If not for the paper itself, the room would have been cavernous, but it heaped in cardboard boxes and down particle board bookshelves until the walls themselves seemed to be breathing it. The room was down the fifth hallway and past the second corridor. He'd been wandering when he found it. By then, Theo had had a chance to search through cabinets and closets, cobweb-bedecked bedrooms and countless passages. He'd stumbled upon this room quite by accident, and only weeks later would he learn of its contents. At first, it was just another simple mystery of the house. A way to pass his afternoons. The room's door was a deeply smoothed mahogany, softened by generations of hands. Its purple crystal handle caught his eye, but its barely-there engravings were his true fascination. 

Theo continued to wander the house, but always he returned to the door. Like a clockwork mouse, every week or so he would ply a new tool on its handle. If he treated the door roughly, the old handle might have fallen and shattered, or else its inner workings might snap. For this reason, he always restrained his efforts. It wasn't until the third Tuesday when Theo's newly-acquired lockpicking skills struck gold. He had been picking distractedly, his mind hardly leaning on the torsion wrench, when he heard a gentle click and felt the door push slightly inward.

Stepping into the room, he'd almost lost his feet out from under him. The floor had slid. Theo righted himself and knelt to pick up the spare sheet that had unbalanced him. It had crumpled at his step, but only in the corner. Most of it was still sharp and flat and wide and, he thought, oddly rough for something that made the floor slick as ball bearings. It felt hardy, yet flimsy at once. More stray sheets lay around his feet and he picked up a few, folding some, bending others in long cylinders, tossing the rest up to see them fall back down in strange arcs. 

When I think of love -- not static love, not Hallmark love, but whirly-dirly over-the-moon explode and fall to contented pieces love -- when I think of love, when I see or read a true note of it, there is a small, tucked corner of my heart that makes itself inexorably known. It is pinched and folded in on itself. It is far beneath the breastbone and ventricles and meat of my pulsing life. And still, when I think of love, when I see an instance of love that reminds me however distantly of what I've felt before, that tiny nugget tucked in on itself becomes more of me than the rest of myself combined. How can such a small, worried piece be so irrepressibly whole?

It's a comfort, this corner.  If I wonder whether romantic love is now beyond me, something I've dealt with too roughly in the past to call back someday, I need only recall this piece of my heart and its overwhelming power. No matter what uncertainties I face in life, I know that this corner, redoubled on itself as it is, is totally out of my control. It's a bider. It bides its time. Every once in a while, un vez en cuando, it is the stalactite that drips into the dark, deep pool of me, sending ripples out to my frigid borders. Its call says "wait, and I may rise again. There will be more."

There is a tucked corner of my heart more powerful than myself. It is a small, clipped bud. Yet it is raw and tamed only by itself. It waits. It knows the truth of me that I often forget. It is a knot, a node, that holds my oft crumbling form in place. 

And when I think of love, it sings.