Cirque Microsaurus

Cirque Microsaurus

Logline: Suffering a blow to the head via the punt of the champagne bottle that christened her racing trimaran Soothsayer, a lesbian tech mogul turns straight and starts a mini dinosaur circus in San Francisco.

The 86’ wing-sail catamaran bobbed gently at Pier 27. An obsidian missile, the AC72 pranced in place with trophy-winning elegance, with each exhale of the waves. Equally elegant were the 20 models milling at the end of the dock, shivering slightly, but breathtaking nonetheless in matching black vinyl monokinis. Carrie Livingston surveyed the crowning glory of her lifetime achievement, then the goosebumped legion. She inhaled deeply, and accepted a glass of champagne from a tuxedoed waiter.

“I love the Bay in May,” she purred.

“Those poor, cold girls,” piped her equally stunning partner, Pandora—graceful fingers twining around a flute of Cristal.  Her black pleather minidress hugged her luscious curves, as she tugged on a smart leather jacket, shivering.

Noticing the frown playing on Pandora’s features, Carrie smiled.“Don’t worry, darling…they’re just  for our inspiration,” she whispered into her lover’s ear. “You’re my only and my everything.” Carrie took Pandora’s left hand and kissed it; lips brushing the green diamond she’d given her on their wedding day. They both sported the same $10K hammered gold band from Pavé  in Berkeley, set with a glittering five-carat stone.

One of the models strode up to the couple.

“Ah, Mona Middleton, my QA lead,” exclaimed Carrie, as she wrapped her arm around Mona’s shoulders, causing Pandora’s creamy forehead to crinkle once again.

”Pandora, sweetie, please meet my most valuable employee, and one of the most brilliant minds at Soothsayer. Mona, Pandora used to be a top hacker and debugger…the latter for me…but of course, now, she’s otherwise occupied.”

Pandora forced a smile as she shook the girl’s blue hand.

“Ms. Livingston, I am so thrilled to be part of your team…and THIS team” she waved towards the other girls. Your enlightened management is as successful as I know this beautiful vessel will be. I just wanted to congratulate you and say thanks!”

“Thank you, dear. Now , why don’t you take this glass of champagne, and make sure the rest of the girls have one too.” Carrie motioned to a beefcake waiter, who was hovering nearby.

On cue, a radio announcer from KNBR/ESPN Radio picked up a microphone and faced the crowd. “Welcome everybody! On this auspicious day, we celebrate and inaugurate the maiden voyage of Silicon Valley superstar Carrie Livingston’s racing catamaran, Soothsayer II. A contender for the America’s Cup Championship in 2016, it’s 86 feet long, carries a crew of 11, and is able to reach speeds of 88 mph. Carrie, if you’ll do the honors…”

The announcer picked up a champagne bottle from the tiny, black velvet-draped table before him and handed it to Carrie. Sizing up the bobbing hull, she took a wide stance with her stilettos and swung the bottle like a baseball bat. It shattered with an epic crack. The punt flew toward her, whacking her head with a noticeable thunk.

She fell like a K.O.’d prizefighter; her coconut making a sickening hollow sound as it hit the wharf. And then she lay motionless.

Pandora rushed over, “Someone call 911!” she shrieked.

The media surged past the horrified and shivering models. Not missing a beat, the announcer continued his live narration: “Ms. Livingston is DOWN! In a tragic turn of events, as she was christened her catamaran, IT mogul Carrie Livingston has been struck down by the punt of the very champagne bottle she was swinging…”

Flashbulbs exploded and the audience gasped.

“Known to be a bit on the eccentric side—requiring of all her employees mandatory onsite daily yoga and meditation—Ms. Livingston is nonetheless regarded as the most successful tech mogul in Silicon Valley; with Soothsayer earnings for fiscal 2013 topping 17.6 billion. Thought to be at the top of her game, Ms. Livingston—at 55 years old—has everything to live for.”

Sirens approached, as the chattering, confused models huddled like Emperor penguins that had just lost their egg. Some of the more enterprising paparazzi offered them their jackets.

~

Word spread like wildfire at Soothsayer headquarters. As the announcement rippled through the building, incredulous employees prairie-dogged over their cubicle walls and conjectured heatedly at the Smoothie Bar.

“Is she still in a coma?” a bloom-cheeked geek wondered, wide-eyed, over his Monster Mango-rama with protein powder. “What does this mean for all of us?”

“What if she doesn’t make it?” another posited, slurping the last of his Banana Mamma Jamma. “This blows, dude.”

Bets were placed on whether she would live or die at what Forbes magazine called “the most enlightened workplace in Silicon Valley”.

~

Beep…beep…beep…What’s that annoying sound? Carrie slowly opened her eyes. She saw nothing but white mist. Am I dead? she wondered, blinking. Slowly a hospital room came into focus…and the face of a beautiful woman in a black leather jacket peering down at her.

“Who are you?” Carrie asked, frowning.

Pandora’s naked left hand flew to her mouth.

“Short term memory loss is common after a concussion and coma,” the doctor had assured her. “Since she’s physically fine, why don’t you take her home and try to jog her memory. That would be the best treatment at this point.”

~

Carrie stepped into her Woodside mansion gingerly, eyeing everything as if for the first time. Pandora squeezed Carrie’s ringless left hand, “Does anything look familiar, sweetie?”

Shaking her head, Carrie let herself be led on a tour. As they entered the master bedroom, she took in all 1200 square feet of it. Nearly snow blind from the pure whiteness of its swath of carpet, white furniture, and comforter, she approached the custom Duxiana with a frown.

“What are all those stuffed dinosaurs doing on the bed?” she puzzled.

“Sweetie, these are all yours! Actually, I’ve been hoping for the past year that you’d grow tired of them, but you said you had one as a little girl. The decorator thinks they’re a nightmare, but they make you so happy… No, huh?”

“Nope. Sorry.” Carrie sat on the bed weakly, cradling a 10-inch sauropod.

~

Over the next several weeks, the froideur between Carrie and Pandora grew steadily worse. All of Pandora’s loving efforts at rekindling Carrie’s memories as well as their relationship, failed. Finally, Carrie asked Pandora to move out…that she needed time alone to sort out who she was now, since it seemed her old self wasn’t returning.

“Since we’re not married, this will all be much easier, right?” she said to Pandora’s retreating back. The front door slammed. Carrie was alone at last.

Over the next few weeks of solitude and soul-searching, Carrie realized she had lost all interest in sailing, in her business, and in women.  She kept hoping something would resonate…an interest, an idea…anything.

Facing her white laptop in her white bedroom one night, it hit her. On her screen was the home page of an unusual business just south of Tuvalu…

~

“Ultimate Exotic Pet,” a Kiwi-accented voice replied, “We fulfill your extreme animal needs.”

Eyebrows raised, Carrie pulled the cell phone from her ear and stared at it, then shrugged.

“I’d like to set up a visit.”

~

In the two weeks before her trip to the South Pacific, she made the city of San Francisco an offer they couldn’t refuse, and bought Candlestick Park. Workers began retrofitting it to become an enclosed tropical jungle.

She then proceeded to kit out her private 767 jet with 20 spacious cages. “Just keep the animals separate from the main cabin, she told the engineers. “I don’t want to smell the poop.”

~

The tall, musclebound Kiwi led her down a jungle path. Carrie found herself staring at his bulging biceps, then brought her gaze up to his eyes.

“So you want to create a…”

“Circus.”

“You know these are mostly reptiles, ma’am…they’re not very bright. Except for the Pakicetus. It’s the doglike ancestor to the whale. And Phosphatherium, the pig-sized ancestor to the elephant.”

“I’ve made my fortune doing things people said were impossible. Show me what you’ve got.”

~

OK, so that’ll be two Microraptors, two Raptorex, five Microceratops, three Nemicolopteri, two Phosphatherium, and two Pakicetus…oh yes, and three of the smallest Velociraptors. Next I need to give you their care and dietary requirements...

“Tell me, Aidan, has anyone ever tried to train these creatures?”

“Actually yes, let me show you what Pakicetus can do…” (They approached a fenced area.) “Here boy, fetch…”Aidan tossed a ball to the far end of the cage, and Paki raced after it, catching it midair on a bounce.  The russet, doglike creature returned with the ball, dropped it to the ground, and sat, gazing at Aidan and Carrie with intelligent, blue eyes. Then Aiden threw it a beach ball and Paki bounced it on his nose several times. “Good boy!”

Carrie clapped and laughed, causing Paki to scurry away to a corner and hide.

“We’ll have to work on the applause thing,” Aidan shrugged.

~

“So who’s going to care for them in San Francisco?” Aiden asked.

“Actually, if they could spare you here, I’d like to bring you with,” Carrie grinned.  “How does $250K/year sound?”

 “Good as gold, mate.”

~

Aiden’s leg casually brushed against Carries in the jet cabin. Shivers ran up her spine and she nearly spilled her Chateau Margeaux on the white carpet. “Of course, I’ll hire you as many assistants as you need,” she said, recovering. “Now this isn’t going to be a zoo! Carrie waved a caviar-laden cracker in emphasis. “I don’t want the animals to be gawked at until showtime! Until I say so! I want full creative control here…”

“I’ll do my best, ma’am,” Aiden replied, patting her knee, and causing some precious drops of Margeaux to pattern the carpet this time.

~

Practice began, with a few missing fingers among the handsomely paid-off workers.

As training ensued and the Park’s media kit began to circulate, Carrie found she had a three ring circus sooner than expected…When the media began spotting Carrie and Aiden at the swankiest restaurants in San Francisco, and his car parked by her house nightly.

Someone else noticed the nocturnal visits. “She thinks she can just throw me away…” Pandora muttered from the neighbor’s hedge.

~

Finally it was opening night for Cirque Microsaurus…Thousands of expectant children, parents and media clogged the 101. Private shuttles, boats and helicoptors turned out to be the most successful method of gaining entry to the sold-out arena.

The show began with the paki’s doggy tricks, the wonder of the four-winged flyers, and the sweetness of the pig-sized elephant. This was followed by wild dancing by the foot-tall Microceratops, who waggled their ruffs comically and made the audience laugh as they danced to the Nutcracker Suite.

The T Rexes and velociraptors followed, wowing the audience as they chased balls, Aiden, and each other, in a somewhat synchronized manner.

As the grand finale ensued, Carrie stood proudly in the center of the floor, white top hat and tails matching Aiden’s. Just as the music crescendoed, the stadium was plunged into darkness. Screams pierced the gloom. Then there was the crunch of huge metal doors being wrenched open. Chill bay gusts ripped through the stadium.

Not far from a nearby P.E. & E. transformer that she’d hacked and shut down, Pandora cackled evilly. “You think you can love cold blooded creatures, Ms. Livingston? How about a bunch of dead reptiles?!”

~

Pandemonium ensued, as animals and humans run helter skelter. One particularly oversized Velociraptor slammed full tilt into a tent support beam near Carrie. It cracked and began falling in slow motion. As the deathly fog swirled into her tropical Thunderdome, and her little denizens began dying, Carrie screamed, but found she couldn’t make a sound. The beam bonked her on the head and she blacked out, as the pakis and tiny elephants rush to their fallen mother’s side, huddling for warmth and safety.

~

Carrie woke in a hospital room, panting, with a loving Pandora pressing her favorite stuffed dino to her. “My babies!” She gasped, eyes wild and unfocused, then gradually resting on Pandora.

“Your babies are right here and they’re fine,” Pandora soothed. 

“But the circus?! Aiden?!...Was it YOU that killed them all?” she snapped.

Pandora looked puzzled…then horrified.  She took a deep breath and unfurrowed her forehead.

“You’ve been in a coma for two weeks, sweetie. You suffered a concussion when you were hit in the head by the punt of the champagne bottle you christened Soothsayer II with. Do you remember?”

Slowly, thoughtfully, Carrie began nodding.

It had all been a dream.

Carrie began to laugh, as she took Pandora’s hand. She noticed that the green diamond set into the hammered gold band that she’d given her on their wedding day was still there.

Carrie grabbed her favorite stuffed dinosaur, which lay next to her on her bed and threw it into the wastebasket across the room.

“Come here, baby,” Carrie said as she pulled Pandora to her and tipped her face up.

Pandora drew the privacy curtain with a secret smile, and kissed her resurrected lover.

Fin

Clouds

The sky reads differently in Westport than back in SF. Here, in southeastern MA it has a decidedly feminine quality in its summer softness. This morning, warm, moist folds of mystery and secret quickly skimmed the eastern sky on a northbound voyage. Like a monkfish egg veil undulating spectrelike in seawater (one microscopic egg thick and held together by a web of the mother’s outbreath). Both inspire speculation.

Would these perplexing pleats knit together into a thunderhead? Or purl themselves into pendulous, ponderous skysheep, dragging themselves heavily upriver to cause an afternoon shower?

(And how is it the monkfish veil doesn’t stick to itself, but, like a silky scarf, continues to billow endlessly in its tank at the Boston Aquarium; gliding over and over itself gracefully?)

So unlike the decidedly masculine and extreme Bay Area clime this time of year. I am not missing San Francisco, with its hurricane force gusts of chilling, marrow-bracing fog that is the City’s self-sacrifice and tithe so the rest of the region can enjoy a sunny, hot summer.

Just like the cabin refrigerator’s timer needed to be reset in order for it to work this year, so my inner timer is readjusting to a slower setting more in tune with this climate.

And so I am watching clouds and reading the sky in wonderment, as I regain my bearings, both terrestrial and celestial.

The Distrusted Storyteller and Someone Else’s Words

The funeral director asked if I’d like to deliver a eulogy for my Dad.  

I could speak at one of three places:   1. The Church service, 2. The Reception, or  3. The Grave.

“Absolutely!” I said. “I’d certainly want some storytelling at my own going-away party, when it’s time. Let me talk with my sister and brother and get back to you about when and where, OK?”

~

At my mother’s funeral eight years prior, my sister had asked me to read a Bible verse during the Church Service. Me, the Wiccan, Shamanic Practitioner, Recovering Catholic… Me, who had already thought about, written, and published several of my mother’s stories… Especially upon her death, I wanted to tell her tales, laud her life, and praise her publicly. Reading someone else’s words was a letdown. Even if they were God’s.

The only recognized storyteller my family trusted was a priest. Also lapsed Catholics, they nonetheless thought the Church held the only legitimate ceremonial structure to apply to major life events. They clung to their beliefs as tenaciously as an abalone on a storm-tossed boulder.

I caved. Delivering the first line with successful audience eye contact, I actually felt pleased with myself for a nanosecond. This is like a book reading, I mused dreamily, basking in the stained glass spotlight.

Then I looked down.  

I’d lost my place.

An awful silence ensued, as my stomach knotted as tightly as my mother’s crochet hook on one of her ubiquitous afghan squares. My eyes scanned the page wildly, reeling at the stream of eight-point type on onionskin.

I remembered to breathe. The sanctioned words appeared. And I continued reading… Someone else’s words.

~

A priest can pronounce judgments, hurl insults, and evoke ideas...all of which my family drank in like a draught from the Grail itself.  Every Sunday red-nosed Father Lamontange worked himself into a frenzy during his sermon. He showered his flock with righteous vitriol and venom about the daily excesses of his parishioners in the face of Jesus’ suffering: “There are THOSE…yes, even among you RIGHT HERE (this was punctuated by his index finger stabbing the air) …who eat and drink SO MUCH…you have to take a seltzah to get to sleep at night!” Devotees in the front pews were duly baptized with his spit during the harangue…the price for their penitent proximity.

~

The media’s influence on my family’s life was on par with that of our priest, and its effects were similar to those of giving a vampire permission to enter your home...your tender, upturned throat and mind were made available to their every whim…noble or nefarious. Seductive and able to erase all vestiges of autonomy with a glamour, media hooked my family like a tweaker’s hypodermic.

Carefully crafted copywriting was delivered by two revered members of our household. These sentinels rose with us and remained turned on all day (unlike us), even when no one was in the room. The radio or television was given credence over my family’s own ideas and thoughts. Such good modern consumers, so unquestioning in the beliefs that were delivered and implanted through modern appliances, my family was ruled by others’ opinions.

My mother would perk up, hearing one of her “experts” on the radio, and we were shushed—our own questions or curiosity deemed insignificant.

~

In my family I am the Distrusted Storyteller.

Yarn spinning and tale telling never occurred in my clan. Mute holiday exchanges involved cards…and never phone calls. A Hallmark sentiment was deemed superior to any handwritten or spoken word. And while I marveled as familial troubles always smoothed themselves out through skilful dialog on the Brady Bunch—in a nice, tidy half hour, complete with commercial breaks—our home was the cold war palace, the seething stewpot of unvocalized resentments, the unexamined umbilicus of the undead…keeping us toxic and tethered to mediocrity.

~

I actually wrote a eulogy for my Dad…in a seaside restaurant of my hometown. I agonized for hours over just the right words, the best representation of my father, to deliver to his loved ones on his special day. I decided to extol his virtues, and created six bullet points to expand on…humility, integrity, altruism, service, non-violence, and creative thinking. The story gained momentum.

He’d always placed our family’s well-being over his own interests. His was the humble hero’s journey. He accepted the role of the low-key, yet steadfast rock of support to his family. Of course there were challenges throughout the years to which another man might have reacted to differently, but I admired the non-violent path he chose and it has influenced my life greatly.

As an Engineer in a family tool and die shop, he delighted in grappling with creative challenges, ranging from single-handedly building a second story to our house, to puzzling over and then creating an elegant solution for hanging a quilt I’d made.

He lived his life with deep commitment to his role as a provider, and with respect for his roots and for the Earth. His careful tending of hearth, home, and land created many small miracles. Out of a garden whose soil seemed to grow an inexhaustible supply of rocks each year, he coaxed the largest, most luscious tomatoes I’ve ever tasted. Every summer evening, after working all day, he’d painstakingly water and weed until nightfall.

While never coddling, he provided comfort and lightheartedness—singing to me as a child many times. Later, his political views–which  opposed those of mine and my sister’s—would provide for some lively debate in our house.

Even later, he cared for my mother, under the difficult circumstances accompanying her five year descent under Alzheimer’s. As my mother’s life approached its conclusion, his devotion to her was absolute, even at the expense of his own health.

~

In the end, my brother convinced me that my Dad wouldn’t have wanted a big fuss made of him at his funeral. Again I caved to family pressure. I convinced myself what I’d written sounded trite and ridiculous.  The unsung hero whose life I wanted to honor and respect with my own words was sent off on his journey by a priest, uttering God’s words. A priest who smelled like a homeless man. Who cracked jokes about the unused rosary that the mortician had wrapped around my father’s hands. Hands who I’d never seen touch prayer beads. But hands that were nonetheless ministered to by this minister as a result of this politically ingratiating gesture on the part of the mortician, done in order to squeeze my Dad’s last-minute funeral into the pastor’s busy schedule. Making him appear devout.

And yet, even as the smelly priest droned on at the funeral home, and showered my father’s body with holy water, I felt my father and mother up above me in balcony seats—beautiful and young again—laughing hysterically at the absurdity of it all. Throwing a shower of popcorn back down on the priest. And I realized it was all alright.

Distrusted or not, the story lives. As does its teller.