Le Porc-épic et Le Papillon

It has been most difficult to get back into blogging since my nasty cold went away. So while I try to get back in the groove, here is a small story I wrote for my French homework. —David

---

Le Porc-épic et Le Papillon

Un jour, dans le forêt à côté de Paris, Pierre le Porc-épic s'est perdu.

La mere de Pierre l'a cherché.
Pas de Pierre!

Elle l'a cherché chez eux.
Pas de Pierre!

Elle l'a cherché sous les arbres de pamplemousse.
Pas de Pierre!

Mais finalement, elle à trouvé Pierre.
Il était dans le jardin.

"Salut, Maman," dit Pierre.

"Pierre," dit Maman, "Je me suis inquiété pour toi!"

"Oh, Maman—je suis ici! Je bâtis quelque chose!"

Pierre a bâti un sac. Le sac est brun et le sac est construit de papier kraft et colle. Il y a beaucoup des petites gateaus dans le sac aussi.

"Quest ce que tu fais, Pierre?" dit Maman.

"Oh, Maman, je bâti un cocon!"

La Mere n'a pas compris. "Un cocon," dit elle, "Pourquoi?"

"Maman, mon amie, Charlotte la Chenille, a bâti un cocon aussi. Et elle s'est endormais dedans le cocon. Quand elle s'est leveé elle etait un papillon! Je voudrais être un papillon aussi. Et j'ai bâti un cocon pour moi! Maman, je voudrais m'envoler!"

"Oh, mon pauvre petit Pierre, tu n'es pas une chenille. Nous sommes des porc-épics," dit Maman. "Et les porc-épics ne s'envolent pas. Nous préférons jetter nos épines et mangeons les pamplemousses. Vive la difference, Pierre, vive la difference"

"Oh, Maman, je t'adore! Je sais que je suis un porc-épic! Mais si j'étais serais un papillon je volerais à travers la forêt!"

FIN

When you talk about this blog later, and you will, be kind.

Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine

A Component of Love Called Melancholy

September 29th, would have been my Dad's 88th birthday if he were still alive. I take this opportunity to share a few short pieces he wrote about his life. These several memories were written in the early 1980s.

---

A Component of Love Called Melancholy
by Bill Maxine
September 29, 1919 - February 21, 1993

When one examines one's life to see if it has a special meaning it makes one wonder and reflect and not be too sure of where to look. Like a skein of tangled yarn one pulls on certain threads and finds the skein tightening up, and another strand releases, and so on and on.

How I was made and formed causes me to think symbolically of my time: the first summer after World War I - September 29, 1919. I believe I was a promise that was hard to keep. Maintaining my integrity was struggle enough. I never felt threatened from within; and the schools never succeeded in turning me inside out.

My first trauma I do not remember. But I was told I went into very severe convulsions at the attempt to circumcise me. It was my first protest, and I succeeded. But in stopping the knife, it left me with a stammer I carried until I felt sexual love. I mention this so you will have a person in mind as I try to remember experiences just about everyone had.

My father's father was French and in Paris he carried coal up six flight of stairs. This must have been a miserable back-breaking job carrying the black stuff from under to six floors up where it provided light and heat. And in some way he sought a promise and came to America where he found other French in Greenbay, Wisconsin. He found himself surplus and moved to Jamestown, North Dakota where he must have disappeared into the puree of this great melting pot. I marvel at how little I know of my past. My father I remember as a great story teller. Like so many it was all within the American tradition of anecdotes, to tell stories to give themselves a sense of place, jokes on those less fortunate or stupid, and a secret envy of the rich and successful.

Mrs. Johnson - The First Grade

It is hard to transpose feelings back to an earlier time without adding wisdom or reflection to a moment vividly recalled. I was six. Though I don't remember feeling six. Our school was a block away from home - Roosevelt Elementary. I don't think in all my life I ever though about it beyond the typical. It was named after a President, some prehistory institutionalized into a building. I wonder if it was for his cure of TB in western North Dakota or his exploits in Cuba that my school was bestowed with his name. Roosevelt died the year I was born.

In my First Grade room the desks were aligned in rows like tombstones or soldiers. Cast iron sides with oak seats and a liftable writing surface. No soft maple or open seating. That came after me.

We were all directed toward the front facing the teacher whose desk was all wood. I wish I would have been aware of it then but school seems to be only a lesson in pointing at letters and learning to count. Mrs. Johnson seems to have taken a findness for me or my vulnerability by bringing me to the front of the class, and setting me on her lap, and having me count the buttons on her bodice.

How I Remember Those Smells

It was in the Fourth Grade when I noticed Jean Hendrickson. Before this time girls were just other inhabitants of the school yard. She seemed so pretty, just like a princess to me. One time I got close to her and I smelled something akin to musk; which was such a contrast to my grubby hands that had the smell of fingers that scratched and wiped my behind or relieved me in the school urinal, this with left-over lunch smells and school ink from leaky pens.

One day, with great courage and my new ink-o-graph pen that wrote with gren ink, I wrote a love note to her confessing my feelings. I delivered iyt in a terrible way, but the only way that was safe to my fearful heart. I folded it carefully and ran up to her in great speed and said, "Here, half-wit!" and ran off to another part of the school yard where boys played and girls were scarce. Now I stood exposed to her and what she might do.

My God, with her Fourth Grade maturity she could laugh at me or tease me or ignore me. However the next day the verdict came. She walked up to me and gave me a note in green ink. She wrote saying she liked me and would be my friend. Now my anxiety was more than I could handle. So I broke off the relationship of 48 hours and I kept the note and treasured it very much. I don't think I ever spoke to her again. I just went back to be with other boys with smelly hands and the familiar things i could cope with. Sadly I think what might have been and reflect, when it comes to feelings of mine, I haven't made much progress.

Eddie's Drawer

When one gets older and wisdom sets in, it fills one with an inner security and another emotion, a component of love called melancholy.

My big brother Eddie's drawer in the dining room buffet, was something of envy to me, a point of passage, a place to keep secret things. Eddie's drawer was full of multi-purpose jack-knives, agate marbles, press clippings of his local heroics as a boy scout, cigarette lighters, and an extra pair of real horse-hide shoelaces, his Boy Scout manual and extra Merit Badges yet to be sewn on.

I thought perhaps that someday I too would have my own drawer. That never happened. My private drawer had to be in my bedroom, hardly a place of public or family envy. For my sister and me, our family consisted of two big brothers and a mother and father - we were sort od "add-ons" that kept the family poor. At any rate my sister Mugs, and I, needed a great deal of love and attention. So according to that great natural law, we received less.

Sod Buster

Solitary sinnuous struggle
Penetrating virgin prairie
From downside up
From the dark place
Stirring solitary sinuous
Seed root forever perennial
Thrust up into entangled crust
Shoving stirring solitary
Filaments, capilaries, tuberale
The entangled way of sod
A history of nourishment
Spearing shoviong stirring
Through the crust
Spring saffron
A Crocus
A toast
Bottoms Up
A Crocus is

---

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Stories and Poem written by Willis Henry Maxine. Copyright 2007 D. H. Maxine.

Stingray

I've been digging through my life lately, and I found this story (or fragment) that I wrote when I was twenty-two. It is based on an incident that happened on a school trip to Mexico when I was twelve. It was an unusual school, with unusual teachers, in an unusual time, the mid 70s.

---

Stingray

"What is it? It's too late for this. . ."

"No, get up! Chris passed out; we can't wake him up!

Ellen pulled on a pair of shorts and a shirt, and zipped herself out of her tent. Ellen is my seventh-grade teacher and we're in Mexico. We all call her Ellen. She's a lesbian.

It has not been a fun school trip so far. There's sand in all the food, and the water is undrinkable! Lots of us are kind of sick from it. We've been purifying it, (the teachers put Clorox in it, yuck!) but it tastes terrible! This is our fifth day here and we have three more days to go. There are nineteen of us: five adults, and fourteen kids, ranging in age from a strange little girl named Monkey who's six, to Adam who's fifteen. Chris is eleven; and I'm twelve.

Back to the trip being so bad--the adults really aren't taking very good care of us. Whoever cooked dinner tonight tried to avoid the wind and sand, and they took the campstove INSIDE the tent! I GUESS they spilled gasoline on Chris's sleeping bag. 'Cause right after we went to bed (we were talking and playing with our flashlights) Chris was sitting there giggling in his underwear and he said "I feel weird," and then he was just lying there against the side of the tent, kind of caving it in. After we decided he wasn't fucking around, we dragged him outside, and I went to get Ellen.

"We pulled him out, but he won't wake up," I said sitting down in the sand next to him.

"Adam get a flashlight," said Ellen rubbing the back of Chris's neck and peeking into his eyes.

"What? What? No I'm not . . ." (Chris was coming around) "Why 'm I out here?"

"Somebody spilled gas on your sleeping bag," I volunteered, "and you, uhm, fainted."

Chris was crying now.

"You're not supposed to be cooking in the tent! I could be dead! Did you-- use my-- sleeping ba ...bag ... to ... heh ... heh ...

Ellen told Chris to stop talking and to breathe slow and deep. She said he was hyperventilating. Chris began to breath normally after a couple minutes. Ellen got up, walked over to the tent, stuck her head inside, and said: "You guys can't sleep in there tonight, it 'll have to air out. Monk, you and Jennifer go over to my tent. David, Chris and Adam can sleep outside.

"What does Chris sleep in," I asked. "His bag is ruined!"

"You and Adam open up your sleeping bags and make a pallet. Chris can sleep between you. Sit up with him for a while. He can use the night air. I'm going to go get the girls set up." Ellen glanced around, decided she was finished, and went to bed leaving me and Adam (big deal) to care for Chris.

I tossed the two sleeping bags out of the tent and Adam started to make up our beach bed.

"Chris," I said "I've got a Seven-Up I've been hiding if you're thirsty?"

"Sure, Thanks," he said, wiping the last of the tears out of his eyes. I padded through the sand to the ice chest, and Chris went and sat in the middle of the sleeping bag bed.

"Here." I handed him the opened can and sat down next to him. He took a sip and he started to breathe funny again; he swallowed quickly and stopped himself with the Seven-Up.

I'm starting to feel a little guilty. Right after Chris passed out, my first thought wasn't saving him, but feeling him up before he was revived. In all the confusion I think I could have gotten away with it --and that almost makes me feel worse.

"You can take my pillow," I said "yours is kinda' gassy." We both giggled.
Chris sprawled out on the beach-bed.

* * *

I'm lying on my back listening to the ocean. I really like this sound but also sort of hate it, too. I can't think of a single nice image to go with it anymore. Everytime I close my eyes, I see dead stingrays washing up on the beach. There are shark-heads washing up on the beach, too.

The men in the village fish for sharks. I guess they throw the heads back in the water. The sharks are only about three feet long, but I'm still too scared to go into the water more than a couple feet. Besides the waves are too high to swim.

"We could share the pillow if you like," said Chris opening his eyes.

"I thought you were asleep."

"I think I was."

"You really think you're Ok," I asked putting my head on my half of our pillow?

"Uh Huh--but in the morning I'm gonna kill whoever cooked dinner last night!"

I can smell Chris's breath. I keep looking at his mouth and his teeth.

"Are you having fun on the trip?"

"I was until somebody tried to kill me!"

"You're Ok. We saved you!"

"Thanks! Night."

"'Night."

* * *

Yesterday I was sitting outside the tent and I started to feel so awful I started to cry. I didn't want anyone to see me, so I walked down to the water and splashed myself so no one could tell I was crying and would just think it was the ocean on my face. And I just cried. I don't even know why! Monkey was down at tide level making a sandcastle of some kind, and Ellen was sketching the island, the dolphins were playing a couple hundred yards off shore, and Adam and Chris had gone into the village. And I wasn't doing anything! Just sitting in the tide and crying!

Everybody else was having fun, and I was sitting in a big pile of sand and crying. And I DON'T KNOW WHY! Nobody even knew I was crying. The dolphins were just diving in and out of the water, Monkey was into her stupid sandy world, and Adam and Chris had left me at camp while they went into the dumb old village. I don't know why I should care, there isn't anything to do in the village but order "Naranja Soda". (That's the only thing we've figured out how to buy.)

After a while Ellen put down her sketch pad and I helped her straighten up the tents. Chris and Adam finally came back, Adam with a huge stingray by the tail. No doubt he planned to throw it at me later on, when no one, (or EVERYONE!) was looking. The dolphins left, and Monkey's castle washed out to sea.

* * *

Chris is asleep. His hair looks like it's glowing he's been out in the sun so much! I'm trying to decide whether to put my arm around him. People are so stupid --I don't know --I just don't understand why he helped Adam throw dead stingrays at me, when he's nice to me when we're alone--it's like he's two people. I know I want to do it and everything, but if I put my arm around him, I'm afraid I'd still feel all alone--and it's dumb-- 'cause we should be friends.

---

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.
All rights reserved.