Inexplicable Fragments of Imagined Lives

Inexplicably, the word inexplicably began to show up in my blog. A lot. I have no explanation for this. It just seemed called for. And, after too long sitting on planes today, I found myself scrawling this on pages of a legal pad. I have no excuse (or explanation) for any of this. Perhaps it’ll provoke you to write a great novel – or to stop reading blogs altogether and go back to the daily newspaper.

*****

Love seemed like too strong a word to use, but it was not her idea. This was tennis. When you have nothing, they call it love. She shrugged, stretched to her full height and began her serve.

*****

For some reason he thought his life would improve immeasurably if only he could get a visa for Japan.

********

For Jeremy, nothing better captured the 70s than Barry Gibb, in falsetto voice, singing “I’m a man.” 30 years later, he still lost sleep trying to make sense of that decade, something he refused to admit even to his therapist.

*****

He did not actually take candy from children but he did take a special kind of glee in taunting them with it when their mothers were not watching.

*****

Naomi’s thesis project consumed the whole of her twenties. Her once promising academic career had been waylaid by an inexplicable desire to understand the apparent overuse of Jake as a character name in daytime soap operas.

*****

It was not as though Oswald woke up that morning intending to start a fire in his French Literature class. But in retrospect, it seemed like the turning point in his life.

******

If Desiree had only realized that the cashier’s sunny disposition and friendly banter would have been the highlight of her day, she would have paid more attention. The entries in her gratitude journal were becoming more anemic.


********

Once again, Fred peered into the fridge and wondered, Did the woman pay no attention at all? Did she have “buy pickles” on a monthly grocery shopping list? Did she not realize that the pickles were building up in the space behind the leftovers? And didn’t she realize that with his Freudian training this act of passive hostility would take on inescapable meaning? Oh why couldn’t he have studied Jungian psychology instead? It seemed as though it would be so much easier to laugh off her idiosyncratic behaviors if only he’d chosen differently in grad school.

****

He watched the corn rows flash by, his eyes beginning to hurt from flicking his gaze down the rows. Even he did not know what he was looking for or why he thought he might find it in a corn field.

********

Gladys had the most powerful urge to prove her goodness that day. Still, she herself could not explain the chain of logic that translated that impulse into the tragic mishap that caused her to run over Mrs. Glumongo’s foot.

******

The field trip might have gone well if Todd and Ernesto had not somehow gotten their hands on the PCP. And who, really, would sell such a thing to 3rd graders?

*****

His research into longevity was inspired by his love for Bjork. The thought of her dying – of her growing old, even – was more than he could bear. The Noble Prize seemed almost incidental.

*******

As quickly and as inexplicably as the random thoughts – the fictional excerpts – had come to him, they stopped. He was left with half-written postings on the evolution of system thinking, portions of the inaugural address he would like to hear, an argument between Bernard and Maddie about family values, and a recipe that used a dishwasher and bullion cubes in the soap dispenser in lieu of a microwave oven.