Automatic Writing

A few years ago I attended a party with four guests. The host was a man I was to eventually come to detest (an occurrence as rare as Halley's Comet) whom I refer to as The Count, as in Dracula, and all the meanings that word can have -- aristocratic and blood-sucking and dressed out of Nazi Wear Daily, not to put too fine a point on it. His girlfriend was and I believe this is the clinical term, a total nut, but a beautiful one and beautiful women get a pass for that, thank God. A few drinks into what was to be a long night, she admitted that she'd lock herself in her room for days, doing automatic writing (a form of writing where you channel someone else without thought) and conjuring up Abraham Lincoln. Being the smartass I am, I wanted to ask what Abe was thinking these days, but I kept quiet as she said that her child, a seven-year old boy, worried about her during these trances and would bring her sandwiches. These are the kinds of incidents that keep the therapy industry thriving, I believe.

As the party wore on, we talked about all sorts of things, and I remembered the parties my parents used to throw in the seventies where people would try all sorts of things like seances and astral projection, a practice where you try to get your spirit to leave your body. As far as I could tell, nobody ever left their body, but as they say, it couldn't hurt to try, especially as the conversation trailed off and all the food was gone.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"I have often been driven to my knees by the conviction that there was no other place to go." Abraham Lincoln

Michelle's Mist
A mist is straight liquor poured over crushed ice.
Scotch, the better it is, the better it is.
Lime garnish

Benedictions and Maledictions

First published in Plainsongs:

Dream Cruise

Working on his antique car, it exploded,
and he lay suspended between life
and death for months until he woke to what
remained. Before he went deaf from the pain
medication, he’d heard a few people say,
Wouldn’t it have been better if . . . He could
finish the thought, but instead drifted off into
visions of cars stretched for miles, him behind
the wheel of his gleaming machine, the envy
of everyone sitting on the side of Woodward Avenue,
a glittering mirage that they could only glimpse
for a moment before he became indistinguishable
from all the lucky ones that were driving the same road.