On the day of the
funeral, she sat beside
herself--and waited.
What you see above is the distillation of a short story that I wrote two years ago, entitled Tequila Mockingbird. I was in a bit of a haiku phase at that point, and this particular one struck me, in full, while I was otherwise preoccupied with eating my lunch and reading the daily news. The original version, was, if I recall, scribbled onto the margin of a page and then torn out and tucked into my wallet, where it lay, unbidden, for the remainder of the day.
Prior to the haiku, I had rewritten the story as a 10-page play called Leftovers, which opens with the main character, Dolores, bent over a broken plate full of turkey bits. The play is entirely devoid of dogs, and in fact, conveys an entirely different interpretation of death from that of the haiku, despite deriving its origins from the same source material, an excerpt of which you'll find below:
In the wake of death, every day is the same day. I don't remember who
said that, but we both know it to be true. In the morning you always
look through my belongings, and at night you stow them away--you don't
want anyone else to know that you still think it's your fault. But I
know. I see the way you spend your time, ruminating over your life,
brooding. The way you wash the dishes without thinking, dropping them
on the floor. Dammit girl, who the hell is going to pick up after you
now?
Both the play and the haiku are, in a sense, remixes. They are not merely permutations of a theme but evolutions in the story: they are distinct entities related to a single ancestor whose traits and qualities, while present, are not necessarily dominant. Although all three works deal in death and coping, they are each unique in approach and perspective.
It's often said, only half-jokingly, that artists are always reworking the same themes. In a way, that's true. What we express signifies our voice as much or more than our tone or style. The ingenuity comes in how we express those ideas. Artists are always remixing, partly because what they feel about the themes that matter to them changes over time. I've always had a contentious relationship with death, ever since my first godmother mysteriously disappeared, only to reemerge eight years later as a bygone victim of Lou Gherig's disease.
Unsurprisingly, my view on death is an admixture of ardor and hatred that usually manifests itself in dark or sardonic humor. That so many of my characters meet unusual fates should be expected; what many find so surprising are the number of characters whose passing is...beatific.
Perhaps I am simply trying to give such individuals a death that was denied them, or their cognates, in life.
Who knows? in the next version, I may have them eaten by wolverines.
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