Musical Introduction brought to you by Swedes Singing Backward:
(which reminds me of my favorite home movie filmstrip as a child – “Susan eating cereal in fast backwards.” It was brilliant, and although I think the joke was about vomiting, it taught me to believe that time and space are flexible concepts.)
Well, enough ado about nothing frontways. Let’s get on with it, shall we?
This missive comes to you from Laura Hartmark, a.k.a Laura Fartmark, a.k.a The Laura Haura Horror Show a.k.a…
It goes without saying but I will say it: I was picked last for dodgeball all of my life. Of all the movie stars and porn stars on earth, I most closely resemble Deb from Napoleon Dynamite. Pippi Longstocking does my hair. I have more money than Scooby Doo.
I grew up wearing mauve corduroy culottes sewn by my mother with white knee socks and bandaids on my knees. I sported glasses, braces, violin case, and a backpack full of the entire contents of my locker. I was afraid my locker would get robbed during the night.
It’s not that I don’t have game. It’s that I have another game. Another game going on inside my head. My kindergarten teacher said I was a lovely child but needed to stop staring out the window and daydreaming.
My second grade chorus teacher stopped chorus rehearsal to tell me to keep my tongue in my mouth while staring at the ceiling instead of singing. She recommended me for special services. I don’t mean like an FBI early training program, I mean like for the classes that get you on the short bus.
Tonight going to my longtime friend’s longtime house in the mountains (which I have visited several times before), I remembered 10% of the way — the first 5% percent when I started out on my journey, and the last 5% when I finally got to her house. That’s called dysgeographica, a.k.a. “This girl can’t find her way out of a paper bag.”
If there’s a straight line anywhere, I can make it into a curlicue.
I saw so many little villages in Upstate New York and Massachussetts along the way, though. Each village magical, as if it had appeared out of nowhere. In fact, they appeared out of nowhere that I could remember. Oh, to think what I saw on Mulberry Street! A whole new world! All along the circular circuitous way! Way out! Far out!
My method of flirting, I am sorry to say consists of: “Would you like to partake in a discussion of radical feminist theory and also of the science fiction?” I stole that quote from a blogger in Australia because I actually couldn’t think of anything to say. I first thought that the Bridget Jones quote, “I love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you” was the best line. But then, I have been told, it isn’t. Not so much.
Realizing that I have no game, I attempt quick recovery by turning it backwards: “I hate you, I have always hated you, I will always hate you.” But by then my credibility is ruined.
So then I go silent.
I will mention here that often in gym class I got hit in the head by the ball.
Onwards! I digress.
When I speak to people good with sequencing things, they simply take whatever I have out of my hands and do it for me. The reason I am a writer is that the talking thing has not always worked out for me. I am always off-topic, frequently off-color, and forever off-kilter.
So as a sort of coping mechanism, I write. In writing I have time to consider what I am saying and edit appropriately.
My nose is cold. It always gets cold when I get tired. (yawn)
I recently had another writer stay at my house and she made forty seven calls, sent thirty eight emails and texted one hundred people in the time it took me to think about liquid smoke and google Hennessey Youngman. I made up those numbers. I do better with made-up numbers than with real numbers.
I make sense. I make sense tremble in my wake. I make sense backwards like a palindrome. Like anyone, you just have to take the time to get to know me.
Don’t judge a person or a book by its cover. Hey, look! A cliché!
You should especially not judge a person covered with double-sided tape by accident, which sometimes happens.
Let’s just unfurl the song and get out of here before I get hit by the ball.
