#one day i'll get over the expression 'mutiny was here' but today is not that day

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

FEMSLASH FEBRUARY 2024 #11: In which Cameron invites Donna to visit

[CN: food/meal mentions] [CN: major character death reference/spoilers for s4 of Halt and Catch Fire] . .

Their new normal, through some miracle, had come to include Donna and Haley coming over to have dinner with Cameron and J0e on a regular basis. Cameron looked forward to it, and she also thought often about how it literally took Gordon dying for her and Donna to become friends again. She felt terribly guilty about this, and wished that she could apologize to Gordon for having taken them all for granted for so long. She also worried that it wouldn’t last, that these dinners would eventually taper off and then stop completely, and that Donna would drift out of her life. She didn’t know how to express this fear, or who to talk to about it.

In early August, J0e threw himself into learning how to use a grill, and then invited Haley and Donna over for grilled vegetables and steaks. They arrived at 7pm on the dot, as always, and Cameron went down to the front door to let them in. When she opened the door, there they both stood, drinks and dessert in hand. Haley was wearing her usual men’s section pants, undershirt, and patterned button down, and Donna, who seemed to be glowing, was wearing a dressy-looking wool knit tank top and linen shorts.

During their regular awkward-but-sincere greeting hug, Cameron felt Donna’s bicep. “Jesus, you look great,” she blurted out. “Did a new Jane Fonda aerobics tape come out or something?”

Donna chuckled, and Haley wryly said, “It’s probably all the swimming.”

“Oh,” Cameron said, feeling slightly embarrassed.

They all had their usual surreal-but-genuine dinner conversation as they ate. Updates on Comet, recent pop culture happenings, current events, the occasional Silicon Valley rumor, all spoken about as if things were normal, as if they didn’t all still feel Gordon’s absence keenly. They joked and they laughed and they didn’t say how strange it felt, they just kept at it as best they could. And after they finished the entree, Cameron, as always, got up to clear their plates, and said, ‘No, no, sit, I’ve got it’ when J0e offered to help, and then waited for Donna to come and join her in the kitchen while she pretended to wash the dishes.

Their kitchen conversations had been awkward at first, but had become more comfortable surprisingly quickly. Donna came into the kitchen that night and said, “So…how you doing?”

Cameron smiled reflexively as she pulled a bottle of seltzer out of the refrigerator. Closing the door behind her and turning back to Donna, she said, “Hanging in there….” She saw that Donna had her glass in her hand, and asked, “Refill?”

Donna handed the glass over. “If you would be so kind.”

Cameron took the cap off the seltzer, put it on the counter and then took Donna’s glass. “You look like you’re doing a lot better than just hanging in there.”

As Cameron poured the seltzer, Donna beamed. “Well, thank you. I try.”

Cameron offered the glass back to Donna. She opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated, and then after Donna took the glass back, she said, “You definitely, you know. You seem better than you did that day that you came out to my trailer.”

Donna had just sat down at the kitchen table. She sat up straight, suddenly, but didn’t say anything.

“I mean, I was worried,” Cameron added. She refilled her own glass, and then she screwed the cap back onto the seltzer bottle, and went back to the refrigerator, grateful for a reason to not look directly at Donna. “I wanted to make sure you were okay back then, but, I don’t know. I didn’t know if I should bother you.”

She lingered by the refrigerator, and then she said, “I’m sorry, really, about, you know, Rover. God, all of that seems like a different life, but also, it doesn’t, and either way, I shouldn’t have gotten involved —“

“It’s okay,” Donna smiled glumly.

“Really?” Cameron asked. She took a step toward the table.

“It was almost nice. I saw your code, and it was like working with you again.” She paused, and then admitted, “I never stopped missing that. I never stopped missing you.” She looked away, and then said, “I guess, I just didn’t realize how much I missed you until that day I had to go see you.”

Cameron frowned. It felt like there was something Donna wasn’t saying, was hiding. “It’s usually like that, right? It doesn’t really hit you, until it does.”

Donna’s shoulders sagged sadly. “I didn’t want that to be over. But, it is over,” she said. “And that’s okay.”

It didn’t look like it was okay with Donna. Cameron felt, oddly, as if she had had this conversation before, but didn’t know why, or how to articulate how it felt.

Donna picked up her glass and held it up. “Mutiny was here.”

Cameron raised her glass, and said it back, “Mutiny was here.”

Without breaking eye contact, they both drank. Afterwards, Donna gave her another one of those sad, resigned smiles.

It occurred to Cameron that she’d had a version of this conversation with J0e. Cameron wondered if this was mere coincidence.

She put her glass down on the kitchen table, and sat across from Donna. Desperate to change the subject, said, “I haven’t been out there in a while. At my trailer I mean. I would, but, J0e hates being out there, and, I don’t really feel like I can leave him.” She stopped short of asking, ‘What does it mean when you want to be with someone, but being with them feels like being in a trap?’

As if she could hear Cameron’s thoughts, Donna said, “Well, that’s what being in a relationship is like, sometimes. It won’t always be like that, though.”

Cameron felt like this general wisdom didn’t apply to her situation. “Yeah. I hope you’re right.”

Encouragingly, Donna said, “It will pass.” She took a sip of her seltzer, and then she said, “You’ll be able to go back out to your property and live as a recluse most of the time before you know it.”

Cameron leaned back in her chair, and relaxed slightly. “I am kind of a recluse, huh?”

“There are worse things,” Donna said.

Abruptly, without thinking it through, Cameron asked, “You wanna come visit me out there? When I’m able to live out at my property again?” Donna looked surprised. “No paperwork,” Cameron added quickly, “no work stuff at all. Just a social visit. We can sit out by my fire pit.”

Donna thought about it for a second, and then smiled. “Yeah, sure. Count me in.”

[suzannnemillerhistoryandresearch]

POEMS (and poetic writing) by SUZANNE MILLER

FAULT

My brain has a great fault

And one day half of it will fall away

The feeling half?

Meanwhile my baby reptile's brain

Wants to slither in some muck

And snap and passing things

When my fault finally tears away

I'll lose a continent

Most of what I know will sink

Treasures and all

My fault is not my fault

I had no hand in it

An act of God

One day a rumble

A boom and a slide

And contours will be changed

For another seven thousand years

UNTITLED

Now it's time to let go of my mother and my father

Now it's time to let go of the hurt of the poet

Now it's time to let go of the damaged child I've been

the broken bird I've been the woman in the window I've been the sphinx I've been with memory of stone

Now it's time to let go don't you know

Now it's time to let go of the last To the very last

***

***

If it is the poem I love

The poem on a napkin

The poem in a glass

Served up for the discouraged

Then the poem I love

Is my desire nearly realized

***

***

My grandmother was a divorced woman

She wore slacks and worked in a factory

As for as I know

There was nothing lyrical about her

UNTITLED

It occurred to me to eat the fleas

Off my socks

Which were full of the,

From the cats

It proved inefficient

But (illegible) your nerves at things

Only do it at your leisure

Is my advice

Don't get compulsive

Just eating any little spect

Eat with awareness

***

Am I your animal prey mate?

No, I am a solitary

Like the Nepal tiger

I need thousands of miles to roam

And that just for my body's food

Of the other

I need immensity

Mystery

You in your many differences

Need your explosions of pride

I in my womanly difference

Need to be alone with my stripes

UNTITLED

What a pair of pretty boys, Richard and Kelly

Stoned both they beat each other up

One especially cries for his father

Long gone

Swap meet lamps are smashed

A little blood here and there

They hurl their pain around the friday night

Then it gets about 4

They fall asleep in each other's arms

What a pair of pretty boys, Richard and Kelly ****

WENT TO THE DOCTOR TODAY

Patient: I have metaphysical pains, doctor

Doctor: Where are they?

Patient: Well, there're here:

in my abdomen and chest I can't see as often my hearing is erratic my heart beat is soundless my brain waves meaningless......

Doctor: One minute please! I've heard of symptoms like these.

Patient: Oh, and there are eruptions here and here oozes here and here oozes and secretions drips and stains disgust and fear losing my job what have I got?

Doctor: I'd say you've got mutiny all over your system

UNTITLED

There's no reason to do this

Nothing wrong with that

There's just no reason to do this

So you do it Yes you do

So I will not see the end of warriors

I hoped I would would would would ........

Mommy Daddy why are you throwing me away?

and away and away and away and again and again and

again

So much happens in a short time

It takes so much time to recall it

For example'..........

Why is almost everyone sick? (that is not feeling well?)

Why are so many people recovering

Walking outward walking out

Why are so many people recovering

And so many still sick? (that is not well?)

My family was composed of mostly cruel people, feelings were hard to express

They were hard on each other too often, one of them or some of them or all of them were so hard and sometimes cruel to someone or some few.....a curse of multiple of curses was laid upon them till each and everyone has paid their share. I've paid mine. I declare myself free of the curse. This day. This very day.

UNTITLED

All these carefully planted clues and hints but no solution in the end. The audience will not be given its tidy tie-up of the mystery + all loose ends, All shall be explained. He runs the risk of alienating his audiences or stimulating them. First of all because all the characters talk as if Mr. Herbert had been murdered the audience is pulled into believing he was. But he may have been thrown from his horse his head on the bank and fallen into the moat. In which case they are all innocent. But they have murder in their hearts and the men at best do murder Mr. Neville whom they fear will marry the widow. By their grouping together to club him to death they assert their tribal (aristocratic tribe) power and their gender domination. We are left feeling these men could have contrived the death of Mr. herbert - "A man without property is nothing". So Mr. Noyes is nothing, Mr. Talman is nothing and Mr. Neville is nothing the women aren't even men so they are doubly nothing!

UNTITLED

Tell a tale of your oddest love. The one that called forth from the demons of the air their bilest sarcasm. I will being unable to refrain from these submerged images glistening at the bottom of my pool. Lips + jewels suk in the pearly stones and those are cast in bronze. Imagine that I, the lover do not exist. Only the Beloved reigns here. There is no room for she will comprise a universe consisting solely of herself. Although one might say that I am sometimes the Beloved, refracted, reflected or reveried you could catch me at that. But that's another tale from the enchanted globe on my delicate shoulders. However, though I wrote she that too isn't always the case. She and He are interchangeable although difficult to tell apart except by certain outward emblems of adornment. For he doesn't wear her topaz ring as large as the devouring sun and she doesn't wear his shiny black tapered boots + black cossack coat as broad as the night. Though the lilys have tried very hard to imitate her fingers, to catch the graceful phoniness of those white tentacles that encompass the martini glass like the white sea foam holding the static drama of our (celliri?) cup, they always fail. But his hands are all logic, each finger signifies a fallacy exposed, or a truth asserted that comes streaming out of the upright thing like the smoke of incense, or the ray of light in a painted saint's vision, and I see the scrolls of words coming out into the air in something massive like Latin.

O, what sweeps my shores, a cast, green + shapeless power. It doesn't matter to me that no one liked the Beloved. They were envious of her limitless resources, her magical snobbery by that collapsed them into shadows. She had a classical inhumanity + the wealth of Valhalla. She like to poke me in the ribs with her umbrella - just for fun. But, perhaps that was he. That would be more likely, wouldn't it?

UNTITLED

But they cannot keep me. I see at night oceans full of (gorgeous?) prisoners like the opulent conditions of a harem. I am awed by the co-existence of things. Deserts appear before me and I understand that the infinite dimensions in the Sphinx's eye is born of these treeless expanses. Other lands unpeel beyond my wall, blue from the azure Eastern seas.

ARIADNE THE SHRINK

God knows she'd like to be something else

When you have a child to raise

No man to carve the bird

Owing your beauty

A comely setting

You sacrifice the stars

For the oozing psyche

With God having this miracle in mind

You flourish larger

Than the ordinary heart

It becomes you

To pour from your golden lap

To the copious bounty of your mind

Steady on you stand

HOLDing the almost invisible

Thread in your woman's hand

Leading the leaders

Out of the maze of the beast

God knows she'd like to be something else

ARIES

I am the Ram

Living in the highest places

He doesn't know it

But I see the hunter

Looking over my precipice

I feel his breathing

Why is he not content to be near me

He wants to do something

The silences I live in

Perhaps these expanses

Terrify him

If he would put down his weapon

He could touch me

And all power would be his

Poor hunter

Timid braggard

He'll end up with the barrel in his mouth.

EARTH

I am the Earth and I can rock you or keep you still

I am the Earth and I can scatter your toys in heaps

And break you in half

I am what can be wandered and used

But if you harm me in your grossness I will swallow you up

Work this out

Work this out now

For if you go too far in your greed

I will wake you up

Through sometimes it's better to put you to sleep

I am the Earth and I know what I'm doing

THE BABY ALONE IN THE RUINS

The thought too often came

If I only had a body of work

I could take out and point to

And say look

I suffered this I celebrated that

I honored life even when life

Didn't seem to want me

When it seemed life, like my mother Didn't want me

I took all of you to my unsucked breast

And said I will scream for you

I will be your outraged voice

I will hurl your fury at the wind

As it blows through my breastbone

My poems will listen to themselves

Since no one hears me

I am the baby alone in the ruins

And I will turn to my beloved and say

I can not really hear you

The volume of my fury is too high

11/20/85

UNTITLED

She loved day's end and the very word twilight and crepiscule, the promise of night with it's mighty veil. Were we not conceived, that heroic journey in the dark and then formed, in richest blackness? We have each of us been there, in place like no other. Black out space is all spangled and full of heavy visible bodies, but womb darkness is like the brain of a god.

UNTITLED

Before we two (there are just the two of us aren’t there?) begin the delightful game of story-telling, the author, we won’t pretend there isn’t one, wishes to intrude only to display a little background about the way the game is usually played.

Always before, time reaching back to Greece or beyond, the poet/hero is a young man. We are given his innocence, then his confrontations with life; mystery, lessons, shocks, and joys, to his final epiphany. These three stages are here, in this narrative, given to a girl, and by doing so the author is aware that there will be no reverberating mythology, no archetypal, age-hallowed, venerable and heart-nodding echo to give her added weight and creedence in the Collective Unconscious, whatever one may take that to be. The formidable task will be to make you believe that she existed, that she is possible, and that she may have lived before, though mute and blind, her tongue missing, her eyes forbidden to see what must not be seen.