Headache, backache, laptop day. Writing three or four things at once. Essays, outlines, stories. Serious, fun, fantasy. Reality sneaks into e-mails. Research, academic, shopping. Planning presentations, planning to leave the country. Planning writing. Saw the eagle and he taught me how to fly.
Wonder what tomorrow will be.
My neighbor has a very sophisticated home alarm system, ringing both into the security company as well as the police station. However, there are a few little quirks in the system, and I’m one of them.
As happened again, the alarm went off while she was away. The protocal is that the company calls the house first, then me, and within x amount of time, the police are on their way. My job, since I chose to accept it, is to go over and see if indeed it is a break-in, fire, etc., or a false alarm. If a false alarm, and if I can call them back in time, it’s cool. But other scenarios did and may happen. 1) They don’t reach me in the shop and watch as policecars and firetrucks whine into the driveway next door. 2) I don’t get inside the house to check and call them quick enough, but am clever enough to come back outside with my hands up to face the cops. 3) I go over and it’s not a false alarm after all, and am shot by a burglar.
Don’t you think that for all the money these systems cost, I wouldn’t be a necessary, unpaid and risk-central part of it?
Anticipation of a path in time and truly several. Sitting, working, waiting for forecasted snow. Super Doppler says mid afternoon; I check my daily calendar: 2:45 p.m. – Writers Festival meeting; 4:00 p.m. – Dinner; 6:30 p.m. – CW Class. This, of course, should all go well without forecasted snow.
Meantime, there are trips to banking, post officing and grocerying. Back home, measuring and ordering, homeworking and cooking. Timewise, spacewise, these are set and unaffected. Unless forecasted snow can pre-perform itself and show up hours early.
But late is what I’m wondering about; where will I be in Greenie on the road? Time, the proper accurate, on-the-dot-of time is what I need to know, and then I’ll figure out which path as opened up I’ll follow.
Aha, that’s what I was missing in my life; hip grinding, doing the bump with the stool, crashing into your world music.
Just blared the stereo up in the shop and danced. Felt good. Thought back to my wedding day and letting loose. Shocked and delighted my family who had never seen me through the high school gym dance years up through the end of my twenties. Vows and christian piety were ceremonies past, the prime rib left to bone, the cake divied up, and the band played on. Taught my twelve-year-old nephew how to dirty dance. Bit my lower lip in Derby cool and swirled across the floor like a white tornado. Polkas with one brother-in-law, down and dirty with the other. Mom was amazed at the swing of my bustle. My dad just grinned. My groom had only one dance with me, a slow one, before he was raced to the dentist and his bride unblushed.
What’s moving me today, sung by Willie, Ryan Adams, Hank Williams III and Keith Richards. (Lyrics by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards)
"Take me down little Susie, take me down
I know you think you’re the queen of the underground
You can send me dead flowers every morning
You can send me dead flowers by the U.S. mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won’t forget to put roses on your grave."
Transformation
I’ll gather up the stones you throw
that gather at my feet like eggs of unhatched days
and lay them one on one into a wall
delicate as the gauze of curtain yet together
sturdy as the roughedged country fieldstone.
For my world lies out in open fields
that roll up as well as down
and are spotted with blue chicory
and yellow Indian paintbrush
and you have only tossed
your red blood seeds of the lovely poppy here
to bloom as well.
It’s coming to a point where I must indeed pull my head out and look around, even to find a new hole.
Strange how intelligently we can decipher the signs, know the solution, yet fly away if we can, or like the proverbial ostrich, hide from it. I am a clinger to moods, comfort or discomfort. Know I must move on, yet bide my time as it flies forward at warp speed.
Life goes on, despite my best efforts to anchor it to port. Need a virtual kick to cut the rope and sail away, lest I drown as the tide rises against me.
I need someone to take away my laptop. Or rap my knuckles with a ruler. I write too much.
Oh boy! Oh joy! Morning rabbit tracks in the snow! They tell a story, just like words. A rabbit is living underneath my frameshop. This is good because I was afraid it was the skunk.
Avoiding as much as I can get away with the routine of day. The work and home chores sacrificed to a higher god of creativity. How can you feel poetic doing laundry? Although it is true, I must admit, that making meals at times can be a romance. Shrimp Scampi last night.
But Mrs. Cardinal is calling long and loud at the feeder this early morning. Chirping quite insistently from the snowball bush that overhangs it. The one we are supposed to cut in autumn but we leave untrimmed through winter as a cover, a haven for the little ones from the hawks.
I’m early in the frameshop, have with me history notes and lit to write about. But first and more important, I suppose, is to care about those who bring me pleasure, not let them down. Though clients bring me cash for what I shape together, it’s only money. I shall go and fill the feeder.
I know I’ve said this before–and look forward to saying it many more times, but my writing style in short story has changed dramatically. I’m not sure this is voice, or something that develops with the slow absorption of recognizing the qualities by reading the work of others and hence, spitting them out again in my own work, but little by little, there has been a definite change.
It’s also happening more quickly now. A story of two, three months ago is vastly different than the ones I’ve put out in the past couple weeks. They’re still not up there, but they’re getting closer to the quality I’m aiming for. My rambling is less, my imagery–just developed the capacity to understand it and incorporate it, this past week. Learning to see where the story really ended, although I still tend to go beyond that point, but have usually cut its tail off by the beginning of the second draft.
But there is a frenetic pace that pumps the new blood. As if something serious has been discovered and all the time and energy shifts to focus and bring back to life. Is the clock ticking? Is the sense of urgency something to be heeded?
In workshop the other night, someone mentioned dedicating my story to Sylvia Plath’s "The Mirror" which I realized that I had read a while back in Intro to Lit.
I didn’t quite remember it, just the feeling of it, and immediately was horrified to think that this piece had stuck in my brain and it was Ms. Plath, not myself, who had been writing my story.
Since checking it out, while the thought might have been there, the stories go off in two directions. I breathed a sigh of relief, but still, in the Catholic Central of my brain, there is some rumbling.
A sunny morning belies the foreshadow of the snow storm sailing into port, an ETA of sometime in the night. I see the forecast on the laptop where I’m sitting in the living room, and am interrupted by bird shadows on the sunny blinds. Some chirps and swoosh of landing wings.
Together, a male and female are building their nest in the bush beside the picture window.
Was feeling frustrated and weary the other day, and so discovered the cathartic aspects of video gaming. Yes, I wandered back into Silent Hill 2 and got myself killed a few times. Ah, that felt good.
Workshopping is, as I’ve said before, an invaluable aid to a writer. I’ve come out of these sessions with a new viewpoint of both my own writing and that of others. They catch what you’ve missed, they catch what you’ve tried to slide by them, and they offer suggestions that often are the answer that’s been elusive throughout the writing, although you’ve worked very hard to feel and find it.
There is an air of professionalism that you develop so that it’s easy to take the blows when they land. After all, this is your child they are discussing. After a while, even though it still may hurt a bit, you’ve developed a poker face and learn to listen very carefully to what is being said because the advice is usually key to the success of your story.
That professional countenance and receptivity extends to the good times as well. Last night, I can only only hope that cool prevailed, and that I wasn’t physically bouncing in my seat.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology