POETRY: Eternal Universal Noise

Posted on February 4, 2004 by susan

Just a start — “Eternal Universal Noise”

Oh, but where was that—
and why?
I heard again
the booming sound
that men make when
they fall.

Rivers fork their course
with blood;
thick and muddled
joyless noise to
wash the foreign banks
unloosing screams of
agitation.

Shouting from the shores–
useless
to the cause at hand,
you know;
no one can stop
the flowing of
the river.

Neptune giggles with
delight
white foam, black silt
rising, swelling
babbling brooks
run to rivers.
He grins to hear
a boom.

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WRITING: The Cosmic Butterfly

Posted on February 4, 2004 by Susan

Just had this image, as I look within myself and see me as part of you all. A webring—not officially so titled, but looking like a giant glowing neon popcorn necklace in the blackness of the cosmos. We float gently on an invisible atmosphere of understanding, not touching, yet connected by silver thread wavelengths that just as well keep us from bumping into each other. We’re never still in the silence of space, but undulating out of sequence that still seems to bring us all in sync. Pulsing with life, bobbing up and down, never in danger of falling too far because the highs offset the lows of the chain.

No need to comment even—what’s kept us all together is the underlying understanding of having been there and knowing that your place in the span is vital. You all can bring me up, and you all can bring me down, but just a bit—a waver. The butterfly’s flapping wings, revised edition.

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REALITY?: Downer

Posted on February 4, 2004 by Susan

I’m not liking this day. There’s a pancake cloud sitting about five feet over my head, and I’m not one to get past the fourth step on a ladder. I’ll need some Willie, Waylon and Emmylou today, to help me find the words. But till then, this will have to do…

I feel the blues comin’ on.

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LITERATURE: Hurston’s “The Gilded Six Bits” Part II

Posted on February 3, 2004 by susan

Hurston’s exposition, in the first sentence, is one of setting, and symbolism and metaphor are subtley rampant within the story. “It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement that looked to the payroll of the G and G Fertilizer works for its support.” This draws quite a picture of a “neighborhood” obviously one in which people have their own homes, and all are gainfully employed. How simple a sentence, but used to describe the lifestyle of the characters and those around them.

The next two paragraphs indicate a sense of pride in ownership as everything is described as well taken care of: “mess of homey flowers…blooming cheerfully”, “Everything clean from the front gate to the privy house. Yard raked so that the strokes of the rake would make a pattern.” And, since Hurston has already established that this yard is like all the rest, we get a picture of all the houses on the street. But something else is happening here, an underlying theme that sets up the story: “The fence and house were whitewashed. The porch and steps scrubbed white.” Here we see that the “ideal” is related to “white” and “clean.” This will be repeated in Joe’s description of Slemmons’, perversely the Devil in this neighborhood Garden of Eden.

Continue reading →

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REALITY?: A Silver Lining Entry

Posted on February 3, 2004 by Susan

Lord knows I turn clouds inside-out to find the silver lining, but this one’s tough to get excited about. We just received notice that our house has increased 50% in evaluation by the town. This of course means that taxes will go up considerably, even if the mill rate drops a point or two.

The good side? Well, I guess if we’re forced to sell our home because we can’t pay the property taxes, we’ll get more for it.

Gee, I feel better already.

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LITERATURE & WRITING: Voice

Posted on February 3, 2004 by susan

We’ve had many long discussions here on the voice of an author and how it is indelibly marked within one’s writing style. While pure fiction does not relate personal episodes of the writer’s life, the experience must exist as a seed within his mind, and creative powers extend and enhance it to become a thing apart; a story loosely based upon a known fact or idea.

One of the problems with reading—and one of the elements that eventually develops out of interest and affinity—is the knowledge of the author’s personal history. Anthologies used as classroom text often give a short author bio, as well as essays upon the readings that include opinions on where the author is coming from. All well and good, but a story must first be read on its own. If it’s well-liked, others from the same author will undoubtedly be sought out. Eventually more about the author will be researched, and a more complete understanding and appreciation of his writings can be formed. The problem in reading the personal history of an author first is in coloring one’s vision of the story as it is being read.

A posting on Zora Neale Hurston’s story below tries to avoid the author—as much as possible since she is writing from a personal background knowledge of Southern life in the early part of the century. But Hurston’s work is beautifully simple in its telling of what her characters face, yet the characters are reflections of human nature common to all and thus easily relatable to by any reader. It’s obvious from the setting that Hurston has a more intimate knowledge of the era and the lifestyle of her characters because of the simple way she produces such powerful imagery, but then, she’s a tremendously creative and skilled author. I don’t need to know much more about Hurston to enjoy her work; but I’ve become intrigued enough by the style to want to know.

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LITERATURE: Hurston’s “The Gilded Six-Bits” Part I

Posted on February 3, 2004 by susan

It’s taken me forever to write an essay on this story by Zora Neale Hurston, because something about it bothered me—not bad-bothered, good-bothered, and it finally came to me late last night: The story is an updated version of Adam and Eve.

Technically, the story is a linear narrative, omniscient third person narration point of view, culturally based upon life for a young Negro couple in the setting of the 1930’s South, and the theme, to me, is temptation. Plot follows a believable sequence from the exposition of a happy newlywed couple, Missie May and Joe, hinting at wants and desires beyond the good things that they possess physically and within each other, to confronting opportunity of realization in the person of the wealthy Otis Slemmons, to the conflict of “biting into the apple,” the loss of paradise, and the continuation of their lives after the fall. Even the symbolic punishment of childbirth for the sin committed by Eve is carried through in the resolution of “The Gilded Six-Bits.”

The theme again, is one of temptation. As Adam and Eve were tempted by the apple—the only thing forbidden to them in paradise, Joe and Missie May are tempted by the gold jewelry Slemmons displays and the power it represents. As the title of the story indicates, the temptation is based on a belief that turns out to be bogus; the jewelry is not real gold, and the price Joe and Missie May pay to find this out causes their loss of “Paradise” – the innocence and happiness they took in what they had before envy and greed brought them down. Although they continued as man and wife, things could never be the same because Missie May had given in to temptation and exposed the weaker side of human nature. While Joe understands the lesson, and sees the weakness in himself as well and the joy of the relationship can be regained, it will never achieve the pure innocence of its original nature, tainted forever by the “original sin.”

NEXT: Symbolism and Metaphor

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TECHNOLOGY: Almost Done

Posted on February 2, 2004 by Susan

Hi There!

Now isn’t this better? Well, I like it so far, and Hunter Green’s my favorite color. I still have to tweak out some of the headline colors, but believe me, I’ve copied the CSS to a file so that I don’t screw everything up again.

I’ve been so busy today on painting the walls of Spinning, visiting my Dad, and running a few errands that I didn’t get a chance to visit anyone here in the blogging world nor answer some of the comments made to my postings. Let me try to answer some of them here.

Thanks to those of you who liked the photo, and believe it or not, it wasn’t a staged photo shoot. I was so intent on whatever I was doing at the computer that day that my husband felt a bit ignored, I guess. First he placed Pooh-Bear on the chair with me (this was before Edgar came into my life) and when that didn’t get my attention, he placed Pinky the Flamingo on my head and took a picture. J’s kinda goofy-sweet that way. I’m probably the only bride who has a photo standing next to her groom who is making devil’s horns with his fingers over her head.

Speaking of the stuffed dolls, I didn’t see the Super Bowl and there supposedly was an H&R Block commercial that featured Willie as a little stuffed toy. Please, if you ever hear of them being made available, you must tell me. I won’t tell Edgar. And hopefully, H&R Block won’t find out that I’m the one who’s been sending their pop-up ads back to them via e-mail.

Hope I didn’t make anyone feel inadequate with my note on how much I’ve written and posted. You just have to realize that I do have a lot of control over my time, and that I’ve given up breakfasts, lunches, TV, sleep, a college course, friends, family, a dustless home, and my self-respect to spend so much time sitting here. I tend to go overboard when I’m really into something.

Thanks also for offers to help on my technical difficulties. Your names have been copied and pasted and sent via e-mail to my “HELP” file. I promise not to let myself get too deep into messing things up before I call on you.

Maybe now I can get back to writing…

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TECHNOLOGY: Fun Idea!

Posted on February 2, 2004 by Susan

I’m sure you all forget my post about hiding text but making it visible when the cursor is moved over it. Well, if you don’t know how to do it, and you don’t feel like digging through my posts to find out, you’ll miss out on a “Secret Message” that I’m thinking of hiding somewhere on the site as a fun thing. But I’ll let you know when I put it up somewhere.

First I have to dig through all my posts to find out how to do it.

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TECHNOLOGY: Involvement

Posted on February 2, 2004 by Susan

I realize I haven’t posted anything yet today. I’ve done some interesting things that I could tell you about, but honestly, I’m really having a heckuva good time playing with colors on a testlog (I’m not dumb enough to try it on Spinning after yesterday’s fiasco). I did, however, first copy and paste the original stylesheet into an email to myself before I started messing with the code, printed it out and am using it as a guide as well as learning what the whole setup is which helps to understand it when you can see the whole thing (6 pages!) printed out.

Which brings up the question, I suppose, of why am I playing with computer data when I’m such a physical hard copy person? Too busy to analyze that one right now, so let’s just say that this little quirk is part of my charm.

I’ll be writing more tonight; if I can settle on a color scheme!

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TECHNOLOGY: Susie Fix!

Posted on February 1, 2004 by Susan

For those of you who missed it, it was quite an exciting afternoon on Spinning. Stuff was never in the same place twice, and I even reverted to the old template because the text on the one I’ve been using was kind of smooshed into the left sidebar along with everything else, and if it didn’t fit, well it was just cut in half.

I fixed it, and it took me a lot longer than if I had gotten onto the Typepad Forum Website and just asked, but you know, whenever I need help, it’s usually because I’ve done something really, really, dumb and so I hate to admit it.

I’m not nuts about the blue, but ever since I put that photo up on the right I’ve had to change color codes around to match better. I don’t have a good program for changing the color of the photo, I just worked with a scanner and Corel Photo House.

Yes, I will change it all. But believe me, it won’t be until I recover from this last exercise.

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TECHNOLOGY: Technical Difficulties

Posted on February 1, 2004 by Susan

Oh, hello.

I’m having some serious technical problems here, and you wouldn’t want to see what the site looks like after I played around a little, so I changed back to the old template so you can’t see what I did to it.

The basic content is all okay, except that some of the posts are now meaningless lies because they refer to the site before I screwed it up.

Sure wish I’d gotten further into the book on html.

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WRITING: Just as Prolific as Ever

Posted on February 1, 2004 by Susan

Today I started these entries in a new document in Word, as I’ve been doing now for the past couple months to separate the months’entries and make it easier to type right in without scrolling all the way to the bottom—last month, through 50 pages.

All told, I’ve written 472 posts, near 100,000 words, 187 pages single-spaced in Word. It’s only been four months and seems like a lot, but then, five years ago I wrote a novel in three months that was 190,000 words—about half of which need to be cut out. Someday I’ll pick it back up, read it, and most likely start it all over again from scratch because from what I remember of it, the writing style would make me cringe today. I may be just as prolific, but I’m sure not who I was five years ago.

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REALITY?: Hail February!

Posted on February 1, 2004 by Susan

I don’t know why. Just because it signals a new month of new discoveries, maybe? Or because it is one month closer to spring? I’m learning to look on the bright side of things, although that’s never been my way. I believe in the power of negativity, at least as far as emotional state of mind is concerned, because then when something good happens, it’s unexpected and the high is higher than if it were. And if things don’t pan out–if they go as expected–then it’s not such an earth-shattering event, and rarely leads to traumatic depression. This way, if I want to enjoy a little depression, I have some measure of control over it.

I gave my husband a haircut this morning; I’ve been his barber for fifteen years now, because the one he used to go to was entertaining and always knew the latest jokes, but couldn’t cut hair worth a damn. Then he tried someplace else, but it looked like the woman had just stuck a bowl on his head for scissor guidance. I do, I must say, an excellent job on his hair, and I really enjoy doing it. I also cut my dad’s, my sister’s and my own, and an occasional neighbor’s. It’s something we’ve learned from my Mom, who also did the family haircuts, and it just has become a family tradition. Doesn’t save a lot of money, but it does kind of serve as a bonding and private talk time.

Today I cut J’s hair while he sat in the kitchen. As soon as the weather warms, we take the barbershop outdoors. One of the neatest things I’ve seen is a robin’s nest in early May, lined with J’s hair. Those baby birds had the warmest and coziest nursery in the neighborhood.

See? I can find joy in simple things. Even with a negative attitude.

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WRITING: Revelation

Posted on January 31, 2004 by Susan

Bolt of lightening time! I got striketh by the apparent contradiction to my former beliefs (strong, firmly held ones, now laying shattered and messy on the rug) that experience more than practice equals progress. I used to say that I didn’t have to pick up a pencil for a while but when I did and proceeded to draw, the experience accumulated in my brain led to a better rendering because the knowledge and memory was there to be drawn upon when used. In other words, you’ll draw an ear much more realistically after seeing ten thousand of them, so life experience aids the process.

However, when I did sit down to draw the past few days, with a fairly clear image in my mind of what I wanted, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t draw eyes, the mouth, the nose–well, I always had problems with noses, but I couldn’t even draw a spider web. So while I still believe the unconscious experience will help, there’s something more important to it than that; and, it applies to writing because that’s proving out a different theory–it’s practice that’s equal or even more important!

As we live our daily lives, the creativity grows because of experience and discoveries. But the technical skills, the execution of the creativity requires practice to hone the skill. Makes sense; we go a little further each time, get a little better at it too.

So now, in order to refine my artistic skills, I must draw a picture of every nose I see. Not quite, but I think you know what I mean.

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