An Interlude in India

 I'll get back to the twelve steps soon, but this is where I put my travel notes, and i've just spent several days in the UK and India.  Travel journal being edited, but here are my "I'm home" thoughts.

I've actually been back since Saturday night, but the travel and time changes and all the things that go with coming back after two weeks abroad had all my time yesterday.  My sleep schedule will take a while to get readjusted... it was 11 and a half hours to adjust the time zones. I didn't reset my watch, just remembered that it was half an hour fast, and morning instead of night, etc.

No crises while I was gone. The dogs were clean and fluffy and happy to see us, and seem to be none the worse for wear. The fear is always that they will regress in behavior or get sick or ... all those things we doggy moms worry about.  But they seem to be just fine.

I've kept a running journal of the India trip, and will try to clean it up for posting this week.  Quick impressions for you... India is amazing. All the bad things you've ever seen are there, but if you think that is the gist of the country, you would be very wrong.  It is full of joy.  The people, from the lowliest beggars to the loftiest business people seem to have made peace with their lives and exude an essence of being thrilled to be alive.  Of all the things I saw and did, that is the take home message for me.

The country reminds me of what I think the US must have been like at the turn of the century.  The industrial revolution has sort of passed it by.. infrastructure, except in the biggest cities is non existent.  Their most abundant and greatest asset is their people, and the population continues to challenge well meaning politicians.  We talked to a banker at a dinner one night, and he said that 50% of the people are doing fine, but the other 50%, the very poor, the homeless who give India its reputation, is a problem no one can figure out. And they are trying, because these are not people who don't care.  It is very hard to change what has become an accepted way of life for so many though.

I recognize that I travel in a bubble. We stayed in the same hotel in Delhi every night, mostly because it was a known and India must be taken in small bites.  The first day we ventured out of Delhi, my husband cautioned me that I would now see the "real" India. Twelve hours later, I knew that if I had days like that at the first of the trip, I'd have been booking earlier flights home.

And that would have been a mistake, as I wouldn't have had the time to fall in love with the country. With its spirit, its problems, its pride.  It is humbling for me as a person, and like the best of travel, will make me appreciate all the more what there is at home, and what there is to do, everywhere.

I'm not ready to download all the details from my mind yet, and have quite a bit of work to catch up on, so I'll beg off the travelogue for now, and hopefully sprinkle experiences in as things get back to normal.

In the meantime, namaste.

Mangal Manjusha, Delhi, India, February 2013

12 steps for Writers

Some of the most successful programs for self improvement in the world are what is know as a twelve step program.  Modeled, I think, after the system used by Alcoholics Anonymous since its inception, the programs are outlines for healing.
So like any good netizen, I googled Twelve steps for Writers.  And yes, there are lots of articles out there. Mostly they appear to be comedic, tongue in cheek articles that are entertaining, but not really helpful. There were some that made sense for article writers, maybe even blog writers. But what we are dealing with here are writers of fiction.  Story telling.

So I thought I'd see if i could come up with twelve steps.  Maybe even helpful steps.  Rather than force myself to come up with all of them in one sitting, I'll do what will necessarily end up on the list, and take my time. In fact, let's make that number 1.

1. Take your time.  Hear the voices.

By this I mean that it is great to stream of consciousness write whatever comes to your head.  Most writers I know do ten minutes of free writing, or three pages or 750 words. Or they open a paper journal and go outside and just write the weather.  Remember the sunrises I used to write?  Like that.

All of those are just methods of clearing the cobwebs.  They let you move from the focus on life as you know it, from the kids and puppies and telephone and clock and all the other things that insist, demand your attention. Until you can give yourself a chance to put them aside, it is going to be tough for your characters to whisper to you what they want to do.  Impossible for your plot to show you the interlocking pieces.

And when the characters do speak, or the plot unfolds in your head, get it down on paper, but don't go running to Aunt Martha, your biggest fan just yet.  Let it sit. For hours, days, or in some cases, even years. Good writing doesn't expire.  Later on we'll have a step on revising, but for now, just take the time you need to go a little crazy and hear the voices.

(by the way, if you stumble across this blog and think, how sad, she's writing and no one is reading, don't worry.  I've been around a long time, and I'll get the hang of marketing some day.  I think that may be step 12.)

If you are reading and you have things you think should be included on this list, don't hesitate to comment or shoot me an email.  I think I'm all linked up now.

40 days...

Thanks to the folks at Inprint I'm back in regular writing workshops again.  I don't know that I learn a lot from workshops anymore... I suspect I have enough writing books and critical essays to have earned an MFA by now, but given the number of "drafts" that have taken up residence on my desk, I clearly need the discipline of deadlines. I don't know what possessed me to think that printing out drafts was a good idea, other than the ability to "not edit" while sitting in positions not conducive to a notebook computer, but these pages now haunt me every time I sit at my desk.

So my commitment to myself is to a) write new things for workshop, and b) FINISH something.  So not only have I signed up for another round of workshopping at Inprint, I've agreed to a less formal group with classmates from the last workshop.  That means I will have new eyes for some of the drafts and I will have deadlines to get them moving. Even if they move to the trash or back to a box in the desk that I'll save for the day I have a publisher begging me for anything...

What's that saying I like?  It costs nothing to dream, and everything not to.

Tomorrow I'm with the Old group, and am taking them a short flash piece I wrote in 2009 and a longer one I wrote way back in 2000.  Both of them inspired by the state of Michigan, one winter, one summer.  Since it has been almost fifteen years since I've lived in Michigan, it interests me that this is the work I feel safest with.  Now I've been in Texas longer than I was in Michigan, so it may be time to take some Texan sized risks.  The last two novels I've worked on have major Texas scenes... all i need to do is edit 300 pages before I can get back to them.

at 7.5 pages a day....that's only 40 days.  And nights.  We all know what can happen to the world in 40 days!

Resolved...

January is resolution time.  For writers, that means time to renew our commitment to our characters, our word count, or at least our butt in the chair time.  I'm  no different.  In fact, I made several resolutions, for the year, about writing.  One of them had to do with editing. One had to do with publishing. One even had to do with actually writing.  Here we are two thirds through January though, and the only one I am faithful to is the writing.  Sad to say, I write because I love to write. Not edit, not publish.  Unfortunately, I already have hard drives and baskets and folders full of "writing."  It's time to do something with it.

Challenges are helpful.  I am competitive, and I like winning, so I have accepted the challange from a writer friend to enter a non prize winning contest.  Why? The winner gets their work read on stage. Hmm.  Maybe being read is enough of an incentive to get me to polish up a few things.

Fear is also helpful.  I signed up for another workshop, and have to have stories or chapters reader ready at least two times in the next ten weeks.  That doesn't sound like much, but I've challenged myself to make it "new writing." That's right. no pulling a tried and true and already work-shopped story from the baskets. That's too easy. Those stories are old and the emotion that created them is long gone. I'm no longer attached to them, so when I read them cold, they don't elicit a need from me to fix them, while preserving the passion from which they were created.  Great for editing. Not so great for creating.  And I want the encouragement that comes from having someone read what I'm working on now, and want more.

What gets you to keep your resolutions?

On Democracy

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.  Winston Churchill

Over the years, I've been involved in many facets of Democracy.  I've run campaigns for local candidates, I've volunteered for national ones. I've given speeches, monitored voting counts, hung up posters.  As a political science major in college, I learned more about the process of elections than anyone should, and I admit it left me somewhat.. jaded.  Even back in the 70s the academics believed that politics were about one thing, and that was getting re elected.  I think now they'd agree it is about control of resources and power as well, which can't be accomplished without re election.
I also, as many of you know, participated in some experiments with democracy in the Virtual World of Second life.  One of those projects was a Euro style system, where parliamentarians were elected by factions.  The other was a direct democracy, one person, one vote on all issues. One thing stands out among all those systems, all that experience, both real and virtual that never ceases to amaze me, and that is the number of people who don't exercise their right to vote.

People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of the those who make themselves heard and who vote-- a very different thing. Walter H. Judd.

There are good reasons not to exercise the right to vote, but most of them have to do with someone doing something wrong. My youngest son was looking forward to voting in his first election this year.  He filled out the paperwork and sent it in with plenty of time to get an absentee ballot.  (He's registered at home, but is at college now, 5 hours away.)  He never received his ballot. That isn't right.  I'm still toying with flying him home after class so he can vote, but that's a bit drastic.  I'll watch the polls.. if it looks like it might make a difference, you bet I'll do it.   Because one thing is for sure: 
Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote. William E Simon.

If you have the right to vote in the election today, please exercise it.  I may not agree with your choices, but I believe completely in the collective choice of all our voices.   We just have to make ourselves heard.

November again.

The sun was relentless today, perhaps mocking the biorhythms that adapted to daylight savings time, and thrust itself into the world like a too long denied lover.  It lights the morning now, silver rays stabbing through the trees and prodding me. There are things I am supposed to do today.

It is November again, and once again I am writing new words. I am taking a break from the relentless editing that haunts me year after year because I write these fifty thousand word novels and then have to do something with them.  I love the new words.  I don’t even mind the editing.  I just have to convince myself that this is what I do now.  I’ve been flirting with it for a long time, looking through the side of my eyes, slipping behind my desk or just opening documents on my computer and typing, always something that can be stopped or interrupted. And that is why I’ve never finished anything, because I never say, this is my job. This is my work. 

For the first time in the 12 years I’ve been doing this casually, I feel that it is okay to say it. I don’t have to say, “and I write” as a tag line to whatever else I am doing.  I don’t have to stand in front of a group and say, my name is Georgiana and I’m addicted to words.  It is socially acceptable, sort of, and mentally necessary. 

I’m going to get out of my way now and go see where my story takes me.

Time for Change

For a long time now I've been thinking of upgrading this hidden blog to a full fledged real life writers website. I think I've hesitated because that means I'll actually have to be connected to it and responsible. No more family secrets exposed in the tiny wrinkles of the internet I've let in. No more pretense. No more flirting... well maybe a little. A writer's website should reflect the writer after all.

So what has changed? A couple of things. I'm no longer embarrassed by the things I've written. Part of that comes from getting older and that don't give a damn attitude that comes with age. Part of it comes from reading and reading and reading and realizing that my words may not be the best ever written, but they aren't the worst, at least in my opinion, either.

And I have time now. I've stopped taking new legal clients. I don't find the thrill in law I once did. If I could represent only writers and artists all the time, and could separate my right brain functions from my left long enough to stop sighing around them and actually give them the answers they need AND make it pay for the overhead, I would. But that doesn't seem likely, given that I don't live in New York or L.A.

So I'll keep doing my pro bono kind of work, and keep writing, and just own what I do.

I promise to make this prettier soon. I'm taking a workshop!

p.s. here is a duplicate site I'm experimenting with too. http://rosesrefuge.tumblr.com/

November

It's almost halfway through November, my tenth year of participating, at least on some level, in Nanowrimo. This is the first year, believe it or not, when I've actually had a day or two where i was ahead of the daily word count goal. I think it will stay that way from here on out, mostly because after ten years, it becomes an institution to be honored, and somewhat of a family tradition. Only my kids are participating this year, from the ten year accumulation of writing buddies. I have to wonder what all those other writers are doing these days. Maybe they published best sellers and are doing world wide book tours under their real names. Let's go with that.

At the risk of jinxing it, I'll confess that I'm well on the way to having a rewrite finished. By the end of 2011, it is my expectation to have work out there in Agent-ville. I don't feel nervous about that. I don't feel that if what I submit is not published, that I will quit. When I look through my comuter files, and my credenza files and the stacks of paper that keep me company in my office, I know that writing isn't optional for me. I'm okay with that too.

It is a muggy November morning, and I've got characters trapped in some space and time warp that none of us quite understand. That's the beauty of Nanowrimo. It lets you play.

another Oscar Wilde quote

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

- Oscar Wilde

Resurrection

In the process of preparing my old computer files for migration to the new laptop, i have come across a happy discovery of journal entries that were once posted elsewhere and which i thought were lost. I'm not so vain as to think anyone will want to go back and read my ancient musings, but i'm happy to have the writing just the same. I'll be plugging them in to their rightful chronologocial space as time permits.

I think I've once again talked myself out of signing up for an MFA program. I read a whole book comparing programs and found 4 that sounded promising. Then i went to the sites and looked at the specific curricula and realized that I don't want to spend a lot of time on critical reading of other people's work. I just want to write. So i will embark on a "semester" of self discipline, taking the guides from the programs i was interested in and self motivating, but not spending time socializing or getting to know the voices of other students. And if i don't do it... perhaps that is my answer. No point in letting others count on me to not do the work.

It is Texas Summer now, which is the equivalent of an Iowa Winter. Neither are times when there is much room for outdoor pursuits so it is the perfect time to read and write and work on the computer. I'm going to see if i can rebuild my website. How long have i been saying that?

Thoughts about process

Shall I just get it over with and admit to having slept too late to see sunrise today? I did open my eyes, and got up before the kid left for school, but it got light without me noticing. That's how it goes sometimes.

I got another thousand words on Invisible, the latest WIP today. This is the novel I worked on during November, for NANOWRIMO, and i was pleased to see that most of the writing actually wasn't so bad. I had stopped writing in November at the point in the story just before climax, and had begun thinking of it as "novelitus interruptus," fearful that I'd never actually get back to it to write the climax. Honestly, I didn't know what happened, and even though I'm a thousand words closer, I still don't.

The fun part though, is that this is a bit of a mystery story... no, it is all mystery I guess, though you, precious reader, have met both sides, you know the villain and what he's thinking, and you know the victims. You have been getting to know the protagonist, but she needs a little more work. She keeps surprising me, so I have to admit I don't know her fully yet either.

Today though, she figured out a piece of the puzzle that was missing, that if she ever goes down the stairs to dinner with her friends, where all the parties will be in the same room (well, they don't know the villain is "there") She might be able to talk about what she is thinking and the 4 adults involved will put it all together. Or at least have a good idea.

The writing process continues to fascinate me. Anyone who knows me personally will tell you how much I do not like horror, suspense or mystery. Yet I am drawn to write them over and over, always the escape from the literary prose that I *want* to write. I have learned though to just go with it. No sense trying to make myself drink from a dry well.

The frosting

Monday, January 3, 2011

The sunrise is so consistently beautiful at the beach that it is hard to find new words to describe it, like too much vacation, I just start to take it for granted. Today, the fire-y pink oozed over the horizon like melted frosting on a too-warm cake, and I remember, it is the last day of the holiday break, and time to throw out all the excess from the celebrations. Time to get back to work, but not quite yet, one more day of radiant warmth, of writing when I want, reading, napping and enjoying the lack of schedule.
And taking down the tree, washing clothes, organizing the week, organizing the work, organizing the travel schedule, and oh my god, look at my desk. When is the next day off?

jam and bread

Sunday, January 2, 2011

The sun rose quickly today, painting the horizon with a layer of strawberry foam, like what forms on the top of homemade jam, and layered like that, the deepest red next to the horizon, the lightest pink toward the sky. The sweetness didn't last long, as soon as the sun itself was over the horizon it was sharp and metallic, a knife cutting through the morning, silver white and intense, almost threatening. And I still feel soft and sleepy, so I guess that makes me the bread, because the heat of it is what made me get reluctantly out of bed. I'm going to have to remember to either close the blinds, or sleep facing the other way.

celebrate

Saturday, January 1, 2011

I watched the sun lift inch by inch above the sea this morning, and saw as the fog kissed the waves, rolling to shore wrapped in them, an infant swaddled, then gently released on the land as the waves unrolled. It would have felt spooky and mysterious, the way it did two nights ago when it was so dark I got claustrophobic under the open sky. But the sun was there to turn the cloud to glitter and the sensation of a joyous birth reflected off the sparks—it reminded me to celebrate all these perfect days of sensations.

Sunrises and such.

Happy New Year! I have decided to revive an old writing drill to kick start the new year and re connect with my most successful writing routine. For about 6 years at the beginning of the last decade, I made an effort to write every day from about 4:30 A.M. ending at sunrise every day, with a description of the sunrise and an attempt to tie that to something in my subconscious memory. Most of the people who read this blog have been part of this exercise. To keep the practice focused not on astrology but on writing, my "rule" is that I don't post the sunrise on the day I write it, giving myself a day to review and edit.

I wrote one this morning, and spent some time reviewing notes from 2002-2004 when I was contemplating a publishing project called Lake Shore Lit. The project died with my mother, my focus so distorted that I knew it couldn't be successful without concerted effort and concentration that I couldn't sustain. So I let it drop. Then epublishing hit and I see that had I taken on the project, the struggle would have been excessive.

Each time I get involved in something like that, I am reminded that it is the writing that matters, not the game of publication. But without publication, the writing is a silent scream, a masterpiece left in the closet.

It's time to be seen, and heard and read. Come along with me.

Focus

Anyone who knows me knows me to generally be the kind of person who gets hold of something and then chews it up until all the flavor is gone and its completely "handled." The problem is that i can't stay in any one subject area for very long without getting bored. So I'll hit writing hard for months at a time, then disappear from the writing world, reappearing at bar meetings and taking on pro bono clients and proving that yes, i still can change the world! This characteristic makes both law and fiction good options for me simply because the facts always change. Maybe not the rules or language or laws, but the facts always have new twists.

Overlap is hell though. If you are the "last client" on my desk before the creative writing monster grabs hold, I resist finishing your work, not because it is hard or I don't want to, it is just that my focus has already moved on.

This week is the last week of October, so NaNoWriMo starts Monday... which is a creative sprint for 50,000 new words of fiction. I really like Nano months, because they fit my personality.

But I really like the two clients on my desk, too, so discipline must set in and i must get their work sent off before the week ends. And hope they are satisfied and happy so when writing loses its tartness in a couple of months, I'll have work to come back to.

And what I have really lost my taste for is virtual worlds, so if that is where you've found me in the past, you might want to go to twitter or facebook or even... gasp... email! Who knows if that will light back up for me? Some things i guess we just outgrow.

I'm heading off on another trip this weekend, a little business, a little fun, in Sacramento. I don't think I've been to Sacramento before, other than a fly through, so I look forward to the adventure.

The next two months will rival my traditional summer travel spree though, with 4 more trips before the end of the year, and of course two major holidatys. Add that I want to have a birthday party for my spouse this year, and our traditional Christmas Eve Eve party, and then the events other people have, and you'll understand my nerves.

But in true form, I'll add to them all. I'll do Nanowrimo, and I've committed to finishing up the nagging files on my desk that I actually assumed would be finished this time last year.

And I still have three doctors to deal with… two are just doing those nasty tests people my age do, and one is a six month follow up from the tests I did last winter with the cardiologist. We are all determined, despite awful hereditary stuff, that I will not have cardiological issues! It really is all preventative at this point. Well, I never said I wasn't a control freak.

Today I took Scout on the "long" walk we do, about 4 miles I think. Last week when we tried it, she fell down in the street and had a seizure. It didn't last long, but signals a change in her disease… she's never had one when she was actually active before, they generally hit her in the middle of the night. She had two more short ones in the next 24 hour period, but has been fine since then. No issues today, and now she's resting. She will be ten years old in December… it makes me pay attention.

What I noticed on the way was that the trees are actually dropping some leaves this fall. Not beautiful, they mostly go from green to brown, but remind me of past vibrant falls, mostly the ones in Michigan. There used to be one maple by the Y where I played tennis a couple times a week that turned the most gorgeous shades of gold that I looked forward to it all year. It also signaled the end of nice weather, when that Maple's trees were gone, winter set in, and the long dark season is not part of living there that I miss.

It is hot this morning in Texas, but not by Texas standards. The pollen is debilitating, but the humidity has lifted, and for now, the trade off is acceptable. Just one more pill!

Full moon this week… I'll add photos of last month's harvest moon at the beach. Not great photography, but a great memory.

Make new friends, but keep the old…

That's the first line of a song we learned in Brownies, many years ago, and sang it in a round. The other line to the simple ditty: one is silver and the other gold.

I've not been a good friend over the years. In fact, my life is divided into segments in my mind when I was involved in one thing or another and it was always accompanied by one or two people who were special. Then I'd leave the project, leave the community and completely fall out of touch. For years, I tried to keep up with Holiday cards, or email, or an occasional phone call. Now, I find myself lurking on Facebook pages or twitter accounts, wanting to know what is going on with the people I have cared about, but apparently not enough to actually invest time in them.

So as summer turns to fall, I have decided to try some new things. One of those things will be the reconnection project. I don't anticipate that I will renew and revitalize all the relationships I've left behind, but I do think I can make some connections with the people, who like me, didn't mean to fall out of touch so much, but rather fell into the rhythm of the life they were living in each moment.

I don't have regrets about living. I just don't want people to feel forgotten.

I'll try to keep up a report.

Today, I wrote a letter to an old friend I used to write with, chat with daily. A good man, kind, compassionate, thoughtful. I know I won't ever fall back into the daily connection routine, but there is no reason to be miserly with my words. I know he will be happy to hear from me.

Some of the connections won't be happy, and I won't hear replies. I am promising myself not to take it personally. How many times have I done the same?

If our friends are the measure of our treasury, then I've accumulated a fortune. I just have to figure out now how much of it I've spent.

Travel Weary

As summer winds down, I can finally take a breath, and when I do it is the humity of Houston I breathe in, at last. Two weeks in Michigan, a week in California and what feels like every weekend since April in Galveston have taken a toll on my writing and my need for routine. (When the plane landed last night and they opened the door, the heat was so intense that it rushed to the back of the plane like a fireball, or a puppy who couldn't wait to leap on us to welcome us home.)

But why, when I crave routine so much, do I find it so boring?!

Up at dawn this morning, yoga and journalling complete, the choices now are the book, the files, the ever present files or the gym. I've convinced myself that competition is good for me, so I'll enter some fiction contests again, and am picking out 5k's to train for. I know, 5k isn't much of a goal, but it is a good start, and manageable, the way a short story can be when compared to a novel.

Or there is coffee. None in the house, and the call of starbucks is getting stronger each moment...

And having fallen in love with both California and Michigan again, it is important that I distract myself with something, or the longing will, as falling in love has taught me over and over, turn to depression, then an attempt to fix it, and ultimately, loss. I'm finished with all that for now.

Love Beads

Grandma wore bright plastic to town on Friday nights,
Poppy beads, she called them
I could pull them apart with little fingers,
Snap them in, and out, with ease.
Unbreakable, those beads.

Later I passed hippie beads from neck to neck
as we chanted peace and love to one another,
and hung them in streams in doorways,
clicking open as we walked through
and showered back down.

Now I wear two bracelets.
On one wrist, hard pink plastic,
held together with elastic
etched with symbols of romance.
It stretches and adapts.

And on the other, my husband's pearls.
Silk thread weaves through the golden clasp
Elegant against the creamy luster
To work, it must turn all the way around
before it slips in smoothly with a click,

The silk knots around each pearl
Have grown old and I'm not careful.
It weakens with age and breaks.
The pearls drop, bounce and scatter.

Together we look for them, and count,
some have rolled beneath the sofa.
Some clear across the room.
We retrieve what we can find.
Don't worry, he tells me.
They can be restrung.

Lilacs

Lilacs

Their scent perfumes my memory,
Purple, pink and white,
Full beards of the branches
Droop heavy

They bloom only a week or two
So abundant
Armfuls cut from the stems
Leave plenty

I crush the star shaped blossoms
Like damp tears against my cheek
They leave me longing
For home.

poem "what love is"

Come dance with me on cloudspray
Splash froth at my ankles
Let your bare feet sink into the mist,
Soaking in the steam of passion
And leave the world below behind

Come test this featherbed,
pillowed against the azure dawn
Let's taste the nectar, ignite the lightning,
and dissolve into each other, floating,
so light that we become the sky,

Then tie a silken rope swing to the stars;
I'll push you first, then you push me,
with each thrust flying higher,
We will wonder at the colors
that tint the clouds at sunrise,
but close our blinds at night.

Poem in your pocket day

I am not a poet, though I've always wished I was. This month, being poetry month, I've actually written a few. But they tell me today is Poem in your Pocket day. And that means print one and carry it with you.

I know Keats is a little overdone, and love poems may seem trite. But this is the one I thought of first when I heard about PIYP day, and so I felt the need to honor that.

When You are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

William Butler Yeats

and a draft.

Lilacs
Their scent perfumes my memory,
Purple, pink and white,
Full beards of the branches
Droop heavy

They bloom only a week or two
So abundant
Armfuls cut from the stems
Leave plenty

I crush the star shaped blossoms
Like damp tears against my cheek
They leave me longing
For home.

a quote from my jr. league days

"Never spend your life's work doing something that ultimately does not count."

Tomorrow,I will remember this.

just because i want this poem in my blog

Cuando yo muera quiero tus manos en mis ojos;

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes;
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me once more:
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears to still hear the wind, I want you
to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else
to continue to flourish full-flowered:

so that you can reach everything my love directs you to,
so that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.

Pablo Neruda

Dolphin's Delight?

or, what would you name a house on the island?

Finally signed a contract on the beach house to be. It has been a long road, and tested all my common business sense. This was the 5th property we've bid on since January, and were within 20K of the last one on Wednesday. We were set to increase our offer to a level that *should* have been accepted, but for some reason, i just couldn't get excited, and asked the realtor to show me what else there was. She had only two properties we'd not seen, one that literally came on the market Thursday morning, one over the weekend.

Maybe it was instinct, but I asked to see them. The new listing was first, and though out of the price range we were hoping to stay in, it was perfect. Not really perfect.. perfect for us. The kicker was the third story office with windows all around, and a view so clear we can see the island curve. Add to that the building specs which met Florida code, (much better than Texas) and the price per square foot at nearly $40 below the least expensive one we found...

Spouse was out of the country, but flew in exhausted Friday morning. The day was beautiful though and we drove with the top down. As we turned west at the seawall and followed the Gulf to the realtor's office, we watched the water. Out a few hundred feet from shore, a pod of dolphins frolicked in the waves. I've seen dolphins a lot, but only a few times from the land. They always make me feel happy.

We were at the house by 9:30, and made a full price offer by 11. He says it was the stars in my eyes, but I know he loves it too. Now to sweet talk the loan officer...

Closing April 26. ;)

profile subjectes

Read some advice about Twitter tonight that suggests that one should be focused and actually post about the things she is focused on. But I'm a scavenger, always scouring others words for the one that makes me stop and reflect. Wouldn't it be funny to be always retweeting someone's quips because I like the words? Embarrassing.

I got to listen to Mary Karr read from Lit last week. I enjoyed her presentation a lot... and part of it was her Texan-isms, about which I wrote when I first moved to Texas... more of the plethora of essays and stories that are in my personal slush pile, unpublished and un posted with yet another breakdown of websites. The one she added to my collection of colorful phrases: "Signing doctor to your signature when you can't write prescriptions is like being a General in the Salvation Army." She recommended that writers watch for metaphor like this in everyday speech, and with northern jealousy, I realized how much more color there is in the south, in so many respects.

My profile says, mom, lawyer, writer and virtual world personality. See above re expansion on writing thoughts.

Law, well. I still believe that my clients confidences include not telling anyone they have a lawyer, especially if it's me. Not getting much from me on this, perhaps I should take that reference down. But .. I work alone most of the time, and most of the time I don't even come across lawyers in opposition. But I LIKE lawyers. Might come from having gone to law school when the men exponentially outnumbered the women... but I still find lawyers to be great friends. So I'll leave it in. And break rules. Heh.

I'm debating my scavenger role in life as well, as we contemplate buying a condo on the beach in Galveston. I can't decide if it is a negative, particularly in light of the tragedy in Haiti... doesn't it make more sense to send more aid? Or positive... Galveston needs investments to recover.

But this is a longtime dream, to fight saltwater spray on windows that I can open and leave that way if i choose. Couple the sad real estate market with the last hurricane and you find a depressed buyers market for a resource that there will not be more of. We would keep it for the time when we are ready to sever ties with suburban real estate, and not yet ready to sever ties with the children we've launched into this part of the world.

And I've got a terrible case of land lust. I've quenched it the last couple of years with virtual land in Second Life, but this is not a lust that knows satisfaction.

harbored

All day I work at my computer or sometimes other places in my house and mentally collect bits of things I think might be something I could write about. And then I don't write until so very late that remembering anything is hard. Today would have been the same, but I only slept about three hours last night and ended up falling asleep for a while and now my state of consciousness is a bit upset. So here I am.

I remember I wanted to write about Grace Hopper. You may not know who Grace Hopper is, in the front of your brain, but if I tell you it is better to ask forgiveness than permission, you will know who she is. Or debugging computers. Or my favorite of late,"a ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what a ship is built for."

Sometimes I feel like a ship. Or the harbor. I think if I wanted to focus on that phrase I could write a whole essay about being a harbor. This week for example, my husband is in Cuba. Nice, yes. And I'm home. Agoraphobic a little bit, and sort of challenging myself to see if I can get through the week without leaving the house. Hunker down with my writing, my work, and let my sons run what errands need to be run.... there is a kind of magnetism to the idea. Showering and bras, optional. (Not really, sadly, both would drive me insane to go without.)

But my daughter wants to meet up and write on Wednesday. I've signed up for a law class on Friday. And the week I had laid out in my head to be so productive and ... quiet... seems to be slipping away.

But it's only a week. I'm reading Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked, and the characters in the book are faced with 15 or 20 years of life which they feel has slipped away from them. I am glad I don't feel like them, but then I'm only half way through the book, so I don't know if I will keep that sentiment. Here is a description I bookmarked, thinking when I did so that I wanted to collect quotes describing the sea. It is delightful to find one that is original: "The sea was hurling itself at the beach over and over again, like a nasty and particularly stupid pit bull..." Charming, yes?

My son is upstairs playing a mournful melody on his guitar. He learned to play classical guitar in college... something I encouraged right along with bribing him to take literature courses. (I do believe in Liberal Arts.) We've bought so many musical instruments for the four of them over the years, it is nice to hear one. Though the melody makes me feel sad... until his phone rings and I hear him laughing.

Laughter of my children is like a buoy in the harbor.

Farewell Geocities and Ode to the Corporate Wife.

It was ten years ago that I realized that "real" writers had websites, and I knew nothing about them. So I took a class, learned basic html, volunteered to edit for three different ezines, one of which I actually learned from, (and is still in existence) and decided to put my own writing site together. I was deep into writing sunrises then... I think there are 6 years of them in the files and I was committed to posting them. I never posted them the day I wrote them though. I wrote one day, then came back the next day and edited. Between times I'd write the journal entry or essay or story that the sunrise seemed to suggest, so the postings were always a day behind, a little cleaner and a little less random. At least in my mind.

The site was named the same as this blog, and lived on Geocities. Geocities, as a free site anyway, died this week. I pulled all the pages.. now I have two complete folders of web pages, one for my law site, one for the writing, that I really should take the time to upload. But i'm too busy playing around with twitter, facebook, plurk, and these new blogs to actually do something that I SHOULD be doing. I have finally requested the release of the domain name from Martindale for my legal site though, so ... progress?

Speaking of Loose Ends....A friend, in chatting innocently the other day, touched a nerve that I didn't realize was still raw. I hope I didn't let on how unsettled it made me when he referred to my Corporate Wife status. I was a little surprised he honed in on that... I seem to spend less time on that particular aspect of my life now than I ever have. I had also forgotten about the book I was going to write ten years ago, parodying the whole lifestyle. Can't decide if i just got lazy, busy, or swallowed the kool aid.

Determined to find out why that phrase unsettled me in the circumstance, particularly because I sprinkle it into my own conversations with some frequency, I did what any self respecting lazy over achiever does. I googled "corporate wife."

As I suspected, the literature on the topic is dated. The articles I found, mostly dealing with the uber rich breed, didn't reach past 2003, with the most in depth one done in 2000.

Hmm, I mused with myself... I wonder if my research from back then is still on my computer?

Hurray for Spotlight, and Mac :) Another seach of my hard drive and I found that "corporate wife" has been consistently in my subconscious, making its way into two nearly complete short stories, both of which I like (though one of which I clearly was having hormonal spikes as it turned the corner from emotional to erotic in ten pages or less!), one "novelette" and is a recurring theme for the women in my almost finished novel. When I planned the original book, I had NOT intended to include the usual crap... ."have your husband approve what you wear" (really?) but instead some of the more human aspects, which ...well... are funny. Or were to me, in my disrespectful attitude toward everything remotely discriminatory.

Has my attitude hurt my spouses career? Looking at where he is and where he came from, I am pretty sure the answer to that is no. I'm also pretty sure I'm well known among the industry as being outspoken (rude? nah. Sassy, maybe.) and more fun to sit by at a dinner than the usual pretty wife. And I'm lucky, in that we didn't either one ever set out on this road, and have written our own rules along the way. We get by with a healthy dose of "whatever works" tempered by "say yes whenever you can."

And I started thinking about the friend who jarred this memory, and about how he is doing a bit of the gig himself, and about my daughters, and think maybe I should update those files, send out those books, and write one more. I have research from ten years ago... how much fun this will be to go back to my chosen interview candidates and update.

If you think you have something to add... you know how to reach me.

Gaps

"Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself. "

From The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai

i should blame stewart

But I suppose that wouldn't do. He did after all, post a pretty sunrise/sunset before he closed me out of his blog. tsk tsk.

But one of my favorite quotes... okay, one of the thosand quotes i have stuck here and there on postit notes, stickies in mac vernacular, is this one:

When you blame others, you give up your power to change. -Douglas Noel Adams
So Stewart is off the hook, as are the rest of the writing group, and the pompous neighbor who had the audacity to die without letting me know.... imagine that! And so are my brothers and my sister and the cyberlaw boys and and and.

Writing became another chore I was fitting in, and the minute it became something to cross off a list was the minute it no longer felt like art, but craft. Now i'm sure there are elements in all writing of both, but the important point is what it FELT like. And when i no longer felt that i was creating, it became just another boring exercise.

So why now?

Because i find myself speaking in poetic quotes, things i've heard and said aloud so i would remember them. I am meeting new people behind the veil of sleep, characters fully considered, fully alive, tempting me like a man who wants me, but doesn't want me to know it.Poems in magazines in drs' offices, repeating like new budding branches. I am again drifting to literary fiction, putting aside the non fiction, the popular novels, even the classics that have kept my attention for the last year. Clean, clear writing, mesmerizing characters, plot i have to think to follow.

it's what i want to be when i grow up.

Do you think it is time yet?

poor brad

Where did you go, the person in my mind, the one who can muster up anything from a murder to an orgasm and let me feel the terror, taste the blood, come screaming down the other side? Where buried in the chasms… that's the word I misspelled to lose the Indiana State Spelling Bee…. where are you hiding? Did you take all the words and leave? Did you gather my friends one by one and form a perfect V in the sky as you flew south?

Wait. I am south. Did you go back home?

I dreamed I had sex with Brad Pitt last night. Very bad sex. His penis was tiny, like that of an anatomically correct boy doll, and I think he was as disappointed in me as I was him. After, he didn't run or act shallow, I didn't cover my naked skin, I guess we figured the jig was up (is that the phrase? Why does it sound awkward and what does it mean? I could google it, but if I did I'd be swallowed by the internet and never come back again, so the jig will simply have to be up.) We talked about his condo resort development, named in my dream head Redfield, which I know is a photoshop plug in…. and as I looked out at the mountains from the old farm house (the resort was all booked up of course, I asked him, which one do you own, and he said, with awe in his own voice, all of it. I like thinking of famous rich confident people in terms of their most base parts...like Brad as a young boy who just can't quite believe he is where he is. (Disclaimer, I don't know Brad Pitt, only like about half his movies and really never fantasize about movie stars… I think this dream had more to do with things not being as they appear, don't you?)(Unless you really want to believe that rich famous beautiful men have tiny cocks that look like plastic)

Today, I will take pictures of jasmine, magnolia and azaleas. I'm working on a project and I want all the flowers of the tropics in my files to finish it.

Today I will buy tickets to Madrid. I am meeting my daughter there in April. We will fly into Madrid, then train to Cordoba, and then see Granada, Seville and the coast. I am thinking I will rent a car and we will drive to Lisbon then. Ten days. I do not think I will take my computer. I want to travel light.

The first trip time I took my daughters to Europe was the summer we moved from Michigan to Iowa, the summer I actually started writing, really. It had been a whirlwind career year for my spouse, and a good one for me as well… I broke all my personal income records that year. But we'd been on several Corporate trips, all over the world. For this trip, I sent my boys, 4 and 9, to stay with my mother, and packed the girls up with me (middle school and high school).

It was a trip with all sorts of typical family mishaps… passports late in arriving, missed connections, lost luggage, etc, but by the time we had toured Paris and headed to Toulouse for my spouses meeting, we were relaxed. While he did business, we chose to go to the coast… I was given a rental car. I was actually quite proud of being able to drive in France, and the girls were thrilled with the independence the car gave us. We were even doing well with the foreign road signs, until we got to the tollbooth. The fare was something like ten francs (yes. Well before Euros) and I tried to give the toll taker the coin in my bag with the 10 on it

She refused it. I looked again, yes, it said 10, as did her sign, and tried again. She blew her bangs up in the disgusted way the French have and huffed "not a franc not a franc" over and over. My alert daughter finally figured out that I was trying to pay in Mexican Pesos.

We all love that story, but recognize it has limited appeal and sounds very snobby. So we only tell it in the family. If you are reading this now, does it make you family?

So yes, now it's Euros, and I think I can drive. But do I want to? I do love trains. We'll see. First I have to book the flight.

And before I can go, spring break will be here. I believe I am the only person in the world who does not like all the holidays. I miss routine, I miss work.

Wow, bad sex with Brad, and negative on holidays. I think my inner psyche is shouting "not a franc."

on living and dying fast

i went as soon as my husband was home from his travels, and could watch our son. I was lucky, i got to spend a good day with my sister, where she was awake, mostly, and alert, and she knew me.

I didn't know what to do. Terminal illness, when treatment has concluded, doesn't take a lot of time. My other sister, my one remaining sister, and my stepfather had the routine perfected. And the pride of the patient, which always came between us, wouldn't allow me a lot of hands on time.

But i couldn't just walk away, and just as i knew in my guts on Friday it was time to get up there, i woke up Saturday morning knowing exactly what i had to do. It was like i was channeling my mother. They needed someone to cook.

To be fair, my oldest sister was the best cook, the one who had the most years and most attention from mom. I was always destined for a career, so it surprises me still when i know how to do things without looking up directions. Osmosis.

It is also Thanksgiving week. Being in my mother's house, despite the circumstances, meant it was wrong not to have things around for guests to nibble on, for distraught family members to take nourishment from.

So I went to the grocery store, and i cooked. I bought thigns for sandwiches, soup, casseroles, and pie Yes. Pie.

I believe that those things, the soup and the pie, chocolate, made from scratch, were the last things on this earth my sister tasted.

My flight home took six hours. When i left her this morning, she was resting peacefully, breathing well, but sound asleep. I stroked her hair and said, I'll see you later.

I knew as i said the words, the same ones i said to my mother the last time i saw her, that i wouldn't.


She lived fast. She didn't finish high school, though she got a GED later. She married 4 times, though twice to the same man. She had three children. She leaves a grandson.

She started smoking cigarrettes across the street from the jr high when she was 12, because it was cool, and because her sister who was such a "good girl" wouldn't like it.

She had a bad cough that she saw the doctor for in June. By then the cancer was stage 4.

She was 48 years old.

She died before my plane landed in Houston.

She once said, when asked about current events, that she didn't care about that stuff. If it didn't touch her world directly, then it didn't really matter. Life is relative, you know.

I thought that way about her for many years. But I was wrong.

i was wrong.

Rest in peace, little sister.

Still trying

So i've been telling the folks at Ipowerweb, who host my website, that it hasn't been working, since March. Actually, as I review past entries, i see it's been since may. Still, i can't edit, can't upload and even though i think that i don't really care if anyone reads these little blurbs, it seems i do... if i didn't care, i'd continue to write entries and save to draft.

I'd switch to blogger save, but then anyone who clicked my domain link would not see. So frustrating. My annual fee is up for renewal in a few days.. i suppose that means they will handle it.

or not.

anyone know a good hosting service?

just more late night words

Busy week, full and stressful, just the way i like them. But I've neglected the non profit, must get the 501 c3 app filed soon, and the novel lies in dusty stacks all around the office.

I got a copy of the latest anthology in which my work appears in the mail, and even my critical editor child gave the book and the contents good marks. And i got paid.. which makes it even more of a banner week. I know, a good promoter would link her to the amazon site to order, would shamelessly pim the project, but i'm not doing that here. Maybe on the website if i ever get the isp to respond to the publishing issues. The contract is up the end of this month, so if nothing else, i'll switch then. There are just sooo many files.

A few months ago i created another blog for my second life character. i will link you here to it, but not it to you... too much crossover I think. But so far in my almost one year of SL, I've gone through three careers. And I always come back to words for solace.

Depression has been at clinical levels for about a month now. I've promised myself that if i can't break the patterns this week, i'll go in for the medication. Or take the one that i've left sealed in my bathroom vanity since 2004.

but that's another story, and these posts aren't showing up, so i'll leave this to edit another day.

yet another test

trying again... going to switch isp's

august

Reading my friend Fred always makes me want to write as well as he does. He's just journaling. I remember just journaling, but for almost 8 months now, I've abstained. In some ways, it got to feeling like those Christmas letters I quite sending about five years ago… like what I was doing was putting my life out there like I was bragging or something. Not sure why, especially when most of the people who read me lead far more interesting lives, but I guess it's the way I was brought up. You share bad things; you keep good things quiet so that the people around you who aren't feeling so good don't feel worse. It was an upbringing where the negative was always stressed, the positive taken in stride. I don't much care for that.

Right now I am sitting outside the cottage in Michigan, the view of the blue lake available over my shoulder, across the empty lot and through some trees. Not the perfect view of a bluff side cottage, but the safe view of one far enough back for mortgages. When we bought the place, banks wouldn't lend lakeside. The risk of their collateral ending up as trinkets on the beach was just too high.

The air is warm with an edge of crisp morning chill. The newscasters say it is the hottest week in Michigan so far this year. Coming from the sauna of Texas, I feel like I am breathing for the first time in a year. Maybe that is why I am finally writing.

I have bare feet. Grains of sand cling to them and make me a bit uncomfortable, like I am dirty. I am not. Except for the grains of sand.

There is a different value system at a lake cottage in Michigan and a suburb in Houston. Grains of sand on bare feet are valued here, but there, I feel under dressed if my toes aren't perfectly polished and encased in new or nearly new shoes. Part of it is beach mentality I know. Part of it is just not caring about details. Or maybe recognizing which details matter. I don't know.

Today is my last day here this year. I think that has more to do with the writing today than anything else. It took eight months away, and two weeks at the lake to want to do this, and I am afraid the next break will not have an ending.

And I ask myself, so what?

i'm having issues with uploading photos, and am now wondering if words are a problem too. If this works, i'll be back

playing with words

Recently I had a conversation with a songwriter that reminded me how easy it is to play with words and how much fun it can be. I think that many of us who consider ourselves "writers" fall into a trap of taking ourselves too seriously, trying to hard to be good and forgetting the value of telling a story, or expressing an emotion just the way we feel it.

Last week, for example, I had a few "moments" where I found myself saying, this, this is the essence of what I want to say, just remember this scene, write it down, feel it. Oh so artistic! But when I finally got back to my desk, booted up Word, (so dusty from non use!) I could only remember the place, and not the sensations. So much for writing when I get to it.

Today begins the challenge of "summer." The last day of school marks freedom for my son, but increased pressure on making time for work and writing for me. It has been this way every year since I moved my office home. Every summer I think about moving back out to the commercial district, but then I go to a meeting or conference and remember that I was at the beginning of a trend, not a follower, and that it is easier now than ever to work from a home office.

I promised myself that I would write something before my 10 o clock meeting, and it's time to leave for that now. This will place hold for that "moments" thoughts I had, and will make me get back to them. I'm going to seriously attempt daily blogging for a while, see if I can get back into a mode of discipline.

marching on

It is closer to morning on Wednesday than night on Tuesday, but I can't sleep. If my contacts didn't hurt so much, or my glasses would stay together, I'd just stay up tonight. Neither of those are the case.

I've been nagged. I have been on hiatus. hell no, i've been lazy. Playing games, playing house, playing play. Yet none of it makes me feel as though there is anything to show for the days that have passed, and i don't even have littel blog entries that i can point to for explanation. A kind of depression, a kind of head in the sand let it all go by kind of season. I've let myself detach in a way that is too much like what i always never wanted to be. The only connection to the person capable of that judment, that "what i always never wanted to be ness" comes when i can spit the words out of my way and just write.

I had a moment last week. I had a moment when the novel came alive and all the critiques i'd heard finally came together. I know now how to get all the characters in the same room together, which is the goal, they tell me, of a complex multi plotted novel. I didn't know it was suppoed to be so easy. That's why i go to workshops.

My goal in January was to write 20 flash pieces in that month, and I wrote only two. I had also a goal of having sections of the novel finished for each presentation time in workshop, and i did that. Not completely dead i suppose, but certainly in need of resuscitation.

I'll edit this tomorrow. If you read before then, all i have to say is that it is 4:09 am, and i've not slept.

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up,
at least a little bit. -Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965)

magnetic poetry

So she challenged me, with words. Not a duel so much as a "get out of your tax return right brain mode and play" kind of challenge.

here are the words:

grass,idea,rain,wood,upon,chant,fever,compose,smear,write,find

here was the result, leaving me happy to write prose.

I don't know
if it was the grass we smoked
or the fever of lust,
but when he scattered kisses
in a chant across my thighs
and let his weight down upon me,
his body hard wood,
I got the idea that I could write.

Though before
I could compose the words,
he left me
with a smear of what had once been
love.

barking at the sky

Whether it is because we are between Ellington Field and NASA, or close to the water or what, we get all sorts of interesting aircraft flying over the house. Fighter jets, hot air balloons, antique war planes--a regular air show if you want to sit out and watch it.

I'm sitting in my kitchen with my laptop, waiting for the new battery (ah) to run down so that it will stay as charged as possible for as long as possible. Then I have to plug everything in and deal with the work that waits for me. But i was reading for a few minutes with the back door opened, so the animals can come in and out and I can feel the real air. It is cloudy today, and cool, and the air is soft. Cool, here, of course means it's in the low 80s.

All of a sudden, Scout started barking. She always barks at the doorbell or when strangers approach, and we've had all sorts of odd break ins in the neighborhood lately...so I was a little concerned...this is the back of the house, no service people due, and she wasn't moving like there was someone at the gate.

I looked out, and realized she was barking at the sky.

A blimp, SANYO across its side, flying so close it made her feel insecure. I tried calming her, but she kept barking until it was out of sight.

Something about it makes me feel like I am doing just that, futile though it is. Just barking at the sky.


edit: make that a Lightship.

sweet

Every once in a while I actually send something out for publication, and every once in a while, someone likes it. The good folks at Long Story Short are publishing me this month. Here's the direct link to my story Outfield.

Nice publication, and I'm flattered to be in such good company.

refueling

I want to write about the experiences I had last week at
Big Bend, but somehow the noise of the city has filled up that perfect silence that I found in the desert, and the scent of petroleum in the air replaced the perfume of wildflowers.

I wonder why we live like this.

is this heaven?

When I woke at five a.m. I was surprised to see so much light. My senses and the chart I downloaded suggested that it was too early for the day to begin. I was thirsty though, so I got up anyway…to every light in the house blazing. I checked the garage, assured that both of the young adults, who live here from time to time, checked their rooms, and went back to bed. There is a cycle going on here and most days, it takes my breath away. That's not a bad thing.

Is this heaven?

The cold rusty taste of well water reminded me of my grandmother's house, the metallic flavor of childhood bubbling up from the fresh spring. A small river ran alongside the park housing the "fountain" …the fountain being little more than a copper pipe stuck into the spring, and a catch basin made of iron or something non-descript, funneling the unused water back to the ground to be cleansed, and bubble up again.

Fresh air, air that didn't make me feel dirty, that made my skin soft and kissed my hair into relaxed curls, blew in gentle breezes and I enjoyed the scent of the Midwest, grass and woods and trees and …home. Parts of home I'd not enjoyed since before my mother was sick and no longer able to get outside, every trip back spent indoors, or running errands, or the non-stop eating that is the essence of socializing in farm country.

We walked along the river awhile, past a butterfly and perennial garden bordered by a stone path, a small refuge. It seemed more like a preliminary graveyard to me…memorial benches and such scattered among the trees. It would have made sense if the park overlooked the river, but it didn't. Next door was a metal pole barn, across the road, someone's house. Strange.

We walked on and came to the cemetery, where the family engaged in the annual spelling of the surname debate… one side spelling it with an "o," the other with an "e." My role was to offer logical educated theories, none of which were given any credence. I figured any family not close enough to know why one brother spelled his name one way while another spelled his differently didn't need any more of my attention, so I wandered away from Rasmus and Sine's grave, and that of their infant daughter whose name was no longer legible on the carved stone tablet. I walked a few hundred yards, and browsed. Obelisks hewn of soft, white stone…definitely not marble, marked graves of entire families, some born and dead in the same week, or month, or day. Many of the simple monuments marked the graves of both infant and mother, none with the poetry I'd like to think belonged there. But these were pioneers, old country Norwegians and Danes and their heritage didn't leave room for the fussiness of words at such times. Stoicism must have come from Scandinavia.

We came back to the house, and my youngest pulled me aside. "Have you noticed that I'm the only one whose picture isn't up?" He doesn't understand. I don't either. I took the risk when my son, my spouse, his brother and father went to play golf. I told my mother-in-law it hurt his feelings. I wasn't sure she'd care; she's never warmed to this child. Still, I had to say something. The omission seemed so blatant, and cruel, especially when he'd ridden 18 hours one way on his last weekend of summer to visit her.

Later, she brought me three folders. The meticulously organized folders were filled with obituaries and photographs of ancestors from my husband's family long gone, some of them from recent years, some from centuries ago. Mostly, they were lists of names and dates of death and birth. In many cases, there were cemeteries listed, so that markers could be located for the deceased. And in the back of the last folder, there were several pages, handwritten in beautiful script. The same script, over and over, as if rehearsing for some handwriting test. My mother in law had been told how important it is for a family to preserve their memories. She was trying, I think, to understand family, but what she'd written was mostly a tribute to her own mother. Her last sentence said: "She is not only my mother, she is my best friend."

The narrative was written the year before her mother died. I saw something in those words that I'd never seen from this woman who, intentionally or not, has antagonized me for nearly 30 years. I saw her as a person. A person who was pacing the kitchen the whole time I was reading. A person who I've felt judge my meager attempts at cooking, cleaning, and other things that are the province of women from her era. And I saw that the tables were reversed, that she was nervous of the judgment I might pass over her attempt at something that I do. So I was honest, and gave her what I give the other people whose words are important.

"This is great," I said. "You should write more."

She breathed and I wonder if she knew she'd been holding her breath. "Thanks. I like to write."

The rest of the family returned after that, and she made a show of pulling out another box, and sifting through its contents until she found what she was looking for. She wiped the dust from the simple frame and carried it to the living room: my youngest, proud in his baseball uniform. Then she stopped and fluffed his hair.

The trip left me aching, lonely for the things that will never be again. But it also gave me some perspective on things I never quite understood.

As we crossed the countryside between their house and the interstate, taking in the luscious rows of tall corn and verdant soybeans, sectioned off in perfect one mile squares, I felt connected to the past, to family, maybe even directly to the earth. I was pondering the clean life of Iowa, the simple wholesomeness. But then I think we crossed into the twilight zone…

Disjointed notes written down sporadically over the last few days.


Tuesday Night: Full moon, blurred by clouds. Wishing I were still at the beach, but remembering it rained today.


Last week in Michigan: Man in the Laundromat when I went back to change the washer to the dryer, having run to the grocery store in the ensuing half hour, had dumped his dirty laundry in on top of my clean. He was tall, about 6"3" and probably 275. But his glasses were so thick that his eyes looked like frog bulges through the lenses. I sorted his dirty clothes from the top of my clean ones in one of the seven machines I'd been using. Sand poured out of some of them, and I felt very odd handling his dirty underwear.

His only comment to me was "I thought it was empty."

A well-meaning patron came over and whispered to me "He's legally blind, but so independent!"

"I can tell," I replied. I shook the sand from the clothes and put them in the dryer. No harm, no foul.

The other day in Chicago: First shock was staying in a room identical to the one I was in when I found out my mother had died. I didn't realize it when the doctors gave me the details. I didn't realize it when my sister called and said you need to come now. I realized it when my friend, on hearing the numbers the doctor had given me said, "oh hon."

Later, I had to go to the lobby. I don't pay good attention to the directions in hotels and so I turned the wrong way out of the room to get to the elevators. I passed someone else I knew but didn't really want to chat with, so kept going as though it was the right way. I ended up at the end of the hall where a floor to ceiling window looked out over the river and straight on to the lake. It was stunningly beautiful. We were on the 34th floor. It made me dizzy.

I've been through the mail from the last three weeks now. I did all the laundry before I came back from the lake, but I need to unpack the suitcases and put it all away. Something really sad about putting the luggage away, even though I 'm desperately ready to be finished traveling for a while.

June already?

If it weren't for the fact that I've been incredibly busy, I'd feel bad about letting this little blog founder so.

What have I been doing?

reverse order....
-Celebrated our anniversary in San Antonio weekend of the tenth of June.

-Studying creative writing with Justin Cronin for the past six weeks. Great teacher, great writer. I've got ...direction again. Anyone who writes knows how hard that is to maintain over the incredibly ridiculous amount of time it takes to write a novel. I was going to qualify that noun with "plot-driven" or "literary" but none of those words are necessary, or probably even appropriate.

-Spent nearly two weeks traipsing about the United Kingdom with my youngest daughter. Learned that traveling light is something to aspire to, but also that climbing stairs and schlepping luggage is surprisingly good for bad knees.


Those are the most recent passtimes... I'll try to add some more detail in the next couple of weeks. I'm heading back to Michigan next weekend though, and there is no high speed internet there.

free writing, ten minutes

/Ten minutes. 10:58 pm

I used to be able to tune out all the sounds in a room and focus only inside my head. This led to a bad startling habit … being so far gone anyone from the outside world would frighten me if they intruded. I'm a little jumpy that way.

The rain was back by the time I left the gym today and left raindrops on the fence posts like spiderwebs in an iron woods. What light there was sparkled through the clinging drops and made me think of the beauty of an ice storm. I tried to take the picture, but I failed.

I don't miss ice storms, though I must say I'm glad to have known their beauty.

I'm planting an herb garden this year, designing my own planter and placing it outside the window in the family room, which is connected to the kitchen. I thought I would have it in place by now, but won't allow myself the freedom of creation while the tax files are still spread across my desk. Deadlines there, and I face only the deadline of nature with the herbs.

I did lust over some spearmint today. I can't think of what I'd do with it, unless it would be to flavor mojitos. And I'm not particularly fond of mojitos. But it was a nice plant.

I let myself have only one glass of Chianti tonight. Homemade lasagna. I know, it is overkill, but when all I can create is in the kitchen, that's what I'll do. When I went to find the recipe though, I found that the page was missing from the cookbook. It's some thirty years old, can't hold it against the book. So I had to try to remember the recipe, something I've made many times but never really worried about needing to remember. I know I had all the ingredients, but the proportions seemed wrong. It tasted fine, but it wasn't what I expected.

So there is your metaphor for tonight, the things we remember to make the things we want, getting all the pieces right, but missing it somehow. The result isn't bad, just not what we expected.

The iris are blooming in the garden I planted last year, bordered by Mexican heather…the same shades of purple repeating in the tiny blooms and the orchid-like iris. I thought about picking them, bringing them inside to brighten the gloomy rooms.

But I didn't. I let them bloom.

11:09/

another gift.

Gift from my other daughter.

Listening Up

"What is your favorite?"

I had only time for one question; the great author was only signing his name, only three times per person. Those were the rules we agreed to before we got in line for his autograph. Five people before the signing table, we were told to "nest" our books so that there would be no delays in the execution.

I understood that. There were a thousand people in attendance to hear him read, and most of them wanted autographs. I've been to dozens of readings in that hall and none that were so well attended had even allowed signings.

But I couldn't just stand there while he scribbled his "John Updike" and gawk. I came to the reading with knowledge only of what he'd written, not any personal experience, other than a short story here or there. I'd looked down the list of his publications, and listened carefully as he'd described stories and their history. His credits page is long. Where would I begin?

So I asked him. He smiled, ran his fingers through his hair and laughed an almost nervous little laugh. "That's a hard question," he began, "they are all… "

"Like your children, I know. But which one really? I promise not to tell the others."

"You knew I was going to say that."

Hey, we have the same number and combination of children. It made sense that it would be the same comparison. Only a writer understands that each story is jealous of the one before it and the one that followed. Stories are living creatures!

He stumbled a little more, wrote his name my allotted three times, and the person behind me had his books on the table. I was moving away, when he finally replied. "Coup" he said. And then turned away, redirecting his attention so as not to dwell on his disloyalty. That book, after all, was not available for signing tonight.

The interesting thing about his answer was that he'd already described that particular novel as the one least in his style, the one that made him get out of his comfort zone. Something to think about.

intensity

That is the word I'd use for the concert last night. I'm trying to decide what it is about it that makes me feel today like turning over rocks and telling all the bugs of the world to move along, but I'm not sure if that is the music, the presentation or the "package" that went with it.

What do I mean package? Well you know, all the details of a night out. What to wear, what to do with the 13 year old, do we eat first, last, not at all, where to park, buy t-shirts or cd's or beer?

Suffice it to say that we don’t go to concerts of this variety very often. Symphony? Sure, Opera? Occasionally. Theatre habitually. But the music of Sigur Ros is not in any of those categories. But then, it is.

You may not have ever heard the group. I'd heard only the songs played for me by my daughter, who'd given us the tickets to the concert for Christmas, and she tends to have offbeat taste. I liked what I'd heard: haunting melodies, interesting combinations. None of that prepared me for the intensity of the live performance.

I should have had a clue though, from the quiet. The crowd of mostly 20somethings was sober, calm. No one passing joints around, the occasional cigarette was the only disruption to the air. A bar in the lobby, but no line, no one really all that interested in the offerings.

We found our seats, and listened to the opening band, young women from, I assume Iceland, because they didn't speak English very well and their sound had those haunting, wide open tones that seem to come from that part of the world. For their "big" number, one woman played the saw… a real live cut wood saw, with a bow, and it was so beautiful it could bring tears … mournful and full and a touch wild. Two others played what looked like service bells from a hotel, while the other played water glasses. All of this orchestrated by a computer, incidentally the same brand and model as the one I type on this morning.

I wasn't completely sure these girls weren't the band. I hadn't adjusted my attitude appropriately yet, and still thought we were in for the kind of good time we used to have at rock concerts years ago.

I was ready not to be my age. Had on my jeans, which fit well thanks to all the salad, white shirt and had straightened my hair. Okay, if one looked close, they'd see that the concealer doesn’t really deal with the dark circles around my eyes, and the texture of my skin beneath them lately has me trying every kind of anti wrinkle cream I can get my hands on. I won't say we were the oldest people there, but we were in the top ten percent.

My husband was just as bad. He's been to more rock concerts than I ever dreamed of, was actually part of that generation of students who did things like close colleges with protests, went to war. You know, real intense situations. I was always in awe of them, being just a few years too young for it in any capacity but tagalong. He'd already made me promise that if it was bad, we could leave, and just be polite to our daughter should she ask.

So we invited my son's best friend to spend the night… leaving one thirteen year old alone seemed wrong, but the two of them together was okay. (Best friends parents were home, just five minutes away.) Ordered them pizza, decided not to eat before the show. Got directed to four parking lots before we could park.

The second clue that things weren't going to be as we expected was a line in the men's room. But not the women's. Any woman who's ever been out to a public place knows there is something wrong there.

We found our seats, high in the second tier, in the next to last row along far aisle. I will have to ask my daughter if that was intentional… I suspect it was. We really were able to fade into the theater and observe.

The music… electronic and vocal and gifted. Bows used on guitars, I guess that is a new thing, but I'd not seen it. Behind the band, a constant light mural, changing from the faces of the most innocent looking little girl you could imagine, all bright eyes, round cheeks and braids, to, by the end of the set, army boots marching through puddles. The audience was quiet, (and for the most part, there were a couple of inappropriate whoops) respectful. And once I got through the mindset that this was supposed to be a fun concert, and listened, just listened, the intensity of what this little group of people from Iceland were doing struck me. I looked around the room and realized this is the generation that has to deal with things almost harder than that Vietnam group. These people have the legacy of what we've …their parents… done to the Earth, to the world. They don't take anything as lightly as my apathetic generation did. Even their music is intense, and meaningful and what felt like, important.

I can't say I enjoyed it. But I was moved.

The group took no intermissions, did only one curtain call, and returned the standing ovation that carried on for what felt like ten minutes to the audience.

They didn't speak one word. It was all the music.

We left the hall and I realized that I had found something of "not my age" after all. I realized I used to feel that intense about what was going on in the world, that I used to carry a torch with me wherever I went. That was the stake that drove through hearts of my family members. They didn't want to know about global warming or overpopulation or hunger or racial cleansing or back alley abortions and welfare mothers and homeless people and HIV and all the other atrocities that were going on all over the world. It was the Seventies man, and they wanted to hide under rocks and live the lives they were given in their safe little corner of the world, run off to Wal-Mart and Target and buy cheap electronics and country western music cds. They wanted to just be, while I burned with the injustice of it all.

And I'm ashamed. I became more like them, less the idealist. And under what excuse? I had children, a marriage, a job, a career! I could just sit back and enjoy the fruits of labors, not only my own, but those of the rebels before me, who'd won me the right to work for equal pay, to take time off for maternity leave without losing my job, to send my children to free public schools that addressed even their exceptional needs.

And what did it all come down to?

Going to a concert where I wanted to straighten my hair, recapture my youth and rock out, but finding instead, that recapturing youth isn't about sexuality or looks or what to wear… we knew that then…it is about recapturing the fire, the intensity of feeling, that let us have the courage to at least think we could change the world.

And realizing what gifts my daughters have really given me.

pastel rockies

The Rockies, with only enough snow to soften the blow.

playing with light

No words, but looking up

Blogs without pictures get boring.  These are just in my files. It is too dreary to leave them there tonight.

Skyfire, in South Haven, Michigan.

the power of touch

Sometimes I take out memories, and just think about them, about what they meant then, what they mean now.

When my mother was lying in the hospital, trying to recover from the heart attack that led to the stroke that caused her kidneys to shut down, her lungs to fill and eventually, her death, I was lucky enough to get to be with her, at least some of the time. It took nearly two weeks for death to finally claim her. In that period of time many moments stand out as extraordinary. The most intimate moment between just she and I, perhaps any time since maybe infancy, was the night I was alone with her, and massaged her leg.

There was less than half of the leg left, she'd endured so many amputations in that last ten years, and I never touched her before that. I wondered if massage would help increase the circulation that she lacked, the absence of which led to each successive operation. But I didn't live near, I saw her four times a year or so, and she had a husband. It wasn't really my "place" to offer to rub away the pain.

I suppose I was in denial all those years. The last nights in the hospital made me understand that all the people who were close around her those last years were not there out of concern for her, but out of their own needs. Needs which she, even in her compromised state, filled without complaint.

But she was lying there in a hospital bed, unable to move, unable to breathe without assistance, denied even ice chips for fear of aspiration, and the people who'd surrounded her in her years of need were down the hall in the lounge, eating pizza and having a party.

I stayed in her room. It was cold. So cold. Probably sixty degrees, and she was still feverish. The medication they'd given her to regulate her heart rate had the side effect of something thermal, overheating her. The nurses knew this and dialed the thermostat down as low as it would go. But we were dressed for summer, and easily chilled. They gave us blankets to drape over our shoulders.

She moaned; the pain from her tubes, her afflictions surely awful, but it wasn't that. It was the phantom pains that woke her crying in the nights. Pain in the limbs whose circulation had shut down and killed the tissue.

I can handle crises. I don't fall apart when immediate danger threatens, or when someone is hurt. I forgot all about my denial, and went to her. Her leg was bare; she'd pulled the hospital gown up as high as she could to feel the blessed cool air. I'd never really looked at it, and when I placed my hands on the skin of her thigh, she quieted. I kneaded the muscle, soft and pliable, more like the feeling of those water tubes we get at conferences with advertisements, to handle for stress.

The connection was immediate. I knew that it felt good to her, to be touched, to feel my hands working the pain from their memory. I didn't mind, and unlike the way my fingers get when I'm giving a massage I'm not really in the mood to give, I didn't tire. I didn't stop until the nurse came in to do a breathing treatment, and to sedate her so she could rest.

Before I left the room, she took my hand and squeezed it.

I looked in on her the next morning, but they'd decided her best chance was to be drugged to a state of unconsciousness, so that they could perform the next procedure needed if she was ever to come home. Her husband gave consent. His right, his responsibility. She never woke from that state, and a week later we had to turn off the machines.

I wasn't the last person to touch her, there were people in and out the whole week as she slept, but I'm pretty sure I'm the last one whose touch she knew. No one else was with us, we didn't speak, but the power of touch between us reaffirmed a connection that isn't explainable without the experience of it. Parents know it, it is the same one that settles a child's nightmares when he doesn't quite wake up, the

I will always wonder, if I'd been there more, if I'd been there to touch her legs, rub her feet before the doctors began their surgical solution, could her life have been better? Could it be so simple?

This isn't about my mother, or me for that matter, but about the power that humans hold in their hands with such simple things. A soft voice, a kind word, a simple touch, given without obligation or expectation. It astounds me really.

changes

It is the New Year, time for reflection, resolution, revival. I could go on with the "r" words, reason, ruffled, rational… well. You get the idea. I want to get back in touch with words in this blog, and am thinking of stealing the word a day practice that my friend Seliot seems to have abandoned. I've long been addicted to A Word A Day and I can try using them to keep a bit of blogging practice going. There are enough words for both of us. And the rest of you, too!

But tonight's blog entry is about changes. I've given up the Horror writing so many of you have watched me play with. Not because I don't still enjoy playing, but because it wasn't about writing anymore. Many other fine objectives, but the people who I'd enjoyed no longer wanted to have fun with it…it became too serious. So I vacated. I'll move the stories to the website soon, and we can all laugh at Megg's antics. She worried me sometimes anyway.

And look! No more pink! I am not crazy about this color scheme either, but the pepto bismol tones were long overdue for remodeling. The website is next… I don't even have anything I've written in this century posted there.

But tonight I'm in the mountains of Colorado, and I'm using dial up. I don't have the patience for web work on dial up. I know, I'm terribly spoiled. A deal I couldn't refuse. We got ten inches of new snow last night, and clear blue rocky mountain skies this afternoon. Very nice for skiing… tomorrow I hope to actually put some on. Knees, you know.

They tell me it was in the eighties in Houston. It won't be hard to go home.

I've several notes I've not transcribed into this blog that belong here, things from workshops and teleconferences I'd like to share, even some pretty cool photos. I don't think humility is a word of the day.

I'll be adding more links soon, so drop me a note if you want to be included. And for those of you who've faithfully linked to me, thank you. I'll try harder to earn the honor.