home

I've kept a running journal off line the last two weeks, taken dozens of pictures and even got some work done. Mostly though, I've spent time thinking.

That isn't always a good thing.

Tomorrow I have to close one of those transactions that should have been clean, simple and easy for everyone. Of course Murphy's Law is in full force and effect, so I will lose a day tomorrow trying to patch tears from loose ends that never should have been dangling. At least none of them were my fault.

Then I will edit my journal entries, and post them. I'm sure everyone here is just waiting to read what I have to say in my own version of "how I spent my summer vacation"... but trust me, it's okay to breathe. Just how exciting can walks on the beach be, after all?

lake thoughts

Laughter. What a sweet sound … genuine, spontaneous laughter. My son and his friend are caught in that boy world that I always expected to be found here, that my older son didn't find as he spent his days reading and sleeping. They've found streams pouring into the lake and rather than be content to build sand castle damns, they follow them into the woods and chase frogs and look for turtles and arrowheads. They found a wild tom turkey yesterday, and you'd have thought they'd discovered gold. Priceless.

They go into the lake, the temps in the mid seventies and they are fearless. In reality, they teach swimming lessons, work as lifeguards. Between them, they have more medals than I can count. Yet two days ago, a nineteen-year-old boy drowned, while his two friends sunbathed on the beach. One must never ever trust the lake completely. So I make arbitrary rules… "Don't go out farther than the sandbar" I tell them, though I know that the water is barely five feet deep between the shore and the sandbar, and as shallow as one foot on it. Doesn't matter… they accept the limit and turn into human dolphins diving the waves, arching tight backs while their near-man rippling muscles glisten under bronzed skin. I want to take their picture, film them the way I did the dolphins in Maui, because there is some sort of metaphor there that I've not quite got yet. Something about connections I think. Instead, I watch them and hold the photograph in my mind.

I've been having odd dreams since I came here, which means I've been sleeping. I am not sure what that means either. That the air is easy to breathe, that I get enough exercise to be tired? That I feel at peace here in a way I haven't at home for so long? Or does it have more to do with the need for the nightmares to assert themselves, get their message across? Do you believe there are other lives in your mind that have either lived before, live concurrently, or are yet to be set free? I just don't know. I know that there are words there whose origin I can't trace, so I try to honor that as much as I can.

I jot down the bits I can remember in the mornings. I am forced to in a way, because I have to connect to the internet by phone. Waiting gives me a chance to write without interruption or the addiction of email.

I've been reading, luxuriously slow reading. Savoring bits and pieces of novels to steal, as my last writing professor advised. Putting together a house leaving messages of what should be attended to for its new owner, taking off sunglasses to hear better. And this from Baxter: "If God appeared on this earth again, lawyers would sue Him."

I've started talking to people too, something I've been criticized for here. That I am aloof, lost in my head and not the friendly one. I am asking for their stories, quietly, casually, and have learned much from the two lesbians, both in their sixties and bleach blond, though different from the blonds from Texas, these two are beefy, full figured women, though I note that their legs are really quite shapely. It is from the hips up that they balloon, almost identically, and I wonder if it is what they do, or how they eat or if in fact it is heredity. They tell me about the weather and the gossip of people I'm supposed to know, but have forgotten.

There is also a nice looking man down the beach a ways, hair mostly white, with a touch of the blond it once was showing. I like him mostly for the pace at which he walks, slow, languid, as though there are things on the beach that must be found and nothing much up ahead to worry about. That seems to be the right way to walk on a beach such as this.

He likes my dog.

They all like my dog. She's well known before I arrive, a stick slut for whomever will toss whatever piece of driftwood she can hold between her teeth. Only these strangers who toss it for her, these people charmed by her intelligent eyes, don't know she has no sense. They have not put salve on her bloodied paws or given her analgesic to make the pain of getting up and lying down easier at night when the sun has gone down and she aches. I tell them, she doesn't know any better, and they simply think I'm mean, not to throw for her myself.

She knows though, and comes with me.

In the morning before the maid comes.

Maid…what a misnomer. She is really the Woman in Charge. The lady that actually cares about the dust and cobwebs in this monster of a house, with the power to send me cowering in my office, behind my precious stacks, while she takes aggressive command of the rest of it. I have to scurry about gathering all the books and papers I've left all over the place before she comes, or risk never seeing them again. So the office grows worse and worse… (grammar police, please check that word usage?) I've banned her from that room you see. For me and the papers, it is safe haven. But of course I end up losing everything in the attempt. Eh.

Even now I am not in my office. She will be here in half an hour or so, but I can have these moments to sit with my coffee in the short silk robe the color or the sky, greeting the words while my girl cat, who spent the night outside, cuddles against the laptop's warmth. The coffee is Costa Rican today, fresh ground. I sent the last of the coffee I brought from Hawaii to a friend yesterday. That's okay though. He did introduce me to Costa Rican coffee after all. ahhh.

I'm practicing a writing strategy this week, that of just typing in the journal to get the words flowing. I'm dreadfully behind on my personal deadlines, and worse, I've let myself get out of the habit of writing. I'm immersing myself writing books, determined to actually read one of them. This weeks choices include Ann Lamont, Bird by Bird, William Zinsser, On Writing Well and The Gotham Writers book on Fiction. I decided it was time to get back to the basics. Or maybe I'm hoping that if I bore my self with the how to books I will write just to win the right to read fiction again. Yes yes. I do play games in my head, don't I?

Enough about that. I may have to break a rule and write about my trip. But only if I can find an angle that makes you feel… something. For now, I have to get dressed because the enemy is approaching and I have to save the lives of some dust bunnies.

sounds

Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk to you again,

Do you remember Simon and Garfunkel? The voices of my angst ridden youth.
Yes, it is dark now, well past one a.m. Time seems caught on a wheel that hasn't decided yet if it's going forward or backward.--too much travel. Tree frogs or bats are squeaking outside, … it's an eerie loud sound, like so many mice up in the trees. No, that's not it at all. It's the sound of clean athletic shoes changing direction on a gym floor. I am fond right now of images that evoke a change in direction.

Because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping

I was a geeky college kid, always writing poems and staying up all night just to listen to music. I'll even confess most of it was chick music… Carole King and Melissa Manchester and Elton John. The Moody Blues were setting trends then… An aside: I forgot to mention that I saw them in concert on Father's day… the music was the same, the guys were no longer hot…. And the crowd. Oh dear. Just as you'd imagine. Wrinkled hippies with gray hair. The women should have kept those bras they burned in the sixties… gravity didn't treat them well. And they still wanted to groove to the music. I'm still processing that… always the observer you know?

And the vision, that was planted in my brain, still remains.


My journals from that era are introspective, as though I was aware of metamorphosis and hadn't yet decided what to do with it. Then, as now, I wore as many hats as I could…. I was a sorority girl, but served on the political science counsel (apartheid was our issue, and oil. Sigh. Oil.) I was an editor for the literary journal for three years, but don't think I ever missed a frat party. I was a Serious Student. I was open minded (ha!) about sex.

I just realized what a mess this entry is becoming. Feels good. I'm not a tidy person. I do love a good stack of books and papers to burrow behind on my desk. I enjoy the clutter in my head. There are so many interesting corners to dwell in.

I have one more trip this summer, and it isn't really a trip as much as it is respite. My place at lake Michigan. No fish out there pretty enough to swim out to see, no salt. Just beautiful waves, miles and miles of unspoiled beaches, and if I'm lucky, quiet.

Within the sounds of silence.

vacation

It amazes me really, to wake in paradise yet another day, and find the words still hiding. Everywhere I look, from a double rainbow over the mountain to the indescribable blue of the sea, my eyes water with a sweet orgasmic ache, manifestation of the need to see it all. I am beginning to believe the only place I can really write at all is tucked away in a closet or an attic with no windows, where the words are the only sensation of pleasure there is. Perhaps this is why "happy" people don't do much writing. I keep telling myself that I am filling the well with beauty, but I still feel like such a fraud.

Yet even in paradise the small motors hum and manicure of the grounds, the garbage truck grinds the same loud growl of garbage trucks everywhere. Tennis balls plunk against the sweet spot of the rackets on the courts outside the lanai, and the expletives of the players are universal as well. I am still charmed by wind in the palms, though here on the sixth floor they are at eye level and look more like prairie grass swaying in the wind.

And the only thing more seductive, more intense than the land, is the sea, my friends beneath the water: A sea turtle, diameter about 4 feet, as he gulped for air, then dove for food. He and I alone on the edge of the circle of swimmers, not unlike last years nurse shark. No one around to hear my exclamation of joy at his grace. The dolphin who broke surface a few feet away, flirting like a waiter looking for tips.

I would write more, but there are colors to absorb, neon blue racing stripes on black spines and cartoon colored fins waiting for me to come and play. There is sand waiting to smooth the citified calluses from my feet and the sun waiting with its paintbrush of bronzes to lighten my hair and darken my skin. There is coconut oil to smooth over the merging freckles of my arms, aloe to cool my overcooked shoulders and when all that is finished, there is sweet dark rum.

If I'm not exhausted after dark, I'll try to write again, but it has already been a week and I've not adapted to that yet. I can hear the waves kick up on the night wind and the lullaby is irresistible. It amazes me most, waking in paradise, that it is from real sleep that I awaken. It's been a long, long time.

waking to water

The sprinklers were my alarm clock today, leaving the palm fronds dripping like paintbrushes. The mist that hangs in the already too saturated air lets the flowers thrive: plumbago, oleander, impatiens, begonias –Their names like a foreign language rolling off my tongue, without even adding the meanings gardeners of the old world would give them.

The sun is not quite up yet, though I can tell that it has cleared the horizon somewhere beyond my line of sight. The glowing is just-after-dawn light, no romantic rose tones or violet clouds to soften it. Mid-summer, past solstice, I prepare to do what all Houstonians who can do…escape. West, first, to find the mystique again of the islands, see if it will charm me from this slump in mind and spirit. Then north, add to the list of discovery a place I've never been, and try to see through the eyes of a twelve year old (and a dog) again. Then back to my beloved Lake Michigan. Back home.

The strange thing is there isn't that call to go this year. The existence of people makes the difference… the ones I knew are more distant, the ones I know now becoming closer. I suppose I could relate that to the sunrise, too, seeing things clearly. I've certainly done my share of complaining. Reality is this; there is beauty no matter where I look. I just need to accept it for what it is. So the ocean here is not blue with waves to surf and sugar sand beaches to walk on. It is still the sea. The seaweed that clutters the shore may look like detritus to the casual observer, but I know it is Sargasso grass, washed in from a meadow on the ocean. Full of life. I've seen the sea turtles come home here; I've seen the dolphins dance. I've seen the pelicans dive with graceful precision, smashing the image of awkward bird into a thousand tiny droplets shining on their wings. How can I not be home wherever there is the sea?

In two days, though, it will be the Pacific. My first ocean, and yes, my favorite. There are some fish friends waiting for me there, out in a crater below the surface. I'll tell them hello for you.

lessons from my animal companions

It is perfectly quiet this morning. No electronic noises other than the fan in this computer and the constant whoosh of the a/c. I'm sitting in an armchair in the family room, the sun streaming in the window behind me and the cool touch of the air-conditioned air sliding down my bare arms like a blanket when rising. One cat lies on the footstool at my feet, the other in the chair next to me, and Scout is still sleeping up on my son's bed. It makes me smile every time I go wake them, to see them sharing a bunk. She knows she's not supposed to be there, but it is so soft, she risks it. She also knows no one will get mad at her. She's just too sweet.

Wouldn't that be lovely? To have the kind of personality that no one ever got mad at? To always be welcomed with physical touch, a hug, a scratch behind the ears, on a good day a full body rub, complete with tummy pats?

Yet, to always be the dog wouldn't work for me. Lately I've struggled with my sideline roles in relationships that are important to me. I've spent my life behind the scenes, in the center of the action, but often in charge of what goes on "onstage." Why now then? Why do I ponder the reality of it? I don't know.

Last night I met friends for dinner. Writer friends. We were in class together for about seven months, but as I've seen with many such classes, a bond was formed. Perhaps because we trusted each other with that creation more delicate even than children: our words in fledgling form, still undecided if we would let them fly or give them up. I feel protective of these people, knowing that as soon as we venture beyond this circle there are chinks in the wall, someone else to say, "no, this point of view doesn't work," or "your grammar is atrocious," or "this is not credible." Writers are supposed to be tough, I know, but not with everyone. We have to have heart, somewhere. Besides on the page. Don't we?

I've gotten out of the discipline of writing. I used to be able to say, when asked, that I spent about four hours every morning, writing. Words that I save from day to day to let me understand what it is around me that matters. And too often when I let the words free to someone else's eyes, they lose what it is I wrote them for. That happens, that is fiction, but when I start listening too much to the outside criticism and too little to the word whispers in my own head, then it stops being my creation. I have to get better at listening. To myself.

The cat at my feet is curled into a position where his little paws are crossed and curled toward his soft body, and he looks so very vulnerable… not the big brave lion who can chase squirrels from the yard and capture any bird he wants with his speed, but a kitten again, trusting that so long as he stays close to me, he is safe and can rest. It gives him the courage to be that other cat. I think that is a metaphor.

plain old summer heat

I've been neglecting this journal. Not intentionally, but it has historically been where I've written just before sleep, and frankly, this week sleep is on no schedule at all. I'm almost over the terrible sinus infection that disabled me earlier, but the allergies and the HEAT are keeping me inside, and thus my bio rhythms are all screwed up. Blah blah blah.

I am missing my Midwest summers. They get hot too, just not so thickly hot as it is here, nor for as long. Cooling off becomes a challenge, a game of sorts, of putting fans in just the right windows, wetting palms and feet and inner elbows. Sleeping nude with no blankets, staying up late because it is too hot to sleep. Here, it is all… artificial. Just dial the a/c to the temp you want it to be and voila! There is no reason to be uncomfortable.

Today I'm making sun tea out on the patio, and have promised myself time in the sun on a raft in the water, just to remember it is summer. Maybe it's because I'm all tied up with this age thing… I have a birthday coming up, but I'm so damned nostalgic these days. I want to make out at a drive in movie and feel the thrill of just one button unbuttoned… remember that? When just –that much- would make you feel so turned on you could just melt? Or am I the only one who ever has those conversations in my head? The little games where you tell your self… if he does .. x…. then I will do … y…. and if he does… z… I willllll…

Sigh. Summer romance used to be something I enjoyed. Three of my most significant relationships began as summer romances, including my marriage. Something about the freedom to be yourself in the summer that made it more intense. Did you have summer romances? How did they get started?

I'm very far behind in my work, so I'm going to end this now. I'll try to get back in the habit. Soon. I promise.

a taste of a day

The sun is melting into the sky today, the light growing thin and colorless the higher it rises into the heat of the day. The houses and trees are in silhouette, no detail visible, except their shapes, and those in sharp contrast of black against the pale. There are no shades of gray at all it seems, only dark, and light.

The infection in my head runs the same course, either I am completely out, or completely awake, there is no gentle waking or quiet falling asleep. Coughs wrack, and I fear I will keep my partner awake. I know that I have time to rest later, and he doesn't, so I let the sunrise coax me from slumber and remember my routine.

In reward, a splash of rose on the horizon reminds me that it is when things seem most clear that we sometimes get surprised. There may be color to this day after all.

Even as I begin to close this page, insert the date and move to more productive projects, the morning dove and songbirds remind me to use all of my senses. Light or dark, hot or cool, those are easy. Melodious, fragrant? Harder. But the hardest, and thus most interesting, is how does the day taste? Today it is clouded with the salty taste in my head, diluted with fresh water, "natural" (from a bottle?), and soon coffee. Bitter, beautiful coffee. And now, it is full light and the day has arrived.

unwell

I seem to have acquired ocd from hanging around people online. I've had no discipline to finish anything lately, except perhaps this last glass of cab for the night. Hmm.

Part of it is the heat. Sultry baking days. I am reminded that the summer here is like the dead of winter up north, dangerous to be out in, and interminable. Even the pool is over 90 degrees. That isn't refreshing.

It is all relative though. In Michigan, the air rarely gets to 90 and if the water gets into the seventies, we think of it as warm. I need to get back there. My toes curl at the thought of that soft sand.

I've had trouble staying awake today. The sinus infection seems to have control, and if not that then the drugs. Don't talk to me about mixing my wine with my drugs, I'm not driving.

People have been asking me what happened to Megg. I wish I could summon her on a moments notice, feed her a little alcohol and set her loose with her knives and poisons and oh yes those long nails of hers, I do. She's apparently still pissed though, because all I've seen of her in a while is this little fascination with Moths:

They were thick, smoke smudges flitting from the ceiling of the pantry, their casual flight long enough only to choose another place to land. I could close the door and pretend they weren’t there, but even the knowledge that they were there, feasting on the staples, breeding, hatching, multiplying, made me feel dirty. They had to go.

Yes yes, a long way to go. Insects and snakes seem to be what has Megg's attention right now, and sadly, not even the one eyed ones. That concerns me most of all.

expo observations

What do I say about book expo that hasn't already been detailed by the experts? I suppose that my perspective is as legitimate as anyone's… and as a "writer" perhaps I saw things that the publishers, agents, booksellers etc didn't see. I saw people.
Some that made an impression:

~~a younger writer… very good looking, who hadn't quite gotten the hang of the autographing scene, because he took time to talk to me about his book. The themes in it were disturbing, the kind that made me turn my head and look back into his eyes. "is it autobiographical?" I asked. "Not most of it." he replied. I will read it. If it's good, I'll even pimp it a little. He had beautiful eyes.

~~an older gentlemen, with a wonderful British accent, a few years older than me, or maybe not, maybe he was just significantly taller, who didn't "get" the joke of the promo items in the erotic writers booth that said "got sex?" I tried to explain about the whole "got milk?" phenomenon, but I suspect he was also a writer and had never paid any attention to American advertising. Either that or he wanted to keep me in conversation, as I'd picked up a handful of the promo items …I wanted to take them back to a writer friend who'll think the slogan is clever. I thought they were matches and hard candy suckers. It wasn't until I returned to the hotel that I actually looked at them… and discovered they were in fact brightly colored… and flavored? Condoms. I thought the gentleman was lingering a bit long…

~~peripheral connections. As a lawyer, wannabe writer and prospective publisher, I wasn't sure I was legitimate to attend the expo. The registration materials didn't have a specific category for me, so I could only lump myself in with the ubiquitous "industry professionals." It was only when I got email from Author's Guild offering a huge discount on the registration that I decided it was okay. I didn't need to worry. Seems that if you've ever read a book you qualify, despite the warnings that it is not open to the general public and that you should be prepared to present business cards to prove that you are, in fact, an industry professional. Reminded me of the advice a multi-published author gave to a crowd at a workshop regarding publishing houses that read only "agented" material. There is no restriction on who can be an agent. If they want only agented material, you print yourself some letterhead that says Your Name Literary Agency at the top and mail your manuscript. So if you are reading this, and interested in going to Expo next year, go. It's May 19 in DC. Lots of great entertainment, we saw both Billy Crystal and Bill Maher. hearing writers talk about their books, meeting some of them, learning about issues… great fun. No comments on how easy I am to entertain either.

~~as in all conventions, it is clear that the meat and potato meals take place at the private parties after hours and the meetings set up beyond the exhibition floor. The value to someone like me is in the contacts made, and the perspective, honing still what I want to be when I grow up. There were many moments when I wished I'd had a book to peddle, as the offerings don't seem that daunting. There were times when I wished I had YOUR book to peddle… yes, you. And you. There is a market. There is.

~~between Erin and I, we managed to pick up over 50 advance copies of books, many autographed by authors. When we surveyed the loot back in the hotel, we felt like any freshman at such a show. We hadn't considered how we were going to get them all home. Adding that we took the cheap though convoluted route, there was a lot of schlepping on trains and planes, and my weightlifting muscles were taxed beyond comfort. As I'm committed to actually commenting or otherwise responding to anything I read, it's going to be an interesting and eclectic summer.

I'll have to do another entry on New York outside expo, just because there are images I want to capture and there isn't a story to do it with yet. I'm sure there will be though.

chaos

I hear the sea in the wind this morning, the applause of waves in the leaves and the depth in the monotone sky. Off to the south there is a lightening of sorts, where the storm gray gives way to platinum, polished by the sun wherever it is. It is like the beach, where the sand is dark and soft near the water, but as it dries, the darkness disappears. Far up on the shore the wind can pick it up grain by grain and toss each one to chaos, or, I suppose, order.

The words are going there for me, some in chaos, some tamped down on the hard packed edges of my mind. The best part about those is that it is easy to walk on the sea soaked shoreline. The better exercise comes from the part of the beach where the loose grains are tossed in the wind though, where I have to close my eyes to the chaos to avoid tremendous pain, and where, when I can successfully make the trek, the muscles in my thighs scream of the burn that comes from broken down tissue. I like that pain. It means that tomorrow, I will be stronger. It means the words were worth fighting for.

I glance back to the sky to see if the sun is going to make its appearance, cursing the full moon a bit for the fatigue I am flooding with a strong hazelnut brew, and see that instead the sun has gone back to sleep, and the sky softened like the eyes of a lover beckoning me back to bed as well. Tempting, oh so tempting.

reading the dictionary for fun

In the workshop I finished in March, there was a student whose work included a character he wanted to portray as "nerdy"… to do so he, the author, gave the character what he considered an odd habit; reading the dictionary.

I hate to admit this, but if that is characteristic, then I'm very guilty. I just opened the list like dictionary in Word to make sure I was using the word estuary (the wide lower course of a river where the tide flows in, causing fresh and salt water to mix) correctly. When I got through the fifth Latin definition down the alphabetical list beneath the word, I realized what I was doing. It was bad enough that I was reading them. Much worse that I had to retype them into a document. You can't copy and paste from the Word dictionary, at least my version on my computer.

I hate to confess that if that is the definition of nerdy, it fits.

I've not written a word of fiction since The Rejection. I expect another one on Tuesday/Wednesday, Then I leave for New York to hobnob 9to socialize in a familiar manner with somebody, especially somebody considered to be of a higher social class) with The Publishing Industry, including my own daughter. At that point, I will feel not only nerdy, but fraudulent as well. Except I do know a lot of "stuff."

I am most concerned with the designation of wannabe. Iff I do it, I want to do it on a grand enough scale to be taken seriously. Truth is I've done quite a bit of research on the Publishing Company, and know that it is something that can be done. One publisher I talked to told me that he was in the industry solely because he wanted to be… at least I have a concept I want to pursue. That publisher sent me to Book Expo last year for more information. If you don't know, I was well on my way, literally on the threshold of the Expo, when I was called to my mother's bed to witness the pulling of the plug. Everything went on hold then. It is time to get back into motion though; a year of stagnation is too much.

Ah but back to the dictionary. I went to Kemah the other day, in a veiled… or perhaps I should say shrouded… attempt … to entertain my in-laws. Kemah can be fun but has a sense of knock-off Disney about it. Tourists like it. I liked it when I was a tourist too. The good thing about company is seeing the city through their eyes, and remembering why you don't live where they are. My father in law, ever the daredevil, wanted to go up in the Tower… which was little more than a glassed in elevator with a view of the Bay. Mother in law didn't of course…. Afraid of heights… so she chose a bench to sit on while the rest of the family went up. A good Daughter in Law would have stayed with her on the Bench and talked about… I don't know; I've never been a good daughter-in-law.

The tour guide intoned through loudspeakers that we were on a bird migration superhighway, and that the area was an estuary. (See the connection? I know, lame, but it's late.)

Moving water: creeks, rivers, waterfalls, are a source of aquatic joy for me, so much so that I chose my college in part based on its view of the Ohio. Generally now, a river is not enough, not even the Mississippi. To find the aquatic release I need it takes waves, and lately even my freshwater Lake Michigan waves have seemed second rate.

Maybe I have combined, the tides rolling in with the decades, the fresh water and the salt. (We don't need to comment on wide bottoms btw) ...so much with the salt that I don't fit anywhere. I'm not comfortable anymore in Boardrooms because I just don't take it seriously now. Nor am I quite artsy enough to fit the vagabond writer's world. So perhaps this company is the blend I'm looking for. Perhaps.

If you play Texas Hold'em you know how frustrating it is for my opponents to continue to lose to me on the River. If they only knew about estuaries.

Catching a ride on the upswing.

Sounds like a title that should be about golf or something, but in truth, it is about moods. Ever notice how when you are on your way down to the abyss that the people most likely to pull you out of the funk are the people you are least likely to find around? But like golf, when you actually figure out the issue, make contact with the ball so to speak, there those people are, laughing with you, moving back into that arc of sunshine aimed at the green, looking for that flagpole raised high and straight where the grass is trimmed neatly into a triangular… oops. Wrong flagpole….

Okay, so I didn't quite hit bottom, didn't quite feel the depth of depression that I know exists before I consciously turned it around and changed direction. I'm sorry Moods, I just don't have time for that right now.

There are snakes in the story I'm working on this week.(it had to be snakes. i hate snakes!) I used to think snakes were fictitious. My step grandfather… grandma's fourth, remember?… had a farm in Indiana in a place called Clinton Falls. I've written about some of the memories from that place before, but I'd forgotten about the snake until I just typed that. (See what journaling can do?) If you've never spent time on a farm, and by farm I mean one of those places where the family that lived there actually depended upon the fruits of the land and labor to support them, then you probably have never heard of a corn crib. A corncrib was a place to store field corn… as distinguished from sweet corn which is what you eat, whether fresh from the field on the cob, or frozen or canned. Sweet corn. Field corn is hard and dry and ground into meal or fed directly to livestock… seems to me that grain fed cattle eat it cob and all. Field corn is also the basis for many of the consumer products we find in the grocery store.. Everything from the tortillas I used to make enchiladas tonight to the dr pepper my boys are addicted to (since the seventies, high fructose corn syrup, or hfcs, has been the basis of the sweet taste in soft drinks. Not cane sugar. Corn.)

Anyway, on the small farms that prevailed in Indiana, usually less than 200 acres, in increments divisible by 80… we can talk land units another time if you want… the point was to keep back enough of a corn crop to feed the livestock kept on the farm. The rest of the crop was sold at a Co-op, where generally it was transported by train or barge to a larger market, where processors would buy it at "free market" (we can talk about subsidies another time too if you want) rates.

A corncrib was where the saved corn was stored. The one on Grandpa Charlie's farm was rectangular, had a tin roof and slats of old wood pieced together like Lincoln logs, so that air could circulate I suppose.

The biggest problem was that a corncrib was not airtight or secure. And all manner of rodents loved to come there for a quick and easy supper. So Charlie got himself a pair of snakes.

I knew they were there, in the corncrib. But I never saw them. I believed in them though. It is true that things you can't see are still real.
I've spent too long on my feet today, pretending to be something that I'm not. I'm physically tired, yet hesitate to close my computer and go to my bedroom. I wonder if I have more in common with the snake or the mice tonight. And with those references, I know it's time to stop.

back to basics

I get complacent, used to things going the way I want them to, in life even if not in my interpersonal relationships. So I was not prepared for the email I got yesterday, advising me that I'd not been chosen to participate in the workshop for which I'd applied.

Rejected.

Okay. Rejection is normal for writers, but this is a new level of rejection. The piece I sent in was not finished... I knew that. But the class was in advanced fiction, not "show me you already know it all fiction." My sense was that they wanted samples that showed you knew the basics.

Maybe I was wrong.

I'm okay with not finishing first, but not even to be in the honorable mention list is harsh.

Yesterday, I was ready to quit. Yesterday, I let the full moon come in my bedroom window and sparkle off tears that were self indulgent and stupid. "Real writers would be up writing," I whimpered. (Oh to be able to live in purple prose!)

To which my bedmate inquired, "Do you want to go write?"

And I replied no. But didn't sleep. Or anything else for the voyeurs out there.

Today, I resolved to get back to the things I know. To reestablsh the confidence in my work that I've let slip away. I'd sent the piece to an old friend who used to be a fan, and got back insult upon injury. "You can do better than this. Who are you listening to? I see a lot of voices in this piece, but not one of them is yours."

He's wrong of course. Mine is there, but it doesn't know what it's supposed to be doing. It is confused.

I opened up my most recent paper journal this morning, and wrote the obligatory three pages. It was even legible, which clues me in already that there is a problem. If my words aren't coming faster than I can pen them, they are forced, unnatural. I read back over what I've written and see mostly masochistic lashings... all the things I said I'd have done by "now" that I've not even begun. Plenty there to kill all the creativity.

Then I open the word-a-day email, with this quote: Grasp the subject, the words will follow. -Cato the Elder, statesman,
soldier, and writer (234-149 BCE)

So that is the question of the day. WTF is the subject? Pretty sure it isn't complacency.

on the outside

I'm depending on water today. Not just water, Ozarka bottled water. The allergens are overwhelming today, so I gave in to the need to breathe and took the zyrtec my doctor scolds me for stopping at all. "You aren't in the Midwest anymore" she says. "The air is not good and the secondary infections are dangerous."ugh.

But it makes me tired, and thirsty, and vulnerable. None of those are conducive to functioning in modern society. Even virtual society.

I know I could avoid the symptoms of whatever it is in the air by staying indoors. Just going to my nice office, where the air conditioning and the hepa filters keep things clear… bur I can't. It is criminal to be indoors when the weather is nothing less than orgasmic. I know that is a silly use of that term, but its been stuck in my head for days and I had to type it out so it will move on…. Well. . maybe that is a little to Hemingway-esque itself.

Moving on.

A-word-a-day is focusing on eponyms this week. Monday's was Gresham's law, the theory that bad money drives good money out of circulation. The theory extrapolates to other areas as well; politics of course come to mind. Who in their right mind would run for office?

And writing. If one or two biographies of celebrities weren't making it to the shelves, those resources might be going to something memorable.

I'm waiting up for Tubby the cat to come back. I opened the door to call him inside, and he went out. I don't need more legless lizards or de-feathered birds in the living room. I do need his overstuffed cuddling. And for his sister, Buffy, to stop crying at the door. They only really miss each other when one is on the outside.

I guess I understand that, too.

remembering

My earliest memory was of a day when I was two years old. I know that is unreasonable, but I recall it in such detail, recall the emotion, the scents, the way the afternoon sun was hot against my cheek, my hair sticking to the sweat beading there, that I know it is genuine. I had awakened from a nap, on my parent's bed, in the back of the two-bedroom trailer where we lived, only five of us kids at that point. As I did with my children, my mother would sometimes lay down with me in the afternoon, hold me close and let me rest, that sweet slumber that babies have. I remember her scent, dove soap, and probably bacon grease in which she cooked everything it seems. I remember the scent of dust on the window screens, and the heat of August in Indiana. I remember waking alone. I remember crying. I registered the sense of real loss for the first time.

In an honored place in my office there sits a simple statue, circular almost, of a mother and child, facing one another. It is carved of wood, was given to me by someone very special. I've seen some like it in museum shops around the world, but only fine ones. This one didn't come from a museum shop though, it came from the hands of a mother in a place where there is no denial of the way things are. She has no mimosa to fog the morning, no burned toast or flowers. Chances are good she has never tasted orange juice, nor had the luxury of sending her children off to school. Never met a friend from the world we create here on line. I wonder if she ever fell in love, but then I see the gentle curve or the child on her knee, and know that of course she did. Of course she did.

I've never had to live like that mother. There were days when my own mother must have felt a similar desperation. Raising four children alone, having already sent three into the world, working nights in a factory for $88 per week, before taxes. Dealing with her own loneliness with nicotine and Canadian whiskey. She did what she could though, and never lost her sense of humor.

In her last week of life, she was on all kinds of medicine to help her heart stabilized, lower her blood pressure. By then, she could barely communicate, but her mind, her quick and caring mind, was still intact.

She'd lost all sense of caring about appearances. The medicine made her hot. Very hot. It was freezing in her room and as we grown up children gathered at her bedside, she kicked off the sheets and even pushed her gown aside to get as much cool air on her skin as she could. She had nothing on beneath the gown.

My brother had to tease her. Humor is what we resort to in our family, to cover the tears. He said to her, "Gee Mom, you've lost weight."

And mom, in her weakened state, with her heart not working, her kidneys shutting down and her lungs mere days from collapse and failure, flipped him the bird.

She still had the ability to make us laugh, to make even that time okay. That my friends, is what mothers do.

Me? I'm in denial. I don't have a mother to call tomorrow, to send rose plants to, or even call the florist when I realize I've waited too long again. I really did wait too long.

It wasn't until I stopped myself from putting cash in the pocket of that bag I bought last week...(bad luck to give handbags or knives without cash) and packaging it to send, that I had to accept there was no one there to open the package.

I sent another package last week, to the person who sent me the statue. I fear that there was no one there to receive that one either. The message wasn't clear I suppose. It should have been. But when we register a sense of loss, one thing I've learned is that it is unforgettable.

As are the people who touch us so deeply.

five oh five oh five

I had my last session with the trainer on Tuesday… ten weeks for the same cost of one hour with the physical therapist and she did know as much about rehabbing my knee… though she really wanted me to train to be some martial arts babe, and that just isn't going to happen. I felt a little bad, I know she needs the money, but she had started giving me attitude about being five minutes late and really. It's the gym. I'm not going to tell a client who calls that I can't talk because I've got crunches to do. And I'm still not convinced that ball crunches… on a support ball... are that instrumental in recovering from knee surgery… but … whatever. Not like I don't need them.

When I told her I was finished, except for maybe a monthly check in for a couple of months she was sad, because she fancies herself as something I "do" for myself. Her words: "You have to make yourself a priority. You give and give and give and there is nothing left over for you." I shouldn't have been flattered by that, but I was. I'd rather be a giver than sculpted.

One of my favorite movies is playing: Good Will Hunting with Robin Williams and Matt Damon. "It's not your fault."

Mother's Day is Sunday, and I'm still in denial. Today I went and bought a gift for my Mother in Law who hates me because I read and don't mind clutter and she was the "homemaker of the year" in high school. In her house the only thing there is with printed words is the Bible, and it is artfully arranged in a curio Cabinet with a pair of antique glasses sitting on top. Please.

But I'm a get-along girl and so I bought her a Brighton straw bag that I will overnight tonight. She'll be visiting for graduation this month, and the bag will be nice for traveling. That isn't the weird part though. The weird part is that I bought one for my own mother too. Well not really. She's been gone a year in June. Mother's day last year was our last normal conversation, not preceded with, "but what does the doctor say?"

I wrote the play by play of her last illness and death last year to a friend who is no longer a friend. I kept all of the letters and pasted them together in one long document, taking the references out. I believe in preserving raw emotion as best i can, and then calling upon the preserves when I need it later. I never posted or published any of it, lots of sad stuff regarding my siblings in there, but I'm thinking it might be a way to acknowledge the continuing grief. Perhaps I will post it here when it's been a year. I'll think about it.

I'll take the bag back. Or keep it. But it was for her, and well. I'm strange.


I was going to close tonight with a memory, and a phrase with which I am mesmerized, but the memories are hurting right now, and I've been advised that the phrase is copyrighted. I'll have to get a license I guess.

Instead, I'll use a paragraph from a story I'm working on.

They nearly tripped over the carcass of a deer, its body half buried in the sand. The snout of its nose was bleached white in the sun, and the skin picked clean, so that there was a skeleton head attached to the fully preserved body. The breeze from the lake sterilized the air and Susan couldn't look away. It was like an abstract painting whose meaning she couldn’t get, a poem too metaphoric for her to decipher. She wondered if it had chosen this place to die, or if it had been killed. Above all, it seemed at peace.

notes from the weekend

Calm. The sun kissed the air with warmth today, before it settled in among seashell clouds spread across the sky like they've been tossed with tides and left to be collected by a passerby, one more memory of a day spent with the sea.

I gather bright colored beach towels from around the pool, twelve of them, and half a dozen more fluffy white ones from my bathroom. The children who transformed from tank tops and cut off shorts to evening gowns and tuxes, and back again in a blink of an eye spread them to dry on the pool chairs. Now that they have gone, the scene is just more laundry.

What isn't just something else to clean or put away are the memories. The funny kid who kept coming back for more plates of eggs in the morning. The one who thought i believed his outrageous lies, simply because he wanted to go outside and smoke.The mother who wrote me a thank you note...before the party. That is optimism.

And my kid, smug, happy, in his element.

Anyone who wants to put down teenagers hasn't met the ones I know. They make me laugh. They make me know we are doing some things right.

That was Saturday night and Sunday. On Friday I had a date with a blue-eyed blond, with tousled curls who likes nachos and ice cream at the ball park, but doesn't care about hot dogs or beer. He taught me about the relative speed of sliders and curve balls and split fingers. And to pay attention to how Clemens winds up. It was with brutal honesty though that he explained that the rally hat was embarrassing. Well heck. We were down 3-2!

"Does it really look bad?"

"Lets just say you've had better days."

Maybe, but not many.

saturday morning

There is a wind blowing that I want to turn into a cliché about change and atmospheric pressure and storms. How lazy is that? Why not focus smaller, see the way the fronds from the Chinese fan palm click together like snapping fingers in a forest full of applause? Or the way the hair falls across your face when you look down, sheltering your eyes when it is too painful to look into mine? Or too honest? Easier to note the way that you stand, and turn to go.

Cliché. I want to fall back on you, write silly genre pieces that won't disturb anyone for long, leave your impressions of me intact, leave you untouched in anyplace that matters at all. But I can't. I can't settle for surface tension when beneath the water, deep, deep down there is a current, warm to the touch, steady, strong, that carries me to places you can't see from up there, a current once touched that won't release me until I've found the source of things, and then I am afraid to discover that there is no source of things, that it is all cyclical, circular, hop-on-let's-go-around-again the same.

So I choose. I pick a cliché here, a bud to slip into a crystal vase, a bit of green for contrast and let it be. But it is so lonely.

I awaken aroused, an image behind my eyelids I don't want to let go, Words that I know I need to write down … gentle words from an outlaw that don't belong there, the kind of contrast that makes me stop, listen, beg. I tremble, worried that any one spoken will change the tenuous balance, make you disappear, make you weep.

I don't want to open my eyes. I don't want to see that when I do the cat still lies at the foot of the bed, the dog beneath, each tuned to every movement I make, each guarding that what I do is only that which they can predict. It is too early, they will know that, and all the passion in the world won't matter if I disrupt someone's or something's routine.

There is a storm coming in from the Gulf, and the pressure changes again, the wind chills and I carry the energy of this naked moment with me to the tasks at hand, and all that I know for sure is that change is necessary, change is perfect. And that I owe nothing to the sunrise, and much to the dark.