Sunday Serenity #32
Ed sent me the link to this video after he visited my Sunday Serenity. I couldn't resist ducking back in here and adding it. It features a slide show of Larsen's paintings.
Join us for a moment of serenity
Read more...Saturday, November 17, 2007
Ed sent me the link to this video after he visited my Sunday Serenity. I couldn't resist ducking back in here and adding it. It features a slide show of Larsen's paintings.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Friday Snippets 19
I'm late getting my snippet up again this week.
Sigh.
This time it was due to an eye doctor appointment this morning which meant that I couldn't stay up all night last night preparing the post and then visiting. I thought I would be able to get to work on it when we got home but I had not bargained on having dilated eyes. And then we had company this evening.
I chose this snipped today for several reasons. First because it features a woman living with visual impairment and that's been on my mind this week because of the upcoming eye doctor visit. Also because it features a woman in her late forties feeling sorry for herself because of her passing youth and disability and that was also a feature of my week as I said a final good-bye to my late forties on Tuesday.
I wrote this while still in my mid thirties. It is a short story and I almost posted the whole 2369 words. But I decided to split it in two.
Oh, another reason I selected this story for now is that the character, Marion, has popped up as a supporting character in two of my Fruit of the Spirit novels so far and I am leaning hard toward using her in Spring Fever, my NaNo novel this year. Which would essentially bring Spring Fever into the Fruit of the Spirit fold. I don't know if I ever intend to give her her own novel but her profession as a trauma psychiatrist comes in real handy.
How Does Your Garden Grow?
by Joy Renee
by Joy Renee
Marion traversed the dark hall her fingertips lightly brushing the velvety tulips on the wallpaper. One by one she touched them, counting as she went. Ten between her room and the door to the kitchen. She could see them as clear as day in her mind. A dark, nearly black purple regimented on a field of succulent green. She had helped her mother hang the paper near thirty years ago and been so enamored with it she had recreated its charm in the yard surrounding this house.
Acres of grass kept more perfectly groomed than putting greens framed a dozen flower beds where a prize purple tulip stood at attention for one month of every year. The only thing to spoil the effect was her neighbor Clay Quincy’s insistence on growing a variety of flowering vines on the fence between their properties. All spring, summer and fall there was an effusion of vibrant color cascading over her fence. She was sure he took a perverse delight in spoiling her creation. He had once referred to it as evidence that even psychiatrists were not proof against neurosis.
Marion left the narrow confines of the hallway, keeping a hand on the doorjamb to get her bearings before stepping into the wilderness of her house. Use a cane? In the house I grew up in? I know it like I know myself. But she often turned back to her room and waited for Ernestine to see to her. Her daughter--raising a daughter of her own, while nurturing a radio talk-show--saw to her mother’s needs with barely a hitch in her lockstep.
Light inhabited the cavernous kitchen like a dragon its lair, slashing at Marion’s eyes. She blinked rapidly behind splayed fingers until her eyes adjusted to brightness, listening to Ernestine fix breakfast--the tinkle of metal against glass (a fork stirring eggs in a bowl?) the clang of metals (a pan being lidded?) the percussion of cupboard and fridge doors, the jangle of utensil drawers. Across the room, Verna croons counterpoints of contentment to her dolls.
Marion was emerging from a winter’s mourning for dimming eyes and withering womb--a double whammy. Though her resolve to contribute no more defective genes was twenty years old--the age of her widowhood--menopause at forty-eight seemed as much a failure as failing eyes.
No matter what Clay said. Clay Quincey, an EMT, spent off duty days making pottery and courting Marion with patient perseverance. She held him off with scrupulous decorum.
Except her scruples went the way of her eyes and ovaries last fall, during a week spent hiking on the coast. They began in separate sleeping bags but confronted with the depth of their friendship, Marion found her grounds for naming their relationship inappropriate, shaky as the sand at sea’s edge. With Clay’s whispers in her ears relentless as the surf, their bags were zipped together. Then Clay proposed again.
"What objections are left?" He brushed her bangs back to plant a kiss. "Time dissolved most of them. Your mother’s been gone five years. And I never thought she’d object."
Marion hid her face against his shoulder. "She never saw you as a suitor. You saw how she treated them."
"Because she feared they’d take you away, which I wouldn’t have. Since age fourteen I did chores and errands for her, and escorted her about. She treated me like a surrogate son."
"Your eighteen to my twenty-eight made it impossible for her to see you as more than surrogate kid brother for me."
"Two decades has lessened the shock-value of that if not proved my commitment." He tightened his arm about her.
"I never doubted your commitment. Just the wisdom of it. Age difference aside, I wouldn’t deny you the delight of having your own children and they couldn’t be mine."
"I don’t want to father children who can’t have you for a mother. I’d have been content as step-father. I felt like father enough the night Neal was born. Almost delivered him myself! If the paramedics had been five minutes longer…"
"The night you found your vocation." Marion remembered the gray-faced boy kneeling beside her in as much awe of the life-savers as the life giver.
"And my heart." His hands cupped her cheeks. "Two callings which I never repented."
"I know." She caressed his lips with her thumb.
He caught his breath. "So how can you still object?"
"How can I subject you to the burden of an old blind lady?
"The same way you do Ernestine."
"That’s different. I cared for my mother as she did hers. She needs to be home anyway. Her Drew flew the coop."
He gripped her shoulders. "So let her and the kid have the house and move in with me. With your career you needn’t follow tradition and be so dependent. Doesn’t take good eyes to be a good listener. If maneuvering clinic and hospital mazes is too much, I got room for you to set up at home."
"You make it sound fated." She laid her cheek on his chest to feel his heartbeat.
"It always was." He kissed her with long-denied urgency.
Today she blushed to think that she and seriously considered his proposal for several weeks after their return home. Until symptoms of menopause consumed her thoughts and nibbled away her courage. His call this morning had penetrated her self-absorption. "You, a trauma shrink, hiding from life?" a vulnerability in his voice had twisted the knife in her guilt. Time to end his agony. Better to ruin a friendship than the rest of his life. Today she was off to Clay’s for a long-postponed pottery lesson. Where she would firmly put their relationship back into the safe zone of friendship.
Marion eased one foot forward, reaching for the table, its mahogany surface a splash of shadow against pale linoleum and cerulean walls. Her fingers followed the edge to the south window-wall, where plants of a variety of shape and hue sat on shelves and hung from the ceiling. She took a mister among them, bestowing halos of mist, fingers brushing lightly the vines and leaves, hovering over blossoms as she inhaled an ecstasy of life.
She knelt beside a fern growing vigorously from a glazed pot, hands halting over a cluster of wilted fronds. "Feeling poorly today?" She probed its soil and sniffed her fingers. "OD’d on water, poor thing."
"Is Fern sick today Mare-Mare?" Verna asked in a sick-room whisper.
"Might say so. Sometimes too much of a good thing is worse than too little. She’s got a little root rot. Best leave her be for a bit." she set the mister down and stood, wiping gritty fingers on her denim skirt and adjusting her black T-shirt’s seams. It fit snugger this spring than last. The winter had laid more than heavy thoughts on her.
"Hmmmm." Ernestine approached, "Your grunge-work get-up." Silver letters across the chest read: Down and Dirty. "I see you’re up and about."
"So you do and so I am. Up to no good and about to be caught." She winked at Verna.
"Go wash up you two. I’m about to set the table."
"I’m about washed-up already." Marion mimed a morose look in an imaginary mirror and giving herself a finger face-lift made a face at Verna, who squealed and ran for the hall.
"Verna Ruth! Walk!" Ernestine commanded. "Better yet, come help Mare-Mare."
"No need. I may be washed-up but I’m not laid up." To prove it she stepped forwards without reaching for support. With the second confident step she grinned but the next instant her grin was plastered to the wall as one foot surged forward, surfing the waxed floor.
"Mother!" Ernestine lunged for her.
Marion watched the red slime slide past her eyes as her face floated down the sky-blue wall and the bright white floor drifted up, a fathomless cloud offering endless embrace….. Slugtrail slugabed snuginbed snugasa bugaboo bugout slugitout knockout knockabout knocked…
(to be continues next week)
ummm. If you can't wait until next week to see the rest, the entire story is posted over at Joywrite. The link is in the sidebar somewhere. I'm lazy. It's late And I have less than two hours to try to generate some NaNo word count for today. So I probably won't be making my visits until I've done that. Read more...
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Thursday Thirteen #60
I think it is time for another batch of those silly Title/Author combos. I warned in October that I might resort to this when the pressure was on during NaNo and 70 Days. I won't run out of these anytime soon. The list sent to me vis eamil some years ago is eleven pages in 10pt font. I haven't even read them all myself yet. This third batch doesn't even finish up the first page, though I will have to move into page two to make thirteen the next time I do this.
See the post below this for a progress report (of a sort) on NaNo.
Thirteen Funny Book/Author Combos.
At The Bottom Of The Can: Hazel Nutt
Athletic Supporter: Jacques Strap
Back Row Of The Orchestra: Clara Nett
Bad Cow Jokes: Terry Bull
Bad Falls by Eileen Dover
Bad Gardeners: Wilt Plant
Bad Investment: Les Riches
Banquet at McDonalds: Tommy Ayk
Baseball Tales by Homer
Battle Axes: Tom A. Hawk
Big Fart! by Hugh Jass
Blonde Hair by Bim Bow
Blowout!: Vlad Tire
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
NaNoWhineMo
I'm so far behind now, I feel like throwing my hands up. I'm only about one quarter of the way to the goal on the night before the halfway mark should have been met. I'm closing in on 13,000 but should be closing in on 25,000. Which means I need to average 1.5 times the 1667 words per day pace for the last 16 days. And that is not looking doable from where I sit right now. We're talking a daily pace of 2500 words per day. It isn't outside the realm of possibility but so unlikely I am feeling really discouraged.
I should be feeling rather pleased with myself though because today I made nearly 2000 words. But because I was aiming for 3500. And I had a fairly good chance of reaching it too because I made 1500 in 90 minutes this morning. I took a necessary break after that frantic push, intending to get right back to work but when I got back to my computer it was not cooperating with me. I though maybe I'd finally pushed the envelope to far with too many aps and windows open. But it turned out that my laptop had been commandeered by the update manager. My attempt to get back to work was met with frustration after frustration. Moving from window to window became exercises in meditation on the spinning hourglass against whited out windows. I was nervous that I was going to have to force a restart but I couldn't remember if I had saved my work before walking away from the computer.
Then the computer announces to me that updates had been downloaded and a restart was necessary to complete installation and the computer would restart automatically in 4:55; 4:48; 4:32.. The buttons gave me the option of: Restart Now and Restart Later. I clicked later and started saving my work and closing the applications. The dang alert came back every five minutes. That whole process took me longer than pumping out those 1500 words. I was so mad. Why today? Why in the middle of most peoples prime work hours. I fumed and ranted in my head during the whole procedure. If only I could have been typing those thoughts. I'd have had a much more interesting post than this.
Really, I don't get this proprietary attitude of programmers over a product that is no longer in their possession. I mean, it feels like a kind of theft to me. It steals my time and productivity. It commandeers the major tool with which I work right in the middle of a work session in which I am on a roll! How many employers would put up with the technology in the workplace if this was done to the computers of the average cubicle worker? I mean, REALLY!!!
And of course getting all worked up about it served no purpose other than to take my focus off my story and onto a frustration in which my obsessive-compulsive mind just glories in wallowing. By the time I the laptop got back to the welcome screen and I was able to click onto my desktop, I was exhausted. It takes another ten to fifteen minutes just to load my desktop. It was after noon by now and I'd been awake since six-thirty on less than seven hours of sleep after being awake for twenty hours on Tuesday--2AM to 10PM during which I advanced over 2000 words. I was tired of sitting on the edge of the bed watching a screen which I could do nothing with. I was just plain tired. So I lay down.
I was contemplating going ahead and making the walk to the library again this week even though neither me nor Ed needed any more books to see us through another week. I just wanted to get out of this room! I was going over in my mind the things I needed to do to get ready to leave. The next thing I knew I was opening my eyes in a dark room and it was 5:06. I was disgusted with myself and my mood has not improved in the last six hours.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
I'm How Many Seconds Old?
I was just wondering yesterday how many seconds in a half century. Then I found this fun calculator today and now I know. I plugged my birth date in and got my answer--and a whole lot more:
13 November 1957
Your date of conception was on or about 20 February 1957 which was a Wednesday.
You were born on a Wednesday
under the astrological sign Scorpio.
Your Life path number is 1.
Your fortune cookie reads:
You were born with the skill to communicate with people easily.
Life Path Compatibility:
You are most compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 1, 5 & 7.
You should get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 3 & 9.
You may or may not get along well with those with the Life Path number 8.
You are least compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 2, 4, 6, 11 & 22.
The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2436155.5.
The golden number for 1957 is 1.
The epact number for 1957 is -1.
The year 1957 was not a leap year.
Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 1/31/1957 and ending 2/17/1958.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Rooster.
Your Native American Zodiac sign is Snake; your plant is Thistle.
You were born in the Egyptian month of Tyby, the first month of the season of Poret (Emergence - Fertile soil).
Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 20 Heshvan 5718.
Or if you were born after sundown then the date is 21 Heshvan 5718.
The Mayan Calendar long count date of your birthday is 12.17.4.1.11 which is
12 baktun 17 katun 4 tun 1 uinal 11 kin
The Hijra (Islamic Calendar) date of your birth is Wednsday, 19 Rabi'u'th-Thani 1377 (1377-4-19).
The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 21 April 1957.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 21 April 1957.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 6 March 1957.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 9 June 1957.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 16 June 1957.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Tuesday, 24 September 1957.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Sunday, 14 April 1957.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 5 March 1957.
As of 11/13/2007 10:19:57 PM EST
You are 50 years old.
You are 600 months old.
You are 2,609 weeks old.
You are 18,262 days old.
You are 438,310 hours old.
You are 26,298,619 minutes old.
You are 1,577,917,197 seconds old.
Celebrities who share your birthday:Rachel Bilson (1981) Whoopi Goldberg (1955) Chris Noth (1954) Jean Seberg (1938) Oskar Werner (1922) Nathaniel Benchley (1915) Louis Brandeis (1856) Robert Louis Stevenson (1850)
Top songs of 1957All Shook Up by Elvis Presley Love Letters In the Sand by Pat Boone Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley Teddy Bear by Elvis Presley April Love by Pat Boone Young Love by Tab Hunter Tammy by Debbie Reynolds Honeycomb by Jimmie Rodgers Wake Up Little Susie by Everly Brothers You Send Me by Sam Cooke
Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 7.14755381604697 years old. (You old hound dog, you!)
Your lucky day is Tuesday.
Your lucky number is 9 & 11.
Your ruling planet(s) is Mars & Pluto.
Your lucky dates are 1st, 10th, 19th, 28th.
Your opposition sign is Taurus.
Your opposition number(s) is 6.
Today is not one of your lucky days!
There are 366 days till your next birthday
on which your cake will have 51 candles.
Those 51 candles produce 51 BTUs,
or 12,852 calories of heat (that's only 12.8520 food Calories!) .
You can boil 5.83 US ounces of water with that many candles.
In 1957 there were approximately 4.0 million births in the US.
In 1957 the US population was approximately 150,697,361 people, 50.7 persons per square mile.
In 1957 in the US there were approximately 1,667,231 marriages (11.1%) and 385,144 divorces (2.6%)
In 1957 in the US there were approximately 1,452,000 deaths (9.6 per 1000)
In the US a new person is born approximately every 8 seconds.
In the US one person dies approximately every 12 seconds.
In 1957 the population of Australia was approximately 9,744,087.
In 1957 there were approximately 220,358 births in Australia.
In 1957 in Australia there were approximately 73,696 marriages and 6,298 divorces.
In 1957 in Australia there were approximately 84,953 deaths.
Your birthstone is Citrine
The Mystical properties of Citrine
Citrine is said to help one connect with Spirit.Some lists consider these stones to be your birthstone. (Birthstone lists come from Jewelers, Tibet, Ayurvedic Indian medicine, and other sources)
Yellow Topaz, Pearl, Diamond
Your birth tree is
Chestnut Tree, the HonestyOf unusual beauty, does not want to impress, well-developed sense of justice, vivacious, interested, a born diplomat, but irritable and sensitive in company, often due to a lack of self-confidence, acts sometimes superior, feels not understood, loves only once, has difficulties in finding a partner.
There are 42 days till Christmas 2007!
There are 55 days till Orthodox Christmas!
The moon's phase on the day you were
born was waning gibbous.
Copyright © 2006 Paul R. Sadowski (http://www.paulsadowski.com) Read more...
Monday, November 12, 2007
Monday Poetry Train #25
Those Were the Days
by Joy Renee
Those were the days
When the sky blushed blue;
When the grass grinned green;
When birds sang true.
Those were the days
Love groomed my heart;
Trust bloomed my spirt;
Joy grew unfettered.
Those were the days
My soul sang Gloria;
My eyes saw clear;
My dreams soared.
Those were the days,
I was Daddy's delight;
I was Mama's eyeshine;
I was little brother's guide;
I was baby sister's glee.
<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>
I've posted this one twice already but had nearly forgotten about it because I don't have a copy in any of my files--paper or electronic. I wrote it right in the blogger platform on September 23rd and posted it on the 24th to commemorate the first anniversary of my Dad's passing. Then in late May in honor of his birthday (the second one without him) I did my TT on memories of him and reposted this poem. Rhian saw it that week and invited me aboard the Poetry Train.
I'm reposting it today in honor of my own birthday. After today it will be four years before I can write a 4 when noting down my age. Yes, that means I'm been half a century breathing earth's air.
In the picture, taken late summer 1964, I am seven and three-quarters, my brother has just turned six and my baby sister is about a month to six weeks. That hydrangea bush I'm sitting in front of had the most gorgeous blue and purple flowers; some nearly as big as my head at that age. I've loved hydrangea from my earliest memories. I remember being thrilled earlier that year when I got to move into that bedroom looking out onto that bush when my parents moved out of it and into the new addition.
My brother and I had shared a room since I was 22 months old. He got one of the new rooms because Mom wanted to keep him closer for awhile. About a year to 18 months after this picture was taken, my sister moved in and I didn't have a room of my own again until my brother left for tech school in 1977 and my sister moved into his room. I gave up my privacy 13 months later when I got married, December 2, 1978. Read more...
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Sunday Serenity #31
I had no idea such things as techno remixes of classical music existed. I found them while exploring YouTube for Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Vivaldi's Four Seasons in relation to my NaNo novel, Spring Fever.
I like.
I'm not sure how serenity inducing this remix of Beethoven's Ode To Joy is, but since I began Sunday Serenity for the purpose of injecting more of both peace and joy into my weeks I say this counts. I love Beethoven's 9th Symphony and it's last movement is my personal anthem. I dig this version.
There is more where this came from. Explore.
Read more...
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Crash Courses
I've had a major slow down in word production on Spring Fever, my NaNo novel, this week. When the words stopped flowing and I found myself all in a tangle on Tuesday, (a great disappointment after such a feverish start,) I began spending more time on the various crash courses I needed to flesh out the plot and the character's lives.
See my TT this week for a glimpse into the story and an idea of how many topics are involved. It is to be expected, I suppose, when you have two professors and a grad student as major POV characters and each with special interests and needs. Below are just some of the resources I've turned to so that I can pretend myself into the mind of a poet living with MS; a professor passionate about Dante; a grad student incorporating dance and the tarot into her thesis and who gives birth twice in the course of the novel. Which reminds me, I still have to research surrogacy, embryo freezing, and midwifery. Since I'm creating this to collect my resources as much as anything else, I may have to update as I add resources.
Among the books I've been reading are:
>>Joseph Campbell's Masks of God, leaning heavily on V.1. Primitive Mythology
>>Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
>>Jamke Highwater's Language of Vision: Meditations on Myth and Metaphor which is organized around the Major Arcana of the tarot and gave me the idea to do the same for my story.
>>Dante's Divine Comedy--Since I have a copy in the Britannica Great Books set, I've been dipping in now and then to read a paragraph or three.
>>Also in the GB set is Aristotle's works and I've dipped into his Rhetoric and On Poetics. Something I expect a professor of Medieval Literature would know.
Always useful as a resource whenever music is involved or excerpts from documentaries might be helpful is YouTube. So when it occurred to me that Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Igor Stravinsky's ballet, Rite of Spring, might merit some kind of involvement in a story called Spring Fever, that is where I headed.
Vivaldi ~ Four Seasons
Joan Bunning's Learning the Tarot.
>>What is especially helpful with Bunning's site is the list of actions associated with each card. This is good for triggering ideas for the plot.
Emotional Toolbox. [Hat Tip Joely]
Info on living with MS
On Dante's life and works:
Dante at Wikipedia
>>but of course I've used Wikipedia for all the other topics as well.
Dante Alighieri on the Web
An Exhibition of Renaissance Dante editions.
There is a lot of Dante material at this Columbia University site but it is the collection of images they have that drew me there. It always feeds a writer's imagination to have images to look at.
Similarly, The World of Dante is a gold mine of info, texts and translations but their collection of maps is really extraordinary.
Here's a bit of fun: you can take a test to see where in Dante's Hell you will be sent.
The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
| Level | Score |
|---|---|
| Purgatory (Repenting Believers) | High |
| Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) | High |
| Level 2 (Lustful) | High |
| Level 3 (Gluttonous) | Low |
| Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) | Low |
| Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) | Low |
| Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) | Very Low |
| Level 7 (Violent) | Low |
| Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) | Moderate |
| Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) | Very Low |
Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test Read more...
Friday, November 09, 2007
Friday Snippets 18
This is another snippet from the same story as last week. It takes place some nine years after last week's scene. But this was the first scene I ever wrote for this story and it is in the omniscient POV. Since most of the rest of the novel is to be told in Vivian's POV this will have to be rewritten. Though another option would be to let it stand as prologue.
Brooding Instinct
They found her beneath the tree where she'd fallen. Rather, young Kirk found her. On a visit to the drinking fountain during Sunday morning's song-service, he made an unsanctioned detour past the side door to gaze wistfully at the yard beyond. That is when he saw the foot snared in the apple tree's rope swing.
Beneath that slowly swinging foot, arms flung wide above her head, she lay in an abandoned sprawl. She clutched with one hand a scarlet apple sans one snowy bite. Bulging eyes stared unseeing at the sky. For the first time that morning ten year old Kirk's voice joined with those raised in praise inside.
Through the fire-doors and the double-paned insulating windows shut against the bite of an early fall morning, they heard him and fell silent. They streamed out of the Meeting Hall and flowed around the rock-still Kirk, many holding hands to ears against his scream and when they saw her, hands flew against eyes and mouths and heaving breasts. With gasps and murmurs they encircled her.
"Vivian! Vivian! It's my Vivian!" A woman broke from the circle and threw herself down beside the plum-faced body. "Help her"
"Only our Lord can help her now." Brother Curtis intoned.
"Let us pray." Brother Joel commanded. Heads obediently bowed as he began. "Dear Lord we beseech you to look upon us with Mercy as we face this trial. We commit into your hands our Sister Beth in this, her hour of great need. Your Will is often a great mystery to us but we trust in Your Wisdom and Your Loving-Kindness towards us. With grateful hearts we remember Your Gift of Salvation bought for us with the Blood of Your Only Begotten Son. For this and for Your Daily Blessings we thank and praise you. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
"Amen." a chorus answered.
Those who had kept their eyes closed, opened them upon a miracle but the few who watched witnessed the saving of Vivian Christopher.
They saw a stalwart Kirk, having transmuted his scream into a preternatural serenity, pull from his mother Valerie's embrace and approach sister Beth who was alternately pushing on her daughter's chest and puffing into her mouth.
"That's not the right way, Grandma." he whispered, untangling Vivian's foot from the swing. "Besides, she's choking on the apple and you can't get air in 'til you get it out. Here, help me roll her over."
He handed Vivian's floppy arm across to her mother, who took it and pulled as he shoved against the shoulder. With Vivian now face down with one arm trapped beneath her and her cheek resting against the apple still clutched in that hand, he straddled her.
Vivian's mother took the apple from her daughter's hand as Kirk slipped his arms around her ribs and lifting her into a kneeling position, placed a fist below her breast bone and gave three sharp squeezes.
The bite of apple shot out and Kirk lay the still lifeless Vivian, her face a reflection of the storm cloud rolling over the churchyard, on her back, tilted her head, pinched her nose and blew into her mouth as though it were a balloon--once, twice, three times.
Then he lay his ear to her chest. He frowned, "Here, Grandma, you do like I did when I say." With one fist inside the other and elbows locked he leaned heavily against Vivian's chest, counting five. "Now." he said. "Three times."
On the third repetition of their joint efforts Vivian sucked in a lungful of air and her chest began to rise on its own. The blue slowly faded from her face until it matched the pale wound on the apple now clutched in her mother's hand.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<o>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
For those of you who've seen both last week's snippet and the previous week's from, A Tale of a Wail, you will note yet another mention of Curtis. He is only my second attempt at drawing a villain. The first being Brandon in Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes. You need all three snippets to get the full sense of his sociopathic tendencies. I don't like working with villains. I resist writing the scenes they appear in. That is one of the biggest obstacles to my finishing the novels I start.
The following would be spoilers if there was much hope of this ever hitting the shelves. But you all have earned the right to a peek inside the plot.
Kirk is presented in this snippet as the son of Valerie and the Grandson of Sister Beth, mother of Vivian. In last week's snippet Valerie was presented as Vivian's older, married sister who had suffered several miscarriages. And last week, fifteen-year-old Vivian was climbing this same apple tree in the middle of the night for a secret rendezvous with her twenty-five-year old cousin, Curtis. That was the night Kirk was conceived. Kirk is then given to Valerie to raise.
I'm not sure yet who all is aware of this. In one scenario Vivian goes into premature labor on the same night Valerie is having another miscarriage and Curtis switches the live baby with the dead one. Now he could be the only one who knows this, or he could have persuaded Vivian it was the best thing, or he could have been in collusion with Valerie's husband or Vivian and Valerie's father--Brother Joel in the above snippet and lead Elder of the Assembly. I like the options in approximately that order. I'm sure neither Beth nor Kirk are aware. I know that Vivian left home after graduating from high-school when Kirk was nearing three and that this is her first visit back.
Sorry this is getting posted so late. You can blame NaNo for it again. Though this week it isn't because I was swinging from sentence to sentence like Tarzan among the vines but rather because I fell to the jungle floor and wandered into a quagmire. I'm stalled out at 6622 since Monday. I should have hit 15K by midnight tonight. It's not hopeless yet. But closing in on it.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Thursday Thirteen #59
Thirteen Things About My NaNoWriMo Novel
1. The title is Spring Fever
2. It started out as a simple romance, a love story, but then it got really complex.
3. Musing on spring, got me musing on seasons and from there to the cycle of life and death which fit nicely with my poet character, Holly Dawn Harper. She was already suffering from MS so it was likely she would be musing on these things too. So I gave the body of her work the theme of the four seasons. This would feature the seasonal cycles of sky, weather, flora and fauna along with various culture rites associated with seasons.
4. Holly's interest in seasons is one manifestation of the novel's exploration of time.
Concepts of time are expressed in a variety of ways by various cultures so I wanted to give each of my three POV characters a different ethnic heritage and to make things even more complex they each got mixed heritage so that there would be more concepts in the dynamic--the dynamic operating within each of their psyches and the dynamic operating within the relationships between them. Holly is part Amerindian and was raised on a reservation.
5. Holly is approaching forty and is married to Graham Palmer Simons who is a professor of ancient and medieval literature with a special focus on the poets and a personal passion for Dante's Divine Comedy.
6. Graham's heritage is Catholic and Jewish. His training as a academic also impacts his concept of time as knowledge of the historical milieu of a piece of literature is part of a complete comprehension of it. He is also multi-lingual, speaking several languages and reading several more and thus his interest in the etymology of words would also impact his concept of time.
7. Graham, as is reflected by the meaning of his name 'from a gray manor; stern', is the quintessential professor. A man of authority who rules himself by the same code he expects others to adhere to. He is in his early fifties and a bit hidebound.
8. Thus he is more than a bit distressed when Holly, who is also a professor, agrees to take on as advisee a grad student who wants to do her MFA thesis in mixed medium (poetry, song, dance, art etc.) organized around the Tarot as a storehouse of archetypes, metaphors and symbols that can communicate across cultures because they are grounded in the universal human psyche. He feels this is a frivolous waste of Holly's precious time and energy.
9. And so enters Maia Rhiannon Robins. (notice I changed her middle name since the last time I posted about her) Maia's heritage is Celtic mixed with something else which I've not settled on yet. To add to her image of frivolousness in Graham's eyes, she gives birth to an infant out of wedlock. But Maia can hold her own against Graham's scorn, deflecting his often caustic remarks with humor. She is not going to allow the friction between them to endanger her opportunity to work with her long-time hero, Holly. Maia's concept of time is influenced by her experience with music and dance as well as her passion for mythology and story.
10. Holly sees in the dynamic of Maia and Graham's relationship similarities to the beginning of her own relationship with Graham over sixteen years earlier and, suspecting that she has entered the end-stages of MS, chooses to encourage it, for she fears for Graham in the event of her death for he, like Dante, had lost his first love (a childhood sweetheart) while he was himself a grad student and had withdrawn into a decade long frozen wasteland of the spirit. Holly does not want this to happen to him again. So she offers Maia the job of helping her organize her papers and invites the young mother and infant to board with them. (Note: she has no intention, nor do I, of encouraging any infidelity)
11. The relationship between Holly and Maia is as important in the story as that between Maia and Graham and that between Graham and Holly. Holly and Maia quickly bond on a very deep level which soon has them sharing their most intimate hopes, dreams, desires, fears, regrets etc. Holly will share with Maia her thwarted desire to be a mother and confesses that early in their marriage she and Graham had frozen embryos in hopes that she would be able carry one to term during one of the intermittent remissions of the MS.
12. Maia, after careful thought and realizing it means that ethically Holly cannot remain her thesis adviser, offers to be a surrogate. Holly accepts but fearing Graham's refusal of the plan follows through without his knowledge. She wants this for him as much as for herself. She knows that his sense of duty will not allow him to neglect his child so, even if the relationship between Maia and Graham does not take the direction she envisions, the child would anchor him in life.
13. I've mapped out 22 chapters (major events) organized around the Tarot's Major Arcana. Each chapter takes on the themes reflected in the cards but not necessarily their titles. Nor do I follow their typical order. Each chapter is narrated through the POV of one of the three though not in strict alternation. (Holly's last chapter is the 14th at about the three-quarter mark in the story arc.) Each chapter also features a season except that the first and last chapters feature all four. Spring, of course, gets more billing than the other seasons.
Oh, and even though I set out to venture outside the boundary of my Fruit of the Spirit story world, I'm now teetering on the edge of bringing one and possibly two characters from FOS stories in as supporting actors because they have the profession needed and are already so well envisioned. The same goes for the college or university featured in two FOS stories. I'm still torn on that though as that risks allowing this story to get all tangled up in the FOS time line which became such an inhibiting factor during 70 Days of Sweat last summer. It is harder to generate word count when you keep getting side-tracked fiddling with a hundred some inter-related (by marriage and other relationships) characters and a sixty-odd year overarching story arc.
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Measured Progress
No new word count on Spring Fever my NaNo and 70 Days of Sweat project today. But there are other ways to measure progress besides word count.
I started my day with that shampoo I discussed in last night's post and followed up with that walk to the library. I've now got clean hair and a refreshed spirit. I'm physically exhausted and sore but that is more bearable than the mental fatigue I was fighting last night.
I made the trip especially to go after books for Ed. There was only one thing I was planning to pick up for myself and that was a DVD of Igor Stravinsky's ballet, The Rite of Spring, which research for my story had brought to my attention as possibly meriting a mention in the story if not more--like giving one of the characters a passionate interest in it. At the very least watching it should inform my several levels of consciousness on some of the themes of my story. Not to mention fill in another one of those culture gaps created by thirty-five years of eschewing all things 'worldly'.
I found mention of the ballet in one of my sources and immediately went to Wikipedia to learn more. The more I read about it, the more I wanted to see it or at least listen to the score. So I went to the library catalog online to check on its availability.
We can't request items from other branches until next week and Phoenix is currently in very small quarters while its new building is under construction and over half of its collection is in storage. So I wasn't expecting to find something I could get my hands on much before Thanksgiving. And as I scanned the list of materials related to Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring popped up a lot and as I expected. none were at Phoenix. Most were CD, but once it was a video cassette of the performance. I was pleased to see that because though I prefer DVD that I can play at will on my laptop, this was important enough to be willing to use my in-laws TV and VCR in the middle of the night. But then, near the end of the last page there it was, the DVD. I clicked on the link to see which branch it was at, expecting it to be the community college library. But, like a miracle, there was the word Phoenix followed by the word in. That, of course, ended all deliberations on whether or not I would make the effort to get to the library today.
That was the first thing I looked for when I walked in the door. It helps that the DVD shelf is right inside the door. At first I didn't find it because the title showing on the spine read, Keeping Score: revolutions in music: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. But Stravinsky was in smaller font and the rest was covered by the Dewey sticker. On my second pass over the shelf I was reading the Dewey stickers because I had written down the number at 3AM. I didn't even need to get out my notes.
After that, I must have been feeling exuberant or something because I started pulling novels off the shelf for Ed with abandon. Partly that was due to them being short mysteries and I wanted to be sure he had enough to last a full week. I resisted most of the ones that tempted me. After all I'm still reading The Historian! And haven't touched any of the five I checked out last week. But I succumbed to two slenderish trade backs. Not much weight and quick reads. Both of them were on the theme of women dealing with issues of womanhood inside fairly patriarchal cultures. I was afraid I wouldn't remember their titles and was too lazy to return to the other room for my notebook to jot them down while there.
Then on a whim, I decided to glance at the medical section (Dewey 600s) on the chance they might have a book about dealing with MS because I've given that to one of my characters. There wasn't one specifically about MS but there was one on how to manage your life while living with chronic conditions. A glance through it showed that, although MS wasn't one of the conditions focused on, there was plenty of info that could help give me insight into my character's daily life. And even ideas for conflict and resolution or just events that move the plot.
That book had been on the bottom shelf, and as I stood up my eyes passed over the title on the spine of a trade back book that was laying horizontal atop the row it belonged in because there wasn't any room on the shelf for it. Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest. The same character I've given MS, I've also given an ethnic Amerindian heritage! Here was another portal for getting into her head. I hadn't decided which tribe to assign her to yet. But whether or not it becomes a Pacific Northwest tribe, her interest in her own heritage combined with her academic bent (she is a poet and a professor) would make it likely she would know these stories. Under it was a book collecting legends of the world and it had a some Amerindian stories. It was also the fattest book I had picked up all day so I deliberated some. But flipping through it and seeing all the stories from around the world and across time, I realized that many of them would be familiar to the poet's husband, a professor of medieval literature, or the grad student who is the poet's advisee and has a passion for mythology.
I tell you, it was the weirdest feeling to have these items (the ballet DVD and four books) fall into my hands when I least expected them. I have read a lot about synchronicity but have seldom consciously noted it when it was happening to me.
Yet another benefit of getting away from the laptop and the confines of this room, was a clearing of my head which allowed the ideas to start flowing again. It had felt like my characters had abandoned me yesterday. But today they were walking beside me and conversing with one another. I was so engrossed at one point that I stepped off a curb and was halfway into a crosswalk before I realized I had not checked for approaching traffic. It was a side street with no light and a stop sign for vehicles but I've often had to contend with cars that stop inside the crosswalk or others, turning off the main street into the crosswalk while I am in it. It is not wise for me to get that engrossed in a daydream when I'm walking city streets. It is a life-long habit of mine and very difficult to break. Someone/something was watching over me today.
My TT tomorrow is going to be 13 things about Spring Fever, my NaNo novel. I was hoping to get both this post and the TT posted before I slept but I'm wiped out and dare not risk inviting that headache back in again.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Wilting
I've had three slow days in a row with my NaNo novel. I'm behind the pace by 3377 words, assuming the need to average 1666.6666 words per day. I'm a tad discouraged but not panicked yet since I've frequently surged ahead by over 3500 words in a single day on a story. But that kind of thing isn't the norm and I can't count on it. When it does happen, it usually follows a day or two of backing off to dream the scene(s), watching my characters move in their environment and interact with it and with each other. I can't afford very many such breaks in grinding out the words though. Especially with there being no guarantee that the surge of words will follow the fallow day.
It doesn't help that I'm fighting another headache either. This isn't quite of the migraine category yet but still... It might be eye-strain. I've taken the step of increasing the font size to 20pt to see if that might help. Of course, I won't be able to judge that until after I've rested my eyes and started fresh.
If some of these headaches of late are eye-strain related, I may be getting relief soon. I've finally got an appointment with an eye doctor. A week from Friday though, so it's not going to help me get through NaNo. Even the best scenario means that I'd be breaking in a new prescription during the last ten to fifteen days. There is always eyestrain involved in that too. And to make matters iffier I have to go with bifocals as our insurance only allows for one pair in two years so I can't have separate reading glasses.
I did not have a happy experience with bi-focals last time I tried them. They were fine for reading or for sewing while watching TV or for not having to choose between seeing your dinner plate or the face of your conversationalist across the table. But for walking about--not so fine. My tunnel vision seems to be encroaching faster from below than from the sides so I have to look down to see anything below the level of my nose. Looking down with bifocals while stepping off a curb was nearly as disorienting as stepping off a carnival ride. I use that analogy because I had bifocals when we moved to Sunnyvale, CA in 1999 and the following spring we bought season tickets to PGA (Paramount Great America) amusement park. It was a natural comparison.
One of my frustrations today is that my word count remains so low in spite of the fact that I have spent the majority of my waking hours focused on Spring Fever. Once again I've put every other thing in my life to the side to become submerged in the story world. I don't know whether to just accept this as the way I work most productively or to think of it as something that needs to change. I know such a working style would not be compatible if I had other pressing responsibilities: a day job, kids, a household of my own to run. But since I don't have any of those, maybe I should just go with it. On the other hand, I am starting to miss certain things. Like reading novels, watching movies, clean hair, and sleep.
And getting out of this room! It's been a week since I've been any further than the dinner table or the bathroom. I was considering passing on the weekly trip to the library this week because I've barely touched most of the books I brought home last week. One of them has become essential reference for my story world but the rest are just sitting there taunting me. I still haven't finished The Historian, the novel we own so bringing home more novels makes little sense. But Ed is down to three out of the seven I brought home for him and thus might not make it to next Monday without more. So now I'm thinking that I should try to go tomorrow, the last day the Phoenix branch is open this week. And if I wake up headache free I think I will wash my hair and head for the library.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Monday Poetry Train #24
Thanking Evan
by Joy Renee
We thank you Evan
For your visit.
Though you came and went
In the space of a smile,
In that little while
Blossomed the flower
Of eternity.
We thank you Evan
For you exist
Now in hearts enlarged
To hold the ocean of love
Which over the years
Of absorbing our tears
Will return our joy.
For Eric M twin of Evan M b. 7/27/95 d. 10/31/95
#############
In mid October of 1995 Ed and I began babysitting three month old twin boys. On the morning of Halloween we were expecting the arrival of the babies and instead received a phone call from the mother. Evan had died of crib death.
Because Eric was Evan's twin, doctor's recommended he be attached to a monitor for a year and any caregivers would need to be trained in how to use the monitor. The family decided to keep care of Eric inside the family.
So, in a sense, we lost both babies. Ten days is plenty of time for me to bond with an infant.
The day before, Evan had gazed into my eyes and smiled, holding the gaze and the smile for what seemed like an eternity. Memory of that moment sustained me through the grief process and was the seed for this poem.
It is hard to believe Eric is twelve years old now. As far as I know anyway. His family were friends of friends of my mother and I haven't heard anything further since my mother's friend showed me a photo of Eric at age three.
___________
Sorry I'm so late getting this posted this week. It has been hard to drag my attention off my NaNo novel.
Plus it is getting harder to select a poem. I've got three left now! I'm going to have to start writing poetry again or start reposting poems or switching to fiction outtakes....
Maybe I'll be inspired once I get inside the heads of my three POV characters: two poets and a Professor specializing in medieval poetry. Which leads to an interesting question: when a character in a novel writes poetry which is included in the text of the novel, who is the author?
__________________
for more Poetry Train passengers Read more...
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Sunday Serenity #30
Can you tell I just love these singing cats. Some of them are silly and some are energizing. This one is serene and had me anticipating posting it today the first time I saw it while Ed was putting together his TT this week.
Watch a snow white cat amid pale almond blossoms emit the velvet voice of Marcus James Christian singing the song, Almond Blossoms Fall, from the album Harmonious Haiku>
Read more...
Saturday, November 03, 2007
I've Got the Fever
I'm on fire for my story. My NaNo story, Spring Fever, is off to a raging start this year. I'm closing in on 5000 words. I'm not claiming their quality words. but they are words.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Friday Snippets 17
Sorry I'm so late posting Friday Snippets this week. I was hoping I'd have something from my NaNo project ready. I should have known better. It is too soon. In order to generate word count I am allowing myself to be very messy with it.
So instead I'm sharing a scene from my NaNo project of two years ago, Brooding Instinct, another novel from my Fruits of the Spirit story world. Most of that one is still messy too but there were a few scenes I have worked over. This one still needed some work after I chose it for today's snippet. I chose it anyway because it has a character in common with the snippet from last week. Curtis isn't actually in either this scene or last week's snippet from Tale of a Wail, we view him only through the thoughts of the protagonists.
Brooding Instinct
Vivian listens to the silence of the house. She waits at least thirty minutes past the last sound she heard from her parent's room. The night-time restlessness of both of her parents have increased since Valerie's last miscarriage. Her father spends more time in his study before heading to bed and her mother has taken to coming in to check on her, content to watch her sleep if Vivian does not let on she is awake. This has made it difficult lately for her to leave her bed let alone slip out the window into the yard and make her way to the apple tree. Thus the rendezvous with Curtis have become fewer and farther between.
She slides one foot onto the floor and pauses to listen. Nothing but the tick of the clock on her headboard. She sets the other foot beside the first and stands, holding her breath for the sound of the creaking floorboard if she miscalculated. Thank God she doesn't have to cross the middle of the room where most of the old floorboards are loose in the dry heat of summer and speak their irritation with one another in a language of ticks and squeaks. It is just one step from the side of the bed to the window sill of this old window with the sash that is left raised to catch stray night breezes. Each season has its own challenges but summer is the most conducive to getting out of the house and back in again without announcing her movements to her parents on the other side of the wall.
She has already prepared for her departure by unhooking the bottom of the screen so that it will push out on its hinges. She will have to remember to keep one hand on it as she lowers her self to the ground so that it won't snap shut with a sound like a knock on the door. She slides one knee onto the low sill and leans her head under the sash. It would be so much easier with Curtis' help but also so much harder to explain if they were caught. This way she can claim she only wants to go sit in the swing to catch the breeze. That is something she and Valerie used to do in the summer when they shared the room. And even after Valerie left home three years ago, Vivian continued to do it and occasionally her mother would spot her and come to join her.
It wasn't until Curtis moved into the converted Sunday-school room the summer she was thirteen that her parents started acting like she mustn't be sitting out in the yard alone at night. Vivian couldn't pretend not to understand why. She had been wearing her heart on her sleeve for Curtis since she was small enough to ride on his shoulders. But what the family considered cute when she was five to his fifteen was no longer thought cute after he turned eighteen. Let alone now that he was twenty-five. He promised that as soon as she turned eighteen they would move to Idaho where it was still legal for first cousins to marry.
Vivian slid her other leg over the sill and lowered herself to the ground by one arm as she held the screen open with the other. As soon as both of her feet were solid on the grass below, she let go of the sill and then carefully released the wooden frame of the screen. She stood absolutely still for long seconds, breathing in and out through her open mouth the better to hear every possible sound. Her parent's window just yards to her left was also open. Though she thought she heard their electric fan whirring, which would mask some sound. But why take chances?
After a couple minutes of hearing nothing but crickets and frogs, she ventured one step backwards. And then, pivoting on that foot, she fairly scampered across the yard to the apple tree. Sometimes she would sit quietly in the swing for several minutes. Just to be sure her escape from the house had not been detected. For being spotted quietly sitting in the swing was not likely to bring her parent's wrath. Only her Mama's offering of an iced juice or herbal tea along with her solicitous companionship until Vivian voluntarily returned to her room.
But this night, it was already past one in the morning and she was impatient, fearful that Curtis would give up on her and return to his room, leaving her to ache for the touch of his hand on hers, for the sound of his voice as he spoke her name when only she could hear. So, instead of sitting in the swing she stepped into its seat and in one fluid motion she grabbed the branch on which its ropes hung with both hands and swung herself up into the foliage.
Standing on the branch supporting the swing she was just able to reach the underside of the tree house floor where there was a trapdoor. She pushed this up eagerly anticipating his greeting. But there was only silence and black darkness. Disappointment was like a sudden dousing with cold water. Tears sprang to her eyes and she had to take several juddering breaths to keep from crying. She couldn't bear to turn back, retrace her steps in the same careful silence to the same sigh-soaked sheets and dream-withering walls. She could at least rest for a bit first.
Before lifting herself up she reached into the branches and plucked an apple. She tucked it inside the front of the sports bra she wore under her knee-length night shirt then reached for a second one, tucking it into the other side. For the third one she had to reach so far to the side she needed to release the grip her other hand had on the solid trunk-connected branch and shift all of her weight onto the foot farthest from the trunk. She held her precarious balance by swaying gently as the toes of a single foot gripped the bark under them. When she grabbed the apple and tugged sharply its sudden release caused her to wobble so severely she thought for a moment she was going to topple off her perch and plunge into the dark beneath her feet where the twigs and branches which were now her concealment and comfort would whip and lash her mercilessly as she fell. But it was only a moment. Not even a second lapsed before she had steadied herself again with one hand on the trunk and that third apple safely in the other.
But now she must do something with it for she needed both hands to proceed up into the tree house and she wanted to go on up even if Curtis was not there. He might still show up and even if he didn't she longed to lay on the floor and look up through the branches at the stars and dream of the day when she and Curtis could declare their love for each other and forever after belong to each other in the open light of day before the eyes of parents, Assembly and God.
The tree house in the wee hours was the only safe place to think about this longed for future as it was the only place it was safe to meet each other's eyes, to let their gazes linger on one another, to touch finger tip to spine. to trace the graceful arch of the other's bare foot with one naked toe. Vivian shivered as a cool breeze passed through the branches. She opened her mouth and gripped the apple gently with her teeth without breaking the skin. It was early in the season yet and she nearly drooled in anticipation of its sharp, green-apple tartness as she launched herself up into the womb of darkness above her head.
##################
Just a note to clarify something. I have no idea whether Idaho is a state that still allows first cousins to marry. Vivian believes it because Curtis has said it. Read more...
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Thursday Thirteen #57
Thirteen Weird Things My Cat, Merlin, Thinks are Yummy
1. Peanut butter
2. Jelly
3. Fruity yogurt
4. Apple cider vinegar
5. Salt and Vinegar potato chips
6. Rose petals
7. Alysium
8. Ice cream
9. Ice cubes
10. Watermelon
11. Mayonnaise
12. Applesauce
13. Cheddar cheese
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
I've Got NaNo Fever
The typewriter in the NaNo icon reminds me so much of my first typewriter, a little portable Underwood that was at least ten years older than I was when I received it for my thirteenth birthday. On November 13th 1970.
In just two hours and a few minutes I get to start writing the story that I've spent the last nineteen days dreaming and jotting notes for. I'm raring to go.
This year my story is a love story. I was going to try to do a straight romance genre story but I seem to be incapable of creating characters and plots that don't take me into philosophical musings. So I've listed my novel as literary fiction at NaNo again this year. The icon above links to my profile at the sight.
My novel is titled Spring Fever. It is the story of Graham Palmer Simons a Professor of Medieval poetry with a special interest in Dante's Divine Comedy; his wife Holly Dawn Harper also a professor but a poet in her own right whose work explores the concepts of time, seasons, and change; a grad student Maia Fleur Robins who's thesis is on the symbols of transformation embedded in the Tarot. Maia's thesis adviser is Holly but she must take classes from Graham. She and Graham get off to a rocky start when she arrives late to her first class with him. Their encounters after that simmer with intense emotions; not just the resentment but because of an instant mutual attraction that neither can afford to be conscious of. But Holly notices and gives it her blessing, though she says nothing to either of them. She sets out to matchmake them, seeing in Maia Graham's potential salvation in the event of her impending death. Holly knows she is fast approaching the end stage of the MS she has battled for fifteen years and she knows that Graham is in denial about it and fears for his sanity after she is gone. For the loss of his first love in a tragic accident had sent him into a tailspin from which he barely escaped with life and mind intact. Meanwhile Maia has recently been badly betrayed by a professor from her undergraduate years and has no wish to think about another relationship let alone with another professor twenty years her senior.
I don't know yet but I suspect that I am going to be alternating POV among these three.
I once posted the original storyseed for this story here, the beginnings of a scene I wrote years ago. It is a story that has been simmering in my imagination for nearly ten years. But in honor of the NaNo requirement that no scenes be written ahead of November 1, I was disqualifying this story. But I was desperate and decided that instead of disqualifying the story entire, I would just forbid myself to look at that storyseed again until at least several days into NaNo. Not even to remind myself of character's names and descriptions. I haven't looked at in in over a year. I found the link to it in my archives by its title.
I've thirty minutes left before I can Read more...
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Oh, Joy! The Books Are Back
The Phoenix branch of our library system opened at ten Monday morning. I was sitting on the brick-enclosed flowerbed by the front door when the librarian arrived to unlock the door at two minutes til ten. I had not slept. I had tried, but it was no go. The day before a big event has always been one of my insomnia triggers.
I was sooooo tired last night. My muscles and joints are still trying to decide if they reeealy want to know each other that well.
My haul included 7 novels for Ed; 5 novels and 5 NF for me; and 4 DVD. Sound like a lot? Ha! Then you don't know me well. Take a look at my profile pic. That was me bringing back the last of the books on the last day the libraries were open last April 6th. About a month before that, I'd had to bring back three or four times that many in the week before they put a 30 item limit on each card. At the heighth of last winter/spring I topped 130 items on my card alone.
That wasn't typical though. 60-80 items on my card is more typical. I kinda went a bit crazy after news of the impending library closure. I had dozens of projects ongoing. I tried to bring as many as possible to adequate stopping places. I panicked. Instead of doing a dozen things well in the last four months, I did six dozen in slip-shod fashion. I stopped taking notes. I tried to become a sponge for the words but no matter which thing I was working on, anxiety about several of the others kept my mind distracted.
I'm hoping I've learned some lessons that will stick over the last seven months. I probably wouldn't have committed to 70 Days of Sweat if I'd still been a slave to library book due dates. I probably wouldn't have committed to posting daily to Joystory either. I do not want to loose the momentum of giving quality time to my writing. I want to bring the ratio of fiction to NF reading back towards half and half. Fiction, my first love, had slipped to less than 10% of my reading over the last decade.
I also learned during the Read-a-Thon October 20th that my reading speed has slipped to between 20 and 30 pages per hour. That is a large drop from the 50 page per hour rate I was at 7 years ago. I'm hoping that removal of a cataract in my right eye and new prescription glasses will allow me to bring that back up but until then, an adjustment of expectations is in order.
Somehow, I got confused today and spent most of the day thinking it was the last day of October and that NaNoWriMo kicked off at midnight. It wasn't until just before dinner this evening that I figured it out. This afternoon I had finally gone to the NaNo site and reactivated my account and updated my profile. I'd been putting it off because part of the task was to grab icon gifs off their site for display in my sidebar. It had been so long since I'd altered my sidebar, I'd forgotten how to do it. I also needed to change the image at the top of the sidebar, shaming Southern Oregon for the library closures. The one showing a jumbled pile of books with a red circle and slash over them.
There were several other things I changed on my sidebar. I spent the evening after dinner plugging away at it, learning how to add URL links to images that refer to their site instead of to blogger's photo id. Also, in reverse, to add an image to a link in a link list. I made a number of changes but there are still more to do. For one, I need to totally revamp my link lists. This evening I eliminated at least half of the links in 'Blogs I Haunt' because I hadn't visited for months or I knew the link was invalid. I need to add in the ones that have become regular haunts over the last year.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Monday Poetry Train #23
This is another poem that disturbs me as much as By the Blood does. Early versions were written in the weeks following the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. I considered using pictures from the event for this post but the chaos and terror of that day is not the point I wish to emphasize. The first versions of this poem were dark and full of despair. Over the years I have added and subtracted and rearranged words and lines, tweaked punctuation and repeatedly decided to destroy all copies and versions. I'm still not entirely comfortable with it. And yet. There is just something.
I think it keeps drawing me back because it is so strongly associated in time and symbol to the event of my definitive break with the fundamentalist sect I was raised in. For five and a half months preceding that April 19th, my dreams had been full of ruined buildings, bombed landscapes, contorted bodies of children as my world unbuilt itself. Throughout the news coverage in the weeks following, I was never quite sure if I was dreaming or awake.
Even the early versions of this though attempted to focus on the aspect of community--its vulnerability and resilience, its faith and its heart. In loosing my community, I was at first bereft and adrift. But apparently by the time I began composing this, I'd already begun to see the possibility of belonging somewhere again. Since then I've learned that it is not only possible, it is necessary.
Heartland
by Joy Renee
Oh, oh, oh, Oklahoma!
Our nation’s heart.
Land of the free.
Domain of love.
It harbors our hope and in no
Sense from the rest is set apart.
They can resist its innate charm?
“Honey no sweeter
Than revenge.”
Answers fear
To injustice hinged.
Anger, home-grown and adamant
Timid reason and appeasement
To resist til vengeance
Jabs disturb plain faith.
“A beneficial call to arms
Stirs our bitter rage uncoiled.”
Heartland love:
Its innocence
Partook in harmony.
Then dangers intimidate.
And judgment foiled, liberties are
Leased by terrors some name just.
“Deuces are wild,
Jokers suffice
Our grapes of wrath
Your peace un-spun.”
Yet we must again partake
In that song of hope and faith;
Reclaim our trust; reach out with love;
Establish anew our reliance
On community, on harmony;
Proclaim with humble defiance:
“It’s not just dues but sour grapes
That kills the heart for its mistakes!” Read more...
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