3-31 How to Write Good

A handout from my writing class. Words to write by.

1. Avoid aliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.
19. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquaialisms.
20. Even if a mixed metaphor signs, it should be derailed.
21. Who needs rhetorical questions?
22. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
23. Eschew obfuscation.

These made me smile, but also made me realize I'm guilty of just about all of them. Take them away and what's left? Newspaper articles? LOL. I can see the case for not relying on any or all of the above, but a lot of them, to me, represent how a person would flavor his/her own creation, throwing in a pinch of this, a dash of that. Maybe it's just me and I am feeling threatened to have so many of my "crutches" branded as bad writing. LOL.

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Quote of the day: I had come here with Darin, a highly unlikely infatuation kindled in the furnace of parental disapproval. Lost reference.
Chosen because I immediately thought of my first boyfriend, and how my parent's dislike of him made him all the more attractive. I loved how the author puts this.

3-30 Writing Exercise - Bringing the Abstract to Life

Think in concrete terms. Make the following abstractions come to life by rendering them in concrete specific details or images of one sentence.

Racism - Hiring an unqualified white over a qualified minority

Injustice - Letting a drunk driver back on the road after his third incident involving injuries or deaths of innocent victims.

Ambition - Skating five hours a day, starting at age five, for fifteen years.

Growing old - Suddenly finding yourself lost on an "unfamiliar" street one mile from your home of forty years.

Salvation - A five year old seeing her mother's face after spending a frantic few minutes lost in a large crowd at the amusement park.

Poverty - Going to bed for two nights in a row with a gnawing hunger that presses through to the backbone.

Growing up - Understanding for the first time that your parents are actual people.

Sexual deceit - Lying to a partner about birth control in hopes to have a baby.

Wealth - Living in a home where there are rooms you never, ever need or use.

Evil - Forcing a four year-old daughter into the basement for another game of "hide daddy's hot dog."

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Quote of the day: ...and then she made me swear not to tell which was like asking me to carry a bomb in my mouth. Kaye Gibbons - "A Cure For Dreams"
Chosen because who has not been told a secret that was screaming to be told, to feel the impossible pressure of it against the door of their clamped lips, pushing, pushing to be released to the nearest ear. I love the urgency and danger of "bomb in the mouth", perfectly describing the fine balance of wanting to tell, yet knowing the destruction it could wield. Bearing a secret forces one to combat inner forces and I love using the bomb metaphor to mark the tightrope walk of it.

3-29 Writing Exercise - Three Childhood Memories

Random memories from the house I grew up in:

1) The beloved attic fan, droning and rumbling me to sleep every spring, summer, and fall before the heat forced the windows shut. I'd lay in the dark, the two windows to the right of my double bed open, and cool breezes were sucked in right over my bed, as I lay snuggled under this spectacularly silky, pine green comforter we inherited from my grandmother. I loved this blanket and would give anything to still feel my toes under it again. A constant bedtime refrain would drift down the stairs to my mom, "Can we have the fan?" There'd be this brief silent anticipation of "granted? Or denied?" and then after a few moments, the metal slats of the fan opening in the tiny hall ceiling right outside my bedroom door would whoosh open and heaven breezed in. Sleep would follow in minutes. I never felt so cozy and safe as I did on "fan nights."

2) My upstairs bedroom had a dormer window that opened up to a small, flat area holding a flower container, usually filled with plastic red geraniums. It was just large enough for me to sit on quite comfortably and during the summers, I used to climb out there at night, after the neighborhood had shut down and all were tucked safely in their homes. I'd do it during the day too, but it was best at night, when the sound carried and I could hear the dragcar sounds drifting over from the fairground speedway on race nights. When I got older, I'd smoke out there, overlooking my "domain", thinking life thoughts, wondering where my life would take me. When friends would spend the night, we would climb on up to the roof peak, and straddle the top - a leg on either side of the roofline and we'd smoke, and laugh, and plan our lives. The attic fan gave me the sense of total safety and security; the roof visits gave me my sense of freedom and independence, leaning outward, but still attached to home. I felt lucky to have the only house on the street that I could have done this. All other homes were one story and we were in a palace.

3) Pet history - Captain Flabbit the rabbit, Laird the black lab, Fluffy the white persian, Tag the cocker spaniel, Tiger the orange tabby, myriad hamsters that always escaped and/or died, (they always bit me, but never mom) multi-colored Easter chicks - I never knew where they ended up. They would just be gone once they started growing. Snakes in the back yard, kittens by the millions (we always were just getting rid of one litter when another was born), the tiny, furless baby squirrel that fell out of the tree and I fed it for about a week with an eye dropper and warm milk until it died. I took it to school with me to keep it alive and I remember getting special privileges to leave the class to feed it. I kept it wrapped up in a little shoebox.

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Quote of the day: Her heart beat hard enough to dim her hearing in pulses. Barbara Kingsolver - "The Prodigal Summer"
Chosen simply for the uniquely description of intense emotion. I can't remember the context of the passage anymore to know if she is describing fear, or love, or anxiety. But it doesn't matter really. The passage speaks of the moment when adrenaline pumps the heart hard enough to resonate in your ears. I, too, have heard the heart pulses in my ear and she captures that moment well enough for me to relive them.

3-22 Writing Exercise - State of Grace - A Short Story

State of Grace

"So, ladies, I trust you found your meals satisfactory?" the dapper waiter purred, assured of our glowing review. He cleared away our plates and placed the bill on the table for my grandmother. Nanna peered over her reading glasses at his name tag, then stared straight up at him, snaring him in that steely gaze I know so well.
"Well, Erick with a 'k," she deadpanned. "Your food was unbearably bad. But at least it was expensive. Now run along and bring me my change. That's a good boy." She dismissed him with a sharp flick of her multi-braceleted wrist.

Erick wilted before my eyes and sighing a subdued "yes ma'am," slunk off to do her bidding. While embarrassed for him, I had long outgrown any embarrassment for myself. Besides, she was quieter than usual this time and her acid comment had escaped the other diners' notice for once. I watched Erick's retreat for a moment before returning my attention back to Nanna, my mother's mother, the proverbial bull in everyone's emotional china shop. How many years has it taken me to move beyond the numbing public embarrassment she used to cause me and arrive at the more manageable states of resigned acceptance and amused fascination for such a unique relative? Counting back, I realized this was my twelfth annual pilgrimage to Pensacola, beginning when my mother first shipped me down at age eight from our native Louisville for two weeks of what she euphemistically termed "bonding." Actually, that initial summer I now realize was when mom had finally gotten serious over her first dependable boyfriend since dad had died, and had needed some bonding time of her own. During my first few summers with Nanna, I think my youth had protected me from her harshest scrutiny, but puberty and the years following found me easing slowly but surely into her sight line. This year, my twentieth, I came prepared with a modest, yet effective battle plan that should serve me well. I would simply agree with her point of view, acquiesce to her wishes, and do my best to slide in just under her radar, which is forever blinking with little green dots of potential prey. And, to be honest, I wouldn't have it any other way. Life with Nanna is, how shall I say, always interesting and , while my work constraints permit me only one week a year with her, I still look forward to it with great delight.

"Thanks for the dinner, Nanna," I offered, coming back to the present, and bravely added, "I actually thought it was pretty good."
"Oh, pish posh, Lucy," she exclaimed with a wave of her polished red fingernails. "It was an absurd concoction of preposterous proportions and I simply long for the days when food was easy to order and simple to eat." She extended her "long" into the more dramatic "loooong" in what mom had always called the Tallulah Bankhead voice. "I mean really, darling, Greek Lamb Brochettes with Cucumber and Tomato Chutney," she intoned, reciting one of the menu items from memory. "What decent person would eat such a ridiculous thing?" She abruptly stood up, signaling the end of the conversation, and, leaving Erick a paltry tip as if to punish him for working at such a place, ushered me out into the warm Florida evening.

I am always astounded at how Nanna plows through life helter skelter, a madman's bullet released on an unsuspecting public. Her real name is Grace Bouchet, of the New Orleans Bouchets. If mothers bestow names upon their children in the hopes of one day defining their grown-up character, then Mrs. Bouchet would be sorely disappointed in how Grace actually turned out. She was about as graceful as a dump truck with its horn stuck. The Bouchet family's meager beginnings had changed drastically when Grace's father, Henry, a lawyer for the oil-hunting DuPont family, had waived his normal fee in lieu of a percentage of the oil profits if and when they ever struck, which they did when Grace was around ten. She never wanted for anything again.

"So, Lucy, do we brave the Friday night Baskin Robbins crowd? I'd do just about anything for a Daquiri Ice-slash-Pralines N' Cream double scooper," Nanna said as we walked toward her spotless, white Buick Skylark taking up the inevitable two parking spaces.
"I'm ready if you are," I said, nonchalantly pulling off another note from under the windshield wiper, written by some anonymous irate parker, and tossing it in the back seat with the countless others.

Nanna, noticing the note, laughed. "Well, what did that one say? My parking again? Honestly, Lucy, I simply don't' see what all the fuss is about. There's plenty of parking available that I can see, and I just can't be bothered by making sure I measure up against every single little white line. I mean, really, darling, who has the time or inclination? One day, I think I'll actually read all those little notes that people have so kindly left for me."

I smiled and nodded, remembering my battle plan to sidestep any possible disagreement, and also because really, there was just no point. We hopped in the car and I had just turned my thoughts to the Rocky Road-Mint Chocolate Chip combo in my future when I heard a loud banging on Nanna's rolled up window.
"Open the door, lady," a voice growled thickly. The dark figure leaned in close, his breath forming a tiny fog cloud on Nanna's window. "I need your car."

Nanna turned to me, perturbed. "Lucy, I think this juvenile is pointing something at me. It can't seriously be a gun, can it? For Pete's sake, how absolutely distracting. Young man!" she admonished as he began to bump us hard enough with his body to start the car rocking. "Stop that this instant! You'll throw a hip out. What could you possibly want with an old car like this? Why don't you run along and get yourself a nice, red sports car, suitable for your youth and sex. This is just an old lady's car. Now shoo!" She nodded at me satisfied that he, like all the others that had crossed her path, would obey without question.

I quickly looked around the car to see if he was alone. He was. "Nanna," I said quietly. "I have an idea. Just listen and do not question me. In a minute when I shout at you, gun the accelerator and get the hell out of here. Do not hesitate. Are you ready? Now, start the car."
"What? What are you going on about? Lucy, don't be silly. This boy isn't..."
"Start The Car..." I hissed in my most commanding tone. "Do it!" She did as I asked and the engine roared to life, startling the boy who aimed his gun at us. We could see it plainly now, pointing directly at Nanna's head through the pitiful, useless barrier of glass.
"OUT! NOW!" he shouted, motioning at us with his gun.

Suddenly, I jumped closer to Nanna, looking purposefully behind the nervous boy toward an imagined rescuer and shouted as loudly and as frantically as I could muster, "Officer! Help!" Just as I hoped, the gunman quickly turned away to look behind him. "GUN IT!" I screamed at my stupefied grandmother. "Go! Go! Go! Now!" Before she could question, and before the carjacker could react, Nanna flattened the gas pedal to the floor and the car responded with a furious squealing of tires, launching us out of harm's way. But as I looked behind me through the back window, I watched the frustrated thief train his gun on our retreating car and, sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth in child-like concentration, fired. In cinematic slow motion, the bullet whistled towards us, penetrated the back windshield, and escaped out the front windshield into the dark night, leaving a cracked, hole in the glass as it traveled on in the darkness beyond. I heard, or imagined I heard, the boy's strained curses as we sped out of the solitude of the parking lot into the welcomed bustle of the street.

"Lucy?" Nanna's voice was smaller, hesitant, foreign. "Are you all right, darling?"
"I think so," I replied. "Just shaken up a bit." I inched myself over next to her in order to give us both the familiar comfort of warm bodily contact when I noticed the blood on Nanna's shirt pocket. Without drawing attention to what I was doing, I studied her, slowly backtracing up her neck and spotting the little drip, drip of blood from her earlobe down onto her big, silly earring, then further down to her purple cotton collar where it was forming a small stain.

"Nanna, why don't we pull over for a minute and catch our breath?" I suggested as calmly as I could under the circumstances. She was driving so I wasn't about to go into any details about possible bodily harm. She didn't seem to be feeling any pain yet, so I took that as a good sign.

"Oh darling, let's just keep going for the ice cream, " she answered with aplomb. "I think I need that double scooper more than anything right about now, don't you? I simply did not find that at ALL amusing." She ended with a forced chuckle, sounding the right note of bravado, but it fell flat, a sour tone in an otherwise melodious attempt and we both heard it. I knew to ignore it at the time, but I couldn't help but register the tiny, almost unrecognizable flicker of change in the air before it vanished away into memory. Nanna needed me to take charge, I was shocked to discover, but the feeling was so new to her, so strange and bewildering, that she had no idea how to proceed. Neither did I. All of this flashed through me in a few seconds and I realized she was waiting for me to answer.

"No, actually, if you don't mind, I think I really would like to pull over for a second wind. I need to figure out what to do next," I said, stalling for the inevitable conversation ahead. I don't think Nanna has ever been in the hospital other than to have my mother, and I wasn't looking forward arguing with her about getting her there to have her head looked at. From where I was sitting, it looked as if the bullet had only grazed her just above her right temple, which relieved me. Besides, I thought, the bright lights and busy activity of an emergency room would do me nicely. I wanted people to fuss over me and bring me coffee. I wanted to be out of this car.

"Well all right, darling, if you really, really, want me to," Nanna replied, slowing the car. I seem to be feeling a bit funny myself, if you must know. I have the strangest headache. You don't supposed I'm getting my first migraine, do you? I've heard stress can bring them on. I mean, I've never been one to let a silly headache stop me but I do think, under the circumstances, it would be best to take a few minutes to regroup. You're not going to faint, are you darling? Oh look, here's a perfect place."

She pulled into Shore Enough Liquors' well-lit parking lot. She found a spot and parked, leaving the car running while she turned and looked at me expectantly, the flush of excitement slowly draining from her face. Before she could say anything, I said gently, "Nanna, I think you've been hurt. You seem to be bleeding, here," I touched the right side of her hairline, "where the bullet may have scraped you. It doesn't look too bad."

As I knew she would, Nanna reacted immediately. "Oh, don't be absurd, Lucy. Don't you think I'd know if I'd been hit by a bullet for Pete's sake? Of all the ridiculous..." She paused and then said cautiously, "Did you say I'm bleeding?" She lifted her right hand and felt along the temple where I had pointed. Feeling the warm ooze, she looked at me for a few seconds in silent, amazed confusion. "Well, dammit all to hell," she murmured. "That boy shot me."

I took advantage of this brief Nanna-daze to press my point. "Why don't I drive us to the emergency room so they can take a look at you?" I encouraged. "From what I can see, it's nothing that can't be fixed up by a nice, young, handsome intern who's just yearning to practice what he's learned from all those expensive medical books." I could see a smile forming on Nanna's pale face. "You can't let him down, can you?" Besides, I could sure use some ER coffee that's been sitting on some forgotten warmer since 3 o'clock this afternoon. So how does that sound to you? A good looking intern for you and a cup of brown sludge for me...you interested?"

"Well," she demurred, showing a bit of her old spark, "I've never been one to turn down the possibilities found in the attentions of eager, young men. And Lord knows I could sure use a cup of their finest. Yes, now that I ponder it, I believe you've hit upon a splendid idea. You drive." She sounded so relieved to have the decision made, but that could have been my own relief flooding out for both of us.
"Great." For the first time since what would forever be called "the incident" in our family, I relaxed. "You can navigate me to the nearest hospital. I'm not sure where we are right now." We exchanged seats and, with no other conversation except Nanna's steady directions, we each spent the ride lost in our silent interpretations of what happened; categorizing and storing away the effects that the last thirty minutes have had and would continue to have on our lives. I understood that for whatever reason, Nanna had climbed down from a place of absolute control and impervious will that had served her comfortably throughout her passionate life. I also understood that it wasn't permanent; that soon, after the initial shock of vulnerability had worn away, her innate sense of personal balance and remarkable ability for inner damage control would win the day. But the fact that I had been witness to it, no matter how briefly the barriers had dropped, brought a new sense of closeness to our relationship. We had tried on the other's skin for a time and I knew we would never look at each other the same way again. The bonding Mom had envisioned so many years ago was complete.

We arrived at the hospital and I let her out at the emergency room door, and then parked in a temporary parking spot just outside the ER. Upon entering, I wondered where she might have gone, but didn't have to wait very long before I had my answer. Over the din of a busy night shift, I could hear her barking orders to anyone within earshot. I couldn't help smiling at the sweet normalcy that had returned to my life. I entered the trauma bay.

"Oh, Lucy, thank God!" she moaned. "This twelve-year old nurse thinks she's going to give me a shot! I mean, really, honey, " she glared at the admittedly young-looking nurse, "does your mother know where you are? Good Lord, leave me alone!" Nanna picked the hands of the nurse off of her like she was picking off fleas. "Don't you know what I've been through tonight? Lucy, where is that handsome intern you promised? Please, darling, go get me some coffee and send in a real doctor who isn't out past his curfew."

Seeing that she was in good hands, I said, "Nanna, you're doing fine. While you're being cleaned up and bandaged, I'm going to go on a short errand." I smiled at the nurse with what I hoped conveyed both sympathy and apology. "I'll be back in fifteen minutes."

Nanna turned to face me with a jerk. "What? You're going to leave me here?" And then to the nurse, "Ouch! Really, my dear, you're about a gentle as a jackhammer, and for Pete's sake, those icy hands! If you touch me one more time without warming them up, I shall take measures against you."

I interrupted her. "Nanna, behave. That nurse is only trying to help you. Now, I'll be right back, I promise." And with that, I slipped out to the car. The moonless night sky shimmered with summer stars, even through a cracked and bullet-holed windshield. I rolled down the window as I headed for the Baskin Robbins I had noticed just one block back. One Daquiri-Ice-slash-Pralines N' Cream double scooper coming up. Just for Nanna. Just for Grace.

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Quote of the day: Two whole days I dreamed with Swede about the things twenty-five dollars could buy. The bills were straight voltage, juicing all sorts of hallucinations." Leif Enger - "Peace Like a River"
This quote is being said by an eleven year old and I chose it because it brought back strong memories of what it was like to have sudden riches as a child and the delicious agony of how to spend it. One of those memories that I forget I have until an author writes something just so, and the memory gets sucked up out of obscurity for me to relive it happily, or unhappily, whatever the memory may be. Reading this quote jolted the memory of having Christmas money to spend, me sitting at the kitchen table with the huge Sears catalog open, pages upon pages of choice. Glorious torture - choices and power that money brings, the adult world opening up for a short time and letting me join. I'd forgotten how powerless it felt to be a child and why this was such a Big Deal.

3-20 Writing Exercise - Who's Next?

Another short story I wrote for a class.

Who's Next?

I can't believe I'm going to actually say it, I think to myself; the final insult, the words that surely strike horror into all middle-aged, how-did-I-get-here women, namely me. Facing the crumpled, elderly man before me with all the dignity I could muster, the words cringed out of me, "You want fries with that, sir?" God. I tried in vain to maintain the chirpy, frozen smile I'd painted on since ten this morning. It was now two hours into my virgin voyage as a Burger King employee and this gentleman was my first at the register. It's been the last humiliation in a string of humiliations that had begun when my darling husband decided my best friend Ruth looked better in his bed than I did. Jobs were scarce in this little town and until I could fix the Duster's transmission, I was stuck working at a place within biking distance. I hate men. Well, ok, not really, but I hate them right now. Seriously.

I looked again at the grizzled old guy who had been studying the colorful menu above my head as if he was choosing his last supper, carefully looking at each photographed menu item and studying each line of text with the seriousness of a scholar.
"Can you repeat that little lady?" he said, intently watching my mouth. "I'm afraid I left my hearing aids at home and I wasn't watching your lips. What was that you said?"
God. I have to say it again. With a trembly, false enthusiasm, I said clearly and with gusto, "Would you like some fries with your meal today, sir?" My face flamed with an instant heat. At least I'm not wearing a silly chicken hat like those kids at the Quick Chik across town. Their beaked hats were the final humiliation, and although it was out of my neighborhood and therefore my neighbor's gossipy tongues, I chose the closer Burger King with the sane uniform of maroon golf shirt and khakis. No way was I putting on a chicken hat.

A line was forming behind Mr. Indecision and the crowd was getting noticeably restless. Hungry people in an order line have a dance all their own and I was quickly learning the steps. They expected a lively pace, a happy face, and hot food. This old man had stopped the music cold.

"Sir?" I prompted the sweet-faced, white-haired codger. "Have you decided on your order?" My patience was slipping and it wouldn't be long before the nineteen year-old pimply-faced manager would pop out to see why the New Girl was holding things up. I urged again. "Sir?"

"Yep," he finally said. "Just the Whopper, whatever the hell that is. Looks like a plain old hamburger to me. Oh, and one of those Coca Cola's, too." As he ordered, he looked at me, seeming to take in the contours of my face for the first time. I saw him register that I was clearly older than the other fresh, young faces dotting the greasy landscape behind me. His eyes clouded with a raw grief that clearly strained him, but passed quick as a blink and I'm the only one who caught it.

Oblivious to the irritated crowd behind him, he put out a hand to mine saying, "Pardon me, but I had a daughter your age and you sure do remind me of her. She died of the cancer a few months back and I'm missing her awfully bad. She took real good care of me for these last ten years since her momma died, you know. I've been a bit lost without her, to tell you the truth. She always cooked for me and I've run out of the frozen meals she had left for me in the freezer. In fact, believe it or not, this is my first time in one of these hamburger places because I didn't know what else to do - I can't face the kitchen just yet. Anyway, you got a sweet smile and it went right to my heart on this lonely day. Now, what do I owe you for that hamburger?"

I smiled, warming up to my job. "That'll be $3.29 sir. And I sure am sorry about your daughter. I'm no stranger to the pain of loss myself. Why don't you come back again for lunch tomorrow and I"ll make sure we cook you up a Whopper all nice and hot."

"I just might do that, " he replied, taking three-fifty in loose change from a leather pouch he had pulled from his pants pocket and pushing it towards me across the counter. "I think a daily portion of Whopper and your sweet smile are just what the doctor ordered. Fix me up with both, little lady, and I'll be a new man." He grinned broadly, momentarily revealing a younger, more vibrant version of himself in the grip of new hope. He took his meal, nodded a thanks, and shuffled off to a sunlit corner, to the relief of the backed-up line behind him.

"Little lady," I smiled to myself, suddenly infused with ancient memories. "I haven't been called that since dad died. Sigh. I love men. Next?"

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Quote of the day: My mother went to the wedding anyway because she was fifteen and therefore slave to risk. Kaye Gibbons - "A Cure for Dreams."
Chosen because anyone who has been fifteen knows precisely what this means. Teenagers feel they have a personal letter from God stating that nothing will happen to them, meaning all risk takers are either ignorant of or exempt from any possible consequences. The "slave to risk" neatly states the implied imperative of those unsteady years when teens seem almost compelled to do It, whatever It might be. Shudder. How did we live through it?

3-18 Writing Exercise - A Short-Short

A short-short is a short story that is very short, usually not more than a page or two. The challenge is telling a story is very little space. You have to make the reader feel like he/she understands the dynamics right away. This was mine from my writing class.

Be All That You Can Be

Susannah lay on the floor immobile, afraid to move, afraid he'd see she wasn't unconscious yet. She slowly tongued her front teeth, using the tongue tip to wiggle them back and forth, finding them incredibly loose. She could feel the blood seeping out of the corner of her mouth and she absurdly found herself thinking that at least maybe the dark bloodstain wouldn't show against the ancient burgundy shag carpeting beneath her ruined face. She was glad she was facing away from him, facing instead the dingy, water-spotted wallpaper, reflecting twenty years of transient military wives who knew the wouldn't live there long enough to care about redecorating.

"G-get up, whore," Vaughn stuttered in his drunken stupor. He always stuttered when he drank, which was lucky since it gave Susannah a heads-up that danger loomed ahead. "I know you can hear me, bitch. You th-think I'm st-stupid, doncha? You think you can fool me by l-layin' there and pretendin' but I ain't finished with your sorry ass y-yet." With the last stutter, he toed her quizzically with his left foot, booted with the steel-toed, black-shiny standard Army issue footwear. "Hey, slut, move or somethin'," he muttered, already losing interest. "Where's my f-fuckin' dinner?" He stumbled towards the swinging door leading to the kitchen mercifully now lost in his Jack Daniels haze. Susannah heard the swish-swish of the door as it swung open and shut, open and shut, leaving her alone in her misery and relief.

She knew he would be in there for a while, staggering around in the meager pantry for something to eat. Violence always made him hungry. She imagined him choosing the last remaining jar of home-canned peaches his witless mother had sent them last summer. He wouldn't notice that it had already been opened, that he wouldn't sense the x1080, a highly toxic, odorless, tasteless poison the Army used regularly to rid the post of its bothersome rat problem.

It had been easy enough to get, using the supply sergeant's juvenile crush on her to its full advantage, and equally easy to mix in with the peaches. She had placed it in a prominent position among the tomato sauce and lima bean cans, knowing Vaughn loved his mama's peaches. And there he was now, rattling around, then silence. There wasn't much to choose from on the shelf as she visualized the golden peaches tempting him, offering their sweet promise of juicy relief. She heard the quiet whirring hum of the fridge as he got the milk. He never could eat his peaches without cold milk. Still lying in a broken heap, Susannah felt her clock-wound muscles begin to relax as she imagined him gulping bite after sweet bite in that wolf-like way he inhaled his food. A smile teased through her jaw pain as she waited with closed eyes for the sounds to come from the next room. "Be all that you can be, asshole." she reflected as she slipped into her first happy sleep in years.

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Quote of the day: Night would settle in like slow blindness, sucking the color from the trees and the low sky and the rocks and the frozen grass and the frost-white hydrangeas until there was nothing left in the window but her own reflection. Anita Shreve - "The Pilot's Wife"
Chosen because I love the description of day turning to night. I think it beautifully captures those fading last moments that happen every day. But when was the last time you paid attention? I can really visualize the daylight disintigrating into her reflection, the moment taking me from the outside to the inside. I love the "slow blindness" metaphor. Gives the moment just the right bit of chill, to match the obvious winter outside the window. This woman's twilight is a lonely one.

A Few Longer than Normal Quotes because I'm too Lazy to Write Today

Put a few adults in a room with a sweet-tempered infant, and you may as well leave a tub of butter sitting out in the midday sun. Within moments of crowding around the crib, their grown-up bones begin to soften and their spines to bend. Their eyes mist over with cataracts of pleasure. They misplace intellect and discover new vocal ranges - countertenor, soprano, piglet. And when they happen on the baby's hands, prepare for a variant on the ancient "Ode to the Fingernail." Angier - Woman- An Intimate Geography.
Chosen for its universal truth. This behavior has happened to people through the centuries and it's a passage that should ring bells for everyone who reads it, either from personal experience or observation in others. I can hear the googlie goo's as I read it. Great stuff.

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In the evening after a two or three inch snowfall Daddy and me take our supper in the breakfast room where we can look out the window to where the floodlights shine through the limbs of our apricot and our elm and play off the peaks and drifts against the carshed and just generally make a spectacle of even our back yard...somtimes after midnight and before sunrise it is not at all uncommon for the clouds to blow off, leaving the moon to break through and put a glow on things. Daddy says because the light is extraordinary and unnatural, it inflicts a kind of madness on some people while they sleep and they wake up in the morning wanting to drive their cars. Daddy says he cannot explain it otherwise since there's no reason at all for a townful of people with absolutely nowhere to go to wheel their Buicks and Pontiacs and oversized Fords into the streets of Neely where they pass the day veering off into ditches or phone poles or just running up onto the fenders of people going nowhere in the oppposite direction. Folks only learn enough to use chains about the time the snow has begun to seep off into the ground and slush up in the gutters, and for at least an afternoon and most of an evening, Neely sounds for all the world like a town under armored attack. T.R. Pearson - "A Short History of a Small Place"
Chosen because reading this passage brought back my own snow memories from childhood in a rush, particularly the descriptions of a snowfall at night. Who can read this and not immediately sense that quiet thrill of watching the familiar landmarks of one's backyard slowly evolve into mysterious lumps and crevices, pajama-ed feet itching to be booted and exploring. Snow at night remains one of my favorite memories. We don't seem to have those snowfalls anymore, or did they just seem bigger and more frequent back then?

Writing Exercise 3-15 Part Story Part Essay "Starstruck"

Loreen was eleven when her family moved across the street from us. We didn't know much about them except for two things; her dad was a country music singer in the Grand Ole Opry and they lived like trailer trash, or so I thought filtered as it was through my 1960's Beaver Cleaver version of how life should be lived on our street. Her two year-old brother, Buddy, would sputter around the yard in the cold, autumn air, naked except for his dirty cloth diaper sagging down his pink little hips, his legs chapped from the cold. Loreen also had two younger sisters; nine year-old Kimberly with her tangled nest of greasy, blond hair and four year-old Sue Ann, a wild-eyed terror who bit. I loved to sit Kimberly down and coax the blond mess into normalcy while she made circle designs with her compass on a discarded pizza box. I wouldn't go near Sue Ann.

Most of the time, though, it was just me and Loreen giggling and whispering in her bedroom like school girls do. I liked the exotic thrill of being in a home where no one cared about it. Food hardened on plates on coffee tables and under beds, drawn curtains blocked out the neighborhood I knew, the kids tending to themselves while the mom took long afternoon naps that spilled over past supper time. Loreen ate at our house a lot. Once, we tiptoed into her parent's bedroom while her mom napped and Loreen showed me her dad's sparkly, fringed stage costume in the closet. I wasn't impressed, but still, he was famous somewhere, so I told her I thought it was wonderful.

At least that's how I like to remember those two years. Loreen, she remembers it a bit differently. She remembers the ridicule, the taunting, the constant "loyalty" tests she endured at the hands of our five-girl neighborhood clique, girls who had grown up together since toddlerhood. Loreen was not only the new kid, she was also "country", a label guaranteeing unhappy results towards her ambitions to fit in. One time, as a test of her loyalty to the group, she was thrown inside the Wallace's fence, to face Rascal, a mean, vicious and unforgiving bulldog who made an immediate beeline for her screaming figure, his teeth bared, ready to take her down. We grabbed her at the last minute and hauled her over the fence, leaving Rascal snapping at the fence in frustrated leaps. We congratulated her on her bravery and welcomed her to the group, until the next day when she would face yet another test to prove her worthiness. We made her constantly perform for us, singing little songs she had written, or funny little commercials she'd create. One was about a toothpaste called Buttermilk Glisten. Each performance was followed by the promise of acceptance and welcome, the Nirvana of girlhood. It never came.

I look back on those years with the hope that she remembers me more as the friend who played one-on-one with her in complete contentment, and that it was only in the throes of mob mentality specific to twelve year-old girls that I stood by and let her endure the humiliation. I'm not proud of this episode in my life and even now, twenty years and two bad husbands later, I would love to find her and apologize. But with all her fame and fortune, I doubt she would see the sincerity of my approach, tormented as I've been with her big, round face, her haunted eyes.
So, all I can do is listen to her on the radio, when the electricity hasn't been cut off that is, or watch her radiant elegance when she picked up her last CMA award on television, when I can get decent reception out here in the country, and be glad that whatever angst she went through maybe contributed to her success today. She's famous, rich, and beautiful, a sight better off than when I last saw her so long ago. I recall on that final day, while the movers packed up the "rental" as the neighbors called their house, Loreen and I walked up and down the street together, discussing our futures, how we would stay in touch, conveniently forgetting my silent participation as observer of her misery during her stay here. I hope that's how she remembers it, I think to myself as I go outside my double-wide to chase my youngest in his diapered waddle. He could use a bath.

********
Quote of the day: I find it to be generally true that the people with the most hateful, inhumane, intolerant politics are suckers for the most obscene forms of guileless sentimental exploitation. There's something about the love of handguns and Jesus and Old Glory, astronauts and unborn children that makes a lot of fat, racist, ultraconservative hickweeds want to gamble and buy sweatshirts and get all choked up in front of some wacked-out, self-worshiping bloatus of an entertainer in a full-body tiara singing "Born Free." Cintra Wilson - "A Massive Swelling"
Chosen because so much of her writing made me smile, or laugh. This passage underscored some feelings I have myself about some groups of people, but she just sort of spits her feelings out with gusto, and I liked the freshness of someone this descriptively snarky to go for it.

Lengthy Quote - A Country Year

Sometimes I wonder where we older women fit into the social scheme of things once nest building has lost its charm... We are past our reproductive years. Men don't want us; they prefer younger women. It makes good biological sense for males to be attracted to females who are at an earlier point in their breeding years and who still want to build nests, and if that leaves us no longer able to lose ourselves in the pleasures and closeness of pairing, well we have gained our Selves. We have another valuable thing too. We have Time, or at least, the awareness of it. We have lived long enough and seen enough to understand in a more intellectual way that we will die, and so we have learned to live as though we are mortal. Because our culture has assigned us no real role, we can make up our own. It is a good time to be a grown up woman with individuality, strength, and crochets. We are wonderfully free. We live long. Our children are the independent adults we helped them to become, and though they may still want our love, they do not need our care. Social rules are so flexible today that nothing we do is shocking. There are no political barriers to us anymore. Provided we stay healthy and can support ourselves, we can do anything, have anything and spend our talents any way that we please. Sue Hubbell - The Country Year

This quote, among others like it, was acquired when I was going through a particularly dark time emotionally, and I needed to hear these things from other women, about the power we each have in ourselves. Knowing I would one day be a woman "of a certain age" myself, I read it often, and it never failed to confirm my own positive feelings about life and how it could be lived on one's own if it ended up that love never found me again. I believed in the quotes back then, because I needed to, and I believe in them now, because over time they wove themselves inextricably into my daily choices for happiness.

Writing Exercise 3-11 - One Syllable Stories

Write three fifty-word stories, using only one syllable.

Jane went in the store for those small, brown pears she loved while Sam stayed in the hot car. Sweat stung one eye as he watched the girl so close on the curb, in her tight, red shorts. What was she, twelve? His blood roared in his ears. Run, girl. Please.

*****

When I got home from school, dad had packed the car with her clothes. “Get in” he had said. “It’s been a year and we need to move on. The thrift store can use these.” I think of the day when I’ll see her blue dress on strange flesh and cry.

****
”I do” he cooed, to a heart he knew was his. The priest then turned and asked the same of her, to which she said, “I don’t know.” The shocked gasps of the crowd reached him as he heard her start to weep. “What?” he asked, stunned. “What did you say?”

***********
Quote of the day: One day can make your life - one day can ruin your life. All life is, is four or five big days that change everything. Beverly D'nofrio - "Riding in Cars With Boys"
Chosen because it made me stop and think if was true for me. I found I did indeed have my own four or five days and that the author was absolutely correct. My life changed direction with each of them.

Traditionally Speaking

This was an essay I wrote for a Creative Writing class years ago. Putting it here for safekeeping and so I don't have to write something new today. :-) My dad loved this essay - I think he read it over and over and never failed to tell me often how much it meant to him. Re-visiting it here today brings his warm presence to my mind as I type. Hi Dad. This one's for you.

Traditionally Speaking

"I found this little first edition on one of my Saturday morning yard sale 'blood sport' outings. I beat up an old lady and grabbed it out of her hands. I know the story means something special to you, so I wanted you to have it." So reads a dear friend's inscription on the inside cover of Ferrol Sam's book Christmas Gift!, which he had given to me for Christmas. He was right. "Christmas Gift!" remains one of my family's most treasured traditions and each Christmas morning brings the gentle, warm tickle of happy participation in a game that started generations ago in some long forgotten patriarchal giggle-fit. Reading Sams' book swept me back to the magic of Christmas Past, experiencing the holiday as only children in their open-mouthed, wondrous innocence can.

Sams' experience of Christmas was vastly different from mine, his being one of an early 1900's farming family immersed in grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, many of whom had lived in the same house for over six generations of Sams'. His holiday began a week before Christmas with tree chopping expeditions on the property, the fattening and subsequent killing of a forty pound gobbler, and dense seasonal smells permeating the air for days as various pies and dressings were conjured up from the fat, floured hands of the matriarchal clan. It was a Currier and Ives print come to life.

My own memories recall more modern surroundings, a 1950's suburban neighborhood completely bereft of any horse and jingle-bell sleigh or snow-covered fields of choppable cedars and I happily never knew the difference. With relatives spread over the four compass points, my family of four had to create new traditions, as well as sustain established ones particular to the McNellie sensibilities and needs, which we did with great fervor and enthusiasm; the holiday jigsaw to be worked, Dad's country ham and biscuits on Christmas morning, chocolate covered cherries always from "S.C." and the little silver pitcher half-filled with sherry on the dinner table for my grandmother, because she said with a twinkle in her eye, "every one knows that boiled custard needs a little zip." Her custard, as the creamy, yellowish color quickly turned a dim sherry-brown, was for years the source of delighted ribbing, doled out in love and laughter. Christmas dinner failed without that pitcher.

One of my family's most cherished traditions, which due to the mentioned Sams' book, I was surprised to find was not unique to us, is "Christmas Gift!" The truth of its beginning is veiled behind years of retellings, but my father can remember his father doing it with his father and it remains one of those bizarre rituals that are virtually unexplainable to anyone outside of the family.

Apparently, in generations past, when there was no television, Nintendo, or headphones plugged into God knows what, people actually interacted with each other in poignant and meaningful ways, such as beginning inane little holiday traditions. A great- or even great-great grandfather McNellie decided it would be fun to give an extra gift to the first person to yell "Christmas Gift!" to everyone else in the house on Christmas morning. Not only did this begin a long and uplifting tradition I fondly label "chaos of the decibels" between otherwise stable adults and children, it also grew into a deeply competitive and yet honorable exercise. In the beginning it probably was a very innocent interaction; today, it means war. The participants have changed through the years, but the glory has never died. The extra gift became an obsolete trophy; now it's just the principle of the thing that keeps it alive in our hearts. Each year we secretly approach its coming with a renewed sense of cunning purpose. "This will be MY year" we each think to ourselves. "That baby is MINE!"

In an old farmhouse stuffed to the gills with relatives, the tradition seems a more lively, and possibly more meaningful endeavor when all are under one roof. In our suburban situation, with our few relatives experiencing their holiday morning under their own roofs miles or states away, it was reduced to battle by telephone.

My earliest recollection is of my father and his father, Pops, calling each other early on Christmas morning and hurling shouts of "Christmas Gift!" into their respective black, knobby phone receivers. My brother, Theodore and I quickly learned the rules, which basically consisted of trying not to get a wrong number and no calling Pops before the sun rose. For the next twenty years it was a race to see who could "get"Pops first.

Pops was no dummy. He refused to answer the phone with a simple "hello" but would instead insert a resounding "Christmas Gift!" ensuring his success. Of course, this confused any unrelated person who just happened to be calling on other matters, but Pops remained undaunted.

Theodore and I learned ways around this. The trick was to call Pops and scream out the moment we heard an audible click on the other end. But it was chancy - like the time I dialed a wrong number. After shrieking into the phone and laughing victoriously at my sly win, there was nothing but dead silence on the other end. Being eight years old, it took me a few minutes to realize that the silence was not due to Pop's suffering his shameful defeat, but to a complete stranger's wonder as to what asylum patient had gotten access to a phone!

Pops won most of the time, but looking back I know he allowed us more than a few victories. It was a wonderful time in my life and when Pops died, a tremendous void was felt during those first few Chistmases without him. By this time, though, Theodor and I were living on our own and, thankfully, traditions die hard. We started anew with Dad.

Theo and I have proudly raised the next generation of "Christmas Gift" contenders and it has been incredibly gratifying to watch it come full-circle. I found absolute delight in the squeals of my two children as they tried to outwit my dad, their "Papa." Theo's children did the same. Even now, with all of us grown, we still continue the contest, although a few have cheated, trying out the newest technologies like leaving a voicemail at 12:01 in the morning, or sending an email timestamped as close to 12:01 as possible. Of course, this was ruled "foul" by an insulted majority, forcing live voices to be the only true path to victory.

Family traditions, to those who have been lucky enough to be blessed with them, bridge not only the present to the past, but also and more importantly, the present to the present. Each unique custom provides the family members with a sense of "us", like a secret handshake or the knowledge of a password that provides entry into a sacred haven for the chosen few. A deep, unvoiceable sense of attachment, protection, and belonging shudders through the soul as year after year, games of repetitive silliness whose origins are lost in time, bring laughter and hugs to all involved. I feel it bubbling up from my kneecaps every year it happens and I am gratified now to say my children are now beginning to understand, cherish, and protect their own traditions that I made sure were injected into their lives from birth. It bonds them as siblings, it bonds them to me as parent, and it bonds them to their silent, unknown ancestors. Today, Easter Sunday, I have just spent my morning hiding little plastic eggs around the house for my twenty-plus year olds to discover, because they insist that I do so. "It's tradition! Don't think you'll ever get to stop, Mom" they say, smiling with mischief, but also with a seriousness born of need.

The gifts of family tradition are two-fold: one is in the actual doing, the happy camaraderie found in all who are in on "the joke", who share the history from the inside, as no one else can. Traditions are a family bank, and participation is the coin of shared memories, common experience, and silent understandings of ourselves and where we came from, and the first gift is putting our riches in the family account. The second and maybe more important gift, is the drawing on those riches once the tradition is gone, perhaps due to death or some other unforetold separation. Then it's the memories of the tradition and the laughter over a "remember when" evening spent either together or alone, that allows us to revisit each other, to go to the "bank" and withdraw comforting, familial currency. It's a win-win situation all around.

I know that yelling "Christmas Gift!" at sleepy family members is perhaps a silly way for grownups to behave. But for me family traditions, regardless of their apparent lack of logic, perpetuate a wonderful link that bonds ourselves to our parents, our children to ourselves, and I'm so very glad that this family has stubbornly held on. Pops would be proud.

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Quote of the day: I am not universally admired for the bell-like clarity of my diction. Words slide out of me like fat fish. Pat Conroy - "Water is Wide"
Chosen because Pat Conroy is master of dipping a sentence in the vat and it coming out Southern. I have spoken to some southerners that even I couldn't understand them. Love this description.

Solitude, Independence, and Other Female Vices

I have been alone for a really long time and I am still in love with it. Most of society has a problem with the idea of an unattached person, most specifically a woman, but in general any warm-blooded person who prefers a solo to a duet. However, it seems to be the single female who weathers the most negative thoughts and behaviors of surrounding polite society, languishing, as she surely must, in her lonely spinsterhood, widowhood, or "divorcee-hood."

Perhaps these well meant concerns stem from an earlier age where unmarried women faced a bleak future of, at the worst, poverty and the very least derision and ostracism - a social firing squad. I'm not totally educated in the reasons behind historical mores and behaviors towards women; I'm admittedly more guided by movies and literature regarding earlier cultural societies, information which could be easily embellished or altered for dramatic license. However, my weak education on the matter aside, it does seems to me that a woman who found herself alone at any stage in her life was always viewed to have qualities which made her predatory, innately damaged, physically and sexually undesirable, or the old standby, a bitch. There simply must be some internal defect which accounts for the fact that she can't or won't attract or keep a man.

Fortunately for me, a) I'm too independent to care about outside judgements that might force me into disastrous romances in search of personal or social validation and b) I live in an age where single women face these kinds of judgements less and less. For both I am overwhelmingly grateful. That's not to say I don't experience the common expressions of concern, "why are you still single? You're too picky." You aren't putting yourself out there...." I hear these comments frequently from loved ones who insist I need to find a relationship in order to REALLY be happy. I know they say it out of love and concern, but I don't know how to tell them I'm actually happy and content without coming off sounding defensive, apologetic, or unwilling to face truths only they see.

When a long term, deeply loving relationship ended, I turned to books to try to help me understand all the things I was going through and in the course of reading, I came across a number of passages that encouraged me, that I recognized in myself and that, gee, maybe I wasn't alone afterall in my need for independence of spirit. I'm going to add them here - they are taken from a book called The Improvised Woman by Marcelle Clements, who interviewed many, many women on how they view their single life. These separate comments spoke either to my personal experience or my philosophies in general.

I asked someone recently, "Do you think I give the message to men that I'm not available? Do I turn them away somehow?" He said, "Well, I think that you're intimidating to men." I said, "Why?" And he said something about how I always say what I want to say. I can't be with someone I have to watch my mouth with. Not be me. I can never...it always ends up leaking out of me sideways.

How is it that solitude doesn't feel to me to be a punishment, an unfortunate fate I had to resign myself to? I still haven't gotten used to the surprisingly pure pleasure of living alone. On occasion, my very ease in this kind of life feels worrisome to me. And, of course, sometimes I feel lonely. But whenI try to decide whether or not I wish it to be an interim solution or a permanent one, I find myself loathe to give up the romance of independence.

It's not that there aren't any men, it's that there are no men she wants to want, or who would want her in the way she wants to be wanted. "There is no men" then, is less about men than it is about women. It's not really about looking for a husband or a lover, it's about not having found a role as a wife or as a lover that makes sufficient sense on a long-term basis.

It's not the men, it's the roles that are hopeless.

Still, I know I want someone's heart. I want to share my heart with someone. I don't need it all day, the way these wives do, but I want to have that sometimes. A friend who is a lover, not a lover who is a friend.

When I think about remarrying, it's terrorizing to think I would be giving up my independence. That's become more important to me than almost anything else. I just really do love not having to get somebody's permission.

I really, really hated having anybody tell me, "it's time to go to bed."

"Sleeping alone is one of the things I love" more than one woman said. Their intimacy with solitude is precisely what my predispose them not to enter into new relationships. They remember the opposite discomfort and what it's like to lie in bed next to someone when there are problems, "especially if you wish you were somewhere else, or when you're angry, or when you're restless and would rather get up and tinker around the house."

I love being single. It's almost like being rich. Sue Grafton

One day I hope to love and be loved again. It's a glorious way to spend one's time and energies and I don't PREFER one life over the other. But I do know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that whether I do, or I don't, I will be fine either way. And this gives me great comfort.

Writing Exercise 3-7 - Happy Chutzpah Day!

Creat a new category of greeting cards and provide some sample cards:

Category: Happy Chutzpah Day!

As you may or may not be aware,
But today is a day to declare
We were once quite annoyed,
but are now overjoyed
That you finally found you a pair.

Congrats on finally leaving that guy!

************************************************

That you stood up your bride is appalling.
When you found you preferred your footballing.
But I say live and learn,
It’s not much a concern,
Like some refs, it was just a miscalling.

Way to leave her at the altar, dude! Wish I had your nerve.
*******************************

I know this is hard
But I'm sending this card
And it's your turn to sit there and take it.
Oh my God, you're so dumb
thinking you make me come.
When if fact, I just lie there and fake it.

Never thought I’d find the guts – I love this day! Sorry honey!

***************
Quote of the day: William Blake used to say when his energies were diverted from his drawing or writing, that he was "being devoured by jackals and hyenas." Brenda Ueland - "If You Want to Write."
Chosen because of the delicious 'jackals and hyenas' mention. This is precisely the feeling when daily duties interfere whenever my desire to create takes over and it made me smile. Doesn't it just kill you that some thought uttered by some person 230 years ago reaches across time to someone he could not imagine, and PING her right in the gut? This is what art is, this is what art does - uses shared experiences, either real or imagined, to connect artist with audience in a palpable way. Art, in all its forms, remains the most beautiful expression of "You are not alone" that I know.

Writing Excercise 3-6 - Another Navel Gazing Poem

Untitled

Once, during a day of training,
Overcast with spots of raining
I sat dreaming, scheming of
Adventure I may never see.
Oceans beckoned with their mystery
Old cathedrals whispered history
Mountain treks so cold and misty
Hoping soon to set me free
From my velvet agony.

The Taj Mahal, the Louvre Museum
The pyramids, the Coliseum
Call to me, a lusty, eager
Counterplay to ennui.
Then, I stop. What am I doing?
No far land is worth pursuing
When instead I could be cooing
To the grandson on my knee.
He’s the sight I’d rather see.

Sometimes fate from up behind us
Sneaks a sudden gift of kindness
Balancing the wanton yearnings,
Silencing the urgent pleas.
Maybe one day I’ll be found
Again exploring foreign ground
But until then I’m homeward bound.
Exploring life quite happily
Sometimes home can set you free.

*******
Quote of the day: The sea wrack Milton hoses from the sidewalk every morning includes the dead jellyfish of prophylactics and the occasional hermit crab of a lost high heel. Jeffrey Eugenides - "Middlesex"
Chosen because I thought it was a great and unexpected, almost startling blending of two totally different theme images. I would never have thought of used condoms as dead jellyfish on my own, that's for sure. I like it when an author can pluck two seemingly unconnected images and make them work together on the page.

Helen Keller

This new, never before seen photo of a young Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan has surfaced this week. I keep looking at it. The movie "The Miracle Worker" was one of those movies from my childhood that stayed with me, made me first aware of the beauty and importance of language between human beings, and what it would be like to try to teach language to someone totally unfamiliar with something that I took for granted. I can still see Patty Duke's face, as light finally dawns, understanding that the motions Anne was making in Helen's outstretched palm stood for the object she was showing her. Water. This is water - and her world cracked open. Her total rapture and ravenous need for learning after that moment riveted me to the screen. I was ever after fascinated by Helen, and now own a first edition of her autobiography. She became one of my unspoken heroes, someone who overcame unfathomable handicaps to not only survive, but excel in the foreign world of those who see and hear. Her story still moves me.

Writing Exercise 3-05 How Did You Get That Scar?

Write as a newspaper article:

Three year-old P McNellie was found sprawled in a heap at her Woodmont Lane bungalow late yesterday afternoon after attempting to solve crime in her living room. With her magic red Mighty Mouse cape tied tightly around her shoulders (it was since discovered that this cape had been reported missing by her older brother, Theodore, also a renowned crime fighter) the little superheroine allegedly climbed on top of the piano in the living room, searching the corners for any and all evil villains . Her mother, D. McNellie, has been quoted as saying, "I don't know how it happened. One minute, I was in the kitchen washing dishes, the next minute, I hear a shrill little "here I come to save the DAAAY!" shout-sung from the next room, followed almost immediately by a loud WHAM. The poor little thing, determined to fly, she apparently missed the villain and hit the doorframe instead."

P seems none the worse for wear. After a tearful, fearful trip to the doctor's for a few stitches to her blond head, she was whisked off to the local Walgreens for a box of banana popsicles, her favorite. She is currently resting comfortably and plans to continue watching Mighty Mouse's every adventure. There are no reports of further criminal activity in the McNellie's living room, and the red cape, Mrs. McNellie assures us, will wash clean of all blood.

*******
Quote of the day: Ina felt a little ting of disappointment that was a mother's companion. Charles Dickinson - "The Widow's Adventure"
Chosen because this little ting has been part of my daily life since I first gave birth thirty years ago. Another passage wonderfully describing a shared human experience; this time an intricate part of motherhood, something any mother will instantly recognize.

A Favorite Long Quote

Some quotes I love are too lengthy to be appended to my regular entries, so I will be giving them their own space in which to stretch and preen...

*******
...and there was nothing in the world to do but wait for the mailman to come, and pray that he wouldn't. Mama said the postmen in Neely had never worn neckties until the war, had never worn their gray wool uniforms with stripes down the trouserlegs, had never worn their postal-issue caps, had never been so severe and proper until the war came along to make them extraordinarily significant. They would knock on doors and out would come mothers and wives and sisters already on the raw edge of agony, and the postman would extend the notice towards them...and mama said nobody who got one ever opened it right off, but clutched it and bent it and worked it through their fingers and never neglected to say "thank you." Kissing the axe, Daddy called it. T.R. Pearson - "A Short History of a Small Place"
Chosen because it affected me emotionally, how war can impact what would otherwise be a normal, everyday interaction we all experience - receiving mail from the mailman. I was touched by the small but significant gesture of how the postmen chose to dress themselves to reflect the gravity of their job. And "kissing the axe" is such a juicy final wallop to the end of the thought. This author captures so many wonderful moments of life in this book using long, luxurious, lazy sentences. I need to reread it.

Writing Exercise 3-5 First Job

Elaborate in an essay the trials and tribulations of your first real job. How has that experience shaped the person you have become?

My first real job was as a travel agent in the 70's. Most of the professional trials came from working with the music industry and their horrible travel schedules. Most of the personal tribulations came from learning how to work with the public in general, how to be patient, kind, long suffering, and polite in the face of a red faced stranger screaming at you about the lack of hotel parking and the fact that I had not informed him that (insert destination here) was so damned expensive.
The music industry presented a particularly difficult challenge when it came to booking their travel arrangements. This was back in the days before computers - when all tickets were written out by hand and all fares were worked out using a gargantuan set of constantly changing tariff sheets. This fare book was, I am not exaggerating, about 8 inches thick, with a daily influx of mailed updates to replace those that came in before. In other words, a nightmare. My own personal demon was Jimmy Buffet and his ladylove. This was before Jimmy became REAL famous and was playing the small venue circuit. A typical booking would go like this: Paducah, Kentucky on Friday, Walla Walla, Washington on Saturday, Happytown, Ohio, on Sunday, Hickville, Montana on Monday. Of course, none of these little towns had direct flights of any stretch of the imagination, so inbetween cities, there were several changes of planes. Sometimes, Jimmy’s ticket would be three or four stapled together to accomodate all of the stops. It would take a few days of arranging, rearranging, and gnashing of teeth to finally get all booked, and ticketed. Invariably, the next day, Jimmy or his manager would call to let me know that one of the gigs was cancelled (always the one in the middle of the trip) and that instead, they were going to some other God forsaken unheard of village. Oh, they would meekly add, we also need that ticket by tomorrow. I learned great patience and forbearance doing Jimmy’s tickets.
As for the public in general, let me just say that one has not truly worked until one has worked with the public at large. If you haven’t learned to hold your tongue after the first few weeks, you have either a) been fired b)gone mute or c) learned the art of seeing them all as 5 year olds.

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Quote of the day: A woman can wear stovepipe trousers and blue jeans or a farmer's bib or tails and a top hat and so what - she's just exercising her options as a consumer; but if a man puts on a skirt he'd better be ready to pick up a bagpipe and blow. Natalie Algier - "Woman"
Chosen because it made me laugh - one of those little eternal truths softened by humor.

Time's an odd thing

I remember how surprised I was when I found out that the 17th century was the 1600's, or the 18th century was the 1700's, etc. Even to this day, I have give myself a very slight, split second pause to remember to "subtract" a number when I hear "during the 15th century..." so that I know it's the 1400's they're talking about. Until I was old enough to know better, it made perfect sense to me that the 15th century would be the 1500's!

Similarly, when we celebrate our birthday, we are actually celebrating the END of that year, not the beginning. So when I turned 54, I was actually beginning my 55th year. I'm sure this is common sense to everyone else, but I was probably in my 30's before this dawned on me, or more truthfully, when I actually gave it thought for the first time ever. Not mind boggling stuff, but there it is - acknowledgement that I'm slow on historical time references.

Doris Lessing in "Love, Again" wrote of compression of historical time, allowing me to collapse all of time and its historical eras into more manageable time chunks. The passage:

"Somewhere about middle age, it occurs to most people that a century is only their own lifetime twice. On that thought, all of history rushes together, and now they live inside the story of time instead of looking at it from outside as observers. Only ten or twelve of their lifetimes ago, Shakespeare was alive. The French Revolution was just the other day. A hundred years ago, not much more, was the Civil War. It had seemed in another epoch, almost another dimension of time or of space. But once you have said, "a hundred years is my lifetime twice," you feel as if you could have been on those battlefields or nursing those soldiers. With Walt Whitman perhaps."

Reading those words I actually did experience that rushing of years, compacting themselves into something more reachable, more graspable. Just four "grandmothers" ago (assuming they all lived to be 90ish) Shakespeare walked the earth. He just comes whooshing forward out of the textbooks, out of the dark "way back then somewhen", and plops into someone I could almost reach out and touch. Fascinating. We're all closer than we realize and time is such an odd thing.

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Quote of the day: We stood out like three banjos at a funeral. Jenny Colgan - "Talking to Addison"
Chosen because it made me laugh out loud. '...three banjos at a funeral.' Can you imagine any two things so beautifully unmatchy? Fabulous.

Random thought

Josh Groban sings like Ronald Coleman speaks. Velvety honeyed goodness that vibrates the marrow.

Writing Exercise 3-3 - Traffic Stories

A long line of cars are at a standstill on a highway. Each car's occupants has a story. Describe six of them.

God, it was hot. Muggy hot. Shimmering wavy asphalt hot. The ’72 Chevy Impala had lost its air conditioning 2 days and 800 miles ago when Daryl, doing his macho bit, had urged and pushed the old motor up the California mountains on a prayer and some duct tape. Neither had held up their end of the bargain and ever since, the only air that blew was the thick, sticky breeze from the four open windows. “When are we gonna get to Granny’s, daddy?” whined Lily, her toothless grin long gone in the tiresome heat. “I wanna cold drink.” Soon, thought Daryl, soon as this damn traffic clears out. And the further from your momma we can get you the better. This will teach her to tell me I can’t see my own kid."

Sarah and Doug silently stared ahead at the long line of traffic. Doug held Sarah’s cool, slender fingers in his own, imagining what must be going through her head. I was only lost for a little while, he thought. It’s not like I couldn’t find my way back to our RV. Sure, I’ve been forgetful lately, but doesn’t that happen naturally when you get to be my age?” Doug knew Sarah had not wanted to come to the beach this year, worried about his “state of mind” as she called it. And now this. Three days into our trip and she wants to go home, just because I got a little lost.” Sarah’s grim face registers a sorrow that she dare not voice. “He doesn’t even know,” Sarah felt herself give way to tears. “He doesn’t even know.”

She snuggled up against his bronzed neck and inhaled the maleness of him…the sweetness of his skin too tempting, her longing too deep. On the beach, the sight of him lying stretched out on his stomach, eyes peacefully closed, his exuberant youth glistening on him like dew on a new rose. She ached for him as she lay beside him in the August sun, murmuring to him words only a newlywed could whisper. She stroked the small of his back, fingers stretched tantalizingly close to the dimples just under the bathing suit elastic, teasing, asking. Their hotel is just down the road. But this damn traffic. Maybe she should start a little early, she thought, nibbling his secret sweet spots in blind joy.

The beeper had gone off. It was coming. The baby was actually coming. Shelly had promised that it would be all right for Dave to take the afternoon for his latest watercolor masterpiece. He’d managed to conquer the mystery of the mountains, but had yet to capture the movement of water on the canvas and, although he had not asked, she could tell he itched to drive to the shore, paints in hand. She was a few weeks away from her due date which made her feel relatively sure nothing would happen and gave him a loving shove out the door. “Go!”, she had laughed. “Paint me the ocean.” Now, he sat in the car, traffic at a crawl, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in an unconscious admission of panic. He grabs for the cell phone.

The rolling thunder of the Harley in neutral purred in his ears. Damn, the traffic. Brooks peered up ahead, squinting in the brightness of the August morning sun, frantic to move ahead of the cars bumpered together in one long metal rope as far as the eye could see. Gauging correctly the widths of distance between the nearest lane of cars, he nervously eased out the bike as slowly snaked his way north, deftly maneuvering between the stranded cars. He had to get out of this mess before the sirens caught up to him. His Harley would make him easy to spot, especially from the air. How could Sonny have missed that alarm? “Easy street, man, “ Sonny had cooed. “You’ll be in and out of that beach house in minutes, man, I’m tellin’ ya. E–Z street…” Brooks made a mental note to burn Sonny if and when he ever got under cover.

“Oh God, not today,” Sam said to herself. “Of all days, please not today.” She could still smell Jim on her shirt, on her hands. He had been particularly loving today, as if he might actually say the words she had hoped to hear, “I’m divorcing Megan.” But after a session of lovemaking, the morning had ended with the usual platitudes and promises. What was she doing? Why couldn’t she stop? She had really taken a risk this time, leaving work like she did using the old “dentist appointment standby.” She was supposed to meet her husband Bob at their marriage counselor’s at 10:00 and she had left the beach house in plenty of time. When the speeding car had run into her, she was unhurt, but the car was undriveable. She looked at the long stretch of cars lining up behind her and silently apologized to each of the drivers whose morning she had just ruined. The imagined control she had had over her life drained slowly away. She no longer heard the highway sounds, felt the debilitating heat, or saw the motorcycle as it came barrelling blindly from around the rear of the van in the next lane.

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Quote of the day: Mrs. Purdon's fierce independence was a rock on which every attempt at sympathy or help shattered itself to atoms. Dorothy Canfield "Flint and Fire"
Chosen because it's another passage in which I can see myself, or at least the possibility of myself. I'm independent to a fault and this passage rang a bell of recognition and warning.