green Solard

Whittling Away...

2010-06-10T10:20:00.003-05:00

You know how you have those things in your past that stay buried and fester like an old splinter or something? I have many and I'm sure most people do -- else we wouldn't have sayings like, "Most people lead lives of quiet desperation." Toxic people, situations and events run through our lives like water through the Grand Canyon, chiseling a channel too deep to fill up and too wide to bridge.

One toxic person, situation and event (yes, all three knotted together like that twine ball) that I've been chewing over, something I've always privately thought of as the entry gate to my thankfully brief descent into Hell is when I was shoved from the comforting nest of my junior college speech/theatre department into the pit of vipers theatre department at university.

I had developed a relationship with the svengalian JSB when he was recommended by one of my forensic coaches as a tutor in algebra. At 24 years old, I'd experienced far more than my share of adult content, yet surprisingly had remained truly naive to so much of the complex network of experiences which make up the social web. Or to the point, I was still, miraculously, a Christian and a virgin. I'd never experienced a person such as JSB in my entire life -- someone so charismatic, so mesmerizing, so spell-binding! He'd look deep into my eyes, and seemingly imply... things... I was sure I was in love to the deepest core of my being. We'd sit late into the night in various coffee shops writing poetry together; mine stilted and rhymey... his open and free and flowing. He taught me how to express myself through poems and affected my creative writing so much ...that to this day I won't even attempt a poem unless it's practically bursting out of my chest like an Alien.

He'd make my birthday special...and then not speak to me for several days, only to resurface in my field of vision with a girlfriend on his arm. He'd ignore me passionately for several weeks -- while in the new relationship -- and then somehow just ...materialize in my life again, staring deep into my eyes and burrowing even further under my skin. He'd tell me I was priceless and special to him...and then disappear into another woman's life, only coming up for air long enough to pointedly ignore me. The old manchurian... To say that he scarred my soul sounds dramatic...but comes pretty close to the truth. Even today, 20 years later, writing about him makes my stomach slightly nervous.

As much an effect he had on me, he worked doubly on my two female speech coaches. When they talked of him, their language was couched in terms nearly religious... For a time, I truly thought he was some kind of magi or mind-bender, so wide-spread was his effect on everyone.

They pushed me from the nest of the junior college speech/theatre department into the speeth/theatre department at university before I was ready... I remained convinced for a long time they did so to shield JSB from my poisonous influence. I suspected he wanted me gone...so they gave the appropriate shove. From there, my life -- in my carefully culled together Life Narrative -- took a downturn that would last for the next seven years. My personal 'desert' or Dark Night of the Soul. I always blamed those seven years of wandering on the two speech coaches who shoved me away from the bosom of their prodigious care at the behest of the Enigmatic JSB...

Until yesterday, that is. My Personal Life Narrative took a big hit when I had a sort of epiphanal moment in realizing that perhaps he was/is weaker than I and needed protection from me! Even though I was wandering, I had never stopped believing in God, in Christ...never stopped praying -- although my prayers were more disgruntled thoughts than actual prayers. I had my God watching over me... JSB only had his "angels" -- two women, mired in new age philosophy and hamstrung by their own personal disappointments and impediments.

Hey, I know this sounds arrogant, but it's actually the exact opposite. I went through Hell during the three years I attended Ole Miss. I was NOT a good fit at that university. I had a chip on my shoulder a MILE wide. I was surly and uncooperative with the faculty and sometimes outright rude to my fellow classmates. I was a B*tch, full-stop. But, as the old saying goes, "just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they ain't out to get ya!"

My core problem began with the speech program's graduate advisor, JC and trickled like an oily, rancid river through his (now) wife, V and her toxicly deranged friend P. It spread like a virus to others because I simply didn't have the tools -- emotional or psychologic or (perhaps most importantly,) spiritual to fight back so I spread it. I spread it like Jif in an otherwise empty pantry. I was so full of putrid, impotent rage at the attack by that Triumverate that I projected it onto just about everyone else in the vicinity. I became a Victim, and I had NEVER been a Victim. I thrashed like I was on fire against what I perceived as Public Opinion against me. I bristled at what I thought were slights and sneers at my mental state. I boiled over the reputation as "easy" that I knew they spread. I became very, very paranoid. I seriously contemplated suicide, and started a very futile, very frustrating period of counseling... because I just. couldn't. get. over it.

God, but this hurts to even revisit. Seriously. There's a part -- a very minute part of me, mind -- that wishes some of those people -- the innocent bystanders -- could read this and realize I was so, so miserable. That the person I was for those three years (and the recovering individual I was for the next four) was/is NOT who I AM. That pressure and force, and perceived persecution shaped and molded me into a person I had never been, nor, God willing, will never be again. I am mortified when I think back to who I was during that time... a person I don't even recognize as living in me -- like I'd been ...possessed.

But hey, I survived. I've got the emotional scars -- all keloid bloated and gnarly -- to prove it. The thing that hit me yesterday is, perhaps, JSB didn't. I think he may have been very needy emotionally, only I didn't recognize the need beneath his mesmerizing qualities. Maybe I asked too much, pushed too far, needed too much from someone who, ironically, had nothing to give. Maybe my two new-agey beloved speech coach advisors recognized that fact and made the decision to cut me off because they knew, ultimately, I could take it and JSB couldn't.

I dunno. Alls I know is I'm still standing. I'm not particularly proud of who I've been at times...but I'm proud -- without reservation -- of what I've become. And I owe all the good to God, and take full responsibility for all the bad.

So...I guess what I'm saying is, I forgive JSB for confusing me so, my mentors for abandoning me, and myself for not looking to Jesus through that time. Had I put my faith and trust in the Rock That Shall Not Be Removed, I might have had a different experience at Ole Miss.

Driving Miss Crazy

2010-04-16T08:13:00.005-05:00

My mother owned the road. When she perched in the driver's seat, every other driver on the road, in deference, parted their vehicles in two undulating lines to the left and right of her path. She sailed, swan on placid water, through the line unassailed to her destination, where she landed gently, slid the shifter gracefully through prindle and descended from her coach in a cloud of beatific satisfaction.

At least in her mind.

My experience, as her shotgun passenger, resonated differently. Her majesty was not pleased with the subjects occupying 'her' road, and made her displeasure quite known. Her tone of voice, her mode of expression, her posture all signified livid, unmitigated aggression towards her fellow travellers. I learned the rankest cuss words, not from my peers in the schoolyard, but right there, shotgun passenger seat to my mother's road rage. I experienced my first one-fingered salute, not from a loosely cobbled gathering of disaffected youth or a peace protest or a rock concert, but right there, sitting next to my mother as she navigated her personal Mad Max-ian pot-holed hell.

She always felt, I think, she'd been born to a chauffered car, but found herself saddled with the soccer mom duties of the mere plebiscite.

You know that queer mix of embarrassment and superiority every kid eventually feels about their parent? I'd get acute pangs of it toward my mother's wild gesticulations and loud profanities while pressed into piloting the family sedan. I guess I was shocked by the realization that my mother, from whom I'd learned the bedrock principles of 'Right and Wrong,' turned out to be as much of a fraud as I at the 'actions speaking louder than the words' thing. It informed the very beginnings of my foundational mistrust in all authority. Poor mom. Probably had no inkling she was shaping a closet anarchist.

My mother's dead lo these almost seventeen years; her impotent wheelian rages stifled, blanketed by the softening of almost two decades of inactivity. She went -- maybe not gently, but certainly -- into that good night where no one impedes her progress on the road by driving too slowly, or too fast, or erratically or by not using their %$##^#$% blinker! I suspect her drivetime plays like Singin' in the Rain instead of Beyond Thunderdome, now. In short, she is at peace, finally, behind the wheel.

But sometimes, usually when I'm behind the wheel, oddly enough, I'll hear it. That string of profanities and wild ravings; I'll see in my peripherals the surreptitious hand ...uh... signals. I'll feel the faint recognition in my spine, the slow slide down into the seat for concealment, the complex embarrassment mixed with equal parts superiority... the recognition of The Drive down Her Road. I'll think to myself "Mother!"

And I realize, with a growing sense of shame tinged with the vaguest beginnings of forgiveness... I am just like my mom.

Desert dry

2010-04-13T21:32:00.003-05:00

Still reading. Not much writing at all. Trying to figure out if I'm meant to be an author, or a writer.

To me, an author implies commercial success -- however modest. Anyone can "be a writer". You need only write every day. (So, as of right now, I'm not even a writer.)

Right now, I'm reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. Although written in the mid-90's, the advice is resonant and I'm getting a great deal from the instruction. Mostly reaffirming what I learned from other books on writing, but with Lamott's own unique voice supplying. I think I'd enjoy studying under her -- she seems very organic.

I'm already pretty whimsical in my writing pursuits. If 'the spirit doesn't move' then neither does my pen. If I'm not feeling it, I don't even glance at the laptop. What I need is to harness that wayward childishness and learn to channel it into a daily practice.

Easier said than done.

Pfft.

2010-01-05T09:16:00.003-06:00

Okay, so I've done very little writing since NaNo '09 wrapped. I've written a few things by hand -- a prose-poem kind of thing about Christmas; a little piece of observatory prose; and pages and pages of book reviews -- but my fingers have nary tapped the keyboard of my laptop or Dana for anything other than surfing. But my time has been well-spent.

For I have been ...reading.

Yes the twin Sun to writing for a Writer is Reading. I'm a very uneven reader. My F-i-L and S-i-L are both very consistent readers; always with a book, steadily making their way through stacks of 'books to read' and polishing them off regularly. I've long wanted to be disciplined in my reading like that, but alas -- as with most other areas of my life -- I'm more like a mad dasher.

I can read like a sum'bitch when inspiration hits me. I can devour 300+ page novels in a single day -- and still have the clothes washed and dinner on table -- if I'm really of a mind to. And have, several times. The problem is, I have to 'feel' like it.

That is the single biggest hurdle in my life for anything worthwhile I wish to pursue: I wait for the 'feeling' to hit me. I have to be inspired, motivated, driven to do whatever it is.

For instance, in the month of December after NaNo '09 ended, I devoured eight books. Daniel Silva's latest Gabriel Allon book, The Defector, Brad Thor's The Apostle, Sara Bird's How Perfect is That, P.J. O'Rourke's Peace Kills, Haggai Carmon's Chameleon Conspiracy, Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow, Tim Gautreaux's The Missing, and Michael Connelly's 9 Dragons. I'm rounding out that list by currently reading Steve Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo.

All of the books are very different, although some fall into my currently favorite genre of Thriller/Adventure, and I'm learning a vast deal from all of them about story structure, conflict and tension and characterization. In the rest of my posts for this month, I'm going to examine in detail some of the stuff I think I'm learning.

If the inspiration hits to actually write a post. I wonder if there's any novels out there that can teach me to be consistent and disciplined....

Trouble Letting Go...

2009-12-01T08:40:00.005-06:00

I'm still in NaNo land -- reading forums and following cool links to all sorts of writing inspired challenges and stuff -- things I didn't have time for when trying to corral 50k/30d.

Here's one -- test how fast you can type:

67 words

Typing Test

There's a little disclaimer at the bottom informing the user it's not 100% accurate ...so I'm gonna go with that! 57 words/m? Oi, I'm SLLLLOOOW. Jim is faster than me!!! (Pam Beesly would laugh through her nose at me.)

Edited: so yeah, went back and improved by 10 words... if I keep up the improvement rate, (+10 words every day, times 330 days)... Uhm, uh... I could do next years NaNo in like, uhm, less than five days. Yeah.

(Someone who knows how to do algebra? Ples, halp?)

"...it's, like, better than losing?"

2009-11-28T19:33:00.004-06:00

You know, Joe Fox says that The Godfather is the "i-ching, the sum of all wisdom, the answer to any queston..."

Well, I dispute that. To me? It's Bull Durham. There's always a pertinent quote to be culled from that movie.

Anyway: I won! Now, I'm going to have a much deserved movie night with my family, without who's patience I could not even attempt to write 50,000 + words in 30 days. Thank you, Chris Baty and Co. for a wonderful "30 days and nights of literary abandon." This aspiring author totally appreciates what y'all do.

I'll see y'all in a week or so...

More Ignominious Self Aggrandizement

2009-11-15T22:33:00.002-06:00

I like big WORDS and I cannot lie...

I'm not exactly tearing up the field, but I'm holding my own.

Staying just a little ahead of the daily goal, my word count is healthy even if my plotline is anemic.

Editing. It's what December is for.

Shameless Fist Pumping

2009-11-09T21:15:00.004-06:00

I already put it up over on my Writer's Group blog (Pens and Pages Writer's Group) but I'm going to put it over here, just because I need all the dangling carrots I can get:

(Link broken)

Lot's of Wrimo's swear by it. And I'm not sure I've EVER written like my life depended upon it before. So, yesh (as my Jr. High-er says.)

If I procrastinate again? I'm settin' that sucker to "kamakaze" and throwing some Hail Mary's baby!

Weezer is the Funniest Band in Rock

2009-11-06T11:51:00.003-06:00

When I'm pounding on boards or sanding floors or puttin' graphite on doors,
to make the time run smooth, and get into the groove, and really enjoy what I do,
I hum.

And at least 60% of the time the tune that ambles unbeckoned into my head?
Sum'ing by Weezer.

I love these guys. Enjoy.

http://

Oops I did it again...

2009-11-04T13:24:00.005-06:00

I think I'm beating a dead horse with that title...it's been a looooong time since Ms. Spears could be considered an innocent, if flirtatious schoolgirl...

Showing my unhipness aside, I'm doing it again. Hopefully, in about 26 days, that badge'll change to "...2009 WINNER!"

I'm cooking along, with a respectable bank of words right now, suffering a smidge here and there of that form of anxiety particular (it seems) to writers: self-doubt...but I just tell Self Doubt to shove it! Heheheh.

I Want To Pass It On...

2009-10-20T12:55:00.003-05:00

Hee -- I love that song; every time I hear it, I'm back in front of a campfire, swaying and singing in harmony.

Anyway... I found a WONDERFUL Writer's Blog, and (see post title) to everyone who happens by this Siberian Blog. (Yes. I am in Siberia. 'S why no one visits me. **pout**)

Anyhoo, without further adoo (poet; didn't know it) the Aforementioned (love those big words!) Blog:

http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/index.htm

Go there; Live, Learn & Prosper.

Namaste (because I am just that much of a poseur)

(Actually...I'm painstakingly refinishing a floor and there just might have been a little too much inhalin' of the fumes. We're still running the tests. Get back to you with the results in a later dispatch. Ooooh -- cliffhanger! Now you HAVE to come back Bwahahahahahah)

Balance

2009-10-14T08:06:00.005-05:00

So, I've pretty much made my peace with the Wii Fit. I'm hopping on every morning, give or take a couple here and there, trying to have some semblance of a fitness routine.

I'm also writing pretty regularly. Mostly it's fits and starts, drabbles here and there, waiting to be spit shined to posting-ready.

I'm also pretty consistently keeping house -- nothing like I used to, but then, I was kind of a clean freak back in the day. But my house is relatively tidy, mostly dust free and regularly wiped and vacuumed, so I'm at peace on the subject.

I'm also regular in my guitar practice. I'm managing a little book and a little tab every day. I've almost got the acoustic opening to Crazy on You by Heart down. So, that's good. I think I'm about ready for an electric. (cover your ears, bebe's, heh-heh-heh)

I'm juggling these balls pretty steadily -- nothing Cirque de Soleil ready, of course, but mostly managing.

The only thing I don't seem able to shim in is regular blogging.

The NaNoWriMo is fast approaching, and although I've gone b*lls out in the two previous years with 50-50 success rate (won '08, didn't win '07) I've actually got a rough plan for this year! I'm excited by the story idea and I will be posting the chapters (as I've finished, so they will be largely unedited. Fair warning) up at my FictionPress account at http://www.fictionpress.com/~solard. Here's the brief synopsis posted at nanowrimo(dot)org:

"The civil war in Heaven left the angelic population devastated. Those choosing to follow Lucifer in his revolt found themselves doomed to walk the earth, caught between the spirit and the tangible world. Those choosing to remain loyal to the High King continue the good fight to this day in battle for the souls of humankind.

There remained a few, unable to make a choice, which were doomed to an unspeakable fate. Sentenced to reincarnate until the End of Days, they remain heavenly souls bound to earthly bodies; neither human, angel nor demon, they know neither the blessings of heaven nor the tortures of hell. They are the Nephilim.

Near the end of the war, with the heavens in turmoil, Zephan makes the fateful decision to escape the choice between serving a King to whom his loyalty wavers and the deplorable Lucifer, arrogant leader of the the Fallen Hosts. At the last possible moment, he seizes his chance, impulsively reaching for the hand of Aziel, dooming her to the same fate; to walk the earth as Nephilim, despised by heaven and hell alike."

If you stumble upon this post (I feel like Lt. John Dunbar, sometimes ;-) I hope you'll go check out NaNoWriMo, and my FictionPress account. You're welcome to read my novel, and tell me what you think. All comments welcome, even "flames". (Hey, you gotta let the little ones get their aggressions out in safe ways, after all. Heh.)

Act your Wii Fit Age, not your shoe size...

2009-08-03T18:49:00.003-05:00

Wii Fit can kiss my butt.

I have reached almost 100 days on that sucker, and I've not budged from between a two pound weight variance (and no, I'm not saying how much). Up/Down, Up/Down, Up/Down, on and on and on it goes. I gain and lose the SAME. TWO. POUNDS. every time I step on that stoopid little talking, sweat-inducing board.

And man, is that thing ever chatty. Mouthy little artificial intelligence exercise dominatrix. You wobble ever so slightly and that thing admonishes you in a smug female voice -- and you can just see it's perfect little geek-wet-dream-cartoon-never-happen-in-nature-body -- that "You're a little shaky!" Well, Duh, Byte-for-Brains! I'm being JUDGED every single nano-second I stand on this White Board of Condemnation! I'll be doing fine -- for me, that is -- until the smarmy voice intones, "You're swaying a bit!" and then I'm like, "Ya THINK?" as I topple off the side, and the Wii goes, "BOINK!" in a cartoony verbal slap at my inadequacies.

The hate. It Burrrrrns.

If you don't stand on Her Majesty just so, she measures you the entirety of the exercise as being "off balance" and lemme tell you... I wasn't particularly 'off balance' until I introduced myself to that unctious little White Platform of Fail...but now? I'm contemplating Wii-hicular Homicide. I plant my feet on her so carefully...and look at the light yellow circle, expectantly...hopefully, even -- "Maybe this time...?" But my little red dot (which makes me think of lasers...attached to the scope of an M16...pointed at that judgey little yellow circle... yeah...) will be off center. GAHHH! What do I have to DOOOOO?!?

I think that perfidious white nightmare would make an excellant clay pidgeon. Now THAT would be a nice workout, yeah?

Heh. The kicker? I primarily do the Yoga exercises... And isn't Yoga supposed to be like, Zen and stuff? Aren't you supposed to be "loving the body you have now" and breathing into the poses with calm serenity? Releasing your anger and all that crapola? Yeah... No. It MAKES me angry, I tells ya! I cuss my way into the Warrior Pose (eh, I've known PLENTY of 'warriors' who work 'Blue'), I grit and gnash my teeth through the Tree Pose, I gripe and mutter through the Dance Pose....

Oh, yeah. I'm Zen. If by Zen you mean "Homicidally maniacal." That little (*&%%$#@)!! Makes me want to rip it's console out by the root and toss those little Wii Rem--

........Hey...what's this?

..................................The Balance Board's batteries are low? Oh NO! I'm sorry, honey!! Mommy didn't mean it!! I swear -- look! I've got some Double A's right here, fresh from the package... please don't lose all my stats, sugar! I will make it up to you, I SWEAR!!

The Road to Hell...

2009-07-21T12:57:00.004-05:00

I had every intention of submitting a blog post a week. I had intended to write a synopsis of my NaNo '08 novel. I had intended to write character studies of the characters from that '08 novel. I had intended to write the latest chapter of my just for fun, X-Files-inspired story-with-no-apparant-end epic. I had intended to sketch out the next chapter of my unfinished NaNo '07 project...

Instead, I read.

Sometimes intentions can be the road to a personal private hell. And sometimes they can be the road less traveled and sometimes they can be what we wanted but was never intended to be.

I've started another just-for-fun project...and I no longer feel guilty for them. All writing is practice, and, although I've not been doing what I'm meant to be doing...I am writing.

So, here is a half-baked blog post, just so I can cross an item of my "I had intended to..." list.

When I was your age...

2009-06-13T14:37:00.000-05:00

I remember back when I was a kid and my parents were still together, one of the things my parents enjoyed was going to see Clint Eastwood 'spaghetti westerns'. I guess they were produced in Italy or something and thus they were called by that name. Anyway, I was no older than 10 -- that's when my parents split up -- so Clint Eastwood wasn't even a name to me, just squinty eyed glare and thin cigarillo poking out of his grim mouth. It wasn't so much the movies I remember as the venue. They dotted the landscape when I was a kid, but you don't see them around much anymore. As a matter of fact, if you played a variation of "punch buggy" -- slugging your seat partner every time you saw one -- you'd likely fall asleep waiting for the opportunity to get in a 'legal' hit.

What I'm talking about is Drive-In Movie Theatres. Those unmistakably tall and wide screens lit up to five or seven stories tall, giving real heft to the phrase 'larger than life'. It's small wonder I recall Clint's squinty glare and his cigarillo -- they were as big as the family station wagon on those screens.

My husband shares the delight and nostalgic 'awwww' that I feel when we happen upon one of these cherished relics of our separate but oddly joined past. They conjure memories of too much sugar, swing sets set in sand with the screen looming too closely behind, fast friendships made at the foot of those surreal screens meant only to last for the night... The feeling of freedom at parents close enough if the need arose, yet far enough out of pocket to give us our first thrill of independence. Not to mention the giddy joy of watching the stars at the same time you watched a movie from the hood of your car.

We are lucky enough to be caught in a triangle of Texas towns that gives us a choice of not just one, but two Drive-Ins. Oh, there are more -- this one in the picture that I snapped on the way to Grapevine TX, and another down the road a piece (that's a good Texas phrase) featuring a gapped-tooth stare from the sheet metal slowly dropping off the screen's facade occupied by a herd of cows that think the car corral (auditorium, maybe?) makes a good wind break.

I never fail to feel a little sad when I drive by that one.

But back to the picture. You can't see it, because we were driving too fast, but the audience section isn't bermed and ready for cars -- it has rows and rows of benches! Can you imagine? Where did the cars park? And how did you listen? Or, maybe the benches were just the 'front rows' with plenty of room for cars behind. I dunno.

Still... it must have been one heck of a Drive-In in it's day, huh?

Now With More Pictures

2009-06-03T16:45:00.000-05:00

We stayed at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine this past weekend. The Gaylord Texan is a large hotel which houses a 4.5 acre atrium. The atrium features small scale replicas of the Alamo, the San Antonio River Walk and a 9-story oil derrick. Throughout the atrium winding around the landmarks, lush gardens abound. We had a fifth floor room with a balcony overlooking the atrium. I took the picture from our balcony the first night.

The local model train group built an exhibit in the atrium which includes The Hogwarts Express train, the Polar Express train, a bullet train, an old fashioned steam train,a very realistic subway train and a couple of others, too. Right next to that, a large scale platform in the shape of a guitar hosts another group of model trains. In the center of the promenade up on a bridge in the shape of a figure eight, another model train runs periodically. They must like their trains in Grapevine!

Our first (well, only really) day we spent mostly at the beautiful outdoor pool-- not quite olympic sized, but adequate for getting in some laps -- with a line of man-made waterfalls that spill into the pool the entire length. Mostly sun worshipers dominated the space and my little fam felt a tad out of place. The indoor pool seemed basically deserted. Odd; usually it's the other way around -- lot's of family splashing in the outdoor pool while the indoor is occupied by the serious swimmers and adults who want to 'see and be seen'.

Most of our recreation consisted of walking the indoor grounds, and with 4+ acres that was plenty of exercise, lemme tell ya! The hotel literature says they keep that atrium at a steady 72 degrees, so the walking was pleasant, comfortable and free of the clammy sweat induced by walking the (equally beautiful but steamy) outdoor grounds. Outside, the hotel boasts it's own vineyard, honoring Thomas Volney Munson, the Denison, TX expert on viticulture who -- no joke -- saved the European wine industry in the early 1900's by exporting three ship-loads of native Texas rootstock. For this service, Munson was awarded the Legion of Honor, Chevalier du Merite Agricole.

Not bad for an 'Merican, eh? And a Texan to boot.

I suspect Pete Townsend visited the Caprock of Texas

2009-05-26T21:24:00.009-05:00

My fam and I just got back from a camping trip in an area the locals refer to as the Breaks -- that's the edge of the geographical feature called the Caprock in the Texas Panhandle/ New Mexico area. The land 'breaks' off along a rough line and if you're standing on the east side of it you can see for miles and miles and miles >;-)

We had a great time roughing it and testing our limits against the harshness of the landscape. The rain lashed at us when the sun wasn’t burnishing our skin and the wind blew hard, rattling our tents and our nerves.

But the sky! Oh, it unfurled like a canopy beneath our campsite, stretching like infinity.

Coming from the east coast, I was used to seeing the sky obscured by tightly packed buildings, suburban sprawl or, when we could get far enough out, veiled by a covering of trees. My mountains were the Blue Ridge Mountains. I'd traveled several times through them to my father's place in Texas. Traveling those mountain roads was like driving through a green tunnel.

Even living in Tyler TX, ensconced in the Piney Woods ecoregion, I never got the sense of myself spinning in space on this big rock we call Earth at roughly 800+/- miles per hour, tethered only by that vaguely understood physical law called gravity. As a child I viewed the sky framed by familiar structures, safely seated on the hood of my parent's car. My horizon consisted of my neighbors' rooftops.

It wasn't until I came to the Texas panhandle, surrounded by miles of flat, sparse landscape that I fully apprehended that sense of "Whoa. That sky up there? It's big." I remember likening the vista to a vast soup bowl of inky, star-studded anxiety. It unnerved me, trying to comprehend that many stars in the night sky.

The only comparison I had was the awe I'd felt summers at Virginia Beach, watching a horizon comprised only of ocean and sky, and the smallness I would feel in relation. But I had the high rise resorts just behind me to help quell those overwhelming feelings.

I felt really unsettled for months after I moved here. I couldn't bring myself to look up very often -- even though, as a tween amateur astronomy nerd, I would have sworn that I'd gladly give my freedom for the typical night view most natives take for granted in this part of the country (and I cherish my freedom, yo.) I thought I'd never get comfortable with the limitlessness.

Then I went back east for a visit. I hated it. I couldn't get used to not seeing as far out as forever. I didn't like the buildings obscuring the view of the sky. I felt hemmed in, surrounded, suffocated.

It gets under your skin, this wide open, windy, parched, richly-colored, rugged land. Sometimes, you just have to go away to realize it.

To everything turn, turn, turn...

2009-05-22T11:14:00.007-05:00

So I head out at 7:30 am to Abernathy by a very circuitous route, hugging tightly to the back bumper of the yellow school bus carrying half of the sixth grade band, lest I get hopelessly lost. Band competition: one of those inevitable yet unplanned for things in your visions of the future spent raising your kids.

I lamented to my friend Di that I'd have to miss the May PPW meeting as in my parental "Rock-Paper-Scissors" game of life "Kid" always beats "Selfish Wants." Plus, I had to drag my Youngest, as the love of my life was scheduled to work that day. Joy. I envisioned a recalcitrant child stonily harrumphing through the whole day-long event. My visions were not far from reality, either, but more on that later.

Di said, (and I love this about her -- her optimistic viewpoint that everything, EVERYthing can be used as a writing prompt!) "Ooooh, what a GREAT opportunity to get some good human-behavior observations down on paper!!!"

Isn't that cool? She looks at all situations as just one more potential writing exercise ;-)

Anyway, I said, "Oooh," back and thanked her for the gentle, optimistic reminder, packed my trusty, beat-up notebook into my purse and suddenly looked forward instead of askance at the prospect.

The day was rainy, chilly and generally miserable and Youngest, against my protest, had worn my old dojo robe over a tank top, shorts and sandals as a defense against the elements. (Notoriously under dressed, that one) Plus she had to go into the building sans dojo robe as it's really (no, really) not appropriate for public display.

She grumbled throughout the entire competition -- "I'm cold," I'm hungry," "this is boring," "are we leaving yet?" I attempted several times to appease her by running out to the car to get snacks we'd packed and an extra t-shirt I keep in the car, but she would not be appeased. She's nine, bless her heart. (If you are southern, you know what I'm really saying when I use the phrase "Bless her heart....")

After our sixth grade band performed their portion, I turned to Youngest and said, "Okay, chicky, they're done. You wanna stay in here or go out to the-," She cut in "To the car!"

We made our way out there, me gripping her tight to my side to try to keep her from plunging her sandaled foot into the puddles and the wind whipped us both inside the warm car without too much trauma. Through my crazy ninja-mutha skillz, I actually got her smiling again, (Yes. I do rock, thank you.) which turned out to be a good thing, because the band took their sweet time eating a school-provided lunch of which we two little lost souls were left out. (Oldest forgot to hand in the note explaining that her mom would be tagging along. Harrumph.)

I get home, and a couple days later Di asks, "So...did you get anything good written down in your human-behavior study? And, because I have a really short attention span, I said, "Huh?" She reminded me about the writing I was going to do at the band competition and I said, "Oh, yeah, that."

She said, "...what?" like she knew what was coming, and I told her the recaplet of the sojourn and how instead I spent my time entertaining Youngest. She commiserated, and we went on to talk about whatever meandering things we usually expend an hour on the phone hashing out.

Well, Di, I'm happy to tell you that Chance gave me another...well, chance. I attended the Spring Band Concert last night, and was able to get a mulligan on my Human Behavior Project, with the added bonus of the rest of the Jr. High band and High School bands too.

Here's what I observed: (names changed to some inane nickname to protect the innocent ;-)

Master: A voice like a strung willow branch, plucked; high, a bit tinny but not unpleasant. Unhurried yet abbreviated movements, controlled and devoid of dominance. He offers a smile of distracted elegance while his eyes take in all, registering neither disappointment nor relief.

Apprentice: Her brow creased in alarm, hand emerging slow as a turtle's head in tentative welcome. A smile spreads slow and reaches her eyes; her brow, however, misses the "all clear" sign.

Junior Officer: Is this the willow branch upon which Master's melodic voice is strung? Like a linear sigh he seems too insubstantial for gravity to hold him! Bending inward protecting wisps of logic and strength embedded in almost painfully thin veneer. Walking sheet music, "blink and you might miss him," he conceals more than the ink hieroglyphs scratched upon his surface. Close your eyes and open your ears. You'll see him as he is.

Trombone: His voice must have room, more than even the Tuba. Sliding forth, testing outer limits followed by eventual retreat to familiar places. He has vague ideas of the notes to play but -- unlike the other brass with buttons to press -- must feel his way to make the notes true.

Confidence came late but once he discerned the 'sweet spots' the underbrush cleared and the path -- which he thought he'd have to trail blaze -- had been there all along, waiting for him to find it. Distractions tempt him to unsure ways; will he lose the path or blaze new paths all his own?

Horn: He is uncomfortable with his voice. To cover, he's ever watchful of those who speak out confidently, counting mindlessly with sure toe taps, understanding the melodic scratches on the page. Fearful of playing a wrong note, unsure of the symbols others read with ease, he can hear it but cannot see the music.

Maybe he will surrender for a while, lay his voice aside, revel in the physical knowledge of pure sport. One day, on his way to the court a black line like the readings of a heart monitor will catch his eye. He'll stop, tilt his head, prick his ears and stare, focused on the line until the meaning emerges from the blur. He'll hear and see. His fingers will twitch out the interpretation of the line like a heart monitor read-out. The court forgotten for a while, he'll allow his hand to find his voice again.

People Concerto in A minor, by Grief, Good. ;-)

the path

2009-05-17T22:38:00.003-05:00

"We can do this the easy way...or we can do it the hard way"...

Those words have been spoken in some incarnation in a lot of movies by a lot of different heros. John Wayne, all the dudes that interpreted Wyatt Earp on screen, heck probably even Bruce Willis said something near it in his Die Hard movies -- although not nearly as memorably as his Yippee-ky-yay M*****F*****. (You don't get many catch phrases as good as that one. Well, maybe Ahnold's "I'll be back," comes close. But I'm chasing rabbits, now -- back to the point)

We can do this the easy way or the hard way... Like we have a choice. Most people can do it no other way than the hard way -- and I know. I'm a people. Who usually does "it" the hard way. Someone much wiser than me said, It is only through the hard times that one grows...(or words to that effect.)

It's the high winds that bend the juvenile trees (almost so far that you'd swear they were going to break) that actually strengthens them and helps them grow tall -- if they don't break, that is. Heh -- that's another one, what don't kill ya, makes you stronger. How many times have I had that phrase shoved at me by some stalwart old fart...who, I begrudgingly admit, knew better than me? How many times since I've started to become a stalwart aging fartlet have I said the same thing to other young saplings who -- I know looked at me like I was just as crazy as I thought the old farts were who were saying the same thing to me?

I had a friend who told me that you have to beat the tomatoes to get them to grow. That probably doesn't make sense to anyone who hasn't planted a bunch of tomato plants and anxiously watched them suck your water bill to over three thousand extra gallons a month only to appear to swoon every single day in the harsh sun of a typical TX panhandle afternoon. But if you have? Well, you know exactly what my friend was talking about -- it may not actually do any good... heh. But it sure makes you feel better ;-)

Is it true? Do the beatings you take in life make you stronger? I pondered this today as I had a pretty frank conversation with my soon-to-be twelve year old...about a very difficult period in my life. I found myself at one point in the conversation saying that although I was pretty strong when I was in high school, I went through a terrible period in college wherein I surrendered everything that made me "me"....but that now, I was much stronger than I'd ever been before the terrible period with the difficult people in my life and I was actually -- if not exactly grateful -- I was at least thankful that I learned from it, and grew...and that I would never just let someone strip me of my self-worth again.

I don't have the abject terror of being unloved the way I did then... perhaps because I stumbled upon someone who loves me unconditionally --- and allows me to love him back the same. I don't need approval the way I -- even subconsciously -- did then because I've learned (well, more accurately I'm in a constant process of learning) that I need only stay true to my core values and I need no other approval. I no longer see the necessity of perfection in myself...I only have to give my endeavors my best. Sometimes my best is half-assed, and that's okay too as long as I don't make a habit of it.

My husband -- before we were even dating, when we were just two friends who worked in a dinner show together -- used to nab me by my sleeve as I was storming out the stage door for a smoke after I flubbed a cue and he'd look me in the eye and he'd say, "Let it go. If you focus on what you messed up, you'll blow the next cue...and the next...and the next. Concentrate on the moment and you'll do fine."

He was right. When you concentrate on the moment -- whatever it is -- give it your focus as if it's the only thing happening right now, as if there's no other concern in the world, you'll do fine. Will you make mistakes? Sure you will... but in the end, you'll regret only the things you didn't do, not the things you tried and flubbed.

Maybe that is the "hard way" -- ranging around, giving your best, getting messy, making mistakes, flubbing your lines and staying on stage in spite of it -- because of course the 'show must go on' -- pitting your wits against the wind and raising your fist and saying "Give it your best shot!!!"

Live wild. Live hard. Live like you mean it. Let the wind blow, the rains lash, the elements nearly break you. And then feel that powerful sinew in you grow.

Malconent in the Middle

2009-05-06T08:39:00.004-05:00

I guess I don't have as much to crab about as I thought I might, lo these many years since I started blogging. That was the reason I started to blog - to get my bitch on, and dump it squarely somewhere so my husband wouldn't have to listen to a constant stream of complaint.

But looking back over the posts I've made -- I haven't really complained all that much. A real "Huh." moment for me, actually.

Dare I say that must mean I'm...happy...? Ugh. For a post-modern, slow-maturing, aimless, caught-between-Gen's X-and-Why-doesn't-really-fit-in-either Gal, that's quite a shocking realization.

I practically ™'d Miserable Dark Girl.

sigh. I guess I'm like most people -- much cooler in my own imagination than I am in actual living color. Much less a dweeb, much hipper, more insightful and deep, than anyone out there gives me credit for... Heh. Right.

But one thing I can say, without reservation, pride or prejudice, is that I think by myself, for myself. Sure, I pick up as much imput as I am humanly able -- and I don't stick to one source, either; I crib from everything left, right and center that I can find.

Once I've let the mash stew for a bit... I form my opinion. Which usually ends up coming out something along the line of, "Well... I see both sides -- I really do and can honestly say I think the truth...is somewhere in the middle."

I'm so middling it's probably the topmost reason I'm so damn boring.

Conflict in the Middle East? I see both sides, I really do...and I think the truth is somewhere in the middle -- but only one side might be willing to step to the "middle" if their damn dance partner wasn't so willing to blow it's own children up as a statement that they don't particularly like the style of music.

American politics: Left? or Right? I see both sides... I really DO (and have at various times in my life been on both of them) but I think the truth is somewhere in the middle -- only, politics is so much more fun when we can gain power by demonizing the other side and placating huge swathes of complacent, uninformed people with meaningless platitudes in order to maintain that power! (and yeah, I think it happens on the left and the right.)

Okay...here's another tough one. Abortion: For? or Against? Heheheheh. I guess you know what I'm going to say. I see both sides... I REALLY do, and though it horrifies me personally, and I don't think I'd have one myself (can't really say, as I've never been pushed into that particular corner, and don't really WANT to be, thankyouv,v,much) we've traversed too long a road to try to repeal Roe v. Wade now and I cannot, would not in good conscience impose my moral stances against someone's own right over their own body. It's so impossibly sticky, that my stance is the best "lesser of two evils" I can hope to ever come up with...

See? Middling. Horribly, horribly middling. But it's the best I can do. And I'll tell you, it IS a stance, the middle. Some people might say that it's no stance at all...that you either have to be right or left, pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel, for Abortion or against it... And maybe they're right.

But I don't think so. (Lookit. You've GOT to have enough weight in the middle to keep the seesaw from clunking down hard one side or the other...s'all I'm sayin') I think that mind-set is what got the world into this kind of trouble in the first place.

Look. If there's a God, a Creator (and I, personally, believe) then that God gave the human creation one very precious gift: Free Will. Left it up to us, to muddle along as best we could in a divine love so intense that it would rather we evolve, slowly and painfully -- maiming, warping and killing ourselves along the way to finding the path to not just surviving...but THRIVING -- than to ever IMPOSE upon us, like a dictator or tyrant, its own Will.

Some think that is the height of uncaring, dispassionate, ambivalent feeling. And sometimes... I do too. Sometimes I think, Ah, God...can't you come down here and make us all get along? Make all the paths straight? Make all the wrongs right?

Then I think... do I really want to be an automaton? It's like in my parenting -- which I do unevenly, sporadically and to very mixed results, I might add (my kids are great thru no fault of my own, btw) -- though it kills me, almost literally, I have to let them make some mistakes and (more importantly) to face the consequences all on their onesies if they are going to learn, grow and survive.

But I'm only human. I still stick my hand out in front of them when we are somewhere high up and they step too closely to the edge... (they are 9 and almost-12) I still remind them -- every single time they take a bike ride -- to watch carefully at all road crossings. I still -- God love 'em -- clean up their more minor messes -- both literal and figurative -- for the umpteenth time...because I'm not omnipotent, omniscient or omniwise. (I made that last word up) I have myself all fooled up that I actually possess a modicum of control.

I can get away with "imposing my will"... because I don't have all those nifty "omni-" gadgets at my disposal. I can still claim ignorance for meddling and keeping my "creation" from learning valuable lessons the old-fashioned way... thru trial and, unfortunately, error.

In God's big arena, though, error sometimes has devastating, far-reaching consequences.

But it ain't like we haven't been warned or (in human-parent vernacular) nagged sufficiently either. Can we really claim no culpability in the whole mess?

Ads that make you go, "Huh?"

2009-03-18T09:13:00.002-05:00

I have a difficult relationship with commercials. Mostly I consider them a nuisance, except for when I'm in need of a restroom or drink break. Well, and on those rare occasions when they actually work, and I consider them a pithy little shot of entertainment in their own right.

I mentioned the stupid Valentine's teddy bear commercial in my last post, and added to it the even stupider and more crass Burger King commercial. I also can't stand the plastic King -- so creepy -- but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that one. (Oi, poor Burger King! They've never been able to top "Have it Your Way")

I'm also unimpressed with those commercials for some financial planning company which look like a live action filmed commercial with the cartooning effect superimposed on top -- what's the point? I mean, film it, and then animation on top of it? Isn't that a bit like tracing?

Just saw one with pigs sitting at a table in a restaurant - Okay, is that supposed to sell something? I mean to humans?

There are others that I can't think of now, and I can't be arsed to sit through youtube vids looking for them. The less I recall them, the better my sanity.

There are a few I enjoy, like the Sonic Drive-In Comedy Duos -- the two guys are funny, the husband and wife are growing on me and they've just launched the Mom and Son -- I think they're funny because they're identifiable. The duos are comical, but in a down-to-earth, "ain't life quirky" kind of way.

Then there's the Hall's cough drop "War Face" commercial -- I think it's hilarious and I laugh evertime I see it. That one isn't even slightly identifiable -- I mean, I've never had a Military Sargeant roll out of a thunder clap and give me a boot camp pep talk when I pop a Halls cough drop in my mouth, You? Yet isn't that what that first inhale feels like after you do? "Let me see your 'war face'!" indeed.

I roll when I see the "Bing-O was his name-O" style of that commercial for the employment website, with the woman screaming and banging the wheel of her car, the man walking by the desk casually greeting the fellow employee "Hello, Dummy" and the guy weeping uncontrollably (along with the punching of the stuffed animal -- don't tell peta) I've had jobs where I felt EXACTLY like each one of those repeated scenarios. It never fails to make me laugh. Again, very identifiable.

I guess they're all pretty successful -- even the ones I don't like -- because even if I can't recall the exact company name they're advertising, I can at the very least hit the industry.

Is that always good though? I mean, I have an aversion to Burger King and I'm not sure if it's because the plastic Burger King freaked me out on some subconscious level or because I just prefer McD's french fries.

Is it just a coincidence that I continue to go to the Sonic Drive-In, even though the one here in town without fail gets my order wrong, puts waaaay too much ice in their drinks so you just know you're getting ripped off and everything (from the ice cream to the burritos)tastes like it's been cooked in the same stale grease?

Do I neglect to invest for my future because I'm some cool cat who can't be bothered planning for my old age, or because I think the commercials for the financial planning company "cheat" because the artwork is traced?

Do I spend a little more on Halls rather than the knock off because it's actually better, or because I'm hoping Sp. Agent Gibbs (the best-looking fictional former Marine I know of...) to roll out of a clap of thunder and exhort me to "put on my war face"? (Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?)

I dunno. The advertising companies have so fully embedded psychological study into the process that perhaps we are ALL just the victim of choices we made based on some unfairly stacked media advertising practices.

Makes me wonder, though; now that we've entered into the concrete, visible phase of economic downturn -- paybacks for rampant requisitioning, maybe? -- will we see a day when advertising companies are held accountable for making people want what they don't need, can't afford, and isn't necessary? Will we see trial lawyers (the scourge, imo, of our modern times) humping the pass the buck gravy train for our consumerism run amok onto advertisers who unfairly weighted their campaigns with subconscious appeals to that greedy nature in us all?

I don't know. I'd like to think that once you become an adult you start accepting some responsibilty for your choices -- no matter how manipulated or coerced you may have felt. Some things you just know deep down inside. Like, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Like, anyone who tries to tell you they have the corner on the absolute truth is either lying or trying to sell you something. Like, you can't pay for an Escalade on a Hyundai income. Given the raw numbers set before them, wouldn't even a fifth grader be able to predict that one?

Huh. Come to think of it, maybe our government needs to go back and relearn some fifth grade arithmatic, eh?

"Oi" is not the first part of "Oink"

2009-02-10T12:35:00.004-06:00

Gah. I'm sitting here at my laptop, trying to find a link for some recipe I want on the realsimple.com website, when what do my wondering eyes behold but a television ad for a Stuffed Bear company based in a maple-y North Eastern state... It's the most pig-oriented ad I've seen, standing out in a sea of Valentine's Day cliche's. I cannot believe that someone isn't grousing about this from the feminist camp.

It opens with a bunch of 'Central Casting'- men partitioned in office cubbies all eavesdropping on a group of soft-porn stand-ins for real female office workers gushing over a (stupid) Valentine's Day, 'Zoro'-masked stuffed bear using heavily double-entenre'd adjectives.

"It's bigger than I thought!" is one that stands out. Hahahah. I get it, Beavis.

The women in the commercial are model-perfect, plumped-lip, cooing barbie dolls, and the men are stereotypical skulking lounge lizards, trolling the internet looking for that one item that will give them a 'lock' on that most cherished of Valentine's Night destinations. One of them even makes the 'white man's overbite' face. And this message, conveyed by a child's toy? Great..../sarcasm.

Who do you think still enjoys receiving and giving stuffed toys for Valentine's Day, anyway? I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count. (for those who need a cheat: it's teen-agers.)

As far as I'm concerned, count me in with 'Sheila Kingston'... You want a bulls eye on the 'most romantic' gesture and (almost) guaranteed entrance into that cherished Valentine's Night destination? "Go paint my house!" Forget the flowers, the diamonds, the expensive chocolates (I'll never turn away Dove's Dark, however.) Instead, clean my gutters...or change my oil...or put the kids to bed for a solid week.

Flowers fade, chocolates disappear (with two sneaky daughters, I have a LOT of help with that one), and diamonds ...well, they are pretty cool, actually. But doing something for me that I'd have to pay someone else to do? Timeless....

UPDATE:
Added to the hit list? That Burger King Commercial for the Burger Bites. Uggh.

January "jones"

2009-01-20T16:12:00.004-06:00

I don't really know her work, but her name is really cool.

The entire month practically gone, and no blog post for January. New Years' resolutions are something I gave up with Barbies and a complete, unquestioned faith in Santa Claus. (Hey, I said "unquestioned faith" not total disbelief -- I believe...I just have serious questions, is all.)

Many times, in a quiet moment, I'd sit at the computer and try to come up with a post, but nothing ever gelled. One of the most disturbing parts of being a writer, is forging ahead in spite of feeling that every word that flies off your fingertips is complete and total garbage.

You know, my daughters, both of them like to write. When I bring my little Dana along, if I'm not using it, one of them is sitting with it in their lap tippity tapping something out. It's heartwarming, and it's astonishing, too. They, both of them, sit down with no angst, no worry, no hemming and hawing... and they write. They don't futz over whether or not it's publishable. They don't squirm when I read it (or when they are writing it...) Afterwards, they are proud of it -- "Look what I did, Mom!" -- and they don't go back to it obsessively tweaking over and over, picking at it like so much lint on a sweater until it's "perfect" ...but bland.

And the kicker? The stories are usually good. I mean really good. Imaginative, inventive, colorful, evocative... with characters that jump off the page. Are the stories "perfect"? No, heck no. They have surprisingly few spelling errors (my youngest especially is a very good speller), and a few grammar errors...but that is beside the point, and we all know it. Those things can be easily corrected. The creativity and spontaneity they exhibit in their stories I hope will never be edited away.

When I think of their writing, of course, I'm proud of them, although I don't feel proprietary -- I try real hard not to live through them. I try to say as little as possible that isn't along the lines of "Wow, thank you so much for sharing this with me! I'm honored!" They'll have teachers in their future, likely in college (hopefully they will be able to go to college) who will smash their work to bits -- come on, I had plenty of those types of professors, and I know you did too -- so I'm gonna be firmly ensconced in their cheering section.

Reflecting on this careless, reckless abandon with which they approach their own writing...I often wonder if a "little child shall lead them" in my case...and if I can absorb a smidgen of that careless, reckless abandon in my own writing?

So...other than a quick spellchecker on this puppy, I'm going to embrace that ideology and let this blog post ride, as hammered out in first draft style. And hopefully, in a small way, it can kick off a little bit of psychic 'new years' resolution' in my soul, and inspire me to approach all my other writing in the same way. It's something I've been attempting since the 2007 NaNo -- to give that inner editor a bottomless cup of aromatic Joe, drop her into a cushy chair with lots of books around her and tell her I'll be back in a few hours -- when I'm done recklessly hammering out whatever chapter I happen to be writing.

Here's to the new year!

Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride,

2008-12-10T09:38:00.004-06:00

Nobody's gonna slow me down...Oh no, I've got to keep on mooovin'.

That's a great song, and an even better sentiment. One I've only begun to tap into now that I'm solidly in my 40's.

I grew up being a bit, let's say 'morose' to be kind to my younger self, and didn't really even see the glass much less be able to tell if it was half full or empty. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking 'happy' thoughts. My father was an alcoholic with pedophile tendencies, my mother tepid in her demonstrations of love, and my younger brother a complete pain in the (bleep). Your basic garden-variety late '70's family dysfunction.

In recent years, however, I've allowed my husband to rub off on me in some very good ways. (stop it... I'm not being dirty) He's a gem, and like I said in my last post usually a very positive person. When he gets down in the dumps, I feel my duty to be the lifter upper. Back in the day -- when we were just starting out together -- it was exclusively the province of my guy to lift me out of the dumpster emotionally. I feel the sting of those years -- all that hefting with very little reciprocal effort on my part -- and thus feel compelled to 'make up for it' in redoubled efforts now.

So, I've noticed -- and happily, so have close friends -- that the doldrums don't hold me under water quite so long as they used. That's the way with bullies: their power over you decreases in direct proportion to your increasing confidence in triumphing over them. And the moroseness or depression or the doldrums or the blues -- whatever you want to call it -- is one big, bad bully. But then, the ones generated from inside usually are.

Of course the way to invite a bully to another attempt at domination is to announce on the bullhorn that you've bested him.

In a sense, with winning the NaNoWriMo challenge, getting a much needed new car, finding out that the damage done to our bank account was only in the amount of three dollars -- (yes I went yesterday, found out it was an organized effort by someone(s) in Florida just systematically hitting a series of bin numbers) ** I had started to feel ... shall we say a little smug? Yeah, that's a good word. I was letting down my guard, opening my arms wide, picking up that bullhorn and shouting "Look at ME! I'm able to stay 'up' all by myself! The Bully has LOST!"

(**Okay, so I'm naive -- it was more like over $150.00...but still. It could have been worse. Way worse.)

Heheheh. Someone much more eloquent than I once wrote "Pride goes before a fall." Lucifer knows that one by heart... and so. do. I.

Oh, yeah, I'm a good one for getting lazy when I've hit a high spot. If anyone can coast on past accomplishments, I can. If anyone can diet to the right size and then think "My work here is done," as they rub their hands together in anticipation before diving into the bin of unlimited Oreos, I'm your gal. Matter of fact, I've done it every year for the past six. If there's EVER been a soul who thought, "I've achieved (__________) now I get to fall back and watch the motes floating lazily in the sunbeams," I am that soul.

But that's not the way it works, is it? Those of us who struggle -- be it with our weight, or depression, or addiction -- must always be vigilant. Always on the lookout for that little chink in the armor or crack in the fortified wall or hole in the dam.

As devotees of (insert your passion here) like to say, "It's not__________, it's a way of life," so too must the strugglers, the battle-scarred worriers, the bullied, the sullied, those pilloried by real or phobic or outright imagined fears.

For me, I think I can identify with all of those bondages in one way or another. And so... I soldier on, trying to remain vigilant, on the look-out for any sign of vulnerability...never really awake, and only occasionally very well rested. My armor is lightweight, though, and the weapons are deadly accurate, sharpened as much by intent as by daily use. When I do fall asleep on the job, the quicker I can wake and fight, the better the outcome.

Because I've been without the armor before. And it's a defeated end to a fight that is never really begun.

It's always somethin'

2008-12-08T14:00:00.006-06:00

Looking out the window which frames the tree that flips me off, I can see blue sky bright with sunshine wherein puffy clouds drift lazily. I think, "It's December," with no little amount of astonishment. The odds of the contracted roofers replacing our worn patchwork quilt of protection before the winter snow arrives grow shorter by the hour. "It's coming, it's coming," my mind whispers, lest the snow gods hear me and come bearing gifts of enchantment and treachery.

It all started several months ago, actually in early June, when around these parts the late spring gives into summer's insistence and the tornadoes threaten wide swathes of retribution on the evil and the good alike. We aren't particularly evil...but then we aren't exceptionally good, either. So, it all comes out a wash, I guess. Anyway, our proverbial number was up.

Some background, first. We had endured many a season here ensconced in a snug if sprawling house with good bones but a terrible, old, worn out flat roof. Alas, fixing a flat roof is a crap shoot and the patch job performed before we finalized the purchase of the house lasted approximately 6 months. Coincidentally (or was it?) at the first rain, we had three separate leaks inside. Fun. Ah well, at least we had enough buckets.

My husband being an enterprising young man rigged syphons in the low spots - first using left over evaporative air conditioning tubing (did I mention that up until about a month ago we haven't had central air for about four years? Ah-- yes, well, I digress) and later, after the cooler tubing wore out, some fresh poly tubing. Easy peasy -- if you don't mind going out in every snow and rainstorm and sucking on the tubing to get the water flowing. (and yes, we've both done it, though to be fair, he's done it much more than I)

We knew it would be a loooong time till we could afford to have the roof redone, so we reconciled ourselves to the 'sucking'. (metaphorical usage intended)

Then came last June, and the tornadic weather which brought us - our whole town, really - a blessing disguised as a curse: the worst hail storm anyone can remember -- and we've got some folks around here who are in their 90's and still sharp as a tack. So, yeah. Looong time. Not a skylight emerged intact from the wrath of that storm, unleashing it's fury in the form of softball sized (yes, really) stones.

We called our insurance peeps a week later -- after someone advised us we should. What did we know? We thought, "Flat Roof -- no one's gonna touch it," so we didn't call at first. The adjuster came out and totaled the roof, though.

And we've been waiting ever since to get it fixed. (There was the little matter of the heating and air conditioning guy who stopped up the progress by 'intending' to do this or that, showing up without calling, doing about an hour and a half worth of work every sixth day and letting new leaks rain water down the new holes he sawed into our already overtaxed roof...But I digress again.)

Yeah... But we do have our dining room finished -- except for six pieces of trim that we cannot match (still looking) -- but then we did that job 100% on our own, too.

Last night my husband said, "I'm through depending on other people. They always let you down." Aw! That is sad. This man is not that kind of man. He's always hoped for the best, prepared for the worst...but kept on believing the best -- of everyone. That he said something like that? Is not a good sign.

And now... just got a call from the bank -- at 5:02 pm (riiight) telling us our debit cards have been turned off due to some "suspected fraudulent activity". When I asked the bank rep "how much we talking about here" she said, "I can't tell you anything about it, I'm only calling you (at 5:02 pm, when you have to sit and STEW all night long worrying about it but be unable to DO anything because the bank hours are set to 'closed') to let you know why your card wouldn't work should you try and use it..." Great. Hope we don't bounce any outstanding checks while we work this little snafu out.

Our life is full of many blessings that cannot be measured in dollars and cents... but when it comes to dollars and cents...

It's always somethin', idn't it?

Confetti and Cocktails Time!

2008-11-25T14:25:00.005-06:00

I did it. That's what I can say, now, to the question "Have you written a novel?" Why yes, yes I did. As in past tense, as in already accomplished.

I've just submitted and been approved by the NaNoBot Overlords 52,541 words, topped off with "the end" and everything and I've now got the purple bar with the white lettering that says, "winner" on it displayed under my user name. I've printed out my pretty certificate with my name and my novel's name on it that has "Winner" emblazoned across it, and I'm gonna figure out how to put the winner badges on this here blog.

(the number of times I can use the word "winner" let me show you it)

I feel...Like I can accomplish anything, now.

So, I'm going to celebrate, kick back, enjoy the holiday...and plot my Script, for the upcoming Office of Letters and Light challenge, "Script Frenzy".... heheheheh... I'm addicted.

Some Random Thoughts...

2008-11-24T08:17:00.004-06:00

I just distilled my writing Mission Statement in one sentence in an email to a friend:

"...I want to write trashy, gossipy, messy, escapist mainstream fiction which gets consumed in mass quantities. -- A lot of it. "

He implored me not to sacrifice my art for filthy lucre... And I had to ask, "Have you read my stuff?" I'm just sayin'...

Now, I'm not meaning to imply that I've never had more literary, lofty goals -- I am known to spew good intentioned -- but still rather bad -- poetry on occasion... But my writing desire is more satisfyingly filled when I'm spinning an entertaining story. Full of quirky yet believable characters. Who get thrown into believably simple yet frustrating situations. Who maybe find a little redemption along the way.

I wish I had the capabilities of a Jane Austen or -- shoot, I can't stand 'em, but they've definitely stood the test of time -- even the Bronte sisters to tell stories so full of scope and timelessness that they become classics read the world over. It's probably not gonna happen... and even if it does? I'll likely be dead, so I won't know anyway.

At the end of the day, I just want to look over a chapter I've cranked out, and smile a little in recognition, wince a little in shared pain, thrill in anticipation, and finally sigh with a little release... I want to...transport, and entertain, and maybe lift up a little... bring a smile... occasionally a tear... maybe just a tiny dash of conviction...?

So, yeah. I wanna tell great stories...but like the kind you tell after a glass of wine, sitting around in front of the fire with a group of friends, just enjoying each other's company. The kind you repeat to other groups of friends because you know they'll bring a smile. The kind of seemingly insignificant event which ends up becoming the gold thread weaving in and out of the tapestry of your days. (What did I tell you about the bad poetry...? See?)

So, yeah. It's not lofty...or significant...and probably won't be a blip on the radar in fifty years...but that's my writing life, in a nutshell.

Here's a quote, from my quietly BRILLIANT husband on writing, and more specifically, editing when you're supposed to be getting the story on paper. He said, "Honey, trimming an overgrown hedge into a topiary shape is much easier than growing a hedge into a topiary shape."

I love it -- I've quoted it to everyone who will listen.

So, yeah: Rule 1# - Get the words down while the muse is dictating in your ear like a chipmunk on an amphetimine high -- you can cut, edit, shape, style and beautify after she crashes into a post-rush dream state.

Looky!

2008-11-21T18:51:00.001-06:00

I just made a banner:

Preeeety -- go there, it's fun.

I, For One, Welcome Our New NaNoBot Overlords...

2008-11-20T09:45:00.000-06:00

I plugged my manuscript in the 'tester' run of the NaNoWriMo Official Counter...and actually GAINED about 700 words! Woot!

NaNoWriMo has been such a huge educational journey this year. I'm hooked. I'm now officially part of the NaNoBorg and want to assimilate as many closeted writers as I can.

I feel the overarching message in the whole is that I can write every day -- and it can be a raucous, wild, free-wheeling, creative ride, instead of a drudge that I have to do.

Oh, and a side message: Housework is NOT essential. (except for laundry and toilets -- those kiiinda need cleaning on a regular basis.)

Given the choice between scrubbing the tub and writing a chapter...?

Well.... just guess which I will pick? heheheheh.

BLAVIN!

2008-11-09T02:48:00.000-06:00

I did it. I signed up for NaNoWriMo. Late -- four days behind, to be exact (that's 6,668 words behind) but am now at 11,956 words. I've closed the gap, all I need to be caught up is a little over 3,000 words. I should be able to accomplish that on a Sunday afternoon.

I put the NaNo participant badges on my page here, proudly, ~~and am trying to figure out how to put a little widget word counter on too. Anyone know how to do that? Anyone, Anyone... Beuller...Beuller...Beull - okay, I'll stop.~~ (Figured it out ;-)

I'm writing a kooky story that I'm making up as I go along -- the characters have already taken on some recognizable signs of life, and I'm surviving and continuing to slap words on the virtual page by completely ignoring my internal editor -- and not being afraid to record the suckiest writing that sucks in order to reach the goal of 50,000 words by midnight, November 30.

It's... exhilarating! It is amazing how much output you can achieve if you simply speed write. And it is all practice -- no pressure...just writing like a kid does, for the pure fun of it!

If you haven't checked it out, and you kind of aspire to writing that novel that you just know exists deep inside your brain, check out the NaNoWriMo -- challenge yourself. You never know what you can do, till you sign up for a contest run on the honor system, with no judges, no monitoring and no monetary prize. It's GREAT!

...Here be Monsters.

2008-10-30T08:56:00.000-05:00

I love that line from Pirates of the Caribbean: "We're off the edge of the map we've made; here be monsters." (and yeah, I know it isn't original to the movie -- it was written on the unexplored margins of most maps back in the day)

I'm still reading this marvelous, humble little book called "Page after Page" and I'm in the home stretch but I've reached the absolute end of my inter-library loan abuse. The marker has been called, and I've got to return it today. So close! (Ah, well, the copy I ordered should be in the mail sometime this week.)

The last section is some good stuff, brother. I just had to come and post -- nay, I was compelled to post!

My thoughts, let me show you them.

God! Heather Sellers is so... good. That tells you nothing! -- let me dig deeper and get into some of my compost, tell you how I really feel. I have to quote from the book, directly. (Disclaimer Ahead!!) These are Ms. Sellers words, not mine:

Some writers, who work very hard, every day, make money off of their writing. Most, like painters and puppeteers and pianists, have other sources of income: lessons, shows, community performances. Most writers are less master and more jack-of-all-trades. It can be frustrating, but I think we like it that way. Most writers aren't terribly obnoxious or stuck-up or greedy for chic sunglasses and fancy cars. They like nice paper. Beautiful pencils. Maybe a particularly fine desk lamp or a gift certificate from a locally owned bookstore. I might be wrong, but I think most writers are going to do the work, anyway, for some other reason than fame or fortune. We are people of letters, as Janet Burroway says. We have to record what we see and what we know, in our towns and on our streets, in our families and in our daily lives. In this way, we are the opposite of fame and fortune.

The thing is, for me, writing is like giving birth. I've only ever attempted it once (hah! birth, not writing) -- despite having two children (first one a scheduled C-Section, the second one an emergency C-Section after being in labor for 24 hours) -- but I remember it vividly. It was hard. And it hurt like the fires of Hell. And it made me SICK and so, so tired. But I didn't even once imagine quitting. I wanted to push that baby OUT -- I wanted to break that tape as I crossed the finish line!! It was the most profound thing I've ever attempted, the pushing. As the doctors and nurses tried to pull this vital thing out of me, I vomited and peed and yes, I shat. It was ...excruciating -- the embarrassment.

Writing *is* pulling something vital from the deepest part of you with all the attendant gore -- there's sweat and blood and urine and feces and vomit and placenta and (finally) tiny, helpless, perfect (even in "imperfection") HUMAN. A whole.other.person.

Writing is swarming in all sorts of life-force vibrancy. It's also a mash of disgusting explicitness. It's... if it is anything *real*-- like LIFE itself. Life is full of dark places that we don't want to go... much less show anyone else because -- God forbid! -- they'd know we were HUMAN. And frail. And disgusting. And struggling. And noble -- sometimes. And ...worth every effort.

*THAT'S* how I see writing. It's, like my friend Robin says, really very easy. But it's also the hardest thing to make yourself do, every day -- day in and day out.

But like birthing a human... it's worth every effort.

Cheri Block Sabraw - Notes from Around the Block: Father Knows Best

2008-10-27T08:52:00.000-05:00

This beautiful 'Happy Birthday' to her father is bittersweet, lovely and exactly how I feel about our current political climate. Take a moment, if you are stopping by here, and read this lovely, heartfelt post.

Cheri Block Sabraw - Notes from Around the Block: Father Knows Best

New Phones and Old Phobias

2008-10-26T21:30:00.000-05:00

I've been using a trac fone for a while now, and I've never, ever been happy with the company -- mostly due to customer service (customer disservice) over one issue: I never, in about four years of paid service, had a voice mail...or for that matter caller i.d.

I spent two separate very long sessions with the outsourced (and undertrained) customer service people -- all very nice, very polite folk -- who had absolutely no idea how to actually resolve my missing voice mail problem. Finally, after the second lengthy attempt, I just gave up, and had a phone with no voice mail, no caller i.d., and no way to know from where the untold number of calls I missed came.

My guy and I have discussed getting new cell phones since he graduated and agreed that once he was settled into his full-time job, we'd begin looking in earnest. We've shopped around, compared companies and plans, asked around our collective pool of friends and family and let it all stew for a bit. For about 5 months, actually. That's a pretty tasty stew.

Well, this past week, we finally made our decision, signed on for a family share cell plan and bought three phones. (My youngest gets one when she enters Jr. High, just like big sis. A fact, I might add, that is causing a little bit of drama around the house right now.) My husband got a mac-daddy, tricked out SmartPhone, chock full of high tech goodness and my oldest and I each got LG Scoops -- hers is turquoise and mine is orange.

My guy gets his phone out and starts off with a bang, making calls, zipping around checking out his new toy, and I'm kind of timidly poking and prodding mine a little bit and my oldest thoroughly has hers mastered in about 20 minutes. The only thing I was really concerned about was getting my (finally!) voice mail set up. After I saw, or rather heard, my oldest speak her greeting into her phone, I think, "Oh, yeah -- I wanna get that up and running." So I grab my phone and start hunting and pecking around to find how to get my greeting on mine.

Guess what? My new phone...the one I was waiting for so I could finally have voice mail... Doesn't have voice mail.

You know... I don't care for the bells and whistles. I mean, I don't want a JitterBug, or anything but, criminy -- Just let me place phone calls, and in turn, have some way to freaking identify the callers I miss!!!! I don't need live streaming video feed with an mp3 player and games and whatever else the "latest" cool phones have!!! Just give me my dang VOICE MAIL, please. (Although...my new phone is mp3-ready...and I'm kind of excited about that!)

Grrrr. I was burning, man. My husband -- who is my a-number-one, go-to guy -- starts messing with my phone, and when he can get no further on his own, starts scouting the internet for solutions. He exhausts that avenue, and then spends about 40 minutes on online tech support, chatting with someone about my problem...then he calls a number the chat tech gives him and spends another like, 45 minutes on the phone with that tech person and after about two-and-a-half hours Voila! I have my voice mail!!! (He's the BEST!)

So... now I want ringtones, dude. And like, mp3's... and maybe a couple of kewl games; like can you get Halo on your cell? And how about web browsing... because I need to surf at all possible times...

Oi. Maybe it isn't too late to check out one of those JitterBugs....

Get Back, filthy Muggles!

2008-10-19T17:49:00.000-05:00

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

You saw it here, I Am Lord Voldemort!!!! Bwahahahahahah! but really I just need a hug *wibble*.

Go and take the test, Death Eaters!

November approaches...

2008-10-12T16:17:00.000-05:00

...and I am chickening out about the whole NaNoWriMo thing. My guy asked me in the car yesterday where (and when) I was planning to take my 'writing sabbatical' this year. And I had no reply. I knew it was coming... I thought I'd like nothing more than another mini-retreat to just marinate in aloneness to prepare for the Month of Speed Novel Writing.

Last year, in the final weekend of October, in preparation for the NaNo, I went and stayed in a little cabin in Ruidoso, NM. It was a productive two days... I made little meals for myself, walked freely around in the (at that time of year) mostly deserted resort town and wrote, wrote, wrote.

But...the thing is, one of my favorite things in trying to cultivate a writing life, is that I like to sabotage myself. (Oh, yes -- right after the 'brown paper packages tied up with string,' is the 'self-sabotage' verse of that song.)

I'm struggling just to get stuff into this blog...to get through a book I'm reading with writing exercises in it...to finish a longer-than-War-and-Peace fic that's been going on since '06... and to try and write something, you know... original... Plus, guitar practice every day, and keeping up with the ever present housework.

Writing, unfortunately, takes a back seat to all the housework. Because housework is unrelenting; because if I don't sit on that proverbial lid and try to at least keep it level it topples over and takes over; because a clean house makes me feel useful; because I want to run away from writing so I won't fail... (oh, hay thar, real excuse!)

Plus, you know, there is a lot of stuff to watch on youtube.

Here's the thing. This book I'm reading, it's called Page after Page [not to be confused with that book by that perky chick who hosted (hosts? I heard she's back...) Trading Spaces] and that book -- if you're prone to self-sabotage or writer's block or any of the myriad of psychic afflictions to which writers are susceptible -- is painful. The author, Heather Sellers, asks incredibly thought-provoking questions (read: self-inflicted mental colonoscopy) of the Writer Inside You. She makes you, in short, examine whether or not you truly, deeply, madly want to write.

And I'm not sure my answer is ...yes. Because if I truly, deeply, madly wanted it, wouldn't I be doing it?

So, yeah... November fast approaches, and I'm running for my life.

Hymn

2008-10-07T18:00:00.000-05:00

I'm over 40 and I found something that I like...but I'm not sure if I'm "allowed".

I've stumbled upon a band that was unfamiliar to me. I always get a little obsessive every time I discover new music, and I listen repeatedly to the newly discovered stuff -- you know just to make sure, heh. Normally I'm not too uptight about genres and styles; I can find something I like on almost any station on the radio dial. Even with the stuff I don't care for I can usually manage to find something noteworthy or valid about it that I can, at the very least, appreciate.
My first love is Rock and Roll and I thoroughly enjoy Classical; I relax to modern orchestral arrangements (like soundtracks for movies) and even like some Rap. The toughest field for me to mine is Country...but Sugarland kind of helps with that.

I never felt the constraint of propriety on my musical tastes .... Until today.

Following a thread completely unrelated to what I was doing (there was a little reference in someone's icon) I hit youtube and played several selections of music by a band called H.I.M. Anyone under the age of 21 knew (probably -- what do I know?) about this band five years ago, but being that I'm ancient I don't have the same leisure time to scout out the good music -- I just wait until the whipper-snappers mention it in their lj's.

Anyway... this band is usually categorized as .... goth. Oi. I can't even say it any "louder" than that! I'm ...embarrassed. I think...?

The lead singer/songwriter is young enough to be my son... (Okay -- if I gave birth at 12! Let's say...my S.O. if I was Demi Moore! Sounds cooler.)

The members of the band sport multiple tattoos, they cultivate a nappy, I-haven't-showered-or-shaved-in-three-days-and-just-stumbled-off-the-bus-drunk-to-play-this-gig look and did I mention that they are goth? But still -- good music is good music.

I sat down every time I took a little break between projects today, and listened to a different song. I can honestly say that while some of it didn't just whallup me in the solar plexis, a majority of it did.

If you're over 40, and like fresh music... check 'em out. Might I recommend "Love Said No" or "Killing Loneliness" or the acoustic version of "Funeral of Hearts"...?

Space Invaders

2008-09-06T14:52:00.000-05:00

I have tried to write this post several times, but that thing...you know that thing that sits somewhere in the back of your mind, or the bottom of your gut, or in the pit of your emotions? -- that thing keeps me from posting.

It's not like it's a big deal -- I was going to riff about how as a wife and mother, your time is eaten up by "space invaders." (Sorry to any retro-gamers who happened upon this post by mistake, but it's not about a video game.)

See the trouble is, the post kept going in this whiny direction aimed at a person who whines a lot about not getting any time to themselves, in spite of the fact that this person has more time to themselves than I do simply because they play (unfairly, IMO) on the sympathy of those around them.

And then I remembered, heh, I don't have a job anymore...so, yeah. Loooootsa time on my hands, now -- and in the two weeks that my offspring have been back in school? I've managed to fritter away about 2/3'ds of that time on ...nothing.

I think I'm feeling crabby and out-of-sorts at myself, for taking all this glorious time that I've gained by giving up my "real" job for volunteer work and housework. So I transfer all my anger to this person -- for something I guess I'm jealous of? 'Cause, honestly...they get more done with their free-time than I do -- when the person I'm really angry at is...Me.

Now that I'm not employed (and turned down a full-time job that -- five years ago -- I'd have really wanted) I think I'm having trouble figuring out how to arrange my time. I've always had an impossible to surmount list of To-Do's that I knew I'd never have the time to accomplish... and that excuse was perfect for not accomplishing anything. Heh, now that I've the time... what excuse do I use for not getting any of those things done!?!

I didn't think I'd have this hard a time prioritizing my time. I thought I'd shout "W00-H00!" and finish a bunch of UFO quilts, and the mending; paint the kitchen; color my hair; obsessively pursue sudoku excellence; rearrange the furniture, and then have it all reupholstered and arrange it back; learn to make tatted lace, Scandinavian embroidery, and crocheted dish rags; repaint the office so that my youngest can have her own room; sew new curtains; redo my two hideous bathrooms; clean the closets; get rid of all the electronic equipment that doesn't work or only works sometimes and have a huge "as-is" garage sale; and, and, and...?

Whew. That list makes me tired.... think I'm gonna go take a nap.

Creative Juicers...

2008-08-13T19:41:00.000-05:00

That phrase "Get the creative juices flowing" made me think of just how those juices would start flowing... And the unsavory thought struck me, "Hmmm, probably the same way we get juice from other things... by wrenching and squeezing the dang thing till we've purged it of it's last 'gettable' drop."

Sitting down to write is the precise time one would like to have those creative liquids seeping copiously and -- very often -- that's just when the mental electricity goes out and the infernal machine won't operate and the juices, alas, remain unsquozed. (it's a word, 'cause I said it is.) Of course...that's when you knuckle down and do it like Grandma did before household electricity was a given. You grab that fruit and you slice it open, and you mash it down on that weird thing that looks like a deformed, ridgy boob, and Voila! You got your juice!

Come to think of it... that pretty much nutshells the writing process in all it gory glory.

Before I put my big girl panties on and actually told people that I was a writer, and swallowed my fear and joined a Writer's group, I wrote with abandon... I wrote like it was my job. I wrote without even thinking about it. As soon as I told someone, "Why yes, I am a Writer," it appeared the well pretty much ran dry.

It reminds me of a story about faith I came across once. Here it is:

The following letter was found in a baking-powder can wired to the handle of an old pump that offered the only hope of drinking water on a very long and seldom-used trail across Nevada’s Amargosa Desert:

“This pump is all right as of June 1932. I put a new sucker washer into it and it ought to last five years. But the washer dries out and the pump has got to be primed. Under the white rock I buried a bottle of water, out of the sun and cork end up. There’s enough water in it to prime the pump, but not if you drink some first. Pour about one-fourth and let her soak to wet the leather. Then pour in the rest medium fast and pump like crazy. You’ll git water. The well has never run dry. Have faith. When you git watered up, fill the bottle and put it back like you found it for the next feller.
(signed) Desert Pete.
P.S. Don’t go drinking the water first. Prime the pump with it and you’ll git all you can hold

(Keith Miller and Bruce Larson, The Edge of Adventure)

That little buried bottle is to the pump what 'creative juicers' are to writing... My friend Diane calls them 'prompts'.

During one of our meetings, someone -- in the LIBRARY, no less (tell me, when did libraries lose that 'shhhh, please be quiet' thing? Why was I never told?) -- starts blabbing rather loudly on her cell phone during one of our 10 minute writing exercises. In the library. Where it's supposed to be a safe haven for studying. I got rather irate, "OH! the nerve --" when Diane shhsh'd me and said, "Use it: it's a prompt!" Aside from giving me a "harrunh?" moment... I actually learned something.

Everything -- every piece of stimuli our senses take in -- can be used as flint to start the fire; the creative juicer that extracts those creative juices. Every experience we have, every person we know is an opportunity to exercise that squeezing hand and extract a little prose.

Bernie Mac, Isaac Hayes, and...?

2008-08-10T22:43:00.000-05:00

My husband has a good friend, also an alumnus from the acting pool at Disney's Epcot, with whom he shares a limited but spirited email correspondence. The subjects of these emails usually include a 'what I'm up to now' catch-up, a list of some haunted places the friend has researched and the 'Celebrity Triumvirate Deaths' that seem to happen with more regularity the older I get. (or maybe it's just that all my childhood celebs and heros are aging with me...?)

First, Bernie Mac passed on Saturday from complications of pneumonia and left me and I'm sure many of his other fans completely stunned. He was so ...young.

Then tonight, I sit down to the laptop and see that Isaac Hayes was pronounced today at 2:08 pm.

I read Bernie Mac's bio yesterday, and mourned a little. (I can't truly mourn, as I didn't know the man personally. But I always appreciated his 'observation on life' comedy style...and his appreciation for our Libraries. My heart goes out to his family, nonetheless. Read on, Bernie Mac man. Read on.)

It wasn't until tonight, as I was reading some bios and articles about Isaac Hayes that I started getting a little freaked out. In one of the articles, the reporter commented that Mr. Hayes had recently completed a role in a film called Soul Men (scheduled for release in November) with Samuel L. Jackson and... "comedian Bernie Mac who died on Saturday..."

Whoa. Look... I'm kind of -- in spite of my usually no-nonsense, practical faith, and due in large part to a complex mixture of Southern Baptist religion and deeply-entrenched southern spiritualism -- superstitious. A black cat crosses in front of my car? I pull a u-turn. I know it's crazy, but man, it's deep-seated!

My only thought on reading the Soul Men cast list is... Samuel L...Watch your BACK! It's completely irrational, but I'm actually worried about the man! Too many motherf*&%ing deaths in the motherf*&%ing news!

TWO cast members passed away in one weekend. What went on on that set? Was it under a curse? Remember when the little girl from Poltergeist died in that heli- accident? There were rumblings of a 'cursed' set over that incident...

I'm confronted with death in my little, aging small town all the time; I accept it as a natural course of life. But celebrity deaths? They freak me out. They seem so sudden. And they truly seem to happen in threes.

And that? Is just spooky.

Yellow-bellied sidewinder...

2008-07-21T01:06:00.000-05:00

From as early as I can remember I wanted to be a writer. Specifically, a reporter for the Washington Post. When I "grew up" after realizing that the guv'ment would give me this thing called a Pell Grant to go to college, I took my first couple a years at a Community College.

I chose Journalism as my major. (natch) Fueled by the vision of field assignments in exotic locations, I pursued my courses with a vengeance. I was a late-starter (at 25) -- I had to make up for lost time. No assignment was too small -- if it happened on campus, I could find an angle and fill a spot in the student paper with a story. My ability to write catchy headlines became a minor (very minor) legend in the news room. I won second place in a national collegiate contest for one of my features the head of the journalism department submitted on my behalf. Not too shabby for a first year. I was on my way...I could feel it.

Until I hit the mid-point of the first semester of my second year (technically my last year, as it was Junior college) approaching grade time and I had... about 13 "inches" and needed about 32. Staring down the deadline with a keen sense of impending failure, and against all my advisers advice...

I punked out and switched my major at the last possible moment, dropped the offending class and became the newest guppy in the casting pool of the Department of Speech and Theatre. I had taken just enough theatre hours to make the switch possible and began a 10-year odyssey as a second-rate actress.

Heartbreaking, I know. Gag; don't break out the violins, yet.

I can't regret the chequered theatre past -- however indirectly, it led me to my husband... And he ain't too shabby, either.

Those dreams of being a reporter for the Washington Post were shelved, a long time ago. The 'writer's block' that seized my lapels back in my second year of Journalism shook me to my core, and I never gave a passing thought to writing again. It wasn't until I got involved in the online world of 'ER' fandom and encountered this strange thing called fan fiction that I began to wonder if I could put pen to paper and crank out something interesting to read again.

Let me 'splain... No, too long; let me sum up: I started writing again. Fan fiction mostly, but some poems again, too... A few headlines, short stories... Readers seemed...kind of pleasantly entertained...a little. I started to think...hey, maybe. Maybe I can...oh, I dunno, write again. Like, maybe even ...try...to, uh, be published. The hope that I could was like a tight knot in my gut -- I couldn't really distinguish the features of the feeling enough to even describe it as hope -- but it was there. A little glimmer, anyway.

And then this really neat thing happened, like most neat things -- I wasn't looking for it, didn't even know I needed it, until it was there and then, of course, it was indispensable; my husband (the one I met -- indirectly -- through acting) said, "I think this is the next phase for you; I think this is what you're supposed to do." That hope that was a tight knot burst in my gut... and I wasn't sure if it was a completely pleasurable sensation because I cried and it sort of hurt, too... maybe like the first stages of appendicitis.

It was profound, because I couldn't remember my mother, my father -- anyone other than my fifth grade social studies teacher Stephen P. Liles -- telling me: Hey, you have the right stuff, girl! Go get your dream!

And it would be all good, except for the crippling realization that I've written NOTHING for months...and every time I've attempted it, I walk away. I'm scared, scared, scared to really go for it. To go balls out and be consistent. I'm like PeeWee and the snakes; every time I pass my laptop I think for a moment and then shudder and slink away. Writing -- or rather, FAILING at being an accomplished professional writer SCARES HELL out of me and ironically...makes me NOT write. Tell me to speak in front of a room full of people about a topic you just handed me, shove me out onto the stage with little to no prep and I will do some fancy verbal footwork and -- at least -- bullsh-- my way through it, oh yeah. But ask me to simply sit down and write -- something, ANYthing -- once every day?

Well... see the title of this post.

Let's get ready to BLOGROLL....

2008-07-18T18:59:00.000-05:00

Hee. I'm imagining the title shouted out in that WWF announcers voice.

A bit of background:

I'm an inveterate magazine subscriptionolic (Hello, my name is...) always in search of the better mag. I've swashbuckled through subscriptions to House Beautiful (too 'foo-foo'); flirted with Southern Living (too 'Feeoo- feeoo'); had an on-again-off-again relationship with Better Homes and Gardens (come on: Upscale and out of my league / or Homey and Familiar; pick one, please?); picked up an occasional Family Circle, Redbook, and Ladies Home Journal -- I've had a LOT of one-night (magazine) stands... (blush)

Currently I'm brushing off the advances of a BH&G subscrip renewal and letting it run out, am happily nesting with Real Simple, and have just let Good Housekeeping back into my life. (I know, I know -- Three Main Mags? -- but the BH&G will run out eventually...won't it?)

So, I crack open my brand new Good Housekeeping August issue, and start thumbing through it. I'm enjoying the pictures of clothes I could actually, maybe afford without a major credit check, recipes for which I might actually be able to find the ingredients in my small town grocery, and pretty, pretty landscaping ideas I will dream about but never do (although I could, as GH is very true to the middling classes who can't afford a landscaper ...on retainer.)

Then I flip a page and a picture of a man from my past is looking penetratingly back at me... And all of a sudden, it's ten years ago, and I'm just getting my husband hooked on the show to end all shows...and the Major Motion Picture is about to debut...and I'm so EXCITED!

That's right. Duchovny is BACK, baby. X-Files: I Want to Believe is scheduled for a July 25th release, and I'm SO THERE!

Anyone in my company longer than 10 minutes KNOWS that I'm an X-Files nutjob. And although, for me, the show ended at the final episode of season 7 when Scully said, "I'm ...pregnant." and I've been telling my husband "Aggh. It's no big deal..." about the new movie? Secretly, I am a big, quivering mass of icannotWAIT! to see it.

But I digress. I'm happily reading along...happy to see that DD seems to have gotten a little ...ahem... humbler in recent years (yeah, I thought he became an arrogant ass at the tail end of the X-Files' run, So?), happy that he and Tea Leoni are still (seemingly) happily married(why? I dunno... just am.) when I stumble upon an innocent looking little digit next to his name that was just sort of unobtrusively slipped in there: his age; given as 43.

"Harrunh?" Scooby said in my head. I could have sworn (on a stack o Bibles) that he was older than me. Like....big-brother-older. Like 4 or 5 years... which would put him (Sooorry, DD's publicist-who-probably-wants-him-to-appear-to-be-younger-and-hotter-now-that-he-has-a-new-movie-that-they-hope-turns-into-a-franchise coming out) at 48 or 49 years old.

Look, I know it's a Hollywood disease the symptoms of which cause stars to undergo the knife, lie like rugs about 'extended vacations' to cover surgically-induced absenses and become drug addicts to try to keep up with the Jones for youth and beauty...

But seriously. I -- and any X-Filian worth their salt KNOWS DD was born in 1960. And any Truly FoxMad fan knows his b-day is coming up very soon. (August 7th, she said smugly.)

Okay. I'll come clean. I ran to my laptop (because the battery -- it's second one -- is shot and I can't actually use it on my lap) and looked him up on imdb...and WHEW. His correct birth year was there in his bio, plain as day.

I'm pleased. Because I always liked ol' Spooky Mulder (and the guy who played him) and the thought that the character who's Holy Grail is The Truth, lies about his age...?

to quote a dear voice in my head, "Harrunh?"

I'm in DisneyChannel Heck...

2008-06-27T11:43:00.000-05:00

So...when did Disney start manufacturing Animatronic Children for their sit-com line-up.

Gah... I have two daughters in the Tweener age group, so Disney runs like a CNN crawl in my house, and I'm just... Blech. All the kids look

Plastic.

Sad; we're infecting them with our Celebrity-Worshipping Cult at younger and younger years.

Don't drink the Kool-Aid, kids.

2008-06-11T17:24:00.000-05:00

I thought this was entertaining, if juvenile...and very intuitive of my deeply repressed secret dreamworld life. It picked Alex Krycek out of five choices.

Smart M.A.S.H. game. Heh.



		I will marry Alex Krycek.
		After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Sydney in our fabulous Shack.
		We will have 15 kid(s) together.
		Our family will zoom around in a Red Viper.
		I will spend my days as a Ad Executive, and live happily ever after.

Lame Duck

2008-04-23T14:02:00.000-05:00

For almost five years, I’ve been the preacher at the church my husband grew up in. I’m not ordained; don’t even have a degree, but the denomination is one in which the congregation can vote on a lay-person to fill the pulpit while searching for a ‘real’ Pastor. They voted me in unanimously, and I’ve doubted the wisdom of that corporate decision almost every day! But I regret not one day of it. I grew more in the last five years than I did in the last 15.

I’ve stated to them from the start that I knew I wasn’t what the congregation needed but that I could fill the hole for four or five years until we found someone who was. I never made any promises…like that I could be their pastor, but I did often feel the compassion to step up to the plate and be more than I ever thought I could. Even though I tried to be honest with them, and tell them that my first priority was to my children, I still felt (feel?) that some of them were always very unhappy with me…that I could do better if I just put forth a tiny bit more effort.

Like I’m compulsively late – always have been, and, likely, always will be – but that as much as I’ve tried to be on time, and keep regular office hours…I just…can’t. I cannot make myself get in there on time – I’m always late.

[I’m suspect it’s one of those self-defeating tendencies that perfectionist-underachievers display, because to succeed tends to scare the hell out of (us).] But I was thinking about it today – I called in sick, even though technically I don’t guess I’m really sick… I just am exhausted – and I realized, after one of the parishioners called and offered to be of any kind of help – even to picking up my kids from school and keeping them for a little while! – that maybe…they wanted me to reach out to them a little more often, ask for help from them, lean back on them just a little…if it meant they’d get me to the office on time!

I don’t ask for help…unless I really, really, really need it. (Maybe that’s why I’m so tired?) And maybe they kind of wish I had, more often. Instead of just asking when it was basically an emergency.

Well, we found and voted for, and hired a ‘real’ pastor. I’m very happy. I look forward to becoming a better mother, wife and writer with a bit more time in which to wallow around in it all.

But I cannot help thinking…or wishing that I’d figured this whole thing out before now, when I’m on my way out the door.

My husband went to pharmacy school and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

2008-04-14T23:24:00.000-05:00

There was a dearth of pharmacists in this country roughly six years ago; an alarming trend that the industry sought to change through heavy recruitment of new pharmacy students. My husband was one of them who, in mid-life, discovered a job change would do him good...and six looooong years later, he's (we're) almost there.

He graduates in May (god-willing-and-the-crick-don't-rise, knock on wood, turn around clock-wise three times and then spit over your left shoulder as you say 'shelaleigh' real loud*) and he doesn't really want to walk the stage to get his diploma. I told him he must walk... for me, so I can take his picture. He's acquiesced to my request, but not real enthusiastically. To him it's all cake at this point -- useless and filled with a bunch of empty calories. He's jumped through hoops for that school...and he's done.

I know it seems easy for me to say, but I've gone through it with him. He did the studying and the testing and the projects and the butt kissing, yes. But I endured as well. I endured being a de facto single mom for all the many weeks he's stayed at school to save on gas. I've endured long nights alone in our bed, sleepless and lonely. The severe weather warnings, and worry -- no, not for us, here -- for him up there, in that tiny little camper probably being buffeted about by the golf-ball sized hail.

Yep. I've gone through it, too. He's got the knowledge, tucked safely in his brain; the credentials are his, and his alone...But I walked that path with him and dreamt of seeing him at the finish line triumphant. And I want to take that picture that simply wouldn't be the same if staged after the fact.

So, yeah. He's gonna walk, and he'll do it with a smile on his face. Because for him, it'll be all about the pride he sees in my eyes when he catches me looking at him; all about the many times that he thought he might not make it, but I knew he could. I'm his biggest fan, and he knows it. He would blow it off if it was just for him.

But it's not. It's for me, and he knows giving me that gift is way better than a t-shirt.

*I made that one up.

The tree outside my office window has a hand that flips me off

2008-04-10T11:27:00.000-05:00

No -- really, it does.

Where I live, the trees are in full bud-mode, but there's this one that is still winter-bare, and on the west side of the tree there's this bony hand flipping me the bird. Considering my vantage point for this treehicular insult is the spot where I attempt my writing...well, it's just not a very good omen, I don't think...

I'm in a writer's group now; a local group of women, young and old, bonded together by the nebulous desire 'to write'. Some want financial success, some desire personal success and, for most of us, the goal is simply 'to have a goal'.

I have a goal. Oh, yes. I've always simply worded it 'to be published'. It's always been enough, because, see, I'm a procrastinating perfectionist (re: evidence: this blog's dearth of posts) -- I don't need a goal more specific than that because then I'd actually have to back it with action.

And that is where the real fun begins.

I've got this guitar -- It's a travel-size Oscar Schmidt Washburn acoustic steel -- that I saved up for over many, many months. I put aside every little bit of spare cash I had -- birthday money, Christmas money and lint-furred spare pocket change -- in the hopes that I could afford a guitar on which to learn.

Being 43 years old, and having already taken up the guitar in my late-teens for a couple of years, I didn't walk into this blind; I knew of the blinding neuro-pain I'd have to endure in the fingertips of my left hand... (although I wasn't fully aware of the mid-to-severe arthritic complaints of my left shoulder and elbow that would accompany this journey at an older age, but that's another story)

I knew practice would be hard, and finding time for it even harder. I knew to expect slow progress because, let's face it, the 43-year-old brain doesn't catch on as fast as the nineteen-year-old one. (come to think of it, neither do the 43 year old fingers...) I knew I'd probably never be Eddie Van Halen, but I'd hoped I'd be the best Solard.

And yet... I walk into that office (the same one that I avoid writing in. Coincidence? I think not.) and stare at that guitar and --? Turn around and walk out. That's exactly what I do. I get all gut-twisted, and I walk away. Because...?

Same thing with the writing. Someone in my writer's group said, "Tell people you are a writer when they ask what you do... that way you'll be too embarrassed not to write." Good advice, yes. The problem is, when I'm sitting in front of the laptop in that office with that bird waving at me from the tree outside that office window... I get the familiar gut-twisty feeling and I walk away. Because...?

Fear...maybe. Who wants to fail at something they want so badly? Not me. Who wants to spend hard-saved money on something you've anticipated for years only to discover it's actual use is as a really unwieldy door stop? Not me. Who wants to spend months churning out 150,000 words only to realize it would make a great Bezoar*? Not me. Who wants to stare at the bony hand on that tree outside that office window waving the Finger of Epic Fail?

...................................... ''/

Who thinks that you have to be under 20 years of age to be a whining emo brat-tard? not me...

*Ep 2.13 Grey's Anatomy. Also...a pretty darn funny word.

2008-01-09T14:28:00.000-06:00

I’ve been seeing a lot of “news” updates – constant and detailed – of the travails of… ahem, …troubled young starlets like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse, (insert King of Siam “etcetera, etcetera” here) in my internet surfing of various popular internet sites. The volume of words wasted…er, uh… devoted to these ~~train wrecks of narcissism and unlimited income~~ poor, struggling victims of addiction is disturbing.

Are we – you know, the people not hunting and gathering these sometimes hourly reports and spamming the world with them – really that interested in the every minute, whimsical turn of these screwed up individual’s lives?

I’m going to go out on a limb, here, and posit that most of the people in the world have their own small dramas to play out every day and have too little time to devote to the manufactured, self-induced chaos of some spoiled, impulsive AdultChild.

These people are just grown up unruly children who’ve never had anyone say an honest “Get OVER yourself and go clean your room” to them. What is so newsworthy about a marginally talented wastoid falling apart?

They are like trolls on a message board: “Hear ME, look at ME, pay attention to MEEEEEEE!” They’re in a vicious circle of courting the press and bemoaning their lack of a Private Life, trotting out their fugly, dirty laundry for anyone and everyone to see – no matter if they want to or not - because it’s EVERYWHERE.

The first rule of dealing with trolls is don’t feed them. What is the press doing by documenting in excruciating hourly detail the wild vicissitudes of these individuals? Giving them the exact dosage of the drug they need to continue on in their headlong plunge over the edge.

How.in.the.world. did this stuff become news? I don’t get it. It’s only interesting to teen-agers blessed with so much free time on their – uh, wait. I think I got it. EVERYONE markets to teen-agers, because they whine and stamp their feet at their mommy’s and daddy’s to get their fast personal computers, televisions, x-box’s and wii’s in their rooms so they can spend allll (eleventy!) their time isolated from ANYthing that is real and worthy in life and immerse themselves in the bad examples of their ill-chosen “heros”.

Okay. Makes sense now.

I just wanna throw something out there, though. I don’t admire the people I mentioned at the beginning of this post (or any of the several others similar in circumstance and behavior – they just happen to be the most “in the news” right now) – I feel sorry for them. I pity them.

Whether they have problems because they were mothered by someone who desired fame themselves which compelled them to disregard even the most basic of parenting wisdom, or they have a propensity toward addiction behaviors and fame exacerbates that tendency or they have a diagnosable psychological disorder (although I’m beginning to think the Psychoanalysis community would have EVERYONE be in the throes of some psychological disorder or another – but that’s another rant) it’s the same. I pity them, because they’ve been encouraged in their dysfunction rather than compassionately and firmly led away from their self-destructive bent.

That, at bottom, is what bothers me about the pop “journalists” who are documenting the minutiae of a person falling apart at the seams; it doesn’t help anyone – not the consumer of the trash journalism OR the sufferer of the break-down – it only fans the flame.

I’ll tell you who I ~~admire~~ am intrigued by right now; Angelina Jolie. Here is a woman who, in the span of a very.short.time transformed herself from a person who seemed to be teetering right on the edge of LiLo and Brit-Brit level shenanigans (hello? Vial of blood around your neck?) into a U.N. ambassador and global philanthropist, who’s (seemingly) selfless desire to mother a child who needed it inspired the current trend of Third World Designer Babies (Yes, I’m talking to “your majesty”, you trend-whore).

Here’s a woman under an incredible amount of scrutiny who could have imploded and become just another statistic. Yet she managed to PR her way into near-beatification and actually managed to do some good …all while having to play down that whole weird escapade with the vials of blood and theTMI/ PDA. Not to mention the very public snagging of the husband of America’s Sweetheart.

You don’t come back from that s**t without some real grit, determination and (most importantly) perspective, folks.

So… if you really feel for these screwed up young women in the news… turn off the tv, don’t buy the rag, and look around for someone nearer to you who might be in the same boat, and try, instead, to help them save themselves.

On Goldberg's Pwnd

2007-12-22T10:58:00.000-06:00

Some people (like some guy named Lee Goldberg) think that fanfic writers are deluded, moronic idiots with seventeen cats all named some precious, goopy name, huge fat rolls hanging off the sides of their broken down office chairs and basically nothing in their life worth living for so they seek out emotional fulfillment by STEALING SOMEONE ELSE’S BABEEEE!!!! While Mr. Goldberg and his ilk are certainly entitled to their opinion, I think t/he/y weaken their position by resorting to schoolyard tactics such as bullying and name calling.

How... precious.

Anyway... I hate cats, am out of shape but not FAAAAAAT!11! (Hello, Mr. Goldberg – Glass house and all?) I’m happy to say that my life actually is kinda good; so busy and fulfilling, in fact, that in the four years I've been "actively" writing fanfiction... I've managed to hammer out only a little over 100,000 words.... And dudes, that's like only ONE Michael Connelly book, right?

So, yeah, I write fanfic. I do it as a writing exercise... to work on the mechanics of the craft of writing, without the pressure of "Oh-my-god-I-have-to-try-and-get-this-thing-published-or-I'll-be-a-failure-GAH!!1!!!1" In other words, it relieves the competitive struggle from my brain – ie, I CAN’T have it published – and frees me to be able to simply concentrate on a specific skill set during the exercise.

My question, and it's NOT "Why is Lee Goldberg picking on me and my ficcing brethren?" Rather, it's simply "Why does he care?" What punches his buttons so furiously that he continues to flog a horse that is so dead it’s a Frenchman’s dinner? Why does he get so hot under the collar about it?

I have a theory… and it’s by no means original – I think Freud might have come up with it first, and it’s trotted out on every media fan board argument at some point – I think Mr. Goldberg reacts so viciously because he sees a little of himself in what he attacks. It’s sound psychology – we usually are harshest with the people who most remind us – subconsciously – of ourselves.

The guy writes tie-ins. So he gets paid to steal someone else’s baby. Is that like kidnapping, kinda? Oh, wait – it’s sanctioned by the creator, right? I guess it’s alright to be a hack and come up with alternate scenarios for someone else’s creation if you ~~sell your soul to them first~~ sign a deal with them to shill their product.

Whatever; like I said, I’m supportive of his right to have an opinion. The button-pushing that drove me to rant about it, is that Mr. Goldberg is the beneficiary of some old-school nepotism and the people – like Naomi Novik, a ‘lowly’ ficcer who “Made It” – whom he attacks so vehemently, AFAIK, specifically aren’t. He and his compadres “Made It” through connections (read: relationships) to those already there. Ms. Novik made it…uh, because some power broker…uh… liked her writing…? Is it because Ms. Novik created an entire universe out of her imagination and, uh, is actually successful at it, while Goldberg (mostly) writes tie-ins for…uhm… teevee shows? Ahem. I’m sorry. I can’t resist laughing …just a little.

So, yeah… rant on, Mr. Goldberg and friends. We all know what you look like – being the beneficiary of some blood-line connections in the writing world – attacking a woman who successfully took her hobby and made something original.

Here’s another psychological principle for you, Mr. Goldberg. Most people when threatened by something they perceive as better than they will react one of two ways: they will either attack it (so, so tacky)…or they will compensate by substituting something for their own inadequacies.

Oh-oh-oh, I know! Why don’t you get a really fast, souped-up sports car?

One person candlelight vigil

2007-05-02T13:28:00.000-05:00

Oh, the ups and downs of life.

Right now, I'm thoroughly unhappy with my home life... and that fact has almost NOTHING to do with reality. It's because I'm fighting depression, actually.

Anyone who suffers from depression, knows what I'm talking about. I've tried some traditional avenues of help for the tendency toward depression that I've had since I was very small... including counseling, self-medicating with Alcohol, better living through chemistry, sex, and none of it -- including counseling really did anything to stop the depression. I finally came to the conclusion that you know what? --sometimes I just feel bummed. self-destructive. alienated. hopeless.

And that's okay. I do a mental check of when I start feeling it... and when it passes. And, except for a couple of really extraordinary instances, the feelings pass within about three days. And if I'm unable to endure three or four days of drifting, and treading water with occasional points where I feel lucky just to hold my head above water... well, then I must be made of some really weak stuff.

And I know that I'm not. I am strong.

I am a broadcaster... to an unknown audience (-- maybe to no one --) in the middle of a sea of doubt, and fear, and lonliness... and if someone is reading this, and thinking they can't make it... that they're lost... with no hope...

Don't give up; it will pass. You have people who need you -- believe and hold on for them, if for no other reason.

So... Blogger is Google, now?

2007-03-30T13:01:00.000-05:00

My, how things change. Google will one day rule the world... Bwahahahahaha.

Couldn't get into my blog, because I'd forgotten my password. Figures. You try to come up with a password that can't be hacked, and it's so good, you can't remember it yourself. Now, THAT's irony, Alannis.

From now on, I'm going to stop being coy, and just embrace the fact that I'm a writer. I'm not going to go around calling myself a fledgling writer, or a wanna-be writer or an unpublished writer (all of which are true...well, except for the last one, if you consider college publications.) From now on, I'm simply going to say, i am... a WRITER. --period-

Mostly, I'm writing fanfiction (yeah, laff it up) because I'm able to just experiment with an already created universe, concentrating on plot, dialogue and characterization. Right now, I'm in the middle of a WIP of colossal proportions based on the X-Files. It's mostly paralleling canon, but I'm trying to weave a wicked AU relationship between Scully and Krycek. This caught me some flak, at first -- a couple of ugly posts telling me, basically, to SHUT UP! SCULLY LURVES MULDER!!! KRYCEKS A LOSER!1!!!1 (hee) But mostly the reception has been very gracious.

It's funny, I used to be so into Mulder and Scully -- I never thought they should be romantic (their relationship transcended the merely sexual, imo) but I got kind of MAD at Duchovny with all his "I'm staying/ I'm going" bs... and I thought, Go! Don't let the door hit ya, ya ingrate!

And besides... Nick Lea is so beautiful it hurts to look at him.

So, yeah. Obsession + passive aggression = I want to make my Scully and Krycek action figures (snigger) do it. So sue me.

DISCLAIMER!!! I don't own the characters, and am making no (michael) muhney (another minor obsession) on them!!111!!1

Hee -- that always makes me laugh. Like anyone writing fanfiction would ever actually cut into the profit margin of the Big Brother(s). I know the disclaimers are a necessary evil, but they STILL make me laugh.

What? A point? Oh, yeah.

Okay, things I've learned from writing fanfiction:

1) Write something every day. Even if it's a sentance that you backspace through a hundred times. Writing takes metaphorical muscles -- if you don't exercise them, they will atrophy. NO, really. Be Nike. Just do it.

2) Try to write the stuff that pleases YOU -- not your readers. It's not being selfish; you only know your own tastes -- what makes you sit up and take notice -- and, chances are, there are others out there who enjoy the same things you do (otherwise, there'd be no Nielson Ratings) Instead of trying to figure out what will draw readers, write what would draw you. Remember Field of Dreams? If you write it (and you like it) they will come.

3) Have a 'spot' that you write in -- it can literally be the same seat at the dining room table, size doesn't matter. But, it's important to have it, and stake your claim on it: "THIS... is my writing spot!"

4) When you're writing (fiction, especially) get into the head of your primary character. In your mind's eye, take a few moments to visualize the scene you will be writing; see what your POV character sees, and describe it. It's that simple. And that hard. Because the trick is ---

5) ...try to describe it as succinctly as possible. (something that's really hitting home with my current X-Files fic, lemme tell ya... ) The more tight the writing (especially in action-driven fiction) the more the reader is drawn in and will be caught up in the writing.

6) Spell check, spell check, spell check. It should be like a mantra, man. Nothing takes someone out of the moment of your story quicker than baad spillink.

7) Accept constructive criticism gracefully. Let me go further -- encourage it, court it, solicit it. I like strokes... a LOT; who doesn't? But, sadly, strokes don't help me improve my writing. (although... they do inspire more writing...)

8) Read other good writers. Shamelessly copy them. NO -- don't steal their words (plagarism is NEVER cool)... but learn from them, imitate them (it's the best form of flattery) and try out their different styles. Always with the mind toward, finally, finding your own.

9) Try to get an objective person to read it before you post it -- a Beta reader. You are too close to your own writing, and sometimes -- like a doting parent with an unruly child -- can't always see the faults that need correcting which would stare the less-involved Beta in the face. It can only help.

10) Even if you do have a Beta tell you, "Cut this entire paragraph!" and it's something that you feel reeaally needs to be included? Trust your gut. You, after all are the crafter of that little slice of heaven... and if it's something you feel strongly about, keep it.

11) Sometimes, the chapter you're working on just ...isn't happenin'. Don't sweat it. Try writing a future chapter, or reworking an old one, or just go back and read older chapters to get back into the timeline you've established. Or, you know, take your dog for a walk, or shoot baskets with your kid... Don't, absolutely DON'T fear the Writer's Block. It happens, yes. But like with most things -- it, too, shall pass. Don't give up on your passion. If you do? You will live to regret it.

So, that is what I've learned, so far. It's been a wonderful, frustrating, enlightening, frightening thoroughly rapturous journey.

Till next time --

Trivial Pursuits

2006-10-10T23:23:00.000-05:00

I mentioned fanfiction before, and there is an author that I'm really into right now. She writes simply the best, true-to-series X-Files fanfiction I've ever read. Her name is Joann Humby and she has a lot of stuff archived at Gossamer. Two serial fic's of hers that I highly recommend are Consequential Loss and Disconnected. I'm making my way through all of her stuff in my off hours ;-) Her Mulder and Scully are lovely, and her Skinner is tortured and her Krycek is ...well, let's just say he's fleshed out the way I always wished they'd have fleshed him out in the series. If you're looking for fic that is imaginative, original and plays like a really tight, excellant X-Files episode (or movie) in your mind, you should give her a look.

Good stuff.

On Fanfic

2006-09-03T00:22:00.000-05:00

Oy.

First of all, I'm just going to say that I write what is in my head. I'm not a great writer, but that's good; I've got a goal that way, see?

Secondly, I get bored easily by the same old, same old, and my mind wanders to the different avenues, the little back streets, the messy little greasy spoons, precisely because they are the road less traveled.

When you're writing in a forum which is open to eeeevvvverrrryyybody and their brother, you are gonna get all kinds of stuff -- or you should, anyway. And all I was seeing was the same stuff over, and over, and over. I envision something...else.

My name at the forum is the same as here. And I'm not that prolific -- I've only got two stories -- one that is basically abandoned, and one that I just started. Both were based on popular shows... One, a dinosaur that's still limping along on the N_ _ network, and one that put Fox (both of them) on the collective consciousness's map. I cherish my stories, y'all, because writing is a dream that detoured in my life, and something that I am compelled to do... like breathing, right?

If I think the former nurse turned doctor and the rich boy doc who feels called to Africa really, truly belong together... and I write it in my little fanfic and that bugs.. well, you're entitled to be bugged, but get over it. I watched it faithfully, and that is what I thought should happen. If the powers didn't exactly agree with me, so what. Their's is a money game, so I understand. Gotta squeeze that teet as long as the cow is still standing, right?

If I think the dirty double agent who doesn't like to be discarded like somebody's bad prom date (and -- what a shame -- lost one of those enormously attractive arms) and the inscrutible doc from Quantico with the creamy skin turned alien chaser make for more interesting possibilities in my little passion play, who CARES? The show has been in the can for FOUR YEARS. The double agent doesn't even talk about his time shillin' for the mytharc anymore and the inscrutible, beautiful doc with the delicate skin is busy setting up housekeeping in London and doing stage plays. Meanwhile the Favored One, the Agent everyone loves best, the one everyone thinks the lady doc should have ended up with is busy parody-ing Agent Fox, painting charity pictures with his butt aided by his very, very funny wife and enjoying being a dad.

I don't think my doofy little fanfic is bothering any of them, really.

So every.single.person.writing.x-f fanfic thinks MSR is a religion... I don't. Never did. Can't make me see it that way... (oh, yeah -- here's more treachery: it ended for me at the foxy one's disappearance. The truth wasn't out there after Season 7)

Besides, it's so much more fun when there's lots of variety.

So, as far as my stress-busting creative pursuits are concerned, Bad boy double agent? you go for it, boy -- enough skulls, get you some skully in your closet.

And Doctor Former Nurse, if you're going to stay with the Croatian, get him to lighten up.

I'm cozy in the rocket

2006-03-02T08:14:00.001-06:00

When my head begins to get too big, full of notions that I'm a true individual, that I listen to all sides of an argument before making an informed, personal decision... That I'm not a follower of the crowd, that I trail-blaze my own path, that I don't acquiesce to the press of popular opinion...

Something comes along to knock that self-satisfied impression right out of my head.

The feeling that we are individual, and special is a not-uncommon feeling; everyone wants to feel that way, a few of us actually do... Most of us, though, are shocked to find out just how like we are to our neighbor.

Usually this feeling is brought about by some life-event, like marriage or a very first job search or, going back even further, getting that first car. Invariably, if the money issues forth from the pocket of the parents, the car will be a sensible one with good gas mileage and absolutely zero cool factor.

But if we've saved up our own money, we are as likely to pick a car low on internal advantages, and high on looks as we are to hate our parents with a seething passion at the ripe age of 15. But then, "cool" is a priviledge of the teen years, and the desire for it outgrown as surely as the ignorance of the importance of good gas mileage evaporates, upon footing the cost for the first month's supply of that hungry machine.

It's usually the detritus of life that sways upon the cool factor -- the stuff that won't make a bit of difference when life begins that steep slope toward the inevitable-- the stuff that is engineered to be hot right now, and passe 15 minutes hence. Cars, clothes, shoes... the term "planned obsolescence" comes to mind. "Style" is perpetuated by it, spring, winter, fall and summer clothes lines thrive on it, and where would Bill Gates be without it?

There are some things, though, that even within the confines of planned obsolescence, transcend the bounds and appeal to a wide swathe of people and have some staying power... Jeans, for instance. Hi-rise, boot-cut, low-riders, ripped, patched, bleached, scorched and yes, even the whole-heartedly despised mom jeans-- despised even by the very moms encased uncomfortably within them-- there are as many styles as there are bodies to fit into them... One positive, universal appeal of jeans, though, is the fabric from which they are crafted... If there is anything better than cotton denim I haven't experienced it yet... and, interestingly, the very thing that makes jeans so wide-spread in their appeal also ensures the extremely slim possibility of their ever being "planned" into "obsolescence."

Jeans are to the clothing world what the humble potato peeler is to the kitchen gadget industry; it's just not possible to "build a better mouse trap" in either instance.

Television shows, however, are in another realm altogether... Other than the ridiculously ever changing clothing lines that the fashion industry foists upon the hapless, vapid fashionista, they are far and away the most lacking in any crumb of longevity. Once the industry discovered that syndication produces Midas-ian wealth, the aim switched from crafting an entertaining show as long as it appeals to the public, to "keep it on air and wring every last drop of creativity, freshness, intventiveness, and plausibility until it remains a mere shell of what it was at it's inception. I have more gripes than I care to recount in detail, so I will just toss out some "knee-jerk" words -- XFiles, Seinfeld, ER (a pox on you, tptb), Alley McBeal... all shows which became colossal disappointments in their endgame.

Also, it has nothing to do with my point, but I would feel remiss if I didn't mention, briefly, at the extreme opposite end of the wading pool -- the shows which were cut off before they should have been -- Sports Night (what the heck happened there?), Once and Again, Flying Blind (hello. did "Dharma" first. and did it BETTER), Futurama (come on; for a sophomore effort it beats the hell out of American Dad, any day. And while I'm on the subject -Seth, be careful, your crappy Dad, is killing the creativity of your far superior Guy.)

The disillusion abounds. You get to where you numb yourself to the gi-normous dearth of quality, creativity and innovation, until one day, you take a page from your husband's play book, and start channel surfing... and lo and behold you come across... blue jeans. Not just any old k-mart version, either...but real 501, button fly, gently used in the seat and knees, washed to softly perfect...perfection. The kind of jeans that, from all evidence, just sputtered right out of the factory, like, yesterday, but have the unmistakeably old soul of a pair of Miner 49ers.

Before you know it, you're hooked. Bad. You can't wait for Sunday nights at 10 (9 central, ABC) when you can get your weekly fix of this very good thing. You're cruising along, enjoying the sheer pleasure of having discovered something rare -- something actually creative, and fun, as well as moving (gag) ... but then you discover that the whole world (all six and a half BILLION people) are watching, and appreciating, and digging what you're digging.... And you don't feel quite so special anymore... but you know what? You don't care.

Because it's JEANS man.

O brother, where art thou?

2006-02-21T08:28:00.000-06:00

He's my brother. And I haven't heard from him in a long, long while. We used to be close; I would listen to his girl woes, and he would listen to my advice. Somewhere along the way, though, he didn't like who I'd chosen to become, and he cut himself out of my life.

For a long time this cut me to the bone; I was proud of him, and worried for him. I wanted all these good things for him --a relationship with a nice girl, a good job which fulfilled him creatively (he's a phenomenal artist) but most of all, I wished him peace. With himself, the world and our past.

Now... I just feel sad that he doesn't know his nieces. He met our oldest, who asks about him every so often, when she was only a year old, and has never met our youngest. She rarely asks about him... but I know she wonders about him. We've built them a life which is full; full enough to compensate for a missing piece which probably doesn't want to be found.

He's a very unique individual... maybe he's even felt pidgeon-holed by people around him... maybe he's struggled with the same fears I've struggled with... I don't like to be put into a box, and labeled neatly. The box may constrict the life right out of me or be too big to fill from one moment to the next - who needs that, right? I don't want to be defined. I just want to be.

But he stuffed me in a box many years ago... I don't know what was happening in his mind, but I think it went something like this: our mother was dead, he had unresolved feelings and thoughts about her, and he transferred them to me.

Eww. I get a little squicked just thinking it -- much less typing it out. But it's my version of what happened. He, no doubt, has his own. Neither is the real truth... but somewhere in the middle, I guess.

He's a non-entity in our lives... he's a persona non-grata (although he extracted himself) he's... he's a phantom. A living dream state... someone I remember... but with soft edges, and dim color -- like an old photograph from the 70's or something. He chose to give me up; not the other way around... and yet, I'm the one who feels the guilt. And the loss.

He's out here, somewhere, in blog-space. Hey, Bro. If you're ever in the dust-bowl, look us up. We've left a candle burning for you. There's a couple of little people here who'd really like to know you.

Been a Long Time...

2006-01-04T13:18:00.000-06:00

The Holidays were a whirlwind.
They seem to go by faster every year. Is that because I'm getting older... or is time, actually, speeding up? I don't know, but at this rate I'm going to be 110 next year.

I made no New Year's resolutions this year... because last year's was to never make New Year's resolutions. Again. Ever.

It's the first successful New Year's resolution ever I made. Yay! me.

Happy (belated) New Year, everyone.

I wish...

2005-11-13T02:16:00.000-06:00

I was nicer
it didn't depend on how others treated me
I felt good enough for that to be enough
my roof didn't leak
my yard never needed mowing
I had unlimited time to show my kids how much I adore them
I exhibited more grace... and less confusion
There was such thing as time travel
And that I wouldn't screw it up, if there were
there was time to sew everyone who was cold a nice, warm quilt
no one was plagued by fear
everyone had enough to eat
shoes were free
shopping for bras didn't cause aneurisms
Mulder and Scully never "hooked up"
there was no such thing as (you fill this one in)

But if wishes were horses... we'd all be knee deep in crap (thank you, Romano)

I'm sitting here at (checks clock) 2:26am, wishing there was no such thing as writer's block coupled with deadlines. Sometimes, the words just won't come. I'm currently in training to write on demand, although it's more speechwriting than actual "writing" writing. Once a week I have to prepare a speech of sorts, and I write the script beforehand. I like the structure of the script, although I really need to get away from that because it's usually so stale by the time it's delivered. And stale don't move people.

I think the difficulty (I use the term loosely -- not many of us truly have "difficult" lives...) of my task is compounded by the recent speed reading I applied to a nifty little book entitled Leadership and Self-Deception Getting out of the Box. What a great book --but it's pretty profound, and it's temporarily vice-gripped my mind. Can't stop thinking about it. I highly recommend it to anyone. Period. Anything you do in life can be positively influenced by the principles contained in this slim yet impactful book. (Yeah, "impactful" doesn't sound like a word to me either but what do you expect --it's after 2am)

That was the end of this evening's PSA

Here's a modern day tale: Once upon a time, there was a person who wanted more than anything to be a writer. But deadlines caused performance anxiety, which led to the crippling fear that nothing would issue forth from the fingertips, which became a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Writer to Be, and the WtB changed courses... embarking on a mad voyage down the paths of least resistance. WtB realized years later what could have been but fought indecision and fear in enbarking on the long forgotten dream of the past. Caught up in the inertia of self-doubt, the WtB felt powerless to change the patterns of the past.

Moral? Don't be like WtB. Wishes may be exercises in futility...or they can be the bridge to something greater than you've ever imagined. Never stop wishing.

Peace; and good night.

Time Passages

2005-10-04T15:26:00.000-05:00

Every year around the end of October, I get pensive and tend to dwell too much on the past. My mother passed away at the end of October. So every year around that time, I start taking stock of my life...

I think mostly about guys. Yeah, typical. I'm sorry I cannot report a fixation on the more profound topics like politics or religion... Nope; for me it all comes down to the dudes.

Not just any dudes, either. No -- this is the short list of Guys Who've Had Significant Influence On My Life.

Mostly, I remember one guy in particular... but this isn't just one of the guys on the Short List... no this was the Big One. The First Love guy. Every woman's romantic journey starts somewhere, and most of us mark it by the first guy we dated, or the first guy we crushed on. And that's okay. When I compartmentalize them into neat little categories I have to name Patrick Phelan as the Point A on my romantic Odyssey. Even if we were only nine at the time... and he "liked" my friend more than me. Okay, he didn't know I was alive; but let's not split hairs.
And then there was Richard. The first...okay, the ONLY, high school relationship. But that was more an experiment in endurance than anything else; the central theme being who could get out alive, through the haze of smoke (both the legal and the illicit) and the after-effects of ill-gotten beer.

No; for the real Point A in my journey of sexual awakening, I'd have to give that honor to someone I never even kissed. No, really. And I was 17 when I met him, too -- well-past the age when a kiss is any big deal.

This guy towered over me -- I'm pretty short (5'0") and he was easily 6'4. He was a lot older than me ("but well within range," my fevered teen-aged inner romantic always whispered) and he was the counselor at a private school I attended in my last year of High School.

Oh, man I fell so hard for that guy. I would dream up reasons to go and have "office time" with him... which wasn't hard to do, as I was from a pretty unstable background and lived in a youth home at the time I met him. And before I go any further let me clarify: no, "office time" isn't a euphemism for sex. (Hey, man, I'm talking spiritual stuff here...)

He was patient and kind, and listened with longsuffering endurance to my breathless ramblings... and it didn't hurt that he was gorgeous and in a band, and had longish hair, and had biceps that were cut like a lumberjack's (only without all the dirt and grime.)

Long story short, I graduated, and his band hit lean times, so I didn't see too much of him for a while.

Until I went to a small two-year college in a Dallas suburb, and in the middle of my - oh, who am I kidding, I don't remember which semester- Suffice to say, that he ended up on a construction crew on campus, the offices of which were located in a trailer which I could see right out my dorm bedroom window.

Oh, the misty-haloed fantasies the view of that trailer sparked... white steeds, armored Knight -- something along the line of Buttercup's jump from the window at the end of Princess Bride...(only, not into Andre' the Giant's waiting arms...)

I visited him every.single.day. And brought him a loaf of my homemade banana bread with me... because it was his favorite. It didn't hurt that he wore those sleeveless undershirts almost every day (Oh! I got to see so much of his skin!) due to the hot working conditions. And he looked like a bronze god from working in the sun all day... and his brown hair now had natural blonde highlights in it the likes of which would make Bon Jovi fire his hairstylist...

But... it was his soul I was falling for; no, really! It just came in a really. fine. package.

And just when I was at my absolute worst point -- too far gone for any kind of therapy-- his job ended, and he was no longer outside my dorm room window.

But that wasn't the end...

We attended the same stadium-sized church, and he was on the youth staff there. So, yeah. I saw a lot of him still... And the memory is fuzzy, yes, but I recall getting more than one phone call from him at the dorm payphone (we weren't allowed phones in our dorms).

One in particular, I'll never forget. It was when he called to tell me that he was moving on... going back home out west. I was so crushed that he was leaving, and being the stoic that I am, I couldn't let him know I would be hurt by this knowledge, so I basically told him to have a nice life, and hung up on him. Nice, huh?

I went on to dodge a couple more phone calls from him after I'd graduated and gone back to the youth home... including one in which he'd tried to tell me he was getting married. Our mutual friend filled me in, though... letting me know that his intended was the same height...had the same hair color...and even the same first name as mine...

Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe he was just trying to bury the memory of the besotted little teen-aged girl whose attentions made him feel like Superman.

I mean, what guy doesn't want to be Superman, right?

first days

2005-08-23T09:06:00.000-05:00

I've been through this before; I should be jaded and take it in stride this time around. In some ways, I am; the feelings are dulled, a little bit. I've been in the same position before, although with the oldest one, not the youngest. I'm still the same person, repeating half-remembered rituals of pick up and drop off... and yet, this time is so much more poignant. Even though the "shine" may be off the experience, this is the last time I will have this "first."

Today, our baby went to Kindergarten.

(Well... yesterday, actually as I got interrupted while trying to write this.)

She loves it, too. And now that our baby, our youngest, has successfully entered the dawn of her school career, I realize that we are on the downward slope of life -- blink and we'll miss something.

Remember that scene at the end of the movie Parenthood? (love that movie, btw) The scene where Gil and Karen's youngest child has just ruined their daughter's school play? And there is a montage of all the family members enjoying the simulated roller coaster sensation? I never got that. Well, I got it...but with this being the last time I'll send a child off to kindergarten, I finally get a deeper meaning of the whole "roller coaster ride that is life" thing, and it is this:

The slowest part of the ride is also the shortest -- the ascent. When you are up fifteen times a night with a newborn, and bombarded by an endless cascade of diapers and teething, and just get one (reluctantly!) out of diapers when another is on the way... Well, you get the picture; it seems this phase of your life is an eternity, and you wonder if you'll ever get a good night's sleep again... And it does seem like the longest stretch of time in your life... until you get the last one in kindergarten, and before you really clear the sleep (deprivation) from your eyes, you've hit the top of the ascent...

And there is this breathless moment, where time seems to stand still for the tiniest moment... and then WHOOSH! your flinging down the technically longest part of the ride... but it doesn't feel that way because it goes by so damn fast.

I used to shrug off the advice of people who would tell me, "enjoy them while they're little, dear; they will be grown before you know it..." and I'd think, "yeah, yeah; I got it..."

Boy, was I arrogant. Seriously.

Oh, I tried; I did... up until my youngest hit the terrible two's (from which she has yet to emerge, imo.) and from then, everything but this moment has been a blur. I just sent my baby off to kindergarten...

And I feel a... breathless sensation...

Maiden voyage

2005-08-16T02:05:00.000-05:00

First time blog....and my mind is a blank. Typical. Too many thoughts, usually. Can't get mental peace enough to fall asleep. Hopefully this will change, as I'm usually un-shut-up-able.