387

NEW WORDS!

I love these new words and because I love them and they came out of me tonight in what was only about 10 minutes of solid frenzied writing, I am sharing them here for a change. Here we go!


I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, consciously opening my lungs to let the life back in, hoping it will come and with each inhale, I think of a new person. It calms me, a trick my sister taught me after the fire, a way to fall asleep when all the bullshit about counting sheep doesn’t work. I don’t know anyone that it works for actually.

There’s Aunt Minnie and her Pomeranian, Fifi, that only eats strawberry yogurt. The mailman Ray. He’s missing one ear but he keeps his cap pulled down low so you barely notice it, at least I don’t notice it anymore. It took a few hand deliveries for me to avoid staring but then one day, after handing me a priority mail envelope full of inscribed fountain pens, I shut the door and realized I’d not looked at the side of his head. I almost wondered if he’d grown an ear and I missed the chance to see it, to say, hey, Ray…way to go. The downstairs neighbor, Miss Edna who always asks me to pick her lottery numbers for her. You’s lucky. That’s the only thing she ever said to me in her pleading. You’s lucky. It didn’t matter that she never won with my numbers. She keeps asking and I keep giving them to her, always including a 4 and a 37. My nephew Charlie who loves windmills and his 8 year old sister Clara who still isn’t potty trained.

But sometimes, when I go through names, I get stuck on Brett. He’s always on the list. A lawyer, a crusader wearing the cross of King Arthur on the breastplate of his armor, a slayer of dragons with a sword made of pure gold. He’s always there in some fantastic getup but I never take him seriously and I get stuck. I get stuck on him because he reminds me of my father and it’s not like he exists as a separate person for me, especially at times like this where his disappointment stays behind even after he’s left the room.

Day Forty-Seven: "Afternoon of an Author" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bewilderment.

Fitzgerald gives the reader a snapshot of one of his afternoons and while a fictional account of same, the story reads as a sort of resentment of his life as a writer, and the resulting frustration and sadness that comes from not knowing what to write and where to find the inspiration.

From within? From the streets where he watches women on street corners in their dresses and bright colored hats? From the storefronts and barber shops and park benches? The writer in this story is a drifter of a man at the end of his career struggling to find a tale worth telling. Fitzgerald got this one right from start to finish.

Images I'll never forget.

Day Forty-Six: "The Place" by Edith Konecky

Appearances.

A young Jewish girl is forced to try on dresses at the tailor's shop where her father works. This may seem blase but, this is not just any young girl. She's flat chested and not very tall and dresses, the ones her mother picks out, don't fit her right. There's a scene toward the end of the story where the girl is standing in awkward heels with socks stuffed into the bodice of the dress and with the dress pinned to her slip in order to attempt a proper fit.

Still, it's no good. The reader sees, through this image, that this girl won't ever quite fit, not only in her world where curves and stature equal status and allure, but she won't ever quite fit into the vision of the future her mother and father have for her. She can only hide inside these too-big clothes for so long.

This was a feminist story through and through and I have a feeling a second read would reveal even more.

Day Forty-Five: "The Valentine" by James Jones

Courage. Insane Courage.

This kid had it. This 8th grade boy struggling with the courage to give a girl in his class a heart shaped box of chocolates. We see him agonize over the decision to buy the gift. We see him change his mind over and over about how to present the gift to his classmate. We see him watch from a distance as the gift is opened and laughed at. And we see his heartbreak as he takes his seat in class in anticipation of what he calls "fifty whole minutes of his life."

Though the story doesn't end the way the reader wants, you can't help but root for this kid. The reader knows all too well that this happens. Feelings get hurt. Plans get derailed. People get disappointed. But, what the reader knows that this kid doesn't yet is that 8th grade is just a time, a period of time where courage, the courage this kid had, is what matters most. THAT is what will carry him into adulthood. There is hope and life in his courage and for that the reader can't help but be thrilled.

Day Forty-Four: "What the Sky Sees" by Jon McGregor

Hidden.

This story about a man who makes a mistake and spends his adult life trying to hide it, is at once lyrical and brutal and twisted in the way the language soothes the reader into thinking, like the man, that his situation will all turn out okay.

Interestingly, a good bit of this story is spent in reference to the sky itself, its colors and shapes, yet it doesn't feel overdone. The sky at dusk in one place is described as the color of a "freshly forming bruise" which I thought was perfect. This sort of detail is what makes the story compelling and keeps the reader reading.

Ultimately, it's a story about mistakes. Everyone makes them. It's what we make out of them that matters. Nice job by a writer I'd not read before. I'd definitely read more.

Day Forty-Three: "A Real Durwan" by Jhumpa Lahiri

Honor. Dishonor.

An aging doorkeeper (durwan) of a building located inside an Indian village takes her job perhaps more seriously than is warranted and as a result, those in her building expect more and they then honor her more for the extra work, for the stories she shares of the luxuries and comforts from her life before to which they are not accustomed.

She is more than a doorkeeper. She is a dream, an image of days gone by that they'd rather not consider or remember or hope for again, and she is there, a dream and she's safe as long as she tells her stories and sweeps the floors and keeps the stairwell clean.

But then, she is robbed and then her building is robbed while she is out searching for the person who took her life savings. At that point, the tenants of her building turn on her. The perfection of the dream she personified--shattered. The story concludes with her tenants in search of a "real" durwan...and we know, as the readers, that they simply don't see what they already have in this woman, a woman more real than anyone wants to believe.

This was a great read from Lahiri's Pulitzer prize winning collection of stories. I can now see why she got all this hype!

Week Seven Short Story Selections

Day Forty-Three: "A Real Durwan" by Jhumpa Lahiri
Day Forty-Four: "What the Sky Sees" by Jon McGregor
Day Forty-Five: "The Valentine" by James Jones
Day Forty-Six: "The Place" by Edith Konecky
Day Forty-Seven: "Afternoon of an Author" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Day Forty-Eight: "Falling out of Love" by Larry Brown
Day Forty-Nine: "Michael Egerton" by Reynolds Price

Day Forty-Two: "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen

Potential.

A mother stands at her ironing board, ironing, thinking as she waits for her 19 year old daughter to return home from a long day of school. What will become of her daughter? Did she fail as a mother? How could things have gone differently?

With line after line of memories filled with child rearing, a mom making tough decisions about work, bedtimes, discipline, and housecleaning in relation to the time spent with her children, this story reads as a sort of referendum on motherhood on the run.

When the mother acknowledges how she has managed her daughter rather than truly being a mother to her, she says this and it breaks the reader's heart for both the mother and her child:

"I will never total it all. I will never come in to say: She was a child seldom smiled at."


This short story is a cautionary tale about what happens when you don't pay attention to your child's needs or when you pretend that those needs aren't really there. For this single mother, the blinders she wore in order to survive, to keep her family unit in place, are the same ones that allowed her to muster some hope in the end that her daughter would do better than her, BE more than just another mother standing over her ironing board.

Day Forty-One: "In a Tub" by Amy Hempel

Heartbeat.

This short short story is about listening, to yourself, to your heart, to the feel of the body and how it relates to the world around it, a world of cats and empty churches and potted plants that need tending.

How to find your pulse in new ways. An ear to a pillow. A body submerged in water. The bigger picture here is the tub itself, the idea that there has to be a place where we each of us can close our eyes and listen for just a heartbeat.

Day Forty: "By Love Betrayed" by Judith Ortiz Cofer

Versions.

A young girl wonders about the lives of her parents. What does her father really do when he's working? Why does he have a second job that her mother won't talk about? Why is her mother so religious? Why does her mother scratch and slap her father?

These are all questions the young narrator has and yet when the story concludes, despite the complete lack of answers, the reader is left with a sense that the absence of finality, the remoteness of truth, are better examples of what life is about than the truth revealed to the little girl when she witnesses her father in the throws of an affair with a neigbor in their apartment complex.

What she sees cannot be changed. What she tells her mother she has seen...well, there's some wiggle room in that. The father makes sure of that. Such a simple and short story to set up a fundamental fact of life: there is, at the core of everything, something real and of itself. When we talk about it...that is the only time it changes. Sometimes, as this story shows, it's for the best.

Day Thirty-Nine: "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" by J.D. Salinger

Confirmation.

In an interesting story that revolves around a telephone conversation between two grown men, the reader sees what pain a miscommunication can lead to and yet what pain a miscommunication can sometimes spare others from. With crisp dialogue and a voice that is always his own, JD Salinger shows how vulnerable a man can be when the prospect of losing his lover is presented to him.

It seems that for the author and his characters, there is really never a resolution.

Day Thirty-Eight: "Trick or Treat" by Padgett Powell

Cunning.

A seemingly happy married woman plots to seduce her 12 year old lawn boy to shake up her life, to make up for the boredom that from the outside, makes her life work, makes it a success. The dialogue in this story between Mrs. Hollingsworth and little Jimmy is so much fun and you can see how situations like this begin, progress, and as the story concludes, you have a sense of where this untenable relationship will end.

It was a pretty risky move on Padgett Powell's part to write this story but it works and the ick factor is surprisingly minimal. A proposed criminal act occurring on the night of Halloween, a true "trick or treat" for the reader as we are left wondering if it will actually happen.

Nice Job!

636

New Words!! Finally, 636 for the night. More to follow tomorrow. More.

Day Thirty-Seven: "If this Letter Were a Beaded Object" by Robin Bradford

Connection.

A lonely, recently divorced woman huddles under a staircase in her Texas home waiting for a hurricane to run its course and bides her time reading Moby Dick and alternately writing a letter to her dorm mother from college. She reaches out to this woman from her past, a woman that it's clear to the reader meant a great deal to the author of this letter. And it's the way she expresses her connection to the woman through her memories and by envisioning the woman's life after she knew her that makes this story breathtaking.

What a beautiful look at yearning and its place in a lonely woman's life. This story could not have been written any better. I'm so glad I found it and will add this author to my "need to read more" list.

Day Thirty-Six: "The Pelican" by Bob Shacochis

Temptation.

What a wonderfully written story about an "agriculturalist" in the Caribbean who is immersed in the culture while feeling his way around the people and the plants that so interest him. The details here about the various trees and flowers that he encounters combined with the dialect used by the main "supplier," Marcus, really put the reader into the story.

You feel transported reading Shacochis and I'll definitely read more after taking on this story and its inhabitants.

Week Six Short Story Selections

Day Thirty-Six: "The Pelican" by Bob Shacochis
Day Thirty-Seven: "If this Letter Were a Beaded Object" by Robin Bradford
Day Thirty-Eight: "Trick or Treat" by Padgett Powell
Day Thirty-Nine: "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" by J.D. Salinger
Day Forty: "By Love Betrayed" by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Day Forty-One: "In a Tub" by Amy Hempel
Day Forty-Two: "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen

Day Thirty-Five: "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster

Revolution.

This is the first "sci-fi" short story I've read as part of my 2012 reading project and if you'd told me it would be an E.M. Forster story, I'd have laughed and denied that it could be true. However, it seems to me, after reading this story, that he was sort of meant to write this type of thing. It is strange and eerie and oddly believable despite the talk of air-ships and glowing blue plates and death worms and breathing tubes and THE MACHINE.

This idea of "the machine" is obviously a metaphorical one in the story but we are shown how a mother and a son adapt to life inside the machine and the ramifications of venturing outside of the machine. The central conflict revolves around the son's decision to leave, to challenge the structure on which the machine is based, a structure which keeps individuals isolated and devoid of personal connections to not only people but to places, animals, plants, anything that could stir emotion.

When the mother, Vashti, repeatedly recalls the "terrors of direct experience", the reader sees very clearly what Forster is trying to do, what he is trying to say. I think however that this story is best summed up by the following quote from the story:

"The imponderable doom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable doom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. Something "good enough" had long since been accepted by our race."

This is perfect. Forster is setting forth his own challenge in this story which was first published in 1909. There has to be something better than "good enough" if we are only brave enough to look for it.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

So, I discovered this American poet when I was in my senior year of high school and then, my best friend bought me a copy of her collected poems when I was in my first year of college. Sadly, during a really nasty flooding rain a few years ago, the book got soaked while still packed in a box from the move from my apartment to my house. Now, that book is missing its back cover and the pages are wrinkled and mildewed in places but it didn't keep me from putting it in its proper place on my shelf along with some of my other favorites.

And every now and then, when I feel like a good cry or just...when I feel like taking a look at another woman's gnashing and reeling and healing and forgetting, I take the book from my shelf and I peruse the poems I've marked over. And even though the ink is smudged and some of my own comments I can't read anymore, I can still recall exactly how I felt when I first read her.

I find myself wanting now to read her again...perhaps because it's the one book I could never let myself part with despite its own decay.

Day Thirty-Four: "The Other Two" by Edith Wharton

Perception.

This short story by Edith Wharton shows a man struggling to come to terms with his wife's two former husbands, men who are suddenly and regrettably a part of his daily life. In true Wharton style, there is a love triangle of sorts where there is passion and understated intentions that only cause the parties involved more pain than pleasure.

It was interesting to see this man analyze the two former husbands, both of whom were very different from him. And he's not jealous. He's just curious, at least at first but as the subtle hints pile on that his wife has been lying, that curiosity fuels the greater worry. Wharton builds the tension in this piece perfectly.

This was a dense read but it was worth it for the language, to remember what it was like to live in a time of repressed feeling when the words used to describe them were so powerful.

Day Thirty-Three: "Maybe You Can, Too" by Garrison Keillor

Ingenuity.

This is a story about a housewife who has an idea for "computer skirts" and decides to act on it. It is a ridiculous idea, bordering on absurd, but somehow she is able to manufacture and market these cotton elastic banded skirts to slide down around a computer monitor so that it looks as if it is wearing a skirt.

The narrator can't really believe it and then laments the various times he missed out on opportunities. Is it being afraid to get embarrassed that holds the narrator back or is it sheer skepticism and lack of insight? Regardless, he seems to be on the lookout for the next big thing as the story concludes but as a reader, you get the sense that he won't find it.

It's as if the next big thing will never be something you are actually looking for! The next big thing will simply happen to a person, a whim put into action. This narrator is thinking too hard.

Day Thirty-Two: "American Desire" by James (Jedd) McFatter

Kickstart.

This short story is just that, short, but don't let its brevity fool you. There is more meaning packed into these six paragraphs than in many longer short stories, than in some novels even. Line by line, this story deserves to be analyzed and then read again just to feel it, to appreciate the pace of it.

This author is my brother but that matters not. What matters is that the words he put on the page, words about needs, some basic and some complex, resonate.

"I need a kickstart and a kickstand and a swift kick in the pants."

Say that aloud a few times and you'll see why this piece works. It's how the sentences fit that make it smart. It's the choice to put them in their respective places that make it brilliant.

Day Thirty-One: "In the Night" by Jamaica Kincaid

Rhythm.

This is as beautifully written as anything I've read lately and I read it out loud from start to finish. I get the feeling that this story MUST be read that way in order for the reader to experience this story about a young girl dreaming of what it will be like grow up and be loved by a woman , to escape from the "night" and its noises.

The opening sets the tone and definitely worth including here:

"In the night, way into the middle of the night, when the night isn't divided like a sweet drink into little sips, when there is no just before midnight, or just after midnight, when the night is round in some places, flat in some places, and in some places like a deep hole, blue at the edge, black inside, the night-soil men come."

I'm not sure I can wait to read the remainder of her short stories in this collection titled "At the Bottom of the River." I may have to devote a week to her during this 2012 reading project. What a powerful voice!

Day Thirty: "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud" by Carson McCullers

Disillusionment.

What a story!

A man tells a young paper boy about losing the great love of his life, a woman, and how the heartbreak of her loss helped him figure out the "science" of love. He tells the kid that the problem really begins when a man falls in love with a woman. He says of these foolish men:

"They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax."

Then, the seemingly bitter old man asks the kid if he knows how a man should begin to love instead? This is where the hypothesis is made which gives the story it's title. He tells the kid a man should beginb by loving "a tree, a rock, a cloud." All objects that he can admire and love, steps if you will that lead up to the big event, the woman that he feels cannot be loved until all the rest has been exhausted.

Sadly, the story ends with the kid asking the man if he's found another woman to love after testing out this scientific theory of his. To this the man replies:

"That is the last step in my science...I go cautious."

And the reader knows then that this man is no genius. He's simply more foolish than he was the first go around.

499

I managed 499 new words tonight after a crazy day and after reading and blogging the short story I read today. I'm so proud of the new words and I can't wait to get up in the morning and write some more.

Balance, that's the key. Reading is bread and writing is butter. I gotta have both!

Day Twenty-Nine: "Other People's Dreams" by John Irving

Enlightenment.

A newly divorced man contemplates why he never had his own dreams while married to his wife for 10 years, particularly in light of the apparently active dream lives of those around him. What he finds is that in moving from bed to bed to couch to recliner, every time he falls asleep, he dreams the dreams of the person who'd previouly slept in a given spot. It's really fascinating the way Irving works this story and leaves the reader asking whether the man truly takes on these "old" dreams or if he is dreaming in the shoes of others.

From his ex-wife dreaming of old age and its effect on her body to his mother dreaming of making love with his father, now deceased, there are moments when this story breaks your heart.

The part that stands out to me is when the the narrator explains why perhaps the man isn't dreaming on his own or rather, why he isn't examining further why he's only dreaming through others. This quote sums it up:

"We are top-of-the-water adventurers who limit our opinions of the icebergs to what we can see."

What a perfect way to say "we are afraid to look for the meaning"...this is why I read John Irving!

Week Five Short Story Selections

Day Twenty-Nine: "Other People's Dreams" by John Irving
Day Thirty: "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud" by Carson McCullers
Day Thirty-One: "In the Night" by Jamaica Kincaid
Day Thirty-Two: "American Desire" by Jedd McFatter
Day Thirthy-Three: "Maybe You Can, Too" by Garrison Keillor
Day Thirty-Four: "The Other Two" by Edith Wharton
Day Thirty-Five: "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster

As planned, mixing the old with the new and throwing in a family member of mine! It's only getting better!

Day Twenty-Eight: "The Chinese Lobster" by A.S. Byatt

Madness.

This story is near perfect in my opinion. A.S. Byatt layers this story of a Dean of Women's Studies at a college with that of an art professor in her care and also with that of a struggling art student in her department, and she does it in an interesting and easy to follow way.

The Dean and the Professor sit at a Chinese restaurant to discuss the complaints lodged against him by this "mad" art student and the discussion itself is worth the reading of this story. Notions of faithfulness to one's art, of the true understanding of one's passions and how to relate those passions to others, notions of loyalty and honor to a larger cause. ART.

This story was brilliant and the metaphor of the lobster, a lobster between two crabs, really made this work for me. So many layers of meaning in a story that is intentionally layered. What a way to end week four of my reading!

Day Twenty-Seven: "A Poetics for Bullies" by Stanley Elkin

Manipulation.

What a wonderful story rich in details with a clear voice, the voice of a kid who prides himself in being a bully and who calls himself "Push." The best part of this story though is how the reader senses his vulnerabilities every time he engages in the bullying, particularly in the way he interacts with his buddy Eugene. Eugene is as close to a friend as Push allows but even then, he's Push's punching bag more than anything else.

This could have easily wound up as a story about a mean kid. Instead, the author shows us in a subtle way that "mean" is just a word and it signifies nothing without a consideration of the personality traits that exist on a "mean" person's edges. For Push, there is insecurity, of course there is. But there's also some compassion, just beneath the surface and there's a breaking point and we keep reading because we desperately want to see it.

NICE STORY!!!!!

Day Twenty-Six: "The Ballroom of Romance" by William Trevor

Outside.

Irish writer William Trevor tells a story about Bridie, a young but approaching middle age woman, who spends her weekends at a dance hall called "The Ballroom of Romance" which we come to find out is a place where not much romance occurs, at least not for Bridie. Mostly, she sits back and watches men enter and exit her life while she struggles to keep it together.

One scene in the story where she's in her bed on her back, weeping and the tears sliding down her cheeks and onto her pillow around her ears, is so vivid and feels so real that it's a testament to the author's writing. It's that good and he got it right, the woman's emotions over this sort of loss, this sense of profound loneliness in a world where, every weekend, there are opportunities, opportunities for everyone but Bridie. Instead, by story's end, she resigns herself to staying on the farm, with her disabled father, to spend her days at least having someone to take care of. It's not what she wants but, she decides, she chooses, that it's good enough. At least he needs her. What a statement!

Day Twenty-Five: "Blueprints" by Barbara Kingsolver

Reaction.

A spot on depiction of a marriage in decline, this story by Kingsolver started off a little slow for me. Upon further consideration though, it wasn't the writing that put me off. I think it took me a little bit to fully absorb what I was reading and honestly, I didn't want to keep reading, to continue experiencing this sad and realistic look at the struggle, the grind, not knowing if or how it would get better.

We see Lydia, a young middle school science teacher contemplating where her relationship with Whitman, a carpenter, went wrong. They were lovers, friends, cheerleaders for each other and throughout the story there are flashes of that shared history but only moments and that is what creates the tension that moves the story along.

Midstory, when Lydia observes Whitman from a distance planing a piece of wood while making a coffee table, the third person narrator notes:

"Every time he shoves the plane forward, a slice of wood curls out and drops to the floor, and she wonders if he's going to plane the board right down to nothing."

THIS, this sentence and its placement and subtle purpose in this story IS WHY we read fiction.

Marriage in a nutshell, the shaving away of each other until you're hollow and empty but somehow still salvageable. Kingsolver ends this one on a happy note where there's hope and understanding. Is it realistic? Will the change last? We don't know but we are left suspecting yet not fearing the worst.

the search

These days, looking at the world with fresh eyes, well, at least less tired eyes, I can't help but come back to this great Philip Roth gem taken from his novel "The Human Stain"

“The pleasure isn't in owning the person. The pleasure is this. Having another contender in the room with you.”


I hope and now I wait...

Day Twenty-Four: "The Little Bouilloux Girl" by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette

Patience.

Told from the point of view of a young French girl, this story tracks the rise to womanhood of the narrator's companion, another young French girl whose beauty is taking her places and helping her move up in the world in a way that the narrator isn't. There's a sense, not of jealousy, but of curiosity over this strange phenomenon.

Pretty girl. Pretty clothes. Pretty life. Pretty people around her. Pretty future.

Why? This question is never actually asked by the narrator but it's the overarching theme that is never really answered by the story's end. Instead, there seems to be some sort of justice or satisfaction in ultimately NOT being the pretty girl and this is shown perfectly when the narrator spots her companion on the street as an adult, aged and still looking for a man special enough to sweep her away.

This is a story where one girl's patience is another girl's poison. Very nicely done by a French writer I'd not yet read.

Week Four Short Story Selections

So, I've read and blogged two stories already this week but I figured I should post my reading list now before I get too far into the week. Here it is:

Day Twenty-Two: "The Scheme of Things" by Charles D'Ambrosio
Day Twenty-Three: "Work" by Spencer Wise
Day Twenty-Four: "The Little Bouilloux Girl" by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette
Day Twenty-Five: "Blueprints" by Barbara Kingsolver
Day Twenty-Six: "The Ballrooom of Romance" by William Trevor
Day Twenty-Seven: "A Poetics for Bullies" by Stanley Elkin
Day Twenty-Eight: "The Chinese Lobster" by A.S. Byatt

Day Twenty-Three: "Work" by Spencer Wise

Blessings.

On the verge of unforeseen Nazi terror, a Jewish kid wants to make his mark: on his boss, on a woman, on a life that seems to be moving at a pace that doesn't make sense to him. When, toward the end of the story, his boss chides, "You're going to have a very difficult life if you can't figure out where the hell to stand," the reader sees that this kid is actually the lucky one. As his coworkers march off in the shoes he's helped make, this kid is standing still, in the rain and he's safe.

There's a final suggestion that he take another shot at it, try again at all of the things he wanted to make his mark on, but I was left knowing that this kid would never do it. The words would indeed "burn" in him but he'd be spared the devastation of the boss and the woman and the war he didn't see coming. This was a story about an unexpected blessing in diguise from a clever writer who knows how to leave the disguises elsewhere. The words on the page here resonate. There are no disappointments in failure. There is only the need to look on the bright side.

I'm glad I found this one...will be on the lookout for more from this writer for sure.

Day Twenty-Two: "The Scheme of Things" by Charles D'Ambrosio

Dignity.

This story, as recommended by my brother, had me on the edge of my seat, knowing with every new paragraph that I was on the verge of something either dreadful or utterly beautiful. That this look into the life of runaway druggies was heart wrenching is expected...but that it's strangely appealing is not.

What a vivid image: a Halloween night where there is so much at stake and yet so much to hope for as these youths do their own sort of trick or treating, searching for food, for shelter, for kindness and finding it in an old and lonely couple living in an Iowa cornfield.

This is a beautiful story about having dignity even in the worst of situations, dignity in the midst of the desperation of drug addiction, in the midst of gnawing hunger. As someone recently said to me of D'ambrosio, this guy doesn't get enough press.

I could not agree more.

Day Twenty-One: "The Shawl" by Cynthia Ozick

Sacrifice.

A tragic holocaust story of a toddler being thrown to the wolves. Literally. With images that are both disturbing and soft-hearted, Cynthia Ozick creates a sense of uneasiness that defines this short story. For some, I think this story would be too gruesome or difficult to read, particularly because it pairs the loving relationship between a child and mother with the relationship between the German Nazis and the Jews in a way that leaves the reader shocked and cold and without hope.

The shawl itself is used as a symbol of what protects the child from harm. The actual shawl shields the child from recognition and her ultimate execution and the symbolic shawl is what feeds her, nourishes her while she waits for a certain death. This is one of those stories I'll need to read a second and third time to fully see what Ozick was doing.

This was a lovely read!

Day Twenty: "Death of Distant Friends" by John Updike

Mercy.

This was a wonderful story told by a middle aged man dealing with the deaths of three important friends in his life: his golfing buddy, an older woman friend of his wife, and his Golden Retriever. Each brief recollection of these characters lets the reader into the mind of the narrator and we see him as a man who is truly "between" his life. He's not in it.

Despite their lives and how they enriched his, the narrator remarks that their deaths have given him a sense of relief, a relief that surprises him. This is where the story went beyond plot and became Updike:

"Witnesses to my disgrace are being removed. The world is growing lighter. Eventually there will be none to remember me as I was I those embarrassing, disarrayed year while I scuttled without a shell, between houses and wives, a snake between skins, a monster of selfishness, my grotesque needs naked and pink, my social presence beggarly and vulnerable. The deaths of others carry us off bit by bit, until there will be nothing left; and this till will be, in a way, mercy."

BRILLIANT!

Day Nineteen: "Clerical Error" by James Gould Cozzens

Schemes.

Written in 1935, this story touches on the embarassment associated with pornography and it is cleverly written with a twist at the end so that the reader is drawn in and help captivated until the last word. A bookstore owner sends a collections note to a prominent man's estate after his death expecting to blackmail the family into paying for the "purchase" in order to avoid the unfixable image of impropriety.

What the bookstore owner doesn't realize is that on this particular occasion, his plan will backfire as the deceased man was a blind man. Love it!!

The Real Deal

I attended a reading on Tuesday night where two wonderful writers obliged this adoring reader and allowed their photos to be snapped with me. National Book Award Finalist Patricia Henley and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler...two very kind and generous people who've enriched the literary world with beautiful writing. I'm happy to call both my friend.

Day Eighteen: "The Grave by the Handpost" by Thomas Hardy

Judgment.

It's Christmas Eve and a group of carolers make their way through the city as usual but on this Christmas, they find themselves drawn to a strange light illuminating the town's seminal intersection, the literal crossroads of this 18th century Engligh country town. When the carolers reach the light, they see, beneath the handpost at the intersection, a grave that had been dug and a corpse lying therein. The gravediggers then tell the carolers the story of the man they'd just buried.

There's tragedy and then music and as expected, the Victorian notion of the inevitability and cruelty of fate shapes the story as Hardy questions whether there is in fact forgiveness after suicide or whether it even matters to ask the question.

Day Seventeen: "Docent" by RT Smith

Memorialize.

Told in the first person, the narrator is a docent, a volunteer, giving a tour of a chapel associated with General Robert E. Lee. The story reads as one long guided move through the chapel but there are places in the tour that the reader is guided into the docent's mind which appears to be on the verge of senility.

I'm not sure I particularly liked the voice in this story and it was a more difficult read for me than usual but, I did find myself laughing when the old woman volunteer would make "connections" between General Lee and Edgar Allen Poe...imagining that Poe's "Annabel Lee" was in fact a relation of her beloved General. She also points out that General Lee and Poe share a birthday. My favorite line is where the docent, after pointing out the value of General Lee to her great southern state, she says that Poe on the other hands reprsents "the dark side of our Virginia psyche."

In the end, I'm not sure whether the volunteer is actually supposed to be giving tours as she is being asked to leave by a security guard. But that is the author's point I suppose. We are left with mixed feelings of sympathy and awe for this aged volunteer whose ardor for her General Lee is strangely contagious.

218

Finally...new words. I've gotten so caught up with my reading that I've been neglecting my writing. That changed tonight and will change tomorrow as I have several hours set aside to write in the afternoon. 218 words...I'll take it.

Day Sixteen: "Red Lily" by Patricia Henley

Bittersweet.

Patricia Henley breaks my heart with this story. A young girl caught up in a fantasy of a man who doesn't deserve her but on whom she bestows her attention, her longing, her devotion nonetheless. There are religious undertones to this story that only serve to magnify the overtone of martyrdom. Jenny openly and knowingly accepts the punishment that is loving Eddie Fox. She does this and it's hard to watch but for a woman, it's easy to understand.

I loved the image of the red lily, the special flower that she offered up to Eddie as a sign of all of her emotions. That he didn't want to find a vase to put it in was the perfect depiction of this sort of man, this stereotypical sort of man who doesn't understand what he is doing to the women he manipulates and baits.

This story is a look into how even the shredding of a woman's heart can result in a whole again. There's repentance. There's forgiveness. There's hope.

Day Fifteen: "No Jury Would Convict" by Irwin Shaw

Wishy-washy.

This short story by Irwin Shaw reminds me a little of the Raymond Carver story from a few days ago except this one, instead of being about a group of guys in a barber shop, is about a group of guys bull-shitting about baseball while watching their team come "close" to a win. You sense the excitement...you feel the characters holding their breaths despite their nonstop chatter as they hope against reason, despite the stats stacked against the possibility of a win but it's there...and sports fans know that feeling and it's packed perfectly into this 5 page story.

Again, this was a nice snapshot sort of story that still makes one think about what Shaw was saying. One of the fans, as the story concludes, switches sides, changes teams, deciding it's time he root for a winning team. Shaw captured in a concise and clever way the notion that no one likes to lose...and sometimes, reputation or history be damned.

Week Three Short Story Selections

This is where I'm headed with my reading beginning tomorrow:

Day Fifteen: "No Jury Would Convict" by Irwin Shaw
Day Sixteen: "Red Lily" by Patricia Henley
Day Seventeen: "Docent" by R.T. Smith
Day Eighteen: "The Grave by the Handpost" by Thomas Hardy
Day Nineteen: "Clerical Error" by James Gould Cozzens
Day Twenty: "Deaths of Distant Friends" by John Updike
Day Twenty-One: "The Shawl" by Cynthia Ozick

This week I'm keeping to my plan of mixing some contemporary writers with some classics...it's only getting more exciting as I go!!

Day Fourteen: "The Cures for Love" by Charles Baxter

Coping.

This story is about a young woman who is getting over a breakup and using her study of Ovid's "The Remedies for Love" to do that. Baxter, as always, uses vivid details to bring this story to life. From the young woman's thought provoking bath to her ride along a city bus and her people-watching in an airport, this story is, start to finish, classic Charles Baxter and it includes quotable phrase after quotable phrase which makes the piece more than simply memorable.

"You should witness the high visibility of joy. You should believe."

"Funny how books put themselves into your hands when they wanted you to read them."

"I can remember you. I just can't do it in front of you."


I could go on and on...and I may read this story a time or two more just to absorb it all. As expected, this story delivered a touching look at the state of love on the proverbial rocks. This is one of those stories that put itself into my hands. I needed to read this!

Day Thirteen: "The Burning" by Eudora Welty

Resilience.

Delilah is the slave of two white sisters living in Jackson Missisippi. When the story opens, soldiers have arrived with the intent on burning the house and we soon learn that one of the sisters knew what was coming but had stayed, certain that they would not be subject to the wrath of the indifference and cruelty of the war. But, when the house is burned and the sisters along with Delilah are left to make their way through the burned city, the city that others had already abandonded before the burning occurred, the story really begins.

In the midst of the devastation, Delilah is the one who persists, who continues toward some hopeful end even when the sisters hang themselves and leave her alone. As the story approaches its end and Delilah is face down in the high grass of a river bank, Welty creates paragraph after paragraph that took my breath. Delilah finds a piece of glass and after wiping it clean, she sees it is a mirror.

The imagery used of butterflies and dragonflies and bats and insects, buzzing life circling as if she were dying and they were all there to witness it rather than feed off of it was genius. There weren't any buzzards, only the buzzing, the steady hum of a life that she hadn't given up on yet. Her reflection in the mirror revealed what she could be and not what she was. Then she stands up and makes her legs take her away from the death the others had given themselves too. She walks into the river, determined to cross it and on her head are the treasures she keeps safe and dry and in her head she knows she's going to be okay.

Friday the 13th...feeling lucky

So, I woke up this morning and was determined to wear a smile and not focus on the possibility or perhaps in my case, the probability of some mishap befalling me...I really do have what some might call "bad luck". Instead, I choose to define what I have as "ironic misfortune on the verge of laughable fortune" but even that might be a stretch.

American writer Elbert Hubbard said "Luck is the tenacity of purpose" and I think that's a great way to look at it. Today, I'm all smiles still...nothing is going to get me down. I'm making my own luck today. Ironies be damned.

Day Twelve: "The Calm" by Raymond Carver

Observation.

This short story by Raymond Carver is a good example of what he does best: slice of life. Barber Shop. Bullshitting in a barber shop. A character heavy bullshitting session in a barber shop over a foiled hunting trip between the patrons. It's as if Carver gives us a tiny scene but layers it this way and it feels like there's more to it than there is when you finish reading it. But in reality, it's exactly what Carver wants the reader to see. It's a snapshot and there's more to the story that we don't see but that's okay. For Carver, in this story, that is preferable.

This was a nice piece to read after Day Eleven's reading. The diversity is already making my head spin but my heart thrum. Finally, I feel alive!

Day Eleven: "Isis in Darkness" by Margaret Atwood

Longing. Resignation.

This story is worth the read for the last four paragraphs alone, paragraphs that are beatiful and painful and bittersweet and real. It's at the story's end, when the main character, Richard, realizes that he still has a role to play in the life of the woman he loved, a woman who was the great mystery and possibly the great love of his seemingly unfulfilled life, but a woman who never quite let him in. He decides to write about her poetry when she dies, to memorialize her in his own way. And he doesn't choose to do this for notoriety or to save his own writing career that never blossomed as hers did...no, he embarks on this story and study of the woman to as the story says, "exist for her at last."

When Atwood begins the next to last paragraph, the reader knows that Richard had found his calling, to write about this woman he loved.

"He will have a place in her mythology after all. It will not be what he once wanted...his are humbler metaphors. He will only be the archaelogist, not part of the main story, but the one who stumbles upon it aferwards, making his way for his own obscure and battered reasons through the jungle, over the mountains, across the desert until he discovers at last the pillaged and abandoned temple...He is the one who will sift through the rubble, groping for the shape of the past. He is the one who will say it has meaning. That too is a calling, that also can be a fate."


I'm blown away by this paragraph, the fullness and frankness of it. We all have our own obscure and battered reasons to put our feelings into words. Atwood shows though that the history one gives is often an offshoot of yearning...a hope to be a part of the main story and a resolve to accept it when not.

Overlooked...a conclusion

Why is it that certain images or sounds or words or references to a particular film or book or place trigger the memory so cruelly?

Rarely does a combination of these things bring up from the depths of one's soul, from one's unconscious longing self, a happy thought or a fondness for something from days gone by. At least that's not the case for me.

Most recently, it's been names with me. Names, the same names, popping up in ironic circumstances that trigger a memory and then I'm hurt all over again. The worst part is that I can't stop it and I've thought a lot about this lately, about what it can mean if anything and I've reached the conclusion that:


my unconscious self is perhaps more awake than I am and that's why I don't recognize the moments that will matter until after they've settled into my unconscious and then worked their way back up


Then, after dwelling on this point for the past few weeks, I was struck and my greatest fears about my waking self were confirmed when I stumbled this morning upon this quote by Graham Greene from "The Heart of the Matter" :


"He couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch."



It is possible that I've simply failed to observe what is important in my waking life, that I've spent my time focusing on work and people that don't really matter to the exclusion of any meaningful reflection on the present. But, it is also possible that I've simply been overlooked by life with no reason to observe those things in the first place. After all, what are all of those memories for, what is it about their interconnectedness that amounts to more than a blogger's rambling if there is no one there to share it all with?

Thank you Graham Greene for being just one more name from which I can't escape.

Day Ten: "Generous Wine" by Italo Svevo

Restraint.

This was a fantastic story by a writer I'd not heard of when I chose the story. A man attends his neice's wedding and gets drunk on wine. That's the story in a nutshell but it's the watching of him getting to that point, the why behind his drinking on this particular occasion that really tells the story. It's a look at how the choices people make shape perception and then how perceptions fail to change when those same people make an alternate choice.

Here, the niece had vowed celibacy, wanted to be a nun, but then...at her family's urging, decides to "do the right thing" and get married. The uncle/narrator is appalled by this and as he drinks more and more throughout the story, the reader sees not only what he feels about a world view that would put such pressure on his niece but also what he feels about his own situation in a marriage that would have been better avoided in the first place as well.

I wouldn't say this story is a challenge to the institution of marriage per se. Rather, it challenges the notion that choosing one's fate is possible. Fate chooses you and you get married because it's the thing to do. The choice is gone and so the narrator drinks. With a wonderfully vivid cast of characters and spot on dialogue, this story was worth the read.

I'm very glad I found this one. It was for me "generous wine" indeed.

Day Nine: "The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros

Disappointment.

This short short story is part of the greater story which has the same title. Already, I can see the larger story being shaped by this snippet where the narrator shows the reader what it feels like to live in the slums but to pretend like you live in the suburbs. When the main character shows her schoolmaster her home, a third floor flat whose outer walls have peeling paint and makeshift wooden bars on the windows, the reader feels the shame of it with the narrator.

With crisp and vivid writing, this short story makes me want to read the remainder of the collection right now. I may just do that.

Week Two Short Story Selections

So, I already posted my review of the story I read for Day Eight...but, here's the remainder of my official Week Two reading list:

Day Nine: "The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros
Day Ten: "Generous Wine" by Italo Svevo
Day Eleven: "Isis in Darkness" by Margaret Atwood
Day Twelve: "The Calm" by Raymond Carver
Day Thirteen: "The Burning" by Eudora Welty
Day Fourteen: "The Cures for Love" by Charles Baxter

Week Two is shaping up to be very interesting!

Day Eight: "The Blue Devils of Blue River Avenue" by Poe Ballantine

Luck.

Some kids have it, some don't. Some are born with it. Some will die without it.

In this short story, the reader experiences first hand what an 8th grade boy does when confronted with the "devils" of his neighborhood. Drugs, sex, pornography, stealing, all of it is tempting and you see this kid getting deeper and deeper until his mother does what many of the other moms don't do. She reins her son in, restricts him to the house, removes him from his so-called friends and we see that she does it just in time. Around him, the other teenagers are teetering on becoming criminals or worse, criminal-makers. They want this kid to be part of their world, to have their dismal lack of luck, so show him what's it's like to draw the short straw every day, every day. But, he survives, he makes a new friend and his luck changes and by the story's end we see him clinging to that fact..that luck CAN change. He clings to that belief even though as the reader, you see that it's not true. His luck simply...is.

This story is moving and heart breaking and it is written with an eye toward detail that keeps the piece humorous despite heavy undertones of hopelessness. With lines like "They had a clock in their house that said, "No Drinking Till After Five," and all the numbers on the clock were fives" and "We drank lemonade or root beer, and ate kumquats and stuffed the seeds up our noses" the reader gets a sense of voice that is brilliantly portrayed and very difficult to create in the first place.

For anyone looking for some fiction to get lost in, this story is it. I'll have to re-read it several more times to fully absorb its richness and depth.

WOW!!!!!!

Day Seven: "Epstein" by Philip Roth

Trouble.

In this short story, Lou Epstein asking the question "when did the trouble begin?" and in classic Roth style, the answer is offered with humor and with the irony that accompanies any man's journey into self-reflection. Caught up in an affair with his neighbor, Epstein longs to return to the life he sees in his houseguest, his 22 year old nephew who is on military leave and having the time of his life. This story reads like a man searching for the time of his life only to realize his wife has already given it to him.

This story was part of Roth's award-winning collection of short stories titled "Goodbye, Columbus" and I'm glad I read it and can add it to my Roth reading history. It was a fitting way to end week one of my daily short story reading.

961

So, after not writing yesterday, I got in 961 words today and I created a scene in the novel that will be crucial to the rest of the story, at least I think so. I really don't know what will happen or what my character is capable of at this point but she's coming into her own...FINALLY!

A word I used today is "decimals" and yeah, that's random but I figured a random word is worth sharing as much as a meaningful one. After all, the random words are part of the whole and are what give vivacity to a story. I'll take random over predictable any ole day of the week.

Day Six: "The Golden Apple of Eternal Desire" by Milan Kundera

Manhood.

This short story was a fun read first and foremost. Written in short labelled sections, the story is interesting and it keeps the reader wanting to find out if the main character will end up with a woman or remain alone. That is the center of this story, this search for what makes the character feel like a man. Does he play wingman to his philandering friend? Does he continue to lie about having a woman in his life to avoid actually getting out into the world and dating one? Does he have courage to confront his friend about his carefree lifestyle? Or will he continue to be the man who is a MAN with a capital "m", the guy who sees these women as the golden apples of eternal desire, women who are plentiful and hanging just low enough for him to pluck despite being unripe.

What Milan Kundera does in this story is make the reader laugh at what is truly a sad state of affairs. It is not love. It is not life. It is always just pretend.

Day Five: "The Angel is My Watermark" by Henry Miller

Reflection.

This short story is actually more of a nonfiction-esque look at the author's fixation on painting that occurred later his in literary career. And while autobiographical, parts of the piece read like fiction, a work on fire with the kind of voice that Miller is known for. It's boisterous with an undertone of accusation of his fellow artists and their abandonment of the idea of art for art's sake.

Miller describes his love of painting, watercolor painting specifically, and when he says "We don't have to turn out a masterpiece every day. To paint is the thing, not to make masterpieces" the reader is to accept this without further consideration. Miller's approach is matter of fact and ultimately very convincing.

Like painting, the point is to create art, to experience the process and to learn to love it, learn to LIVE it. This was a nice read for me at this point in my writing life. If I can do what Miller says and realize that "no one can be paid to give of his joy, it's always freely given," I can continue to write and for the sheer overwheling desire inside of me to share.

I share, therefore I am.

222

222 words tonight but I'm tired and can't do more...tomorrow...there's always tomorrow

Day Four: "Mortals" by Tobias Wolff

Insecurity.

In this short story, Tobias Wolff gives the reader an obituary writer who loses his job after a "dead" man shows up at his newspaper with questions as to why the paper has declared him deceased. Turns out, the narrator hasn't checked his facts, done the research, and his willful blindness cost him a job that while not what he wanted, was better than nothing.

Couple the narrator's lack of concern with the undead man who is mysteriously curious about the way his obituary was worded and there is an irony to this story that is refreshing and that is not being pushed onto the reader. At its conclusion, the narrator passes a mime and throws some money at him, hoping to not be imitated. It's a poignant ending to a thoughtful story about the insecurities that plague us all in life and in the face of death.

I'll read more Wolff for sure.

Day Three: "A Find" by Nadine Gordimer

Choice.

This story is quite brilliant. A man, following his second divorce takes off for a few days at a nude beach in search of his purpose, to find the child inside of him. That's what he tells himself and the reader believes it too as he skips stones across the ocean, as he sits and sifts sand through his fingers, as he swims and cleanses himself of the way he's been with women, always attracted to frauds and dishonest women who'd been unfaithful to him.

But then, he finds a diamond/sapphire ring buried in the sand and he places an ad in the resort newsletter and he waits in his room and interviews woman after woman who may have "lost" this ring. All of the women are dishonest, frauds, the very sort of women he'd drawn too and it's as if he is interviewing them all for his own means irrespective of this ring.

Then,he makes a choice and he chooses to give the ring to a woman who can't describe the ring in detail. It's not hers but she tells the best lie and she is the most physically intriguing with a sultry voice. He chooses her because she made herself so beleivable and though he knew it was not the truth, he was drawn to her gall.

The story concludes and we're told he marries the woman and they never speak of the ring again. What a great statement by Gordimer on the state of how relationships often begin.

One sees what he wants to see. One chooses to accept willful blindness because it's better than being alone. One doesn't bring it up again until it's all over when pointing fingers is to be expected. This story reads as Gordimer's subtle indictment of the nature of man's attraction and ultimate disloyalty to the whole of women.

Given the choice, men choose to be stupid. They simply can't help it.

511

I got in 511 words tonight. Not much to report other than to report that I'm still getting my daily words in. I'm hoping for a big night of writing tomorrow as I approach 40,000 words.

Day Two: "What Ernest Says" by Sue Miller

Identity. Influence.

For me, in reading this short story, I'm interested more in the characters who are not present than I am by Barbara, the 8th grade white girl in a predominately black school. The story reads as if it takes place in the 50's because of the way the classroom is divided by race but then again, it could just as easily describe the divisions often made by students of various cultures in an effort to disassimilate or to reclaim their cultural and socilogical identities in a society that has been pushing them to "blend" in in order to succeed.

Barbara's parents, the ones who send her to this particular school in lieu of the private school that their peers send their children to, inhabit the story only to demonstrate why Barbara is faced with a series of disturbing sexual encounters. In an effort to "expose" Barbara to many things, her parents left her exposed and vulnerable to the unexpected pressures that come from being white in a black world, in a world her parents clearly were never part of.

The pressure Miller subtly and perfectly portrays through Barbara is this: Don't let them see you flinch. Don't let them know you doesn't understand what they're saying. Don't let them know about the all white church you go to or about the confirmation you're planning for. Don't let them know you want to be somewhere else, with your own kind too just like they want to be with theirs. Don't let them know that you know you are an outsider, will always be one. Don't let Ernest know you are a good girl and that you don't understand what he means when he tells you what he wants to do with you, with your body. The pressure is to assimilate while the others all struggle to do the opposite. Barbara can't reclaim her unique identity in this setting. Her parents have made sure of that. Barbara didn't have a chance to develop hers. You can't reclaim what you never laid claim to.


Sue Miller is a new read for me. Aside from "Inventing the Abbots," I was unfamiliar in general with her writing but I'll definitely be reading more. To be able to do so much with a short story of only 5 pages is amazing. Talk about a story with layers and layers and layers.

101

Okay, so 101 words is not much but I did read and write today otherwise, this is just my word count toward my daily goal of writing FICTION. So, I'm happy with it nonetheless. Today felt very productive regardless.

Word for the day from my fiction: Dante

Yes....my character is headed to his own hell...

Day One: "Moving Day" by Robert Olen Butler

Inadequacy. Missed Opportunities. Silence.

The narrator in Robert Olen Butler's first published short story is a man existing in his present life when he learns that a war buddy of his was killed in combat. The narrator is existing and not living his life for the very reasons that he always envied his buddy Duncan Pratt. Duncan Pratt was educated, cultured, and he had the inside track when it came to their assignments and the expectations of what was waiting for them in Vietnam. The narrator played basketball in a small midwestern college but he didn't like it. He doesn't seem to enjoy or embrace his adult life either with his wife, Marta. He lacks the perception to make impulsive decisions like Duncan Pratt and he mourns that in his own way at the end of the story when he decides to call Duncan's widow and share a quote with her about living life and cheating death only to find out that he can't reach her. The phone in his hand is dead. So is the heart in his chest.

A paragraph from the story that explores this fully is as follows:

“Sounds pretty dull. I like the action, the movement,” I lied, and realized it was my last lie for now because we were nearing the pain of the half mile; and I knew this lie was woefully inadequate because Duncan recognized it for what it was. But I knew he wasn't so sure about his own work and I wanted to run faster, run away from him, but it was no good because for some damn reason I needed to convince him I'd live.


Duncan Pratt lived, and though he died, he didn't die in vain because he'd lived. The narrator, as the story concludes, realizes that his silence and his missed opportunities have left him in a state of existence that the reader senses Marta is aware of as well. What he plans to do now, we don't know. I get the feeling that he doesn't know either.


This is a great first story by Robert Olen Butler and it paved the way for much of his fiction that lives and breathes inside of Vietnam without being ABOUT Vietnam. I'm glad I found it and that I chose it for the first story of 2012. It's time to start living, to break the silence. Words have weight and carry a heavy burden when unspoken.

Exceptional Excerpt to conclude 2011

I haven't posted an exceptional excerpt lately and so I figure it's time, particularly as the year comes to a close. With that in mind, my last blog post of 2011 will be this, from Brian Morton's novel "Breakable You" that I'm finishing tonight.


"We wish for a symmetry of feeling, but we rarely get it. It is painful to be the one who loves more, and painful to be the one who loves less."


These two sentences, when I read them, made me stop and reread them, and I folded down the page. This is what is great about Brian Morton's writing. Such a simple idea, something everyone knows, but he says it perfectly and without masking the idea in fancy terms. No, it's easy. Rarely does one find his or her match. Most of us walk around in one of Morton's two camps, either loving more or loving less and dealing with the pain of where one lands. Here's hoping that 2012 proves Morton wrong. My wish is for that symmetry of feeling. Being rare doesn't make it extinct.

Happy New Years to you all!!

1,221

So, I got a ton of writing done today particularly given the amount of time I spent writing. If I had been able to put in another two hours, I may have well hit 2,000 words today but even so, I'm pleased with my progress.

Today's word from my writing: reflective

Not sure why I chose that word to share but, there it is. Now, I'm taking a break to finish reading Brian Morton's "Breakable You" I'm so happy to round out my 2011 reading with such a wonderful novel and writer.

CHEERS to all!

291

So, in the last hour I wrote 291 words and they were GREAT words tonight. A word used in this snippet is "wildflowers" and I'm noting it here because really, when is it NOT a good time to point out wildflowers when you can?

Week One Short Story Selections

So, I've already said I'm starting my year with the Robert Olen Butler short story "Moving Day" but, here is the list for the rest of week one.

Day Two: "What Ernest Says" by Sue Miller
Day Three: "A Find" by Nadine Gordimer
Day Four: "Mortals" by Tobias Wolff
Day Five: "The Angel is my Watermark" by Henry Miller
Day Six: "The Golden Apple of Eternal Desire" by Milan Kundera
Day Seven: "Epstein" by Philip Roth

Just choosing the stories has been a challenge. Now, it's time to read and blog about them and I'm up for it.

103 words and a plan for the year ahead...

Yeah, it's not much but 103 words is better than no words and besides, I got a chance to use the word "olfactory" this morning. THAT alone is worth noting.

Aside from my writing, I'm getting ready to embark on a challenge for myself of reading a short story a day in 2012. First up, the Robert Olen Butler short story "Moving Day" which I believe was the author's first published piece of fiction. I'll have a review for it on January 1, 2012 and then, on January 2, 2012, there will be another short story review. I'm still making my list but I'm excited about the chance to really study the craft of the short story and to also broaden my reading horizons as I finish writing this latest novel.

Silent Nights

I haven't shared any music on my blog so far but I think it's time to change that, particularly in my current state of a certain quiet in my life.

Aldous Huxley hit the nail on the head when he said:


“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

So, to that end, I offer Marble Sounds' "Come Here"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEUrVuP4D_g&feature=related


As the song says, I'm in no hurry...you don't have to worry...come here...

profoundly flawed

Like the exceptional excerpts I've posted here from time to time, quotes will occasionally strike me as not only worthy of memory, but profound for the ability of a given phrase to completely capture an emotion or a fundamental truth about life or love or loss and to capture it in an image that one can't quite forget. I stumbled onto this one today and thought I'd put it in my blog so I wouldn't lose it. It's rather perfect and powerful in its simplicity even if flawed as I'll explain following the quote.


"I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken --and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived."

--Margaret Mitchell

I read this and I picture a vase falling from a mantle and resting in pieces in the floor. It is very true that the best thing to do with that vase is to throw the pieces away and replace it with a new one, particularly when putting it back together with glue would not not only require too much work, but when it would leave the vase looking damaged or irreparably fragile.

But, what if the vase is an antique, part of a set of World War I china that your grandmother's first love brought back from the war? It was unique and beautiful and it held its own on the mantle among the other flashier and newer pieces. It can't be replaced. It can't be. Mending it is all one can do...that is, if the vase is this kind of vase, the kind you won't likely find again even if a duplicate exists out there in the world. So you pick up those pieces and you glue them back together. You do this so others can see the scarred beauty of the vase. That way, no one forgets it was there once upon a time on the mantle and that it was glorious.

433

So...my life got in the way for a few days but I'm up this morning and I've written 433 words. Today was mostly dialogue but it was important dialogue. Here's a snippet:

“All brawn and no brains. Well, some brains, enough to know when to get out of the rain at least. Neither of them were ever any good at carrying an umbrella if you know what I mean.”

“Enough with the metaphors.”

“Metaphors are easier. Try using a simile sometime. It’s like…”


Anyway...that is enough on this portion of my novel. It's coming along nicely now. I hope to add some more later today but with Christmas fast approaching, I'm not sure when I'll have the time. If I can squeeze in even 30 minutes it will be worth it and I need something to be worth it these days.

up and coming

It's official. I'm now in a book club. I've joined a writing group. I've already booked reservations and tickets for three different literary festivals this coming Spring. I'll get to mingle with Margaret Atwood, Pat Conroy, Stephen King, Geraldine Brooks, and Jamie Ford to name but a few.

I've started crafting my 2012 reading list based on these authors to ensure that I'm ready for the talk, whatever talk it is that I'll have a chance to have with them about their writing, their lives, and their plans for future works. Having corresponded and shared with several novelists now over the past year, there is no question that I am inspired by these interesting and different voices and as much as I love to read...THIS IS MY WRITING YEAR!


And...I'm still actively writing on my sixth novel. So, I'm up and coming myself...it's not just events for me these days. My inner life is turning the corner and now my voice is what I'm looking for. My voice is what I must find.

544

I didn't get to write yesterday but I did manage 544 words this evening and I plan on getting in some more in the morning to make up for lost writing time. Even so, the words tonight were solid words even if there isn't a word I can point to that needs special inclusion in this post. This was more of an overall 544 words good feeling than a feeling about any of the individual words and that's okay. I'm still writing. It's what I can do.

a new word

Interestingly, while writing tonight on my work in progress, I went to my trusty thesaurus in search of a nice synonym for the word "nonchalance" because it just didn't seem to fit my character. What I stumbled onto was this word:

insouciance


Yeah, I hadn't heard of this word either. Turns out, and it may seem obvious from the way the word is spelled, that this word is derived from French word "soucier" which means "to trouble or disturb" which means that the word insouciance basically means "not toubled by" ie...nonchalant

Now why nonchalance is the word most people are familiar with and not this word is a mystery to me and one I'm not willing to spend more time on than I have just now in researching this new word in the first place. Even so, I'm at least putting this note in my blog since it's always nice to add a new word to my vocabulary and to the possibilities of what I can do on the page by using it.

(thought I'm totally not using it in my novel...no way, it't nothing my character would dream of using in a sentence :) )

Taking Notice

It was one of those things to take note of, the choice to use the spare upstairs bathroom at my sister's house, a bathroom that is bare except for the soap dispenser on the white counter, the toilet paper on the roll and a book resting on the top of the tank of the toilet...no hand towels or rugs even, just the soap, the toilet paper, and this book so of course, I noticed the book. It was the only thing that didn't belong there.

And this book looked familiar. It was an anthology of American Literature and I could have sworn it was my book but I couldn't be sure so I opened it up and there, on the back inside cover was my name, my maiden name. That told me the book was one I'd had during my first two years of college and the beauty of this book was that in the margins of so many pages were my words too. Comments, questions, references to other parts of the same story or poem or to other poets or authors altogether. There were question marks, asterisks, underlined passages and passages I'd stricken through. And while I'd folded down several pages in the anthology, there was only one bookmark. That bookmark was a small rectangle of blue cardstock that I vividly remember using at an old video store I worked in during college. We made our own post-its if you will from this blue paper and for me, I'd made a bookmark of it. Again, this was out of place in this book with mostly folded pages so, like the book itself, I took notice.

The page that was marked was an Anne Sexton poem "For My Lover, Returning to his Wife" and while I do not have a recollection of the poem as a whole from reading it before, I quickly read through the poem and found the passage that I am certain resulted in my bookmarking this one page in the middle of a thousand pages. It is the final blow as I like to call it, the slamming of the door at the end of the poem that did it for me, that does it for me still:


I give you back your heart.
I give you permission --
for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound --
for the burying of her small red wound alive --
for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call --
the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.



So I read this last night and I've thought about it some more today, about why this poem would come back to me now. But I see it. I took notice. I am a watercolor. I. Wash. Off.

78

I got in 78 words so far this morning after waking up LATE after being up LATE...long night here but a lovely night. It's nice to feel a little bit of me returning. I'll glady exchange a small amount of happy for less words. At least for now.

word used: appetite

This is another of my favorite words to say and to watch someone say. The eyes can never let the mouth be the only one that enjoys the saying of it.

:)

the mighty albatross

Stranger things have happened I assure you but, tonight, as I drove my sister home from the airport to visit family, I swerved on a small bridge to avoid a disturbingly large bird. Now, in rural north Florida, one expects to be on the lookout for deer or possum or the occasional wolf or bobcat but a bird of this size?

No.

No.


It was a strange and foreboding sort of event but as I've said, stranger things have happened. But, I am convinced it was an albatross and because I associate the bird with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I'm so glad I didn't actually hit the bird. I have enough going on in my life right now. I don't need something else dragging me down.


Seriously though, this bird was HUGE.

*shudders*

a "small town"

There are many Southerners who claim to have been raised in "a small town" but until you've been born in Graceville, Florida and raised in Bonifay, Florida, they wouldn't understand my definition of "small" and wouldn't comprehend why it irks me to hear so many claim to know what it's like to actually live in that kind of a world.

Born: Graceville, Florida, 1977, population less than 2,000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graceville,_Florida


Lived: Bonifay, Florida, through 2000, population 4,078

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonifay,_Florida



I lived it, 20 years of it and I came out on the other side and I'm proud of my rural roots for the life it gave me and the life it pushes me to lead now. It's because I come from "a small town" that I am the writer I am, the mother I am, the lawyer I am. It's because I see opportunity and I know what it's like to not have it or to think you don't h ave it. But I see it now and I can't look back because I know what waits for me if I do.

1,358 and more research

Yes, the number above is correct...I was up at 1 am writing so these words are going on today's word count ticker...it was an emotional rollercoaster of a writing session that also involved some quick research that turned into a fascinating flashback about a time when my character harvested pomegranates. I'm extremely proud of my words from this morning for both the words themselves and for my ability to push through my own issues and the moment of those issues to make my story shine.

word from this morning: noose


This story is only just getting started.

Marcel Proust...yeah...I'm going there...

So, this French novelist is well known, blah blah blah...but he is more than that. He is one of THE most quotable phenoms to emerge from French literature or I'd venture, from literature...period. Here is an example that hits close to home these days:

"Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind."

If I take this quote to heart, which honestly is hard not to do when one considers not only how accurate his statement is but how perfectly he puts it, I find myself searching for some sentiment to counter it, to convince myself that maybe he got it wrong and later corrected his statement after living life or experiencing love. But no, this is what we get:

"We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full."


Basically, what Proust is saying is that not only is it okay to grieve, but it is better to grieve and suffer than to be happy in that it's a choice to a certain extent. Mind over body. Some choose the body, others choose the mind. I wonder what Proust would have to say about the act of the choosing.

still thinking on this...but thinking on this is shaping what I'm writing tonight...maybe now is the time to throw in a little French for good measure

552 with excerpt

This morning was a good morning with 552 words. I LOVE what I wrote this morning and what it means to the story as a whole, how it moves the story along. Instead of posting just a word from the piece, today, I'm posting an excerpt that I feel is a sort of miniature turning point in the story:

When I reach the hospital, I pull into the parking lot of a neighboring party supply store. I get out of my car and I’m just starting to walk when a gust of wind rips a bouquet of green and orange balloons from the handle across the front door. Children scatter and jump, grasping for the dangling ribbons but only one small boy is successful. I watch him for a moment and imagine myself into his life, into the sort of innocent wonder and unadulterated abandon that compelled him to leap and reach for a drifting balloon in the first place. He doesn’t know it yet, I think and wish there was someone to tell it to, but he won’t always catch the balloon. Sometimes the strings just aren’t long enough.

307

a word for the morning: divert

307 words today...at least I'm still writing...

222

This morning there were 222 words in me. That I was able to put them on the page is astonishing given my last few days and lack of sleep. But, it is done.

One of those words: intermingling


Tonight, there will be more words, I hope. I'm approaching 30,000 now on my current work in progress. As long as I'm still moving toward a finished novel on a daily basis, I'm keeping at it and I won't quit for fear of what that means moving forward.


As the great Vince Lombardi said, "Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit."

581

I've gotten in 581 words this morning and I've been writing for an hour and a half straight. While I could write some more this morning, I think I may instead snuggle up with a cup of coffee and two novels that I'm currently reading and try to knock those out before my girls wake up. Today is gingerbread house making do so I have to be prepared for full on kid time when it gets here. :)

In any event, a word I used today is: tenacity

This also happens to be one of my favorite words of all time and I'm glad it found a place in my novel today.

984

I got up super early today because I had to write. There was no way I could have stayed in bed. So, I hopped out of bed, made a pot of coffee and sat down at my laptop. I wrote the first 350 words that first hour. Then, I took a break and washed a sink full of dishes and cleaned up a little in my living room. Then, I sat back down and wrote for another hour and got out another 175 words or so. Took another break when my 3 year old woke up and I made her some pancakes and turned on her Saturday morning cartoons while she waited for my 6 year old to wake up. After that, I sat back down and now, I've written another 400 words or so, brining my total for this morning to 984 words and I'm very proud of the ones I got in this morning.

My word for the day that I used is: murky

:)

You gotta love the adjectives you can use to describe water...sooooo many possibilities!

120

I got in 120 really good words this morning...really good ones, and I managed to use the word "chromatograph" which makes me feel AWESOME on this fine Friday morning. Yes, it being Friday helps too.

Tonight, I plan on adding hopefully another 1,000 words to catch up for what has been a slow week for me.

Happy writing all!

an ebook virgin

I did it. It was my first time. I downloaded an ebook today and it felt FANTASTIC!!!!

Now...hopefully the book will deliver the goods and not disappoint. The novel is called "Fall of the Birds" by Bradford Morrow and it's a short novel which is all that I'm willing to commit to for the time being, at least online anyway. This may be a very complicated relationship I'm entering into with the electronic world but I'm ready to take the plunge.

I'll post later to share whether this experience was indeed mind-blowing!

73

Well, I only got in 73 words this morning but, since I got in another 77, I'll pretend I wrote 150 words this morning. Tonight, I need to kick it in gear. Even so, I'm happy I wrote something.

Word used today: quiet

talk about a word with layers and layers of meaning that can't really be replaced by a better word

:(

179

I got in 179 words this morning. Among those words was the word "funnel cake." It's good that I got these words in this morning or else I'd have craved one of the very things I wrote about. Just another reason that my early morning writing regimen is paying off.

Writing to lose weight...now there is a diet I can live by.

Getting My Pulitzer On

I just ordered Jennifer Egan's 2011 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "A Visit from the Goon Squad" and 2010 winner Paul Harding's short novel "Tinkers"

Hopefully, I'll get my copy of "A Visit from the Goon Squad" signed in February by the wonderful Ms. Egan. For now, it's reading time.

100 Notable Books of 2011

I'm glad to see that Charles Baxter's "Gryphon" made it onto the list this year. I have my copy ready to go for my 2012 reading. It's never too late to return to this author's writing and it's been since this summer since I last enjoyed his work.

The link is here for anyone interested to see who else hit the top 100

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/books/review/100-notable-books-of-2011.html?_r=1

a writing sample

This is from my current WIP...the aimless wandering of a lost soul...but things are about to get better for her, my character's name is Madge. Madge is about to turn a corner...I can feel it:



Where I go when I can’t go to him is a silent place, a place that controls my emotions in a noisy and unpredictable way but that moves my body quietly from one room to another in search of empty coffee mugs that might still have a trace of his taste on them. It’s something like gravity, the way his absence magnetizes everything around me. I’m drawn to the comb in the bathroom drawer that reminds me of the way he says he wore his hair in the seventh grade, slicked back with Murray’s pomade because his mama said it made him look like Rhett Butler. I’m pulled into the closet where his shoes are unlaced as always, and I have to touch the tongue because I can see his fingers there now fussing with the leather to ensure a proper fit. The sink where he shaved and where he stopped shaving because I asked him to. It smells of the Old Spice he preferred over the kiddie stuff and I’m sniffing and sniffling because my body can’t let it go. My south to his north. My presence. Here. Now. His absence, a force I can’t resist.

daily

Someone once told me that writing daily is the key to writing...and it's not one of things that you really have to be told in order to know it but even so, knowing it and doing it are two different things.

So, I'm committing myself to every day, to writing every day and to reading every day as well because I don't believe one will hurt the other. I am going to come to my blog and log the number of words and also my favorite word from among them. It will challenge me to make sure I keep my story interesting and fresh and whether it's 47 words or 470, they'll be good words because I'm holding myself accountable.

So, with that said, this morning I've put in 421 words. One word that was used was "marshall" and I realize that doesn't give away much about what the story is about but that's fine. Every story is made up of one word added to another word until you have sentences that combine with sentences to make paragraphs. And, for the sake of daily writing, I'm happy with the word because it is on the page now. I just need to keep adding more words until my story is complete.

Doctor's Orders

For anyone who knows me, they'd know of my fascination with Dr. Seuss aka Theo Lesieg aka Theodor Seuss Geisel

Today, with everything going on in my life and with everything not going on in my life, this quote rings true and is something I need to hold onto:

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

This will be a struggle for me on many levels but I'm trying and lucky for me, I'm not a quitter.

Poe's sonnets

So, Edgar Allen Poe is not known for his sonnets. He only ever wrote 5 of them. But, a discussion of the one he penned in either 1840 or 1845 titled "Silence" deserves a spot in my blog for sure. And it's a lovely sad piece from Poe which is perhaps expected. But in my opinion, this sonnet loses its steam in the last few lines but is totally worthy of note for these:

There are some qualities--some incorporate things,
That have a double life, which thus is made
A type of that twin entity which springs
From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.
There is a two-fold Silence--sea and shore--
Body and Soul. One dwells in lonely places,



This passage is packed full of depth and darkness and it makes me want to sit outside in the fading daylight and stare into the deep blue ocean while listening to the wind at my back on the shore. It reminds me of a novel I finished recently aptly titled "Ocean Sea" where the Italian novelist Alessandro Baricco beatifully paints the same picture through fable-like narratives, all of them focused on the sheer life force that is...the sea.

Living near the water, this passage of Poe's struck me when I ran across it today. So I shared it here to bookmark it for my future musing.

The Jew of Malta

Last night, while doing some reading, I was reminded of the class I took in college on Renaissance drama, ie, the non-Shakespeare class. We read a combination of Chrisopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson plays and after thumbing through my books, I noticed that I'd heavily highlighted and asterisked several sections from Marlowe's
"The Jew of Malta"

Notably, at the beginning is the telling phrase "there is no sin but ignorance" with which Machiavel introduces the play's leading man, Barabus.

I guess this was the 16th century Marlowe-esque prequel to today's "ignorance is bliss"

I'm not sure why this is sticking with me but it is. Does this mean it is sinful to be happy? No, that can't be. I think if you combined these two ideas you could say that it is sinful or dangerous to be blindly happy to the exclusion of reality. Now what one's reality is? That's a different post altogether and I'm afraid Mr. Marlowe can't help with that.

how can I explain it???

Coincidence: a remarkable concurrence of events without explanation


This needs to be broken down a bit for me to properly address the situation.


Remarkable: striking, noteworthy

Concurrence: simultaneousness

Explanation: a statement or account that makes something clear

hmmmm...yeah, I'm scratching my head too and here's why

In the fourth novel I wrote...the main female character is named Stephanie Friedman...and the novel centers around whether she will make a fateful flight back to her small town in Florida for a funeral...it's a long story but bear with me.

So, I'm in the Denver airport this past Friday and I'm waiting in the line for security when over the loud speakers I hear:

"Stephanie Friedman, please report to your gate. Your flight is departing in 5 minutes. Stephanie Friedman. Please report to your gate at this time. Your flight will be departing shortly."

I was floored. It was her name, the exact name and it was the setting, the exact setting in which my character found herself and which serves as the crux of the novel. Coincidence? Absolutely...without explanation? Maybe not. I'm looking at this as a sign to step up my efforts to get that novel published. At the very least, I'll have a great story to share with my readers once it's all said and done.


For now, I'm still mulling it over, finding it hard to believe even if I can fashion a hopeful explanation.

lunch break reading

I picked up my copy of "Weegee Stories" today to do some lunchtime reading. In this collection of short shorts, Robert Olen Butler captures the spirit of a woman's inner yearning for life and the accompanying struggle perfectly. While there is a lot more going on than just this, I feel this is a valid point to be examined and for me to document for my own purposes in dealing with these same issues.

For readers interested in what I mean, take a peek at "Christine Matheson" The narrator says at the conclusion of the short short, "let me live in my body and just paint" and it's briliant. It makes me want to pick up a brush and start.

Then there's "Dorothy White" where the narrator is enraptured with strong feelings and says "I am inside my body and outside my body" and while I'm not sure I see this sentiment in the photo itself, the sentiment still resonates from the story. It's as if she is saying, it's okay for me to scream every once in a while. It's okay if that's what it takes to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged. She is saying "look at me" but what she wants us to see is that she is engaging in the scream. The sound and tone and pitch and length of it don't matter. What matters is that she's done it.

In "Mary Simmons" the narrator starts "make me a pallet on your floor" and goes on to express her desire for this man she's set her sights on and it's sensual and stated in a way that a woman understands, in a way she thinks. It, like "Christine Matheson" encapsulates a sort of desperation that is subtle and almost always there in the way a woman needs.

This is shown perhaps best in the short short "Louise Brecht" which is a companion to the "David Brecht" one. Read by itself, "Louise Brecht" is heartbreaking...with lines like "weary I drift, my eyes puffy from crying, and I try to make out the trees in the dark and he used to kiss me under those trees", the reader is drawn inside the aching spirit of the narrator and all because she is mourning over the loss of a kiss or of the man who would kiss her that way. But...read alongside the "David Brecht" short, the image takes on a much darker and deeper portrayal of the misunderstandings that make women fight for their own inner lives even more. His ends with "I wish to hell I knew what this was all about" while hers ends with "you come home and you don't give me a kiss, you don't even say a word" This is also one where the photo that accompanies the story is perfect and memorable and in my opinion, the best of the collection.

Weegee Stories can be purchased online at http://www.narrativemagazine.com/store/book/weegee-stories

quotably noted

I discovered this quote today from a Brian Morton book entitled "Breakable You" that I've just ordered off Amazon.

“What you are is a complicated girl with simple needs. You need your books and time to read, and you need a few friends and you need someone-not to take care of you, but to care for you. If you have all those things, you'll always be alright.”


This is just lovely and I thought it needed a place to live on my blog so, here it is.

up early

It's amazing to me how clearly I think in the mornings when I'm up early writing. Is it that my house is quiet or that I have a sense of the day ahead of me? That I don't feel like I'm running out of time? Or is it that morning is where my words live?

The name of my blog hints at that but until this morning, I didn't think about my words living in a space other than in my mind and spirit. Today though, I feel like my words live in the morning and here is what my morning has given me so far:


“Don’t do this,” I say even though I know that sparing him won’t change how he feels. He’s always been annoyed with me trying to dull the pain by talking it away. That what the drugs are for, he’d say. Don’t waste one of your words much less a sentence on it.



Yes, this is out of context but this paragraph is something I'm proud of in and of itself and also for what it means to my story as a whole. Now...back to getting those morning words in.

Updated Reading

As promised, here is where I've been and where I'm headed with my reading as the year comes to a close:

READ:


23. A Moveable Feast-Ernest Hemingway
24. Silk-Alessandro Baricco
25. Swallow-DM Thomas
26. Seize the Day-Saul Bellow
27. The Pleasure of My Company-Steve Martin
28. Eleven Minutes-Paolo Coelho
29. Alleys of Eden-Robert Olen Butler
30. The Deep Green Sea-Robert Olen Butler
31. The Folded Leaf-William Maxwell
32. Venus in Furs-Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
33. Starting Out in the Evening-Brian Morton
34. On Distant Ground-Robert Olen Butler
35. Sun Dogs-Robert Olen Butler
36. A Window Across the River-Brian Morton
37. Ocean Sea-Alessandro Baricco
38. Edisto-Padgett Powell

READING:

158 Pound Marriage-John Irving


TO READ:

Soul Thief-Charles Baxter
Master and Margarita-Bulgakov
Nemesis-Philip Roth

Change

I haven't maintained this blog like I promised I would but it's Thanksgiving Day and I can't help but want to find a space to thank all of the writers who have inspired me and moved me to write, to read, and to live.


From March through October, that person was Robert Olen Butler. Everything he wrote and still writes makes me want to write better, makes me want to experience life more. But, things change and people change and for those reasons, we go in search of new writers or new feelings to replace the old ones and we hope we aren't disappointed because if we are, the old feelings won't fade. It's like how many of Butler's characters, particularly in the Vietnam novels, go from woman to woman, proud of themselves for being faithful for the time that they're faithful, cherishing every moment even if only for a few days or a few weeks. It's their commitment to an idea or a person, the fact that the commitment can even occur, that seems to enliven his characters. From David Fleming searching for his lost son in "On Distant Ground" to Ira Holloway embracing his own martyrdom in "They Whisper," the characters love but they love in their own ways until they can't handle it anymore.

It's that way with reading and maybe it's that I'm getting fickle now that I've turned 34. Or maybe it's that I am trying to allow myself the variation that others so freely engage in. With reading, it's no different. So, because it's Thanksgiving Day, I thank Robert Olen Butler for waking the reader in me and for giving me the courage to read someone else now. I will update my reading list soon to reflect where his fiction fit into my life.


But, right now, Brian Morton is that variation person for me. I'm reading "A Window Across the River" and I'm once again blown away by how sensitive he is to the artist's predicament of how to maintain human connections without letting those connections alter one's art. Can an artist be true to himself and love at the same time? How does love shape what that artist can know and how that artist can express what he knows?

Since reading his novel "Starting out in the Evening" in September, a phrase from the novel has stuck with me and I can't shake it. It's this and I paraphrase:

"Loving someone is not about giving her what she wants, it's about giving her the extras."

On this Thanksgiving day, I'm grateful for Mr. Morton's writing. It's the extra something I've been needing and I recommend it for anyone else in search of the same.