Category: writing

Buying dirty books

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rossmurray1's avatarDrinking Tips for Teens

The last thing you expect when you go to Old Orchard Beach in Maine on the long Labour Day weekend is to keep your sanity. The second-last thing you expect, among the tourists, souvenir shops, fried-everything stands and carnival rides, is a book store. But there it is, right on the strip. Granted, it’s full of remaindered books, and you have to dodge the caricaturist parked at the entrance, but it’s a little bit of paradise among the bikinis. Incidentally, if you’re looking for something called Paradise Among the Bikinis, you’re in the wrong kind of store.

But I did find a dirty book. Tucked into the row of fiction was a book by one of my favourite authors, Nicholson Baker. His novel, The Mezzanine, is particularly good. It’s set entirely during a ride up an escalator. Baker writes a type of fiction in which not much physical action…

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What I’ve Seen…Reaching 60

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Arteyes

Tomorrow is my birthday. It’s a big one. Sixty. At this auspicious moment I am wondering how the hell did this many years pass so ridiculously fast?

When my kids were young teens itching to do something they weren’t ready for yet, I would get out the construction tape measure. I would lay it out to 100 inches and chalk where their ages fell and how long their wait really was to participate in the activity that eluded them. Then I would point down the line to how many more times they could do that forbidden thing in the one hundred or so years they had to live their lives. It made the two inches from 14 to 16, when their driver’s license would come seem like the paltry eye blink that it was.

Looking back down my own line of numbers, already passed, I am embracing my million moments that drew together to make me. Gathered knowledge is just hoarding thoughts until you share it. For what it’s worth, these are some of the things I have seen.

Even if you grew up watching shows like Friends and assuming adulthood would be a constant coffee klatch with your across the hall neighbors, you will spend most of your time alone in this life. Unless you are conjoined, this is the way of the world. And if you can’t be at peace in your times of solitude, why in the hell would you think other people would be interested in spending time with you either? Learn shit. Get interested and then you will be interesting-to yourself and to others.

The greatest lesson for young teen abstinence should be the fact that the first person you get naked with will-in all likelihood-not be the last. With the exception of the four couples you will meet who are childhood sweethearts-you will swim into and out of tubs, ponds, raging rivers and oceans of love in all its forms until you find somewhere that becomes your place in the world. That’s where you will build your home- however early or late in life you find it and trying to pitch a tent anywhere else will give temporary shelter and nothing more.

When people close to you lash out it is usually because they want you to love them more than it appears you do. If you pay attention, people will tell you what they want-so listen.

Most people, even the most hardened among us, still have a soft, gooey center and if you are paying attention and listening you can figure out what they love. That is what made them gooey like that in the first place. If they showed you the gooey love, they shared the keys to their castle. Honor that.

There are seven billion people on this planet. When you are not famous, the statistical magic of finding one person who can see you for the blazing light you actually are is a gift rarer then the most expensive gemstone. Own that.

Real love never dies. It only changes shape to accommodate the way you live now.

The secret to happiness is this: figure out what you want and find a way to ask for it.

Love is your own personal experience. It sparks and blooms inside your own head-like a private revelation; a movie only you can see. Even if the object of your affection does not return your ardor with the same intensity or at all, never hold regret for having felt that feeling. To know what love feels like is like visiting the most beautiful place on Earth. Not everyone will go there in their lifetime but you have, and you can tell others what it feels like to stand in the center of all that beauty; what it is to see the blazing light of someone else and have it warm your soul even if it’s just for a moment. It will change you forever; no matter if life or death moves you far away from that other person, it will remain part of who you are now.

What I have seen while I have run, swam, played, danced, loved, fought, created, walked, crawled, bled, cried and laughed my way through the sixty years on planet Earth comes down to this: love. It always comes down to that. And on the last day I get in this life, it will still be about love; who I loved and who loved me.

That is where I have a cave of treasure like Aladdin. I remember all the love my heart has felt. It fills my pens, my brushes, my cooking pots and the large broken parts inside of me. It is my gold.

The Japanese have a practice called Kintsugi. It’s a ceramic pottery ritual where a beloved broken vessel is pieced back together with molten gold used like glue. It gathers the shattered parts together; making it whole again in a new and beautiful way.

Today, I will visualize all the love I’ve known as gold and let it fill the cracks and broken parts of me to make me whole like the day I was born only different…better. It will be my private gift to myself; the strengthening of my weak places. What I’ve seen in my sixty years has been a kaleidoscope of wonder and I am filled with anticipation as the curtain rises on the next act.
kintsugi bowl

Poetry Day: Word Rescue

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oubliette-st-y-nyll-wales-uk-by-capt-gorgeous-fcc

Word Rescue

I’ll fling my words to you
like fragrant flowers at your feet
your head down again
you might
notice them-
Words like silver death stars to your heart
thrown on still night air
over soft linen
to kill your drowning doubt-
adamantine chain of words
fashioned
down –
to your hand
an escape route
from your perfect oubliette
that you have made
your lonesome home

Water Lilies ~

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I adore these flowers. More for the fact that they fight their way up through mud and darkness to reach for sun. Even more that their roots are an interconnected world we do not see. As we all are…as we all should be.

Maverick ~'s avatarMaverick Mist

20140601-IMG_0462
“It took me time to understand my waterlilies. I had planted them for the pleasure of it;
I grew them without ever thinking of painting them. ” – Claude Monet.

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Poetry Day: Cactus Flower

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cactus flower art

Cactus Flower

Creamy cactus flower
bouquet out of reach
guarded earnestly
there will be no souvenirs
lucid dreaming carries me
off to somewhere else
til I’m half a step removed
a movie out of sync
as what I was and who I am
come close to touching hands
for just one golden moment
time slows in its dance
and then once again
I am standing in that desert
looking at a chance
that the world ahead
held a certain sign
your heart beating next to mine
for a breath or two
it was me and you
then time rushed ahead
regained its bruising pace
in this dreaming place
and I was looking at your face
the same yet different now
silvered round the brow
though eyes will never change
a lifetime passed between
what you meant to me
and who you are to someone else
but for just one golden moment
time slowed in its dance
until what I was and who I am
were almost touching hands –
they left a blossom on my palm
an offering from my past
a single creamy flower
plucked from a cactus tower
message clear and plain-
an exchange for all my rain

The Right Word

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ingridsundberg's avatarIngrid's Notes

Mark Twain Quote Mark Twain famously once said “the difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter – it is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.”

As writers it’s important to know that we’re more than storytellers, we are wordsmiths! Every word we type has potential to do more than convey character and plot. Our words can also deepen the mood and emotional resonance in our novels.

Ilsa J. Bick is a master of this technique. In her apocalyptic zombie novel, Ashes, Bick intensifies each page with the danger of her world through the use of aggressive words. In the following examples Bick uses the violent words of: slash, spear, and pierced, to describe otherwise peaceful images.

ashes_sales-1“She registered the slash of morning sun in an already too-bright and very cold room…” (301).

“She heard the creak of Tom’s footsteps overhead, and a 

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The First Three Chapters of the Sci-Fi Romantic Comedy, ARC…

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I’ve been working hard on my novel, Arc and rewriting it from a different point of view. Have you ever done that? Hammered out tens of thousands of words and then had the forehead slapping realization that the wrong person is telling this particular story? Yeah. It sucks. But better stuff comes after the weeds are pulled.

Anyway, I’ve decided to follow in the new tradition of putting larger portions of a novel out there for people to read, so here you go. The first three chapters of Arc. Enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Click away Dear Readers….

https://wordninjagirl.com/appetizer-menu-a-little-taste-of-arc/

Joss Whedon & the Space Station

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You know the question about what famous person, living or dead you would want to be stranded with on the Space Station for a month? Joss Whedon. That’s my pick.

This guy is a veritable horn of plenty that delivers a continuous stream of scripts and characters and storylines that capture my imagination every time.

It wouldn’t be like being stuck with someone who can barely create their own life. Being stuck out there with Joss would be more like him, me and the hundreds of stories that he’d have just squatting in his head.

Add mine to the mix and an endless supply of tasty food items and we’d be good. 

Yeah. I pick Whedon. Who do you pick?

 

 

 

Oasis

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Oasis in dp

I-90 runs through Illinois and just off the Mt. Prospect road exit was a place that meant something to a lot of us that grew up in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. It wasn’t a beautiful place, just a typical 1950’s utilitarian brick and glass, I-could-easily- be-transformed-into-a-minimum-security-prison…or-a-school, design. It was the Des Plaines Oasis, a road side rest stop/restaurant/and well known gathering place for local teens in the wee hours of the night.

Even though you may have never driven I-90 through Des Plaines, you’ve probably seen it. It was the building lit by fire from the flame thrower Carrie Fisher used to torch the Blues Brothers while they made a call in a phone booth. By the time this film was made in the 1970’s, the restaurant had already changed hands from the old Fred Harvey franchise.
Here’s the scene.

They tore it down this past weekend to make way for road widening. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it got me wondering where teens will go now at 3 in the morning to eat waffles and drink gallons of coffee after sneaking out of the house.

Back then, it was the only thing around for anyone under 21 when your munchies sent you into the night in search of a plate of fries and a hot fudge sundae. Everyone I knew wandered through that place at some point on a weekend. Looking at the door in the photo, got me thinking of all the people’s hands that touched that door handle over the past 50 plus years. Friends, lovers, classmates, neighbors and uncountable others; the famous and the civilian suburbanites; they all grabbed that handle and made their way to a leatherette booth where a plastic coated menu awaited their hungry eyes. So many of them are now gone from this world, mixed with the dust of the demolition.

In some less patchouli smelling, eight track dimension of my memory, the words that Izak Dineson wrote in her book (later a movie), Out of Africa rose up again…

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me…?”

All things must pass. Thank you and goodbye, Des Plaines Oasis. You were the scene of many hilarious conversations with friends dear to my heart. And thanks Fred Harvey Restaurant (way back when) for your pencil-stuck-in-their-hairdo servers that let us just hang out when the rest of the world was closed for the night.

Somewhere in the air over where you once stood, there is a shadow of me with waffle syrup stuck on it somewhere. It’s quivering with laughter and humming a song from Tumbleweed Connection.

All things must pass. Gone but not forgotten.

Salt in My Wound

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sea salt

Question: Am I missing out on some sort of secret, super delicious farm salt? Mountain salt, perhaps? Or maybe it’s prairie salt that I should be wanting…

I went to open a box of Triscuits and noticed that the label proudly announced, “Made with sea salt.” Wow. Really?

Technically, all salt is sea salt. Mined salt is nothing but seriously old sea salt that was trapped when the oceans receded from current land masses some 300,000,000 years ago. So… sorry gourmet sea salt peddlers, you’re going to need to come up with a better catch phrase.

That, or maybe I can start bottling and selling Earth Air and Wet Water. Yes, I think I will. Let me get to the patent office before someone steals my idea…………….
And this is what I do to avoid working on the damn speech I’m supposed to be giving this weekend.