Archive | April 2015

Dedicated to the memory of my old friend

Apr20

TIME AND OTHER NONSENSE

Once upon a time in a long forgotten land, I had one phone number and an email address, both of which I shared with my entire immediate family…

A couple of amazing things happened to me over the past weeks. First, under pressure from a well-meaning sibling and my daughter, who both insisted that I MUST open a Facebook account or be forever excluded from all communication with them, I started a #%!!#! account. I struggled my way through the setup, which included having to delete several mistakes (you don’t want to know how many) then added a fan page for my book, PERSEPHONE IN HELL. You can find a link to my Facebook page on this site – please take a look at it, it was so much work – I’m begging you! Several hundred grey hairs later, I now have three email accounts, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and this blog. Plus a smartphone that bleeps and buzzes and texts me all day long. I now have to bring my cell into the can with me so I won’t miss the latest blinking green light that indicates an important contact is attempting to be made. Did I forget anything? Today a so-called friend told me that I should set up an Instagram account too. I officially have no time for any other occupation or avocation, such is my preoccupation with this social media world.

But on to the good news. I’ve been discovered! No, not by Houghton Mifflin or Harper Collins or a Hollywood agent. Discovered by an entity far more significant than a mere publisher or movie producer. I’ve been discovered by my high school class reunion committee!

They found me on Facebook. And here, I’d successfully hidden from them for all these many (too many to count or admit to) years. Somehow, they hunted me down. They found me out. They called my name and surprise (this is the other amazing thing), I am pleased. Every emotion in the world has run through me since a nice woman named Alice found me out. I am humbled and shocked by the attention they’ve shown me. I’m amazed they remember me, that some think fondly of me; that some even like me. Who knew? I didn’t. I spent many years being scared of my past. I blocked out as much as I could until the emotions of my teenage years came screaming back in my writing.

In this passage from my novel, Ancient Glory returns after 40 years to end the story. Glory the teenager has had a rough time of it. She believes that everyone hates her. She’s lost all her friends and the love of her older sister, and thinks that even Mother Nature is out to get her. She despises herself. She needs the comfort and support of knowing that she will somehow survive. She gets it from Ancient Glory…

“And scars will lighten, they’ll pale unless you keep rubbing at them. Best to let them be, let them fade away in their own good time, in their own difficult and savage, cruelly dissonant way. Wait long enough, they’ll fade – it’s the law of nature.”

That’s what I did. I let enough time pass from my troubled youth for my scars to fade. They have lightened, so much so that when I got the call from that nice woman named Alice, I could answer with a hesitant but happy heart.

With many thanks to my old chums.

This posting is dedicated to the memory of my old friend Tom, who tragically could not find the strength to let enough time pass for his own wounds to heal. Tom, if only we could go back in time…

A Waiting Game

Apr9
 CALMLY RANDOM

It takes solid perspective and a certain maturity to wait. Waiting for something good to happen, like getting an offer for a better job or a HarperCollins editorial review. Waiting for your children to grow up and become independent adults. Waiting to retire to start living. Waiting for the next phase of your life to begin. Truth be told, I’ve never been a patient person. To wait is to hope for life to be better one day. To wait is to wish for an improved future. One day…I’ll get that Mini Cooper I’ve always wanted…my novel will be published…thousands, no millions of people will buy and appreciate my book…those extra pounds will disappear…I’ll buy my luxury city condo and that isolated cave by the salty sea…I’ll make my living by writing.

Hope. It’s a waiting game. Some find hope easy to come by, while others like me get annoyed and impatient, bored and dissatisfied with the endless infinity of a disembodied future. But Ancient Glory takes a practical approach in my novel, PERSEPHONE IN HELL. Forty years after her coming of age, Glory reckons that both hope and impatience are misplaced emotions. Her years have gone by; her life is almost over. It’s time to get real.

“Perhaps I have a bit of a real queen in me after all. Because I decided that I wanted to live. And I’ve learned something, not from all my imaginings and escapes, my fractured histories. I’ve learned there is nothing to be done but accept the explanations. Block out the pain. Go on. Even a queen can only wait so long for good news from across a wide ocean. At some point, she’s got to move on.

And scars will lighten, they’ll pale unless you keep rubbing at them. Best to let them be, let them fade away in their own good time, in their own difficult and savage, cruelly dissonant way. Wait long enough, they’ll fade – it’s the law of nature.”

Wait long enough…no, that’s Ancient Glory. That’s not impatient, impulsive, impetuous me.

 

Morning Has Broken

Apr5

CALMLY RANDOM

This morning my phone rang at 8 o’clock and woke me up. Out of a deep sleep. On a Saturday, which is one of my two sacred days of morning rest. No one messes with my sleep on a Saturday morning – no one. It’s my sabbath, n’es pas? I value my sleep so much that when my kids were small (and I mean prop-up-in-baby-carrier small) I’d stick them at the end of my bed with bowls of Cheerios and let them watch TV for hours at a time – Bozo the Clown, The Magic of Oil Painting, Jack LaLane. Anything that was on TV on a Saturday morning at 5 a.m. was fair game so long as I could sleep through it. Call me a bad mother, I don’t care. I needed my sleep then; I need it now.

This unflagging self-centeredness reminds me of my character Joyce, Glory’s mother in PERSEPHONE IN HELL, You’ll recall that while Glory craves beauty and power in her fantasy queendom, all Joyce wants is to be Cleopatra and sail down the Nile by herself with no one to mess with her. In this scene, Joyce is smoking in bed on a hot and humid Sunday morning.

“Joyce propped herself up in bed and looked around the room at the piles of her beloved books. They were mostly science fiction. She liked books better than she liked most people, maybe even better than her own kids. In fact her books were like her children in many ways. She treated them the same. Just like her kids, her books were not well kept. Not put properly back on the shelf at night, not always read cover to cover or contents appreciated.

Rather, Joyce’s books were dumped in piles surrounding her. Some with torn covers, others fallen behind the bookcase, pages splayed open with coffee stains. Or in a corner, dust covered and crawling with daddy long legs.

When she chose a book to read, she would devour it with pure pleasure. Nothing else would matter. Then, she’d throw it onto the discard pile where it would lie unseen, quite literally for years.”

Sleep, science fiction, kids…what deep dreams are made of.

PS The call was not important.

 

 

 

High Expectations

Apr1

DREAMS AND MELANCHOLY

Spring tulips and daffodils

Spring tulips and daffodils

Over the years I’ve set some high standards for myself, goals that became more like self-imposed requirements than ideals to strive for. College, graduate school, a healthy family, a beautiful home, a satisfying career. I’ve worked hard and achieved most of those goals I set out to attain.

I’m wondering though, why I think all these accomplishments aren’t enough. Maybe it’s the Chinese fortune cookie I picked out of a takeout bag that has me yearning for more. ‘Your success will astonish everyone’ it said. Perhaps I expect greatness from myself. I crave brilliance. I’m disappointed with my mere competence and above average show. It’s a personality flaw of the highest degree. One of my sisters said it well – “I’m happy with the small things in life,” she said, “while you are not. That’s the difference between us.”

In PERSEPHONE IN HELL, Glory has just named her sister Queen Penny the Good for saving their tiny brother Davey from a car fire at the dump. But somehow, Penny can’t accept the title. Fear that she is not good enough invades even her nightmares.

“Penny woke up with a start. Tears streamed down her face. Her little sister Kit was dead, in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. She couldn’t save her. She had saved Davey but she couldn’t save Kit. Penny was heartbroken. She knew she would never be good enough, not for this family with their high expectations.

But she couldn’t save everyone – how could they expect it of her? She was only a girl herself, not a queen or anyone’s mother. I’m not Penny the Good, she thought. Not good or brave or strong. She hated her family for imposing this burden. Hated herself for her inferiority, for not being able to live up to their ideals.”

Where does this burden of expectation come from? It’s a load so weighty it can rob a young girl of the very desire to live. A goal so high it becomes a dream destroyer. A demand so insidious it paralyzes with fear of failure. I do this to myself, I know I do. I couldn’t save my brother from taking his own life. A personality flaw in the highest.

Is there greatness in me? Is there greatness in me?