Archives

Writer’s Block

Jun13

CALMLY RANDOM

It’s officially happened. To me. To long winded, always-has-too-much-to-say-for-her-own-good-me. I’ve got writer’s block. That infamous condition that happens to writers everywhere and across all time and space. I can’t think of what to write. A few weeks back I started my second novel, tentatively titled “Moses” and wrote the first two chapters plus most of a third. The subtitle is “Delirium”. Maybe that’s the problem. When I started the book I was feeling joyful. I cranked out those chapters in a short time. I was feeling so happy. Then it went away, and along with it, my ability to write about delirium. What happened? I just simply lost the ability to feel good. It happens. I suppose you’ve experienced it once or twice. When a writer loses confidence, especially when the current subject is joy, well…it’s debilitating.

I’ve got to get myself happy again so I can write. I need to finish my new book. I want to feel accomplished, that my life amounts to something beyond mere survival and propagation of the species (of which I’ve already done my fair share.) I want to feel joy, or at least enough contentment with my life to be able to write my stories. That’s oh so important to me.

Meanwhile, I’ve been writing up a storm of poetry which I’m proud of, and that’s a form of happiness in itself. I’m expressing my emotions but not in a linear fashion. It’s not the same as completing a chapter of my book. But it will do, it will have to do for now. I realize that not as many people enjoy poetry or want to understand it as those who read novels. But poetry has real value for me and allows me to cope in this world. I hope you’ll bear with me as I endeavor to figure things out. Maybe a vacation is in order to help clear my head.

 

 

Delirium

Apr22

CALMLY RANDOM

In my posting MELANCHOLIA, I discussed melancholy, a decidedly depressing subject. It was a very important posting for me, and I needed to write it. But who wants to read about sadness all the time? So this week I’ve decided to talk about happiness. Happiness in the extreme. A state of being where a person is giddy with excitement and enveloped in the moment of pure joy. Do you remember the last time you felt deliriously happy?

I’ve searched through PERSEPHONE IN HELL and can’t find a spot of that pure joy for my main character. It’s disturbing that in a story that chronicles two years in the life of a teenage girl, there is not one moment of complete happiness. There is anticipation (when Glory goes out on her first date ever with Billy.) There is sibling horseplay (when Sammy falls out of the closet like a mummy and scares Glory half to death.) There is a delicious sense of trickery (when Glory’s family steals away with buckets of contraband blueberries.) There is delight in young sisters’ play under the gentle pine trees. There is independence and solitude high in the maples branches.

But I can’t come up with one quote on undiluted pleasure. That delirious feeling of first kiss or first love. That sense that the rest of the world doesn’t matter, that only the exchange between lovers is real. Finding one’s soul mate and proclaiming before everyone who matters that the two of you will love each other forever. Or a first look at one’s newborn baby, or the pride one takes in watching a child grow up healthy and happy. Seeing your children off to college and on to independent lives. Getting the news that you got that job you wanted. Travel to Paris. Visiting Monet’s garden at Giverny and Mont Saint Michel in Normandy. Seeing the Coliseum in Rome and the Acropolis in Athens. Using binoculars to view the vast number of stars in the dark Atlantic sky from a deck in a rented home in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Driving to Florida to see the very last space shuttle lift off.

There can be utter joy in connecting with friends both new and old. In celebrating your shared collective remembrances and experiences. In rekindling passions, whether for old friends or loves, or for an interest that used to sweep you away. I remember the joy of singing, the absolute love I had for the stage and for every dimension of bringing a play, musical, or operetta to life before an audience. I recall the applause and how it made me feel alive and worthy. I recall standing behind the tympani, squeezed into a tiny stage at Jordan Hall in Boston while singing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Ode to Joy. My ears rang for days after, but the thrill of participating in that music in that venue was joy I will never forget. Singing Mozart’s Missa Solemnis, the most thrilling music ever written, at Symphony Hall. Handl’s Messiah at Trinity Church, a stunningly beautiful cathedral in my home town of Boston. I sang leading solo parts too: Gueneviere in Camelot, Fiona in Brigadoon, Yum Yum in The Mikado, and others. These were joyous occasions of the most delirious kind.

Right now, I’m feeling a little sorry for Glory. She hasn’t experienced any of these moments. There is nothing that helps her understand how much joy there is to be had in a difficult world. When it finally hits her, this feeling of delirious happiness, she may not know how to cope. She may spiral out of all control. She may not be able to handle the excitement. She may mess everything up.

 

 

The Difficult Season

Jan27

CALMLY RANDOM

icy-branches

In this excerpt from PERSEPHONE IN HELL, Madeline Standish is Glory’s physics teacher. She’s caught Glory daydreaming again; unacceptable for one of God’s chosen people. Glory assures Mrs. Standish that she’ll try harder. Madeline is the quintessential Yankee – tough, proud, and determined to keep all things in their proper place.

“Madeline drew up her papers into a neat stack and erased the formulas on the board. It’s potluck tonight, she remembered. Descendants of the Mayflower night.

She looked out the window. Hope this blasted sleet doesn’t cancel our meeting. The difficult season is upon us. But I pride myself as a true Yank, and a little bad weather won’t change my plans.

She thought of the pickled cabbage dish she’d be bringing for potluck. It was the same dish she’d been making her whole life, following Grandma Prissy’s recipe. Her friend Helen, the home economics teacher, had suggested adding a pinch of cinnamon for excitement. But Madeline was unmoved. No need to change a thing, she thought with unbending conviction. It’s perfect just the way it is.”

To give Madeline credit, an inventive person can go mad waiting for a New England winter to pass. Perhaps those old weary Pilgrims had it right. Best to accept and hunker down, filling any irregular open gaps with a life that could be lived over and over again. Better to block those cold annoying breezy thoughts with considerations that don’t stray outside the norm. To surround oneself with casseroles and company as constant as the steady oaks. With tested deliberations that conquer the difficult season for generation after generation. With hearts all set in a single direction.

With chronic cough and March in the making…

 

 

I Find the World a Wonder

Jan10

CALMLY RANDOM

feet

I find the world a wonder

A place of suspect substance
No weighty exchanges
Only smiles
Wheezing, joking, tickling
Aching sides, laughing
Cameras clicking
Documenting joy
Eyes shining in disbelief
Craving to stand together
To be
To live
And touches of happy caresses
Such touches
Clarity
Euphoria
Transcendent bliss
Most wondrous of all, authentic talk
A marvel, unheard of
In this modern age
Of strategies
Meant to disarm and conquer

None of that

Sorrow and melancholy revealed

Mellowed, rounded
Accepted
With unselfish consideration
With humanity
With tender kindness
None of the horrors of the times
Only a return
To the garden
To desire
To ecstasy
These surreal moments
Of myth-like legend and confident faith
Can’t be real
I must be dreaming
Or wishing
Desperate for the click click
Of the clock to mean anything

Beyond the misery

Wanting this world to exist

Searching for wonder
Poet’s fancy

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Nov28

CALMLY RANDOM

thanksgiving-table-2

I don’t count the pounds anymore as it’s too depressing, but surely I’ve gained a few over the last weeks! What with the whipped cream, maple walnut rolls, turkey with stuffing and gravy and cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with maple syrup, butternut squash with brown sugar, green beans with almonds and mushrooms, corn bread, broccoli with cheese sauce, corn pudding, chocolate raspberry cake, apple pie, and pumpkin pie (not to mention the assorted appetizers, nuts, wine, champagne, and hot mulled cider I consumed), I suppose one could say that I enjoyed the holiday to its fullest! Yes, I handmade from scratch almost everything on that list. Other family members brought the desserts, to give them credit. I am a good cook, probably not a great cook, certainly not a gourmet cook. But I think it all turned out well, very well. We’re still eating the leftovers, and I shall be wearing them proudly on my hips, thighs, and tummy for several months to come!

If you’ve had a chance to read through my book PERSEPHONE IN HELL you’ll find that Glory thinks about food a lot. Her family is poor, there are no luxuries, with six kids in the family one has to move fast to get a fair share. Food in the end is something to remember and savor.

“…let moonlight and soft pines in, blueberries and corn on the cob; strawberries in summer, crisp apples in fall…You’re not too old to run after the ice cream truck, and the breadbox can be clean. It can be full with homemade fudge and devil’s food cake now and again. There’s cinnamon sugared bread for the making.”

Some people eat to live. I live to eat. It’s a cliche but true. In a world that sometimes seems uncontrollable, hard, even cruel, a fine meal can keep a person’s spirits strong. Good food – Mother Nature’s finest work.

 

Blog Night

Jun8

CALMLY RANDOM

Captain's chair - wish I had one of these!

Star Trek captain’s chair – wish I had one of these!

 

It’s Friday night again. Friday night is blog night. Sometimes it’s pizza night too, or sub (grinder, hoagie, submarine sandwich, whatever you call it) night. Once in a while, Friday is Chinese takeout night, though that’s usually reserved for Saturdays. When I was a young adult, Friday was going out on the town night. I wouldn’t have stayed home in front of a computer for anything. Of course, home computers hadn’t been invented then. But the point is not how old I am, but I suppose, how much I’ve changed over time. How staid, how settled, how quiet and domestic I’ve become. So much so, I don’t resent sitting here with my glass of wine and thoughts in my head that I want to put down on virtual paper. No, I’m reasonably happy with my choice.

But, soon I am going to shake things up a bit. I can’t write if there’s nothing inspiring to write about, if I follow the same routines and the same patterns week after week. So here’s my plan. Next week, I’m going down to Florida to witness the Atlantis, the last space shuttle liftoff from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. I’m going by myself, no company at all. I may not communicate with anyone. I may decide to be completely alone in the world. To find out if I am lonely or simply alone. Being alone isn’t a bad thing. In fact for an artist or writer, it can be quite refreshing. Loneliness is another thing entirely. I will probably be lonely.

And I may or may not write while I’m there. I may just absorb the event and the wonder of it. I may have a delayed reaction to the scene. Or, I may be inspired to poetry, then and there. Maybe I’ll write a short blog from my smart phone. I don’t know how I’ll feel. That’s part of the draw, to figure out who I am and what I’m made of. What makes a person happy and content? What causes anguish and despair? I hope to find out for myself. Who am I? It is a strange question for a woman of my age to be asking, a woman who remembers a time without computers of any kind. It’s a teenage question, and surely, my character Glory asked it of herself over and over again in PERSEPHONE IN HELL. But I guess that wasn’t enough, the bloody coughing out of my story, painful as it was. The melancholy that washed over me as I wrote it is still present. I still want to find out why. I would like to know why.

So I hope you wish me good journey as I head down to Florida. Remind me to look out for alligators, and to bring sun screen! I hope to come back a more whole, better realized, more self-aware person. A woman more capable of moving forward with joy in her heart. A friend who will choose blogs on some Friday nights, and dancing on others. A movie now and then makes good Friday night entertainment. Or a simple celebration of the Sabbath, which would be a miraculous thing for this woman, who is so set in her non-believing ways.

Atlantis will lift off from earth, the final space shuttle mission, a true end to an era that began when a  home computer was a thing of science fiction and the word blog hadn’t been invented. Forty years ago, Glory was inspired and kept from despair by the landing on the moon. I am inspired and hope to find joy in this final liftoff. One must try. I am reminded of the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise. “Make it so,” he said so many times to his crew. Make it happen. Try your best, with faith that your best is good enough. Make your life worthwhile. That is exactly what I intend to do.

 

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.

 

 

 

The Trust Factor

Mar24

CALMLY RANDOM

Chances are very good that at some point in your life, you’ve been duped. Swindled. Scammed. Conned. People get hit hard, for example, the Bernie Madoff rip off that impacted Jewish philanthropy like a tsunami. Or cold fusion. Trickle down economics. Energy can’t come from nothing. We all know that money never trickles down. And if it sounds too good to be true… But people want to believe. We cling to fantasies of our own creation.

Science requires evidence and proof. One needs to replicate a result over and over to establish a working hypothesis. Not so with human relationships. Sometimes in an instant a bond is formed that appears real. People feel a connection. They trust their intuition. They find the things they think they have in common. Anyone can find synchronicity; after all, we are human and more alike than different. But we want to believe that our trust is warranted. We remain blind to flaws, to inconsistencies, to half-truths, sometimes even to outright lies.

Like the song, I’ve experienced my share of hearing what I want to hear and disregarding the rest. I’ve trusted for no good reason. I’ve most definitely played the fool. Bad things have happened even to good people like me. Good people like me can lead and be led astray.

Is there an alternative to sightless trust? How do I keep from exposing my vulnerability? I could be closed and unfeeling. Maybe I can. I could try. I can stop caring. I could assume the worst of everyone, so that when someone attempts to mess me over, I won’t be surprised. I’m three quarters of the way to mistrust by default already. Not all so naïve anymore. Closing down. Shutting up. Regaining control. My cool.

 

 

Are Teachers Human?

Mar15
CALMLY RANDOM

 

Something strange happened to me when I hit the high school years. Maybe it happened to you, too.

When I was a little girl, I loved school. I mean, I LOVED school. By age 3, I was playing school at home. I’d get out my chalk board, crayons, paper, and books, and pretend I was a big girl going off to school with my older sister. My town didn’t have kindergarten (tells you how old I am – though, yes, kindergarten had been invented!) And my birthday was such that I missed the cut off date for first grade by a month. By the time I finally arrived at first grade, I was almost 7 and had been reading for years.

My teacher was in heaven listening to me read. She sent me up to the principal with my book that was clearly 5th grade level or higher. I was a bit scared to walk into her office, but I read to her with all the passion that I hold for reading to this day. After I was done, the principal hugged me! This is the woman that I had been told put red hot peppers on kids’ tongues if they’d been bad.

Over the early years, I experienced good and not so great teachers, interesting subjects and not. But I managed to hold onto my positive thoughts about school through 8th grade.

So what makes a straight A student from grades 1 through 8 turn into a teenager who hates school? That’s a mystery that is at the core of my novel PERSEPHONE IN HELL.

“The teachers were always catching Glory in a day dream or staring out the classroom window. Mrs. Hansen, her history teacher, seemed to make a game of writing up detention slips. I suppose it makes my sadistic, twisted, inhuman teacher happy. Today, Mrs. Hansen was drilling the class on the succession of English monarchs. Even though everyone knows that memorizing lists of long dead kings is an exercise that could make even the best student want to vomit. Worse even than studying the names and dates of battles and wars. Well, maybe it’s a tie between the two for deadliest.”

Was it the content of the class, or the teacher teaching it that made high school so fatally boring? Were my teachers really human? Did they have first names, families, lives outside the classroom? I thought of them as inhuman, or less than human, or simply so uninteresting that I didn’t think of them at all. Was it true, or was it me? Perhaps I had just turned some corner in life, never to look back. For the sake of consistency, ignoring that long ago hug that acknowledged me as a special person, perhaps a cut above the average, a person of note. Forgetting that I was a queen in my own right.