Fairy tale tales

Classical musicians took folk songs and children's ballads and turned them into classical masterpieces. Think Beethoven, Bach, Grieg, Mozart, etc. It seems modern writers have done the same thing with fairy tales. Even the writers at Tales from the Crypt, which was a copy cat version of Stephen King's Creepshow, have plumbed the fairy tale depths and Stephen King has co-opted a few of his plots from the fairy tale sources.

What brings up this particular idea? A. S. Byatt's Possession is a story about a man who is caught up in an unknown liaison between a married 19th century poet and writer and an unmarried poet who has become the darling of the women's movement because of a long torturous poem about The Fairy Melusine, which is the tale of a woman who married a knight who promised never to follow or watch her on Saturdays. He kept his word for many years until he either cut a hole in the door or watched thru the keyhole to find his wife was a serpent from the waist down. The story is a reverse retelling of Beauty and the Beast, except the beauty is the beast.

Tales from the Crypt used the fairy tale in their rendering of a coupling of a gargoyle who fell in love with an artist, and so on. Even Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid, which MGM used to such lovely purpose in Danny Kaye's portrayal of Anderson, the Danish storyteller whose statue stands in the main square in Copenhagen. Not bad for a Hungarian folk tale to have made such an impact on so many writers and storytellers. You can see vestiges of Fairy Melusine in Fairy Tell True, of which I have written before in this journal.

Sheri S. Tepper won the Locus Award for her novel, Beauty, which takes several fairy tales and weaves them into one woman's life: a sleeping beauty, Cinderella, and so forth. In fact, Sleeping Beauty has sparked many a writer's imagination and even ended up as a really marvelous Disney movie before Disney took itself so seriously into the monopoly of theme parks and all things fantasical market. Tannith Lee, mistress of all tales dark and romantic, in her White as Snow compendium of fairy tales retells several fairy tales, among them Rapunzel, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty, adding her own dark twist to the tales.

Makes you think there are only a few plots and everyone keeps working them and working them. Does that make them derivative or inspired? One actor in a movie said he couldn't listen to Music of the Night from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera without the song, School Days, School Days, running thru his mind.

Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast shares more than its title with the fairy tale and even with Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. They share the tale of Beauty falling in love with the Beast and realizing only as he dies in her arms. And it was all based on the original French fairy tale, which is obviously taken from the much older tale of Psyche and Cupid. Even C. S. Lewis found the story interesting, but he felt it lacked something so he wrote Till We Have Faces, giving Psyche's sister a part in the tale and a motivation for Psyche to undergo the trials she undertakes so she may be reunited with Cupid.

Fairy tales are not original to Europe. Cinderella's prince has found her slipper in many countries. For instance, Charles Perrault's tale of the beautiful young girl at the mercy of her evil stepmother and stepsisters, has her counterpart in Yeh-Shen who is much older than Perrault's Cinderella.

Don't have an idea for another story? Borrow a fairy tale.

Where does it all end? Hollywood is all for taking stories and ideas in the public domain to make billions and it's obvious writers and musicians have no problems with adapting folk music and fairy tales to form the frame for their original ideas. Are there really no new stories, no new plots, no new ideas or is everything built on the obviously strong bedrock of the past? I guess only time will tell if anywhere there is an original tale, an original story, and original writer, musician or filmmaker. Will it be you or me? Wanna race?

Afternoon Delight

I need to get something to eat, go to the post office, and buy groceries, but first I have news. I sold a story.

The story is called Just a Prayer Away, but knowing there will be people who might misinterpret that the name will be changed to Just a Breath Away. The story is for an anthology of ghostly encounters. It's the first sale in a while and I'm excited, ecstatic, and excessively out of my mind with happiness and a sense of accomplishment, especially since I just wrote the story yesterday. It happened many years ago, but I never put it down and I didn't tell any family members about it, so the story will come as a big surprise . . . and possibly a shock. They don't believe in ghosts.

Anyway, I feel like more good news is on the horizon. I can feel it . . . or at least I think I can.

kaiberie asked me yesterday about any romance I might have lying around, but I don't read romance and I don't write it. Well, I haven't written much. Just a couple books here and there that went absolutely nowhere because I lost the urge or the something that keeps a story going. Basically, I just ran out of enthusiasm and gas. One book is finished, but it's not just romance; there's intrigue and secrets and seduction along with the romance, so I don't think you can strictly call it a romance. I need to get it edited and sent out once I can get access to the hard drive it's on.

But I was thinking last night, while I was watching Persuasion, another Jane Austen movie, that I love romantic movies: An Affair to Remember, Sleepless in Seattle (anything with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks), and so many other wonderful Jane Austen books/movies that maybe I should stop worrying about the kind of books I associate with romance and write a few of my own. I wrote one yesterday but I don't know how it will be received or if it will even be published. However, I could be missing out on something that would fulfill a need in me and be a lot easier to get published. Something to think about, especially when you realize that the biggest (and hungriest for new material) genre market is romance. And romance doesn't have to be the Harlequin cookie-cutter kind of romance, but something like An Affair to Remember or Sleepless in Seattle or Jane Austen or a thousand other really wonderful, complex, rich, and multi-faceted stories. I may have to retrench and add it to my meager repertoire. Nothing wrong with getting paid for falling in love with a story and making myself cry. Kathleen Turner did it in Romancing the Stone (not to be mistaken for Romancing the Bone.

Romance author, Joan Wilder, whose books are read all over the world and translated into a hundred different languages, goes to South America to rescue her sister and ends up in the arms of erstwhile trapper and mercenary of the heart, Jack T. Colton. But Joan Wilder is a dyed-in-the-wool writer of romantic fantasies of the Harlequin type and that's not what I want.

I want smart, funny, sexy, hot, seductive, and wonderfully romantic romance. Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? You know what they say: no stone unturned means you might miss the big [insert object of wealth]. Besides, I'm a glutton for rejection punishment and I haven't had enough of that lately.

On the flip side, The Sun hasn't sent me their usual overnight delivery for rejection for the two stories I sent them. That is good news. Usually, I get a rejection back almost before the envelope leaves the post office. I sent the stories May 31st and no news is good news from that front.

Okay, it's time for me to shut up and get some things done. I have movies to watch and I want popcorn for a change. I also want ice cream, decadent Godiva chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream and a pizza with everything, including anchovies. I want to plant my big butt in the most comfortable chair in front of the television and wallow in some more Jane Austen and Philip K. Dick.

On that note, you really should check out the sound track from Blade Runner. From pulse pounding beats to wonderful jazz riffs, the music is really wonderful. As many times as I've seen the movie, this is the first time I've listened to the soundtrack and I love it. A little Eagles from Hell Freezes over and a lot of the soundtrack of Blade Runner makes a great complement to exciting days of acceptances and immediately mailed checks.

That is all. Disperse and go write your own stories.

Ghosts and Romance

When I think of ghosts and romance I think of Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and especially the last scene when she is an old woman and has died in her chair. Captain Daniel Gregg reaches down and takes Mrs. Muir's hand, telling her it's time to go. She rises up as Captain Gregg's young and beautiful Lucia, just as she had been when they first met and she rented Gull Cottage despite its reputation for being haunted.

Unfortunately, that's not the kind of ghost and romance I mean today. I have been busy.

I was waiting for a picture of my grandmother, which I received from my parents a week or so ago, so I could write the ghost story of her visit after she died. I wrote that this morning and just the memory of that special night still brings tears to my eyes because I know she's still near me and just a breath away. It's why I cry when I hear Josh Groban sing Just a Breath Away.

The story is for an anthology about ghosts and I have already been accepted and will even be paid. How cool is that?

The romance is for another contest. I wonder if I should just quit sending my writing in to contests and get back to writing for whoever will buy my words, but in a way it's a training ground, a chance for me to exercise my literary skills (or lack thereof) and get into the habit of writing more and more often. I am pretty proud of the story about a couple of teenagers who once lived across the street from each other and found out eight years later that they had always been in love. There's one little scene where they're walking down the beach one evening at Daytona and he kisses her. He gave her her first kiss when she was ten years old in a tunnel of love at an amusement park and both of them remembered the kiss but never said anything. The story's about summer and broken hearts that need the right moment and the right words to mend.

So, two stories down today in addition to the seven I wrote over the weekend. I do need to get back to the book, but I'm not quite ready to dive back into that deep pool. Not yet anyway.

I finished Rushdie's Fury and it took a surprising turn a little over halfway thru when Professor Malik Solanka falls in love and writes a fairy tale that launches another successful line of dolls and fuels a revolution in Lilliput-Blefuscu where his lover is from. But the ending, surprising as it is, turns out to be a joyful, silly, and wonderful moment when he realizes what is really important to him. It's a little more romantic than I expected Salman Rushdie to be, but it's my first foray into his world. Instead of jumping into another Rushdie world, I decided to try A. S. Byatt's Possession instead. I read a synopsis of the movie with Gwyneth Paltrow and decided to check out the book first. It's a big one, but so far it's intriguing. The first few pages involve theft of history and a professional war between two scholars intent on the same poet. Could be good, but I'll reserve my judgment until later.

I did pick up the other Rushdie book I ordered, which was finally at the library, and checked the mail. I had nothing new to review until today when I picked up the mail. There was a box of five books, nonfiction and fiction, awaiting me and I haven't had a chance to get thru the library books yet. I can see I will be spending a lot of time reading for quite a while, especially since AuthorLink got their problems straightened out and are sending me another horror novel to read and review. Feast or famine, but at least there is a little money in the offing and that never hurts. Don't you feel sorry for me facing a mountain of books I have to read and review? *grins* Or is that jealousy I see in your virtual eyes?

I think I also upset an LJ user when I noticed one of the quotes he posted was from one of my favorite books, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. He considers her a pain in the head that just won't go away. However, I upset him when I said that his favorite, Hemingway, was without substance. Hemingway was a great reporter, but as a novelist his work is a skeleton without the muscle, flesh, and skin. I loved The Old Man and the Sea, but his books were more like movie scripts than novels. The characters are wraiths moving thru a ghostly panorama, but that's just my take. Not everyone likes the same authors, or even dislikes the same authors, for the same reasons. If we did, there would be no reason to have more than one or two writers or poets in any generation. Just pick the one everyone likes and forget about the rest. That's what is so wonderful about writing; there are so many different styles, viewpoints, characters, and worlds to visit. Some you like and some you don't, but than the gods there are lots to choose from. It's like trying a new food. You never know if you're going to like it or not until you taste it.

Just like I didn't realize until I got my father's letter today that I didn't know that much about his childhood. The log cabin he showed me when I was a child is where he was happiest and that was before his mother died. There is a whole history of my family and my father's life I know nothing about. I wrote back and told him I would like to know more about his life and about my grandparents. Hopefully, he'll share that with me and with my siblings. It's strange to realize you don't know much about your parents or what they were like, what they loved and dreamed and hated, and what made them into the people who were the center of your universe as a child.

Well, that's enough prattle for one day. I'll shut up now.

Disperse.

Opinions

Many of you are either writers or like to write or you wouldn't spend so much time commenting, reading, and writing in your blogs. Some of you may even aspire to publication some day, but you're afraid your words and your stories aren't good enough. Granted, there are some who yield metaphor and words like a Samurai and others who fumble and stumble across the keyboard or paper, but that does not mean your words aren't worth reading. The main fear is whether or not anyone will read or care about what you write or, worse yet, that someone will have something bad to say about your writing. Don't worry. You won't be disappointed.

One thing you can guarantee is that someone will hate what you write and decry it from the cyber heights as the worst piece of drivel ever penned by an illiterate ape. That's a given. It is inevitable. But that person who denounces you as a talentless hack with pretensions to intelligence read what you wrote and read it all the way thru or s/he would not have commented about how your ending lacked force or insight and how you failed to tie up all the loose ends or even provide a reason for the story Think about it.

Ever since man climb down out of the trees and stood erect, clutched a fire-charred stick and drew a picture for his tribe, wo/man has been a perverse and erratic creature. Even in biblical history, Adam and Eve knowingly did what they were told not to do -- eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Like they needed help with the evil part. It is part of wo/men's nature, that perversity of spirit that makes them go where they are told not to go and do what they are told not to do. It's a fact of life. We like what we have been forbidden to touch or have or even envision. Without that perversity of nature we would still be a half-step above the animals.

In this day of blurb envy and acquisition, writers pray for someone with a recognizable name who will read their words and give them a literary pat on the back with a quick little sentence or, hope beyond hope, paragraph they can use to promote their book. All that back patting and those kindly words are effective as praise goes, but what about a book that touts its own mediocrity or mishandling of the intricacies of language and societal mores and morays? Wouldn't you be more likely to see what the fuss was all about? Wouldn't you be more likely to pick up a book that screamed in bold three-dimensional letters that the book is garbage and the writer should be banned from any form of writing? Think about the sign that says the paint is wet or the dark basement where strange and ominous sounds scream, "Don't go down there." What are you more likely to do?

Wo/man is perverse so it is time for writers to become equally perverse. Write what you want and pray for critics the way a stand-up comic prays for hecklers so that the spark will start a literary blaze that will rush across the plains and excite everyone to weigh in and give their opinion. The more people who dislike your book means there are more people reading your words and they took the time to buy your book. Whether they keep it or not is immaterial, but I'd be willing to bet they will tell their friends they have to read the junk between the covers just so they won't be called a liar or delusional. A sale is a sale and a reader is a reader.

Every time you think you lack talent, think of the nasty person waiting in the wings to snap up your book just so they can loudly shout from the cyber heights, in print, and maybe even on the air waves and microwaves that your book is the worst piece of insanity to ever see print. Being a hack is not necessarily a bad thing. Look at Stephen King and Dean Koontz and so many others. Even Clinton's book deserves to be read and quietly shut in a cellar, but at least get it from the library and spend your money for some really putrid tripe so you can feel confident that you are no less a writer than they.

Conceit is a good thing. Get some. Borrow it, steal it, or beg for it, but develop it and pray for long, detailed, and lousy reviews. It's your right.

What would it take?

I received my e-newsletter for the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop this morning and read an article about a woman who was invited to send a demo for the possibility of being the host of a new reality TV show. She writes about the unlikely chance and how having her own website made it all possible, that and remembering to add the link in her info when she attended the workshop back in February. She goes on to say she has had more luck with placing her writing since she put up her website in October 2002 than when she was doing the send a copy and SASE for File 13. Makes sense, especially since the Internet is the most effective and quickest way to research a lot of people in a very short time.

Stop the presses! (I always wanted to say that.) Publishers are actually looking for talent on the net in blogs. I guess they get tired of reading and giving obscene advances to celebrity autobiographers after all. Sites like Book Slut and Arts and Letters Daily started out as personal blogs and ended as some of the most visited sites taken seriously. Iraqi wo/men are blogging and telling the story of their lives and the realities with which they live every single day. They are the real correspondents behind the lines and in the thick of battle. Of course, the Iraqi parliament has been threatening to shut down or limit Internet access for a while, but I doubt that will happen, even though they were handed the reins of power yesterday (two days ahead of schedule), while the coalition forces are still there. They still want to appear to be forming a democratic government despite the fact that historically they have been either a monarchy or a despot-controlled government. Just because democracy works for us doesn't mean it will work for their centuries' old traditions. They have been around a lot longer than we have been.

Even the Chinese have figured out that baby steps get you where you want to go a lot faster and safer than begging to be shot in Tiananmen square. Young Chinese have decided that quiet revolution is best and focus on worming their way thru the apple instead of taking a big bite and finding a bullet or a razor blade in their mouths. One such Chinese changeling is Mian Mian of Shanghai whose first book, Candy, was banned. She wrote about sex and debauchery, which came from her own experiences, at the end of the 20th century but has switched to promoting music, writing a newspaper column about relationships, depression, and her views on life, embracing the media she once turned her back on. Mian Mian also writes about fashion and is quite the clothes horse. Her parents, who spent their lives under Mao and his successors, are proud of their daughter and her revolutionary ways even though it seems they really don't understand her. Mian Mian is just one of the new revolutionaries taking their country back by millimeters and changing the world by being the change.

I also read an article by another Erma Bombeck conference attendee who styles herself a life coach who works mainly by phone. Lynn Colwell says she helps her clients see they can have the writing dream, if it is really their dream, something for which they would sacrifice everything, if they want it. She says most of her clients would be happy being able to write one hour a day. I don't agree. I do agree that it is something for which you must be willing to sacrifice yourself and some of your normal every day choices, but I don't agree that it can be satisfied by one hour a day . . . at least not for me. I write more than that in my journals every day. I do agree that you must make some sacrifices, but it can be done by nibbles instead of in gulps. If you really want to write and you want it more than anything else, give up 30 minutes of television a night. Just 30 minutes. Shut yourself away, tell your spouse/partner and children (if you have them) they are not to disturb you for that 30 minutes for anything less than the house burning down around their ears and only if it is headed in your direction. Take that 30 minutes, put on music that fits your mood or the tone of what you're writing or just something you enjoy but that does not interfere with your thinking or your writing, and write. It doesn't matter if at first all you end up with is gibberish. What matters is that you are building a habit, one that will take you where you want to go if you are really read to travel the writing path. Free write -- write whatever comes into your head. Loosen those mental and physical writing muscles and keep going no matter what. Use a timer if you like, but keep writing and don't stop for anything. Make sure to go to the bathroom before your trip and have everything you need at hand so you don't have an excuse to get up and look for something. Prepare for the writing journey the way you prepare your bag for that all important labor and delivery trip to the hospital. Don't be caught with your pencils unsharpened, not enough paper, or games on your computer. Set a timer if you must, but apply your butt to the seat and keep it there for 30 minutes.

After that 30 minutes, resist the urge to immediately critique your work. Leave it for the next morning or during your lunch break when you want something to read. During those 30 nightly minutes do nothing but write. In a way it's like a clandestine date with your muse and if you treat it that way it will be easy to build the writing habit.

It takes six weeks to form a habit and three months to make it permanent. So what are you waiting for? Choose 30 minutes of television you can do without. Don't worry about the laundry or the dishes or anything else. Just write. You'll be surprised how much you can get done in 30 minutes and how good you will feel about your choice and yourself. If you decide writing isn't for you, you'll find out soon enough, but give it a chance. Live your dream and see where it takes you.

In the meantime, I have a ghost story to write for an anthology and some romance to dig up or invent for kaiberie.

I'll shut up now.

Generosity personified

Having trouble writing that first sentence of your story or novel? Tobias Seamon has the answer with his free first sentences to kick start your writing.

You no longer have to worry and pull out your hair over that all important sentence, the one that grabs the editor by the throat and never lets go. Talk about generosity.

I wonder

Sometimes I wonder if high brow literature is beyond my grasp. I have Virginia Woolf and sometimes she seems incomprehensible or long winded. The sentences sometimes take up half a page and I end up going back. Then other times she is as clear as crystal. Could be my mind failing me, but I prefer to think she's a bit incomprehensible at times.

Because of one of my favorite movies, Bridget Jones's Diary, I have decided to check out Salman Rushdie at last. I got his Satanic Verses, but decided to start with Fury and it was a good choice. Fury is about a professor of philosophy who turns his back on the university's politics and dead ends to make dolls. One of his dolls, Little Brain, time travels and converses with the great philosophers. But she grows out of his control and becomes an international industry, to which he kept a financial interest, that has made him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. He isn't happy. He is furious and begins to drink and walk until he finds himself over his sleeping wife and son with a carving knife in his hand. He stops himself and leaves the next morning to lose himself in America, that bastion of capitalism without the weight of a past or heritage, and into the midst of three murders by the Cement Murderer of three beautiful, talented, intelligent and obscenely wealthy young women. The cast of characters who provide the path of discovery to the roots of his fury and his salvation are an intricate and realistic group with agendas of their own.

The prose is rich and textured and the impotent fury that boils and seethes is as omnipresent as the national debt. I can hardly wait to finish this and go on to more of Rushdie's writing. If this book is any indication, I am definitely falling in love. This is the kind of writing that weaves history, language, ethnicity, and wisdom into a masterfully layered treat for mind and soul. Quite simply, Rushdie blows me away and makes me want to write better, richer, and a lot more.

It's strange that a man who looks like the embodiment of evil could write with such beauty and darkness and make it sublime.

But I have lots of writing of my own to do and I cannot spend another day and night dozing and reading like I did yesterday.

Despite being so tired and worn out from the 24-hour writing challenge (and I'm going to do another at the end of July -- I'm such a glutton for punishment), I didn't sleep much. I dozed and slept for a couple of hours and then laid awake, which gave me the perfect opportunity to read with a really good reason to lolligag in bed. I read To Kill a Mockingbird again. I love the simple straightforward prose and the unvarnished and uncompromising look at a small southern town before civil rights when cotton had been deposed as king and whites still ruled in all their naked contempt and loathing for men, women and children who were so much better than they. Harper Lee illustrates the clash of prejudice and decency and the traditions and old habits that maintained the fiction of who was better than whom with the simplicity of a child's vision.

I am surprised Harper Lee never wrote anything else but, as she said in an interview once, she never needed to write another book. She said all there was to be said. Harper Lee was cousin to Truman Capote who mourned the fact that he had written so much and had so much less acclaim, especially when his first novel was such a startling horrific tale. In Cold Blood was the first of book of its kind, a book that splashed blood on middle America, but like most shock, its value was devalued quickly into a sideshow freak. Truman was a competent writer, but he refused to dig too deeply into his heart or his past, except in short stories about his strange upbringing and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Truman Capote should have stuck to what he did best and forget the envy that stalked him in Harper Lee's literary wake.

I read both books in high school and still, even though there are bits and pieces of In Cold Blood I remember, it is To Kill a Mockingbird I return over and over, savoring the story as if reading it for the first time. I remember nearly all of Mockingbird because it continues to resonate in spite of how much time has passed between when it happened and now. I still see Atticus Finch pushing his wire rimmed glasses up on his head to sight the rifle with his one good eye and bring down a mad dog in the street in front of Boo Radley's worn and shadowed house. Everything from the book is etched forever in my mind the way some books do. There are few books I revisit so often or with such relish and I know there will be others. I am sure I will revisit Rushdie's Fury again, finding new and different nuances in the banquet of his prose.

Okay, enough of that. I need to forget about other writers and polish up a little Paradise Hell and move on to the next story. I could rhapsodize for hours about books and writers I have known and enjoyed, and even writers I hate and whose work is merely tripe, but I need to get to my own writing, to texture and shape my own prose. I am not conceited enough to believe what I write is great, but it is mine and I have stories to tell. One such story began nibbling at my mind yesterday when I woke up the first time and is now gnawing vigorously on my resolve to finish other tasks. But then I have always been fascinated by the difference between waking and dreaming realities.

Just curious, but have you ever awakened from a dream disoriented and unsure of where you were, not because you were tired but because your dreams were so real, so immediate and tactile you weren't sure which was more real? I still wonder which world I woke up into and which is real. I could still be dreaming, but somehow I know this is reality because my dreams are somehow more real, more solid, more.

To be or not to be -- famous

Did the ancient artists who painted scenes on cave walls or laboriously turned over rocks on the desert plateau of Nazca care about whether or not they were famous, if what they did would have hundreds, thousands, even millions flocking to the sites to marvel at their artistry, their vision, or were they crackpots, crazy idiots who had nothing better to do with their time?

Today, the only thing that matters is if a book is a best seller. It doesn't matter whether or not the book is useful or even visionary, if it advances literature or is just plain artistic crap selling out like meatballs at a community fund raiser spaghetti dinner or bean feast.

The latest hype is dedicated to Bill Clinton's autobiography and everyone is surprised at the clamor for the book before it even launches. Small surprise, as the On the Media article states, since the media have hyped Clinton's latest public shell game like the second coming. A 957-page journey into the heart and mind of the most self aggrandizing and unrepentant publicity hound in recent history is worth about as much as a trip to the public library to read in the stacks. But the hungry masses will clamor for their own personal copy like anxious parents stampeding toy stores for Tickle Me Elmo or the latest must-have toy. Give me a break.

When did words cease to matter? When did literature become artistic crap that sells better than gold and lasts longer?

Earlier today I pondered those ancient artists who painted on cave walls, wondering if they were visionaries, priests, or crackpots. Did they know their work would remain for all time and mark them as the voice of their age? Does it matter? Isn't the fact that they existed enough? And if so, why does it matter that a wealthy parasite, who will feed off the bodies of the masses and take a percentage of their earnings for his own comfort for the rest of his life, has found yet another way to dip into the dwindling well and gather more wealth at the country's -- and the world's -- expense?

That time and circumstance made it possible for those ancient artists' work to endure doesn't mean we should be bilked into buying into yet another media hyped book with the staying power of dandelion fluff in a fire storm. How do we want to be remembered when our time is past, by the egotistical sensibilities of a Freudian wet dream or by the vision and words of true artistry? I guess in the end only time and circumstance will determine what will be saved and what will be lost to the ages. Of course, Clinton's book stands a chance of outdistancing everything worthwhile of words, thoughts, and deeds since there will be more of his books left behind for time to attempt to swallow. After all, it is harder to digest a dinosaur turd than it is to swallow a hummingbird's tongue.

High

I'm high. Not on drugs...on books. I found this incredible web site called Book Slut and have spent countless hours reading reviews and info on books and magazines and horror and erotica and so much more but I have to take a breath now. *deep breath* The site has been out there for two years, but I am new to the whole blogging thing and LJ and Dead Journal, and now Blog Spot and just getting around to what most of you probably already know.

In the parlance of Book Slut, I'm a research slut, a reading slut, a slut for all things literate and wordy and wonderful. I admit I'm a bit behind the times, but I've been working and traveling and making my way thru the world and didn't have time for anything else, other than some of my own writing. I have a stack of books on the bench at the end of my bed I have yet to get to read, but I'm getting there. I have boxes of books back in Ohio in storage and I have read all those, some of them more than once, and you should have seen the hundreds of books I sold off before I hit the road and ended up in the glorious Rockies. And that isn't even the half of it. I have been reading since I don't know when. A description from To Kill a Mockingbird is apt. Scout is talking about when she learned to read, sitting on Atticus's lap and watching his finger move across the page until the words began to make sense and she could read. I don't remember sitting on my father's lap while he read the newspaper or a book, but I do remember the moment when the words made sense and I was pretty young.

I was born with a love of books and now I have lots more to investigate and read and catch up. Oh, if I only had a hundred lifetimes and could read everything written: good, bad and indifferent. The feel, the scent, the touch of a book on my mind and heart and emotions, the way I feel when I read a really stellar piece of writing or laugh out loud with the really witty parts, even the groans when something really awful has been written. I am constantly amazed at the wondrous (and sometimes really bad) ways that people can take the basic plots and turn them into stories. I want to hold and caress and read and re-read every single book, but funds are a bit tight now. I need Helene Hanff's bookish and oh-so-British Frank Doel's help to find those inexpensive and wonderful volumes slotted on dusty shelves at 84 Charing Cross Road, although Hamilton Books does a really good job with the $1.95 remainder specials. You can find almost anything, but not everything, and I need everything. I want everything. I want to be fed intravenously and just read. I don't want to sleep or walk or do anything but read and then write what strikes my mind, stirs my passions, moves me. I want to be entertained, appalled, frightened, and transported to worlds of imagination and reality. I want more books.

In the meantime, in my temporarily (I hope) embarrassed financial circumstances, I will have to settle for my first taste of Salman Rushdie and A. S. Byatt from the public library's plastic encased volumes. And I am going to have to revisit Douglas Adams's Restaurant and Hitch Hiker in borrowed volumes. I may even take a quick foray back to the Known Universe with Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson among those crowded and public shelves instead of pulling a well loved copy from my own boxes and shelves. But read I will until my eyes can no longer see and my ears no longer hear and I must learn Braille to get my literary fix.

Time to go dress for the trip and pick up my public copies so I can rush back here to read and wallow and explore yet another adventure, discovering new faces and places and ways to write.

I don't need proof...

I sit here in the semi-darkness, the computer screen the only light in the loft and a small light on in the kitchen downstairs and beneath where I sit, pondering a phone call from my mother. It was past midnight in Ohio when she called and we picked up our usual half-argument about calling late and wasting money calling so often. "Didn't I just talk to you yesterday?" I asked before she could say it to me, although she called yesterday and tonight. "Well, if you don't want to talk to me..." At this point, I give in and our hellos are finished. It's a hold over from all the years of arguing and there is love in the exchange and a bit of laughter within the mock battle.

"Your father got your letter today," she said, her voice soft and almost secretive.

"I thought he might've and I was going to call but I know you would have a fit so I waited."

"He didn't say anything. You know how he is. Then he gave it to me to read and said it was nice."

Nice is my father's highest praise when he says anything at all, which is rarely. He doesn't read books. He reads the newspaper and watches television, but he doesn't read books and that is something I didn't realize until a little while ago. I can't ever remember seeing him read a book.

"Then your father started talking about growing up in that log cabin and how poor they were when his mother died. He said he wanted to give his children everything he never had and then he cried. In 54 years of marriage I have never seen your father cry."

"I saw him cry once at his father's funeral," I said, pushing the words past the growing lump in my throat and the rising tide of tears.

I wrote a poem for my mother for Mother's Day and she keeps reading it and tells me she still cries. I cried when I wrote it and she tells me I will never understand how much it means to her.

I don't have a lot of money and my father has a tendency to kill Bonsai trees, so I decided to make something to give him for Father's Day. I tried to write a poem, but nothing seemed right. Nothing came out the way I intended. Poetry isn't easy for me most of the time and other times it flows out of me like water from a hole in a dam. But my father loves to write letters so I decided to write him a letter.

"Your father put your letter back in the envelope and put it in his desk. He went into his office to write you a letter."

I am a writer and my gift is words. Lately, it seems my gift for words makes people cry, specifically my mother and father. I don't mean to make them cry, but I want them to know without a doubt how much I love them and cherish all the memories we share.
I have been plaguing my parents to sit down with a tape recorder and record all their stories and memories about their life so the stories, those bits of history, will not be lost when they are gone. I have had to face the fact that my parents won't always be there, that they are not the immortals I believed them to be as a child. They still see me as a child and I still see them young and strong and eternally there. We all have our illusions. But I do not want the illusion to include any doubts about my love and affection and respect for my parents and for the journey we have shared. I want there to be no doubt in their minds or mine about how precious and special each moment we share really is, and that includes all the fights and misunderstandings and mistakes, because without the path we have walked together none of us would be who we are at this moment.

My father has always feared letting those he loves know how much he loves them because early in his life everyone he loved disappeared. I think he now knows I understood his love even without the words.

This is what I wrote:

Dear Dad:

I wanted to send you a card, but funds have been tight. I thought about writing a poem, but wasn't sure if that was something you'd enjoy or even read more than once. Then I thought about just writing, knowing how much you love to correspond, and giving you a taste of my memories.

Most of all I remember dancing with you, my pudgy little hand in your strong giant hands, so gentle and yet so protective. Spinning me around and making my skirt fly out in a circle while you held Carol or Jimmy on your hip. I remember having to go to bed by myself while you carried Carol, telling me I was a big girl and too heavy to carry, but I went to my room and laid on the floor, pretending to be asleep, so you would have to pick me up and put me in bed, hoping I wasn't too heavy for that short little trip. I remember your smell of sunshine and after shave and the feel of your hands and fingers as you combed my wet hair into long curls and ringlets just like Shirley Temple. I remember the deep etched dimples in your cheeks and the crinkles around your eyes when you smiled and the sound of your laughter that tickled my heart, my ears, and my soul. I remember a green clad Santa carrying an olive drab duffel bag up the snowy sidewalk when Carol and I were making snow angels on the front lawn, your shoulders covered with falling snow and the unmistakable vision of you walking toward us.

I remember the wonderful smells that came from the kitchen when you cooked and the times you decided to teach us all the value of a dollar by making the meals from your childhood: cornbread and beans with fresh onions and fried cornmeal mush. You thought we'd feel sorry for you but all I felt was glad because the taste and smell of those meals linger with me still. I even buy cornmeal mush to fry and simmer beans in a pot all day just to be closer to you when I am far from home. I remember sharing secrets with you and learning about your childhood, scenes that have never faded from my imagination. I remember the log cabin sinking into the ground among the tobacco fields behind Great Grandma Cornwell's house in Cynthiana and the smell of the barn where tobacco leaves dried in the shadowy darkness. I remember riding roller coasters and exciting rides with you at Cedar Point and how much joy you got from just being alive.

I remember watching with pride as you marched in parades on base in Panama and other Army bases, knowing you the moment I saw you by the twinkle in your eyes and the distinctive way you walked. I remember purses you sewed from banana leaves when we lived in Panama and how you enjoyed the snakes as much as I did. I remember you lying on the tin casing of something or other in the back yard on our house on Terrace baking and broiling in the sun with your own concoction of baby oil and iodine, and the way you smelled of apple cider vinegar. I remember the way you worked with the German Shepards we raised and the way you played cards on weekends with your friends.

I remember the letters and pictures when you were posted to Korea and other places we could not go and the excitement and happiness I felt when we saw you again, not to mention the stories and tales of your adventures while you were gone.

But most of all I remember wanting to find a man as good, kind, devoted, loving, and wonderful as you to marry and spend the rest of my life with. I wasn't successful because you are a one of a kind item that has never been reproduced or can be replaced. It doesn't matter that sometimes you have a short temper or love to gossip because you are the best father a girl could ever have. You are a constant reminder that there are miracles in the world and I see them every time I look at you and remember and each time I hear you tell me you love me. I can still remember the first time you said those words to me and I never tire of hearing them. I love you now. . .

As always...

Free music

It seems that while I was sleeping the government, specifically Orrin Hatch, Rep senator from Utah (somewhere I used to live), is helping to draft a bill to curtail music theft on the Internet. I read it at News.com.

The article says, "Proponents argue that the bill focuses on curbing illegal activity on the Internet. "In the film 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,' the leering 'Child Catcher' lured children into danger with false promises of 'free lollipops,'" said Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "Tragically, some corporations now seem to think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal; that they can legally lure children and others with false promises of 'free music'."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't music that comes over the air waves, AM & FM, free music? And can't you copy the music from the air waves, just like copying a movie on VHS, onto casette tape or burn that onto a CD? Can't you even make copies of that music and give it to your friends or copy your tapes and CDs and give them (or sell them) to your friends, relatives, etc.? Doesn't that also make music that you can listen to over the Internet air waves from Internet radio stations fair game?

That's not to say there isn't some free downloading and burning going on, but we aren't talking about people pirating music to make and resell CDs at a much more reasonable cost, but people listening to music over the digital air waves and burning a copy.

I'm not against making a profit -- and the music companies have made an obscenely large amount of profit at the expense of the consumer and the artist -- but doesn't this begin to smack of another loss of freedom? Think about it. If you can't download music from the net and burn it onto a CD or capture it on your MP3 player, then legally, with this bill in place, you also will not be able to do the same with music on the radio, television, or tapes you currently own or have borrowed from friends. It may seem like a big leap from a bill to shut down theft of music on the Internet, but it's really not. Give them an inch and the government will soon take a mile -- or much more.

A lot of this comes from the music industry who are down in the mouth about low bottom line profits. They are matching current sales since the advent of Internet music theft and piracy with sales in the recent past that show a distinctinly downward trend. Let's face it, the music industry has made us dance to their tune, like the mice in Hamelin dancing to the Pied Piper's tune, every time a new innovation in listening pleasure hits the market place. Old 78s gave way to 45s and LPs, which gave way to 8-track tapes, which gave way to casette tapes, which gave way to CDs, which gave way to MP3s and personal players like iPod. Every time a new way to listen to music comes out the consumer has to buy their favorite music on the new format, thus producing a very big spike in music sales, which the music industry execs believe should continue.

But let's be realistic. Even if a bunch of kids burn copies of their favorite music from Internet web sites, how much does that really amount to in dollars and cents? It's just like Bill Gates and Microsoft so upset about people sharing computer programs and causing them to lose a few hundred thousand dollars in a multi-billion dollar industry, so they made the new program CDs single use, which means you can't share files or programs and you can't even use the same program on more than one computer in your own home unless you either buy multiple programs or multi-user programs, which cost a great deal more.

What bothers me most about this, other than the beginning of the end of personal freedoms, is that the major American past time is no longer baseball, football, or even tennis and soccer, it's making money no matter how many people you have to step on or kill in the process. It doesn't matter that these corporate executives and bean counters make more money than they can possibly spend in their own or their offsprings' lifetimes for a good ten generations, but that it has all come down to money and the acquisition of money no matter what.

These wealthy piranhas talk about money as if it was the American dream, but that's not so. The American dream was a home of your own, a family, and a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. But watch out, folks, because that has been change, irradiated by greed and inoculated by selfishness to the point that the American dream has been perverted into wealth at any cost...and that includes the little people who make these people wealthy in the first place.

I'm not advocating theft, but I do believe there has to be a limit to what the greedy can take away from us. The question is whether or not we will continue to let the wealthy make policies that open the way for more loss of the freedoms we have all taken for granted or if we will all rise up and show them they can no longer climb to the top on our backs.

You don't realize it yet, but you and I are the ones who put the coins in these greedy biscuit eaters' pockets. We have the control and the money and if we keep it in our hot, grimy little fists they will not be able to take anything more away from us. We outnumber them and, as Rome found out in a very costly and dangerous campaign against an untrained band of slaves and gladiators, we can end their tyranny. Question is when will you get enough and put a stop to the greed and the parceling away of our freedoms bit by sneaky bit.

The Child Catcher indeed lured children with lollipops and treats, but this time it's the people who are being caught and sold a prison for the price of sugar candy.

Behind Friendly Lines

Several years ago I was given an assignment to interview a woman for a front page article in a local newspaper. I spent a lot of time with the woman as we talked about her past. After backing up the interview with a great deal of reading and research I wrote the article only to have the lead watered down, politically dampened, because the publishers didn't want to be controversial. That has always bothered me. When I sent a copy of the article to the woman I also sent her a copy of my original article, which I do not have here (it's in storage in Ohio). But the thought of how my lead was killed continues to bother me. So I offer the original lead here and a new lead closer to what I originally wrote. You decide which is more powerful and more telling.

Summer camp is a childhood institution in America, but for one Columbus woman, contemplating photos of herself as a child at "camp" brings back bittersweet memories of those times.

Here's the rewritten version:

While Hitler and the Nazis rounded up and confined Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, and dissidents in concentration camps throughout Europe, America, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, rounded up Americans and confined them in camps. Their only crime was a Japanese heritage.

As American pundits debate the merits of demanding an apology from the Japanese for their role in the war that concluded with an atomic blast 50 years ago this month, Karen Jiobu looks back with mixed emotions on a childhood spent in part in an American internment camp.

In March of this year, Jiobu and her husband, Robert, their son, Eric, and other relatives and friends, gathered at the former Butte Camp internment site in Arizona to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their liberation, and to remember a family member who had died at Hiroshima.

In a halting, trembling voice, Karen Jiobu said in a recent interview: "I really never thought about camp until after I went to the reunion and took a communications class. I had to give a speech. I decided to talk about my experiences. I didn't have many memories. As I gave my speech, I started to cry. I didn't realize I felt such deep emotions." She smiles slowly, eyes bright with unshed tears.

Karen, now in her mid 50s, is an executive director of a medical laboratory here. She speaks willingly, but in a soft voice, of her experiences as a Japanese-American child growing up in a nation filled with fear. Her brothers and sisters tell their stories as though the happened to others; her mother and father never talked about their internment.

Robert Jiobu, a professor of Asian-American studies at OSU, declines to discuss his experiences at Amache, Colorado, where he was imprisoned on an isolated Indian reservation. Many more Japanese-Americans also prefer to remain silent.

Karen was three years old when she "went to camp." Her father, mother, grandfather, three brothers and three sisters went with her. Another brother was born at the camp, she said.

Karen's father, Mr. Yoshimoto, was a second-generation Japanese immigrant, a Nisei, born in Hawaii and educated in japan. Her mother was a first-generation immigrant, an Issei, from the west coast. Karen, a Sensei, or third-generation immigrant on her father's side, and Nisei on her mother's side, call herself "Nisei-and-a-half." She says she is American-, as was her father.

Karen describes her father as "a strict man who sought only to make a better life for his family." Before the war, he provided camp housing for laborers he contracted with for local grape growers.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, catapulting U.S. forces into Word War II, Karen's father worried about his family's future freedom. He feared repercussions.

In the meantime, U.S. officials, themselves fearful of Japanese involvement with Germany, had been keeping a wary eye on the japanese-American community on the west coast through FBI investigations. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had been changed from the protective jurisdiction of the Department of Labor to the punitive control of the Department of Justice, and an Alien Registration Act was enacted in June 1940.

Though FBI agents failed to find any evidence of subversive activities among the Japanese-American population, they continued to watch-and wait.

The future that Karen's father dreaded became reality on February 19, 1942 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066, which forced more than 100,000 Japanese-American families to be incarcerated in hastily constructed wood-and-tarpaper barracks in the desolate, arid, harsh interior of America on Indian reservation lands.

"I was only three years old when a stranger came and told my father we had three days to pack. Many things were sold or left behind," Karen said. The Yoshimotos were taken to Stockton, California and housed in animal pens on the fairgrounds. They had to clean out the horse stalls at the Santa Anita racetrack stables where they lived while waiting for other internees, who were being assembled, processed and assigned.

Karen's family was sent to Gila River, a bleak expanse of scrub, rocks, and desert just outside Phoenix on the Pima Indian reservation.

"I had never seen so many Japanese people in one place before," Karen recalls.

Freedom could be obtained-but at a price. Draft age Japanese-American males could secure the freedom of their families by signing a loyalty oath.

The price was too high for Mr. Yoshimoto. "My father refused to sign," Karen states. "He was an American, born in America, raised in America, and treated like a criminal because of his race. He was hurt and angry. It's like being the victim of rape. Everyone wonders what you did to deserve it. We did nothing; we were just different."

At Gila River, Karen's entire family was housed in half of one barracks building. Her aunt and her family lived on the other side. A wall separated one family from another. "There was a pot-bellied stove, and mother always told me to watch out for Gila monsters," poisonous lizards common on the Arizona desert. "I played and had fun. I don't remember much," Jiobu commented.

"My older sister Bev was 16 when we went to camp. She graduated high school there." Karen has Bev's high school yearbook. It shows the haunting faces of young men and women playing basketball, baseball and attending meetings, school and dances at the camp. "I can remember running up a hill to see movies at the amphitheater the government built," Karen recalls, with a smile. She points to a photo of a large, flat-topped hill. "The water tower was on top of a butte. That's why the called it Butte Camp.

"When we went back to the camp in March [of this year] I picked up a piece of barbed wire and kept it. I shouldn't have; it's probably illegal. I thought it was from the camp, but my brother, Bob, told me they took the barbed wire down after six months and put up chain link fences."

Karen has two albums full of pictures of Block 30 where her family lived. "Not everyone had to go to camp. Bev had a friend who lived near the camp. She was Japanese-American, too. Her family wasn't interned." Karen's voice breaks.

"Once when Bev wanted to visit her, she had to write to Washington, D.C. to ask permission. Even when she wanted to spend the night with her friend, she had to write to Washington for permission."

Some Japanese-Americans were never interned because they lived outside what the U.S. government considered the "danger zone" on the Pacific west coast.

"When Bev graduated from high school she left. If you were old enough, you could leave early if you moved to the east coast and had someone to sponsor you. Bev's sponsors lived in Michigan."

After the war ended, Karen stayed in camp because her father refused to sign the loyalty oath. "He was angry and hurt. He was American. He shouldn't have had to sign." Eventually Karen's family was freed, though her father never signed the oath.

When they returned to California, the Yoshimotos settled in Woodbridge in a house on two acres. It was very different from the home they had left in 1943. They had to start over. "Before we went to camp my father had just bought his first new car."

While striving for some normalcy in this post-war world, the Yoshimotos suffered a serious setback. News finally reached them from Mrs. Yoshimoto's family in Japan, where two of her sisters owned a slipper shop. One sister had left the city and asked the other to stay behind and mind the store. That day an atomic bomb destroyed their home in Hiroshima, killing one of Karen's aunts. "My aunt always blamed herself for leaving her sister at home. My mother was devastated. She never went back to visit.

"After the war I saw the Hiroshima maidens. They were young women disfigured in the blast who were brought to the U.S. to have plastic surgery. They visited all the Japanese-American communities and spoke. I can still remember seeing their veiled faces."

Karen has no picture of the Hiroshima maidens, but she has an album full of photos, souvenirs, and memories from a recent visit to Japan. The blasted, broken carcass of a building sits like a stark monument amid modern Hiroshima's cars, people and temples. The shadowy figure of someone caught in the hellish atomic blast is darkly etched on two marble stairs. A children's memorial rises through flowering trees where it is decorated with heaps of thousands of brightly colored origami chains. "It is so beautiful," Karen whispers.

"When I talked to Bev, she reminded me about what happened after we moved back to California. My father saw someone coming up the road and ran out to look. He said it was a stranger. He called to mother and told her to pack. Mother didn't questions him. She began to pack. I hadn't remembered that until Bev told me.

"Father always lived with the fear that the government would send us away again. I don't understand what [the government was] afraid of. Most Issei were too old to fight the Nisei and Senseis were Americans.

"I just wish my parents could have lived to see President Bush personally apologize to all the Japanese-Americans who were interned. A couple of years ago the government gave each survivor $20,000. The apology was enough; I was very touched, but the money made it real for [the rest of America]."


What's your verdict?

This article originally appeared in Columbus Alive!, an alternative newspaper.

I don't know

In going back thru all the files and emails I save on acceptances and rejections, I discovered I've been busier than I thought. I missed a few in the first go around, but hopefully I have caught them all and now I can keep better track of what I write and submit. I do keep copies of everything, but I like to have them in a couple places just in case. One thing is certain, the new program will keep me from shuffling papers. I tend to forget to write things down and by the time I get around to it I forget half of what I should write down. I love my new program, although it is a bit difficult to handle right now. I'll get better and I feel much more organized and in charge of my writing and submissions.

Submission. That word conjures so many different thoughts, most of which should like in my memory and not be expounded on here. Like a certain private joke with someone who is gone from my life. If he ever wandered over here and read this he would know exactly what I mean and might even smile. You just never know. I keep hearing about how the world is getting smaller and smaller and the degrees of separation are shrinking. Personally, I'd rather have no degrees of separation in this instance, but what I want usually has very little context in reality. C'est la vie.

My mind flits and flutters from thought to thought and there have been few people who can keep up when I'm thought hopping. One of those is elementalmuse. We share many attributes. Don't worry. They're mostly good ones. There are many parallels in our lives and I see myself ten years ago in her, and not just because she is nearly 10 years younger than I am. See us together and you'd think we were either sisters or very good friends. In many ways we are both.

Back to thought hopping.

For some reason, writing and how much space we take up popped into my mind.

I was watching Hearts In Atlantis and the difference in how we write and how much space we take up was right there while Brautigan was writing on the inside of a matchbook cover. Have you ever noticed how much space you take up as a child? When you first learn to write, the letters are sprawling circles and lines written with pencils that small hands clutch with a death grip, just trying to hang on. The awkwardness of untrained muscles and ligaments and tendons forced into an unfamiliar exercise that becomes easier with time, the lopsided and disjointed circles and loops coming closer together, merging, taking on a reality that conforms to the letters banding the top of the blackboard. As we get older and learn more, the pencils are smaller and the letters corresponding smaller to fit the smaller lines on the paper. When I was a child, we progressed to cursive and then to ink pots fitted into the strange and incomprehensible metal banded holes in our desks and the first scritch-scratching ink-bloody letters from a metal nib on a tooth-marked and gouged wooden pen. No, it wasn't in the 19th century, but just a few decades ago back in the 1960s. I'm not as old as you think and I'm older than you know, but that's another topic for another time.

Then the advent of ink pens, usually blue capped Bic pens (black for the rebels), and theses and themes and papers written in ink to be handed in. The letters are smaller, more precise (for most of us), and they acquire character, a reflection of who we are. Just as the big circles and lines made with tree trunk pencils on gray-brown big lined paper when we were children, we took up more space as children -- not physically but really. We were short (most of us anyway) and grownups towered over us, but we were important, special. Our shouting and dreams and wishes and emotions took up all the space and air around us...just like the letters we fashioned.

As we grew taller and older, our letters were smaller, conforming to the world around us as we conformed to the rules and expectations of parents, relatives, friends, and society. Some of us kept writing in big bold letters, topping Is with hearts or smiling faces, precisely placing cross bars on Ts, drawing big loops to take up more space. Those were the school rulers, the elite, the beautiful and athletic, the rulers of our youth. Occasionally, some wallflower made their letters big and bold, a bluff, a wish, a desire to be more. The rest of us wrote smaller, some with precision and style and others almost to disappear into the lines and flesh of the page. Left handed writers' words slanted oddly, the letters thin and cramped like their fingers as they fought to train their muscles to perform right-handed tasks with left-handed minds.

Then came typing. Pica fonts at first to better able to see our mistakes and then elite fonts for a precise small look, taking up less space, letting the words speak for themselves. But the size of our letters and the space we take up is already indelibly etched in the curves and whorls of our brains. Our personalities, maturity, dreams, wishes, and thoughts revealed in signatures and handwritten secrets laid bare to the knowing eye. Even our moods can be traced thru our writing. Nothing is secret if you have the key.

But time marches on and the space we take up changes, expanding and contracting with changes in our personalities, our dreams, our lives, until in old age we are back to gripping larger pens and pencils, some with rubbery centers to accommodate arthritic fingers unwilling to obey mental impulses, our letters growing in size as we diminish in height and importance. At last, we are back to big circles and lines that may or may not connect as flailing arms and wide based gaits help us balance and move thru life taking up more space for our shrinking forms. Life comes full circle. The little flat chested pot bellied forms of childhood revert to sagging breasted flat chested pot bellied forms of old age. We end where we began: uncoordinated entities taking up much more space than our size seems to need.

Like I said, thought hopping.

I'll shut up now.

Books for soldiers

There is a certain sense of trepidation in writing to someone you have never met and know nothing about. I have had pen pals in the past, but always knew a little something about them before I wrote. As I looked over the listings of service men and women who wanted and needed news from home, books, hygiene supplies, and to know that someone cared, I was caught by the overwhelming response and wondering where I could fit something in, give a little something back. I don't have much and lately I have had a lot less, but I feel a kinship with these people who are so much like the men and women among whom I grew up as a child of a career Army NCO. I know how much they miss their families and how difficult it is to get thru the days without news from home or news from anyone.

I found one order for books unfulfilled and offered a hand, but I kept looking, half afraid that I would not be equal to the task of corresponding with a stranger. Not that talking (or writing for that matter) has been a problem for me before, but I really know nothing about any of these people. I finally chose a staff sergeant (laughing as I did at an entry to the call for letters asking what SSG stood for) and hopefully he will find something to give him a smile or just a moment to know he is not alone.

On another tack, I am faced with a clear slate at last -- well, mostly a clear slate. I find that the editor in chief of The Rose & Thorn has not publicized the staff issue or the contest, thus making sure there will be very few entries to judge and my last official act will die ignobly. So I'm asking all my LJ friends to get out there and buy a copy. Surely you can afford $3.00 for a superb and beautiful magazine you can read at your leisure during those long hot summer days while you bask by the pool or gobble ice cream and iced tea, water, or coffee, something shorter than a novel and sometimes even short enough for a quick read before you head to bed or to the beach or wherever. You don't have to enter the contest, but you could buy the issue and send the entry information to a poor writer friend who would like to enter but cannot afford the modest entry fee. I guarantee you will enjoy at least some of the issue, dependent upon your tastes and proclivities (there's even a bit of erotica between the otherwise PG-rated chaste pages) and an incredible three-way interview with three of the best known, award winning writers of science fiction & fantasy of our generation: Mercedes Lackey, Elizabeth Moon, and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. So you see there is something for everyone's tastes: a little romance, a bit of horror, some poetry, a taste of tittilation, and some really great illustrations, which I chose personally.

So, if you love good literature, funny and poignant stories, or poetry of every stripe and you don't mind a bit of high brow pedantic writing, go check out the staff issue and make me proud. Make my swan song one that will echo for a while and not go unheard and unremarked.

That is all.

I'll shut up now.

Another day, another review

I just looked out the window. The sky is a back lit pale blue, white around the edges, and it looks like someone has smeared dirt in swaths up and down above the trees in the north. Some of the dirt is paler, almost cream-colored, from the light of the sun going down. The pine trees are bending in the wind and the day is nearly gone. A sudden flash of lightning is followed by a crashing boom that reverberates beneath my feet in my loft office, but the sky is a bit lighter still out the office window and darker thru the windows at the south of the cabin over the deck. Another storm on its way.

This has been a week of violent thunderstorms, sleet, hail, and electrical outages. Three mornings I have awakened to the clock radio at my bedside blinking 12:00. After checking the time on my watch I see that anywhere from 7 to 9 hours have passed while I slept soundly. This feels more like spring in Ohio than summer in Colorado, but then again I'm not sure what summer in Colorado is supposed to be like. Somehow I doubt there will be another drought this year and the forests will be safe yet again from fire. Last summer I spent in a basement apartment with my nose pressed to the screen of a computer either designing and maintaining two web sites and doing my regular job. I came out of my hole in the ground to buy groceries and follow thru on appointments, but little else. When I came up here at the end of last July it was warm and sunny and clear with only one day of rain and electricity the whole time. So, I'm not quite sure what to expect. One thing is always certain, change is inevitable and constant.

Despite the late start and inability to get online -- and getting kicked offline by the thunderstorms running thru here off and on all day -- I managed to finish a book and a review to go along with it. A book about organization, which I sorely need, but which I have been lax about since I came to Colorado. Back home in Ohio in storage my filing cabinet, files, and organization waits in the dark. I began traveling without it and I miss the comfort and security of knowing exactly where everything is, from interview and research material to paid and unpaid bills, manuscripts, and article ideas. While the book was interesting and somewhat helpful, it gave me what I've been meaning to design for myself -- a database for submission tracking. I have one at Writer's Market Online, but I seldom use it. Too cumbersome and I get out of the habit. Today, I changed my laziness and downloaded a submission tracker and took most of the afternoon and evening inputting all the data I had written out on a homemade sheet that was difficult to read. (I have a tendency to scribble when I'm in a hurry) At least it's all down there, even though I discovered that some places where I submitted poetry or stories are either missing. I've probably written down the wrong website or not enough information to find it again. Oh, well, if they accept me they'll let me know; if not it will sit on my tracker like some of the stories I sent out about four years ago I've yet to hear about. Oh, I've contacted the publishers, but they have no record of having received my submission. Considering how many submissions they get and since they don't know me from the rest of the slush pile, it's not all that surprising.

I did realize thru all this that I have had a goodly number of acceptances and some of my work will be published this summer and followed by checks. I do need to get on the ball and get more of my work out there, but this had to be done first so that all I need do is input one submission instead of 100. Getting things like that together are much harder than keeping them up once they're set up.

I also had a program for inputting expenses and income, but that is on a computer I can no longer access because it just makes funny noises when I boot it up. I'll get it back eventually, but in the meantime I need to get hold of some of the software stored in Ohio so I can put the programs on these computers and get back on track. I prefer a certain amount of clutter, but not when it means I will have to pull out my hair come tax time. I like having hard copies and backups. It's the only anal retentive part of me, but it worked for me in the past. And I'm sure none of this is important to anyone but me.

In some ways I have been tentative about putting down any deep roots because I never know from one year to the next where I'll be. I admit to wanting to stay here for the foreseeable future and I am fighting to stay here, but if I can't generate a sufficient income I may have no choice but to go back to Ohio or get a regular job and drain all my creative energy into someone else's business instead of my own. Maybe if I had a regular queue of students for my online course on characterization, I wouldn't worry so much, but there are so many online courses out there given by people who have been teaching them longer than I and they have better publicity. I guess I'll have to work on that.

Another reason for getting things organized today is that I want a long peaceful day to work on the next phase of hoops I need to jump thru in order to be chosen as acquisitions editor for a publishing house. They are impressed with my qualifications and background, but I am one fish in a teeming pond -- or so they say. After this hoop, supposing I actually get thru it without getting stuck or falling on my duff, I have one more hoop to jump thru. I wonder what new torture they will devise. The review sheet is detailed enough and they expect me to be able to do 3 to 4 submissions an hour, including the review. Thank Providence or Talent or someone/something that I type very, very fast or I would be in trouble.

Anyway, I could use a break and I should fix something to eat, but I'm not really hungry and I feel energized. Don't know why, especially since my left shoulder is a bit sore. I guess I'll dive into the market listings and see what kinds of stories and articles and essays I can turn out before tomorrow, always supposing I can actually write something worthwhile. In the meantime, I'll play a little Pyramid and take a deep breath before the plunge thru the hoop.

One more thing . . . have you seen Big Fish? I didn't think I was going to like it, but after I got into it (about two minutes) I found myself walking the fantasy road with the characters. I love Albert Finney and Susan Sarandon, although in a very small part, was quite ingenuous and sweet. It was the story of a many with big dreams and the ability to spin stories around the simple facts of his life that make them magical and special. His son hates the stories and his father's "lies" until he finds out everything he has believed about his father was a mistake. At the center of each story was a big kernel of truth and at the center of the fantasy was the constancy and love of his family who, to him, were reality while everything else was fantasy. Sorry if I'm giving away the plot, but it is a wonderful story. And there have been so many wonderful stories lately, like Life as a House, which I believe should have won more acclaim from critics and the Academy. Kevin Kline has never been more on his game and the story is just wonderful. A simple story of life and fear and estrangement and redemption wound in and around the building of a house and a gift. Made me realize that I don't want to wait until (or if) I'm diagnosed with a terminal illness to realize my dreams or tell the people I love how much I love them. Life is about living and loving and regrets are for never.

Despite coming to Colorado under false pretenses and being cheated and lied to, I have no regrets. I have a wonderful, if quiet, life and I'm happy even with the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. I can either live my life and forget the sword is above me or I can waste my life testing the hair and worrying when it's going to fall. I may die tomorrow or next week, but for now, for this moment, I'm going to wallow in life and live my dreams. I don't want to wait until I'm too old or sick to enjoy them. No time like the present to live. To me, that's what living is for -- living.

Did you ever...

really listen to classical music, especially Rachmaninoff?

I spent the day lost in a fog of music and thunderstorms that made my phone connection unstable. I kept getting cut off. But I listened to the music, really listened, and was transported to a place where emotions had touch, sound, taste, feel, and view. A storm raged outside the windows, lashing the deck with fury at being kept back for so long. Thunder exploded in bursts like roars of joy and exaltation while lightning, purple and white jagged tridents, split the steel gray sky and torrents of fresh ozone scented rain battered the dry ground. All the while Rachmaninoff with his lyric notes wound in and around a deeper more intense and darker background bass thunder, matching the story outside and inside me, coaxing and then ripping emotions to the surface where they were washed in the lash of chorded notes and pummeled with deep rumblings until I was washed clean and bright and new.

I don't know what made me choose Rachmaninoff or why I chose Mozart to follow, but the music I thought would help me focus on writing and the changing nature of my life changed me. I remember reading something by Laura Equivel, a story set in the near future when certain music is banned from public consumption because of the emotions and memories it triggers. Music is used only by trained professionals and only as prescribed by the medical conventions. Some music is outlawed completely and even the professionals are not allowed to listen to it alone or outside clinical constraints.

It always seemed strange to me that people who love new music (new age, hip hop, dance music, pop, rock, etc.) never took the time to really listen to classical music. Maybe they were afraid they would be changed. They were right. Music does change us, especially when it is more than background noise in elevators and on hold lines. The same notes I learned to play as a child, single simple notes, EGBDF, FACE, all of them, sharps, flats, naturals, and all the different times and paces, are just notes, simple, single notes that in the right framework and in the hands of a master can turn us inside out or spur our mental faculties to undreamed of heights. I guess that's why I love musicals so much, because life is better with a score. No words are needed, just the music.

When movies first came out, organists played special scores to go with the action on the screen, wringing tears and emotions, laughter and fear, and even amazement with the sound. The words didn't get in the way. There was only the music and the scenes unfolding before your eyes in a black and white world full of adventure, love, diversity, poverty, happiness, everything you could imagine. But always there was the music, weaving a spell in and around the scenes, and transporting you to another world that left you blinking and straining to see back in the bright sunlight outside the womb of the theater.

So today, and tonight, I bare my emotions and my thoughts and prepare the inner ground for a new day, a new life, a new way of working and writing, hoping the music will cast a spell on me and magically change my mundane words into something more, something as much like the music I love as it is possible.

The past is gone, a tear stained memory of what might have been, and the future is here, a lover reaching to take my hand. I accept.

cool meme

Yoinked from Sarah, the divineneutrino



Which Extremity of the World Are You?
From the towering colossi at Rum and Monkey.


And since I'm trying to conserve energy and space (I'm about to embark on a day-long writing fest), I'll add my quickie here.

Nothing much to tell. Got a great night's sleep (when I finally went to bed) and woke up to a beautiful blue cloudless sky and my plants flourishing in the sun. Didn't have to water anyone this morning since they had a drink sometime during the night and seem to have enough of the life giving liquid. Didn't have to deplete my Nile capacity, so to speak.

I had a wonderful idea for a Cup of Comfort story on love that is due today. For some reason, I had the overwhelming urge to call my Mom well past the last call time (that's 10:00 p.m.) and told her I wanted to make sure she knew I loved her. She said she knew. I felt better after that. Don't know why.

But here's the schedule today:

1. Write story for Cup of Comfort for Love
2. Make card for Father's Day and write poem for same
3. Write inspirational story for Byline Magazine
4. Write paranormal column
5. Write Grammar Goofs column
6. Write P&P column for Litha
7. Write last book review due
8. Take mail to post office
9. Get something to eat NOW!

So, later, folks. I'm going to be writing. Email if you'd like just to give me a break now and then and in the meantime -- ENJOY THIS BEAUTIFUL DAY wherever you are.

I choose happiness

How can anyone be sad when there is such beauty in the world?

My little sister emailed with such feelings of sadness and pain that it hurt to read her words. I know she is having a very rough time just getting back to work and into the swing of things and she is unhappy with her life and the rest of the world. I know how that feels, how you feel there is nothing but clouds and rain and pain in your future and it will never end. No homily or bromide, like "tomorrow's another day" or "things will get better" or "time heals all wounds" and such, is going to help. Of course tomorrow's another day. What would it be? Another month? Another week? Another yesterday? Things do get better but they also get worse. And time doesn't heal ALL wounds. Sometimes the wounds get worse and never heal or you die. How's that for reality?

Pain is inevitable. It is inherent in the process of living. So we have to hang on, with our fingernails and teeth if necessary, to every bit of happiness we can find. Pain only lasts as long as you give it space in your mind. Drugs don't help; they just postpone the pain and make it worse when the drugs aren't available any more, adding the pain of withdrawal. Using drugs is like wearing thick socks and heavy shoes to protect your feet and then taking them off and walking over gravel or thorns. If you're not used to it, you're going to be in pain until the calluses form and protect your feet. Why do you think they call it tender foot?

Someone once told me love is a choice. I believe happiness is a choice. Like today, for instance.

I drove down to the post office to mail my DVDs back to Netflix and pick up my mail. The sky was clear and blue and in the distance between the trees the mountains were frosted with snow. The scene was perfect. On the side of the road a doe grazed sweet green shoots and watched me drive by and stop. She grazed on, pricking her ears from time to time, and moving into the shadow of a bush when I didn't move on. A little red fox raced across the road and slipped into the shadows of a low bush. Gary Puckett sang to me and I sang along as I drove. A breeze tickled the loose hairs around my neck and ears and the sun was warm on my skin. Yellow and white flowers spread along the side of the road and aspen tree leaves, lime green now, shook as I drove by. On the way back home, heavy cotton puffs clumped above me, piling up and turning gray, but were unable to cover the sun for long or block out the deep blue of the sky. A foaming surf of cloud horses race toward the blue shores, mares' tails whipping in a wind I cannot feel high above me. Hummingbirds greeted me when I got out of the car and butterflies of all colors flit floated on an errant breeze. The ground glitters with sun struck bits of gold, fool's gold, and the air is warm and redolent of the deep musky scent of pine trees almost ready to let fly with their green pollen.

Inside, the laundry is ready to go into the dryer and it smells clean and fresh. A bunch of yarrow and some yellow lupine-looking sprig go into water in a window to root and another bigger bunch of bright white yarrow with its tiny yellow centers are banded and hung upside down in the bedroom closet to dry and scent the air. On the deck, hummingbirds scold and dog fight, spiraling up into the sky until they are pin point specks of black. At the top of their flight, they jackknife back down to the earth whirring so close I can feel the breath of their blurring wings. I chitter at them and they gather closer, racing in for a quick sip and then back out again, whizzing and whirring by me in all sides like bees around a busy hive. Little white topped weeds straggle along the rocky ground beneath the deck and butterflies dance on the breeze. And I'm happy.

Music greets me inside and there is work to be done, but I can focus happily because I know all this beauty will await me when I am ready to look up and greet it again.

I don't have a lot of money and it will be weeks before I have any more. I don't know where the money will come from, but it doesn't matter; it will come. It doesn't matter when or from where because at this moment I am happy and at peace. I have a wonderful, if spartan, life and I have everything I need. When I need more it will be here.

For today, for this moment, I choose to be happy.

Nerve

I just don't believe it. I have done everything possible to make my leaving The Rose & Thorn as painless as possible. The only thing that remains to be done is something I started last week, which is dealing with tech support about the bulletin boards. I started the contact and feel I should continue with it until everything is done and I have left the website better than I found it. It's just a character flaw. One of many, I assure you.

This morning I received a message from the Editor in Chief letting me know that my services were no longer required and I should let the new coders have the access codes so they can get on with the fall issue. I've already given the coders the access codes (I sent them last week), but I asked they not mess with the Cpanel until I had the boards' problem resolved. They said they would leave it untouched. Evidently, the EIC didn't get THAT message either. She gets so few of the messages I, and some of the other staff members, send unless it's something she wants to know or see.

In her message to me this morning, she also notified me that SHE would contact the host and change over ownership of the site. I explained that's sort of like me going to her bank and telling them I would handle all her checking and credit card accounts from that point on. I believe that is considered theft or fraud or something equally illegal and un-lovely. She just can't wait to get rid of me, so maybe she did get my message about her attitude, micro-managing, and stealing ideas she had publicly decried two weeks or so before she decided to send them out as her own. The tone in her email is dismissive, rude, and disrespectful. She is done with me and she wants control NOW!

I wouldn't have a problem with it, except that once I start a project I like to finish it. That's the way I am.

Her last email told me she was contacting the new coders and would let me know when they had finished contacting the host to change over ownership. So I have emailed her backup copies of the boards and I am now on the phone with the host to change over ownership. I should just let her try to change over ownership and see what happens when they tell her they can't and then conveniently not get her email messages demanding I give her ownership.

New wrinkle. I just talked to the host and in order to transfer ownership of the site I have to fill out papers and send them in. She's not going to like that at all. Gee, that's too bad. Should I take my time filling out the papers and sending them in? I don't know about that, but one thing I do know is that I can't wait to email and tell her.

Sorry, another character flaw. I like to made rude, dismissive, and otherwise disrespectful people wait. Don't you?