last week
I found this story in an ezine called Exquisite Death – a dark tale for Halloween. I loved the lyrical repetitiveness of it.
Greg and I went to see “Running with Scissors” – I found it funny/ disturbing. Parts of it actually reminded me of a three-year period after my mother’s death – I forgot the exact line in the movie but I think it was something like, “we all need rules, without them there are just too many surprises.” I liked Jill Clayburn’s character.
I enjoyed last week. Wrote over five thousand words on my Fantasy – it is starting to feel like a real to goodness book. I keep wanting to sit down with a pencil and paper and start sketching a map of their world. Naming the rivers, towns, cities, mountain ranges, seas, etc. I think it might make this world more real to me if it has its own map. It was not just the writing that I loved about last week but the unhindered ease of how my days progressed afterwards. Doing a bit of bookkeeping, baking, putting around the yard, filling in holes (yes, they just keep digging) raking the leaves, bringing in my germaniums, tossing the Frisbee to the dogs, the girls coming in after school wanting to talk to me about their school day, while we sat at the table and ate cinnamon rolls. Some weeks appear so unruffled that I actually feel small within them. Maybe that’s how it should be.
Mdialogue was tweaked a little more. To try it out, it now only requires a password and an email address.
dad
The furnace kicked in this morning for the first time. Woke up to a warm house. Wandered down stairs to let the dogs out and stood by the kitchen window for a few minutes looking out at all the patterns of dissipating grey as night slowly evaporated in front of me. My dad called yesterday and talked to me for a few minutes. It’s quite rare when he does that but it is getting less so. How do I explain my dad? The athlete I guess? He used to box in his early years. Also played hockey back then and was a pitcher for my hometown’s baseball team for years. (Left-handed). There are lots of old newspaper clippings that mention him that he saved from the sport’s section of our local newspaper. Sometimes they referred to him as Lefty. Had his own landscaping company (four men and a tractor) and plowed snow in the winters. Wore jeans his entire life, still does. Loves the birds that come to his bird feeders. Walks every day with his dog, Jack. He was the seventh son of the seventh son, which makes me laugh thinking about the White Stripe's song. - Dad would often remind us of this, making it sound like it gave him special powers or something. He loved the Johnny Carson show but hated Ed MacMan with a passion that never quite made sense to us. He spent a lot of energy complaining about that guy – I believed it irked him that someone could make money by just chuckling occasionally on cue. When I first moved here I wrote a lot of journal entries about my Dad – they weren’t always positive entries but now I realize he did the best he could for who he was. –I am not saying our family didn’t have its dysfunctional moments but then again I truly believe you can fit the number of completely functional families out there on a head of a pin.
Anyway, I got Dad on my mind. It’s partly because he called yesterday but mainly because the furnace came on this morning.
From my journal 1990
The Loggiville road with its canopy of trees
Sitting in the GMC, my father and me
With ribbons of sun filtering through the leaves
Falling on the windshield
Potholes sink each tire
And we rattle for a while
As cars pass, hands wave
Acknowledgement from all
And dad spits tobacco
which seems to go a mile
To where the
pinto ponies graze
As I look upon the trailors with
rows of weather vanes and then
out beyond
to a point of sand
a moon time shore
where fires from the night before
leave behind blacken wood
to be covered up by the first big snow.
The road’s a sweet one –
That’s for sure
(before I moved to the big city I use to pronounce "sure" as "shore" – so when you’re reading it – it suppose to sound more like “that’s for shore.”)
writing
I finished my Vampire story yesterday but I still can’t come up with a title. It is funny how things work out – I happen to have a Billy Talent song on my Ipod, Prisoners of Today, from Erin’s CD. She is a fan of Billy Talent; I am not that big of a fan but this song started playing when I was jogging yesterday. The lyrics jumped out at me, along with the teenage angst that accompanies his songs and I started figuring that this was the tone/feeling I wanted for my story. So, when I got home I listened to the whole cd and finished writing the rest of the story and I wrote close to 1300 words. Its total word count is almost 7500 words but I’m hoping to whittle it down over the next couple of weeks. I always feel good when I finish a story.
I came up out of the basement and made cookies after that –
Sunday and we had a friend over for supper and we got into a conversation about writing and other creative outlets and it was pretty interesting. We all agreed that – talent aside – to be successful in anything it just comes down to plain hard work. Which was funny because I was reading the writer’s almanac the other day about Michael Crichton. How he wrote 10,000 words/day while he was studying to become a doctor. How is that humanly possible? I don’t know if I would of wanted to be a patient on his watch? These people must not sleep.
But that being said I also realize that a little here, a little there is not going to get me anywhere and if this is something I want for myself I need to churn out five thousand words a week – and I have to submit more regardless how much it hurts.
I think I sent off stories to four or five places in the last three months, all rejected with a form note except for one which said, although he thought the writing was fine, I left too many questions unanswered. – Which is progress for me.
I think today I’ll try to write a chapter “In a beggar’s pocket” and then clean the house.
This week (or at least the next couple of days) is about bookkeeping – I let is pile up a bit. It is chilly here in the mornings. We took the dogs to the shore yesterday and Cinnamon started swimming after these two huge swans. They lazily swam in front of her leading her further and further out into the lake. I’m whistling my head off and yelling for Greg to do something. I was scared they would get her way out there and she would be too tired to come back or start pecking at her head or something. They were bigger than she was – Greg is looking at me like, you don’t actually think I am going to go swimming after her? But he did the big call out to her and she finally turned around.
Greg said, “You know it is never a very relaxing time taking these dogs for a walk?”
As we watched Cinnamon do loops up and down the shore as fast as she could go I said, “But they are fun to watch and don’t worry greg, they’re still very young, they’ll settle down at some point.” Although I’m not a hundred percent convinced of that.
Anyway, Greg site is now up – he is going to tweak it a little more and I think he is going to put up a demo page so viewers can see the video quality. So, another week and the changes should be made.
The link is www.mdialogue.com
Deadwood and deadsquirrel
O.K. that was pretty lousy but its my blog ☺ so I’m going to leave it. It was a crazy start to that day though. Nerves were a bit frayed. I was still a little upset that I didn’t get myself together enough to get that job. We left the dogs for a bit on Saturday and they chewed along the bottom of our cabinets – nothing a little paint won’t fix but still – and the thing was Greg had just come back from the market with these huge bones for them. Suffice to say by Sunday morning I just wanted to go for a long drive in the country – I am not sure if everyone else did, which made for a less than peaceful drive. But by the end of it- it was fine and just what I needed. October is a funny month. Today it is raining steadily – the force of it varies from drizzle to downpour. The jogging is going O.K. – I’m still taking the dogs with me. They are pretty good. Of course they get easily distracted and want to pull me into certain yards, over to certain trees, garbage cans, other dogs but for the most part they trot nicely beside me.
I am a little hesitant about letting them off the leash now. I didn’t tell you (because I felt guilty) but a few weeks ago we were at a lovely tree filled park which had an off leash part to it and we were walking behind the dogs as they dashed up and down the path and between the trees. Anyway, first thing Erin asks is “do you think our dogs could survive here all winter by themselves?”
And Greg answers, “No they would starve to death.”
Seconds later we hear this screeching and I go running into the trees to see my dogs shaking a squirrel. It was dead by the time I got to them. Man, I felt bad about that. But I think they answered Erin’s question. Annie chased squirrels for fifteen years and never caught one and she was fast. But these dogs are more like the cat – they crouch and sneak, crouch and sneak and then take off after them (and they are very quiet) Maybe I will get a little bell for their collars. I think it is the husky part of them and that they act as a team. Anyway, it isn’t a good thing. I have no idea why I accept it from the cat when she brings home a mouse or a bird but it bothers me that the dogs did it. I hope the squirrel people don’t come after me –
I watch Deadwood now every Monday night. I think it is Season One that I am watching – they have back-to-back episodes of it on the history channel. I’m not sure how historical the facts are but I really like this show. Mind you when ever I see the Gem saloon owner (I forget his name at the moment) I need to come down on the volume so his cursing doesn’t make its way up stairs to the girl’s ears. I don’t know why I am so taking by that character because he is such a bad ass but he’s entertaining. It is the kind of show you want to have a shot of whisky with and a bar to slam your empty glass down on. I reckon I’ll keep watching.
weekend
Fields of amber and suede
Barns of silver and stone
a country drive
to get a seasonal taste -
They argue in the back seat
it is so constant
we threaten to turn around
One wants to get a pumpkin, the other wants
An iced cappuccino
One wants the window open, the other wants it closed
One wants to talk, the other wants to shut her up.
The eldest daughter, her white earphones wrapped around her
throat like a scarf – Panic at the Disco roaring through her
temple - raises her voice so she too can hear her own
yelling
and then the dogs begin to whine – wondering why it’s taking
so bloody long to get to a park.
It is not quite working for us today.
And we’re about to give up on this outing when the youngest
spots a “U Pick” sign –some marker on a sheet of cardboard.
we pull into
rows of trees, blue skies, fruit hanging abundantly
We gather bags
And begin to indulge in one
of the first pleasures of mankind
The picking of apples
Plucking their round bodies of gold and red
from branches so laden, they’re thankful
that were here to offer relief
Red delicious, Empire, Cortland, Spartan,
Crispin, Idared, Jonagold, Macintosh
I disappear for a bit - four rows over in the
Spartans to simply stand in hushed sunshine–
Near is a birch
Wide and lovely, her white body, yellow leaves
borders the next farm
a stretch of field waiting for winter
an apple tree, a birch and a field
And I am suddenly thankful-
I turn back up the row
And spot my daughters
their conflict
For the time forgotten as
they
both reach for a red delicious
From the same branch.
Picking apples
between the whines
Clean up day. How fun. I am hoping to sneak a few hours of writing in there somewhere. I have an ending for my vampire story now. The trouble with my vampire story is I can’t get the tone right. I need to make it darker, creepier but I keep pulling back for some reason. I should just let it go where it wants to. But on a lighter side, I am having a lot of fun with my fantasy/s stories although I don’t get to them very often – with one, I think I might have too many characters. It sort of starting to feel like a Seven Samurai/ Magnificent Seven type story except the heroes are six kids and a huge desert hen. Don’t ask? My muse drinks me thinks. Anyway, dogs are whining at me, time to let them pull me across the city towards the dog park.
It stopped raining
So, I'm off for a jog with the dogs. I’m hoping it relaxes me a little because I have a job interview later this morning and I’m starting to freak. Fingers crossed.
That is Greg at the picnic table, daydreaming about sailing his own one day.
weeds
We step across the threshold into October. Just down the hall, near the den sits winter. With a nod she invites us all to go sit with her for a while but for now we’ll just hang out near the front door's coat rack, and look back through the window at summer.
I decided to take the dogs for a walk to the quarry yesterday. As I past a coin-operated newspaper dispenser the headlines caught my attention. It collapsed like a house of cards, it read. It was referring to the Quebec Overpass, near Montreal, which fell on two cars, reducing them to sheet metal, killing five people.
I kept thinking about it as I walked. I wondered how busy the highway would have been on a Saturday? Were they passing under it at the regular speed or were they slowed up in traffic? How long does it take a car , which is traveling at 100 kms an hour, to pass beneath an overpass? 3 seconds? And where were they going? To the mall - to visit a friend - or heading out into the country to see the changing leaves? Or were they returning home with the baguette and quart of milk they were asked to pick up while they were out? Three seconds – I thought about how many seconds there are in an hour, a day, a year -30 million and change I figure. What are the odds of being under the pass on that very second it let go?
And then I started thinking of the surviving family members. When did they first glance at their stove top clock and say, “What’s keeping them?”
Today I thought about the worker, who was sent to the bridge a half an hour before it collapsed, to investigate a complaint about falling debris. He declared it safe. Would he have been an engineer? And does he now sit with his face in his hands, agonizingly wishing for a chance to go back and change his decision. Life is a house of cards.
When I got to the quarry yesterday, I let the dogs off their leashes and they went flying through the tall grass. I stood for a moment and looked out across the expanse of field at its mixture of colour and I wished I could describe what I was seeing, or better yet feeling. The grass was the colour of a buckskin horse – two shades lighter than gold– and all through it were tall batches of flowering weeds -white, lavender, yellow, rust, brown. There were monarchs hovering over the tops of the tall, purple wayleaf thistles and there were clusters of what looked like minuscule yellow daisies, their sheer volume causing their bodies to bend into perfect arches. There was such a wild look to everything – it made me feel that our world could go on just perfectly well without us. For a moment i felt very vulnerable in that field of such incredible, resilient flowering weeds.
