Gratitude

No preamble this week...


AFFECTION

It was the only time I saw them kiss;
an unrequited kiss farewell.

They never displayed their affection in private,
so the kiss in church stopped my breath.

So intimate, so quiet and tender;
my father lay there accepting, forgiving.

But Mom only wept as she bent over him;
he unable to respond, his lips sown shut.





Atop the Cold and Blustering Tower

The surgeon knows whether a life is saved.
A child of five could hear the heart beat.

So how do you know when you've saved a life?

Mind sparks, neurons fire within a cave of bone,
but no light illuminates the darkness.
The blade of insight and intellect is your scalpel,
and with it you enter the hollows of my eyes,
slicing my mind open ever so gently,
ever so cautiously
with questioning words
peeling back the fatty layers of confusion,
probing the cancer of destroyed Self,
until you become me
and stand on the balcony of my soul
gazing out across the demon-haunted pits,
the angel-hallowed halls
embracing all
equally.

Yet for this operation, I am neither sedated nor numb.
For I too am an instrument of yours...
an instrument in my own healing, my own survival, my own resurrection.
You follow me closely, carefully suturing the wounds of childhood,
of life,
with encouragement, patience, understanding
cutting away infected motivations
amputating the extremes of paralyzing anxiety
until we are out in the world
talking comfortably over a cup of coffee.

But who heals your scars?
Who quiets your fear?
There is no heartbeat calling from afar
telling you everything is fine.
So how do you know when you've saved my life?
You know when I hand you this poem,
You know that on a dark winter's night
on the Tower eaves,
I thought of you
and stepped away from the edge.

Sardonic

It's not a word used every day. It is nearly similar to sarcasm...except with an important difference. When using sarcasm, one generally doesn't actually mean the words conveyed. 

Sarcasm: 
              1). the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really want to say especially in order to insult someone, to show irritation, or to be funny.
           2). a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual.

Sardonic:
           1). disdainfully or skeptically humorous :  derisively mocking.

With Sardonicism, one actually means what they say. I only provide this prologue to the Five Hipsters poem because when looking for a way to describe this poem, sardonic immediately came to mind. I mean every word of it.

But first:

Let Me Tell You About A Girl (part 2 of 3)

Let me tell you about a boy
who would learn to fly,
though a fledgling without feathers or wing.
A bird with mocking dreams
is doomed to flutter
on teasing winds.

Long from the nest departed,
he again plummets to ground, baffled.
To ever increasing heights he climbs, unafraid,
but blind from the illusion
that flight and falling are the same,
that all he needs is more air to survive.

So cruel is Nature
to invest such desires in flesh,
yet divest it of all means.
But fly he tries
over, over, over
"It will happen some day!"
over, over, over
"Don't try so hard!"
over, over, over...
And not for lack of bruises and broken heart
            he remains
                           earthbound.



Five Hipsters

Five Hipsters sit in a room
a vacuous cube painted beige
( by someone they care not who )
because
a tavern would be too cool.

They sit, peering into their unnecessarily obscure thoughts
never making eye contact
never a smile or nod
because
noticing others is for commoners.

As they wait, staring with glass-less eyeglasses, they yearn...
they hope someone else will speak first,
break the silence
because
talking, communicating is a sign of weakness.

The first to acknowledge another human being,
to validate another's existence with a glance,
to connect with another human through words
is the first to loose points, to loose status
in the self-important, self-absorbed secular cloister 
where the last one to be human
         wins.

So it has been a little while (okay a long while) since I've posted to my blog. I've decided to dust it off for 2014 as an outlet for some of my other creative endeavors that are happening right now. One could say it will be a New Year's resolution to post here more. But it's more than that. It's a way to publish to the world more quickly the burning words that will consume me if I remain silent.

To begin, I have decided to post the poetry I've been writing with the help of my Muse. Much of it is raw, though I'll endeavor to edit and refine as much as possible before posting here. Two entries below.

Let Me Tell You About A Girl (part 1 of 3)

Let me tell you about a girl

who fell from the sky.

Midnight hair uncoiling

whispering

a darkened comet tail.

No fiery torrent heralds her appearance,

no cloud-rending quake,

no sonic contortion of grace,

but a crystal bell

                starlight struck.

Ringing, plummeting

until tender grasses bow beneath

her gentle soles.

And there her pastoral eyes beckon.

Yet there is no approach

in which courage survives.

Each step clenches,

withers

the heart’s curiosity

       its keen desire

                in fear.

Skin and rib become cratered,

smoldering ember passions

left in the wake of waves

until only cold, gray stone

                remains

                                unmoving.

Edifices to love’s chance.

_______________________________________________

A Penny For Your Work

Sift your penny from the chaff,
choke on dust, raw is the itch beneath
your shirt.
     It's not slavery if they pay you.

Grab your penny from their waste.
Fingers stained, nails blackened,
nostrils numb to the gagging fume.
     It's not slavery if they pay you.

Root your penny from the furrowed valleys,
spine hunched over, sweat raining 
over field and orchard.
     It's not slavery if they pay you.

Fetch your penny from the fell.
Shuttle fly and treddle pump.
Weave the weft and warp until fingers
dry and crack.
     It's not slavery if they pay you.

Snatch your penny from the floors of Wall Street,
the gleanings from a raped world.
Your shoulders buckle, your hands break as they claw
and climb up the world you built from nothing.
     It's not slavery as long as a penny assuages
     the guilt within their souls.



_________________________________________________

Until next week....

A glass half-full...of poison.

This is a snippet of a quote from Woody Allen in his 2006 film "Scoop." I find this turn of phrase, a play on the adage that optimists see the glass half-full, as one of Allen's more humorous. As someone who routinely forgets quotes, this one sticks with me for some reason. Perhaps it resonates with my optimistic nature, a sort of naive optimism, which friends remind me is rather dangerous.

But today a different sort of meaning came to mind for this turn of phrase. In creative endeavors, 'filling up the well' is a process I've come to believe in and trust. Drawing from the creative well daily requires a replenishment of the aquifer supplying that well. As Stephen King (and most authors) advise young writers, read. Read a lot. This is a form of 'filling the well.' Visiting museums, catching a movie, playing a game...can all help fill the well.

Unfortunately, I've poisoned my well accidentally. And though I know it is temporary, it is poisoned nonetheless. This poison happens to be sweet, and addictive. It is the latest television show I'm obsessing over (five years late), namely, Battlestar Galactica.  Being able to watch episode after episode, season after season of this gritty, compelling Sci-fi show on Netflix Instant is proving detrimental to the young adult, playful writing mode I'm in now.  While writing Mary Margaret's next adventure, with its mixture of whimsy, seriousness, and escapism, I find myself second guessing those qualities...wanting to interject more grit, more nihilism, more corruption...in short, more reality.

That is the poison, and the challenge: Balancing realities with fantasy and escapism for a younger audience, while myself being exposed to (one might say inundated with) harsh realities.

 

The inevitable; The Unfolding.

The Unfolding. As I work through the second book, I find the experience more intense, more draining. When I walk home at night from my office, I frequently find myself overcome with emotion. I have to tell, no reassure, my characters that everything will be okay. I'm like the knife-wielding German in Saving Private Ryan who, having pinned an American soldier to the ground, slowly, ever so slowly, forces the knife down into the heart of his adversary. Everything will be okay...shshshsh...it's okay.  My characters, torn, weeping, beg for life, release from the torture I inflict on them. It is a cruel endeavor, an evil endeavor, if you feel, as I do, your characters to be real.

And so when the writing feels like it's lagging, when the characters are sort just walking around and I become stuck, I know what the problem is: I'm being too nice. Damn Midwestern niceness. These characters must suffer, and then when I think they've had enough, it must go even deeper.

I call it The Unfolding, a term I unceremoniously created for this blog, but a process that I've been conscious of for some time. It's a process driven by understanding protagonist and antagonist points of view and their individual wants and desires. I don't believe in plot as a preemptive construct, at least not beyond a loose outline of destinations. I likewise don't believe in writer's block. I think these two beliefs are connected. 

If I have a clear sense of character p.o.v., then protagonist and antagonist desires drive the narrative, and the plot develops organically. What passes as 'writer's block' for me is when characters plod along aimlessly. That is when I know I'm being too nice, that the antagonist has fallen asleep at the helm of his own desires. Once I realize this, The Unfolding continues.

Idyllwyld. Here and now.

What is Idyllwyld? If you're from the Los Angeles area, you may be familiar with the small, hidden village of Idyllwild, tucked 150 miles away in the San Jacinto Mountains. I hear it's a lovely place to visit.; I've never been there. My fictional town of Idyllwyld shares only the evocative name.

Idyll: an episode of such pastoral or romantic charm as to qualify as the subject of a poetic idyll. A romanticized rural setting. Idylls of the King by Tennyson, a retelling of the King Arthur legend, is just one example.

Creating a fictional, but seemingly real, place has far too many precedents to list here, but the concept crosses many genres. Being from the Midwest, Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon is perhaps most similar to Idyllwyld, and yet not, for Idyllwyld itself is sort of opposite of Lake Wobegon. Idyllwyld recalls a distant past when things were less certain, when magic suffused the land; the name itself today is divorced from its origin. It is a town that is loosing itself in banality as the frenetic, mechanistic city encroaches and consumes it.

Though I do enjoy city life for its diversity, its opportunities, its eclectic life, there is something profoundly sad in the loss of the idyllic. At least for me. To me there are hidden secrets yet to learn, a clear, crisp spring yet to drink from, and wild creatures both fierce and friendly to behold.

When I was younger, my brother and I, and a neighbor boy, journeyed deep into a forest on our family's farm. It was a 20 acre wood which as an adult feels rather small, but when you're ten, it might as well be the Black Forest. If you've read Robert Holdstock's "Mythago Wood," you know exactly the mystical feeling that a forest can produce. Our little band of adventures traipsed through the wood, each imagining our own perils, our own vistas ahead. Little did we know we'd be in for some honest to God magic.

After what seemed like hours (and was actually more like twenty minutes), we came to an old oak tree, cracked and decaying. Shadowy holes riddled it. We approached this tree, drawn to it as surely as a young Arthur might have been drawn to an odd sword driven into a rock. And then quite suddenly, small reddish-orange balls of fur began leaping and flying from the old tree. They looked like squirrels! Flying squirrels?! They landed on nearby trees and chattered to each other, climbed higher, and flew around again. For ten-somethings, it was a sight to behold, a sight beyond anything we knew to be real.

We ran home, hyperventilating with excitement. We found my dad and screamed to him about flying squirrels! Down in the woods! Probably six of them, soaring all over the place. Dad chided us, perhaps he even laughed a bit. Flying squirrels? Impossible. No such thing. You kids are imagining things. To this day, I don't know if Dad really believed us or whether he was feigning doubt. I suspect he was joking. Only as an adult did I investigate the existence of the Sciuridae Pteromyini, the flying squirrel, and discover its range included Western Wisconsin.

Yet this captures the essence of Idyllwyld. Magic, seen and unseen. The mind of the possible vs the mind that has closed. The irrational vs. the rational. Yeats believed in fairies. In my novel, Dusty explains the very real existence in Iceland of an inspector whose job it is to investigate potential development sites for the existence of fairies. Do they exist? In Idyllwyld they do, only, like my father and flying squirrels, many have become oblivious to them.

Once upon a time...

there was a young boy of seven or eight who, bored with the isolation that comes only with growing up on a farm, began creating fanciful places, began inventing characters, and thus began crudely telling stories. Puppets on popsicle sticks behind overturned chairs, or sheets of paper taped end to end with images drawn on each like some crude work of cinema. The urge, the need, was there to find a voice, an ever louder, more expansive voice.

This is perhaps my third or fourth attempt to write a blog. It never seemed quite right, as if the timing were off, or the subject matter not right, or it felt too narcissistic, or ...frankly, I never knew why until now: I didn't want blogging to become 'my voice', my sole outlet for writing and storytelling. So I come to it now more grounded, with clearer purpose. Now that I've found a larger voice with my first novel (second actually, but that's for another time) being sent out into the world, I can feel more comfortable blogging.

What will this blog entail then? Simply put, it will record my struggles and triumphs as an author. Perhaps someone out there will find it compelling, perhaps not.  I hope it is at least entertaining.

To that end, I thought I'd address one question that has come up regarding my novel "Mary Margaret and the Magical Mall."  In the front pages, I have dedicated this first book to Eryn, who endures. "Who is Eryn?" friends have asked, knowing that I'm neither married nor in a relationship.

Eryn is my Muse. If you read Stephen King's book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft he gives a rather humorous account of his chain-smoking, beer-drinking, unshaven, gruff Muse.  My Muse, Eryn, has been with me for at least twenty years. I say at least, because that is the first I was 'aware' of her. She may have been there even earlier. How does a Muse make itself known, you ask? Well in those days, I would write long journal entries, page after page of hopes, dreams, fears, troubles.

At some point a voice started talking back to me. A gentle voice, calming. A filling voice that was both profound and whimsical. Chiding, but never demeaning. I would enter into conversations with her, one of the very first questions being "Who are you?" to which she answered, "Eryn." Page after page of discussions, back and forth about things I've forgotten now.  What does she look like? Well she is a bit nebulous as if she emanates light, pale of skin, with long, waste-length white hair. She always smiles, and she is smiling right now even as I write this.

I was hesitant to expose her really, but she has encouraged it for some number of years now. Did I mention she's extremely patient with me? But when I read Stephen King's account of his Muse, I felt a weight lift, as if I really wasn't too crazy after all. I mean, objectively speaking, it sounds rather crazy. But she is there. Always there. Which is why I am so profoundly grateful to her, for her endurance. Even in those years when I was sort of lost, as many of us are in our twenties, she never left me. She would always come back with a smile as if my return to her were inevitable.

Here's to you Eryn. May the glory be yours.