Nemographia

One More Slice

2008-08-04T15:01:00.000-07:00

French fries...they were treats. Vacation food. Something that one rarely got enough of, salty and straight out of the oil. Until of course, the day that one of the grandparents let me order the large size and then hoover up everyone else's leftover fries. Urrrggghhh. Not that one doesn't enjoy fries now (decades later), but one does remember too many with a wince.

I will assume that the latest book in the Twilight series was one fry too many for me. Although I enjoyed the first three, I didn't see now the last three could maintain that tension while allowing the main character to grow beyond the utter desperation of her own desire. Perhaps there is a story arc that doesn't involve using your friends or a way to wiggle my brain into the narrow confines of happy every after, down in the twisting caverns of a narrative idea that suddenly looms over the text. Maybe when one is younger, one is just used to everything carrying undertones of preaching and perfectability. Or maybe one skates along the surface and watches the colors flash out of the narrative and enjoys the story. However it is that I found my way into the first three, I stalled out 100 pages into the fourth, empty of desire to continue reading.

Despite the sorrow that comes with finding that the last chapter is one chapter too far, I find it fascinating just how narrative can both uplift and stop the reader cold. What is it that provides narrative with this? The story? The reader?

If it is the reader, then what does it profit a writer to do more than study grammar and spelling? How does story-telling become something that draws people into blogs and novels and movies?

Spa Day, with Gerbils

2008-08-03T19:02:00.000-07:00

While rushing through Wal-Mart yesterday, I happened to grab a handsoap that I hoped would be less harsh than what I had purchased last time. It was advertised as a "Spa" line, although beyond that it wasn't specific. When I happened to use it later, the aroma of cedar (a possibly unintentional aroma) diffused and clung to the hall bath. Just like the cedar shavings in the gerbil cages of my childhood. Nervous hopping rodents in need of relaxation in between being grabbed out of their cotton-fluff homes, what a perfect allegory for the work day. Now if only I could cedar-chip my office, perhaps we could eliminate...eh, probably not.

Roaches of the Sea

2008-07-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

His royal oddness, The Pumpkin King, is cheerfully defrosting a ring of boiled shrimp for dinner. Now christened Roaches of the Sea, the shrimp will hopefully defrost prior to the brownies coming out of the oven. Aaahhh, the joys of "I'm Not Cooking" night. Roaches are a recurring theme, lately. While showering at my parents recently, a giant roach ran across my toes. My eyes were closed at the time (shampoo beehive) and the darn roach screeched like a girl at encountering a foot in the shower. Trust me. I was there.

I've never had a gecko run across my foot and, so far, they haven't succeeded in turning the oven into a functioning reptilian rocket. They alwso match these lovely ecru? bone? off-white? gecko belly? white walls. Tres chic. Skitter chic.

guten abend, my little skitterlings.

Still Can't

2008-07-07T18:24:00.000-07:00

Write, that is. Did okay for a day or so, but once that habit is gone, you're fighting inertia to get it back. I do, however, have plenty of reading material, so that's okay. Somehow, though, getting out of one good habit has led to challenges in others. Instead of finishing up my filing, I'm reading the a fascinating Firefly novel by Steven Brust (free from his website), compiled lectures from Joseph Campbell (blame EVERYTHING on Oedipus), and maybe a few other novels tucked in just for interest. One book is tempting me to raise geckos by telling about the author's struggles to raise ravens. I assume that geckos live on something other than roadkill and that they would adhere instead to a mutually beneficial de-bugging diet. I could crochet little leashes from embroidery thread and name them after cars (Chrysler, Mercedes, Cooper).

Why geckos? First, they already know how to get in the house. I think they are living under or around the stove, which no longer functions all that well and whose digital readout is going blank one glowing link at a time. I expect that it will eventually go completely blank, at which time I will realize that I can see through the plastic and that I'm staring at the Gecko Central. Perhaps then the entire gas range will blast off for kitchens unknown, crewed by largly translucent and completely silent sticky-fingered lizards who have grown tired of dealing with doors hidden by dog fur and large loud bipeds who slam plastic cones over them and toss them out into the humid darkness.

I imagine the entire sordid routine will be illustrated by the National Enquirer by way of Aardman Studios.

Sigh. And I still have writer's block that chimes to the clicking of the Eskie's toenails as he paces his room in confusion. Good night.

First, You Must Become As The Slamming Wind

2008-06-20T18:35:00.000-07:00

On the way up from LJ this afternoon it poured. We knew it would be a hairy few minutes when we could see that the trees by the side of the road looked like they were in a shower, water coming down so hard it raised a mist around everything it pelted itself against. Thankfully, the person in front of us was a smart driver and we managed to make it through the worst of the rain going at a sober (not highway) speed. Most of the rest of the way it was clear, although it's thundering outside now and has been off and on since we returned.

The retriever believes this is a sign that he must crawl as close as possible to me and he braved the inflatable mattress pile (perfect height for filing and for meditating and for avoiding having a retriever sit on one) that he formerly found too wobbly. Last Wednesday, he'd wedged himself between the wall and an upright treadmill when it thundered while I was out. I spent several minutes searching for him only to end up in the other dog's room staring at one pitiful brown eye peeking out. It looked like we'd carelessly stuffed a dog in with the rest of our stuff. To get out (not as easy as getting in), there was another inflatable obstacle (exercise ball), a box of hanging folders (stuffed full), a night stand with lamp, and a couch. It was like watching dog ninja trials.

So, thunder turns Dog of the Thousand Naps into Dog of the Ninja Balance. It even, if you can believe it, makes him thinner. How did he get behind the treadmill?

Word Count

2008-06-06T16:05:00.001-07:00

This is just a folderol that serves to exemplify word count. We are reading or typing, eating or snoozing or staring out at the Long Distance, our coats full and poofed in the cool shadows of the living room or his study.
Working thus, we are examining the silver grey afternoon light that should be hot and gold, dropped through the windows like pikes from the bare sky. Today, however, there are clouds. We have hoped for rain and we have received a bit of it, but not enough to do more that evaporate from the driveway and the street so that it looks clean but not wet.
Like ourselves after a shower, the hard ground betrays little of the water so lately poured over it, but the grass, like hair, keeps a few drops close to its roots. More showers may intervene. I am happy for the clouds and the coolness.
One dog has disappeared to his food. The other lays behind me, taking his food in crumbles from the bowls, grinding it by gulpful while looking at me. Why do I glance at him? Why does the reader chuckle to himself, deep in another scene that relates to neither the food nor the stares?
I glance back to see him, to make sure that the food is filling him and that he has not stopped because of the pain of old teeth or the lack of savour of the food shaped and consumed like dirt clods in his bowl. There is other food, softer food, that will appear later in the evening. He may not find much of that, however. At least the water is gentle and the bowl is full.
The break that is formed by the writing helps the words that have been read to find their places in my head. If they are not to remain they will drain out, perhaps in rhythms of typing or speech and then be gone. If they are to stay, they will wait to peer out during the writing that I will sometimes do.
In fact, this count of words itself is in service to that other writing, the writing that is intended for more eyes than those that are variously watching these appear or closed against the brightness. That writing has gone underground and has not found the ground or the slope or the hill from which it can filter again.
The fiction table has dropped and little stories flop about and wait for edits or for new ideas. Given enough time, they will silt into the filing cabinets and will be brought forth in time, relics of ideas that sparked against a particular moment and failed to catch.
Have any caught in recent memory? No, I don’t believe so. Some have been placed on paper but then I began this bout of reading. There were stacks and stacks of books that waited for me and once I pulled one from the tower it was as if I’d pulled a knocker on a gate that swung only one way—inward.
Inside the gate are stories of every hue, biography, fiction, literate short stories and silly fairy stories, half-done stories and full-grown ones. Between them and within them stretch hours cramped into a chair, neck folded almost to my chest so that I could see the words even after I had grown weary of holding that same head upright.
Some books were finished with relief. Biographies, we know they end like the classics, in death. The material of a life, however, runs in odd places and through the commonalities of time and away from them until you are within, not the skin, but the distant circle of the subject. At least, if the biographer is good and the person has come and gone in living memory. Relief, then, is not in coming to the end but in coming back to your life, to a little less of it, in which to act.
Relief comes also at the end of this exercise, as the margins of this page filled with ragged and indented thoughts delimit what might generously be done daily—693 words.

Still Harping on THAT BOOK

2008-05-31T06:19:00.000-07:00

It surprised me with good intentions and then waylaid me with examples of the "big" novels that I've never read. I'm not as widely read as I thought...and I'm embarrassed to say that I did read one of the examples because of the pink dress on the cover. It wasn't one that I enjoyed and I didn't keep reading the rest of the author's books. Still, the pink dress was lovely.

At least I've come to realize that in taste and inclination, I'm not a novelist. There is something in the best novelists that is interested in the wide and deep, the currency with which we pay for modernity or for whatever time in which we live. A novelist doesn't let cost or fears or other restrictions prevent her traveling or her listening in at Starbucks and watching the entire ebb and flow of a day. She relinquishes the structures of control to the extent that she rides the rails of the time or the place and the characters without steering them. This is a habit of perception that is not native to me, nor do I anticipate that it will become so.

Minor quibbles pile up--how often do I pick up a modern novel and become exhausted by the pace or by the way the author keeps beating up on his main character? If I disagree with your taste do I disagree with your premise? Do I want to read about a flawed, damaged, weatherbeaten character for a break? Maybe. Sometimes. However, I don't want to write them.

The Thing That Everybody Wants

2008-05-21T07:03:00.000-07:00

Every meeting for the past couple of weeks, someone in my writer's group throws another log on the fire. Another "should," another rule, another "thing a novel must do." Add the pressure of every swallowed rebuttal, and this wisdom has turned to ash and coal without further transformation. What do these rules violate to the point of fury? For me, they call to mind Harrison Bergeron. I imagine narratives chained to the taste and preference of "everyone," forced to fill the engineered channel of a billion copies sold. Therefore, I , too, would be forced to choose from only those books in that same flat, wide channel.

This, of course, is foolishness. There are plenty of novels and short stories that are different, that don't follow a particular course. And there is no lack within the group, either, of fascinating stories. In fact, my reading has never been broader since I worked on my English degree. Even so, I am not every reader. My tastes veer sharply away from apocalyptic fiction, from blood and horror, from the cruelties that are part of humanity. I can't forego that, because they are my inheritance and humanity as well. Laziness and fear and the cowardice of action...these I couldn't avoid whether novelized or not. And then there are tropes, such as those of a romance, that lead to and from 'love' or 'treasure' on tracks no less stiff than those of your average rail yard. These, however, are my preferences only. They are important to me in selecting books, but not to a generic rule in fostering widescale enjoyment (not exactly a world-domination style evil goal, either).

I don't like rules for novels because my reading preferences are perhaps percentagewise not in the vast majority or even in the simple majority at times. Regardless of my own writing and my desire to become published, my stronger desire is to read and to have the opportunity to read those things that force their way into MY soul. Things that have not been flattened by the "should."

Good Parts of the Garden

2008-05-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

It's the change of another season here--a few days that have previewed the heat of summer and a thunderstorm or two as well. Spring flowers (sweet peas, bluebonnets) have faded, leaving the blue to a few tiny Bachelor's Buttons that are just now coming up.

The Peruvian lily (left) is blooming, along with the Easter lilies. For some reason this year, the stalks are fairly short, a foot or so in most cases. I don't know what the vine behind the lily and to the left is. It came up in the same pot as the miniature pine tree and is slowly twisting its way between the other pots. So far, it hasn't bloomed and doesn't seem to be looking for a support, just running.

One miniature sunflower has come up, but it was covered in ants today. Too bad the zoo won't rent out anteaters. Most of the rest of the beds are covered in between-season weeds and the remnants of pansies. The sweet peas are slowly(!!) setting seed. This wasn't a perfect year for them, although they have now naturalized in part of the yard. More fertilizer and next year they should be better.

I'm hoping the bat-faced cuphea (left) will be around for the entire summer. This year it has a pot mostly to itself (except for that dark pink-spot plant). There is a double version of this at Home Depot that I am trying to resist--but I'm not sure if I'll be able to. It doesn't have the little faces, but the red frills run all the way around the purple tube.

I'm thinking about adding a pot of lilies, including the seeds that have sprouted on my windowsill, the Easter lilies that are escaping the brick border in the yard, the amaryllis seeds I brought from LJ, and possibly one of the Peruvian lilies if some of the other plants in the pot take over. That way, I'll have only spot that needs a heavy dose of water during the summer and I can move that closer to the house. If I do that, I may move some of the (never) blooming irises into a pot next door and beg for a fountain from the Master of All Household Improvements. This could be the year he gets his firepit...

The Special World

2008-05-14T15:29:00.000-07:00

Skunk smell lingers in the corner by the gate and the dog races to the yellow leaves falling golden behind the fence. Here in the Special World, drops fall like footsteps in the green between the fences. A careful nose discerns hidden roots and a persistent set of puppy teeth uproots those slender wooden interlopers from the no-man's-land between the fences. There are other dogs behind the higher wooden fences, but I can't see them. Our office puppy can hear them, though. Like the birds and squirrels that creep and race through the shade in this corner of the yard, she is curious about their smell and their sounds. We remain here for a few minutes, glancing back at the back corner of the low building. It seems further away from us than it should, separated by a blank concrete pad that I could cross in five strides. When it rains again this afternoon, the bushes and trees will gossip in that percolating rhythm of water running down to the soft grass.

***

I have sinusitus of the writing lobe, the kind of blockage that begs for antihistamines and sleep. To keep that myself minimally active, I've been reading how-to books, starting with The Writer's Journey. It's both informative and precious, which is a perfect combination to keep me reading and goad me to stop and just get on with it. Just a few more pages and no more excuses...right?

Even the Gas Stations

2008-05-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

Even the gas stations are beautfiul in The Woodlands. Under a generous
canopy, over the low top of the car, I can see 7-foot while oleanders,
topped by bright green oaks, and threaded and capped by pines. Against
the blunt, infinite blue the pines look dirty. There is nothing but
birds in the trees, maybe squirrels. Nothing to fathom in the blank
blue. Part of me expects to see a title scrolling across the sky, displaying the title of the next episode.

I just realized the sky was Brady Bunch blue.

Somehow, the conference call, the office dog, and the rest of it make more sense. Now, if only someone would hand me a script and the laugh track, we'd be good.

Lazy Weekend/3rd Draft Blues

2008-04-27T15:55:00.000-07:00

It’s late, hours late for lunch, and my stomach is dreaming of edible art. One drumstick, fried, and one scoop of potatoes, glazed with translucent brown gravy. My mouth, agrees, thinking of the soft liquid salt of the gravy and the thick grainy cream of the potatoes. A single crunch through the thin skin and the soft meat beneath. Just enough food to taste, the way I used to get it on vacation with my grandmother. I don’t remember the restaurant; just that it was attached to a shop, like a mall or a strip center. It was dark, a cave of things Texan. And the genie of the cave, the spirit of that wide dark space, served fried chicken and mashed potatoes like a treasure on heavy plastic plates. No grease to the meat and stiff potatoes, real starch, like the uniforms must have had pressed into them.

I went from meal to meal when I was younger. Missing a meal left me shaky and sick, as did sleeping in the middle of the day. My physical schedule had a primacy that has left me, years later, with a general inflation of being as my metabolism has ceased its frenetic demands. That anxiety, the where, when, how of what it is to come, has been replaced by the demands of writing. Where shall I find a space to write? On this desk in which the papers and photos creep ever closer to the keyboard? When shall I write? During the morning, during work, in the crawl spaces of time during the day? How shall I write? As a fantasist, spinning cotton candy threads in place of good stiff Texas cotton?

The latest short story, Poolside, is on its third round of revisions. It's cotton candy rather sturdy denim. While I was driving home thinking about something else, it came out of nowhere, based on one glimpse of a gross pool many decades ago while on vacation. We didn’t stay at that hotel—a stressful peak in a much-delayed homecoming for my mother. Somehow, the memory encysted itself in that tension and now is a small narrative.

I haven’t worked on it every day, but I can feel a tiny knot of tension whenever I sit down the computer or pick up book and this is the intention to go back to the story. The story; however, is not important. While working on this story, I’ve either picked up or started to read books that I’ve had on writing and on the meaning behind the tropes and actions in fairy tales and fantasy in preparation for working on my novel. It’s overwhelming to think about all the things one has to do to make a psychologically truthful, eminently saleable book.

So, the short story lingers in the back of the desk, a small knot of tension that has no grand plot, not much to recommend it. It lurks, like a small animal, in the safety of the darkness, where the sharp beaks of point-of-view shifts can’t chew it up and spit out 3rd person bones, clean of narrative intrusion. I keep reading. A bigger animal will eventually become restless, and I will leap on the novel with all the sharp insight of a dozen books on writing and then we shall see what kind of structure it will leave.

Tomatoes in April

2008-04-25T18:53:00.000-07:00

Well, after weeks of sitting on the driveway and staring at us as we came and went, the tomato plants have been moved to the backyard. Since I neglected to pull off the first set of blossoms, there are even teeny tomatoes on one of the plants. This is all to the good, because I'm looking forward to roasted tomatoes & feta and to curried tomato soup. After the stories about rice hoarding last week, I'm thinking we should have picked some additional veggies to the tomatoes for the garden. Not much space, though.

In addition to gardening, I've switched over from a sci-fi blog (the former Blisterpack Aliens) to a more fantasy-oriented one. This way, I have no excuse not to write at least one snippet a week. So far, there are only two official posts. It's hard to remain interested in a relatively quiet blog (note the gap in these posts). Actually, the consistent writing schedule is proving very difficult.

Anyway, this is just going to be brief--hopefully pics of sweet peas for next time.

Fruit of the Group...

2008-01-31T19:22:00.000-08:00

Yea!!!! Split, the first book from my weekly writer's group has been uploaded to Lulu. We have come very close to meeting our deadlines for the 2007 project, which was to create a series of stories that dealt with dichotomies, either internally or across multiple works and publish it as a capstone to a very successful year for several members of the group. One of the best things about the group is that I have the chance to work with some very talented and dedicated people, which raises the standards that I've set for myself. Although I was frustrated earlier (Kevin claims it is entirely attitudinal), I think this is just the year that I'm going to have to develop a better work ethic. The stories that are important to me have to remain important to me when I'd rather veg in front of the TV, after a day of footling about at work, or, more importantly, when the laundry is singing it's siren song of 'come accomplish something concrete.' You have to reevaluate your standards when folding towels seems like a better use of time than finishing a short story. Honestly, you can use a towel if it NEVER gets folded. On the other hand, if I finish that online course in folding towels in monkey shapes, I'll never have to put them up either, just hang them around the house in amusing simian tableaux. Perhaps I should redo the house on a Victorian theme...oh wait, there was that writing thing.

Our new project is a series of short stories based on letters we exchanged at our last meeting. Again, I was a little non-plussed by the letter I received, but then a sarcastic and demanding narrative voice took over. Wow! So that's where all the British mystery lingo went. Apparently it went directly into my inner literary snob, Marcus, who looks like a young Gene Wilder and sounds like he reads too much mystery fiction. Oh, and he's handy at picking locks, because practical knowledge is sometimes more fun. It's weird to find out your inner Brit resembles Gene Wilder.

If you're interested in braving the dichotomous waters of Split, the link is http://www.lulu.com/content/1786971. Many of us have stories in this one and there are several great short stories (including a few contest winners) waiting for a few moments with a reader (probably not just before bed, however...). In fact, some of them might be lurking in a dark corner right now.

TTFN

How is a Rock Star Like a Safety Valve?

2008-01-25T09:09:00.000-08:00

Two old rockers sit on a couch, one with a cup of hot tea...saw that one on VH1 yesterday. One of those typically awful clip shows with lots of inanity in between things that used to matter. These guys seemed happy, though. They weren't making excuses or scoring sarcastipoints. "It ain't opera" or some variation thereof was the stated attitude. They had a screaming good time, assumed their fans did too and that was that. What more was there to be said about any of the videos that had been shown? That the hair was bad and the music good? Cause I was too dumb to remember that about 80's? As if.

Having a good time and remembering that if you are a writer or artist that you may want your reader, listener, or viewer to have one too is a difficult proposition. Lately I've been hearing from a variety of sources that what I want requires work and that I will achieve what I work for. If that is working for another excuse to watch movies in the middle of the afternoon, so be it. I had a good time and that's all I can ask from that. On the other hand, if I want to be a writer that gets published, I had better get out in the trenches are started laying down that word count. And I get overwhelmed. Now, I'm thinking that one way around that is to stop taking everything as seriously as I have been. I'm not writing the great American novel. What makes your aspirations great? What makes them cheaper than the latest Wal-mart import? I don't know. If you have a few minutes and want to spend it with someone who just became the caretaker of a grub they believe to be a dragon, well then, have I got the story for you. There's a little bit in there about the discomfort some people feel about the way suburbs have covered the fields, but it's not a diatribe. I happen to live in a house on a former field and while I'm beginning to become anti-monoculture (grass) lawn, that's a fight for the neighborhood association, not for the story. After all, it's not Vonnegut and I had a good time writing it. Letting off steam takes it's meaning from a safety valve for a reason.

Chrissa :)

Shallows of Winter

2008-01-20T07:04:00.000-08:00

It's cold...cold enough that the roofs behind us are lightly frosted, that the grass in the backyard is crisp and edged with a fuzzy, glittering outline of itself. The dogs seem to like it. Their coats are finally appropriate and it's kinda nice to be able to snuggle down in the blankets and let them settle in around me.

After spending most of my vacation reading as much as I could get my hands on--more non-fiction, oddly enough, than otherwise--I was reading an article in The Atlantic when I came across a poem about a real winter day in an arboretum and realized (not for the first time) that it's time to stop writing. That, in the midst of the constant yammering of books and TV (and blogs, heh heh), it's just time to shut up. I enjoy reading. I have several books spread around the house, waiting for me to pick them up and finish them...maybe to start them again in another season and read them again. So I don't need to add to the clammer of bad fiction, nor do I need to tell the story of some of the grayer areas of my conscience, any of the excuses or reasons that may have pushed me past a season of rejection letters and missed writer's group meetings. The truth is, I enjoy reading more than I do writing.

And, of course, one will need time during next week's warming trend to clean out the pots that one forgot to cover before the frost...

Dreaming of the Garden

2008-01-03T18:16:00.000-08:00

I will soon have the best garden of the year--neat rows of seed packets that will look very promising spread over the card table in defiance of the fact that I have a tiny yard that is already full of re-seeding marigolds and zinnias and out-of-control photinas. At least the sweet peas don't seem to have been unduly troubled by the recent cold snap. Yea!!

This year, I'd like to finally have two barrels of small sunflowers that will give me enough for cutting to go with the gallardias and zinnias. I had great luck with the amarylis bulb that was supposed to go in a forcing jar but is instead sitting in a pot in the front room. Two sets of deep flowers and another flower stalk (a little pale, but hopefully okay) on the way. I think this will be the last flower stalk for the season and then it can rest or whatever through the spring. I love amaryllis because they remind me of my mom's front porch flower bed. Mom had a row of large plants that bloomed bright red or red and white striped. They were some of the only flowering plants that I remember her having when we were younger. I don't have a semi-shady spot to keep a bed outside, but I'm thinking of having a few pots indoors to go with the geraniums and ivy.

One New Year's resolution should be to keep the beds and pots clean this year. I tend to favor letting everything self-seed. This means that I have spots of zinnia and sweet pea and what I think are gallardias poking up through the grass, which doesn't really help when it comes time to mow. Another challenge for this year is the insane number of fire ants that have come to live in the pots out front. If you've ever read City--my ants are on their way to intelligence and world domination (based on expansion, if not glass boxes). Hopefully the dogs are on their way as well.

Within the next few months, pics should follow. Even if they're cribbed from the seed packets. :)

Chrissa

Warm and Merry Holidays

2007-12-26T06:39:00.000-08:00

This morning a thunderstorm moved through. It began quietly, but the retriever can hear the thunder long before I can and was curled up in my lap not long after the sprinkles started. We passed a few minutes of silence while I read and he watched the weather through the window. Then, the storm rolled over and the thunder was audible and lightning visible, even to me. The retriever started to shake and cry, and the magazine was laid aside as I tried to calm the pup. There is no explaining thunder to a retriever. He continued to shiver as the storm staked out a place over the house to drop a few electric pronouncements. Soon, 80 lbs of dog had shifted from my lap to my left shoulder, his haunches in the crook of my left arm and his trembly middle wedged up against my ear.

At this point, I closed my eyes and rested my head against his side. Despite his nerves, he's a comfortable dog, like a warm furry pillow when the storms curb his restless flopping. I could see the Christmas tree over his back and I was reminded of what I had been thinking about yesterday. We don't have kids (except for the dogs) and we are both several decades away from the rickety Christmas movies projected in an elementary school cafeteria that really helped to draw in the mystery of the holidays. The clicking of the filmstrip and the fact that every class was allowed to sit together, the cold linoleum under us, as we watched angels searching for the what they could give for Christmas. How, I wondered, could I understand or even begin to ponder that miracle now? What is the access point for holding that wonder again in my heart? It was then that I understood the meaning of the filmstrip--I could not so much as ponder as welcome the miracle in. As a child it was easy to give up myself to the season, the joy and mystery and wonder. I didn't need to be told how to do it or even told that I should do it. I didn't need to be told that you can't ponder or hope to contain something like the Christmas story. Not unlike the trembling retriever, the joy of the season is something that you must support by giving yourself to it.

It's difficult to remember, when you are used to having to control your own schedule and expected to learn and continue to process things, that some things must be stepped into and experienced in order for you to understand them. You don't so much understand them as they take you, your heart or your time or your soul, and allow you to be part of them.

I missed Christmas this year--never let it in while I let myself stress about other things. Even now, I feel the tidal pull of New Year's goals and next year's planning catching at me. Today, however, I'm going to sit down and watch the lights on the Christmas tree and curl up with my puppies.

Merry Christmas.

Anger and Expectations

2007-12-18T11:32:00.000-08:00

I'm going to pause for a moment in my continuing search for the elusive spirit of the holidays to remark on a situation that I'm currently involved in. Recently, I (and others) were presented with a new set of standards for an organization of which we are a part. These standards were decided by a group of persons who have little day-to-day contact with the organization and less communication with the individual members of the organization. The new standards are the equivalent of a face-lift, they change nothing fundamental but re-conture familiar territory. The one fundamental change that was made happened to be negative. No additional positive changes were made or mentioned.

I am greatly disappointed in this particular decision-making session. It has made me aware that everything that I do, whether it be stopping by a particular shop for breakfast, becoming a member of an organization, or forwarding an e-mail marks against my character. I didn't acquit myself well when presented with this particular issue. In fact, I took out my frustration on a minor point that added insult to injury. That this response was prompted by the knowledge that I knew better than to have expectations for fair treatment or consideration does me no credit. It does, however, give me a resolution for 2008: That I will think about the values and commitments that I hold and that I will have the courage to act accordingly, providing I have the wisdom to act at all.

Flattened by the Retreiver

2007-12-16T10:50:00.000-08:00

Having recently divested myself of 70+ pounds of golden retriever sprawled across my lap while precariously balancing in the a chair in the office, I can finally reach the keyboard. I think the retriever was trying to get up so that he could paw James until he got a response, but that didn't work. I am the only one whom the dogs get away with walking (or climbing) all over, so pawing James in the middle of Sunday afternoon TextTwist just gets us both in trouble.

I'm sure a nap is in the offing for the retriever (if we are ever blessed with another one, I'm going to name it Suburban Sprawl), but I am trying to work my way back into the good graces of my spouse so that we can finish putting up the Christmas tree.

We did get to look at lights last night, which was fun and inspiring. So many of our neighbors go to great lengths to decorate their houses and lawns in honor of the season. I have to say that the Bethlehem cutout display was impressive (wise men, shepherds, and the Holy Family all cut out of white board and then lit with red and green spots). It was simple display, but reverent in a way that some of the more Vegas displays are not. Another family put an entire neighborhood on their front lawn, surrounding a church in which the nativity was represented.

My favorite lights are the LEDs, with their cool lights that efface themselves into the night, leaving the outlines and glow intact. We still haven't put up our lights, but we're working on the Christmas decorations in the house. This year the season has crept up on us in dribs and drabs, with less of the insistence of, say, a retriever trying to crawl into the lap. Hopefully, we will find the effort to meet the season halfway.

Christmas Lights and Reflections

2007-12-14T07:52:00.001-08:00

We're going to look at Christmas lights this weekend! And it's going to be cold enough to stop for hot chocolate!! This is my favorite part of the holiday season. We're late on getting our lights up and the house decorated but I did manage to finish some of my wrapping today. I'm waiting for the little Elves of the Christmas Spirit to creep out of the woodwork and run around the house spreading joy and merriment and inspiration to get stuff done. In particular, I'd like the laundry elf to hurry up and spread some cheer...I'm putting off the last minute dash to the store for the last of the presents and supplies and enjoying my early Christmas present -- the new desk that James put together with better grace than I usually do anything.

As the year folds up toward the holidays, I realize that I'm becoming better and better at tossing plans into the new year. It's the handiest basket for things such as "work on your latest short story" and "make a monthly submission plan for existing pieces." This year was such a productive year in terms of working on things in the writer's group that next year should be the year that I start putting a toe in the water in terms of gathering rejection slips. This year, I made a few online submissions, but those rarely come with rejection slips. Instead, they fall into the giant hole of received and ignored e-mail. At least a rejection slip puts a period onto the hope that maybe this time...but no.

This is new territory for me, because it's only recently that publication has come to seem like a goal. Although I've been writing on and off for years, for me, there was so much ground to cover (and still needing to be covered) encompassing learning how to flesh out a story arc, learning how to tell the story instead of describing the image of the story, etc., that this is still a learning process.

As the new year skates closer and I'm driving around in the dark looking at houses outlined for the season, I'm going to be letting the wonder recharge the batteries that fuel my creativity and thinking about how to flesh out the outlines I have in my mind into structures that can also withstand the light of day.

Best wishes,
Chrissa

Stalled in the Front Lane

2007-12-10T13:06:00.001-08:00

Where is the cool weather? There are rumors of cooler weather on the way and lots of grey clouds and drizzly bits of rain--so far, though, not so much actual coolness. At least the grey weather makes all the Christmas decorations really pop on the way to work, so I arrive at work full of Christmas anticipation. Yea!!

I think this will be our weekend to put lights up and I can't wait to see whether the net lights we are trying for the first time this year work on the bushes that have taken over the side of the house. One of these days I expect one of them to slip a ransom note in my hand--Install that underground watering system if you ever want to see your house number again, bwa ha ha. Love, the photinas.--but so far they've just continued to sprout upward.

Since I'm in here nattering on the blog, the retriever is eating. He only eats when someone is in the room with him or if he is stuck in the room by himself for an extended period of time. If you walk by the gate, he will run up dribbling kibble. Blech. It's much easier to let him eat on "his" schedule while updating blog entries. Unless you have not much to say, which is pretty much today's theme.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go cheer on the cool front.

The Things You Read

2007-12-09T18:49:00.000-08:00

Recently, as it was a grey day in December, I found myself wanting to read a mystery novel. I have several that I like, but I had just finished On the Road, and I wanted something different but engaging enough to distract me from what I'd just read. The mystery part is important--I didn't want to just veg in front of a book, I wanted something that would be entertaining but also require my attention.

Having heard of a new author who likes several of the same mystery authors that I do, I picked up a book and brought it home. And then read it. I'm sorry to say it wasn't very good. The main character was engaging enough, but the mystery was thin and the detective was an amalgam of stock characters from Victorian melodrama, casually updated with a drug problem for today's "sophisticated" readers of romantic fiction.

Why is everything about romance these days? Why can't publishers clearly label their works? If I had been in the mood for romance, I would have visited that section. It seems that lately I've been on the fringe of several discussions of the danger present in books with certain points of view, but I haven't yet participated in a discussion of the dangers of romantic fiction infiltrating other genres. Danger? Surely this is an exageration. But no, I don't think so. Romantic fiction is characterized in many instances by repetitve and thin plots and sensationalism. Repetitive, simple plots are inimical to many genres because they disallow for depth of character or action. Sensationalism feeds into today's mania for inciting fear, lust, or anger in people to motivate or sell ideas by the basest of instincts. When this type of book becomes ascendant, it becomes more difficult to sell or find books that engage readers with their ideas or imaginations.

Substituting romantic fiction and its conventions for other genre conventions is one more step toward substituting the simple for the complex, the formulaic for the imaginative. In my opinion, its a similar attitude to making a blockbuster movie in which deeper significance is so absent that the movie itself is little more than the icon on the bathroom door. Enter here for violence. Enter here for romance.

This wouldn't be an issue, since most movies are clearly labeled in terms of content and well-reviewed; however, it's becoming difficult in the bookstore to distinguish between an interesting new novel and a romance novel masquerading as a fantasy, science fiction, or mystery novel. With a limited amount of time and a limited budget, one comes to depend more and more on the recommendations of friends and hopes that the tide will turn back again to a different type of storytelling. Unfortunately, with the rise of sensationalism and its attendant fear of different ideas, it may take some time.

Goals for 2008

2007-12-06T19:19:00.000-08:00

Not that I have any yet, but it's that time of year. We're going to be doing monthly goals in the writing group, so I need to come up with some good ones. I'm thinking achievable, like "I will make at least one blog post this month." While I'm weighing what I'd like to pick back up in the coming year, I'm looking forward to the cooler weather as a chance to get back into a regular schedule of working in the yard and going to the park, since those activities tend to keep me in a more imaginative frame of mind.

Today, however, I was feeling sore (too much Christmas shopping?) and spent part of the afternoon contemplating database organization from the couch. The retriever decided that contemplation looked like snoozing, despite the books balanced everywhere, and kept bringing me his latest stuffed chewie. He brings it over whenever he thinks I'm upset or in pain (growling about the database apparently qualifies) and then puts his head on the pillow or couch and stares at me. If I still seem out of sorts, he tries to stuff the chewie under the pillow or drop it on my face. I try to lay out of reach when I'm both sleepy and feeling under the weather. Even if I'm not big on chewing on stuffed critters when I'm down, it's amazing to me that the retriever understands the concept of sharing. I'll take it as a hopeful sign.

Ready, Set, Restart!!

2007-11-30T06:05:00.000-08:00

Well, it was another successful NaNo month! The draft of the novel is complete and ready to go into hibernation until next year's NaNoEdMo. I was thinking of resurrecting last year's novel for EdMo, but I'm thinking about picking that up over the holidays. James is going to be working on his NaNo this month, since he spent large chunks of last month picking up my slack in getting reading for Thanksgiving. :)

Having everyone down for Thanksgiving was a blast & we really enjoyed seeing everyone. It's a shame the weather didn't really cooperate for anything for the rest of the weekend, but at least it was a cozy "winter-type" weekend. The fried turkey was excellent (thanks, Jerry!!) and was just as good on my traditional "end-of-turkey" nachos as it was on the day of. The only thing that we had too much of this year were the chipotle sweet potatoes, which turned out to be a little hotter than everyone was expecting.

It was the start of the holiday season that started me thinking about restarting this blog with a different purpose, or multiple purposes.

First of all, the writing has been going well this year, but it needs continued work. I bounce between I'd-really-like-to-publish-something and have-patience-improve-your-technique. Being in a writer's group is an excellent way to stretch and get better, but I have to remember to not borrow other people's ambitions or lack thereof for my own.

Second, I've been really bad at keeping in touch over the last several years. We probably don't need to go into all the reasons why, but the reasons were never very good in the first place. We are latecomers to the blogosphere, and it still feels weird to me to hold a oneway conversation/journal entry with an unknown number of friends, family, and complete strangers. It helps to know that number is probably "0".

There is no third reason. I'm looking forward to having a place to post A Baron's Own Adventure Stories, based on the life and snoozy times of our golden retriever. More fun than it sounds & everyone could use a good nap.

So, ready, set, & restart!! Welcome to Chrissa & James' updated Nemographia.

Best wishes,
Chrissa

Snoring -- Holiday Accompaniements & Other Breathing Exercises

2006-11-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

We were going to spend today in a genial haze, beginning with a nap in which the retriever managed to wiggle between us and snooze on the pillow. It's warm and relaxing to realize the the dog and the SO have matching hair and temperments, which helps one to nap peacefully. Until the dog rolls over. And stretches all four paws into the back of his master while yawning and drooling over my pillow. At this point, the nap is essentially over, replaced by a rolling hug/shove fest in which the retriever tries to reassert his position as nap leader while the rest of us to try to retake the bed. It usually ends, as it did this morning, with the retriever in posession. This leads to the next stage of end-of-holiday activities...getting crosswise with your SO over ways to enjoy the LAST DAY OF THE HOLIDAY. Do you realize that we have to go back to work tomorrow? Suddenly, people are yelling, pouting, and generally treating each other like children who must go back to work the next day. In this way, neither person is actually responsible for choosing something to do on that last day. Instead, the afternoon is left to quiet time (reading, napping, blogging) while one recovers from the headache brought on by the fight brought on by the LAST DAY OF THE HOLIDAY brought on by having to work for a living. Which, of course, reminds one to be thankful that one has a job, a SO, and two dogs to keep one company. Shortly, one will also have chicken salad prepared in the mini food processor, which will make up for the awful Thanksgiving turkey. Compressed turkeysteroids that took twice as long to cook, resulting in a Martian-dry landscape of stuffing would have made a better science project (or Sci Fi show) than dinner. Fortunately, my SO has both more patience and a greater ability to stomach funky meat dishes than I do. The dogs probably would have loved a turkey football of their own, but we didn't have a back-up plan. Now, for the Christmas Music Siesta!!

Best wishes,

Chrissa :)

Turkeys and Other Gobblers

2006-11-24T08:14:00.000-08:00

Yawn. In the perfect hobbit tradition, I've had breakfast (early slice of pie, deviled eggs) and second breakfast (crusty homemade stuffing, potato salad), cleaned my dishes and am preparing for a pleasant midmorning nap. There will be no crazy shopping frenzy, which I'll just chalk up on the Board of Things I'm Thankful For, along with naps and warm fuzzy puppies. Yesterday, my SO recreated his mother's Thanksgiving feast in credible, edible detail. We watched the parade (and I monitored my inane chatter/constant promotion tolerance, finding it severly low this year) and the dog show. What with one thing and another, it was a day that I was thankful for, lots of togetherness and no running around and collapsing exhausted with a plate in the early afternoon. This should be about NaNoWriMo, and the triumph of 50K, but that's just not quite top of the list this morning. Rather, I'm glad that all of us were together this year, my SO and two wonderful SDs (significant dogs) and that we were able to share another glorious afternoon napping under the influence of turkey and sentiment. :)

Best wishes & happy holidays,
Chrissa

Eye Strain

2006-11-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

Back on track with my NaNo project, I'm having to type this with my eyes closed because I've managed to strain them with a few marathon weekend writing sessions. It's a beautiful day, or so'm led to believe. I'm sitting in the dark of the computer room and tyring to dream of a low-carb casserole that I can bring t owork tomorrow, since it's my day to bring lunch. I've decided to give up on the low-carb thing at work because I'm not much of a salad person and I'm not really following the diet except every other day at work. I was accused of being one step away from a starch molecule in college and I'm just going to have to say that lumps come with the territory.

I'm coming through the slog where I was really disliking my characters. I'm sure they were just as bored as I was with the narrow strictures of their storylines. I've turned them out in the 'real' world now as refugees from the fantastic. They are learning the language, adapting to different light and noise levels, and learning to date!! Admittedly, I'm fudging the language adaption, since I'm positing a magical translation protocol that is no longer functioning when they hit the Gulf Coast in the 70's. That's really difficult for me -- I've never had more than a passing knowledge of another language and I don't really know how long immersion would take you. Similar language bases? A common language based on the closest geographical area to your fantasy realm? I could get away with that for one of the characters. I know that I won't be inventing a lexicon or a different language, so everything will be monolingual in the story.

The language bothers me somewhat, since I'm hoping to chart a realistic evolution that involves a society running in parallel to ours, several running on unrelated but rumored tangents to ours, and our own. We'll see how this goes over the next half of the book. Now, I just need a kick start for the plot so the action starts up.

Chrissa

Fuzzy Dog vs. Arthritis

2006-11-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

As I try to concentrate on my NaNoWriMo novel, I find that I am worrying about our eldest dog, Wynn. Adapted for icy conditions found only in my fridge here in Texas, he has become prone to sliding across the tile floor and straining his hip. This is directly influenced by his need to see what's on the counter, what's out the door, or possible, what's on the other side of the retriever. Pop! Forepaws off the floor and fuzzy hind paws sliding out. Safe! Or not, as the case too often is. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to be in pain, at least not the kind of pain that results in yelps and guilt-inducing brown eyed stares. Instead, this is the kind of pain that keeps his left hind leg tucked tight to his body and morphs his gait into that of dog-rabbit.

This is not the calm influence of the retriever's tendency to nap. Except for balancing 70 pounds on my left ribcage last night (resulting in an all-day twinge today), the retriever tends to be a very relaxed dog. He is laying beside me on the floor, treating his forepaw as all-day sucker and waiting for my SO to come home so that he can relocate to the more gastronomically advantageous areas of the kitchen.

Somehow, this is converting some of the stress of the day into actually peace. I sometimes wish I could take the retriever to work, so that we could all pile on the couch for some much-needed relaxation. In the meantime, I guess I really to get some work done.

Peace and dog kisses,

Chrissa

Novel Writing Paralysis

2006-11-08T15:08:00.000-08:00

I need to stop reading e-mail before I start writing. I spent the majority of yesterday obsessing about bland characters...after deciding that I like bland characters (vis-a-vis, my typical TV schedule). This is not an interesting or usable character flaw, unlike a penchant for sharing nachos with the dog. The white and fuzzy dog seems to be recuperating from his hip issue and the retriever is snoozing happily behind me (nacho bliss--I remember that from college).

Meanwhile, my characters are desperately trying to hijack a new story line and are currently wandering about loose in between scenes. I believe they are eventually going to hitch a ride into a more interesting yarn, but I'm still waiting for that ride myself. I've gotten them out of the castle, which was hampering their ability to do anything but stare out invisible walls and fume about things that were happening elsewhere. Although I can relate to that experience, I can also vouch for it's being nothing to share. So, I knocked the top of one of the towers and flung the little darlings out into the ocean to get themselves to a more interesting place.

My writing group seems to be doing really, even my SO has managed to pull together a decent story with an actual plot. I know this exercise is supposed to be about finishing something so that you can go back to it, but I'm not sure how to finish this particular story apart from a really dull day...the main characters are navel gazing, bend forward, and start to see a black hole where their navel should be...lean further forward and time stretches out and they circle the spiral of their own vast emptiness until SSSSHHHHWWUP! Inside out and eternity...

Well, I can only put this off for so long...I'm many words behind.

Chrissa

Oh No! NaNo!

2006-11-06T15:21:00.000-08:00

After deciding to start NaNoWriMo over my vacation and having worked through the first few pages in more or less rapid succession, I was in a great mood to continue after going back to work. Then, I realized that I seriously disliked my story. Yes, my main character is a lump of borrowed surface that has inflated to its proper height, not quite 7k words.

The grand frustration is listening to my SO talk about his wonderful story, with actual plot and character. It's amazing. Despite being good for a few entertaining fights, it doesn't really help me to advance through the muck toward a livable story. The problem is the artificiality of the story. The main character, a prince of an Arctic kingdom of shape-shifting Walruses, is bored with the story. He'd rather be at home, exercising himself against his awful cousin, GrundWal, who believes himself to be the star of any number of wonderful fables. GrundWal is focused, and this focus helps him run more smoothly in the grooves that generations of Walrus royalty has etched in the icy redoubt that is their Beachhead.

ErwineWal, on the other hand, is an empty pair of eyeballs through which we view the story. He might as well be a wall with a peephole cut in it, for all the effect he has in the story. Crushing boredom.

It's even worse on rainy evenings, when the retreiver is as close to me as he can be because of the thunder outside, but not quite close enough to stretch out beside. Authorial privilege doesn't quite extend to stuffing the dog in the story and letting Erwine take the nap I'm really starting to want.

Belles loiterers,

Chrissa

Discipline, lack thereof

2006-10-11T15:11:00.000-07:00

I should have posted my picture here, since I can't seem to hold to a thought for more than two minutes. The dogs are napping, which is perfect, since it lets me off the hook for feeling like I should be doing something. I realize that lately I've been missing being able to speak and it strikes me as curious that I should have lost that talent. Perhaps the challenge with sticking to a writing routine is that the only time I'm having a conversation that isn't in permanent edit mode is when I'm writing, and the computer or notebook isn't an expressive conversational partner.

I don't really understand why the art of speaking should suddenly seem so dangerous -- just offering an opinion, mentioning a shirt looks nice or that an idea isn't really as detailed or relevant as needs be feels like a dart aimed at a target. There is no criticism, just facile compliments and grunts. Forget speaking out, taking the other side -- no one has a bridge for that chasm. And so, I sit on every syllable and grow rounder with the dialogue that is swallowed daily.

Hence writing about nothing -- aarrrrggggg! The really quiet grunting was a dog hiding under the desk. Now that I'm awake, I guess it's time to call it an afternoon.

Chrissa :)

Thunder Liz, Pt. 1

2006-10-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

I'm fighting with the following story, since it was begun at the request of a family member and just never felt right. Lately, I feel like my short stories are a hair away from a fight with the family -- so I'm hoping that as the story progresses, the irritating main character will GROW UP! Why inflict them on harmless blog trawlers? I'm assuming that the vast filtering capacity will break the story down into easily digestible pieces. We'll see.

Thunder Liz, Chapter 1

I saw the van from the maroon velvet ledge of the window. My arm was canted across the glass behind my head and my cheek was pressed against the window, flattened agains the cool rhythm of a pelting storm. The water sheeted over the other van. He had parked sideways across an empty asphalt lot, showing off the paint job of thunderclouds that rolled over the edges and down the panels. Faint green swells glowed under the curves of the clouds, half-alive in the deep gray afternon.

We stopped early, just as the light turned yellow. Dad had been waiting for minute when a strip of electrons fused and dropped a shaft on the van. Light slammed down with a stomach-turning shimmy, bursting through the tires and crackling over the paint. Tiny balls sizzled over the puddles. Shocked blind and still, the window slapped away from my cheek as the thunder shuddered through our van.

Mom is usually pretty nervous about things like that, but she was fuming silently, lips curled under as the frustration of the lunch date burned in the sacred chimenia at the back of her throat. "Did you see that? Why are we out in this weather, Liz?" Dad looked back to see if we were okay. I slid back into the seat and shrugged my shoulders and arms inside my sweater. "You kids okay? Don't often get to see lighting bolts that close. Almost 20 million volts just grounded into that car. Did you see the tires blow?"

"Yea, Dad." I was back to staring out the window, wondering if anyone had been in the van. I closed my eyes, but that only sharpened the dizzying vision of a pitching van recoiling from the strike of a hot serpent of electricity. I hissed under my front teeth, trying to calm my stomach. My head was hurting from the storm, fatigue, and hunger. I'd skipped a meal or two on the strength of a new sweater and I was ready to heave the rest of them out after that show.

The light changed and the van crawled forward. "We'll just get to the restaurant, eat lunch, and go home. Aunt Bert isn't staying," she growled.

Welcome

2006-09-27T15:23:00.000-07:00

I tend to hem & haw through introductions -- and I realize, as I'm carrying on an IM conversation to one side of the screen and trying to figure out what "redeeming feature" this can be said to have, that it's more fun to peruse than pontificate--no wait, got that backwards. To be honest, I'd rather be napping with the dog. Too bad we are staring out of the window, distracted by the sidewalk. It's finally cool enough to appreciate the afternoon, so we continue to stare. Laziness builds into the afternoon. I think I could sit here and stare out the window, held by the glare of the sun if not by the surfaces it strikes. zZZZZZZzzzz.

Well, that's great, napped through most of the first entry. Guess I'll go locate the snoring dog and find another patch of sun. Hope you get a chance to enjoy a grand nap in a patch of autumn sun.

:)

Steve the Carrot, The Entire Thing

2006-09-27T15:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first and entirely too long post. Things may become clearer later...but probably not.

Steve the Carrot
“…Lectro…”
“Yo Yo Man!!” Steve’s mouth was on auto while he stared at the collage pinned to the side of his cubicle.
“Excuse me?” Bill paused and looked over into Steve’s cubicle. Brad’s manager, who had been watching him as he spoke shifted his eyes out the window and relaxed into vacancy.
“Sorry, just looking at these figures.” Steve didn’t glance back, just flicked over to two new worksheets and leaned closer to the screen. If his IM account had been up, LectroBrew would have been busted by PostNoBill$.
“Oh, yeah. Well make a note of it. I’ll be back by later.” Brad shrugged slightly at his manager and led him off toward his own office around the glassy bend of the main room.
“Whatever.” Steve’s mouth was back on campus, his eyes on the primary smear of a spreadsheet stretched across his dual monitors…he was widely dispersed this afternoon. Leave here at 5:15 this afternoon, stop by the apartment, head down into the city for Jim’s Beer for Drones. Celebrate all of us actually having jobs this year. Mapping out his schedule didn’t help, his ears and eyes and fingers and head didn’t want to all be here this afternoon. He decided to get a coffee and try to focus.
The cheap coffee bar was hidden out in the reception area, tiny paper cups hidden by a tall tropical plants. Leaning stiff muscles against the warm glass, Steve saw a jungle temporarily lit by a sideways shaft, tall tropical plants hiding arthropods in place of monkeys. Dusty crystal highways gleamed between the leaves, like tiny threads of asphalt on an evening drive. He shifted his right shoulder against the glass, letting tension from a morning of precise mousing twitch itself quietly away. The afternoon sun, warm and ancient against his back, wasted its gilding on the foyer to the lab, which shimmered in the blue-white florescent haze that reminded him of a movie set.
A manager from his section strode by with a cup of coffee, causing Steve to stand up directly under an AC vent trying to put the Texas afternoon blaze so kind to his kinked muscles. The cube farm around the lab might as well be located in Minnesota as far as he was concerned. A temperature differential slithered across his body and rustled the leaves of the plants he was staring at. A shadow dropped through the window and he looked back outside.
Clouds raced over the thinning and ragged edge of the carefully groomed suburban woodland. “Too bad, shag cuts don’t look good on anyone,” he muttered. How long it would take the new subdivision on the other side of the tree strip, with its shaved landscape and odd angular timber growths, to soften back into obscurity? Probably longer than it would take for him to soften and become ragged in the daily tumbling of the office. Lately he had become sensitive to the sound of typing. The lab admin had told him one late night while he was waiting for the last set of measurements from one of the projects that small bursts of typing sounding like the clacking of old-fashioned plastic doll eyes. Now he associated the sound with a vertiginous line of blank secretary dolls blinking in unison, and the late nights started to feel like an episode of The Twilight Zone.
He shook his head and his body wiggled restlessly. “I’m going to take a stroll around the campus and shake the kinks out of my fingers,” he called back to the receptionist just inside the office door. She waved and answered another call.
Once into the formal lobby, with its walls of windows, he began to feel a pressure build. Outside, each blade of grass telegraphed the coming pressure ridges and he felt his sinuses shift in preparation and another part of himself relax. He was thirsty, it was a dry evening and the grass around the poured and sculpted pavement poked stiff needles into the heat.
A blue BMW convertible pulled into the parking lot, radio announcing an upcoming singer from the Houston area in just a few minutes. Steve wondered how it felt to take that deep breath, finger the introduction, and then sing directly into the microphone, pouring out a song into an invisible audience.
Steve changed direction toward the parking lot, pulling out his cell phone as he went. He called the office from the hood of his car, wheezing like an excited child. “Elaine, are you looking across to Bill’s office? Is he in there? Jeff Toulber just pulled in and he’s looking like he had a great weekend. Yes, I know what day it is…you know Jeff. I’m going to knock off early this afternoon. Jeff’ll keep Bill in his office for the next hour or so. Yep, I’ve got my keys and my wallet. Give it an hour, then shut down my computer, okay?” As Elaine gave him the rundown of others who were working tonight, Steve thought about the plants in the lobby, one side perpetually turned toward the window, the other starkly working in the perpetual florescent light.
“So, no meetings to miss and most of the rest of guys pulling shifts into the evening? Good deal. You go home ON TIME. Early if Bill and Jeff knock off. You need the time as much as I do. Yep, I’m heading north…thinking about looking in on the old alma mater. If I see him, I’ll say hi, okay? Bye.”
Steve’s Nissan was sitting in a good corner of the parking lot, away from view of the lab windows and close to the entrance. His radio was tuned in to the same public radio station and the local artist, Jill Henry, was describing her day job. She worked for Parks and Wildlife and was enjoying lots of time alone to concentrate. The mind demands its own space, he thought. He shuffled through some of his meeting notes on the passenger seat, looking for a space to jot her name down.
She threw out a chord, paused in her narrative, and accepted another invitation from the interviewer to sing. Steve was shocked by her voice, broken from the young and cheerful interviewee to the warping yowl of the singer. The change wrested his mind into remembered territory.
In college, after a few too many beers and grade B movies, he had decided to make a battery connecting a circuit through his beer, his head, and some leftover wire. He might have been planning for some static discharge at some of the cuter girls. Everyone thought “Electro-Beerman” was hilarious. He began to wind the wire around his wrist, lecturing about Miller Coils and Bud Atoms like his least favorite Chemistry professor.
A few hours later he had woken up in bed, his wrist wired to a dried-out carrot apparently found in his fridge. The end o f the wire was pressed into his skin and a rusty scrim of blood marked it’s sharp passage on his wrist.
“Damn!,” he shook his wrist, trying to free it and flinging the carrot against the wall. The thud scrapped a new line against his wrist and woke him up. The sight of the carrot, sprouted and dry, suddenly depressed him. He was still taking biology course and both his parents were avid suburban gardeners. He didn’t remember buying vegetables recently and wondered if the depression reflected lingering guilt about the way the semester seemed to be tanking so thoroughly, something he hadn’t shared with his parents the last time they came up. They may have brought home-grown veggies for him and his roommate. His head began to beat in rhythm as their neighbor woke up to “Metal Mania AM” from the college station.
He grabbed the carrot and headed to the kitchen. He found a clean saucer in an upper cabinet, filled it with water and grabbed a knife lying by the sink. He unwound the carrot and lopped the shriveled bottom root from the carrot. A sudden disorientation dropped through him. He barely made it to the hall bathroom three steps away.
It was one of the last nights he had been able to party with the same group he had been hanging with since his freshman year. Several of them graduated the next spring and others fractured out into senior and junior year specialties. His roommate suffered a wild hair mid-year to pledge, was accepted and moved out. Steve himself moved slightly further off-campus into a row of townhomes that was only about 50 percent college students. He had several rowdy weekends to look forward to, but no more Electro-beerman chants. In fact, after his girlfriend moved in, it was more on the line of dinner parties around the pool.
Gradually, though, his dreams were changing. They shifted toward sensation dreams, as if he was having difficulty interfacing with the display behind his eyes. He would dream that his toes and fingers were hungry, that each hair on his body received a different chemical signal, trying to find and locate “colors” that he couldn’t remember. He would wake up kneading the covers and sit up, waiting for his hunger to localize itself back in his stomach.
He began buying natural floral scents for his girlfriend, who had never really been the type to see flowers as anything other than background or tribute. He became allergic to her other perfumes, sometimes having odd bouts of hunger or nausea, depending on the scent.
Steve continued his studies, half-aware of his increasing concentration on areas that were ‘cost-effective’ to study. A few company representatives from further south in the suburbs at the very edge of Houston’s awareness would come up and hold brief seminars or lectures on new opportunities in new communities.
Throughout the dating, studying, engagement, interviewing, and weekends visiting his family, he began filling up the windows in his kitchen with carrots grown from seed and the sprouted tops that floated in shallow glass plates balanced on metal bookends screwed into the frame of his windows. Slight changes in pressure and light surrounding his window frame became part of his consciousness.
One weekend, his fiancé was looking for something appropriately sleek and satiny for the ring bearer’s pillow and dragged him up to a strip of tiny wooden shops not far from campus selling handmade clothing and crafts. They were just on the frontage of a big warehouse complex, the parking lot a sandy overlook with a guardrail at the edge of slope directly down to the feeder of I-45.
Here, while kicking around in the sand outside one store fully of tiny aisles and carefully balanced knick-knacks, Steve noticed a patch of green just off the tiny landscaped area. Tired and hungry, he decided to go sit for awhile in the grass and watch people coming and going. As soon as his hands touched the ground, pressing against it as he levered himself cross-legged, he felt better. The wind, the temperature, the tang of something he couldn’t identify at the back of his throat, it was the perfect spot to release his carrots into the wild. His fiancé, Sherrell, had already told him there would be no “excess greenery” in their new house.
That weekend, after the shops closed and Sherrell went over to her friends’ dorm to lay out her new wedding paraphernalia, Steve drove back to the spot, parking behind the shops on the drive leading up to the warehouse, and smuggled his spade and row of window carrots out into the grass. He set them down in a spot, waited to how it felt, and then began to dig.
He held his fingers against the sides of the holes he had dug for the larger carrots, feeling the soft mix of muddy sand, emended with the last of his potting soil. He planted each one individually, feeling the hole before he set the plant in, and then fed them, for the last time, with a mix of fertilizer and compost he had been working on for the past several months. The carrots seemed to settle, well-feed and comfortable, into the ground. The view was good and Steve concentrated on it and on his memories from earlier, trying to put the slopes and greenery into a breathing pattern both deep and calm. Communication through the emotional variation and electromagnetic interference, the gentle ebb and flow of an entire universe echoing through your head and body while the specific reactions of a patch of vegetables modulated the existing patterns, was conversation incomprehensible. Steve didn’t know if he was receiving carroty impressions or continually flashing back to a night of inebriation, but he believed, especially now as he planted his tiny crop, that he was releasing a community of awareness into the hillside, and that allowed him to believe in an interaction that was not part of any stated or remarked area of his life.
He looked out to the other side of the highway, his face breaking the stream of air that rushed along this slope and contemplated this spot of ground. It was within a few yards of shops and workspaces, tucked back so that you could observe both without interacting with either. The pines edged up along the fence, then stopped at a mow line. For a minute, Steve was concerned about the mow line, but he had been careful to locate his plot in the middle of stand of fence weeds that would probably not be there if the mow line extended this far. A rime of clover and buttercups indicated the edge of the grass line, bordered by the scrub weeds that grow along most east Texas highways, interspersed here with the lupines the shopping center had thrown out to complement the Texana theme. In fact, he had been careful to set the carrots down away from that semi-cultivated area as well.
Once his fiancé had decided they needed to break up because she was going to graduate school “and we don’t want to be tied down while we’re still so much in flux,” Steve had taken the job he’d been offered, moved into his small townhouse and dissolved into his job.
On his way back up toward Huntsville, Steve stopped at a Wal-mart store, buying a cheap metal spoon and two tall glazed-yellow bulb pots.
His memory of the old stores was tame. Last year, the last of the shops closed and it settled down into a sagging sleep against its neighbors. The warehouse had closed in the interim and a giant For Sale sign hung over the carrot patch, which avoided the depredations of deer more or less and of moles and other critters through a corporate defense barrier, since it was not only Steve who gained through awareness. They lost a few members on the edge of the plot, but colonized a few different areas, invading the lupines, the fenceline, and the mow line.
This was now a deer-trampled edge of the Piney Woods. The buildings snoozed against each other or sagged slightly inward and the fence around the overgrown warehouse hadn’t been maintained in the five years since the owners had dissolved into another business venture. His carrots had taken over this patch of earth. He investigated the edges of the patch, trying to get used to the strong feeling of earth around him and a new awareness of the sun and breeze. He picked out a few younger carrots, and went back to the car for the spoon and yellow glazed pots he had stashed in the trunk.
Steve started digging on the edge of the carrot bed, chatting softly about his beautiful and empty garden window over the kitchen and his neighbor who grew corn plants on the back patio.
He took his tiny carrot herd home to his kitchen window. That evening, he brought his new carrots out, arranging them around his tiny glass patio table and stretched himself out under the table, so that the carrot tops were almost touching his cheek. He located Orion and began to listen to the sounds around him, letting the night sky push down through his eyes so that his ears were the only earthbound senses.