July 30, 2013

May 31, 2013

  • Save the Historical Xangans…

    Losing Xanga? How can that happen?

    I’ve been here off and on since March 2004. Archiving my stuff isn’t a big deal. I have been backing it up most of the time I’ve been here and will add a couple zip files or two before July 15th arrives…

    but…

    this is what I’m having a hard time with…

    my friends here who are no longer with us on earth. Some days when I’m feeling very sad, I’ll “visit” an old blog and it’s like they’re still with me. This one is still writing poetry, this one is in the middle of a piece of art, this one is planning a new story, this one is talking about his walk along the beach. Those won’t be saved.

    You old timers, remember the time that the boy blogged about his sister’s boyfriend trying to break in the house right before the boyfriend killed him and his sister? His xanga helped put the killer behind bars. It’ll be gone. That’s one example of many.

    Let’s start collecting links to the xangans who are no longer with us and see if there is a way to save them. If you know of someone’s xanga that is still up even though the author has died, link it in the comments to this one.

    How many Terry blogs do we know?

May 24, 2013

May 15, 2013

May 14, 2013

  • Stolen Kisses

    saddle

    Stolen Kisses (a rewrite from May ’06)

     

    “A long time ago,” Grandpa Mac started, mostly as an effective way to convince me to go to sleep on time, but I nestled into the crook of his arm in the old easy chair, and my fingers rubbed the velveteen fabric ribs in time to his chant. I breathed in the smoke of his Winstons and neither of us dreamed that someday the whiff of a Winston would make me fall in love with a boy as much trouble as my Grandpa Mac. Grandpa Mac’d be long gone by then, and I wouldn’t recognize the smell, but between the hazel eyes that danced like Mac’s and the secondhand smoke hanging on his clothes and breath, I’d be a gonner.  ”When your great-grandmother, my mother, was a little older than you, she hid Jesse James in the root cellar.”

    Jesse James was her hero, the dark haired young gunman made a young girl blush when she thought of him. She stole his “Wanted” poster and hid it in her sewing basket. She daydreamed of hearing his voice while she hoed the corn in the hot Kansas afternoon sun. While riding the horse bareback to the neighbors, she pretended to be him escaping from the Sherriff. In spite of being beaten for abusing the horse and acting unladylike, she shoved her knees into the mare’s side and egged her down the dirt path as fast as the old mare could run the next time.

    Good Church goin’ girls don’t kiss outlaws, not when my Great-grandmother was young, and not when I was her age two generations later. It wasn’t done. Not that outlaws ask permission, but steal them as if stealing things their rights and first kiss were just one more possession to liberate from its rightful owner.

    I noticed him instantly, in his freshly polished black cowboy boots and tight jeans with a silver buckle with a bucking stallion on it. His  loud entourage  catered to his every need as if he was a prince. It wasn’t hard to figure out that he was trouble. It was bonded to him tighter than the cheap trash sucking on his neck in public and when he smiled at the girl clinging to him, I fell off my high heels. I sat on the floor, my legs splayed in two different directions, tears forming in my eyes from the pain shooting up my leg.

    Jesse was a mirage in the swirling late afternoon dust; my granny leaned against her hoe and wondered who was making such a disturbance. His jet black horse panting and sweating,  the rider frantically looked for a place to rest and regroup before it was too late. She ran to greet him, bowing slightly, and grabbed his leads. He took off his hat and tumbled off the horse, nearly landing on top of from exhaustion. She caught him as he fell and held him steady until he got his boots back underneath him.

    “Thank ye, Ma’am,” he said politely, more boy than man. His wet hair clung to his head. She wanted to push it out of his hazel eyes, but restrained herself. “Could I trouble you for some water for my horse? I been riding him hard lately.” 

    Speechless, she nodded and fetched cold spring water for the rider and the horse. He leaned against the tie-up fence and drank so fast she thought he’d get a headache. She reached for the cup to slow him down but it was empty. He grinned over the cup and nodded his appreciation. 

    It  was embarrassing sitting on the corner of the dance floor, and people walked right by me as if I didn’t exist. My friends had disappeared and I was alone in a room of strangers. I stood up, trying not to bear any weight on the ankle, and hopped toward a chair.  I propped my leg up on a chair and began untying the pink ribbon on the shoe that crisscrossed my ankle and went up my leg like a Roman Soldier who’d have been brave enough to wear pink. My fingers shook from the pain. I leaned back and closed my eyes, on the verge of passing out. I smelled his presence before I felt his ice-cold fingers on my ankle.

    “That should help,” he said, untangling the ribbon and removing my shoe from my foot. “You need to get some ice on that right away.”

    I opened my eyes. He was kneeling beside my chair, my shoe in one hand and my foot in the other. He started working on the other shoe’s ribbon until I was barefoot. He nodded to one of his guys and they were beside us instantly. “Get me some ice, Teddy.” Teddy faded away and I watched as he pulled the pink ribbon free from the straps keeping it captive. He wound it around his wrist and tucked the ends neatly, then he grinned mischievously. When he grinned, I felt fine, all the pain disappeared. The cold ice on my ankle jerked me back to reality. He laughed at my response, and unbidden tears formed in my eyes.

    “You can stay in the root cellar for a while,” my young grandmother offered. She got him settled in, walked his horse until he’d cooled off and left him tied to an old lean-to in the woods nearby. She fixed him a plate of cold fried chicken and watched him eat. He gnawed on the bones until they were clean and he washed up in the basin of water she provided. She watched the water droplets run down his neck, jealous of their familiarity with his lean body.

    “Hurt?” my own outlaw asked, concerned. I breathed deep, the smell of Winstons filling my lungs, and nodded

    “You should wear more reasonable shoes,” he scolded familiarly, as if he had the right to scold me. I bit my lip and wiped away the tears with the back of my hands. ”You alone?”

     I nodded no. He scanned the room briefly. “It might be broken. You should get x-rays.” Tears crept out of my eyes.

    “I hate to ask ye, miss, but I could use some clean clothes. You got any I can borrow?” She nodded shyly and darted up the wooden stairs to snatch a set of her brother’s off the line. When she returned, she offered them to him, neatly folded, like a Christmas present.

    “Gimme yours and I’ll wash ‘em,” she offered.

    “Turn around,” he commanded, taking the packet from her outstretched hands.  She obeyed, but wished she dared peek.

    “Ok, miss,” he said. Her brother’s clothing hung off his body, and she giggled at the sight. He handed her his filthy clothes and she stepped forward to take them from him. He dropped them on the ground between them, grabbed her wrists, pulled her closer to him. His head bent over hers and she felt his rough windburned lips against hers. She gasped and pulled away. He knelt down and picked up his clothes again. She blushed and looked away. “Just wanted to say thank you is all.” 

    She mumbled something, grabbed the clothing, and darted up the stairs.

    Across the room, the slut glared, her fists tight, and I knew that there was punishment waiting if I wasn’t careful. “Your friend’s waiting,” I said, motioning toward the girl he came with.

    He didn’t look over at her. When his lips brushed against mine, I opened my eyes wide, and pushed him away gently. “Marry me,” he said. I shoved him farther away and swung my foot off the chair. I stood up and as soon as my foot hit the floor, the room started swimming. I tottered and he grabbed my arm to balance me.  I held my hand out and he looked puzzled. “My ribbon?” I said forcefully.

    His hazel eyes laughing, he shoved his hand in his pocket. “Now, that will cost you something.” 

    The next morning, his horse rested, his body replenished, the outlaw mounted his horse. My granny handed him a packet of food and water. He leaned over and smiled, his hazel eyes dancing with pleasure. “There’s only way to say thank you Miss,” he said as he kissed her once more. She watched him reel the horse around and head down the dirt path. She prayed a small prayer of safety over him as the plumes of dust followed his back.

May 10, 2013

  • Mothers and Daughters….

    From May ’09

    storyteller.jpg“I don’t understand mother and daughter relationships,” I replied to a friend telling me that his oldest child and his wife fight frequently because they’re so much alike. It’s because I’m a motherless daughter. There’s a lot of unpacked emotions behind that phrase “motherless daughter” and the consequences resulting from my mother’s death in childbirth the summer I was fourteen still linger with me.

    I sat at the doctor’s office and watched two women off in a corner. The older one, frail and in a wheelchair, fretfully answered the questions her daughter asked, as if she had no right to ask them and resented her intrusion. The daughter rephrased the questions and offered suggestions such as, “Mother, you might want to ask him…” or “If you say something like- could you PLEASE…”, but the old cranky woman waved her off with her good hand, the other in a sling. And then, they did a dance they must have done since the daughter was a teenager. I watched as her eyes flashed, as her cheeks flushed, and as she took a deep breath while her mother said, “You don’t understand me. You never understood me. You-”. Aware that they were in public, the daughter tried to shush her quietly, but the old woman was on a roll. “You think I’m stupid. You think my brain isn’t working. My brain works fine. You’re the stupid one-”

    “Mother, let’s just not talk anymore,” the daughter insisted.

    A little while later, the older woman wanted out of her wheelchair. The daughter lovingly helped her out and moved the chair out of the way of the rest of the waiting room. She returned to her seat which her mother had claimed, a pleased smile on her face. “Why did you take my seat when the one next to me is empty?”glass sea creatures

    “I wanted this one,” the mother said fiercely. The daughter gathered up her belongings and sat down next to her mother as my name was called by the nurse.

    Waiting for Dr. Tim, I had a long time to think about the altercation. It was one of many in the life of that daughter. Countless times she’d been ridiculed, put down, humiliated by the overbearing woman in the wheelchair. At one point, the daughter said, “Mother, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it!” No, I thought- what she says is just as important. And yet… the daughter is here, setting aside her own life, issues, responsibilities to accompany her mother on one more doctor visit. At 89, the old woman will never change. She will never take responsibility for the way she treats others, and yet, her daughter is hanging in there- not cursing the old woman out, but speaking gently and firmly to her.

    At Borders, I’m in the manga section because I have a 30% coupon and a young teen and her mother walk past me. The daughter is chattering away about some event that happened at school, and the mom is listening and making wise comments back. They stop in the manga section and the mother spots a new volume. “Did you read this yet?” she asks.

    “Yeah, Becky bought it and I borrowed it,” the daughter replied.

    Behind me in line while I wait to pay for another “How to learn Chinese” book, a four year child spots the small toy horses. “Can I have one of those toy horses for my birthday, Mommflowery? Can I? Can I? Or maybe a frog? I like frogs! Frogs are cute. Horses are cute. Can I have one for my birthday?”

    The mother ignores her and continues reading from the book she had rushed in to buy while the child fingers a spotted pony. Slowly she sets it back, puts a finger in her mouth, and leans against her mother. “Take your finger out of your mouth,” the mother says, not even looking down.

    I went to lunch with the women from my water aerobics class today and listened to them talk about their lives and their pasts. I don’t understand women. I don’t understand why they dry their hair and then curl it after swimming. I don’t understand why they think make up makes them look pretty or why they find the need to cover up their face. I don’t understand why they talk about ordering salads and losing weight but then order something different. I don’t understand why a mother can’t just fork over the $2.99 for another silly toy that will end up in the back of the closet. The whole code to woman is something passed down mother to daughter and mine broke too soon for me to decipher it.

    What I do understand is the need to be accepted by your mother, the need to love her- right or wrong, the need to have her in your life even when it hurts, and the pain that losing her will bring to you regardless of how old you are. Maybe that’s part of the missing code… that loving someone even when they’re not perfect is ok.

    Currently Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss, Second Edition By Hope Edelman see related

May 9, 2013

  • Gardening with the Girl….

    Our day together started with burritos at McDonalds- a typical place for us to plan the rest of our day. We talked about buying plants for Mother’s Day and what she wanted. For Momma it was tulips, or daffodils, or irises- mostly red irises, she decided. For MeeMaw it was an eggplant plant. “It’s a vegetable,” she explained, “and it’s purple.” We decided we needed to buy dirt to make the old wooden sandbox into a raised garden bed and it was off to Home Depot. It may be her new favorite place with shiny big lawn mowers to sit on, water to splash in, bugs to hunt, and flowers everywhere.

    We found a clerk and she asked him about the flowers for her mom. In spite of her doing the talking, he answered me. I tried to get him to tell her the response, but he never quite got the concept that the tiny kid talking to him was his customer- that she was the one making the decisions. We finally figured out the right stuff and got it loaded in our car. On the way home, we stopped at our favorite toy store where I had spotted high quality children garden tools last week. She had never seen a hoe before and was happy about owning one for her garden.

    After cleaning out the sandbox, we started dumping in the dirt- or rather- I dumped and she worm hunted. Using her rake and hoe we spread it around (or rather I spread it around while she hunted for grubs). Having under estimated how big the sandbox was, we needed to go get more dirt before we finally got to planting the tiny cherry tomato starts we’d started a couple of weeks ago. I had seeds for more plants, but we were both done once the tomato plants were in.

    She spotted a grub among the tomato starts but it escaped from her fingers. I look at how dirty she is and laugh. She points out my own dirt and declares me gross! Lunch, a video, and a nap and all too soon our day is done. One day together isn’t enough! There are lots of seeds still to plant, bugs to hunt, flower pots to paint, and Mother’s Day gifts to replant. None of this will get done today. She’s out and down for a long nap…

May 8, 2013

  • Come Fall In Love- All over again… DDLJ

    Recently I rewatched the classic 1995 bollywood film, Dilwale Dulhanis Le Jayenge (The Brave Hearted Will Take Away The Bride) with Shahrukh Khan playing Raj, the irrepressible playboy, who falls hard for the overly protected Simran as played by the beautiful and stunning Kojol while vacationing in Europe and then has to convince her parents to let him marry her (complicated by her engagement to a complete stranger and her father’s best friend’s son). One of two Indian films on the 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die list, you can catch it on the big screen in Mumbai today- 900+ weeks of continually running (One of the things on my list of things to do if I’m ever in Mumbai). It was my introduction to Bollywood and Shah Rukh Khan years ago and I still come back to it when I’m puzzling out something vague and hazy.

    It is really two movies in tone and storytelling technique (a storytelling style I’m comfortable with since Johnnie To tends to do the same thing). In the first half (the courtship in Europe), Shah Rukh plays a light and cheerful fellow, pulling gags and playing constantly. Everything is a joke and it isn’t until the couple spends the night together that you see the side of Raj you need for the other half when he calms the crying girl saying, “You think I’m trash, but I am Hindustani and I KNOW what a Hindustani girl’s honor is worth. Trust me. Nothing happened last night.”

    That is the theme of the film- he is a man of honor, proud of his family upbringing, and trustworthy. The director, Aditya Chopra, needs this theme to drive the second half and it is there that the film finally grabs me and makes me pay attention. Raj refuses to elope with the girl, wanting the blessings of her family first. He slowly gains the trust of the girl, her sister, and mother, but the father is more difficult. The climax when the father is slapping Raj in anger and Raj responds with his speech about parents love is one of my favorite scenes of all time.

    DDLJ isn’t a perfect film- SRK overacts a bit in the first half, but is supurb in the second. The fight scene is poorly filmed and staged. The dialogue loses something in translation. But the glorious parts are glorious. And what did it help me puzzle out? I’m still a bit hazy, but I think that I was searching for signs of the trustworthy man you see in Act 2 to emerge in Act 1. I want hints that he isn’t changing but revealing a hidden part of himself later on- otherwise, you go… where did that come from? He was such a flit and now he man ups? Hmmm…. consistency in character is my lastest thing. I’m ok with characters changing, but I need to see the journey.

May 7, 2013

  • Writer’s Group…

    The thing about Writer’s Group is that I have a love/hate relationship with it. When I first started, the love/hate was all about me and my reaction to the feedback. But I quickly learned that the feedback was helpful – even when it wasn’t- and that trying the different suggestions made me a better writer as I learned what worked and didn’t work for me.

    In the middle, the love/hate was about the other writer- the one who was writing something I was uncomfortable with, or the one who was… OK… I’ll say it… very very bad…. but then I learned that it made me a better writer as we coached the newbie in the basics gently or encouraged a rewrite or listened to the same piece rewritten and still not working for the third time. It helped me spot those trouble areas and helped me figure out how to approach them.

    Now… my love/hate relationship is more love than hate… when one of my favorite writers shares a new piece, it’s more exciting than a roller coaster to turn the page and I beg for more, or when a new writer offers up their first draft to strangers for the first time, it’s a holy experience. But there is still that time when something someone writes bugs me and I have to figure out if it’s me or the writing.

    We had a writer storm out one night when we didn’t get to his work (even though we’d worked on it the last time) and had “wasted” the night reading about zombies (a very funny but very bad first work that left us all laughing), and vampires (sometimes there are lots of new works about vampires), or romance novels (my own offering that night), and didn’t focus on serious works (his own work about a kid who kills cats). I don’t plan on writing about zombies or vampires (because it’s hard for me think of a fresh take on them) in the near future, but I loved the whole trying to figure out why the action sequence in the zombie one didn’t work and how to make the vampire one seem unique. I write a lot of action sequences so figuring out why his didn’t work saved me a world of hurt in the future (since the advice about acting out the sequence with friends who like you and don’t really want to clobber you with a table leg seemed very relevant). Plus, not being cliche is critical in all my work.

    I’ve learned a couple of things from writer’s group:

    1. respect the work- even if it is a genre you don’t like or a first draft. The work comes first. It is always IN PROCESS and fluid so you can’t reject it.

    2. Respect the writer. They are writing the best they know at this time in this place. If they could write better, they would bring better, and in time, they will bring “knock your socks off” work if they keep at it. (Many don’t return after their first time though… are we too intimidating? Hmmm…).

    3. Listen when others talk. This is so hard for me. When something doesn’t ring true to me, I want them to fix it, not justify it and give me excuses, but in the end, it is their work and their decision and it works for them. It doesn’t have to work for me.

    4. Don’t use the group for what it can do for you- give as much as you get!

    So… in two weeks, it’s back to the writer’s group where who knows what we’ll hear… last night it was the new chapter in the second book of a sci-fi series, a twisted space pirate flash fiction, a character driven short with heart, and part of a cyber-punkish anime/manga influenced work. It’s one of the first things I ask when someone tells they write. “Are you in a writer’s group?” If the answer is no, I suggest they find one- either on-line or in real life. If you want to learn the craft, you need to participate in the writing process with others.

May 6, 2013

  • Thirty Plus Weeks…

    I spent this morning with my writing kids. One hour a week on Monday mornings we read, discuss, play, and write together. As the school year comes to an end, I wonder if they think of themselves as writers yet. They have produced some amazing writing in the thirty weeks we’ve spent together. Thirty weeks- it will be more like thirty four by the time we’ve finished. We spent half of that intensely studying fiction writing and the second half was a little poetry, a little persausive writing, a little of formal writing techniques, and all too soon we’re done.

    The funny thing is- I’m not sure they are better writers- the youngest is, but the older two had solid writing skills when we started so it is hard to see their improvement. They have a better sense of story structure, a working understanding of character development, motivation, conflict, and word pictures. I can’t wait to get my hands on their writing journals and see what they’ve been thinking, but they are still using them weekly for the writing process so I can’t take them away quite yet. I found them very insightful when I reviewed them in January.

    The sheer discipline of writing on a regular basis- not for a grade- but to share and have critiqued has been invaluable. I’m glad I decided from the beginning not to grade their writing. We have a rubric, but rarely use it. The real changes come from the conversations about their actual work and the reflections resulting from those conversations. It isn’t often you get to spend thirty plus hours studying something with the same group of kids in a small, relaxed, non-threatening setting. (Not that there hasn’t been some tears- usually during the week while the youngest tries to complete her writing assignments- and even that has only happened once or twice- and usually comes from her high personal expectations, not the work.)

    Our format is simple: I bring a book (usually a picture book or a short passage) to read and discuss, then they share their writing and we all give feedback, and then there is a short lesson about a specific skill, technique, etc… and our hour is over. It doesn’t seem like much, but they go away with a writing assignment- a pre-writing, a rough draft, peer editing, final draft and spend the week implementing all the feedback they got at our time together. I go away and plan our next hour- what to read, what to cover, and where to go next. And the next week we start again…

    It’s been very helpful for me. It’s given me a formula for writing fiction that is easy to grasp and complex to complete while helping with plotting and character development. It is a structure I can teach repeatedly to all ages- it’s that simple.