Slender Currents

At School, we've finished the first Quarter of 9th Grade. We've spent two days hearing counselors drone on about credits and dire consequences and then returned to our classrooms with our prisoners to tackle a new unit. After being brought completely low in spirit and expectations, the inmates sat numbed and dumbed while we tapped and jigged through another chapter opening. Isn't it amazing how districts rely on a teacher's ability to re-create the wonder of learning, the magic of science, the puzzles of math, and the poetry of language, no matter what the message of the day has been from everyone else?

And somehow, for some kids, in some classrooms, with some topics, leading to some success, we do what we're paid to do - we rekindle, we reinvent, we find the key to unlock the resistance. And some students survive. Not all, but some.

Now, in the same vein, Nathan Bradford has asked a fundamental question about writers and the people who love them and read their submissions. Should we encourage everyone to write and assure them there's a success story for them out there somewhere?  Here's my jaded reply this fine October morning.

Perhaps the fundamental question is not whether we should encourage everyone to write, but whether or not we can raise children who are willing to take a risk-to try and fail more than once, but keep on trying-and at some point, move on to another experience--new and challenging in a unique way--without grief or regret. In an era of No Danger sports equipment, No Danger play ground equipment, No Danger science classrooms and labs, No Danger grading systems---no wonder RISK is a 4-letter word.

I suppose if we can lie and tell every child he/she's a college bound scholar and that all the service jobs can sent to China, we can tell every storyteller that she's wonderful and inspiring and will be published someday, someday, someday, in a universe far, far away.

Once more, my friends, into the fray!
We few, we happy few, we band of writers,

We poor souls, unpublished and doubted

We storytellers of indeterminate skills

We risk-takers with eternally cheery hearts,

Once more, God's speed, God's blessings be upon us!

“Good luck comes in slender currents, misfortune in a rolling tides”

We need all the help we can get.

What is it, Fang?

What is it, Fang? What black cloaked wickedness has crept into my consciousness? Have I morphed from a simple-minded science teacher to a blithering idiot? It's been awhile since I watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone...and it's opposite the brilliant Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl...and I'm flipping back and forth to savor both. Harry, Ron and Hermione are SO very young, so tiny. Barbra is huge, filling the screen with voice and eyes. When she's off screen, I want to wait without breathing until she returns. But there's the stranger who just happens to have a dragon egg in his pocket. And zap! I'm humming the music to put Fluffy straight to sleep. Then zing! She's in the basement of the theatre, wrapped in leopard skin suit and cap. The stage is dark, the red velvet seats empty and she sits on the piano and fingers, "People, people who need people." Oh, I remember about 1962 in Austin, playing a part in the bridge playing neighbors singing, "If a girl isn't pretty, like a Miss Atlantic City." That's it. I know the songs; I've danced to them all, swished long skirts and sang about being a Ziegfeld Star and marrying Omar Sharif.

      So you'd think Fanny Bryce would keep me locked in....but the key flies are twittering and Harry's on the broom and the secret chamber is just through that next door! And it's the most wonderful scene in the movie--the Chess Game. Where Ron is the hero and the villians are playing for keeps.
       You're a stronger heart than I if you could turn it off!
        Even for the Roller Skate routine where Fanny destroys her first chorus dance line!
        Hope the batteries hold out in the remote control!

Tooting Jo Lightfoot's Horn

Good better-than-yesterday-than-a-week-ago morning! Chris is rallying and coherent and will fight off the fever surges for a few more days, but is expected to go home by end of week. Chris 98.6  Gall Bladder 0

Today--in light of this most welcome of news from DC, I want to cheer for the poems of Jo Lightfoot, everyday poet.

You can find her lovely works on her blog at  http://everyday-poet.blogspot.com/

Here are a few to tickle your senses!

Even in September                                                         Autumn grasses
crows complain.                                                             bristle their tails.

Fallen leaves                                                                   Today's wonder
curl up to sleep.                                                               is weatherful.

For each leaf:
different history
different shape
different dance.

My, how I love this last one. Are we not all falling leaves from the day we are born? Are we not all shaped by genetics and life, bent and warped, smoothed and hollowed, cradled and fed--as seasons and emotions take us through our different dances? Perhaps, this is why a handful of us turn to writing. As we write, the twists and puzzles are unraveled. The dreams are given muscle. Songs wafting around in the little grey cells are set to whistle or hum. Tears are used for watercolors. Kisses are blown into the air so we can carress them as we trail our fingers along the back of a couch, up the tall smooth frame of a doorway, over the curve of the carvings on an ancient, battered Voss Brothers piano. Visions given voice.

We are the characters of which we write; we are the stories, first, last, and forever.

September Morn

Today is the 30th birthday of Rosie Lacy, my adopted daughter, the one who made us "a real family" as Chris said at twelve, the one who made Adrian "her slave" at the age of seven. She is off in the wilds of southern Louisiana camping in rain and thunder, and I hope, waking to a calm September morn.

Those who are of a "certain age" remember our mothers teasing as we came from a hot bath, "Oh, you look like September Morn!" For ages it made no sense, and later as we learned she was referring to a risque and popular painting, which we had never seen, it made us laugh. To us, being wet and pink and naked from the bath was a normal state of being--how could anyone think it was risque? We just repeated her "ooolala" and danced down the hall with our towels fluttering like the cape of a matador.

Good September Morn 2009--I sit on the back porch, pink from a steamy shower, watching a gentle rain and a new kitten leaping from floor to couch to piano back and forth across my living room, and sipping a hot cup of double strong Chai tea. Whoops! Something in my past two years must have taken root, that should be a cup of hot, double strong Chai tea. I may be waxing eloquent under the eaves and waning yet another day toward oblivion, but the writing muse insists on consciousness.

Consciously, I know your September morn may not be my morning at all. . . and we all need to remember the dark side of the moon, and of mankind, on a beautiful morning in the Ozarks.

The Day is a Poem
September 19, 1939 by Robinson Jeffers

This morning Hitler spoke in Danzig, we hear his voice.
A man of genius: that is, of amazing
Ability, courage, devotion, cored on a sick child's soul,
Heard clearly through the dog wrath, a sick child
Wailing in Danzig; invoking destruction and wailing at it.
Here, the day was extremely hot, about noon
A south wind like a blast from hell's mouth spilled a slight rain
On the parched land, and at five a light earthquake
Danced the house, no harm done. Tonight I have been amusing myself
Watching the blood-red moon droop slowly
Into the black sea through bursts of lightning and distant thunder.
Well: the day is a poem, but too much
Like one of Jeffers', crusted with blood and barbaric omens,
Painful to excess, inhuman as a hawk's cry.

September Morn 1939. So long ago, 71 years, and still we shiver.

Peace on Earth, Happy Birthday Rosie, September 6, 2009.

Kate

Waiting for the Dawn

Has anyone else ever considered the odd fact that James Michener's Center for Writers is at home in J. Frank Dobie's lovely little white cottage along Waller Creek in downtown Austin, Texas? Could two writers have been more strikingly different in both their choices of subject and their styles? Is this a display of honoring two, or of merely preserving one? Only UT knows, I suppose.

I think, as I fight the guilt of not writing my daily dozen pages, of the enormous number of contradictions I have encountered since I picked up my fingers and sent them across the keyboard.

I can write from the heart, but it's only one point of view and shallow. I can tell a totally fictitious story with no basis in fact at all, and it reads like a personal diary.

The characters of my dreams do indeed, bring me stories that are better than my own. On the other hand, I commit to my own and set aside such ethereal plot lines--perhaps, in case I cannot find the way from side to side without more help from the other world? Indeed, what do I know of voodoo in Chicago? Or teenaged killers in Fort Worth?

And yet, I cannot write FANTASY - all my stories are rooted in the earth herself. How can this be when all I read from ages 12-30 were fantasy and science fiction and the trials of journeymen searching with dragon and wizard, fighting troops and monsters, stretching the bonds of human law and the strength of human religion?

Is there any wonder I am so easily distracted?

What turns you on as a writer, or an artist, or a photographer, or a ??? Do you, like me, wander around in fog and streams of light that doesn't fall from a simple sun until a deadline traps you?
My very curiosity is both a bane and a salve.

A First Impression

Once in awhile I am struck by a guilty conscience. I am having so much fun learning to be a WRITER that it seems illegal. And I haven't even had a nibble for publishing yet. Perhaps that's the secret, that the HEAVEN of writing stories is in the details of the stories themselves. Will publishing be a greater thrill? Maybe it doesn't really matter. I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam. (Popeye)

The trigger to this self-appreciation was the advent of my 30 year with 9th graders. I played the Toreador's March from Carmen as the classes wandered in with glassy eyes Wednesday. They couldn't have named it in a million years, but it got their attention. I won Wednesday.

Thursday they knew my name, and there was Willie and Lobo playing water music - gypsy boogaloo - Spanish guitar and viola. Again, I could see them giving themselves a mental shake.
I think it was a draw.

Today they will write and identify the thinking skills that make us scientists as we communicate.
And then we will design and identify how we are scientists in art.
And Monday we will PUBLISH, present our newspaper article reviews for all the world to see, lalalal. They'll fill a whole wall of illustrated manuscripts and be able to babble about analysis, collaboration, design, revision, rank ordering, and explanation.

Seriously, just like writing with my two groups of pen and ink artists, I believe this surely must be the most perfect example of a WIN-WIN situation.

Heaven.

Between a Rock and the Next Chapter

What a thrill it is using Twitter and Facebook to peak into the lives of people around me, my family and critique groups. Today I am waiting to hear the announcement of Roz's new little Zane, have shared the excitement of Dave's finishing the first draft of his third novel, and I am thrilled that every single other person has submitted readings for the Kidstuff Saturday morning meeting-- but me.

Summer was too calm, too sweet, too cool, and too short. Somehow the garage is cleaner, the carpet is scrubbed, and the hall is painted a fine medium khaki. But the stories are sitting on the dining room table getting no more than a few minutes a day......and damn few pages built of those minutes.

I am hereby taking the best advice I could find in the last two minutes: "Begin at the beginning," the King said, and go on until you come to the ending, and stop." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

I have set Suzzanne's story in motion--now to go back and tell the beginning as I am commanded.

If you are also starting over, starting again, or starting in a new doorway, write me and we'll share hugs and pats on the back. That's what Facebook is good for!

My Brain is Full

I apologize for borrowing from Far Side cartoons with my lead line, but when the can not get past the JDC door into the real world without spilling either blood or ink struck this month, I had no choice. I began to read and reread: Gordon Korman, Juvie Three, and Chris Crutcher everything all over again, and Elaine Marie Alphin, selected scenes, and Thick by Colin Neenan...and a bagload of adult mysteries.

Finally I turned to the wonderful stories of Fiona the Photosensitive Flamingo, and Henry, the child who plays with food, to Tala and her trees, and Rossi and her lost diamond witchstone, flanked by Kari and the voodoo she do so well, Adis and the rooftops of Maddingbrew, and Agony Illyria and her illusion-wielding sidekicks.

Here is my inspiration: Mandy Silberstein, Kristin Gray, Karen Akins, Wild Silas Johnson, Tim Whirled Peas Koch and Justin "Mr. Minkle" Blatherbrain.

No writer is an island and when I am stranded, these fine characters pull me back to the mainland.

Thank you all.

North of the Border, down Mexico Way, la la la la

The first thing a writer has to do is be able to take the heat. Down in McAllen, it's hot enough to fry a brain -- any place, let alone on the sidewalks. So now that the family is on the road and the dogs have all been properly medicated and walked in the opposite direction of the distracting boxer in the yard next door, I have all the time I want to produce my planned 50 pages in 15 days. Not a bad goal, 3 pages a day plus a few extra now and then.
But have you ever noticed that when you're southern born and bred, the AC in an empty house puts you to sleep mentally? It's cool, it's a little dark in the house, the dogs are sprawled out on the tile floors and snoring....I have to get out of this place!! I'm packing the laptop and running for the car.

6 of one.....

Oh the irony! The humbling recognition that writing a story is the same task as cleaning the garage. The garage that is filled with a Moose Beer plaque and favorites gismos left by Chris, with Great Books of the Western World, with 1000 alphabetized Science Fiction paperbacks nobody will buy, with four coffee tables from Rosie's apartments, three bedframes, two student desks, and one beautiful wooden marimba that only Adrian can play, all sprinkled with the debris of my mother's ins and outs and dying dreams.

Writing a story, no matter how long demands that we (a) begin and (b) finish.

I haven't finished dividing the inhabitants of my garage into trash and treasures, really finished, for the last 21 years. We moved in with no one but three 8th graders to carry for us over a Thanksgiving that rained without ceasing. Everything was damp, so most boxes and trash bags of last minutes items were left in the garage while we scuttled in with mattresses that went onto the floors, with dishes cramped into whichever cabinet was open, and clothes that went right into closets. Then we closed the big double door and didn't open it until summer. So in 1986, I cleaned the garage, created a shady place for a little girl to play, a safe haven for a daschund and a couple of cats. When winter came and icy rains slithered in from the north, we closed the big door again. Everytime it opened after that, something new was added, older residents were slid this way and that, stacked and restacked. Garage sale after garage sale only skimmed the immediate surface. In 2002 I closed the big door for the last time.

Today I need to write.........today I am cleaning the garage instead. It consumes me, the decision to select the protagonists who will remain and the antagonists who will be defeated, thrown away, or sold. I can only pray at the end there is a car-sized path when the story is revealed.