Almost Seven -- Poetry

Something about David Bowie's death got to me. Maybe it's because he never seemed old to me. And only old people die. Right? Here I go waxing nostalgic. Here's a poem from Three Part Harmony, a chatbook I published many years ago with two poet friends.

From when my son was    

Almost Seven

legs growin'

Momma raised seat on bike

lowered hem on pants

come to shoulder on 

Great Grandmother she

makes things in clay

plays dominoes

likes me

knows I'm almost seven.

arms gettin' strong

Father takes me fishin'

fish with bow

catch gar some in

Cimarron

get brown like berry

look like I'm almost seven.

school startin'

go second grade

ride bus to Grandfather's he

let me dig potatoes

milk goats

drive tractor

cause I'm almost seven.

soon September

come birthday

then be

goin' on eight.

David Bowie

video from Youtube

David Bowie has had so many faces I couldn't pick just one to go at the top of this post. It came down to the fact that a static photo would not do. No matter of him as which persona or in which costume or with which face.

'Space Oddity,' my favorite David Bowie song, was released as a single in July, 1969. The above video was made at the same time.

I was a young adult and the song captured my sense of being hurled into the unknown with no tangible life support. Instructions from Ground Control (advice from my society) seemed too conventional. Completely irrelevant to my own weightless, planetless state.

At the same time Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon. He traveled through that weightless, planetless state to arrive safely on the moon and opened the entire universe to humanity. Me included.

Like Bowie, I tried on a vast array of personas. I used to think our wanderings were peculiar to the 60's generation. Not so. Just ask someone--anyone--from the generation who survived the Great Depression and World War II to today's Millennials who try to make sense of their world.

And here is where and who I am. I write about life in space. Murder on Ceres. I follow the International Space Station on Facebook. I celebrate each new step into space by many governments around the world and by as many private businesses. These things didn't exist in 1969.

Tomorrow is still unknowable and scary for all us Major Toms. And conventional wisdom still does not relate.

Bowie spoke for me and Neil Armstrong spoke to me. Now they're both gone. But I'm still here and as long as I am, I've got to be willing to make that leap. 

WE are still here and WE must be willing to make that leap.

video from YouTube
First space music video. Commander Chris Hadfield performed
'Space Oddity' on the International Space Station,
44 years after Bowie's original video.

Red Ink -- Passive Verbs

image from bloodstainsandinkdrops.wordpress.com

William Bernhardt started me on the path to writing as craft. (He also ruined my enjoyment of using the exclamation point -- only one per novel -- which also restricts my ability to comment on Facebook posts.)

Bill admonishes us to "show, don't tell" and eschew the passive verb. Ernest Hemingway advised against adverbs, championing the mot juste, meaning the right verb needs no adverb.

Passive verbs and adverbs weaken a sentence and distance the reader from the vision we create. Let me show you. This is the opening from John Lescroart's first Dismas Hardy crime thriller Dead Irish.

     From his aisle seat, Dismas Hardy had a clear view of the stewardess as her feet lifted from the floor. She immediately let go of the tray -- the one that held Hardy's Coke -- although strangely it didn't drop, but hung there in the air, floating, the liquid coming out of the glass like a stain spreading in a blotter.

To rewrite this using active verbs and removing adverbs, it would look like this:

     From his aisle seat, Dismas Hardy saw the stewardess's feet lift from the floor. She let go of the tray -- the one that held Hardy's Coke. The drink didn't drop but hung there in the air, floating, the liquid coming out of the glass like a stain spreading in a blotter.

Nothing is lost from the meaning. The word 'strangely' is unnecessary because the Coke that Lescroart shows us floating is strange enough. We don't need to be told that it is strange with an adverb. (I also replaced the imprecise pronoun. And being an old poet, I enjoy the alliterative d's which are by their nature sudden, strong sounds, even if we read without moving our lips.)

In the heat of writing, it's hard to keep all the good advice in mind. My flash fiction blog Danger from earlier this week contains the following:

   Rain and wind were being sucked into the storm. Once outside the false harbor of my car, I could feel the storm's pull. It was too close.

Open plea to editors and beta readers: Please help us writers to avoid passive verbs. You don't have to figure out what we should say instead, just point out the problem. It may take a while, but we'll figure it out.

One final example from John Lescroart's Dead Irish:

   Moses had raised his younger sister from the time he was sixteen and she was four. When he'd gone to Vietnam, which was where Moses and Hardy had met, she had just been starting high school and Moses was paying to have her board at Dominican up in Marin County.

There you go. Something to be chewed upon. Blech!

Think I'll park my editor's cap and read the rest of John Lescroart's very good book. Good enough that this is my second time through. Alas, we always read faster than our favorite writers can write.

Danger -- Flash Fiction

image from stormchase.net

Lightning blazed across the sky silhouetting a wedge, black against the night. Transformers exploded marking its advance along the highway.

Thunder rolled toward me. Wave after wave. Rising and falling, then rising again. Each wave higher than the last, crashed around me. Vibrating against the car.

Ozone filled my nostrils. The smell of electrical fires. The smell of lightning.

Could I outrun the storm?

"A car is the most dangerous place to be in a tornado. Get out of the car." The whispered advice came from someone calmer than I. Someone from my childhood. "Better to lie in a ditch."

Rain and wind were being sucked into the storm. Once outside the false harbor of my car, I could feel the storm's pull. It was too close.

A rock outcropping rose from the wheat stubble on my left. Boulders, the size of barns, struck white by lightning then disappearing into black rain. Better than a ditch.

Miracle of miracles. A black hole a little more than waist-high opened into the rock. I was safe.

Safe from the storm but greeted by a low growl. Eyes reflected the flashing light from outside. Eyes in a face hidden in the dark. Maybe six feet away. It was hard to tell, but farther than arms length.

I looked away, back toward the mouth of the cave. The storm was on us. Debris churned past the opening. Rain and red dirt from the field boiled into the cave and I huddled against the stone wall.

Whatever the animal was, it was quiet. Like me, subdued by the storm raging outside. There was no place for either of us to go.

The storm passed as quickly as it had come. All was dark and still inside the cave. An eerie light, almost green, spread across the world outside.

I and my fellow refugee stayed quiet listening to the receding storm, our breathing matching perfectly. Inhale. Exhale.

Should I leave first? Or would that cause the animal to attack? The catch instinct. Or would it consider me a threat? And if it did, was there enough room for it to escape past me? Would it feel the need to fight its way out?

We had been safe from the storm, but were we safe from each other?

I backed out of the cave. Something brushed past me. One last flash of lightning showed a furry black and white animal, its fluffy tail held high as it ambled away, leaving just a whiff of its scent in the rain-fresh air.

And I fully understood just how much danger I'd been in.

Downton Abbey -- Spoiler alertssssss

image from vanityfair.com

This photo is the first spoiler -- Lady Mary's riding astride!

I'd done reasonably well, waiting. But last night I was ready to strangle the PBS folk. At 7 p.m. my husband distracted me with Nova's Making North America: Human complete with geology, paleontology, anthropology -- all liberally sprinkled with scenes from my adopted home-state of Colorado. There was no way I could sit through 'Secrets of Chatsworth' when Downton was the only big English house I wanted to see.

And then, and then . . . there was an hour of anguish as some famous actress I'd never seen before showed clips from all the seasons of Downton and literally counted down the minutes to the first episode of the last season.

I've had TV series before that I could hardly wait for the next episode -- 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' 'Northern Exposure,' 'Boston Legal.'

And book series that sometimes required years of waiting for the next one -- Harry Potter and The Wheel of Time. (The latter involved my making threats against Brandon Sanderson's car tires. Though, to be fair, any poor soul who started reading Wheel at the beginning had to wait more than 22 years for the final volume to be published. Still, I did have to wait almost three years for A Memory of Light, the final volume in that 14-volume fantasy series.)

But I digress.

Two Hershey candy bars and countless complaints got me through that last hour. And we were away! A hunt with lots of dogs and horses coursing through the English countryside, after which my husband took his book and went to bed. He does like dogs and horses, but has little interest in the manners and mores of the English aristocracy.

Was it worth the wait?

This First Episode set the stage for the rest of Season Six. The cloud of Green's death was banished from Anna and Bates and now they can get on about their family plans. Carson and Mrs. Hughes, with a little help from our ever-practical Mrs. Patmore, can now get on with their plans. Edith is set on her future road. Earl Grantham saves Mary and proves himself more than just a man completely disassociated from reality.

And best of all, The Dowager Countess takes care of the trouble-making Miss Danker.

If you missed last night's First Episode of the Last Season, you can watch it online, just click here. And enjoy. It's all here -- the characters, the clothes, the posh houses, and lush English countryside all wrapped around intrigues and conflicts enough to make us forget this ridiculous American presidential campaign cycle. At least for one hour and seven minutes.

That's right, it started at 9:00 and lasted until seven minutes after 10:00. Had the news been on the same channel, it would have been delayed. How on earth did anyone come up with a TV episode time like that? Thank goodness for PBS. Only football gets to go over the hour.

As a Baker . . . Nonfiction and Personal

Bad Kocka!

I know I always say I won't have cooking or crafting on my blog. This blog is about writing. But writing is story-telling. This is my story and I'm sticking to it.

With the probability of next year inaugurating reduced circumstances in our house, we decided to make Christmas gifts for the family. My husband has prepared various and sundry smoked and spiced pecans. Give that man a grill and he can do anything. (Including a beef loin roast that he's preparing for our close-family Christmas dinner.)

Because we're having our Christmas dinner Monday evening; my husband is leaving for Christmas in Oklahoma early Tuesday morning; and I'm a world-class procrastinator, I did the baking Sunday. He's had the pecans done for days.

First I put away all the items cluttering the kitchen counters. This goes down to the basement. That goes out into our so-called pantry in the garage. To the linen closet at the end of the hall. Into the office. And voila, I've got a place to work.

The butter and sugar are in the mixer, creaming nicely.

CRASH! Something bad in the entryway. KOCKA! Bad cat! He'd knocked a plant off its perch. There the cat-demon sat obviously amazed and pleased at the freshly watered soil spread across the floor.

I'm ranting and raving. My husband is ranting and raving. "That's why I don't want a cat," he says waving his arms at the cat trying to shoo him out of the dirt. "Cats belong in the barn." (We don't have a barn.)

I was planning to repot the plant anyway. Just not on baking day.

I brought the broom and dust pan in from the garage and went to get a proper pot from the back porch -- preferably one that wouldn't tip easily.

Kocka closely watched the whole plant-repotting and soil-sweeping process, staying just beyond my reach. When I finished, he fled down the hall and hid in the bathroom. Perhaps I look dangerous when I'm not actively cleaning up after him.

Back to baking. Add eggs and vanilla to the sugar and butter. I couldn't open the vanilla without using my handy-dandy bottle opener. I'd been fighting that bottle's lid for months and I was tired of it. I used to use the vanilla lid to measure out a teaspoonful. Approximately. And I knew the vanilla dried and effectively glued the lid in place so I'd started using a measuring spoon and wiping the mouth of the vanilla bottle. It still stuck.

So I decided to transfer the vanilla into a bottle with a lid I might more easily twist off. Found a bottle . . . a mead bottle. A not quite empty mead bottle. But it was after 8 in the morning here and 5 in the afternoon somewhere, so I poured it into a glass and drank it.

              

Perhaps, you noticed my fancy funnel. Couldn't find my regular one so my husband re-purposed a plastic wine glass by cutting off its stem. It worked very well, so it is freshly washed and living in the drawer where the AWOL funnel should be.

Four Cookies shy of a full sheet.

And where, you might ask are those four cookies? That was the second sheet of cookies to come out of the oven. I only recently learned the benefits of parchment paper when baking. From my beautiful daughter-in-law. (Who is also a good blogger. Click here.)

However, parchment paper has side effects. One of which is that it slides easily. And the cookies slide easily. Those four cookies slid off the cookie sheet. Onto the floor. Into the bottom of the oven. Through that crack at the bottom of the open oven door into the drawer at the bottom of the stove.

Kocka thought the cookie-mishap clean-up was pretty interesting, too. But he doesn't eat cookie crumbs. Where's a Dachshund when you need one?

By 10:30 a.m. I had achieved a repotted plant, a clean entryway floor, a clean kitchen floor, clean stove drawer, and some oatmeal cookies. Rice Krispie Treats, Spritz cookies, peppermint cookies, two apple pies, and some kolaches were yet to be baked. I know. You don't bake Rice Krispie Treats. Thank goodness for tiny mercies.

And I'd learned so much. Cats belong in barns and they don't eat cookie crumbs. Be extra careful with parchment paper. And as a baker, I'm a pretty good writer.

Using Real World Senses

Green Mountain December 18, 2015

A writer needs to involve all the senses to set a scene or build a character. A good way to prepare to do this is to just pay attention to your own senses in the real world.

I walk in my neighborhood and gather ample sensory fodder to use.

First the sense of sight. In the distance, Green Mountain is obviously white, but the blue sky over Green Mountain tells me this snow is past. And the view is clear -- no blowing snow to dim the view, no shadows identifying the nooks and crannies of the mountain so the sun must still be in the east or overhead.

And touch. If you could've seen me, you'd know that I was wearing a t-shirt. No coat. No gloves. No hat. When I touched the snow, it was cold enough to make my hands ache. And wet enough to hold the snow ball shape. Yet all the while, the Colorado sun is warm against my skin, regardless of the ambient temperature. Warm enough to be perfectly comfortable. And there is no wind, not even a light breeze, and the lack of moving air touching my face is as palpable as a 20 mph gust, if I'm paying attention.

I'm surrounded by sound. Children squeal with delight and call back and forth to each other as they sled down a nearby hill. A tree full of magpies sound off. Their raucous cries punctuated with the piping of chickadees and counted by the coo of a dove. Somewhere a dog barks. And I can barely hear the traffic noises from the distant interstate highway. Barely, but it's there. The melting snow sounds of running water, while it crunches under foot in areas where it refroze in the night.

But scent, that's the one that I think is most important and least described in most written material. It may not be obvious enough to grab our attention, but it's there. Sometimes soft, calming, like a newly bathed and powdered baby. Sometimes energizing like the air in my neighborhood. Clear and cold and smelling of winter.

Then as I walk, I smell someone's dryer exhaust redolent with the scent of their fabric softener sheet.
And it occurs to me that the smell of clean is different from one person to the next. That can tell a lot about a character. To one character, that dryer sheet smells clean. To another the smell of sun-dried laundry means clean.

And scent from a house where they've had bacon for breakfast stimulates my sense of taste and makes me hungry and ready to go home.

My husband adds a sixth sense, proprioception. That's the sense of the relative position of parts of the body and the effort being employed in movement. This sense is probably more developed in my dancer and athlete brothers and sisters than it is in me. But I'm learning.

Take away one of these senses from our character or our scene and I've got a disabled character or a diminished scene. Or a really good plot device.