Tea Induction

Yesterday was a bit like the pic above: except it was sunny, I was on a porch, and the teapot size was much more managable for my bladder than this slightly oversized one.

I did take a shot of the scene with my phone, but alas, I have no idea how to download files from that ghetto phone and so I'm stuck keeping it to myself, unless I have your phone number. But it was lovely and peaceful to sit after a few months of much ado on said porch and enjoy a pot of earl grey, a beautiful book while scribbling away in a journal homemade for me by the artistic Emily Pohlod.

Sitting there for a few hours I took a nap, explored the clouds, and watched some other tennant carry his beagle like a child across the lawn, the dog's head lolling peacefully. It's moments like those when I get crazy ideas in my head and this strange sensation to pour all of it out onto an innocent piece of paper unsolicited. Those moments are when I come up with stuff like this:

Liturgy is like a spiral staircase: repetition leads us deeper into truth, helps us surround it, see it from all angles. Each step may feel the same as the last, especially once we really get going and have been on the case for a while. But each turn leads us higher as we drag our hand upon the pillar behind us; the mystery of the outcome is that which compels us forward - the mystery being more beautiful than the certainty of straight steps. Liturgy is the repetitive unknown which kindly terrifies us. Without it the beauty of the turn wouldn’t compel us forward for more than the simple necessity of elevation, if even we knew that we needed it.

Every once in a while a window opens up to us, surprising us at our height and gives us a new perspective; we see the ground below as only the birds can see or a secret courtyard which we had been restricted from before, a new landing showing us the underside of the ceiling which we only knew existed in theory….

It really doesn't fit into anything - no story has much of a place for it I don't think. But it's fun to write anyway in an attempt to exactly articulate whatever is going on in the caffiene generated brain of mine.

Cheers!

rmvb

I Need To Get My Story Straight

Writing a page everyday can be rather embarrasing to myself.

I know that no one else is reading most of what I'm writing (here's to hoping someday someone will!), especially in this draft stage, but goodness, re-reading can sometimes bring color to my cheeks.

-"Did I write that?!" - conscious self
-"I hope not." - subconscious self
-"Well it must have been you, no one would bother hacking your computer." - CS
-"Well its kinda dumb/obvious/cliche/boring, isn't it?" -SCS
-"Yes."
-"How did we let it get like that?" - SCS
-"I was probably asleep." CS
-"Can you help me fix it?" SCS
- *sigh* "Really? Aren't you supposed to be able to do this yourself?" -CS
-"Aren't you supposed to get me a cup of coffee?"

I equate it to those moments when you pop in an old CD you used to loooooooove in junior high, and you realize that it's the stuff you imagine Kenny G would compose were he in a pagan hippie cult.  You look around your bedroom like Big Brother is watching before launching at your laptop and stuffing the evidence back into the hole in your closet in which you found it.

Exibit A: I played this on repeat and sang at the top of my lungs, back in the day. (Makes Bieber seem a little less outrageous. He was following a clear lead)

I have adopted the philosophy that "I can always go back and fix it later," as my mantra this Lent. That way I won't spend hours and hours each day striving to make a perfect page, but will just let the plot spill out, cliche's and all.  After the story's out I merely go back and hunt for scabs. (That sounds disgusting, but I can't think of anything else....) Either way, I produce a lot of blush-inducing sentences like this. But also some good stuff too, and at least a story that I can say is starting to hash itself out! Hooray!

Too bad N'Sync can't go back and fix it....

Cheers!




RMVB

A Page a Day Keeps the Apple Away...

...or what have you.

I'm a little groggy from being sick all week, so please excuse my dear aunt sally.
Or my craziness, which ever you prefer.
(For efficiency's sake, I don't have an Aunt Sally, so don't waste your time.)

I've taken up another challenge, this time not only self imposed but self invented.  It's the wonderful season of Lent you see, which means that every not so-good-at-being Catholic along with other "high church" Protestants (and probably a good handful of "non-non-denominational" Protestants as well) make a personal sacrifice for 40 days (plus some).  We also eat no meat on Fridays. So, among some other things, I've thought of trying to teach my very undisciplined arse to actually write like I want to! How silly of me not to do the thing I want to do!



so creepy.....

I actually love Lent.  I love the hopefulness that it gives me when I think of the sacrifices we do. That the horribleness of suffering could be used against evil, to end up making more good things. Bam, Satan, eat that.

Like NaNoWriMo I've merely scheduled an amount of writing to do each day so that I have something to show for myself at the end of this period of time. I've chosen the insurmountable quantity of one page each day.

That's right. I'm intimidated too. (Especially by the above pic.....) So, good out of bad: Although difficult to make myself write, I'll have 40 odd pages done by Easter.

Anyway, today I write while surrounded by 77 degree weather on March 1st on the back porch of my apartment complex, watching birds fly by and bugs get all excited cuz they think Spring is here.
Which, it might be.

Come 'ere pretty flower!! I've been waiting all winter!!

I felt very successful today about accomplishing my one page, so I thought I'd share.

Cheers!

Real Laundromat

Crisis* in the apartment brought me to the only place one goes in such cases: the laundromat.

Luckily, it's just a short drive down the road, and no one was there. Prime environment. (However, I have discovered that the price in washing machine is 200% higher in public than in my old university dorm....so I won't be taking this up as a hobby.)

As you might be able to tell by the backdrop on this blog, I really do love the place. I honestly cannot say that it is actually the cleaning of garments that attracts me, but probably the heat, smell, and whirring of machines.....which leads me to wonder if I, as a number 2 child, was exposed to a lot of laundering via my mother carrying me about while I was a developing pea pod. Hm.

I also like the fact that most people will leave you alone. I do enjoy a friendly stranger-to-stranger chat in public most of the time, but in the laundromat one is free, free to read, write, or stare into nothingness without the tiniest bit of intrusion. Perhaps people are worried that the subject of dirty socks might come up, and oh! how horrifying would that be!? Either way, they leave one to his soap.

So I took out my laptop and got quite a bit of scribbling, stopping only to drag the two loads of wash into the Giant Industrial Dryer In Which Both The Laudry And I Could Have Fit Comfortably. It was lovely, warm, methodic, and easy to concentrate. Entering into the world which I created was easy because the reality around me became a simple shell, trapping me inside the story. A bonus was that the chair provided by the establishment was just uncomfortable enough to keep me from sleeping.

I once read about a girl who would snuggle into different places to see what it was like to write in that spot. I think this is a grand idea - even though sometimes the places I choose end up being Chatty Cathy Hotspots or such an odd location that I end up looking like a creeper, and people's stares bore through my head. But mostly, I find that the newness/uniquness of the view, smell, sounds, and comfort let my thoughts go where they normally do not travel.

And a lady followed me out to return a sock that I dropped.


Cheers

*our washing machine keeps flooding and not stopping. Jerk.

It Takes a Crane to Build a Crane

This will be short and sweet:

I have realized that the less I read, the less I write.  I wish I were well versed in psychology because then I could understand this connection better. However, I suppose it's human nature; the more you have of a good thing, the more you want to add your own stamp to it and then spread it around.

As you might have deduced, I haven't been reading lately:)

Lipograms

Recently, I have been scrounging around the internet to find writing prompts.  Sometimes they are helpful, but often they merely tell me to "imagine you won the lotto, and write about what you would do with it." I dunno, I don't find that super appealing.

Anyway, while looking up the spelling of "renovation" the other day (there's just one 'n'), I was taunted into clicking off course to view one of merriam-webster.com's little articles. The one I read was about words that are strange and hardly ever used, but altogether smart, well-intending and in good standing with their communities.

I thought this particular one smacked of a writing prompt:

#6 Lipogram:

Definition:

a writing composed of words not having a certain letter

About the Word:

Lipo– means "lacking; without," and gram comes from gramma, meaning "letter."

The most challenging lipogram – a decidedly constrained form of writing – excludes E, the most common letter in English. In 1939, Ernest Vincent Wright published Gadsby: A Story of Over 50,000 words without using the letter "E." Below is a lipogram version of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" lacking the letter O (from Peter Blinn, curiousnotions.com):

   

"Mary had a little lamb

The bleached and chalky kind.

And everywhere she went, the lamb

Was rarely left behind."

This is so stupid...I love it

Challenge, O Challenge!!! (Not the little dog, the lipogram). I mean, I don't usually write limericks. It probably has something to do with the fact that I don't speak in limericks......I thought I would write a short paragraph instead. So here it goes! Minus "o" as well:

My grandma was adrift in the hallway. And I mean the up-in-the-air kind. Her feet were gathered in a twist like the drawn spirits seen in children's t.v. images, and the rest of her was a transparent grey. She was twisting her hands and I read a slight guilt in her face.
"What's up, Gramma?" I said.
She turned her face my way and replied, "The car keys, they fell in the driveway," and disappeared.
At least these appearances will be useful.


Take THAT, letter O!!!! Go back to Sesame Street where you came from!

If you have any sentences/limericks/poems/sonnets/short novels that you would like to share that also are lipograms, please do!!! (The combox works well, people).


rmvb

I WAS going to go make dinner.....

....but the housing people must have been attacked, because the water is indeed NOT back on at 5pm like they said it would be. It's 5:18 and I want to put my chicken in the oven before I become ravenous.

I decided to do this to quell my aching belly.

"My books can act as catalysts. They can provoke a reaction in a person that is already ready for change. I don’t think my readers are reading the books trying to learn how to change. You read a book at the right moment and then you see that you have already this volcano inside of you ready to explode and the book uncaps this volcano." - Paulo Coelho

I read this dude's blog all the time. Usually he will post about 3 a day, but that's ok because only one is usually in English. He has some sketchy relativistic ideas sometimes about who God is, et. al., but he also strikes me as humble - not advancing himself above any goodness just out of human self-promotion. Well, often enough, I imagine. I like how he serves up his soul via books, but doesn't expect anyone to clap for him or praise what is there. If they notice it he merely nods in their direction and thanks them for their interest. He likes the success and effect his work seems to have on people that he inevitably receives by praise, but, as the above quote lets us know, he doesn't presume that anything he writes will necessarily mean anything to anyone - he just knows that it can. If the story does indeed do that, then it is merely a component in a lengthy conspiracy for that person to change, and the book is not the god of the renovation. And so, without the pride of thinking he will effect eternity in one fell novel, he creates, and offers, and is satisfied with life. He does because of potential...just in case.

"Sure, I'll write a best seller. Then I'll go practice archery. No big deal."

 I'm sure there should be some sort of finale for this post, but really all I have to comment on is how much courage that takes, how centered one has to be in Christ or self or what-pagan-ish-value-have-you in order to do that. Despite the extremity of those qualities, I'm pretty sure not caring about failure is really the only option for writers if they don't want to fail...



rmvb