A Move

Much like the recent move of The Red Dress Club to something bigger better and a little less inhibiting, I'm moving my site (all posts included) to a slightly different set up at makeofmyself.blogspot.com.

 This blog was wonderful as I spent last semester pushing myself to expand my creative pursuits. The only problem became that my creative pursuits expanded enough that working on just a writing blog didn't really fill the purpose I needed. I've started collecting a lot of crafting DIY sites and, while I'm a little restricted in Hong Kong, I'm interested in pursuing what I can in the way of crafting, design and art. I found it became more and more frustrating not being able to post on the blog, so I started to seek a new direction.

The seasons have turned once again and with that transition, I go too. Even though this site will still exist,  all of the posts and comments are coming with me to the new site.

So here's what I'm Making of Myself.

Getting My Write On and Proud of It

This week's RemembeRED was to write about something that you're proud of.


I've got to say, the things that I've done on this blog - my little bits of writing and art - are things I am proud of. 


In college, I had an abusive boyfriend that I stuck with for way too long. I developed severe depression and went almost two years before I sought any professional help (which didn't really help, but there you are). I had always been a writer, just as I had always been a reader. I really started coming into some better poetry just as I got into college, but then the depression and the suppressing of emotions and experiences. It was all I could do to hang on for the ride.


Needless to say, my writing dried up. Even when I tried to use it as a creative and therapeutic outlet, nothing came. I used to joke with my (genius, novel-writing) roommate that I had the longest bout of writer's block in the history of man: four years. 


It hasn't been until recently that I've found my way back to writing. Two years ago, I started kicking around an idea for a novel, but nothing much has come of it - a little world building and some random notes and doodles. It wasn't until March, after reading the writing/literary blog of a friend of mine that I started really pushing myself to write and express. I may have started the ball rolling a few months earlier, but pushing myself to write everyday and post to the blog a few times a week has really gotten me expressing in a way I haven't in years. Not only that, but it's taken me back to a way of seeing the world that I haven't in a long time. It's nice to start to see things with an artist's eye again. Pushing to express and finding new creativity where I suspected that it might have dried up forever is something I am proud of. I am proud to have pushed and found myself capable of getting there again. 


Fruits of my labors:
Found in the Sea off Cape Artemision, ca. 1920
Thai Fare
Vapid Aphrodite
Heaven Bent
Orphic Mission

The Fight

This week Red Writing Hood calls for us to write a fight. I happen to have a fight written from a scene of a longer work that I've been fiddling with for quite some time now. 

Background:

All the world (aka the stage): 
What can I say? There's magic folks - I'm calling it erg for the sake of this post. If it's not your cup of tea, don't worry - it's the setting, not the point. The three characters are sitting around a campfire after a long day of travel.

Men and women (aka merely players): Three traveling companions
Alden - an older gentleman who looks to be about 60 and displays magical abilities
Niko - a seventeen year old boy who's just getting out into the world for the first time; has no magical abilities and is very scientifically minded
Taran - Niko's former teacher and also a magic user
Tully - another travel companion


The fight:

“The only way it really could have happened was for the powder to have been poisonous to that species…” Niko finished, impressed with his logical conclusion.

“And how do you explain Taran being able to draw with erg then?” Alden asked, getting to wits end. He had heard about every scientific explanation he cared to hear and then some.

“I’m still not sure that’s what it was exactly. See, Taran doesn’t seem to be entirely human and it could be that something secretes from her skin had a reaction with that kind of  mineral –“

“Are you serious?” Alden asked, standing in his anger. Taran, too, stood glaring at the boy and with a shake of her head, stalked off. Tully gave an assessing look to the old man and the boy before heading down the path Taran had taken.

“What?” Niko asked confusedly, “What did I say?”

Alden, whose face was cradled in his palms, looked up again with rage in his eyes. “You are a naïve child. Do you not understand why she might take offense? When you begin to doubt her humanity?”

“I didn’t mean -,” Niko started, but Alden broke in again.

“What? You didn’t mean to call her an animal?”

“I didn’t… I just… and don’t your people revere animals?” Niko defended, not wanting to let go of his idea.

“We revere and respect their place and our connection with them. But just as an insect should never be mistaken for a bird, a human being should never be mistaken for something he or she is not How dare you strip her of the last thing she feels in common with those around her. Just because you cannot explain it with your contraptions and theories, doesn’t make it not real. There are things beyond explanation.” He sat down again with a forceful exhalation.

Niko, who had started to cower under the weight of Alden’s words, snapped back to attention. “I don’t think that’s true. Everything has an explanation.”

Alden roared furiously into the night. “So what it it’s true? Does knowing the explanation change something for you? Does it make you its master?”

Niko couldn’t find anything to say.

“Just because you can’t explain it,” Alden said, “Doesn’t mean it’s not real or substantial. You can’t explain away how Taran saved your life today. That doesn’t make it unimportant that she did so.”

Niko shifted uncomfortably on his log, staring into the fire to avoid Alden’s eyes. The old man shook his head again and sighed as he went to his tent for the night.

Questions from the author: Does the dialogue seem realistic? Do you get the impression that Niko is a young man trying to prove himself? Do you feel the age difference and experience difference between the two (without any serious background info)? Do the characters reactions seem realistic?
**Please note that this is all first draft material**

Dear Life

This week's Red Writing Hood prompt (one of them) was to write a letter to your character's fear. I have a fictional character I've been writing for a while in a fantasy setting who is human but has an unnaturally and somewhat unusually long life.

Dear Life,

To most, you are just that – something held dearly. It seems strange, but the longer I go on, the more I get the feeling that you hold onto me. Too long have I walked this earth, the lives of three women, end on end, and too many generations to count or remember. Death is not your opposite, but humans cling to you to avoid it. It is not death I seek, but rather the resting end of you. It is not even that you have been bad to me and I am wishing the torture would end. No, it is the weariness of a traveler who has walked too far on a road that has no end in sight I seek to escape.

Even if I expire along that road traveled so long, I fear that the priests, shamans and mages might be right. If you do not simply end at death, if you are eternal in some other form after all of this time I have spent here, then there is no rest to come. Everlasting life sounds so good to them. It comforts them as the go to sleep at night, that there is no reason to fear death for it all goes on afterward. How can they not be weary? How can they not want that same sleep that they go into after such a long day of mundane tasks? I watch others go about their daily lives. They work to gain something for themselves in their short time on this earth and age faster than they wish, all the while shunning the wisdom they have gained and ignoring the exhaustion that comes upon them until the surrounding vigorous youth forces them to see – you force them to see. And then the strangest thing of all – they cling to that your youth as though their decrepit bodies could ever again achieve such activity in you again. They fall apart trying to live beyond their means, but all in the comfort that they will see youth in everlasting life.  Is that all a human can crave? To never end the busyness, the going and the doing?

Am I even still human? After going on like this for so long, I do not think I know anymore. I do not want as these humans that surround me want. I hunger for food and drink, but I hunger more for rest to come, for some sight of the end of the road, even if it lay at a cliff on the ocean. If that be the case, I shall make my bed in the sea as did the eternal being, with the rocks as my pillows and the seaweed as my cover. If I must see you again at the end of that road, then you shall only see me in despair.

            My one hope is that you and I will truly expire together at the end of all this.

Your grudgingly obedient,

Tanith

This pov is fairly early on in the development of this character. Ever the romantic, I revive her human connections and she realizes she can still empathize - that she still is human.

Comments welcome.

The Arrowhead

Here's another Red Writing Hood prompt up for the week. They called for fiction (no problem here), so while this may be inspired by reality (the friend) it will be a gross exaggeration of everything else (the object) and completely fictional in the happenings. Here's the prompt:


"In the middle of the night, you get an urgent call from a friend you haven’t talked to in years. Something terrible has happened. What is it and why is he/she calling you?"


It's a tad longer than 700 words, but not by too much.

The Arrowhead

I jolted awake at the ringing of the telephone. Still drowsy, I assured my husband's inquiring grunt that I would get it. I knocked a book off my bedside table as I felt for the phone, which rang again. 

"Hello?" I asked raspily, still half asleep.

"Katie?" The voice sounded familiar.

That name woke me up a bit. I hadn't been called anything but Kate or Kathryn by anyone since I was fourteen. 

"Who -? Danny?" I asked.

"Katie, I need to talk."

"Okay. Hold on."

I set the phone down and sat up, planting my feet on the floor to steady me. Images of the tire swing by the channel and our secret fort in the marshes flashed before my eyes. I hadn't heard from Danny since...

"Babe?" a sleepy voice asked from the other side of the bed, bringing me back to the darkness of the room.

"It's alright. Just a phone call I need to take. I'll be back to bed soon."

Not knowing why I was doing it, I grabbed the phone. I crept down the hallway past the rooms of my sleeping children and down the stairs to the kitchen. Gathering my night gown under me so that the chair wouldn't be so cold on my thighs, I sat down and lifted the phone to my ear again.

"Danny?"

"It's just Dan now, but yes, it's me. It's... been a long time." I could hear the smile in his voice.

With good reason, I thought before saying, "Is there something wrong?"

"Yes. My grandfather has just passed away." The smile had vanished, grief replacing it. He had always been close to his grandfather, the Colonel.

"Oh. I'm sorry. You needed to talk?"

There was silence for a moment. “I was just at the reading of his will.”

Now that would be an interesting read, I thought. His grandfather was a particular and frugal old man. Money aside, he had one of the largest privately owned collections of Civil War artifacts on the East Coast. He must have just died tonight for the reading to be this late.

“He left me everything.”

“Wow,” I said lamely, thinking of the emotional mess that would probably cause Danny, keeping the grief close at hand. Danny had always been emotional. One of the rough-it-tough-it boys, it was personal when it came to his family and you didn’t get in the middle of that.

At least not without a mess, she thought bitterly.

“Katie, I need to ask… do you remember that arrowhead I gave you when we were kids?”

Again, my mind was filled with images of my childhood: the secret fort, my initiation into our secret club The Guided Stones – after the Georgia Guidestones. His grandfather had told him about The Order, a society he was a part of that centered on that “American Stonehenge”.

“Katie?”

“Yes, the arrowhead that you gave me at the marsh fort. Part of that… what was it?”

“The Stones.” I could hear the capitalization and the hurt in his voice that I didn’t remember.

“Right. What about it?”

“Do you still have it?” He sounded desperate.

“I don’t think so. It would have been in a box with my toys from when I was a kid, but Mom sold or donated all that stuff years ago when she moved out of the house.”

“You’re sure you didn’t put it anywhere else? Maybe in a box you kept?” he asked, even more urgent.

I thought for a moment, but replied again, “I’m sorry, Danny. I really don’t think so. I’ll keep an eye out, but when I left Bennettsville, I left everything behind. I’m in Washington now. I’m sure you understand…” my voice drifted off.

“It’s okay, Katie. I understand. I know why you left. I just thought you might have kept it, that’s all.”

“Why do you need it?”

“Well, it wasn’t an arrowhead. It was an awl that my grandfather got out of a dig in Oklahoma. It was…” his voice lost its vigor and died.

“What, Danny?” I said his childhood moniker again, hoping to take him back in time as I had been – to let him trust me.

“It was the oldest bone awl ever found in the US. It was worth about three million dollars and the Order says it’s important.” The Order.

“I’m so sorry, Danny. I didn’t know.”

A few more condolences given, he hung up the phone with even more grief in his voice.

-

Three days later in the Jerusalem Church of Rincon, Georgia,  I nodded to a Salzburger member as I entered the third small meditation room on the right side. I closed the small door and listened to the quiet before pulling out a brick just above the floor-level. Out of the hole came a piece of fabric. Unwrapping the awl, I smiled.

“I knew it was the one.”




Comments welcome.

Filling Water Balloons

So this weekend's RemembeRED prompt is up:


This week, we're giving you a photo to take you back in time.
In 700 or fewer words, show us where your memory takes you. 

Remember that this image is merely inspiration. Your piece needn't have a hose in your piece, but we need to easily see how you were inspired by it.

 I don't so much have a hose story as a brief memory about water balloons. The hose makes little appearance.

Filling Water Balloons

The water was cold on my toes as I tried to fit an empty water balloon over the end of the leaky hose nozzle. It was my birthday and we were a good half an hour into a water fight.

“We always take my car ‘cause it’s never been beat,                                                                                                  and we never miss IT with the girls we meet.”

It was Dan singing. I was only 8 and had yet to discover the meaning behind the lines, but there was something about the way he sang it that made it stick in my mind. He was a few years older and had a much more worldly view of that song that I. He helped me fill up my balloons – it was so much easier with four hands – and we jumped back into the crowd of kids running around the front yard.

Carefully avoiding the red ant piles, I ducked around the Dogwood branches and nailed James right in the chest with a wobbly balloon.

“Arhh! I’m gonna get you for that!” he yelled. The fresh balloons were cold.

Comments welcome.

Stolen

Someone has stolen something from you (or your character). Something of tremendous value. What will you do to get it back? Or will you give up?

Write a post - fiction or non - and tell us about it. Word limit is 600.

Today's prompt comes from Red Writing Hood. I had a pretty hard time coming up with an idea for this one, which I found strange. Shouldn’t this be one of the easiest things to come up with? Maybe…

Stolen

I sat up in the night, not from a dream or a nightmare, but from the sound of the door of the apartment opening. I listened for a moment, breath held tight. The door shut and someone giggled, another voice shushing the first.  Another late night out for the flat mates then…

I lay back down, closing my eyes but not to sleep. What was it that was happening before I woke? It felt like there should have been something going on. I was asleep and… I reached out in my mind, willing myself to find anything there, but no. Just darkness. Emptiness.

It had been this way for months. I didn’t remember when it had started, but no those are the wrong words too. I didn’t remember when they had stopped – my dreams. From an age before I was cognizant of such things, I had dreamed – vivid dreams, subtle dreams.

“Why don’t you write them down and make them a novel?” he once asked, “You have more ridiculous junk happen in your dreams than these silly vampire novelists have all put together.”

Ridiculous junk. He had always thought so. Other people called them “strange” or even, in my mother’s words, “nightmarish”, but not to me. To me they were just something that another part of my being was trying to tell me.

I sometimes used to wake up with a sense of urgency – the need to remember, to know what had happened in the dream, because it was real and meaningful. Other times I would awake confused – how did that end up in my head, where did it come from? Only once or twice did I wake up in fear. Dreams that frightened others at the thought were no source of terror to me. On the few occasions I did have a nightmare, they were memorable, but thankfully not re-livable.

But this seemed all in the past to me. What had once remained in my waking life had now invaded my dreamscape – a pressure, a dampening. As my daily self lost its vigor, its intention, its vitality, so did my dreams. I could manage the day to day, but the loss of my nightly reflections was unbearable. I mourned.

The doctors called it depression. My friends called it “a damn shame that someone like that could hurt someone like you.” I didn’t really call it anything – not until it was much too late.

The life that I had been living and pursuing had become a confused muddle of daily routine and wandering. I had dealt with this before – losing my way, but then I had my dreams to ground me, to help me reflect, to turn to for understanding. Now they were gone too. Stolen. 

A family recipe

Today's post is another prompt a la The Red Dress Club RemembeRED series: 

"I once told a friend that i love her posts because I read with my nose, and she has the unique ability to describe the olfactory sense perfectly.

Sounds can do the same thing. Have you ever heard a song and suddenly you were swept back to a time in your life you had pushed to the back of your memory?

For many of us a scent or a sound can bring back a rush of remembraces.

This week, your memoir prompt assignment is to think of a sound or a smell that reminds you of something from your past and write a post about that memory. Don't forget to incorporate the sound/smell of your choosing!"

So here's my response - just a quick short one today!

A Family Recipe

I stood at the unfamiliar stove, sifting through the available spices and ingredients.

All dried and they're not all here... why can't I find normal spices in Hong Kong?

Chopped onions already making my eyes water with their acrid odor, I cracked the tinned tomatoes and a sharp tinny smell assaulted my nose. Not like at home...

Cool granite with a warm wooden cutting board hold the trophies of my horn of plenty. Mason jars full of bright, sweet-smelling Romas with their bite of once-fresh basil, intensified by the canning salt that touches the palette when tasted. 

My husband stands with a fragrant glass of Merlot in hand, breathing in the barrel from which it was delivered, philosophizing with my father and sneaking a tomato from the jar. I rap his hand with the back of a wooden spoon before turning back to the stove.

The sharpness of the onions fade from the air as they fold together with the spicy tang of the garlic in the searing pan. Olive oil takes on a new bouquet as the sauteing root vegetables are brightened with a dash of Riesling - the cloying sweetness steaming into my face with the alcohol that leaves me heady.

My mother and grandmother move about the kitchen, making some sweet-concoction of their own for dessert - delicate breezes of sugar and vanilla waft by as they pass.

Adding tomatoes from jars, a crackling of fresh ground pepper gives the sweet-smelling sauce a sudden savory scent that is augmented by the pungently grassy aroma of fresh cut parsley. 

Adding fresh, doughy pasta to the boiling water to my left lets off yeasty, floury bubbles as it begins to simmer. 

The longer the sauce cooks and the less we can all find something to occupy our hands, the closer we all drift to the stove, eventually becoming the people who watch the water boil and sneaking a spoon into the sauce when possible. 

I woke up from the daydream to the smell of tinny tomatoes and onions, sharp as knives in my eyes now.

And this is why it’s so hard to produce a family recipe.

Dork Tourette's

So I grabbed (very last minute) a Red Writing Hood prompt from The Red Dress Club:


This week's assignment was to think of someone - it could be a fictional character, a public figure, someone you know - who gets under your skin, and write a piece from his or her perspective.

Dork Tourette's


Okay... just talk like a normal person... breathe in.

The awkward boy of fifteen sucked in a deep breath, pulling up the waistband of his loose swim trunks and brushing dark bowl-cut bangs out of his eyes.

Breathe out.


He pushed the breath out hard, some spittle dripping down his chin, which he embarrassedly wiped away with the back of his hand as two bikini-clad girls walked by. They barely glanced in his direction and his shoulders slumped.

No. No getting down on myself today, he thought more forcefully, forcing himself to stand up straighter as he walked out to the public pool, Just remember what Mom said. These kids are just as awkward as I am and I just have to act like I'm one of them...

He placed the smile on his face that took him an hour to perfect in the mirror at home, but one weak corner of his mouth gave him away. He sidled up to a group of classmates that he was pretty sure were his friends. He had spent the last two years at school with them in the library courtyard at lunch. He went to their parties and had his Mom help him pick out their birthday presents. They had even been to Frankie's Fun Park for his birthday last year, all of them donning laser tag gear and winning little bronze tokens after eating a cake in the shape of a Jigglypuff, which they didn't even laugh at him for.

Even so... he was never quite sure if they were really his friends or not.

"He-... hi guys," he said, tripping on the steam in the concrete, but catching himself on a lounge chair.

"Hey Walter" chorused the group at large before going back to listening to Brandon's speech. Brandon was the glue in the group - you know, one of those kids who everyone just wants to be around and keeps everyone interested. He was just a cool guy to be around. At the moment he seemed to be telling them about a book he had recently been reading.

"... so then the bounty hunter corners the criminal, only to have him reveal he's the bounty hunter's dad - so totally a Star Wars hack, man, but it's not that bad. And this guy, he's hunting - the dad - he's a total badass. His bounty is worth, like, a trillion dollars or something ridiculous like that, so everyone is out to find this guy and turn him in, but once our bounty hunter figures out that his father only abandoned him to save his life he starts helping him on the run. Totally badass," Brandon finished impressively.

"Yeah, that sounds awesome, man,"Charlie affirmed.

"They're making it into a movie, I heard," added Katie, one of the two girls in the group.

"Yeah," Walter joined in. "It reminds me of this anime I really like called Trigun. There was an animated series and then a movie that came out more recently. I went to see it in the theaters. It's about this total badass," he continued, borrowing Brandon's words," who has a bounty of like sixty-thousand million-"

"You mean sixty billion?" Katie asked with a small laugh in her voice.

"Yeah - sixty billion double dollars. And he -"

"Double dollars? What's that?" Charlie interrupted.

"I don't think it means anything special. It's just about how much money he was worth for all the stuff he'd done. And he's called The Human Typhoon, but his name is really Vash the Stampede. And in the series there's this whole thing in the first episode with this guy named Descartes and you start to get that Vash is kinda like this nice guy all along. And he's totally cool and kinda dark, but complex, you know? And the movie came out - I saw it in the theaters - and they tried to keep the original seiyuu, so the animations a little wonky and stuff, but it mostly works. The only thing is I don't think it's really true to the original series because Vash is all over Amelia and she's not really into him, so he comes off as kinda pathetic and if you ask me it's really so that they could get more girls to watch the movie and the series, but he's really a total badass, so if you ignore that part of the movie, it's really good - you know what I mean?"

Walter actually looked at his friends, rather than imagine all the parts of the movie he liked, for the first time since he had started talking. He realized with a suddenness that made his armpits itch with sweat that they were all looking confused or bored. The girls had looked at each other and started giggling. He could have drown himself in the two foot kiddie pool next to them as he felt himself turn red.

"Yeah?" Charlie tried.

The silence continued as Walter tried to think of what anyone else would say... What would Mom-

"Did everyone put on sunscreen? It's really bright out today and it's really important to put your sunscreen on. You could get skin cancer if you don't cover up," he blurted.

Everyone looked more confused at this random outburst.

God... I must have dork Tourette's. 


"Yeah - we did. Thanks, Walter," Brandon said, smiling genuinely. He sometimes did that - saved the day when Walter needed. "Hey - you wanna go swimming guys?"

"Yeah!"

"Sure, let's go."

As everyone moved to the pool, Brandon smiled and gave Walter a soft, but manly shoulder punch.

"There you go again, trying to impress the girls, Walter." They shared a smile before cannonballing into the pool, causing all of the girls to shriek.

The gift of insomnia

Since I could not sleep and I've been wanting to try a red dress prompt, I tackled one this evening and decided to post it. It's not very good and the only real memory from kindergarten that appears accurately is the first paragraph of my response. There doesn't seem to be any narrative theme that's developed here either. I just wrote what came until it stopped.

from the red dress club:

For this week's RemembeRED prompt, we're asking you to remember kindergarten. If, after thinking about it for a while, you can't recall anything, move on to first grade.

Mine your memories and write about the earliest grade you can recall. What was special? What was ordinary? What did you feel? Hear? See? Smell?

Don't underestimate the power of your memory. If you have a difficult time remembering, sit down and freewrite...you'll be surprised what comes to the surface.

Immerse yourself in crayons, chalk dust, and those tiny milk cartons and then come back on Tuesday, March 29th and link up.

Mrs. Yashinski’s black hair stood up in a tall column of tight curls, not unlike those of Marge Simpson, though it would be many years before I could ever make that simile. She didn’t look Polish, but she could have been married to one of the many in town. Her eyes seemed to slant and she always painted her lips on large in red. Her large rectangular teeth showed en masse when she laughed and she liked me, which seemed important.

She taught us and we learned our alphabet, to write them and read them. It was what you did in pre-school. And then the next year in kindergarten she taught us to put the words together and began to read. She seemed to do everything in steps, just like we did. She drew her letters in the proper stroke order, step by step. Just like counting and adding, step by step. Just like sitting and taking out your lunch in a polite and gentle manner, step by step.

I sometimes wonder if she went home and cooked dinner step by step, and walked her dog, step by step, or even did the gardening with her husband, step by step. Could a person’s life be so broken into bite-size pieces and never flow together? Could one pause between those pieces for the rest of their lives?

The only time her steps lost their individuality and her person became a seamless current was when she would read aloud. She did not do as the other teachers and read, the pause and share the picture, then pause and ask the question, then pause and respond to the reply. No. She would hold the book in view and read, sometimes from the pages that she turned in the single breath between sentences and other times it seemed from the memory itself. How could this be the same woman? The one thing I really learned from this woman was how to get drawn into the story. The words would drip from her lips like honey, drawing me in as a bee. She shared that secret moment with us, helping us find it, in which the story became real until we could think of nothing but seeking that moment to relish.

Mrs. Yashinski taught everything step by step, broken down, living life in a piecemeal puzzle. She taught us letters and words, but never reading. Reading she did not teach. Reading she gave as a gift.