Book Challenge Update

Yesterday saw the end of Little Women and I have now moved on to Jo's Boys. I had read Little Women before. I love, love, love it. There is always a new lesson to take in and moral to learn and a reminder that some things about people are truly timeless. I think this time I learned more from each of the sisters than I have before. Instead of focusing on the story most like my own with small additions from the others, I found different and more well-rounded traits in each story that felt applicable to my life. It is always nice to have a reminder that we are all pilgrims who bear our burdens, but that there is some hope that those burdens will be lifted and it is within us to lift them. 

I have never read Jo's Boys, but I am enjoying it thus far. It's so different to read about boys in this similar setting, but interesting nonetheless. Little Women gives you boys and men that are exemplar - they are the kind you look to have in your life as a woman. Jo's Boys seems to be giving you all types of boys to see how they turn out. They won't all be Laurie's or Mr. March's or John's or even Mr. Bhaer's. Some might turn out to be more like Ned Moffat or Fred Vaughn. 

12/30 books for 2011. 

Book Challenge Update

I did not get a chance to update my book challenge yet this week. I finished The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 


I must say, I really love this story. It's, of course, a great growing story full of morals and directives about how to be a good person, how to help children be good people and the loveliness and lessons we can learn from gardening. LOVE IT! 


It makes me want even more to start my own greenhouse. It's a pet idea that I've had floating around the back of my mind for a few years. 


Anyways - back to the book. I finished it Tuesday and began reading Little Women for the third time. It's another book I love. Alcott has such interestingly eternal thoughts. Plus, it is hard to pull me away from the transcendentalists (but not as difficult as it is pulling them away from Unitarian thought... hahaha ha ha.... no one gets my literary joke or finds it funny.


Thus, I have completed the twelfth book on my journey to tri-deca-dom. Or something like that. 


12/30 books completed.

Found in the Sea off Cape Artemision, ca. 1920

Another ekphrasis inspired by a statue I fell in love with on a trip to Greece. 

Found in the Sea off Cape Artemision, ca. 1920

Raising your arms high, you are mistaken for your brother.

They change the tales that made you king of all the children,

whose feet run in the dusty, dirt road clouds. The dust sticks

to our feet, turning our heels black – our bulwark against civilization.

Our sun-baked limbs carry us to the shore and the others squawk

their excitement like gulls, their eyes falling from the sky to the ocean

to watch you emerge. The sea has changed your form – to them you are

now the sea king in your brother’s place, swathed in seaweed finery.

They declare he has been found again, a god among them, while my eyes

fill for you. Your speechless mouth does not contradict, for your arms

spread too wide, your height too tall: they can no longer look in your eyes

and see who you are. They merely stand in awe of your striking figure.

Waves still crashing at your feet, you have not been found. You know

now that every story of his will be indistinct from your own, your legends

collapsed into one. They turn and leave you alone amid the sea shells,

their forms so small to you now. You always were a giant among them.

Grown too tall and too broad, you no longer belong to them. I take

your hand and our gaze meets on level ground. Head held forever high,

you step forward, unafraid.




For a photo of the statue: http://www.namuseum.gr/collections/sculpture/classical/classic02-en.html (ps - it's Zeus, not his brother Poseidon) I could also post my own photos of this piece, but it needs to be read first.

Book Challenge Update... Again

Another book down. Today I finished Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I had never read it. I think I've read Through the Looking Glass, but I'm not quite sure. 


I loved the sense of child-logic and frustrations of having to change one's outlook on the world as one changes. It's such a growing up story, but dressed in such fantastic nonsense that it's just as easily hidden as it is revealed to the reader. It's almost like a fast-forward dream of being a teenager. 


This is book 10/30 read this year. 

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.

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.