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. 

Pushing my limits

I just got Blogger to start working again. It's been having some loading issues that have been stopping me from posting. I don't even know what that's all about. 


The last few days have been pretty full. My husband's birthday was Monday and we decided to do a hike in Hong Kong. We underestimated the hike by quite a bit and found ourselves up a certain creek without a certain paddle to help us. It ended up being a 4 hour hike up and down set of mountain peaks. There were three main peaks, the highest of which was over 800 meters high (and we pretty much started at sea level). NUTS STUFF. I've never done anything that difficult in my life. Ever. 


We did make it to the world's largest sitting Buddha at the end of it all. It was a lovely afternoon. It's good that we could still enjoy it after four hours of hiking and what turned out to be some pretty bad sunburns. 


I did learn something about myself. There was no way of getting out of there once we'd gotten in, except to turn back or go forward. There were a few times where I felt like giving up, but since there's no other real option but moving on, there was no giving up to be had. It was a tough struggle for both of us. I can barely move today and we're both nursing the sunburn on our arms, but we did it. I wasn't sure I could do it. I really wasn't. There was a high ridge that we thought was the last, but when we arrived at the top we realized we were only just over halfway through. I had already had to stop and have two significant resting periods to deal with my breathing. I didn't think my body could handle it, but I pushed myself to a new psychological and physical limit. I was overly ambitious in picking a hike I knew my husband would enjoy and most of the planning sites did not indicate the length of this hike. Maps can be deceiving. 


Things I learned:
- Approximately 1280m of vertical climbing is A LOT.
- My husband and I make a good team. 
- I can push my body through a lot more than I realize if I can pace myself. 


That last one is huge. I've been an asthmatic since I was a child. I couldn't run the mile and I get winded climbing to the fifth floor of our building to get into the apartment. We climbed about 5km worth of distance (not including the vertical). It was a long, hard slog of a hike. But we did it. 


I gotta say - I impressed 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

Thai Fare

Today's poem comes from a memory of my recent honeymoon in Bangkok. A wonderful city to visit in the Land of Smiles. 

Thai Fare

The wind of the traffic blows my hair back

as the tuk-tuk driver nervously smiles and nods,

hoping we don’t notice a different face on the license.

A night, previously too hot to walk so far is now

cool with gusts of wind on our sweating brows.

A hand squeezes mine and I look left to see

my new husband smiling like a child at the fair,

whooping with laughter at the roller coaster of Thai traffic.

A skyward glance gifts me with the strangeness of spiderman

decorating ceiling, the red seating piped with blue

sticking to my legs in the heat. At a stop, I point up

and am rewarded with a broad grin, the child-like quality

renewed. All thoughts of “over-priced” transport

and smile-negotiated fares disappear as joy blossoms

on his face in the glow of the city lights. 

Vapid Aphrodite

A post I got to via lovelinks, by Patricia over at Contemplating Happiness about people watching pushed me over the edge this morning. I went on one of the most lovely Easter Sunday walks to a zoological/botanical garden this year and along the way I picked up (in my writer's mind) a woman, whom I've charmingly named the "Vapid Aphrodite". 

Vapid Aphrodite

We walked through the gardens with spring all abloom

Our fingers meeting in between camera captures, lovely

and bright, the flowers, cranes and flamingos strutting

their best jeweled plumage in the afternoon warmth

We hold the camera at arms’ length, heads together

faces smiling with a light that is not all from above

A sheer mist from the fountain cools our faces, frenzies

of children splash and give chase in the delight

The clicking of another camera comes to our ears

from a fellow being directed by a tall and fair woman

She presents an orange-flowered tree for the camera

as a showcase showgirl presenting her latest wares

The sun illuminates her sun-bleached mop, her lips

too pink, painted as though she could be done up better,

Nature’s beauty undone, she holds her lover’s smile

too long, telling tales of perspiration and aching feet

The corners of her mouth fall with the camera lens,

gone until the photographer glances back up grinning

He leans in for her lips, but she presents a rouged cheek,

looking determinedly for her next ware to showcase.

Comments welcome.  :)

Autumn

Autumn 

It just happens one day, I wake up

and I can breathe in a deep breath

the air is different, heavy and moist

with the smell of dying leaves

never do humans find death so beautiful

as they do each autumn

the earth slowly shutting itself down

for the hibernation months ahead

this – this is when I come alive,

when all else is veiled in tragic beauty




Comments welcome.


Photo by author.

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.

P&W Prompt 4 (Originally 6)

Prompt from P&W (and Angelspeak):

Choose a poem that you've written and rewrite it in its reverse, making the last line first, etc. Revise this version, creating a new poem.

So I chose a poem that I wrote in October of 2009. It was about a girl who was "secretly" involved with a guy I very briefly dated. She had a tendency to try to only treat me nicely when there was no one else to talk to and it annoyed me greatly. I was always nice, but found her flaky, shallow tendencies too much for me one day. Here's the original:

You look down upon me

and I wish

I could sit so high in the world

You whisper quiet conversations

enticing him in slowly

with otherwise mundane

complained efforts

You word yourself out

The chip on your shoulder

growing to my eyes

Showing you sheltered privilege 

you talk about money

then brushing it away

and unneeded endowment offered

Only when our eyes meet

do you shrink away, false modesty

your downward sneer again

Your clicking heels 

The hallway echoes widely

it shares my contempt

rejoicing the abating sound

The prompt is to reverse the lines and compose a new poem. Here's the reverse:

Rejoicing the abating sound

it shares my contempt

the hallway echoes widely

your clicking heels

Your downward sneer again

do you shrink away, false modesty

only when our eyes meet

An unneeded endowment offered

then brushing it away

you talk about money

showing your sheltered privilege

Growing to my eyes

the chip on your shoulder

you word yourself out

Complained efforts

with otherwise mundane

enticing him in slowly

you whisper quiet conversations

I could sit so high in the world

and I wish

You look down upon me

Then I revised and rewrote my (now long abandoned) contempt Again it is untitled – suggested titles are welcome. Here is the final product:

I rejoice the abating sound of clicking heels

in the echoing hallways that share my contempt

for your attitude - your presence, one moment

sniveling and sweet, another condescending

Your downward sneer is spotted so

you shrink away, false modesty appearing

in your shoulders, in the arch of your neck

but your eyes flash and give you away

From abroad, an unneeded endowment offered

You brush it away, your talk of money clearly

exhibiting the sheltered privilege

from which you look down at me, at all

Now growing, to my eyes, is the chip

on your shoulder, in conversation

your word yourself out, pretension only

a short stroll from your misused vernacular

Performing your cheap woes, your seduction

no more than mundane complaints, aloof

and apathetic, you try to entice him

with whispered words and quiet conversations

I could sit so high in the world, looking down

such a slender nose at every human connection, 

but I do not find the presence of others

to be abhorrent - just yours. 

As always, comments are welcome. 

Conference Killer - A rough poem

I was recently at a philosophy conference, when a poem struck me. After listening to one gloriously presented lecture, a second lecturer took the spotlight. Well... the rest is in the poem.


Conference Killer

The battlefield set - pitting academic against academic

In a conference, competition: who will win the day?

One skillful warrior completes his task,

the crowd eager to continue the fight

A second must be given his chance

awkwardly he sits reading, his notes becoming crumpled

as he foams at the mouth with excitement

not stopping to wipe away the spittle,

weapon wildly wielded: the mind has learned, the tongue has not

slurring well thought words with a foreign sound

Inertia gone, the crows loses interest

their eyes roaming the room like prowling cats

avoiding mutual acknowledgement of boredom

others politely look attentive, leaning forward in their seats

willing themselves to not be revealed, a yawn giving them away

Few have the endurance to outlast the incomprehensible

the lecturer surfaces from his berserking on the field

the sole survivor in the slaughter of interest

Yes, I know it's rough, but I'm having a hard time moving on it. And I'm not kidding about the spittle. The second stanza is almost reporting. Of course, so is the third. Anyways. There is some writing for the day.

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.