Always looking...

Hollyhock stalk with seed buds, 12/11/2010

Snowdrift, 12/11/2010

 I'm a bit sick of the snow...it's blowing and raining today, tomorrow there will be more snow after this current mess passes by and triggers more lake effect snow, pretty much the same weather set up as last week (oh, joy.)

My yard has been invaded by a flock of starlings wearing their winter speckles, I love hearing their chatter!

My dog is dreaming, and barking in his sleep.

Thought I'd throw in some pictures I took last week of an old door...

 

 I'm a sucker for old weather beaten wood...I love the shapes, the colors, and textures of this door...and it's got the character scratches left behind by an eager dog begging to go out or just glad to see you coming home, sort of like a written history of someone coming home. I'm always looking for inspiration somewhere...

I've been slightly under the weather...maybe weather related, maybe just worn out, but I'm plugging along, the snow is melting, and winding up in my basement, the sump-pumps are in action taking care of that mess...it's warm enough for lady bugs to come out.

I've written a raw bit for my latest manuscript, Layers of Illusion...my main character, Eleanor spoke up last night and started a rant about television, so I had to listen to her and write it down...so here it is, warts n' all...

*

The television makes me uneasy—everything about the little innocuous box makes me feel un-easy. Too much focus on fear in the news—the world is being overrun by terrorists in turbans (but it seems we have enough of our home-grown variety to worry about), in politics, the Republicans are the Party of Boo! The old fear mongers are constantly being grim-faced negative about everything under the sun that might possibly be good for the people, the bastards. You gotta love how manufactured anger has permeated our society; human disasters implode in our faces every day. Natural disasters seem to be everywhere (they used to be a rare thing when I was a kid), good grief, I never heard of a tsunami until Indonesia got slammed, and now it seems there are tsunami’s (or the potential of one) all the time—what the hell, right? What irritates me even more—every Made for TV Movie is exploiting someone’s unfortunate tragedy for the entertainment of us! Someone is always in trouble, chronically; someone always getting hurt, badly; someone always getting ripped off, incessantly; someone always getting killed, senselessly. Anything brought forth that is positive is so over the top saccharine I could cry my eyeballs out. Yes—I cry at the drop of a hat these days—especially around the holidays, even the commercials are on the tear-jerker setting at full blast. Initially, I was blaming it on hormones, but now, no, I’ve come to realize that I've been marketed to distraction by a media that is bludgeoning my emotions every time I turn on the television. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I unplugged the fucking thing, hauled it into the hallway outside my apartment with the hope that someone will take it. From that moment on I vowed that I will rely on NPR to give me the news reports with their kind, level-headed voices that drone at a volume that is set to relax—sure the world is going to hell in a hand basket, but wait, there is still hope for something better. Hope, I need a good dose of that for my frazzled nerves, I could listen to that shit forever—sure beats the hopeless drumbeat on television. Sometimes I don’t get out of my car right away when I get home at night, I want to finish listening to the story they’re talking about, and then the next one, and then the next. No matter how bad the news is, there is a gentle hum of hope. At least I don't feel like banging my head against the wall or becoming a ranting lunatic toting a gun for a no good reason.

No one took the stupid television until I dragged it out to the common area by the elevators and taped a sign on it FREE! It sat there for a couple of days before it finally disappeared. I don't miss it, not one bit.

*

Eleanor Dean is still developing...growing. Her circumstances keep evolving in that mysterious way of writing a book, the road map is a twisty route from beginning to end, lots of stuff in the middle, some of it will stay, some of it will go the way of things...who knows if this latest piece will make it. She's a woman teetering on the edge, stuck on survive, suffering from one thing after another, being ground down by a cascading sequence of catastrophes, chucking out her television is a sign that she's trying to get a handle on her life. I'm letting the ideas simmer quietly, this has been going on for about 9-10 years, I have gathered at least 200 pages of bits and pieces like this (if not more), one day, I will print it all out, get my scissors and tape, and start piecing it together to create the whole. Goodness knows if it will actually become a book...I do have my doubts about it...but that's part of the process, and I'm okay with it.

Time.

Frosty out there...

Cold outside again tonight...I just took a hot bath, and I'm finishing off my Guinness before taking Max for one more walk...I had hoped to do some writing, but not much has happened, it seemed the evening at home just slipped away from me...

There's more photos of the frosty window on my other artsy-fartsy blog Follow Your Bliss...

Thought I might post a little bit of what I've been working on lately, the latest labor of love, there's still much to do, but this little bit came out of this weekend's work...this is a bit from chapter 4 of Layers of Illusion...the story of Eleanor Dean and Howard Macrae...

Ten years. I’ve been such a hermit these days I rarely pay attention to anything beyond here and there, home and work, there and back again. Ten years ago is a long time. Ten is a magical number—a reckoning on the timeline—a milestone, the memories measured, leveled off, and poured into a sieve; happier times slip through with relative ease, and the heavy clumps of pain that remain are examined closely—what do they mean?

Why remember the things long past? Well, because on page one of The Post Standard there is a name that brings everything back with clarity. Howard Macrae.

Curiosity killed the cat, need I say more? It was much like that predictable feline curiosity that made me pick up the phone and buy a ticket—just one—I said to the voice on the other end, I got lucky—there was one left, well, more than one, there were several. Did I want Orchestra or Mezzanine, she wanted to know.

Mezzanine.

Just one?

Yes.

After I hung up, I guess that voice who asked thought it curious that I only wanted one ticket, I mean really, who in their right mind would go to a play alone? Did anyone ever say that I was in my right mind? I plead temporary insanity. But, of course, Howard Macrae would probably think I am perfectly sane. Sam Shephard’s The Tooth of Crime was one of his favorite plays—or so he said when I knew him and we went together along with a pack of our friends to see it way back when, and through his influence, I loved the play too. Tonight I will see him again, ten years older—has he changed?

Is he balding?

Has his firm, young man body started to turn into the plush, padding of a grown man?

I wonder.

When he appeared in the spotlight leather-clad on his throne as the main character ‘Hoss’, my eyes absorbed every inch of his being from my perch on the edge of seat AA 20 in the Mezzanine. I haven’t seen him since the day he knocked on my dorm room door—he’s still the same—heartbreakingly handsome and ridiculously arrogant, strutting around the stage with his chest puffed out, heavy biker boots clomping on the boards, perfectly on the mark with his lines, his voice in full throttle as he belted out song after song during the duel with Crow—in the end, Hoss is frantic—beaten.

I’m pulled and pushed around from one image to another—

Nothin’ takes a solid form.

Nothin’ sure and final.

Where do I stand! he cries out

I watched with horror as the end came in the lightning flash of strobe lights, the brief twinkle of the gun barrel, his eyes wide as he fit it into his mouth—the lights went out as the gun went off.

Heartbreaking.

Hoss is dead. Becky Lou’s loyalty quickly shifted to the very razor Crow. That bitch. I brushed a few tears from my cheeks.

The members of the cast came out to take their final bows, and as much as everyone seemed to love the tall, slender, young Crow, Howard Macrae as Hoss received a standing ovation when he stepped out from behind the curtain—he was magnificent in his sweaty glory.

When the lights came up in the small theater, the magic of the evening dissipated as everyone rose with a low murmur of voices, gathered their coats, hats, and gloves—the light felt oppressive after being in the dark for so long. In the light of reality, I hated him—well, I really wanted to hate him for what he did to me all those years ago, but looking back on it, it was really a small matter—a matter of the heart—our hearts, his and mine, both of us wanted something different. He didn’t want me, and I wanted to hate him, but I love him instead.

When I saw his name in the paper as the director and the leading man—Howard Macrae—I knew then that I had never stopped loving him—if I could even call it love—I barely knew him, I loved looking at him, I loved the image of him. Infatuation is maybe more like it—my racing heart doesn’t know the difference—pit-a-pat pit-a-pat pit-a-pat pit-a-pat pit-a-pat a mile a minute—Howard Macrae-Howard-Macrae-Howard Macrae-Howard-Macrae-Howard-Macrae-Howard Macrae. The two dark arches over each brown eye, the thick forelock of hair falling over his pale brow, the disarming toothy grin—always ready for a close up, a head shot—a pretty boy—now a handsome grown man. He once said that he wanted to be on Broadway—I thought he should’ve gone for Hollywood, but he’s not in either. Instead, he’s in a dinky theater in an Upstate New York college town, so far off Broadway the lights of the Great White Way aren’t even a glow on the eastern horizon.

That's it. Sigh.

Oh, Elly, Elly, Elly...Eleanor Dean. I do have my hands full writing this woman...Howard has been easy...almost too easy. Buck Orion is going to be a tough one when I get around to him...even tho' I've known him longer...writin' books takes years...especially a good one. This one will be a good one someday...

Here's more winter inspiration...Frost, 1995, watercolor on a scrap piece of BFK Rives...