Life in progress

Tag Archives: life


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A is for … About

“I’m writing a novel,” I say, with trepidation.

“Really?” they reply. “What’s it about?”

“Well, it’s about a girl who leaves home and meets a magician.”

“Oh. That sounds … nice.”

“But his family has this deep dark secret.”

(Best case scenario.) Their eyebrows lift a notch. “That sounds intriguing!”

(What usually happens because I lost them after the word ‘magician.’) “What? I was paying attention to something else.”

Explaining what your story is about can be the most difficult thing. From what I’ve discovered by experience, it’s even harder than writing a blurb – because at least with a blurb, if someone is going to bother reading it, they’ve probably committed themselves mentally to paying attention to at least two sentences – one more than you’ve got to grab them with in conversation.

Trying to explain what I do, off the top of my head, is never easy. I don’t have a natural gift for talking about myself. That’s why I write. And so I’m thinking that this may be one of the major reasons that it’s not a good idea to talk about being an author at all.

Before I do, however, publish my novel, I’ll be sure to write myself a sentence which I will recite verbatim whenever anyone asks.

For the short fiction that goes with this post, please visit my fiction blog here: A is for … Aarin, the Topless Pirate.


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Gearing Up For A Challenge

Ah, I do love a good challenge. It’s just as well, when you think of it: my entire life is one big challenge. I remember saying to myself, before my son Alex was born, I’m in such a rut. I need some excitement in my life! Now THAT was a lesson in being careful what you wish for, right there. Between surgeries, deafness, feeding issues, pneumonias and meanwhile trying to run a business, the first eight months of his life were anything but boring. But I digress. For what I have coming up in the month of April is nothing, by comparison.

Yes, the A-Z Challenge. Since I’m going to write about writing, I thought why not extend the challenge and write a fiction piece a day to illustrate the article I post here? It’s only twice the amount of work, after all! And besides, there’s no reason I shouldn’t show rather than just tell…right?

We’ll see how far I get.

For now, I’m attempting to put all my accumulated notes in alphabetical order. It only seems to make sense, and why put it off? I’ll have enough to do, starting tomorrow.

Don’t you love a challenge? How will you be challenging yourself in the upcoming month?


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Power Over a Dream

I have a recurring dream of being stuck in an elevator. Over the years, I’ve connected it to being stuck in a rut, being undecided about something, or being worried about which direction my life is going. You see, the elevator doesn’t just stop – it takes over. It has a life of its own, going up, down and sideways. Sometimes it is much smaller than the shaft and it swings on its cables. Sometimes it stops between floors and the doors open – revealing to me the scariest thing of all: the dark, dirty elevator shaft.

I had the dream again last night, but this time it was a little different. The elevator continued to have control, but I overcame the dream.

I was in a three storey building and I got into the elevator with two men. I wanted to go from the third to the second floor, but for some reason I couldn’t push the button, so the elevator went to the first floor. The men got out, and I pushed the second floor button, but I ended up again on the third. I allowed the door to close, vowing that if I missed the second floor again, I’d get out on the first and take the stairs. Of course, when the doors closed, the elevator took control. We went up to the roof and started going sideways. I had a window in the elevator then (why? It was a dream) and I could see the tops of the other rooves from where I was.

Instead of panicking, however, as I usually do in this dream, I pulled a piece of paper and a pen out of my bag and I sat down and started writing. I figured if the elevator wasn’t going to do what I wanted it to, I’d make the best of it with the time I had on my hands.

Pretty cool, eh? If only I could remember what I wrote. It might just have been brilliant.


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Nothing

There are days when I wish I could just let everything go; empty my mind of all worries, thoughts, desires, and fantasies. Being empty allows me to fill myself up with whatever I want. A clean slate to write on. I wish to be a blank page.

I want to be clean. To stand in a rain storm and scrape away my cares. To unearth my stress and toss it over my shoulder–discarded–not to be seen again.

I want to drive fast down a highway with the windows open, looking forward to the horizon with no destination.

I want to sink to the bottom of the pool, unbreathing, weightless, peaceful.

I want to meditate. To drift off into the ether; to become one with the universe, and there, commune with spirits of those unliving. To join in their stories.

I want nothingness. With nothing inside me, I can fill myself with what I need.
CAM00049


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Am I Right? – Stream of Consciousness Saturday (Write/Right)

There’s nothing quite like pizza for breakfast. Straight out of the box in the fridge and into my mouth. And don’t tell me it’s not the right way to eat a pizza.

But… I’m a hypocrite. Although I can’t stand having someone tell me what is the right or wrong way to enjoy my food, I often tell my best friend, John, just that. I mean seriously, just because it’s not the right way for me (or most of the other people on the planet) to eat peanut butter… on a sandwich with a slice of processed cheese… should I be telling him it’s not right?

Damnit, yes! It’s wrong, plain and simple. It’s like putting ketchup in your chicken noodle soup, or eating baked beans smothered with maple syrup. (I’ll get some flack from the Quebecois on that one, particularly this time of year.)

We all have our oddities when it comes to food. What are yours?

 

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See this week’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, and join in! Click the link here: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-2914/


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How Did you Pronounce That?

At the mall this morning I walked into a shop, where the clerk behind the counter was speaking on the phone. Her name, according to her name tag, is Theresa Thomas.  I stood before her and she held up her hand to indicate that she was almost finished with her call, so I did what anyone would do. I eavesdropped.

As it turns out, Ms. Thomas was talking to someone who wanted her name. This is how her half of the conversation went:

Her: Yes, that’s right.

pause

Her: It’s Thomas. Right. T H O M A S.

pause while I thought to myself, Couldn’t they have figured that out? She pronounced the ‘th’ like one would say the word ‘throw.’

Her: Thanks. Bye.

Her: (to me) Can I help you? (or at least that’s what I think she said.  I was distracted by the ingenuity of this woman’s parents and the fantasy of  how she might pronounce her first name.)

Her: Can I help you?

Me: OH, yes…

And so it went.

Thufferin’ thuccotash, some people, eh?

This brought to mind a place I worked as a secretary/receptionist, long, long ago in the time before children. The company’s salesman, Mike Daoust, insisted on making sure everyone knew how his name was properly pronounced.

“‘Doe,'” he told people. “Just like a deer.”

So one day I was sitting at my desk, shuffling papers and trying to act like I was working, when a man walked in the door looking for Mike.

“Can I tell him who’s here to see him?” I asked the broad, red-faced man who streamed with sweat across from me at the desk.

My finger poised over the intercom, I couldn’t believe my luck.

I smiled and pressed the button, “Mike, there’s someone here to see you.”

“Who is it?” he asked.

“It’s Ray, a drop of golden sun.”

I was tired of that job anyway.


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One-Liner Wednesday – It’s All About the Grammar

My best friend John, to me: It’s nice having you or someone intelligent to talk to once in a while.

 


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At a Loss for Words

Where’s your communication book? I’ll ask your teacher to tell you.

It’s the most common phrase that is signed in my household, aside from, I love you, and Go to sleep already.

The problem is, of course, that my son Alex doesn’t ‘speak’ the same language as I do, and sometimes I’m the one at a huge disadvantage. I, whose life consists of putting words together to make meanings clear, am unable to communicate with my own offspring. What kind of sick force in the universe came up with this irony?

Tonight I had to try to explain to Alex why he wasn’t able to eat from my plate. It’s something that I allow him to do on occasion–not something I allowed my other two sons to do–since he doesn’t eat much more than one piece of anything, being that he’s tube fed. But now, since I’m not sure I’m completely over this bug, it’s a no-no. Germs are not something I often talk about, and so once again I’m faced with my lack of knowledge, and my incompetence in being fluent in American Sign Language.

Can you fathom the frustration at not being able to say the simplest of things? With a hearing child, the conversation would be over in four or five sentences. “I’m sick, and if you eat from my plate you might get sick. Why? Because there are these things called germs – tiny things like bugs crawling around in my food. You still want some? I thought not.”

Instead? It’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m grateful that I have the resource of the Deaf school to back me up when I need it, and especially that they are teaching my son to communicate with his peers. What scares me are the stories I was told by a few different Deaf people of their hearing families – that they grew apart. The Deaf have their own community. In fact “Deaf” is capitalized when the word is used to describe a person in the same way American is – because it denotes that very community.  It’s only by virtue of the fact that Alex has a global intellectual delay that I might have to care for him well into adulthood.

In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to learn his language. Because once he’s twenty-one and has to leave school, I won’t have a communication book to write in. And I’ll be at a complete loss for words.


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Down For the Count

29. Count ’em. I slept for 29 hours yesterday and into this morning. It seems I caught the dreaded stomach flu bug that’s been going around hereabouts for the last couple of weeks. I just hope I don’t give it to the kids. Luckily, they weren’t here yesterday. Who knows what I’ve left it on though.

I’m feeling better today. Coffee is my gauge – if I’m able to drink it, I’m good. And I did. So yippee for me.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my blog. I’ll get back to you once I’ve done everything I should have been doing yesterday. The worst part is, I had a weekend off and didn’t even look at my manuscript. Damn it.


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The Healing Power of Music

Music has a place in the hearts of many—one might even say the majority of people; it’s what we listen to in our cars when we’re driving as fast as we can (legally of course 😉 ); it’s what we employ to escape the doldrums of life; it’s our background noise; it’s the panacea that allows our souls to heal.

But what of the artists who create it? We treat them these days as though the owe us. We steal from them, and the internet allows us to without reserve. Think about that…

That’s not what this post is about, however. I want to talk about the quality of the recordings we hear in this age of digital everything. Have you ever heard anything on vinyl? Do you remember why it is preferable, even though you want to preserve the cover, to take off the plastic wrap from the outer sleeve of a 33 and a third record?

I am so happy I kept all my records. I have here, in my house, the very first rock album I ever received–Christmas of 1977–“Frampton Comes Alive.” I have many of the CD versions of the old albums I still possess–“Equinox” by Styx, “A Night at the Opera” by Queen” (which I most gratefully received for Christmas last year as a limited edition vinyl copy)

Night

and I’m able to do a direct A to B comparison. Believe me when I say that if listening to a CD is great, experiencing the same on vinyl, is like being in the same room as the band as they record it.  Where digital is a flat wall of sound, vinyl surrounds you like you’re standing inside the music. It penetrates. It removes all other thoughts. It allows you to be fully in the moment, where no cares can invade. It is healing.

If you ever have the opportunity to listen to vinyl, do. If you ever have the chance to buy a turntable, do. Vinyl is coming back. Embrace it.

Slash