Brain, Hands, Breath – Reverie 2011 – Days 14-16

Brain.  Flying forward – the first draft.  Mindless wandering around in circles, going nowhere but around and around and around – the endless revisions.  Hitting the ground like glass falling from the sky – knowing the writing is almost there.  Searching the darkness for another planet – understanding that the story is never complete, but sending it out anyway, one final Apollo mission. 

Hands.  Clapping, crossed at the wrists, reaching for the sky, opening another door, fingers wrapped around the thin stem of a daisy-a wineglass-a pen leaking blue ink-Atticus’ leash-a pale pink ribbon, resting on this keyboard, pulling laces tight, playing against a washboard, stirring another roux, signing a birthday card, crossing knitting needles and T’s and hearts.

Breath.  Holding it.  Running out of it.  Catching it.  Forgetting it.  Waiting for a.  Breathless with expectation.  Deep – the ocean.  Shallow – the lake.  Hold your nose and jump!  Sinking to the turquoise bottom of the pool.  Drinking tea, finding a thin silver dime.  Weightless.  Bursting.  Nearly out of.  Remembering to come to the surface for another and then heading back under again. 

Scents of the year, of the past – Reverie 2011 – Day 13

In winter.  Peppermint, balsam and pine, cypress, smoke, soot, dust, litter.  Coffee, cocoa, beef stew, burgundy, anisette.  Citrus – bitter like grapefruit, sweet and rich like blood oranges, green and trimmed with tang like limes. 

Once a boy kept whispering to me in a college class on southern literature.  No matter how I ignored him, he kept on.  In the ground floor classroom, where mildew swelled in the folds of linoleum, I glared, and still, he kept on.  Finally, the class ended and he followed me, walking backwards before me, bowing and eventually saying that I smelled of snow.  Even in a city below sea level where snow rarely flew, I couldn’t shake him off. 

When he took me dancing, the bar smelled of hot bodies, rum, tobacco, and the sulfured remains of poppers. Midnight meals of buttery omelettes, thick-cut fries, and creamy orange freezes.  In the morning the thin papery odor of exhaustion.

In spring.  Wet grass, sage leaves, mint in time for juleps in early May.  Double-barreled bourbon, wood smoke, charcoal and steaks on the grill.  Wet dog, morning breath, cloves, patchouli, and ashes.  Pears poached in pale wine and sugar and vanilla, star anise and cinnamon sticks floating atop the syrup as it turns darker and thicker.  There was a chicken in the oven, doused in sherry.  There were potatoes au gratin, turning velvety and coppery, begging forgiveness.  There was a salad of endive with a lemon vinaigrette, croutons, anchovy dares and salted secrets.

On the last morning of the year, we crush mint into the fresh tangerine juice, and we don’t even bother to add the dry and silky Prosecco bought especially, especially, especially to accompany the Benedict, Hussarde, Sardou.

Breakfast of Champions – Reverie 2011 – Day 12

The glass of fresh-squeezed OJ, the bowl of steel-cut oatmeal littered with golden raisins and walnuts, the deep black coffee colored with cream.  And the books of war poetry: Brian Turner, Yusef Komunyakaa, Bruce Weigl.  Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam.  I look into my empty coffee cup and wonder about the cold sweet water, the betel-black smiles, Nixon’s Christmas bombing, the way the world turns for the soldier shot down amidst elephant grass and the man who was once a boy on the coast of Oregon, where a beached sperm whale died and was then removed by dynamite. 

I load the dishwasher with rinsed dishes and think about the boy who lost his father, who watches the news, who learns nothing from a world so far from all the fighting.  How no one in his school understands, except the girl whose mother has just been deployed for the third time.  I wash the soaking oatmeal pot and consider the complexity of war, the way anapest and aubade, caesura and synecdoche, image and irony fall into place, just as thousands of miles away, men and women fall to the ground, a final act, no breakfast to follow.

The 2011 Soundtrack - Reverie 2011 – Day 11

Music is the background for many writers as they wind their ways through novels, short stories, memoirs, sonnets and villanelles.  The characters in my novel-in-stories each have their own particular musical preferences, from Johnny Cash and Wanda Jackson to Elton John and Cream, and one sings songs from popular musicals to his daughter as lullabies.  But in these cases, of the writers and of those they've written, the music remains in the background, coming forward only to add color or dimension to a scene or to enliven a character.

In my next book, a collection of stories, the music will bellow and beat in the foreground, for each piece will recall an aspect of a country song.  Who can resist writing about broken-down trucks, broken marriages, and runaway dogs?  So thinking on the past twelve months, I can’t help but laugh a little.  The soundtrack of 2011 is certainly the inspiration for that of 2012, and out of the bend of notes come stories, each with a unique rhythm and framework and narrative voice.   

January – The Black-Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”

• Hey, it was the new year, when one eats black-eyed peas for good luck and then dances around to their sweet, bouncing beat  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA

February – The White Stripe’s “Jolene”

• Flying over the snow-covered Sierra Nevadas en route to San Francisco for a Narrative Writing Workshop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m5KrPXL4wI&feature=related

March – Paul Simon’s “Rewrite”

• I rewrote the first chapter of my novel-in-stories, later published by Iron Horse Literary Review in their Father’s Day Issue – June 2011 - just like Paul sings, “I said, Help me, help me, help me, help me -Thank You!” - exactly…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi2DypBHyUg

April – Cream’s “White Room”

• That’s what happens when you plant your ass in the chair and don’t get up until it’s done – the room turns white and weird, Eric and Jack begin to sing, while Ginger just thrashes about…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRC0rdFokKM

May – Wanda Jackson and Jack White – “Thunder on the Mountain”

• When it’s raining out and you’re wishing for the sun and a fast car and a mountain to race down – “You better roll your windows down” – by the way I love this video!  and yes, admit it, you love the white fringe and have been in that room!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnULGVbhPcY&feature=related

June – John Prine and Iris Dement’s “In Spite of Ourselves”

(written by J.P.)

• The realization of what we've done and what remains to be done!  Ah, couples...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5axlwCBXC8&feature=related

July – Steve Earle’s “Every Part of Me”

• Learning compassion for characters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf_jEKZ77So - album

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPXr3UiuueY - live

August – Steve Earle’s “This City” 

• The sixth anniversary of Katrina - S.E. with the Preservation Jazz Band in NYC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjhegm4JiQM&feature=related

September – Emmylou Harris’ “Wrecking Ball”

(written by Neil Young)

• Summer ends and you realize you just wanted one more dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9N5MGRPV0I

October – Townes Van Zandt’s “To Live Is to Fly”

• This is what happens when you light up with ideas…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JGc2CvM0EQ

November – Steve Earle / Emmylou Harris – “Goodbye”

 (written by S. E.)

• Preparing to bid farewell to the old year and a finished draft

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=ctDVZditHzY - S.E. – album

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr2IY8q687I&feature=related - S.E. & E.H. – live

December – Emmylou Harris – “Sweet Old World

  (written by Lucinda Williams)

• Dark winter days, Xmas lights reflecting the snow and ice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUHrFo4aPGI&feature=related

And just because I’m from New Orleans and believe in baker’s dozens and lagniappe, here’s one more!

Wanda Jackson’s “Sparklin’ Brown Eyes”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=HvnWcb6mu4Q

• This one for the brown-eyed boys in my story, “Skylight,”  in New Delta Review's Issue 2.1

http://ndrmag.org/fiction/2011/12/skylight/

Traditions - Reverie 2011 - Traditions

Christmas in Kauai.  That sounds like an amazing family tradition, doesn’t it?  And maybe one day it will be.  This Christmas is dedicated instead to the dog we love – Atticus!  You could say he ate the family vacation.  The trip funds were certainly swallowed alive.  All due to one little ACL gone awry.  Yeah, sure, we know that dogs don’t have ACLs.  But they do have knees and the lovely ligaments that sometimes don’t last, and Atticus now sports a revised sort of knee to the tune of thousands.  Throw recovery, rehabilitation, and therapy in for good measure.  We are there!  On the family dog vacation of a lifetime!

So the tradition of walking the dog continues.  We are two months out and serpentining hills and traversing uneven ground once more!  Surfing and sailing and walking on the sugary beaches of the westernmost Hawaiian island will surely come another year.