Three New Kitties and Cure for Insomnia

With Labor Day behind us, we say goodbye to summer. The singing of the autumn chirpers escalates with the earlier sunset hour. Though summer is waning, the hummingbirds still hover and dart around the porch. I refilled their feeder for perhaps the last time. 

I have three new kitties. 

We lost our Hemingway cat, Malcolm, to old age and wanted another farm cat to hold down the mice population and deter the minks that ate all our chickens, but somehow we ended up with three. Though feral and shy, two out of three have become tame, perhaps by good food and the Grandma Linck in me. She who warmed milk in a saucepan for her cat in winter. Her spirit hovers in the air like the whirr of a hummingbird. Or maybe they sense her in the owl that hoots outside my window before swooping over the field of Queen Anne’s Lace and goldenrod for the woods beyond. I named the first shy kitty Sneaky Pete. The second to show up is Charlie, who hides under the porch, and skedaddles at the slightest disturbance. The third to adopt us is the prettiest. Grace is gray and white with a big fluffy tail and greenish-blue eyes that shine like ingots of stained glass.  Isn't she pretty?  Now I need to find a free neuter clinic, or at least one with reduced cost.

When the house is asleep but I’m not and can’t, I like to write,  sometimes stream-of-consciousness musing but also a new novel still in its infancy but growing in fits and starts like a pimpled adolescent.

Ahh . . . this writing life. It can be a fine one as long as you aren't in it for the money.  On that note, give a free listen to my new audiobook narrated by the old college suitemate, Jan Harley with her musical voice, and her friend, David Danger. (Gotta love that name!) He does a fine job with Stefan's voice. Curls my toes.

The Drought Diary

I used to have a haynow diary back when I had papa's haymow for a writing hideaway. Now I have a boring armchair dairy. But today I'm calling it a drought diary. Looking for a rain cloud, avoiding the sunny side of the street. 

I've been digging the weeds out from around my tomato plants. They had a slow start with all the deer hobnobbing about, then the tiller broke, then it rained, then I was down and out with a nasty summer cold, so the weeds ran away like the dish and the spoon. Now drought. Sitting under a ceiling fan, scornfully disdainful of AC. But....

If our norm continues to be 90-plus-degree-days, I shall succumb. Are there still people out there who think global warming is a hoax?  Not if they're as old as I am and can remember when winter came byThanksgiving and didn't let up until April. The one small exception was the January thaw. Do you know what that was?  It was famous about the farm. If you're under forty you may not know. If you are under thirty you probably don't care.

How Words Become Swords (to submit or not to submit)

 If in the dark, I can better see, I will sit up all night to decipher the day, write about my failures, from which I can learn (or should). 

So, if you have writer’s block, write about them. You might find you can’t stop. You’ll be like Jack Kerouac with a manual typewriter, a carriage return, and reams of paper on a roll, spewing out failures across the floor and out the door like the meatball that rolled off the table when somebody sneezed. 

The loneliness and ungodliness of the day past with the anticipated tomorrow on the threshold, and, well, shit. Is unholy ungodly? Unholiness. Maybe that’s the word I wanted, Mr. Word. What does Word know as it tries to tell me what is a word and what is not a word. But I love Word. I love words words wordswordswords. See how words become swords? We wield our swords to make a point. We spar and swing and pivot our way across the day and into the night as we search for the perfect word to end a story on. To send on. To enter on. To close the cover on.

********

Adam Feasting:

What if Adam ate the apple?
A rogue deceptor, a muscle man,
who climbed the tree
who shook the limb
who took a bite
and smiled it good.

To write, read and share. Poets and Storytellers. (Feast or Famine)

The Writing Life (and garlic addendum)

Okay, for those of  you who are wondering, the garlic was a failure. My oven's low temp of 170 farhenheit was too hot. I'm blaming my oven. The chopped-up garlic turned brown, which it mustn't do, brown and hard, yet still gummy on the inside. A dehydrator is a must and I have one somewhere in the cluttered closet of my writer's room, but for now I'm turning my efforts elsewhere: to Old German tomatoes and Italian roasting peppers for salsa, chop chop chop, basil and parsley and....oh, yes, of course garlic! Good thing I have 15 pounds set aside for my October plantings. Then there's my grandma's dark fruitcake to make, no candied fruit, just dates, figs, dried apricots and cherries. Wrapped in brandy-soaked cloth for weeks and week. (Use a low temp for  long baking, not NOT 350 F. my mistake). I have oven issues.

Getting out of the kitchen, I have some writing news. Perseverance pays. My poems (two!) are in the new issue of The Slippery Elm Literary Journal 

And in the new issue of the Midwest Review  (number 9) which will soon be showcased on their site. The Review publishes work from writers in or from the midwest region from where words percolate in obscure places.  

I have more news on the horizon about which I'm excited beyond words, so who needs a dehydrator when Indi publishers and small university journals are flourishing and our libraries are opening to stretch and stir from their pandemic lockdowns. Perseverance is my word of the day. All you writers out there, never never never give up.

Now why on earth is that rooster crowing when there is no tinge of pink in the sky? What is he crowing at? Orion charging across the sky in his new change-of-season finery? I know...he sees the light in my window and thinks I'm about to throw open his door and sow some oats.

Not even close. I have a dehydrator to find and words to write and coffee to brew. 

Over and out

for now.

Thanks

for 

reading

this

impromptu

post.

A Troubled Man To The Lighthouse Goes

The night watchman
(a troubled man)
on a given day
when all the birds sing
to the lighthouse goes.
Once a gentleman in Moscow,
under rumors of war
undertakes the voyage
with a golden compass
to a promised Garden of Eden
but it was a risk pool
and no country for old men.

This poem was composed from the titles on my bookshelf in response to the challenge at dVerse (the pub where poets hang out) to compose a poem from the books on your shelf. (Spine Poetry) I had fun and rediscovered some old friends.



 

A Writer's Life

I rouse the cat from his house
with a thump on the roof
He stretches his double-thumbed feet
and emerges from his bed.
I fill his dish with Rachel Ray's
premium blend and he follows me
out to the chicken coop.
The water is frozen.
Inside the chickens are warm
and the trough is dry and empty.
They titter totter down the ramp to the outdoors
with straw stuck to their feet
(those feet that make a healing broth)
and I scatter feed and fill the water as the cat watches.
You take care of your animals before you take care of yourself—
childhood admonishments stick in my head
as things from childhood do.
Part and parcel of this adult package
I would be less without.
Once orphaned we all take our seats
at the adult table. So I fill my coffee cup
sit at an empty table with a blank page
and think about what I will write today.



This little walk through morning chores is linked to Earthweal's open link weekend. Sunday, remember, is a day of rest, even for farmers, writers and environmental activists!

What Would You Do With A Day Of Solitude?

Alone for the day. They ask, What are you going to do in that quiet house, all alone? What will you do with ALL that time? 

Shall I waste it? Daydream and piddle it away?  Drink, dance, light candles and incense, play music and write? Write and write and write? Time well wasted. A beautiful wasted afternoon. 

But dusk gathers, and I’m a chicken farmer as well as a writer. Eggs are gathered in baskets and await their sorting and boxing, but now I must go outside into the bitter cold one last time to shut the hens in for the night.

In the light of the quarter moon, the greenhouse glistens like a snow globe and each frosted blade of grass across the expanse of lawn is an ice crystal twinkling like fairy dust in the headlights of my pickup. I’m a chicken farmer and winter has arrived at last. The ground is frozen so my boots won’t sink into the mire that surrounded the chicken coops from the rain and slush preceding Christmas. There was no hope of it drying under the gunmetal sky with the low light of the winter solstice. No hope of a terra firma without the air temperature dipping into the twenties and staying there. Staying there.

I’m a chicken farmer and with dusk the chickens are back inside and roosting, and I must shut the coops. Roosting, they are vulnerable to any creature that might chose to invade the coop under cover of night: the coons and the skunks, the mink, fox and ground hogs, all hungry for a tasty chicken on a cold winter’s night, a meal worth the risk of a foray into populated areas. So I must cross the poultry fence in the light of the headlights I aimed to light my way. I traipse across the frozen blades of fairy grass that crunch underfoot like tiny bones to secure the coop, shut out the varmints and protect the sleeping chickens that turn comatose with the setting of the sun. Lively creatures by day, they turn silent and immobile by night, becoming even more defenseless than they naturally are. 

The stars that populate the sky and the moon at half-mast help to light my way and I reach the open door without tripping over the poultry fence or the feeders or the big stick one must carry by day to ward off the rooster with his spurs. The hens are lined up on their roosts like sparrows on a high wire. The white rooster is on the top rung surrounded by his adoring flock. He lifts his head and gives me a baleful look but doesn't budge from his perch. I slam the door shut and wedge a board against it for added protection against the crafty coon with crafty hands that can turn handles and unlatch fences. Sleep settles over the coop buttoned up for the night, and all are safe. I’m no longer a chicken farmer. I’m a writer.

The Cocoon

I've been gone so long I can scarce find my way back. I've missed coming around and reading your blogs and participating in Friday Flash Fiction and Magpie Sunday Tales. In case my blog should disappear from lack of interest, I click on it ocassionally to look at the water. But all too quickly, I'm called away to my lettuces and radishes, radicchio and kale, picking asparagus and tending finicky peppers that need this and that and tomatoes that must soon be staked. And then there are the weeds.

I fall into bed at night, earlier and earlier, like the most boring person on earth. In the wee hours of morning I look at my manuscript, portions stacked here and there (cause I'm a hands-on-paper kind of writer), and wonder how long I can persevere in my search for the perfect agent who will love its strengths more than they dislike its problems.

Spring and summer are always like this, no time to write, guilt-ridden at nightfall, but too tired to do anything about it. Achy legs find surcease between the sheets and achy heart burrows into the soft cocoon of blankets and dreams of water, an orderly garden, and a writing life.

But wait....have you ever had Canada geese fly overhead so low you could hear the whoosh whoosh of their wings? I was standing on my front porch admiring the idyllic scene of cattle on grass, when I heard the familiar honking of a resident pair. They flew in just over the power lines with their necks outstretched. I was surprised at the intensity of sound, much like the flapping of a dozen sheets on a clothesline. Geese fly slow and methodical, and the air displaced by their wing span left a tremor in the air. I watched as they disappeared over the tree line, wondering at their destination, wondering what they see from up there.

The Demon Query

When you begin to query agents, it’s much like starting your own seedlings.  Some seeds sprout quickly, like kale (four days!) and some are slow and can take two weeks or more, like onions and parsley. Some are finicky and require perfect conditions, like peppers. 

I worry about my seeds almost as much as I worry about my query letter. I check them daily. There's so much to worry about. Did I use the right medium? It there enough light? Heat? Water? There are mistakes, like dropping a flat of newly planted basil seeds upside down on the floor. Will they ever recover and find their way up to the light?  When the fragile shoots first break the surface, you feel a joyous delirium. Your time and effort has been rewarded. To see the spindly stalks grow and develop their first set of true leaves is like developing your manuscript to a publishable level.

You don’t think you’re every ready to query. You wonder if you’ve done enough agent research. Does your hook hook? Will they like the premise or hate it?  Is your protagonist unlikeable? Your finger hovers over the send button.You pull it back and breathe. How could anyone not like him? Your finger finds the send button. You do it.

Then there is the glaring error you discover after you’ve sent out your first round of queries. You played with your first essential five pages, because you can't leave them alone. You fooled around with the first page and changed a phrase. Then changed it back because it was really, really stupid. But you forgot to save the correction. You sent the really, really stupid first page. You go to bed, happy, not knowing how stupid you are.

You awake and drink coffee and go to your other job, knowing you'll soon be a full time writer. You come home and open your documents, check email and drink something. You open up your sent folder and browse your amazing query and your agent-grabbing first pages and you see what you’ve done. The all-time most stupid phrase is right there on page one. You lean over your screen like a surgeon over the operating table. You can't believe what you see. Now what? Should you send a quick apology and explanation to the dream agent? Should you leave it alone and think they won’t notice the all-time most stupid phrase on a first page ever? 

You send the follow-up email. You kick yourself and go to bed. In the morning you soak parsley seeds in warm water. You turn on the computer and you wait.

A Novel Should Break Your Heart

The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader’s heart. – Susan Sontag 1933-2004

I’ve often wondered if I could write such a story. I have a hate/love relationship with sad endings. Should I challenge myself to write one? Would it make a masterpiece out of a cheesy, happily-ever-after? Have you written a story that Sontag would approve of? One that breaks your heart?

 As writers, should we be purveyors of escape at the end of the day?  Dealing out lighthearted romps, whodonits with neat endings, and happily-ever-afters, floating comfortably above controversy and reality? Or should we be shining a light into the dark corners of human existence and misfortune? There is no harder profession than writing and no higher calling than to tell the truth as we see it. But what is truth and do people want to read it? I don't want or even expect a happy ending, but I want a satisfying one.

Atonement (remember that one?) broke my heart. (I hated it!) Cormac McCarthy breaks my heart every time, yet I return to his stories again and again. I’m a glutton for tragedy, so why can’t I write one?  I fear it’s a flaw, the sign of an immature writer. And while it’s true, that I hate novels with sad endings, those are the ones that stick with me, the ones I can’t forget. So I wonder…do I have it in me to write the only story that seems worth writing? I fear it would break my heart.

The Lonely Pursuit Of Delight

Bear with me as I draw an odd correlation this morning. It was brought on by NPR’s John Augustine’s review of a biography about Beryl Markham, the first to fly solo East to West across the Atlantic against the headwinds that aided Charles Lindbergh.

Her feat thus surpassed Lindbergh’s, but the acclaim was his. She also wrote an autobiography, West With The Night, which is one of my all-time favorites. 

It occurred to me that writers have a lot in common with solo pilots who pursue this “lonely impulse of delight,” a term coined by Yeats to describe solo piloting, but one he could have as easily applied to his own life’s work.  The ultimate flying experience seems to be that of the solo pilot. But for writers, there is no other way to work. 

Yesterday Sally Ride, another pioneer female aviator, died from pancreatic cancer. Ride was the first American female in space. While we often think Americans were the sole pioneers in flight, many terms from aviation come to us from the French: including aviation, fuselage, and May Day, to name a few.   

We have always been as intrigued by flight as we are mystified by the singular pursuit of a writing life, which many see as nothing more than the pursuit of failure. In that regard, there’s a lot of hot air out there about the lonely drunken writer. We don’t need any more hot air in the atmosphere. The oldest flying contraption was the hot air balloon, but the most rewarding profession is writing.

On Fire

It’s a mysteriously foggy morning. The lowing of the cattle carries through the mist and the sun is at bay, like a banked fire. There is garlic to dig and tomatoes to trellis. But first there’s time for a cup of coffee and contemplation while the fog burns off and the landscape emerges.

I’m on my porch now without my sister, she of the musical voice and many words, now at home in a place far away. She of long but infrequent visits, the muse for whom the ink flows, the bubbling brook from which is drawn the angst of regret and the exhilaration of creativity. The visit is over and we plan for the next. The time in between main events is like a lull in the storm, the days we don’t remember, and the people we forget.

I received a Kindle Fire for my birthday. Thus have I entered the age of the electronic reader. I like it. I didn’t think I would.  My siblings got together and made it happen. They think a writer should not be without an electronic reader. I think they're right, as always. I'm the middle child and just try to get along.

About the Kindle: it’s slick as a whistle with color and amazing graphics and a touch screen that is easy to navigate. It’s the gateway to words I can download fast as a hummingbird, even my own. But unlike the hummingbird, I can hold it and keep it.  My first free download was Monsters of Templeton, and then I found Ramona, the tragic love story that takes place in California when it belonged to Mexico. From new releases to lost novels, the Kindle will find it. Some of these treasures are even free. But now I wonder, because I'm suspicious about our new electronic world, can someone with devious intent track what I read, what I highlight and hesitate over? What I return to and the words I look up? Not to spoil the moment, but I'm just saying...I’m old school, a pencil and paper kind of gal.

But I’m not afraid to try new things and while it will never replace the paperback novel and the hardcover treasure, I can see there is a place in my reading life for the Kindle Fire. This is what surprised me: I was reading in bed and evidently deeply absorbed, because at the end of the page,  I lifted my hand to turn it. Yet another occasion to laugh at myself. With the Kindle, you tap the bottom right hand corner to go forward and the left to go back, or you can slide the page with your finger.  I’m still trying to turn them.

The Torturer's Horse Scratches It's Innocent Behind

The torturer’s horse scratches it’s innocent behind on a tree….The old masters: how well they understood the human position: how it takes place when someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

On this fine cool morning, all is still. Even the birds are quiet and a low-lying fog blankets the downward slope of the farm and drifts across the pond and through the trees. It feels like a Thoreau morning, and I wonder at all he saw and felt. I think of all those who came before and all they knew and wish I could offer one of them a cup of coffee and a seat on my porch as I put on my own horrible sneakers.

These are some of my favorite lines from literary masters of old. Can you guess who they are?

1. "About suffering, they were never wrong."

2. "Tell the truth, but tell it slant."

3. "A novel is a mirror walking along a main road."

4. "A book is a mirror: if an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out.”

5. "A writer’s material is what he cares about."

6. "Literature thrives on taboos.”

7. "Any fool can make a rule and every fool will mind it."

8.  "It's not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.”

9. "No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.”

10. "I've led a good rich sexual life and I don’t see why it should be left out.”

11. "I was following in the exquisite footsteps of Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay, unhappily in  my

       own horrible sneakers."

So write of taboos-leave nothing out- and be wary of who you show your drafts to. Balance on a limb and fabricate. Observe the world carefully and don’t be afraid to write what you are passionate about. Hang a piece of art, arrange a bouquet, and write a sentence that fills a page. Be prepared to suffer.

1. Auden

2. Dickinson

3. Stendhal

4. Lichtenberg

5. Gardner

6. Burgess

7. Thoreau

8. Eliot

9. Wells

10. Miller

11. Parker

The opening quote is from Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts

Grab Hold Of Your Writing Life

To close out May (can you believe it?),  I thought I'd share a great post by Pete Morin on how to write fiction that others will want to read. It doesn't hurt that he ends with a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of my favorite "Beat" poets.


To close out May, I thought you'd like to see a picture of our cattle when they were first put out on pasture this spring, where they're supposed to be. It's a little blurry but can still say a thousand words, no?

And one of our plump hens:

My daughter's Corgi rounding one of them up:

And the solar panels at the farm:

To close out May, I'd like to boast that we've planted 140 tomato plants in two days, all by hand, but I don't have a picture of that. Now that the bulk of the planting is done, I hope June affords me time to research my A list for agents, but how do I show you a picture of that? Maybe this Scribbler Award that Tricia O'Brien, one of my oldest blogging buddies, gave me a long time ago will do.

See you all in June!

A Writer's Prayer

Good morning sky, amethyst and blue, good morning.
I stumbled out of bed with another chance to succeed where I have failed.
Winter left, you see, but has returned.
Returned. The birds were joyous for a day,
or two.
But they will return.
With coffee in my grandma's cup
and a sky of purple behind the white-doomed silo,
the writer in me has returned.
Why not a good day?
A quiet day.
A writer's day.
Lord, give me a writer's day.
Amen.