Passageway
“The brain has corridors”
—Emily Dickinson
She moved from street to street, from building to building, from floor to floor. She had done this for more years than she cared to count. In fact, she had grown tired of counting: one year became five became fifteen and twenty as fast as fists could unfold. The passage of time exhausted her, felt like running in place, eyes blinking, clouds covering the sun.
Tagged with: audience, discovery, fiction, imagination, narrative, story, words
Falling
All I knew was that I had to hurry. My muscles tensed. My blood rushed. I wasn’t even sure why. I rolled forward into the night. I pushed through the crowded city street. My own heartbeat fell in with the footsteps, the car horns, the tires thumping down the avenue. I was outside in and inside out. We all blended—all the beats and the clangs and the whines. My pulse was no longer my own. I had lost the rhythm.
And then it happened. The staircase must have been there all along, and I missed my step. I tumbled down. I heard myself clatter and clack. I saw the air turn. And I landed alone in a clump at the bottom of the stairs. A dim light gleamed over a closed door. The outside rhythms had stopped. There was no push inside. No rush outside. I lay there a long time, at the bottom of that staircase, waiting for a pulse. My own steady beat. My own. Steady. Beat.
Tagged with: poem, story, struggle, words
Mirror
She noticed a big house reflected in the pond: an exact upside down replica with windows, a front door, and faded red paint. She could even see the half-closed curtains. It was as if the house were built inside the water.
She sat on the pond’s edge and took off her shoes and socks. She let her feet plop right between the curtains. She slid down further over the edge and then down into the watery window.
Tagged with: imagination, narrative, story, struggle, truth, words
Wish
It was enough to make her crazy—the constant yearning for something she could not name. She saw glimpses of it—in the smile of a new friend, in the tree limbs scraping the sky, in the lone crocus on her lawn—glimpses that just made her want it more.
The wind picked up, and the clouds crawled in. And when the rain began, she listened to its steady beat on the roof. She watched it cry down the windowpanes. She imagined herself on an old raft, a dog at her side, letting the water take her down the river of her street and out into some new adventure.
Tagged with: connection, fiction, imagination, story, why write, words
Heart
I heard the tiniest of heartbeats. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. It wasn’t a Tell-Tale heartbeat, nothing frightening like that. This heartbeat had a soothing rhythm. From what I could tell, the beat came from the trunk of an old tree just off the path where I had been walking. I approached the trunk and put my ear up to its grooves. I listened. No heartbeat. I waited, and then I heard it again—faint, in the distance. A little faster now. Badumpbadumpbadump. I followed the sound and ended up at another tree—this one full of crows and their caw caw cawing. “Shhhh,” I called out. “I am listening for a heart.” One of the crows looked down at me and laughed, or that’s how I perceived it. The crows flew off one by one, and I waited for the heartbeat. When it finally started up again, it seemed to be coming from underneath the snow. So I dug down with my mittened hands. No heart. I sat completely still. Me. The snow. The tree. The crows cawing in the distance. And then I heard it again. But this time, I did not go searching. I sat still. I did nothing. I just listened.
Tagged with: connection, fiction, imagination, story, struggle, words
Jules reached inside for a quarter or a tissue or a chapstick. Anything. Her pockets were empty. Not even a lucky rock. As a rule, Jules never left home with empty pockets. It was a thing she had. Pockets were meant to hold stuff. To make up for their emptiness, she put her hands there. A passerby kept his head down, his own hands lost inside his overcoat. In fact, all the passersby, men and women, looked just the same: sad, drawn, a bit lost. Jules could barely stand the gloom of it all—the gray sidewalk, the overcast sky, the cold air. Her empty pockets seemed even emptier. And so she dug deeper and deeper. She wanted to find something—anything. And finally, there it was, in the deepest recess of her pocket: a clear marble, the tiniest of crystal balls. Jules stood there, in the middle of the crowded city sidewalk and held the transparent orb in the palm of her hand. And people stopped to see what was there, what might be in store, what the future might hold. People needed something, however small, that was clear and round and easy to carry. Something to keep forever in their pockets.
Tagged with: center, discovery, fairy tale, fiction, imagination, narrative, story, words
Fable
I have been reading Aesop’s Fables and playing around with the form. I’m having trouble coming up with a moral to this story. One idea is “even a beggar knows good trash from bad.” Any other ideas?
Trash Talk
Tagged with: construct, imitation, story, words
Hope
The snow fell. It fell and fell. It fell so fast the air was white. It fell so deep, the ground was gone. There was only snow. The little girl stepped out onto what used to be her sidewalk, and she sunk. She sunk all the way up to the tops of her legs. She thought, “If this keeps up, I will be swallowed whole.” And so she shoveled through the night to make a path so that she could walk from here to there. And in the morning light she turned to see her walkway. But there was no walkway. The falling snow had covered whatever work she had done. She planted her shovel into a drift and leaned on its handle. She looked toward the sky, as if some answer waited there. But she could not see the sky through the snow. She opened her mouth to speak, and she saw her breath float out and disappear into the white expanse. That’s when she knew. And so she turned and shoveled her way back through the fresh-fallen snow. It was all she could do—to create the ground of each new step.
Tagged with: construct, discovery, fiction, learning, words
Ducks Swim
The cold air made her car cough. She followed the same path daily. Up the curvy road, over the hill, past the farm stand. Overnight, the temperatures had dipped to below zero. Even the pavement seemed harder. It occurred to her, just briefly, that nothing could live under such circumstances. Of course she knew that was absurd. Here she was breathing, driving. Still, the confinement of her coat—the static electricity of her scarf—made it all seem so plodding and old. It would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, to give in to hypothermia—that sweet, dark sleep? Before leaving the house, she had seen a cardinal in a backyard tree. A male—deep red against the snow. “Aren’t you cold?” she called through window. She stared a long time at its tiny body tucked neatly between branches of a Norway Spruce. Not a single feather shivered. Not one. And then, driving on that familiar road, she looked to her right and noticed a stream just beyond the local farm stand. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? And there upon it swam three ducks, happy and quacking and on with their day—as if it were just that—another day.
Tagged with: construct, discovery, story, words
Blizzard Dream
The blizzard wind whipped swirls around the black mouse as it scurried atop the snow, finally slipping under the tiny crack at the base of a garage door. “Great,” Lou thought as she shoveled more snow off the driveway, “Now it will find its way into the house.” And that night—New Year’s Eve night—Lou dreamed of that black mouse, curled up and sleeping on a towel in the entryway—a towel she had put down to protect the wood floor from her snowy boots. In the dream, the mouse purred. And when the mouse awoke, it stood and stretched like a dog. Lou watched it from some distance. Was she even in the dream? Or was she the mouse? Dreams happened like that. And then she woke up—in the dream or from it—she wasn’t sure. Dreams happened like that, too. On New Year’s Day, she could not stop thinking about the mouse—black against the white snow—anxious to find shelter. The wind died down, and tree limbs brushed lightly against the windows. She closed her eyes and saw the mouse there—just behind her lids. “It has gone and crawled inside me,” she said aloud, not at all startled by the thought.
Tagged with: fiction, story, words
Prayer
It was a cold and frosty morning. The boy could see his breath. Actually see it! “Look at that,” he said and blew again. His mother reached out to grab his arm—there was traffic, after all—and the streetlight was about to change.
“Hey!” he yelled. “You put your hand right in my breath?”
Tagged with: connection, exercises, fiction, narrative, story, words
Blue Gray
The day was cold. Too cold for early December. Her shoulders tensed in the air, and she hated that bulky jacket—the way it took over and became her. She looked up at the trees, completely bare now. The sky shone through their gray branches, a deeper shade of the same color. Even the asphalt matched the sky. She smiled to herself. “I am walking through a black and white photograph—even my hair and coat are gray. My corduroys are gray. It is truly a gray day.” And then she heard the wings before she saw them—almost like breath on the sky. From the sound of it, she knew the bird was large. So she expected a crow, or by some wonderful chance—a red tailed hawk. But there, against the overcast sky, a blue heron appeared—almost dinosaur-like in the cold December light. The heron moved in slow motion flight. She saw its yellow eyes, its fish-shaped throat, close enough to touch, but not really. Its colors blended right into the day, and she was happier than she began, not near as cold and maybe even ready for winter. As if anyone is ever truly ready for that.
Tagged with: center, fiction, story, words
"Aren't Us"
September 11th, 2001 has been on my mind lately. I just enrolled in a new drawing class, and so I have been looking through some of my drawing/painting exercises from past art classes, and I came upon pieces I had done in 2001, months before the horrible event. Looking at those dates—May 2001, August 2001—I could not imagine what it felt like to not know what I was about to know.
And the other day, in looking through an old textbook, searching for teaching ideas, I came upon a poem I had never read before:
Tagged with: connection, discovery, poem, truth, words
Hostage
I have been fascinated with the news of Ingrid Betancourt’s rescue from FARC, her Columbian captors. They kept her and many others in the jungle for seven years.
I watched her interview with Larry King the other night. She spoke haltingly. She apologized for her English. Something n her eyes caught me. She seemed both pained and impassioned. She looked—I don’t know how else to say it—like truth.
Tagged with: discovery, story, struggle, truth, words
Shadow
A recent obituary about the children’s book illustrator Tasha Tudor offered one of her favorite quotations:
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.
—Fra. Giovanni Giocondo
Tagged with: center, connection, quotation, struggle, truth, words
Just Call Me Donley
I recently read yet one more newspaper article that referred to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama instead of addressing them both as Senator. But this part really confused me: in the same article, the reporter called Geraldine Ferraro Ms. Ferraro.
Back in the day—when Ms. came into the language, it was meant to replace Mrs. and Miss with the understanding that men had only one title—that being Mr. So, the logic went, women should also have just one title—no need to differentiate their marital status. It supposedly made men and women equal in name.
Living Room
In the living room
she sits—
In a chair,
the upholstered kind,
old-fashioned with winged arms—
a chair made for conversation
or reading.
A floor lamp illuminates her.
And next to the chair, a red walker
complete with wheels
waits to take her other places.
Tagged with: audience, poem, words
Once Upon a Time
I was pleased to watch the film called Once about an Irish street singer/vacuum cleaner repair man and a young woman who changes his luck. What a beautiful tale of intimacy, music, and friendship. It had fairy tale qualities, but its content surprised me with its unpredictable turns.
And on a different note, but still in the folk-tale-once-upon-a-time category, I happened to watch Tim Burton’s adapation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I was so drawn to Ichabod’s Crane mixture of vulnerability and strength, and so wrapped up in the story’s theme of the rational as it comes to terms with the irrational.
Tagged with: construct, moments, story, truth, words
Sentences
I have assigned my students a series of four summary paragraphs. Each paragraph must introduce the author and title of the essay, identify the main idea of the essay, and then go on to detail supporting evidence.
Yesterday, students brought draft paragraphs and read them aloud to a partner. The partner then read the same paragraph back to the writer. After that, the pair chose one sentence from the paragraph to rewrite. Once each of them had rewritten a sentence, they shared their results.
Tagged with: discovery, exercises, students, words
Links
So far, there are two links to other sites on this page. I plan to add more. But I’ve been thinking about the word itself, links, and how the internet has created a valuable sense of connection for me.
If you are interested in children’s literature or baseball, check out Barbara Gregorich’s website. She and I are in a critique group together, and she has been a wonderful writing and marketing resource for me. Our group, called the Londonderries, is made up of six writers, from different cities. We meet every week online, and we meet every two years in person.
Tagged with: connection, links, why write, words
Twyla Tharp
Lately, I have been thinking about the disconnect between the process of writing and the marketing of writing. I have been trying to write the perfect description that 1) makes someone want to read my novel and 2) makes someone believe it can sell. In essence, I am trying to put words to my voice, style, and vision.
A few weeks ago, my friend Rita sent me a book: The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. In it, Tharp discusses what she calls “creative DNA.” I like this quotation:
Tagged with: audience, discovery, quotation, struggle, why write, words
The True Experience?
In searching through some books for “teaching of writing” ideas, I came across this quotation from Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story:
“From the first I thought that to teach writing was to teach my students how to keep on reading until we all saw as clearly as we could what was driving the writer. What, we would ask of the manuscript, was the larger preoccupation here? the true experience? the real subject? Not that such questions could be answered, only that it seemed vital to me that they be asked. To approach the work in hand as any ordinary reader might was to learn not how to write but—more important by far— why one was writing. In these classes both I and my students discovered repeatedly that this was more than half the battle.”
Tagged with: quotation, structure, struggle, students, truth, why write, words
Lyric
I heard a great lyric this morning to go with the website’s theme of “telling ourselves stories in order to live.” The lyric comes from Mary Gauthier’s song called “Lucky Stars.”
“And I know it’s hard to know the truth, so we live with points of view.”
Tagged with: quotation, truth, words
Some Answers?
I read over the student responses to the questions posed in my 15 August post. Here is my summation of their thoughts:
-Even though writing is not speech, it requires voice.
-The writing process is highly individual. Different techniques work for different people.
-Writers owe their audience a way in.
-Writing and reading can empower us.
-Writing and reading can be exercise for the mind.
-Writing can establish a connection between writer and reader.
-Grammar and writing are not inseparable because grammar helps to structure thoughts.
-Writing is a way of self-expression, knowledge, and documentation.
-Each paper should have a writer’s personality.
-All writing is creative because it displays one’s own style and thought process.
-Writing helps organize your thoughts. First you have to form a structure and build ideas.
-Reading helps you learn to write better