I am still thinking on the past.

 Today I realized that I only live 140 miles from where I was born.  I am still thinking on the past, though not too much, and not with nostalgia or dreariness. I just wanted to find a map to see how far it was since I might drive that way. It's exactly 140 miles from my front door. But the roads are horrific and it's over a two hour drive. I could take Old Number 1 and drive through the boonies aka the Scenic Route. Laughing. I do want to go at least a few more times. But I would like to go to my grandmother's little town first. Take photos. For research. It's a 121 mile trip one way. And the roads are not crowded. But still over two hours to drive. Right through the heart of the Delta. I need to make that trip.

I made a strange observation about myself this week.

This week, of all weeks (!), I have taken notice of my memories on FB and I started looking back, etc. and I was thinking, seriously thinking, that I have made an arc like a character in a book, a wide but serious arc since 2013. I no longer read the same kind of books, I no longer watch the same kind of TV, I no longer paint the same way or even write the same way or think the same way about some issues. I no longer value the same things. I have probably changed more as a person in the last eight years, than I did the twenty-five years previously. And I can't account for it. How it happened. It's not age. I wish it were age. And it was steadying happening to me and I was totally unaware. Oh, well... I am not sure it means anything. Just an observation.

Shakespeare is still one of the most important writers of all time.

In honor of Shakespeare. I write in books all the time, but not in this collection of his plays. All of these were textbooks for a class. Shakespeare was a master of rhetoric devices. Syntax lovers admire this and often read him for this alone. Harold Bloom believed he invented the modern human mind. I agree. He is still one of the most important writers we know and an author everyone should experience. Happy Birthday.

Johnny was a good friend and the very best of husbands.

 Johnny.

The neurotic is always demanding to be heard.

“The extinction

or crushing of demand

through satisfaction

cannot happen

without killing desire.”

— Lacan

(But desire is the opposite of death.) mjh

There is a cost to living and I've paid over and over.

 

“The best thing I ever did was not swim back to the boat. But where was I to go?” — Deborah Levy

Imagine your "defined and comfortable life" as the boat and suddenly, for whatever reason, you are out of the boat and in deep water swimming and you realize that not swimming back to the boat is the right thing to do. But where do you go? How will you define yourself? What or who or where will comfort you? Will you drown? These are the things some people CHOOSE to face. They usually do it after a crisis aka chaos. Most people will swim for the boat. But not Deborah Levy and not me. We float, I think.

In a garden, one learns a lot about life outside one.

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is a moment when you notice that light in your mind has changed.

“She lived her art. She looked like her art. She had the vocabulary of art." —George Lange on Francesca Woodman

So, I am moving my writing stuff to a working studio. I have ordered a desk for the computer. It's an art studio, too. It's at the other end of the house. I bought a bookcase for the books I will need while writing, and can rotate them accordingly. I had two working studios when Johnny died and then I moved into my bedroom after that. It's never really felt right. But I think I was comforted by it, because Johnny was gone and the house was empty and I was so damn alone. (And very sick. Emotionally and physically ill for nearly a year and a half after Johnny died.) Johnny died. I keep repeating that. And I came unmoored. The house was uncanny. Only one room felt safe at the time. I had to slowly reclaim myself and my house. I had to look to the future, too. I could not look back. It made no sense to look back.

I already knew by the end of 2018, that I was never going to remarry, that I was fixed in my desire and need to create things and spend the rest of my years working on my art and writing. One of the things about grieving is how we build solace and attempt to comfort ourselves. We will go the path of least resistance. That's okay, but at some time, we have to face what is really going on with us. I might have made this step earlier if Covid-19 had not struck. Or not. I will never know. But I have made it now. Being alone is not going to destroy me. I have my muses and inspirations. I have my work.

Other things I ponder, that I am no longer depressed. I am no longer a victim of any trauma, and I have known many traumas. Of course, depression will return at some point and I will be disappointed but I will deal.

Today I thought of Francesca Woodman as I made the decisions and set in motion these plans. I have been studying her work. I have been thinking of art and how best to do it. Yes, plans, plans, plans. They had been rumbling through my mind since the end of January. I became fascinated with Woodman a few years ago, her art, her use of low light and the few resources she used to do her art. That she started so young. I was once very young and an artist. I had a scholarship to college for art and instead studied Anthropology and Art History, later Biology and Psychology. I read myself through the entire 19th Century at the same time. My mother was always slightly disappointed that I did not go to Art School but she never made a plan for that. But that's another story. My sister did go to Art School and is a beautiful artist, but she also read herself through the 19th Century, too. How we both love 19th Century Literature. For much of our lives, that was our art.

Woodman's art is still very relevant. This is what I have discovered. Her low light, her delayed or long exposures are still curiously current. She captured time in a way that bothers people I think. I want to replicate her desire for the image of time. But I also want to do some photography work related to my themes. But I want to know things, new things and the things she knew.

Woodman was not a writer or storyteller in the traditional sense of being a storyteller. Her art was her "talk" and in that art, one sees trauma, too, but one does not know exactly what it is. She was vague on purpose. But I am interested in her trauma. It eventually killed her. A suicide at 22 years old is not normal. She suffered from depression. She suffered from rejection and strangely the idea that she would not succeed, all at 20 years of age. There is something odd in that predicament. She had experienced a failed love affair. But looking at her in this photo makes one wonder how such a beautiful creature could throw herself off a building.

I often look to Francesca Woodman. Because I remember being 20 years of age. In some ways, I have had to embrace my 17 year old self in order to reinvent my life and move into the future that I have left. I call it the "Wildflower" role. It's worked very well, and was born out of my CBT sessions. Before Francesca Woodman died, she experienced many good years of creating good art. My sister and I have been exchanging long discussions on art, writing, social media, politics, history, the past, and even regret. We made a list of words that we hardly ever use in our work, our diaries, and even our letters. Shame was one. Boredom another. Regret, too. I've always found regret to be a waste. Even failure is not a word I use a lot.

Art is about choosing. I've had some bad habits on choosing. It always led to delays and procrastinations. And anxiety. But it never led to self-loathing. I suppose this is why I write about Brian Molko and am interested in Francesca Woodman, why I study them outside their gorgeous creative work. Depression runs in my family. But I need to understand their self-loathing, their pain.

I am moving out of this bedroom and corner this month. By May I will be in the new rooms.

There was a moment when I noticed that the light in my mind had changed. The thing is I noticed.

When the Old Blush blooms I know Spring is truly here and Winter is behind me.

 

This is part of Eurydice by Hilda Doolittle.

Against the black

I have more fervour

than you in all the splendour of that place,

against the blackness

and the stark grey

I have more light;

and the flowers,

if I should tell you,

you would turn from your own fit paths

toward hell,

turn again and glance back

and I would sink into a place

even more terrible than this.

 At least I have the flowers of myself,

and my thoughts, no god

can take that;

I have the fervour of myself for a presence

and my own spirit for light;

and my spirit with its loss

knows this;

though small against the black,

small against the formless rocks,

hell must break before I am lost;

before I am lost,

hell must open like a red rose

for the dead to pass.

It's easy to be in the crowd, it's much harder to choose when you know the crowd is not comfortable.

“In Dante’s Limbo, the Ignavi are always waiting. Their crime in life was that they preferred to wait until everything was decided rather than commit themselves to a cause when its prospects were uncertain, and now they are condemned to wait forever in the vestibule of hell. Anyone can jump on a bandwagon. The heroes are those who got involved long before the bandwagon arrived. You have to find a cause and commit yourself fully. That’s the first step in giving meaning to your life.”

                                                             ― Michael Faust

I got the first Moderna Covid-19 vaccine yesterday.

 In what my children call a major triumph, I got my first Moderna Covid-19 vaccination yesterday at the major Walmart, a suggestion by my primary doctor since it's 1 mile from a major trauma unit. Laughing.  I have major allergy issues and have experienced two anaphylaxis events, one at nineteen years of age and one at twenty-three, both concerning shell fish. The second one only happened because my fish was contaminated by shellfish contact. Both were extremely uncomfortable and frightening experiences that I never want to repeat, even with great medical care. I also have allergies to three distinct antibiotics, so my doctor never gives me injections unless they are steroids or iron or vitamin. I don't think they give iron shots anymore in USA. They give iron infusions, but iron shots are very difficult and leave major bruises and soreness. Moderna Covid-19 leaves a very sore muscle in the upper arm, even if one has the foresight to do muscle massage. I had a small reaction to the vaccine in the first four hours, but it was only a light burning in the eyes, no swelling or puffiness or discharge, not enough to concern me, an allergy fanatic. I had a low-grade fever hours later,  but I took some Tylenol and that helped both the sore muscle and the fever. This morning I feel much better. I imagine this soreness in the arm will take some time. As someone who has had lots of needles stuck (allergy immunology) into her over the years, I am not concerned. And I am eagerly awaiting getting my second vaccination out of the way, even though I intend to stay a full half hour afterwards just out of caution. And there's that. My children are all fully vaccinated and we are all going to be happy this summer at our pool parties and trips to New Orleans.

There are some truths we do not want to know and may never admit.

The artist fixes his/her gaze on what is still hidden.

I am such a hippie.

 The other day someone was having a conversation about how different one is from high school. Of course we grow as people. We have many experiences over the years. Life shapes us. Our experiences are what we learn from. But I am still that same girl in so many ways, even as an old woman. I told my sons if I had one wish, it would be that they could know the girl I was before I was a mother. I wore Converse tennis shoes in high school, long before they were cool or even semi-cool. I wore blue jeans and tees. And yes, I wore lots of other stuff, too. Halter tops and bellbottoms. But I was always a blue jean and Converse girl. I liked sandals in the summer. These are my new green Converse, my Easter shoes. Laughing. I am wearing ankle socks because the shoes are new and I don't want blisters. I am wearing boy jeans and a Joy Division tee. I guess I will wear this "uniform" till I die. I want some dark red ones. Shades of greens and reds are my favorite colors. I had called these my "lucky shoes," but today I somehow blew a breaker in my house, killed the stove and microwave and the electrical sockets that run behind the stove. Not so lucky. I am not really superstitious but it did give me pause. I had gone out to see about my personal "will" and signing and notarizing it before coming back to the house to make my own lunch. It did not go well. Extremely unlucky, been this way since before Christmas. I hope my Covid vaccination goes well Sunday and I can come back here and say everything is all right. Oh, well...

Today, I need beautiful but simple things around me so I can endure, so here are some flowers by Dali.

 

Salvador Dalí, Fleurs, 1948

I am committed to practice.

When I first started writing professionally, I was thrown into the lion’s den, so to speak. I knew absolutely nothing about anything. I honestly don’t think I even knew how to write well. And there I was with contracts. Looking back, I realize now what a teachable moment it was, and that I was able to face challenges because I was, indeed, teachable by a very good teacher, my first agent. Over the years, I have realized that writers who are teachable are the ones who continue, not only to write, but to grow as writers. Sometimes teachable means being both self-reflexive and adaptable. BUT, rereading and making notes on Louise DeSalvo’s collection of essays this past week has given new meaning to the word, teachable. Because I think we are now talking about being creative and making choices and just practice. I don’t think there is enough emphasize on how we practice our work, how we really get from Point A to Point Z in our process. What works and what doesn’t work for us as creatives, and why something doesn’t work is really a key to our success in finishing a solid, satisfying project. DeSalvo’s book is being used along with other books on developing habits. I have very bad habits and over the years I’ve changed how I practice work, which I realize has been negative. Did you know it takes at least two and half months to develop a new habit or break an old one? And it’s hard to work on more than 3 habits at a time! Things I have learned. Keep notebooks on what I am writing and why, and the choices I make and why. Keep writing journals on content. Read my work from the beginning out loud a lot. Establish a good working process and keep to it. Divide the process into doable tasks. Develop habits to promote finishing those tasks. Take joy in process. No one really wants to hear about unknown writers’ processes. Smiling. But DeSalvo’s book is full of known and successful writers’ processes, presented in essays that show why practice is everything.

This is a truth.

“The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.”

― Ben Lerner

I am digging out.

 

Note:  I had to replace the main water pipe from house to street the week before Christmas and they dug a huge trench for the new pipe, erasing and burying rocked paths, flowerbeds, flowers, shrubs, and so forth. Today I took this Japanese Weeding Sickle with very sharp edges and began digging out the border of the original west side of my middle flowerbed. Some places were over 4 inches deep buried in heavy red clay as one can see. Then I dug out about two feet from the border, leveling off the lawn. I did this for several feet around. I call this Stage 1 of my Gardening 2021 plan. Cleaning up the mess left by the plumbing company.  I am just getting everything back in order before I start digging up plants and replanting them. I also bagged two large bags of leaves. Good exercise. I don't  live in my head when I am gardening. It is when I garden that I relax and feel a sort of freedom I don't even experience when creating. There is much to do this year. Most of my summer is already planned with gardening work and painting the house outside, a project I started last fall. I realized today that the leaves are awful. I did not pick them up in the fall as usual. Just partly and I might need help to eradicate them now. Oh, well...

I've robbed all the graves.

“The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.”

                               — William Faulkner

Summer in Greenville was hot, and this is how authors steal from their lives.

 

Most of the characters in my current project are based on real people. Even secondary characters. I took a page out of Faulkner's book and when I developed the characters, I began stealing right out of my life. And I am starting right now, rewriting my notes from the beginning of the story to clarify things and also posting this photo, which shows three characters from my story. Oh, yes, they are fictionalized, one is a composite even, but I couldn't have chosen a better photo to explain two complex relationships and one that haunts much of the story.

The center child is me. And that boy is a child I grew up with. It was a long relationship of mutual love and hate. We sort of tormented each other. He also taught me how to kiss when I was a teenager. The other little girl is my sister. We look very happy here and we were. But somehow as the years went by, we lost each other. It's easy to do. But here we are, the three of us, not yet tangled, on a hot summer day in the Mississippi Delta, playing, our lives full of sweet nothings and pets.

Reading Shelley makes me feel like this.

To thirst and find no fill, -- to wail and wander
With short unsteady steps, -- to pause and ponder, --
To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle
Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle, --
To nurse the image of unfelt caresses
Till dim imagination just possesses
The half-created shadow, then all the night
Sick . . .

                — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Are witches insatiable birds descended from harpies?

These are insatiable birds, not the harpies that deprived

     Phineas of his feasts, although it is from them that they descend: 

Their heads are large, their eyes unblinking, their beaks made for hunting; 

    Their wings are white, their talons hooked, 

At night they fly and seek out children separated from their nurses 

    To snatch them from their cradles and rend their bodies; 

They are said to tear out children’s milky entrails with their beaks 

    And fill their gullets with the blood they have drunk. 

There is a name for those birds–striges–so called 

    Because of their strident shrieking in the night. 

Whether therefore they are born birds, or are made such by enchantment 

    And are nothing but women transformed into fowls by a Marsian spell.

                           from Ovid's Fasti

We live in a society where truth and beauty are not the most valued things. This is our dilemma.

“If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty.”

— Jaron Lanier

The Ultimate Selfie as my hand and camera are shown in the lens of my glasses.

 March 26, 2021. On the patio listening to my new favorite band, The Backseat Lovers.

This is my word for this week.

intertextuality

It's spring and I thought of Carol.

 

It's the first day of Spring and I thought of Carol, a friend of mine when I was nineteen years old. Not a very good photo. It's fading. She was a gardener, the first true gardener I knew outside my mother. The first time I saw her she was planting flowers. I didn't know anyone my age who was wanting to plant flowers. She and I became really close friends for a long time. I miss her letters. She wrote the best letters, too. But today, it's the first day of spring and all I can think about is her and how she loved flowers as much as I did. She was from California, a California girl and she and I got along so well. Her story did not end happily. But I won't dwell on that.  P.S. Carol and I did not wear makeup. We were hippie girls. lol I am still a hippie girl.

The circus is the creative act.

“They are enthusiasts, devotees. Addicts. Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent. They seek each other out, these people of such specific like mind. They tell of how they found the circus, how those first few steps were like magic. Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars… When they depart, they shake hands and embrace like old friends, even if they have only just met, and as they go their separate ways they feel less alone than they had before.”
                ― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Social Media is a bad habit I am going to break.

 It's not a secret among those who know me that I struggle with social media. I don't consider my blog or Flickr or Goodreads or Tumblr social media really. I don't engage people on those Internet features. But I do on Facebook and Twitter. I do have an IG account but I rarely go there. I also have Pinterest. I have lots of  boards there where I collect images and note books, etc. I have private boards for images related to my work. I don't engage with others. It's all for me and related to creative work I do. I don't share my work online. I don't commercialize it in anyway. It's private. My life is really private.

Today, I think I experienced the last straw on Facebook and Twitter, the one that broke the camel's back. I had a definitive plan to cut back on Facebook and Twitter. I am quite capable of doing that, but I am thinking right now that I am going to stop Facebook until I finish my WIP. It's become so annoying to me. I already have people snoozed and I have unfollowed all news there. But I still find it distracting. I am not blaming people. I don't do that. I blame myself for being there in the first place. I remember when Johnny made it for me, that and Twitter. Joey set up my IG. I actually made this blog and the features I listed as friendly. John was on both Facebook and Twitter. All my children were, too. But John is gone, and the children have dropped social media except as a rare nonsensical post. Mostly satire and comedy. They text me that. Laughing.

I think, to be honest, with Covid and recent Politics, I have become less tolerant on social media. It's how I feel seeing important things made into entertainment and the increasing polarization and tribalism. I also see things that are not true being passed off as truth. It is just painful to watch. Another time in my life, I don't believe I would be so concerned. And on good days, I never even care, but right now I am distracted for whatever reason. It's real and it's not healthy. Social media is a bad habit I want to break.  I just don't want to do it out of disillusionment.  I may be just exhausted. Lots to think on.

What is Goodness?

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
                   ― Leo Tolstoy

This is really important, especially concerning social media. Just saying.

‘A principal rule for writers, and especially those who want to describe their own sensations, is not to believe that their doing so indicates they possess a special disposition of nature in this respect. Others can perhaps do it just as well as you can. Only they do not make a business of it, because it seems to them silly to publicize such things.’

                Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Post Script on Life and Acceptance

 I was looking at my sidebar and I saw the dates in the posts archives and it was there, not spoken, my life, So many things happened. But the worst was John being diagnosed with cancer in 2013, and I did not really feel human again, till the beginning of 2019. I discovered Placebo the last week of September, 2018. I remember it clearly. I was beginning to come back to life. We had a beautiful Christmas that year, the boys and me. I decided how I wanted to live the rest of my life and I have. No regrets. No looking back too often. Choosing life and happiness. Yes, Covid interrupted so many things and presented me with challenges. But I am going to be all right. Ben told me today, "Life is great. It's the best thing. No sane person wants to give it up."

P.S. Be grateful

I love gardening.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Gardening 1864
watercolor on paper
Design for a small panel in John Pollard Seddon's "King René's Honeymoon” cabinet
Stone Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

It's that time of the year again, the coming of spring. Hope. Time to clean up the gardens. I've been gardening since I was a young girl when I tended to my momma's petunias on the patio of my childhood home. That was my little job. My momma loved petunias, so did her mother, and I am quite sentimental about them. I just love gardening. Of course, this year, I have a great deal of anxiety because of the pipeline incident. To refresh the memory for this post, in December, the week before Christmas, the main waterline that runs from the house to the street collapsed in two places and I had to replace the entire pipe. It was a great expense for me, but not only in money, but in gardening landscaping. A trench two feet wide and at least two and half feet deep or more was dug through my lawn, including a major flowerbed and a rocked pathway. Before that, they had searched for the pipe for two days. Because it had rained for nearly 10 days prior, they were working in a water saturated yard and they were just digging around trying to find the pipe where they could see the most water. I lost plants in that area, too. I think I was too stunned to react until it was all over and then I did get very emotional about what had happened. (Add the unexpected cold and snow in February, and I have lost major plants all over the lawn. Expensive and dearly loved ones.)

I even lost a patio canopy that collapsed under ice and broke. 

Now, I am facing added expense and lots of personal work to clean up what the men and their machines did to my lawn and garden. I hardly know where to begin. Today I had to assess and decide. One has to start somewhere. And it's messy and looks awful and it's hard labor to do this. Most will be on me. It was not an easy day. Another day of acceptance and yes, determination to rebuild. But some things are lost forever.

I think gardening teaches us about acceptance as much as it does hope. One cannot be a true gardener without hope because planting something, anything can mean failure and loss. A gardener must learn to hope for the best and expect the worse as the old saying goes, because nature is a savage garden. And things are always beginning and ending.

I gave away my Daddy's golf cart today.  He died over fourteen years ago. I had always  held on to his golf cart despite the fact that many people offered to buy it from me. I could not part with it. I suppose it's Freudian and somehow I associated the golf cart with Daddy. Today, because my son and I were cleaning up some things around the house, I gave the golf cart away. And I cried. I was really crying over Daddy, over all the people and things I have lost since Daddy died. Over the impermanence of  everything.  It reminded me of what Daddy said about acceptance. I still remember that day...that sad day we talked about how we must accept some things. Loss and impermanence are the harshest things.

But a garden teaches you that. You see the cycles of life, you see things die. That all things that exist pass away into nothingness...

It's almost "Buddha like," being in a garden. Because we learn the most important moment is now. Plants are like that. The best full blooms are really about a day and then the blooms start to fade.

We all fade.

Grief

“Don't be ashamed to weep; 'tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.”
                                                      — Brian Jacques

I have some thoughts on William Faulkner

When a writer thinks of syntax as style, it's difficult to ignore the master of it, William Faulkner. He created new words, new expressions, forms of punctuation, and wrote one of the longest sentences in the modern novel. He was a master of syntax and manipulated words like no other writer then and since. From one novel to the next, he created new forms and styles. It's almost unbelievable to make comparisons between the forms of As I Lay Dying to those in Light in August, or to note any similarities in The Sound and the Fury where Faulkner, in his genius, told the story of Caddy Compson, through the voices of her three brothers (!), and used several styles at once, including stream of conscious, his syntax so in align to his overall designs that it's mesmerizing. And this is just language.

What William Faulkner did with narrative structure is another wonder. The Sound and the Fury has to be one of the most complex novels ever written. Faulkner begins his novel with Benjy, a thirty-three-year-old, nonverbal invalid, and the reader is inside Benjy's head where the entire novel is foreshadowed! While Faulkner is attempting all that, he is also searching for the meaning of an incommunicable experience.

Breathless just thinking about it.

One would think that was enough, but William Faulkner understands the human condition so well that his stories transcend their place and time. He knows the human heart. If you want to learn to write better, read William Faulkner.

Auguste Charles Mengin

 

Auguste Charles Mengin (1853 - 1933) ‘Sappho’ 1877 

Facing the Impossible.

“A butterfly is a caterpillar which refused to give up its dreams to fly.”
                    ― Matshona Dhliwayo

The power of consciousness.

Trees turned and talked to me,
Tigers sang,
Houses put on leaves,
Water rang.
Flew in, flew out
On my tongue’s thread
A speech of birds
From my hurt head.

                 from Healing the Lunatic Boy by Charles Causley

Observations and foundations.

 Reflecting is not the same as Knowing. (mjh)

Momma's fork is one of my most prized possessions.

This is brunch I guess. I have brought out the yellow because it's nice and I usually keep it in the kitchen. But I posted this because that's my momma's fork. When I was at her house one time and she was not feeling well, she told me to take something of hers that was personal and that I loved. I took the fork she was eating with that day. That was 20 years ago. I eat with it nearly every day. I knew then what I know now. It's one of my most prized possessions. How did I know that then? I learned the value of things in families by reading Alice Walker in college and by paying attention to what she was saying. Alice Walker was one of my momma's favorite writers. One of the most important short stories that Alice Walker ever wrote was, 'Everyday Use.' Check it out. Living experience is all interconnected. I miss my momma. But we are still very connected. But I know right now that when I die, this story is ended. So I am posting it here and on my FB.

New Motto 2021 AD

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

                                  —E. M. Forster

Why I write anything at all.

“I don’t write for my friends or myself, either; I write for it, for the pleasure of it.” 

                                  —Eudora Welty

Feeling the change.

Well I've known you for years
Oh but now it's all changed
And all of my feelings
Have been rearranged

                       — Carly Simon

On conversation

“The best conversations are with yourself. At least there's no risk of a misunderstanding.”
                                       ― Olga Tokarczuk      

Elizabeth Enright's Dream Became My Dream.

 

One Saturday, (how appropriate) while I was in the Greenville library (at around age eleven), I was sitting at a table full of kids and they were all talking about a "thick red book" with all three of these books compiled in one volume. They were younger but I asked if I could look at the book.  I was so curious about "this Melendy family, four children, who lived with their father and a housekeeper named Cuffy in New York City that I could not resist asking all sorts of questions. The oldest child, Mona, was around my age, well thirteen years old, close enough I thought, and so I checked the book out and went home with it. 

People, I never returned this book to the library and only recently parted with it, giving it to my younger sister, because she loved the stories, too, and I was feeling generous. The "thick red book" was one of my beloved treasures. I've mentioned previously that I never really got to read age appropriate fiction. I was an advanced reader and I sort of missed out on a lot of good books. And this book was so dear to me that I clung to it for years and years, rereading right through high school. Sometime last fall, in a conversation with my sisters, I realized that in some ways, I still write four siblings, a father, and a housekeeper. It's perfectly Freudian. And people who know me personally, know this about my fiction. In fact, the books I am writing now both have four siblings in each tale and housekeepers. I'd write six siblings if I thought an editor would not ask me to cut a few of them, but I know editors pretty well. 

There is some psychology going on here about this book and what it represents, and the fact that my mother had sisters, and that my husband had great-aunts who were sisters, and I had sisters. All of this seems to matter to me. I understand sisters really well and what I don't understand I want to explore. I suppose we do write what we know or want to know, whether it's a fantasy set in Middle Earth or a spaceship in trouble on Mars. Authors who are paid to tell stories, really can't lie. That's the irony. Their fiction exposes them, not only the stories they choose to tell, but how they tell them. Elizabeth Enright's dream has somehow mingled with my dream in a long twisted history.

Sunshine is good for the winter blues. Soak it up.

 We have had storms and gray skies and thunder and lightning and wind for days. Now I am sitting in the sunlight, rejoicing, taking weird photos for all the kiddies.

This is really about Time.

“The most cherished goal in physics, as in bad romance novels, is unification.”
                                                         ― Lee Smolin

Letter from my sister, reprinted with permission

[A note of explanation. I received a letter from my sister today, included was a letter I wrote to her in 1998, along with a letter with comments on that letter and letter writing in general.]

Jan 8 - 2021

J_

As usual, I am in my office looking for a book I started—there are so many!

Anyway while going through piles of notes I found this letter from you—I loved rereading it. I think now more so because of the distance and time that has passed. So I have made a decision to reread and send most back to you.

The part about (blank) is a hoot! I kept the short story, The Green Man by Richard Calantropio, you even wrote in the margins and marked when he changed POV—I had to laugh. All of this is so like you.

I feel as though we have spent the afternoon together—And that's how important a letter really is. It's a piece of  frozen time, our life in that day—that moment in time where even the descriptions of chores, mundane things take on new meaning.

I love you

L_

[Reader, I wept. And am going to reread her letters to me, too.]

Love is like the wild rose-briar.

“Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly?” ― Emily Brontë

Giving it my all.

“I always believed that once you take a decision, you have to give it your all. However, by doing so you will eventually miss a piece of your heart, or should I say, you will miss a wagon of your locomotive; like a locomotive that switches tracks and heads in a new direction, taking the rest of the train, but leaving one (or five) behind, and within it, some of your behavior, actions, habits and dreams — right along with it. Well, that's what the consequences of our decisions are all about.

So every now and then, when I randomly think about my next step, goal or dream, I end up thinking about the old me Vs. me now.”
                        

                             ― Efrat Cybulkiewicz

Gray on a Sunny, winter day.

 

Franz von Stuck - Falling Stars

Franz von Stuck - Falling Stars

I am reading Little, Big, a story which has a theme of our little lives juxtaposed against bigger events, etc. It always makes me think of stars. All those suns or worlds, most already dead and gone, in the night sky and there I am sitting, looking at them, my little life, my little and tiny place in the universe, so small, it is like the invisible fairies of Little, Big, the ones never quite seen but there on the periphery. I am on the side of life that is fading. I am fading. Soon into oblivion. I used to shudder at such a thought but now, not exactly resigned, but quite realistic, I make a slight moan of protest and perhaps I will shudder later. Who knows. Right now I am too tired to act. 

First Selfie of 2021

 

It's a beautiful day. I went for a walk, then looked around my yard. There are still camellias blooming. I am still here, a wildflower in this savage garden called Life.

The Last Post of 2020. I am leaving 2020 behind. I am burning bridges. I am moving on.

 Sitting here making a list. More changes. Visible changes. My deadline was Christmas Day 2020. I have learned a lot in 2020, mostly how to be a decent human being and how to recognize when others were not decent human beings. I have also grown very tired of 2020 politics and all the comments on Covid. It's been very difficult to see this on social media. But I have had to look to myself, too. Lots of self-reflection. More to come. I am making a list on what I will not do and will do in 2021. Because Time is Everything, and my Time is so limited. And if this year taught us anything it's that nothing is certain. I knew this, of course, but I have had a master class in reality in 2020 to remind me of harsh and unpleasant facts of life. Again, I look to myself. I look to my own weaknesses. I look to my strengths. I have taken on some new projects and am looking forward to finishing some older ones. I want to do some art work in 2021. I want to travel if I can. That means a vaccination and other sacrifices. That means time looking down, like I am right now, sitting at my desks, one or the other, working. It means work.

I wish you a very Merry Christmas.

A Christmas Carol

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow has fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter,
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Throng’d the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,—
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

– Christina Rossetti 

Today is Shirley Jackson's birthday.

 

“On the moon we wore feathers in our hair, and rubies on our hands. On the moon we had gold spoons.” —Shirley Jackson

I am talking southern pecan pie today.

I want to talk about pie today. I am going to make a pecan pie. I don't really know why, but it sounds like fun and I haven't made one in years now. And a pecan pie is so southern. I've been looking at my recipe files and wow, there were lots of pecan pies in it and I could not remember which one I liked best and I left few exciting notes that I could actually read! lol I had to do some research because making a pecan pie is not something I do a lot and so I don't have the practice. And I am going to put my recipe here and what I could make of my notes and well, if anybody wants to make a comment, go ahead. After all, cooking is an experiment, much like writing, it takes experience and practice to perfect a technique or get your vision across. So here goes:

Ingredients

3 eggs

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 heaping tablespoon flour (This means it’s rounded up a pinch or two. Laughing)

1 cup dark corn syrup. (We need to talk about this)

2 tablespoons Butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups pecans (I use chopped pecans, but most people like halves and either works well.)

1 (9-inch) unbaked deep dish pie shell (I always put this out and let it thaw while I am preparing everything)

Let's talk about corn syrup: I use Karo Dark Corn Syrup. That's the southern thing to do, but I had in my notes that one year I used Light Corn Syrup, and one year I used half and half. Apparently the lighter the syrup, the milder the taste is. The darker is the better for me, because I just like the rich taste of the syrup. But I got a lot of compliments the year I used half of each. I don't use maple syrup or any substitute for "corn syrup" because it's not going to set up right. I hear this all the time. Unless you are some kind of great baker, and you might be, but I am not and I know if I do this, it's either going to be a miracle or a big, big mistake. Do that at your own risk.

Let's talk about the most serious problem making a pecan pie. It doesn't set up right. There is nothing worse than a runny pecan pie and apparently I made a few that went in the garbage over the years until my momma said I needed to use a heaping tablespoon of flour in the recipe. lol. A heaping tablespoon doesn't mean much to normal people, but to southern cooks it means don't be too precious when measuring. If you go over a bit, it's not going to ruin anything. But don't go under!!!! lol Another reason your pie can go runny is you don't cook it long enough and you don't let it go to room temperature before you start fooling with it afterwards. A pecan pie has got to set up and I even store my pie in the refrigerator after it cools a bit because I want it to set up firm before I cut it. When you are baking the pie, make an aluminum foil cover for pie crust edges. This keeps the rim of the pie from overcooking while the center gets done.

Oven should be preheated to 350° F.

In a bowl, beat eggs first then stir in your brown sugar and THAT flour, followed by the syrup, melted butter, and vanilla. Mix all this together really well, then add your pecans. Don't overfill the pie shell. You will know when to stop.

Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until set. Allow to cool completely. Like I said, don't fool with a pecan pie until it is room temperature. It's just a mess if you do.

I shared this with my friends in France. They made pies. Smiling.

This is about life, too.

“Fantasy, an unflagging optimism is necessary for a writer at all stages of this rough game. A kind of madness is therefore necessary, when there is every logical reason for a state of depression and discouragement. Perhaps the fact that I can react with utter gloom to this is what keeps me from being psychotic and keeps me merely neurotic.”

                      —Patricia Highsmith

We are all living in bubbles.

"Our consciousness of ourselves as separate and permanent and important is actually delusional."

                                              — George Saunders