Back in the Swing -- oops!

Yesterday, I could finally look at Whose Hearts are Mountains and shape the parts I'd abandoned while answering the developmental edits on Prodigies (which I  need to ship out to other agents at some point).

I think it's a better story than I thought previously.

Honestly, I'm trying to figure out what to do with all the Archetype universe stuff since the first book, Mythos, is such a royal mess. (Or maybe it's not -- I have an idea ...)


****
Just got done rearranging a lot of things. I'm doing serious surgery on Mythos (cutting it drastically back; merging it with Apocalypse) and my developmental editor Chelsea Harper is now editing my first book, which may be the original Lost Cause. That means putting off the end of Whose Hearts are Mountains. Whee.

I have to keep reminding myself that writing is a growing experience.

Review: Board Game Cafe, Maryville MO

We have a small business in our town called Board Game Cafe, and it turns out that they're the best coffeehouse in town. I don't know how well they build a cappuccino, and their menu doesn't offer the frappufoofoocino of their local competitors, but everything I've tried on their menu (including the pastries supplied by Ali, our town's excellent baker) passes the coffreehouse test. For welcoming space, they've won the title in Maryville, in my opinion.

Coffeehouse atmosphere is not a difficult thing for the most part. It shouldn't be shiny, it shouldn't be crowded, it should be a bit quirky with perhaps primitive cabinets or old school shelves or found items on the wall. It should have its own personality -- when corporate coffee chains try to duplicate the look, they fail. Board Game Cafe has a spacious look, with a second-hand couch and chairs in the front window, and sets of tables (because it is a board game cafe as well) along the front. The color scheme is grey/white/black and, although it could use a little more color and quirk, perhaps from game-themed posters, it's unique for a coffeehouse because of its board game theme (as opposed to jute coffee sacks other coffeehouses have). I wish they had a little bit more brown and less grey in their palette to provide a warm feeling, but for the most part it carries off the coffeehouse aesthetic well.

All the Cafe needs to be a real coffeehouse is clientele, because a good coffeehouse cultivates a set of regulars who provide the incentive for other people to discover after peering through the windows. The Cafe doesn't get a lot of traffic right now, at least in part because it doesn't yet have Wi-Fi. They're holding out until they get enough profit to buy some muscular security for a Wi-Fi system, and I can't blame them given liability potential. Until then, I bring my hot spot in if I want to write there.

Anyone out there: Would you like to help this coffeehouse realize this potential? Visit it. Have coffee with your friends. Play a couple board games (they have everything from Dungeons and Dragons to CandyLand.) Tell me what you think.

WAKE UP!

I'm trying to write something meaningful, and I'm failing. Mostly because I'm falling asleep at my desk.

I could write down the stream of consciousness I face when I sleep, but there is a green field far away/I hope to find it some fine day* (repeat and fade) and I'd rather sing along (repeat and fade) than be inspired at the moment ... zzz ...

My drowsiness does not seem to understand Robert Frost's words: " ... and miles to go before I sleep ..." I know he was talking about death, morbid spirit that he was, but I've got a full day today and naptime doesn't seem to understand that. I'm dressed up, I'm ready to teach, and -- zzzzz ...

I am falling asleep sitting up. Sitting up. It's a good thing I can't sleep standing up, otherwise class today could be very ... different.  Zzzzz ...

I've had two cups of coffee. By cups, I mean 12 ounces, or about 2x the amount in those styrofoam shot glasses they call a coffee cup. This means that I've had a total of a pint and a half of -- zzzzz ...

Can I sleepwalk through work? Not an option -- especially since teaching has a touch of acting in it, and I must show my true enthusiasm for this topic externally, which can't happen if I --- Zzzzzz ...

It's okay, I'll wake up as soon as I have to drive to work. It's not good sleeping while driving -- Zzzzz ...
















*Waterboys, "The Return of Pan". Great song.

Settling in

Second day of the semester, and I'm struggling to write.

It may be that I need to put away Whose Hearts are Mountains for another work, perhaps a new work, but I'm not inspired yet.

I'm not panicking yet, because I blame my lack of inspiration on the energy it takes to start a new school year. Once I get settled into the year, I'll be inspired to do something -- hopefully a totally new thing -- when I have space in my head.

In the meantime, I'll give myself time to do the  blog almost every day, and sit for an hour with my computer screen,waiting for the ideas to come.

I'll let you know when something happens.

I love you.

I love you.

I've gotten off track in my life. There was a time I held those three words in my mind when encountering everyone.

I learned that trick during a massage class years ago with Patch Adams (yes, that Patch Adams for those in the know). He saw massage as a way of giving to others and not a way to get into someone's pants. ("If you want to get into someone's pants, tell them, 'Hey, I'd like to get into your pants.' If you want to give them a massage, ask to give them a massage.") He also told the class that if they held the thought "I love you" in their minds, it would make the massage better. And I did, because at that age it was easy for me to love.

As I got older, people seemed less approachable than they were when I was in college. I forgot how to give massages. I forgot how to hug. I forgot to hold "I love you" in my mind when interacting with people. I found myself burdened by grudges, jealousy, all those adult feelings that get in the way.

Last night, during my meditation, my wiser self reminded me of those words, and included others that would help people's souls:

I love you.
I thank you for being here.
You are beautiful.

I will not say them out loud, because there's so much baggage with these words, as if we were trying to get into someone's pants rather than give a massage with no strings attached.

I love you.
I thank you for being here.
You are beautiful.

The Rituals of a New Year

Tomorrow is the first day of my 25th fall semester as a professor.

I could say it doesn't seem like it's been that long, but I've been doing this long enough that I don't remember not going through the rituals of the beginning of the semester -- writing syllabi, preparing course sites, figuring out what I need to say on the first day of the semester to keep from sounding like an idiot.

I don't remember a fall semester where I haven't had the nightmares born of the fear that things will not go well on the first day -- the A/V equipment fails, the classroom is made up of walls and nooks such that some of the students can't see or hear the lecture, I'm late for class, the students get frustrated and leave, I'm standing in front of the class in my underwear ... dealing with the fear spawns its own ritual, that of re-preparing in the last minute so that nothing goes wrong.

What I wear to my first day of classes each year is its own ritual. It's one of the few days I wear a suit, to remind myself that I'm not going into class naked like in my dreams. 

Twenty-five years teaching, and in some ways it's like my first day, when I stood in front of my class in a navy blue suit. One of my students, in a thick Long Island accent, asked "Are you lost?" (It sounded to my midwestern ears as "Awwe yew Lawst?")

"No, I'm the professor for this class," I said.

"Ohh, I thought you were a student," she proclaimed.

Getting back into writing

I haven't written much in the last few weeks, what with working with my dev editor, traveling for New York Hope and training in advanced moulage, prepping for work, and finishing my first semester of grad school. Now it's two days before the beginning of the semester, I've got no prep to do, and no excuses to do nothing. (I don't watch tv well, and there's only so much looking at cats on Instagram I can do.)

So I'm taking the advice I'd give someone else -- write something every day. This means in my case to get reacquinted with Whose Hearts are Mountains. I don't know how I feel about that book at the moment. It's in the Archetype universe, and I've had such trouble understanding how to improve the first book(s) in that universe, Mythos and Apocalypse (which I am thinking of putting together). I don't know if it's sellable, and I don't know if I care.

It might be that I keep working on Whose Hearts are Mountains, send Mythos to my dev editor (Hi, Chelsea!) and figure out things from there.

But I need to write. Every day,

Siren

This poem is about the dark side of me I don't indulge:

I would enthrall you with words
That fade into thickets green,
Tangle you in grasping vines.
Tease you with hints of heat
then saunter away.

The ugliest truths about the fairest of them all

Our fairy tales can destroy us.

If you think of it, fairy tales are usually not about fairies per se, but about magical thinking: "If only I were __________________ (for males, powerful, strong or rich; for females, beautiful -- it's pretty limiting, isn't it?) then __________________ (happily ever after).

In other words, if we're not happily ever after, it's because we're not (for males, powerful, strong, or rich; for females, beautiful) enough. We're not enough.

The implications of fairy tales get uglier, though. Beautiful women get rescued from evil stepmothers, ravenous wolves, and wicked witches. By implication, if women are left in harmful and abusive situations, they're not beautiful enough. And women who find their own ways out are not honored with stories. (To be fair, recent Disney fairy tales, among others, have found ways to honor strong heroines. But they're still beautiful, and a guy is still involved in the picture.)

The most basic, ugliest implication of fairy tales is this: If you are beautiful, someone will love you. If you are not beautiful, you will not be loved. Obviously, in real life, people who are not beautiful find true love, and many beautiful people get stuck in superficial relationships whose narratives sell movies and other media. But we still stick to the fairy tales as informing human experience.

What if we didn't have to be beautiful, strong, powerful, or rich to be loved? What if we didn't have to do anything but be ourselves to be loved?

Why aren't fairy tales like that?

Magic in the morning

Yesterday I made Richard stop at the Farmers' Market while on our way to move my office things back into place for the school year. Little did I know it was to be a magic morning.

First, I should point out that I was wearing my writers' shirt as I so often do -- a t-shirt that says "I'm getting dangerously close to killing you off in my next novel". That got attention from one woman in her thirties who self-publishes romance novels, a woman my age who dabbled in writing, and a young woman who writes for herself. So we stood around and talked about our experiences in writing, in what it means to be a writer, in dreams and realities.

Not the sort of conversation I expected in Maryville. Which is why it never happened before.

Later, as I walked around the ring of merchants, a little girl on her mother's lap looked straight at me and said, "That bird over there is singing to you."

I need no greater magic than this.

Making the Best

Despite the repeated dreams for years that I go back to teach at Oneonta, I am back in Maryville, MO, setting up for the new school year at Northwest Missouri State University. Unless I can find a way to afford the housing costs without having a mortgage in my retirement, I will likely retire here in Maryville.

The difference between a dream and a goal, however, is a plan. At this point the plan depends on two different external factors -- whether the college will be hiring for someone in my position or whether I will wait for the way to open, as we Quakers say, and if it doesn't, I wasn't supposed to live in Oneonta.

Meanwhile, I am working to make the best of my life now. What have I missed about Oneonta? An atmosphere where differences are accepted, if not embraced. A place where I can be myself and feel accepted. In other words, in words misattributed to Thomas Paine, "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." 

I feel like I haven't gotten this in Maryville, but how correct are my observations? I have experienced reactions that feel like censorship when I talk about my bipolar disorder, for example, but I have also received support, mostly over Facebook from my Facebook friends, many of whom are in psychology and social work. I have felt awkward talking to people here, because I feel passionate about writing and the obsession of the day, but I felt awkward in Oneonta because I was the only one around me not passionate about something (other than winemaking, which was my thing while I was in Oneonta). 

As much a haven as Oneonta has been, I didn't start writing in earnest until I had spent some time in Maryville, where the writer's circle skews children's, Christian's, and cookbooks. (I'm literally scared to go to their meetings because my works question the current state of Christianity, as do I)

Do I really need a haven? Or do I need to push against something to create and grow? Do I need to feel like an iconoclast? An outsider? I don't know; I'm thinking.

And in the meantime, maybe Maryville is the best thing for me because I don't have what I need here.

In-Between

I gaze out the window at the Toledo train station, watching the rain bead off the windows. The train has been in the station for a while -- a half hour, a day, forever -- I'm too tired to figure it out.

This train ride will carry me from the joy of  discovering home to the duty of another year teaching college. It will be my 21st year at Northwest.    One of my first students is sending her kid to college. I still feel like I’m in my thirties despite my arthritis, and all my memories jumble into a timeless mist.

I will return to an abrupt transition to beginning of the school year meetings. But for now, I’m on the train, in-between everything.

Coffee in (not quite) Paradise

I'm sitting at Latte Lounge in Oneonta right now, sipping my husband's caramel steamer and wishing we had a real (non-corporate) coffeehouse in Maryville. To be fair, we have close -- the best Starbucks in the 50 states, attached to the campus library,

Yes, this is a bay window.

Oneonta still has a bit of a hippie vibe, with quirky coffeehouse spaces, the Autumn Cafe (a former food coop turned restaurant), and a head shop (the tacky price you pay for the health food stores and artisan delights). The summer traffic has gotten worse and the hotels get quickly packed due to the demand from club baseball tournaments, which Oneonta has capitalized on. The local artisan's store features a writer who writes romantic suspense with a witch as the main character and publishes through Llewellyn Press (the leading pagan press). The attitude of New York State lends itself to diversity of opinion -- "You have a right to live your life, and I have a right to live mine". I suspect things still got heated during the last election.

There is a local Quaker meeting here, as there always has been, and I suspect that it (like most Quaker meetings) has very few attenders. But there is a Quaker meeting.

People are friendly here, whether from Upstate (the mostly rural majority of New York) or Downstate (NYC -- or "The City" as it's known here -- and its suburbs). They can't drive worth a damn, but they're friendly.

You can learn a lot about a town by what it treasures. Maryville, MO treasures kids and church, which is great if you have kids and a church denomination to belong to. As a childless Democratic Socialist and pacifist, I don't fit into any of the local churches. (The most liberal church in town will not take any constructive criticism, which is one of the things most apparent about Missouri -- the attitude of "It's ours, don't question." I was brought up to question everything.)

Oneonta treasures creativity. It has its own arts venue separate from the University. It has the aforementioned artisan booths, local writers, unique restaurant dishes, quirky coffeehouses and quirkier people. I would imagine that, with two colleges and a head shop, Quakers and witches and Unitarians, many families with children would find it a less than ideal place to raise a family. 

It will be hard to leave today, to get back to Syracuse and take the train back to the Heartland and then drive back to a place that reminds me too much of my hometown in Illinois, with its ugly secrets and its resistance to reflection and growth. But I have miles to go before I sleep, it seems, and that includes another year teaching at Northwest Missouri State University.

Which brings up a question:  How can I make my current home liveable? I've lost friends over simple requests to examine their use of words to be less derogatory of the neurodiverse. I have friends. and even though I worry they wouldn't like me if they knew who I really was (the granddaughter of a witch, a Democratic Socialist, convinced that everyone will go to Heaven if there is a Heaven) but they accept my sense of humor and my bipolar disorder. It might help to find groups to connect to outside of town to make up for the lack of church affiliation and connections through children's activities. I may have to drive 90 miles for the nearest Quaker meeting now and again.

But I will retire someday, and if we can find the money for a house (Oneonta has higher housing prices and older, bigger houses) we will settle down here.

They Say You Can Go Home Again ...

I have a tendency not to look back. When I leave a place, I know it will change and the people I knew will leave. It is the nature of life in academia, where most of the people you know are students who graduate and faculty who find themselves elsewhere.

I went to college at a huge university, University of Illinois, with its 40,000 students. I knew very few fellow students, and it was only when I found a core of like-minded people -- a couple faculty members, a few students, a few townies -- that I felt an attachment to people for the first time.

When I left Urbana-Champaign for Oneonta New York, I was alarmed at how small the city and the college were. Soon, however, I grew to enjoy the artistic quirkiness of the town, and I got to know people through coffeehouse culture. I had a network of friends -- not close friends, but friends I occasionally spent time with, and some who kept me sane when my marriage broke up (for reasons I don't talk about, but it was much more dramatic than "we grew apart")

I left Oneonta after five years for a guy. (Not the guy I'm married to). I have always been a "bloom where I am planted" sort of person until I moved to Maryville, MO. After twenty years there, I have not really bloomed. I have grown into a crabbed, stunted plant in hardscrabble soil with little nourishment. I don't know why I feel this way -- Maryville is a college town. It has activities at the university, and my colleagues are quirky. But I have not felt nurtured nor safe here.

Actually, I do know the reason why -- Maryville was the town where two underage girls thought they were creeping out to meet a dreamy high school football player at a party. They were plied with alcohol and passed out. One was raped by the dreamy high school football player, who was the grandson of a state legislator. The charges were dropped by the prosecuting attorney. You might have heard of the girl -- her name was Daisy Coleman, and she was 14 or 15 at the time.

The fact that some people could say "You didn't know the whole story" when the girl was clearly underage makes me feel like living in Maryville is one lurking trigger, even years later. Bad things may happen everywhere, but the level of support the young man got, the fact that Daisy's family was driven out of town, the condescending coverage the local newspaper gave the protestors -- Maryville turned from a difficult town to find nurture in to a burg swarming with ugly shadows.

But now, finding myself back in Oneonta, I am looking back. The town has changed; it's a little bigger and a lot busier and the signs on the businesses on Main Street could use a little beautification. The college has gotten so many new buildings I hardly recognized it. But my favorite restaurants -- Brooks BBQ and the Autumn Cafe -- are still here, and there's lots of coffeehouses (I've already found my favorite).

I would love to move back to Oneonta someday. I may never find it; the cost of housing is somewhat higher and we're a one-income household so we don't have much set back in savings. Oneonta had become home to me, just like Urbana-Champaign had, but maybe I can't go home again.

Dream House

Clapboards and fieldstone,

Perfect grey shingles --

a house as old as church bells,

as solid as a name.

A Volvo in the driveway,

a little rust on it, but still --

they say you can go home again

but it won't be the same

I watch the story

through dime-store curtains

as you embrace your father,

take the Jeep and drive away. 

While in my kitchen,

dandelion wine

serves to remind me 

of the passage of these days.

CHORUS: (2x)

This is your dream house

you say this is your dream house,

this is your dream house,

I'm living in your dream house.

Once you told me,

you'd always lived there,

walked past the house I'm living in

and wondered what was inside.

Then you fell silent,

turned away quickly,

I thought I saw the hungry gaze

of a very quiet child.

CHORUS (2x)

And if you could

run up the stairs and down the hall,

look out the window

where the hayloft used to be,

would you still dream of it,

see how I've grown to love it,

would you then understand it,

understand me?

CHORUS (2x)

And in my kitchen,

dandelion wine

serves to remind me 

of the passage of these days.

******************

I wrote this song about 25 years ago when I lived in Oneonta New York in a carriage house dating from probably the late 1800's. I loved that house, and at one point in my life swore I'd own it someday. 

I'm now back in Oneonta, and it's different. It's picked up more of the tourist trade by hosting baseball tournaments -- I'm assuming this is farm league, as the Yankees have a farm team here. There are more coffeehouses than there were when I lived here, and more ethnic restaurants, but my favorite hangout still exists (and is owned by someone I used to know).

There's lots of traffic out on New York 28, whizzing by the bed and breakfast. 

In a perfect world, the stars would align and I would find a way to afford the more expensive housing costs out here. I would retire early and find a job out here, and write in the local (independent) coffeehouse and eat once a week at the Autumn Cafe. I would make new friends at the coffeehouse like I used to, and I would have the carriage house as a writing retreat.

These are dreams, though, and I know reality has a way of exerting itself over dreams.

My weekend

Since Thursday, I have been in Oriskany (O-RIS-can-knee) New York, at the New York State Preparedness Training Center, doing moulage on willing victims for training purposes.

I'm in my usual post-event daze, made more intense by working under a professional moulage artist with twenty years experience. I learned how to make my injuries even better, how to work with plaster molds, latex and gelatin to make convincing wounds, and how to get wax wounds to stick (I work mostly in wax).

Hope exercises (Missouri Hope, New York Hope, Atlantic Hope and the new ones coming down the pike) are intense. The participants are assigned to teams, and the teams work to solve problems in search and rescue, triage and first aid, and incident command. They are placed in realistic scenarios and have to solve them on the spot. Complications thrown into the scenarios make the participants think on their feet.

There are at least as many staff members as participants -- team controller/evaluators, who advise the participant teams, lane controller/evaluators, who run the scenario lanes, logistics personnel, subject matter experts, exercise director and staff, roleplayers --

And the moulage staff, who are looked at with a certain awe.


I'm bone-tired. It's been an intense couple of days, which I wouldn't trade for anything, because they've given me the opportunity to improve. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here; I hope so. Thanks for reading.

A Miracle.

I just got a note from an agent asking for a full manuscript for Voyageurs. Is it time to pass out yet?

I sit in the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago's Union Station waiting for my train, which should depart in about three hours. I've already been here for three hours, so it's a long wait. I've drunk two lattes and three shots of espresso, and my teeth are beginning to hum. But there's wi-fi, so I can indulge myself in some blogging.

It's cold in here, and it's raining outside. The Metropolitan Lounge is reserved for people in business class and those sleeping in sleeper cars (like we will be). It's quiet with comfortable chairs with outlets nearby and a shower in the bathrooms -- although I don't know who actually showers in a train station shower.

I'm trying to coax some latte out of the machine and hope it warms me up. My teeth will be humming so much I'll be picking up radio signals soon.

The Night Train

When I was a child, I lived a block from the Rock Island tracks, back at the end of the Golden Age of trains. I would wake up in the middle of the night to hear freight trains passing by on the tracks, or the 11 PM night Rocket, a passenger train, to Chicago. For a child who didn't sleep well, the trains were a comfort, offering familiarity in the uncertainty of the night.

The Rock Island Line, like many railroads in the US, struggled to survive when the interstate system made it possible to travel at speeds previously unknown. The network of roads -- interstates, US highways, and local roads -- made the great elegant passenger trains obsolete. However, the Rock Island didn't go without a fight when the government went to take it over, and they wooed people to  their side by offering family excursion trains to Chicago.

My family took one of those excursion trips to Chicago, ninety miles away, in 1970, when I was seven. I remember everything about that trip -- the shiny exteriors of the Rock Island passenger cars and the worn interiors, the feeling of watching the industrial jungles and the brick stations pass by, bridges over sleepy water, and the noise, the glorious noise of the engine's horn close up.

The thing I remember most was eating breakfast in the dining car. With its heavy silverware, its china with the Rock Island logo, and its white tablecloths, I felt like a princess. I don't know if any dining experience will equal that one in my mind, because the waiter found me lemon and honey for my tea with a graciousness it's hard to find nowadays.  That waiter would be in his eighties if he were still alive, but if I could find him, I would thank him for making my day memorable.

The Rock Island line is no longer, having been subsumed into Amtrak. Unlike the Rocket, the aging elegant Rock Island passenger train, Amtrak presents a train ride with little to be nostalgic about. The chairs in coach are not as comfortable, the meals on the Lake Shore Limited are now pre-made, many of the old railway stations are closed and the big stations made smaller due to security needs. Sometimes the toilets malfunction and things get -- odorous.

But trains are still worth traveling on. The variety of people you encounter, from the Amish who see the train as a necessary evil, to itinerant musicians with backpack and guitar, and businessmen with their suit bags hanging in the luggage area. You can still sleep in a sleeper car, which is a miracle of getting two beds and a couch in a tiny space. The chugging of the engine and ringing of the bell as the train edges into the station, and the hiss of luggage wheels as the passengers hustle toward the station, waking up in the middle of the night in a sleeper car as the train travels through the Sandusky preserve on a narrow bridge of land surrounded by lake and marsh.

I dream of the trains coming back someday, when we have given up some of our control issues over travel, when we have given up our love affair with cars. Maybe it's a futile dream, but it's mine.

Happy 500

Wow. Yesterday was my 500th post!

Right now seems to be a time of musing and not much of writing. I'm done with my online class and prepping for a ten-day trip, half vacation and half volunteer work in moulage.  I'm going to upstate New York for New York Hope again, which is one of my three standing moulage gigs for the year -- so more making ordinary people look like trauma victims.

The vacation part is how we will get there and back -- by train, with a roomette both ways of the 15-hour trip. Richard and I are both train fanatics, and even though Amtrak pales compared to the golden age of train travel in the US, roomettes and business class still are novel enough for us to enjoy.

The second part of vacation will be going To Oneonta, where I used to teach college. It's been about 20 years since I left, so I'm expecting things will be different and that I won't know anyone there. It's okay -- I want to see Oneonta again because I still dream of it now and again; it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever lived.

I'll write when I can, although not as often as I usually do while on vacation.

Love you all.

True Confession (or I doth profess too much)

I'm going over some old ground here.

I insisted that I didn't want to get published for the recognition, but just to fulfill a goal.

I have to confess that I lied.

I have fantasies about getting published, about becoming well enough known that someone from my hometown contacts me, and I can snub them.

It's horribly unbecoming of me to be like that. I don't even like to admit I have that fantasy, but I do. Let me explain, and maybe you will understand me.

I grew up different. Intelligent, socially awkward, overweight -- I lived in my own little world. I suffered from pica and ate glue and pencil erasers, as well as handfuls of sugar and Bisquick. I bit my nails. I laughed when nobody else laughed, I sang out loud for no apparent reason, not caring if someone else heard. I cried when people attacked me. I whined. All together, I was that unattractive kid that nobody liked. I don't know if I would blame them.

Being that child, I was prone to bullying from my fellow classmates and adults. By the time I reached high school, I had been beaten up by classmates repeatedly, sexually abused by a few people, raped by classmates, threatened with desertion by my mother.

I made myself a coccoon from the outside world -- from my parents, extended family, and classmates.  That coccoon was made of my fantasies, my behaviors, my wishes. In my coccoon, the monsters that everyone feared were my friends. The monsters would nurture me through the bullying, the attacks, the lack of safety I felt.  As I grew older, I fell in love in my fantasies -- and when I told my best friend the name of who I had a crush on, she yelled it out the window, and every popular kid in the class shamed me in the hallways.

My childhood marred me. I have trouble making friends because I don't want to impose myself on them. I have trouble loving my snot-nosed, eraser-eating inner child. (I tend to wish I had been Marcie as a child. Marcie is me without the snot nose and eraser eating.)

I entertain sadistic fantasies about my classmates from Marseilles. I entertain the thought that someday the tables could be turned and I could, if not bully them, reject them soundly. I feel guilty about that because it's not a "pure" reason to want to be published.

I exorcise myself by writing. This blog post is no exception.

Lughnasad

Lughnasad

As the afternoon holds its breath,
you disappear,
my summer love.
I drink the apple wine without you.

Guest blog -- Girly-Girl the cat

My name is Girly-girl, which I find a ridiculous name because I am a cat. I answer to Girly, of course, because that's a good way to get petted.

I have a favorite human -- the female one who lives in the house. She usually sits on a specific soft place in the gathering room, and makes clicking noises on the flat surface. It gets enough of her attention that I want to sit on it and get attention too. But she usually pushes me off it, making swears when she does.

I do not sit on laps. I sit near them. I'm sitting on the arm of the soft place next to my human. I try to look vaguely disapproving of everything, It goes with not being a lap cat. But when I get petted, I purr. No sense in playing completely hard to get.

I'm starting to get on in years. I don't feel the need to feel charming anymore, not like that smarmy little Chucky who wants to play all the time. I do not play. But I get along with my human just by being me.

Play

I need to play.

I was told I would have to give that up as an adult. I don't listen well. I need to play. 

Not something as structured as board games -- I'm rather competitive and I hate to lose. Role playing -- I love that. To me the game is secondary to being in character. Acting in plays in high school was one of my favorite ways of playing, but truth be told I'm not very good at it, mostly because my relationship with my body is awkward at best.

Nowadays, I play with ideas. Ideas for books or short stories, ideas for papers I want to write, ideas just for fun, like "What would your warning label say?" (Mine would say "Caution: Volatile moods", even though I'm mellow most of the time). 

I play with knowledge. I'm still teaching Richard the difference between Queen Anne's Lace and poison hemlock (an important distinction, more so since I once saved someone's life when they thought the big spotted stems in their backyard were rhubarb). 

I play with learning. I always want to learn something new, especially if it creates something useful. This is why I wish I could learn knitting, crocheting, or tatting. (The two problems are 1) my hand-eye coordination and 2) being able to crack the arcane pattern code and not getting lost on the page.) But I've done winemaking, jelly making, and Thai cooking.

I play with creativity. Creating characters, realistic dialogue, funny scenes.

I also like to play with finger paints, stick drawings, and funny noises.

I'm going to go play now!!