spin your phony words

from the deep background of lies

Someone is watching

I don’t hear the voices of my children anymore. I don’t hear the word “Mommy” or the giggles from little-girl sleepovers. I don’t hear the wails from scraped knees or the high-pitched snorts at dumb knock-knock jokes. I don’t hear the harsh blast of Metallica playing to a crowd of rowdy 14-year olds, or know-it-all teenage voices declaiming deathless 80s and 90s slang such as “Mega” or “Burnt.”  I don’t hear the muttered whispers when they creep in way past their curfew, or the shrieks about broken nails or messed-up hairdos.

No, I don’t hear my children anymore. But I do hear their warm voices talking about their women’s concerns and I am happy when the phone rings and I hear them say, “Mom.”

meet in the city

a cup of bitter coffee

a long intense chat

Try this writing tip:  take the first line of a novel, or short story, or poem, written by someone else, and use this first line as a springboard into your own writing.  Write a page or two, starting with the other author’s line as your first line, and see where it takes you.  Then when you are done, delete the first line that is not yours. The rest of it will be.

Here’s one I wrote, starting with a line from a poem by Hildegarde of Bingen, “I am the yearning for good.”

I am the yearning for good because when I feel the nasty thoughts of anger or smallness, jealousy or fear, when I want to snarl, “she can take her xyz and shove it up her you-know-what” or when I want to whine, “why does he get so much and I get so little?” or when I want to yell “Get the hell away from here” – when I want to say these things, I feel guilty, and that’s how I know I yearn for good. Even in the face of despair that I am not, and may never be, really good, not like I want to be.

I am the yearning for good in the midst of fear, strong as dark whiskey brewed in black winter caves. That smoky taste of fear and lust rises in my throat and oh how I yearn for good then, for a crisp light breeze to blow me outside to where wild weeds grow in lush profusion even though they’re not supposed to, even where their beauty is not seen.

shades of Mexico

drink spiced chocolate coffee

wear a turquoise shirt

Here’s a writing exercise tip:  pick a sensory word, a word that expresses color, shape, texture, sound, smell, or taste.  Then write a couple of paragraphs with every sentence (or most of them) beginning with that word and “is.”  Here’s one I wrote, using the word “darkness.” 

Sometimes I wake up with a song playing in my head. I wish I knew what this meant, or if it means anything at all.  What could it mean that one morning I woke up with “Holy Holy Holy” playing, complete with crashing organ chords as the background to a church choir?  Since I don’t go to church, I haven’t heard that song for decades, but here were all the words, present in my head: holy holy holy lord god almighty god in his mercy blessed trinity. It lurked in the back of my mind the rest of the day.

But then the very next morning, when I woke up I heard “Zip a Dee Doo Dah” playing, sung by chirping Disney-esque bluebirds – what about that? Does the juxtaposition of Holy Holy Holy with Zip a Dee Doo Dah have any deep dark meaning?

 I ask myself these questions, but I get no answers.

eight in the morning

beagles stretch and spaniels snort

the dog park awaits

One of the exercises that has yielded many fertile results for me has been the “Ladies and Real Men” exercise I’ve blogged about before.  It’s pretty easy.  Just write a page or two or three starting with the phrase: “Ladies always” or “Ladies never” or “Real men always” or “Real men never” and let your guard down – way down.  Write as fast as you can and don’t pause for any reason, until you have filled the page.  I am always surprised by what I write, even though I’ve done this exercise many times.  Quite apart from being fun to write, these exercises show just how stupid – and how deep – gender stereotypes are.  Here’s another one I wrote:

 Ladies always cover their knees with their skirts, and if they show their panties they blush painfully and stutter as they apologize. Ladies always say please and thank you and they always look up through their eyelashes at men, in a silent plea for protection. Ladies always laugh quietly; they never roar with delight, and mostly they just titter behind their hands. Ladies always shut the bathroom door behind them and they never let anyone come into the bathroom with them, even to brush their teeth. Ladies always know what the current fashions are. Ladies always have enough money to look down on somebody else, only they never do because that would be rude, which ladies never are. Ladies always bring cookies for the after-church social and volunteer at PTA functions. Ladies always should wear hats, and when hats went out of style many ladies felt naked on top. Ladies always wear white bras, never black ones. Ladies always ask for permission. Ladies always follow and never ever lead.

One summer when I was around eight or so, my friend Rose and I spent a week at my grandparents’ cabin on Camano Island in Puget Sound. We played at many things, but one I remember well was when we made “Indian crackers.” My father, who was part Native American and proud of his heritage, had told us stories of how the Indians fed themselves on crackers made from seaweed when there was nothing else to eat. For some reason this sounded romantic to us, so one hot sunny day we decided to make these Indian crackers for ourselves.

Washington beaches are notoriously rocky, and clinging to these rocks is an abundance of green leafy-looking seaweed. We pried an armful of seaweed off the rocks and found a big flat rock where we carefully smoothed the slick seaweed out flat, pressing our pudgy hands down on its surface until we had a large sheet of seaweed. Then we ran to Grandma and borrowed a box of salt, and sprinkled the salt lavishly over the seaweed and left it to dry in the sun.

Later that afternoon, the salt-seaweed cracker had dried completely, and we eagerly broke it in pieces and sampled it. Naturally enough, our crackers were foul, brackish, absolutely dreadful. We had to drink at least four glasses of Kool Aid to get rid of the taste, and even then it wasn’t completely gone – the next morning we both woke up with our mouths in the same state we’d later know as “hang-over” mouth.

 Our opinion of Native Americans took a nose dive. They weren’t romantic, they were crazy. No matter what my Dad said.