THANKFUL FRIDAY

I started working on a writing project in October of last year. It has become one of my UFPs (unfinished projects) sitting in my Google docs, but I tend to visit this one more often than any of the others. It is a writing project that will not be able to see the light of day for (hopefully) a few years and maybe this is why it has become so easy for me to sporadically add to the story. I’ve tried writing a story centered around Chris and being a widow and I probably have five different UFP versions of this story blinking at me whenever I open Google docs. I just get to a spot where there’s nothing to write. I don’t know how to end it or it just feels emotionally better to leave it as it is. Sort of like vague plans or booking the hotel reservation but not doing any research on what you should see and do in that area. This thing I’ve been working on off and on since October feels like something I’ll eventually finish, like I know how to end it when the time comes.

That being said, my writing style is very undisciplined. It seems that I can commit to coming up with content for this space at least twice a week, but any thing with multiple pages and chapters is a really big commitment. I am an ebb and flow kind of artist. When I’m really inspired to be out and about with my camera and working on photography projects, I have little inspiration for writing. The writing flows in when I’m in a photography lull. I thought maybe the practice of combining the two things would lead to more finished projects, but that hasn’t happened. Right now, I am writing. That’s where I am in this ebb and flow. I wrote about a particular time and some events and as I wrote it all down, I found myself crying at my desk. I was surprised because I thought I had worked through my feelings about those events. I thought I had already done the work to release that pain and that there would be nothing to bring up in the writing of this story. But apparently I still had some feelings tucked away that needed to be addressed.

There was a brief section of time when I was seeing a therapist. I didn’t do too much to seek out this therapist, no interview process. I just went with someone my insurance would accept and walked in not really knowing what to expect. Once a week I’d sit in a cushy chair in an office with my therapist and I would just talk. I needed very little prompting and received no more prompting than “how are we feeling today?”, but this was all I needed to spill the bean can of complaints I had filled up since my last visit. At the end of each session, my therapist would say something along the lines of ‘thank you for sharing’ and that would be it until the next week. After about year of this I felt like I had talked all of my complaints out of my system and didn’t feel like I had anything else to contribute to my therapist. And that was it. I never received homework or any kind of “what if you tried…” My therapist was just a listener. I stopped going to therapy and never made an effort to find a new therapist.

The truth is, my writing practice has been the most helpful tool for sorting and dealing with my emotions.

I am by no means discounting therapy. My one time therapist expedition is not a remotely fair measure of the benefits of therapy. I benefited from time with my therapist. I had overachieved in the no complaining department, not speaking up when things annoyed or bothered me. Even on the blog, I avoided complaints. So for a year, I spilled them all out in a safe space to someone who was basically a stranger. I learned to find ways to communicate about the things that annoyed me without whining. I’ve just had a better experience moving through the really hard deeper emotions by writing about them. This makes me very grateful for my writing practice even when there are times I’m not doing much of it. My creative endeavors are part of my therapy and while I have invested money and time into one creative endeavor like new a new camera and a new lens, I realized that I haven’t invested in my writing. So this week I purchased a gratitude gift for myself, a book on writing titled 1,000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round.

I don’t know if this means I will be writing a thousand words every day. Maybe this is one way to replace my Fortune Cookie Journal. Who knows? But also, maybe instead of asking the question “will I ever write a book?” I can start asking the question “will my book get published?”

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I often forget that this is the month for gratitude because I practice gratitude every day and share it here every week. So, November is just a month that happens to contain a holiday. There are those who use November for more than a gratitude month. November is also National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short. I have a handful of friends who have honored the month with working diligently on a novel and I have on occasion officially thrown my hat into the writing ring, signing up for NaNoWriMo. The challenge of committing to writing daily on a thing you might send off to be published as a book is enticing and intimidating. I have always failed miserably to finish anything.

This is true for any month.

Before you get excited for me, let me say that this year is not any different from any other time. I did not officially sign up for NaNoWriMo. I did not quietly make any commitments to write daily for NaNoWriMo, but I have been writing. I have been writing on a project that I know I have time to write because I don’t have plans to share it in public. At least not now. I am waiting for an appropriate time. The thing I started writing is based on an idea for a book title that just randomly floated into my brain. Since then, I have been fleshing out a story to fit under that title. This is, I just realized, the same way I write my little fortune cookie stories. I use the title of the page, in this case a fortune, to inspire the story. I never really finish a story for this, but I don’t think that I am incapable of it. I always run out of room to write before I am given the chance to finish. Turns out the Fortune Cookie Diary has not just been a practice in creativity but a lesson on getting a writing project off the ground.

This project may end up like all the others and I would not be disappointed with myself if it did. There’s plenty of UFOs on my computer and about half of those make me feel a number of negative feelings most of which revolve around my lack of discipline (I blame Chris). I can finish this or not finish this current project without any of those feelings because in the process of writing, I have let go of some stuff that has not been serving me. Each written memory gives me greater insight and understanding and unlike many of those other projects, I have yet to reach a wall that I can’t seem to write my way around. Maybe this one will keep going because it feels really good to free some of these thoughts that I have been holding onto. They are thoughts that do not serve me well and the foundation for many of my feelings of inadequacy. Those thoughts are where the not enoughs come from. After each writing session I have felt stronger in not just saying, but believing that I am enough.

So for the month that celebrates writing and gratitude, I am thankful for my writing practice.

We are traveling to Iowa next week for a friendsgiving in Heather’s new house. I’ve never been to Des Moines and from what I’ve been told, it’s really great or really boring. It depends on who you’re talking to. I’m leaning into Des Moines being really great because we missed friendsgiving with Heather last year. Up until then, our Thanksgiving gathering were beginning to feel traditional. I am a creature devoted to routine and habits. So to have our gatherings back feel comforting. I don’t know what next week will look like for this space. If I end up not posting anything, may your holiday be filled with light and comfort.

Peace.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The month of July is a subscription renewal month for me. My Yoga Alliance membership is due, along with teacher insurance. I have to renew my rights to my old domain name and also my current Square Space account. Every year, when I get those reminder emails about this or that automatically renewing and billing my card, I think about not renewing any of it. It is a moment of pondering about gain. What do I gain from all of these subscriptions?

Of course if I want to teach yoga, I have to stay up to date with all of the yoga stuff. There was a time I was maintaining all of that while not teaching because I felt that I would probably eventually go back to teaching. Which I did. I’m not teaching much, one class a week, subbing a class here and there, but it is enough. I feel content. I have been considering the idea of approaching a studio about doing a yoga enhancer workshop (incorporating yoga props into a practice), but this is something I don’t want to take on until after October. Keeping the domain and Square Space account feels a little splurgy. There is zero financial gain here. Maybe I’m helping someone. Maybe I’m teaching someone something new. I have no idea. But I do it. I blog because I love it. I teach yoga because I love teaching yoga. The answer to that question about gain that I ask myself every year is that I gain mental health and joy in inspiring others either in their own yoga practice or through my writing.

I am thankful to have both of these outlets.

That being said, it is nice to take a break every now and then. There is a lot of giving of myself when I teach yoga and when I share I my thoughts here. Sometimes it is good to step away and recharge that giving battery. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m stepping away for two weeks, hopefully filled with with fresh thoughts and pretty pictures.

THE NEXT THING

Sunday afternoon, sitting in the sun in Sarah’s backyard for our final (for now) meeting of our book club, it was my turn to respond to the beginning session prompt. We start our sessions by going around the circle and asking how are we feeling, stating our names and saying what we are thinking about this week. My answer was that I was currently feeling nothing and that I was/am thinking a lot about what’s the next thing? A few weeks ago I down loaded and printed out Jumpstart Your Writing in Six Steps from Alice Bradley and it’s just been sitting untouched on my desk between a paper on 3D CLEM and a book someone lent me on making miso.

Monday morning, the dentist installed my permanent crowns which are so much better than the temporary ones I had to wear. This made me a little late to work and just late enough getting home for Josephine to pee and poop on my bed. I don’t know why she chose the bed. Panic? Revenge? This is probably the second accident she’s had in the house since she was potty trained (and that time at Deborah’s house where I was paying attention to her cues and she tried to poop under the Christmas tree). Everything including the mattress protector had to come off my bed and go into the wash. I took advantage of the situation and rotated my mattress all by myself and when I told Michael what I had done, he said “You’re the strongest person I know.”

I replied “That’s probably true.”

I am the strongest person he knows who cannot manage to finish even a shitty first draft of a writing project. I’ve woken up twice in the past three weeks from dreams that could be woven into frivolously fun romance books and each time I’ve failed to write any thing down. My brain wants me to write. My fingers do not want to have any thing to do with translating what my brain has to say. And I don’t know why I dance around and name this something other than what it really is. It’s like my own personal Voldemort.

And I'm writing a novel because it's never been done before - Father John Misty

I am writing a book. I am going to write a book. It might be one of the fifteen I have already started, but I am doing it. I haven’t figured out when or made up any kind of writing schedule but three days ago, I thought about buying some 3x5 notecards for organizing an outline. That’s a start, right? Yes…I know. Starting doesn’t seem to be the problem. Stamina and focus on the other hand are places where I could use some work. Are there notecards for that? Oh, wait a minute. I’ve been blogging for twenty three years. Consistently. Okay, maybe there were some weeks here and there when I didn’t update the blog, but I think of those as vacation weeks. We all need a break form time to time. But if I dissect my consistency in blogging, I can see that I am writing a little over five hundred words two to three times a week. That is almost 1,500 words a week. The average adult fiction book contains 70,000 to 150,000 words.

I need 100 weeks to write a shitty first draft.

THE STRETCH

She looked at the blinking cursor, interlaced her fingers and stretched them as if preparing to play an intricate piano piece. Then, placing her fingers onto the keyboard, she stared at the blank screen in front of her.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

She gently tapped her fingers on the keys without pressing hard enough to even leave behind a gibberish row of letters. What to write? What to right? Whatto right? Whattoryete? The question of what to write was now a semantic satiation. Then she mentally applauded herself for the use of ‘semantic satiation’. Sighing heavily and shaking her head, she mumbled “there is no story here.”

Still, she sat there, scrolling her fingers lightly across the keys waiting for a bit of inspiration, some sign or cue to strike. She marveled at how easy it was to distract herself from the art of actually writing. It was all too easy to open up the New York Times and play a round of spelling bee. She justified the game as a way of helping her brain. The puzzle of finding words may just help her find words for writing. Then, during breaks in her game, she could easily go check in on what other people were doing in social media. An hour could easily pass by while scrolling through some celebrity’s instagram feed, looking for real life images versus the carefully crafted social media image.

The question of what is keeping her from her goals was asked during her Self Care Meeting with her self care therapist and she easily answered “Me. I am the one standing in the way.” She knows that she is the one criticizing her abilities to write anything at all. She is the one saying “Well, you can’t write that. What will people think?!?” She is the one who has mastered the whole deer in the headlights action. When shit gets difficult, she freezes. All ability to make any sort of decision comes to a halt. Do not ask her what she wants for dinner today, tomorrow or next week. Do not expect her to make any phone calls. Oh, there’s water backing up in the basement you say? She is just going to ignore that and pretend that it will fix itself. Her low tire pressure light has been on in her car for weeks. Inaction during a time when action is needed or required is her superpower.

She looks at the blinking cursor and knows the thing she avoiding is not the actual writing but the actual writing down of a truth that exists inside her that she doesn’t really want to tell. If she tells it then people will know that this thing, this truth, is something that she believes. This thing she believes is more than stupid and ridiculous, but she can’t be talked out of believing that this stupid, ridiculous thing is true. So not only is she about to admit to believing this stupid ridiculous thing, she’s going to admit that she is so stubborn that you will not be able to persuade her otherwise.

She sighs and then allows herself to become distracted by the paper’s daily crossword puzzle.

INCOMPLETE

Lately, on Saturday mornings when I’m sitting at the coffee shop before heading out to do the weekly grocery run, I’ve been writing on a story. This sounds normal to you, like yes Cindy, we know you write those fortune cookie stories. This is different because I’m not writing in the Fortune Cookie journal. In fact, and I feel bad about this, I have not written in the Fortune Cookie Journal in ages. Instead, I’ve been writing in a regular no prompting notebook and it’s one long story arc. This all started when I took those mushrooms on a camping trip in July. I started writing a story based on a very real dream I had had. It was one of those past life kind of dreams that played in cinemanic format through my brain. Every weekend since, I’ve spent time just adding to that story. A paragraph here. A couple of pages there. I don’t know where this is going or what my intentions are with this writing. I mean, I’m writing it out in pen and ink on paper. It’s not like it’s going to be an easy thing to polish up for an editor or publisher. The thing is, I am writing it.

This Saturday morning, I went to the coffee shop but I didn’t take that journal. I didn’t write. Instead, I worked on a Thanksgiving menu list. That journal sits on my desk under the grocery list because I pick up both of those things when I leave the house on Saturday mornings. I looked right at that journal as I set the grocery list back down when I got home and unloaded all of the groceries and I heard the tiniest of naggy voices in the back of my head, but I shrugged those voices aside. They were not very loud and easy to ignore. By Monday, the naggy voices had gotten louder and I was starting to feel a bit twitchy. It is almost like the feeling I get when I’ve been away from my yoga mat for too long. My hands and my brain are all “where’s my weekly exercise?!?!”, but also the action has a cleansing quality. It clears some words from my brain and allows for better word traffic and it wasn’t until Monday afternoon when I realized how important that weekly word dump really is.

I shouldn’t call it a word dump. There’s a real story here. It might not be a good story. It might be a far fetched story, but it is a story. It is more story than I’ve ever written before which is why I believe it might be a past life story. It’s real to me, even if I’m still on the fence about past lives. I can see my characters’ faces. I can smell the air where they live. At times, it feels more like me just writing in my diary than it feels like plunking out a tale. I’m not working and if I started taking it more seriously, it would probably turn into work. I think that’s how I’m going to finish something, by not working. Though it does require attention at least once a week because I’m more scattered today than I have been since starting this new ritual. I am surprised by this. I had no idea that the twenty minutes I spent writing on this story one day week would turn out to be such an important part of my mental wellbeing.

Maybe I should have signed up for NANOWRIMO….

Jack and Diane

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Diane was surprised that she could hear the sound of Jack’s mustang speeding down her gravel drive over her mother’s shrill voice. “You keep this behavior up Diane and you’ll end up just like me. Tied down with kids you didn’t want, living in a rundown trailer in the middle of nowhere.” Diane was out and slamming the door on her mother’s ‘nowhere’. She bounded down the porch steps and hopped into Jack’s car. “Just go.” she told him as she leaned back into his cracked leather seats. Jack peeled out of the drive, spitting gravel out the back tire. He had the windows rolled down and Jackie waved her hand out the window, playing with the wind as he flew down the county road.

“Where ya want to go, Diane.” Jack asked as he placed a hand on her thigh. Diane, her head turned towards her window, brushed a tear away with one hand while she brushed Jack’s hand off her thigh with the other hand. Jack, slightly miffed by the brush off, placed both hands on the wheel and increased the pressure on the gas pedal. He flew past the brown state park sign and Diane yelled ‘Stop! Circle around. Let’s go take that Spring Creek trail down to the lagoon.” Jack did a u-turn in the road and headed back to the state park entrance. He still had some hope that he’d be able to put his hands on more than just Diane’s thigh, maybe even get handjob in the woods. Diane knew what Jack was thinking. She wasn’t with him because he was bright. She was with him because he was easy, simple. He was transparent in what he wanted from her and he was way out of getting stuck babysitting her little brother and sister. Diane would probably give him that handjob he was hoping for.

Jack parked his car at the trailhead parking lot and they headed down the steep trail that led to a lagoon of emerald green water. Diane was wearing a pair of sandals she’d found in the clothing donation box outside the Baptist Church. The sandals were not made for hiking this sort of trail or walking in general, but the shoes, painted silver, made Diane feel classy. She slipped several times as they made their way down the trail, each time Jack catching her before she hit the ground. Each time, grabbing some of her flesh in the palm of his hand, letting it linger there. Diane ignored it and kept on making her way down towards the lagoon and when she broke through the forest and into the clearing near the lagoon, she kicked off her fancy sandals. Diane made her way to a tree at the edge of the water. The tree had a large, thick limb that stretched out over the lagoon and bowed like a hammock. Diane was nimble and easily climbed up the tree and out onto that branch, settling herself into the bowed section. She turned her head towards the water as she heard Jack step out into the clearing. Diane smiled to herself briefly because she knew Jack couldn’t climb out on the limb with her. She could be alone without having to constantly brush off his hands.

Jack frowned when he saw Diane lounging on that tree limb. He found a large flat rock near the base of the tree and sat there, throwing pebbles into the water. Diane stared out at the green water, hearing all the things her mother always yelled at her and wondering what she was going to do after high school. She hated that her mother might be right, that she might end up in another trailer park, with a husband who spent his paychecks on meth and one too many kids running around with dirty diapers or snotty noses. Diane hadn’t said anything about taking the ACT or even let on that she was studying for it. She couldn’t bear the ridicule she’d recieve for crappy scores. Diane was surprised when the test results came back and she’d gotten good scores, like scholarship level scores. Mr. Evans, the guidance counselor, told Diane that she’d probably get into any college she wanted and that there would be scholarships and financial aid. No one in her family had ever gone to college. Diane could be the first. She could be the first to do a lot of things.

While Diane sat on that branch staring at the water, contemplating life, Jack sat on his rock, staring at Diane, contemplating his own wants and his own life.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The first week of November, I entered my word count on the website for NaNoWriMo, all 1,535 words of Table Stories. I have not been back since, but I have been slowly working on this project. On Wednesday this week, I started work on the fifth story in the series. It is a story about fried oysters and our family’s Christmas dinner tradition. I even had a text conversation with Katrina about what goes into making fried oysters. I still have no idea what goes into making fried oysters. Sometimes there’s milk involved. Cornmeal seems to be always involved. All of that is making its way into the story, but as I started writing, some feelings bubbled up inside me that I didn’t know I was holding onto. Then I wrote the most painfully honest sentence and the weight of that sentence slammed into my chest so hard that for a moment I could not breathe. I sat in my desk chair, with my head resting back and cried. I was not prepared for the memories those words would end up conjuring. I sent a text to Katrina telling her that I did not think I could write this story. It was too hard.

But I kept writing.

Because at the heart of that story is a story of joy.

I may not be keeping up with the required word count for NaNoWriMo, but I have noticed that I am more organized this time around. Creating an outline centered around meals has brought order to the stories rattling around inside this brain. Though many of those stories are happy ones, there are moments that contain great sadness. I am finding ways to blend the joy with the sad. That’s not right. I think I have always known how to blend the joy with the sad. That is what this exercise in writing has really done. It has reminded me that while I know too well how to tell a sad story, I also know how to tell a joyful story. I know how to blend the two together with words the the way I live my daily life. We live in a blend of emotions.

November is not over, but I don’t see me hitting a 50,000 word count in a weeks time. Still, it has given me a start. It has given me a direction. It has brought me a clear path. Sometimes that is all I need.

A MONTH OF WRITING

I am considering participating in NaNoWriMo next month. I make an attempt at this just about every year and every year, I reach a sticking place where no words come to me and I stare at the winking cursor on the screen. Type something. Type something. Type something. Then all the things I am not clouds over all the things I want to be. I give up and walk away from it. I am real good at giving up on the hard stuff. Maybe it is time to dig into the hard stuff. Maybe I should stop laughing in the face of people who tell me I should write a book.

I sat down this morning to work out an outline. The first thing I wrote is “What is the story I want to tell?” That is as far as I got. The first thing I thought when I asked myself that question was “Chris”. It always come back to telling the story of Chris. Except the story isn’t really about him. It always ends up being about me. Me me me. There is nothing extraordinary about our love story. We met in the cafe during the end of our freshman year. Books were mentioned and Chris said to me, almost mockingly “Oh, and what kind of books do you like to read?” I remember narrowing my eyes at him and thinking “I’ll show you!” Then I told him that I liked Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton. I said that I’ve read some John Grisham, but his story lines are all the same and that sometimes I like to read a trashy romance novel. The look on his face shifted from mockery to impressed. A few weeks later we went on our first ‘date’. At the end of it he said “I really like you.” Chris’s honesty completely won me over.

That was it. From that moment on we were just a unit.

There is not much of a story there. No, the story always comes later with Chris’s death. I don’t like that story. I don’t like telling a story of what it is like to not be a unit. The sadness. The depression. The day to day missing of him. That story sucks. It could be a story about discovering my own identity without Chris, but I am not sure I actually have discovered my own identity. I am still trying to figure out who I am, who I am not. I went into Target today without a list or a plan. I ended up dumping twenty dollars worth of face stuff into my basket. I bought a lip mask. A fucking lip mask. Am I now that person who buys ridiculous masks for specific parts of my face? My chin is so broken out right now. I look like I am trying to recreate my puberty. Actually, I don’t think my skin was this bad during puberty. And see what I’ve done here? I’ve completely veered off and have changed the subject.

I can’t sit down for a month of writing if I don’t even know what story I want to tell. This feels like giving up before even starting. I am leaning towards a collection of stories, one centered around food. Probably because I’m hungry, but I can see something brewing now in my brain. Not a recipe book exactly, but a series of essays centered around the table. Table Stories. It could be a mix of stories from my youth, my time with Chris and now. Little bittersweet stories of memories.

Thanks for letting me brainstorm. I now have fourteen things on my outline and I am starting to get a little excited about writing. That’s a feeling I haven’t had in a while.

COMPLETE THE STORY

Complete the story

Someone asked me recently what I was doing with my writing. I replied with “I don’t even know. Nothing?” That someone then told me that I was too good of a writer to just do “nothing”. That’s nice. I mean, I didn’t say that, but I thought it. I also thought “I am not ‘too good’ of a writer.” I am not much of a writer at all. Where’s my book? Where’s my audience? Why do I even do this? “I am worthless!”, I say to myself as I dramatically shove everything off my desk. Not really. Probably only about 98% of my ‘actions’ only happen in my head. My head is filled with zings, bams, kapows, and yowzas. Every time I pick up the fly swatter to kill a fly, I am mentally drawing a Samurai sword and I’m killing Bill. Move over Herman. You have nothing happening inside your head that is more action packed, crazy pants than what’s going on in mine. Bonus points to who ever gets that shout-out to Herman.

Part of me wants to tell you that I am really good at wasting time. That is why there is no book. That is why my writing is going no where. The other side of that is that I am not necessarily wasting time. I mean, give me a break. How much more things do I need to put into my day?!? I am already focusing on doing my actual job that pays the bills, my mental and physical health, feeding my creativity with a daily photo, and reading some important books. On top of that, I’m staying informed with the daily news (not your rumor mill telephone game news, but actual news) and keeping up with scientific papers. I’m cooking healthy meals and taking care of animals. I’VE GOT LAUNDRY TO DO! WATER TO DRINK! And some where in the middle of all of that I should be doing something with my writing. I recognize that I don’t have to time for writing a book is also an excuse. Really, what has happened here, is that I have not prioritized my writing. I have placed all other activities above my writing.

Saturday afternoon, Michael returned home from a shopping outing with the Cabbage. She’s turning ten next week and Michael got her a phone for her birthday. Don’t even. The phone is necessary for some independence. She currently only has phone numbers, no apps or social media, on this phone. After they got the phone, the two of them went over to Five Below because she loves all the crap you can buy in that place. Michael nabbed me a new journal. It’s one of those writing prompt journals where you are given a few sentences and then you complete the story. I thanked him and then wedged the journal into a group of other journals/notebooks on my desk. That is when I noticed the title of the journal, boldly written on the spine: Complete the Story. The title of that journal knows things. I have probably half a dozen incomplete stories sitting in a Google drive folder right now.

Maybe this a nudge for me to change some priorities and complete a story.

THE KING OF PENTACLES, THE EIGHT OF RODS AND A REVERSE EIGHT OF PENTACLES

Carol raced through the airport, her small carry-on rolling behind her with it’s wheels rattling. She arrived at the gate of her connecting flight just as the words “cancelled” flashed up onto the over head board. Carol, panting and out of breath, placed her hand on her hip and bent over slightly to catch her breath. “Fuck.” she swore on a exhale. She pulled her phone from her bag and checked the flight status app. Nothing until tomorrow morning. Carol was stuck in Detroit. The earliest flight available was a 6:15 AM flight. Carol stepped up to the counter to make sure she would be able to get on that flight. A man in a business suit stepped up next to her at the counter and Carol gave him a side eye. “I think the line starts behind me sir. Not next to me.” Carol said as the man’s elbow bumped her shoulder. “Oh sorry…I didn’t see you standing there.” The man stepped back as one of the flight attendants stepped up to the counter. Carol looked at the woman’s tired face and her name tag. “Candice, it looks like you’ve had a rough day too. I know this sucks for you.” Carol put on a smile and tried her best to look sympathetic. Candice nodded wearily and asked how she could help. “Is there any way I could get a boarding pass for that 6:15 morning flight to New York?” Candice typed on the keyboard in front of her and shook her head. “The earliest I can guarantee you is 8:45 AM.” Carol nodded and replied “Put me on it!” Candice typed a bit more and printed out a boarding pass. “Thank you soooo much.” Carol said as she took the boarding pass being handed to her. She gathered her things and turned away from the counter. Then she started searching for a hotel room and scored a suit at closest Marriot with points from her travel card.

As Carol made her way to the hotel shuttles, she felt a little despondent at spending another night alone in a dreary hotel room. She paused at a take-and-go kiosk and pondered the questionable salads and sandwiches. Then she shook her head and decided to treat herself at the hotel and order room service. The hotel shuttle was waiting for her when she stepped out of the airport. Carol hopped on, dragging her carry-on bag and sat quietly as the shuttle made it’s short drive to the hotel. At check in, Carol ordered a salmon burger, fries and some tonic to be delivered to her room. She had two airplane bottles of gin in her purse. She opened the door to her suit and kicked off her heels as she walked into the room and then face planted onto the bed. Eventually she rolled over and pulled herself up to a seated position. She pulled her laptop from her bag and connected to the hotel WiFi. Carol had already filed her report for the consultation she had done for UWM, so she opened a browser window to scroll through beach properties. This was becoming Carol’s new favorite pastime. She found that she could spend hours looking at various condos and bungalows for sale in places like Hawaii and Florida. Carol knew that this new obsession was a sign that she was burnt out and tired of this hectic life that consisted of airports and hotels.

A knock at the door signal the arrival of the room service she had ordered at check-in. She got up and answered the door. Carol let the attendant into the suit and managed some small talk as the young man rolled in her dinner tray. She tipped him and then shut the door behind him. Carol rummaged in her bag and pulled out one of her little gin bottles and made herself a gin and tonic before tucking into her meal. She scrolled through house listing while she ate until she came across a cute little bungalow on the island of Maui. It was not directly on the beach, but nestled back into the jungle across the road from the beach. Three bedroom, two bath, with a carport. Carol scrolled through the images for the listing. The interior looked fairly new and in good shape, but the front porch and back patio were the things that peaked her interest the most. Carol could picture herself sitting on that front porch with her morning cup of coffee. She could see herself puttering around in the gardens around that back patio.

Carol wanted this house.

Carol opened a second tab in the browser window and logged into her bank account. She looked at the balance in her savings and then she looked at the purchase price of the house. She could do this. She could buy this house easily. The next question was if she bought this house, what would she do about a job? She had a sizable nest egg, but she wasn’t any where near retirement. She would have to get a job. Carol thought about this as she munched on a french fry. This job of her’s could be done remotely. Maybe not with the current company she worked for, but she could freelance. Carol took a drink of her gin and tonic and then clicked on the link to contact the realtor selling the property. Then she started making new plans that did not include being stuck in a airpot hotel in Detroit.

THE KNIGHT OF CUPS, THE KNIGHT OF SWORDS AND THE FIVE OF PENTACLES, ALL UPSIDE DOWN

Well... what to write about this...

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Vivian laid the cards out for her paying tourist and grimaced. Even the most beginner of Tarot Card readers knew that cards were placed down on the table the way they were drawn. If the card facing the reader was upside down, that card stayed upside down. Usually the upside down definition was the opposite of the right side up definition and it usually wasn’t good. Vivian’s tourist had laid down the Knight of Cups, the Knight of Swords and the Five of Pentacles all upside down. Vivian looked at her tourist. She was a well dressed middle aged woman, Gucci sunglasses were perched on top of her perfectly coifed head. Her clothes looked expensive and she had several shopping bags arranged around her. What tipped her off as a tourist was her husband standing just behind the woman, looking bored while scrolling through who knows what on his phone. The husband looked expensive too, but he also sported a very expensive camera that hung on a leather strap around his neck. The two of them were most definitely tourists.

Rich tourists.

Of all the kinds of people to sit down at Vivian’s table in Jackson Square Park, rich tourists were the worst. They always expected more than a simple reading. They wanted a show, a grand display of the cards and those cards all better be the best cards one could pull from the pile. Their fortune telling and future was to be perfect, filled with only the very good. And they never tipped. Never. “Oh! Smile for the camera, Sweetie!” Vivian looked up to see that the woman was in the process of taking a selfie that included Vivian. Vivian half smiled as the woman pressed the button, taking the picture. “Getting my cards read in Jackson Square, y’all!” The woman spoke as she typed with her perfectly manicured hands. The woman looked at Vivian and said “Sorry about that but I just had to Insta this!” Vivian was pretty sure this woman ended every sentence in an exclamation point. Vivian smiled politely and returned her focus to the cards, contemplating her reading.

“What do you think? I mean, they look like pretty great cards. Two knights! And that woman cradling the wounded man. That has to be me. I am so nurturing. Isn’t that right Charles? I give money to all of the animal rescue groups. Right Charles?” The husband, Charles, mumbled something in agreement while he continued to stare at his phone. Again, Vivian smiled politely as she nodded her head. This was the part Vivian did not like about reading the Tarot to tourists. There was always the question of when to tell the patron the truth or flat out lie. Vivian looked at the woman again, really studying her. The woman seemed nice enough. Just because she was rich and most likely clueless didn’t mean she was a bad person. The sad truth was that these were not good cards, but did the woman really need to know that? Vivian had to decide if she should tell the woman that her husband was most likely cheating on her and all of those expensive purchases were leading them both into financial ruin and that her extravagance was going to bring chaos into her life. Or, thought Vivian, she could spin a false tale where the woman and her husband had the strongest of relationships and that only good things were ahead for them. That would be the nice thing to do and who knows? Maybe this woman would actually tip her.

“How long is this going to take, Claire? I don’t want to wait around all day for you to hear some mumbo jumbo crap. You’ve already taken your selfie. Let’s just go.” said an impatient Charles, not even taking his eyes from the screen on his phone.

Vivian decided to tell Claire the truth.

THE TWO OF CUPS, A REVERSE FOUR OF RODS, AND THE QUEEN OF PENTACLES

Today's writing prompt

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Every Wednesday morning I shuffle the deck of Tarot cards. This Wednesday morning is no different. I pull the deck of cards from my desk drawer and start shuffling. The cards are still fairly new, or at least newish. I’ve had them for over a year before I started actually playing around with them. I had a thought once that it would be fun to tell outrageous fortunes to people. That thought didn’t last long. After reading through all of the various cards and descriptions, I decided that I didn’t have enough room inside this brain to remember them all. I would always be relying on the card description pamphlet that is tucked inside the box with the cards. The deck of Tarot cards got tossed into my desk drawer until recently. The cards are stiff as I flip them through their shuffle, not bendy enough for any fancy card shuffle tricks.

I draw the top three cards, placing them down one by one. In the weeks that I have been doing this, the cards have been an eerie reflection of the times. Plague and destruction. I stare at them and I am surprised that I can thoroughly shuffle the deck of cards and still manage to draw three cards that speak a bit of truth. I stare at them and contemplate how I’m going to spin them into a short story of fiction. I am not a believer. I sit on a fence of wanting to believe, but my Vulcan personality keeps me from jumping over that fence. Chris was a believer in the unexplainable, always half jokingly and half not on the hunt for aliens, ghosts, and Bigfoot. His enthusiasm was contagious and he could often get me to briefly hang out on the believer side of that fence. I was always the skeptic. It is one of the things that made us the Two of Cups. We were a mix of art and science, an epitome of our liberal arts education. Every Sherlock needs his Watson, Wallace needs his Gromit, Don Quixoti needs his Sancho Ponza, and Kirk needs his Spock. I may have been the voice of reason in many of Chris’s schemes, but I ended up going along with them any way. Because even the most ridiculous ideas where entertaining. Chris’s death is the reverse Four of Rods. It was not an end to a relationship of trials and disappointment. It was an end to his trials and disappointment.

My name is Cindy and I am the Queen of Pentacles, maybe not highly intelligent, but somewhat intelligent. I consider myself to be ordered and efficient. I like to think I am generous. I once had the Two of Cups, a great love and friendship based on respect. The cards have circled back around and I now find myself with another Two of Cups. This set of cups is different. Now I am the one with the schemes. Michael has become more of the sidekick to my shenanigans. Not necessarily the voice of reason, but definitely the one that goes along with my crazy ideas. He is harder to convince for the go along than I was. Michael is more skeptic, but he eventually comes around. I am currently stuck on the reverse of The Four of Rods, waiting for the end of this particular trial of working from home. That card should just be implied with every reading. There is always a new set of trials and disappointments. Trials end and new ones pop up to take the place of the old.

This set of cards could be fiction. I could write a story of a smart woman and her dog. I could twist them into a tale of young love. I knew a woman who refused to marry her love until he paid off all of his debt. I could flip that story into fiction. Sometimes it is just best to tell the story as you see it and today, I saw more truth than any fiction I could conjure up. I decided to hang out on the believer side of that fence. Briefly. Then again, my Vulcan personality is fully aware that we interpret the cards as we want to see them.

THE NINE OF CUPS, THE TWO OF CUPS AND AN UPSIDE DOWN ACE OF RODS

Tarot fiction today

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Andrea ran her sleeve under her drippy nose and sniffled as she poured the last of the wine from her second bottle into her wine glass. She plopped back onto her couch and blearily flipped through her photos on her phone. “Delete, delete, delete. F you delete.” Andrea slurred as she tapped each photo of Jason mugging for the camera, selfies of the two of them kissing at sunset, dancing at Freddy and Alex’s wedding. They were all lies and she wanted to erase every trace of Jason from her life. “Meow.” Andrea turned her head to see Felix sitting on the arm of the couch. The room spun a bit as she tried to focus her gaze. “Oh, Felix. You knew Jason was rotten on the inside the whole time. You never liked him from the start.” Which was true. Felix would hiss at Jason and then run from whatever room Jason was occupying. She reached over and scratched her orange tabby behind the ears.

Andrea couldn’t figure out how it had all been so good and was now so so bad. She had been so sure that Jason was the one, that they were meant to spend the rest of their lives together. Andrea had been duped and she was angry at herself for falling for the idea that this could be her happily ever after. She should have known from the beginning that Jason was too good to be true. He’d greeted her with a bouquet of spring flowers outside the restaurant where they had agreed to meet after a brief conversation through the online dating app. Andrea had been surprised and flattered at his thoughtfulness. She had been on a few of these online dates already. The first date was never really a ‘date’ as much as it was a meet-n-greet. This was the date where you decided if you wanted to go on a real date together. Andrea had expected to wait at the bar for Jason to show up half an hour late. Then they would have two drinks where she would pay for her’s and maybe even his because of some made up wallet fiasco. They would stand outside the bar and agree to do this again or to go to dinner and a movie. Then Andrea would head back to her cat, Felix, and delete the number from her phone.

This first date with Jason was not at all like those other dates. He had arrived before her and had flowers. When Andrea suggested they just have a drink at the bar, Jason said “Oh…I’ve already gotten us a table. I thought we could eat and linger over our food and wine.” Andrea shrugged and agreed. She had even let him pull the chair out for her and scoot her back in. They ended up sitting for what seemed like hours, taking turns telling life stories and getting to know each other. Afterward, Jason had walked Andrea back to her apartment. They stood outside on the stoop and instead of just saying that they’d like to do this again sometime, Jason suggested they both pull up their calendars and set a time for the following Friday. As the week passed, Andrea started to worry that Jason wouldn’t show, but was leery of sending any kind of text. She didn’t want to come across as too needy or insecure, but Jason buzzed her apartment four minutes before their agreed time. He took Andrea to a concert at the park where they sat on a blanket with a picnic. When the concert ended, they remained on that blanket talking until three in the morning.

Things moved in a whirlwind fashion after that. The two of them seemed inseparable. Jason spent more and more time at Andrea’s apartment. They went to company outings together, introduced each other to friends and family. There were vacations and camping trips. There were minor quarrels with great make-up sex. They talked about moving into together or buying house together. They talked about a wedding on a beach. Andrea was in love and she had thought the feelings were mutual, but it turned out that she was wrong. Andrea was at the Farmer’s Market, picking out veggies for a special dinner. Her plan was to surprise Jason with a nice meal. She was just turning from one vendor when she saw him. Andrea paused to be sure, but it was clearly him. With his arm around the waste of a pretty petite blond woman. Andrea felt her heart leap to her throat as she watched him laugh at something the woman said and then lean down and kiss the woman on the lips. Andrea stepped back between two stalls, her heartbeat racing. Then she turned and fled the market.

Andrea didn’t remember how she had gotten home. Her brain just kept replaying the scene over and over. Maybe she had been wrong about what she had seen. Maybe that really wasn’t Jason. Andrea had dug her phone out of her bag and sent him a text to remind him of their dinner plans. Jason responded with a thumbs up emoji. Emojis were not really his thing, but Andrea shrugged this off and went inside to get dinner started. By the time Jason arrived, she had calmed herself with a few glasses of wine. She kissed him at the door and then led him to the kitchen. She laughed as she poured Jason a glass and handed it to him. “The funniest thing happened today at the Farmer’s Market. I could have sworn that I saw you there. The man looked just like you, except he was kissing some blond woman.” Andrea lifted a pot lid and stirred the sauce she had simmering on the stove while eyeing Jason from the corner of her eye. Jason took a long sip from his wine glass and then cleared his throat.

“Well…the thing is…” and then Jason started telling Andrea everything. He had met Janet around the same time he had met Andrea. Jason had been seeing both of them during these last six months. “I just can’t decide. You both are so great and I just don’t know what to do.” Andrea calmly set her now empty glass down on the kitchen counter, looked Jason squarely in the eye and said “Let me help you decide.” Then she showed him out of her apartment. Andrea leaned against the door and sobbed. Felix sat down beside her and started cleaning his face with his paws. Andrea got up from the floor, found a kleenex and blew her nose. Then she went to the kitchen and threw the dinner she had made into the trash. She grabbed a second bottle of wine and her glass and then wandered into her living room. Andrea’s phone was sitting on the coffee table. She could see text after text flashing across her screen. All from Jason. She ignored them and proceeded to get stupid drunk and talk to her cat.

Andrea continued to scratch Felix behind the ears. “Felix, you’re the only man I need.” Then she passed out, fully dressed, on her couch.

WRITE WRITING WRITTEN WROTE

Seedy

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A couple of weeks back, after I did an illegal U-turn to take a picture of someone’s thirtieth birthday balloons, I had an uncontrollable urge to write about it. I had already written my Thankful Friday entry and so I just set the thought aside for another time. Except words and phrases started piling up in my brain. I started to get twitchy and thought about writing some things down on napkins. We were at the Cabbage’s soccer game, no where near my computer. I finally had to just write it all out in the Notes app on my phone until I could get to my computer. Some of you might be thinking “isn’t that what the Notes app is for?” Sure…on your phone, if that is how you wish to use it. I use that app for lists, not for typing out whole paragraphs with my thumbs.

Desperate times. Desperate measures.

The urge to write those words was intense. It was something I hadn’t felt in some time. For a while now, keeping this blog going has been work. I’ve written and deleted content because it bores me or sounds like whining or doesn’t really tell a story. There are many days where I think that maybe I just won’t post anything this week, but that thought turns into ‘well, if I don’t post anything this week, will I want to post anything next week?’ Before I know it I will have completely dropped the habit of writing anything. I have no delusions of blogger fame. I never look at the analytics section for this blog to see how many people have read what entry. This place will always be a space for me to vomit out the words and phrases that clog up my brain. Sometimes it looks and smells like rainbow cotton-candy vomit and sometimes it looks and smells like my dog’s vomit. Michael and I are doing intermittent fasting right now. I’m using vomit for my analogy to take my mind off of food.

Also, I’m feeling slightly loopy.

I’ve been in a writing slump for a bit, but things have shifted and now I find myself wanting to be here to spill my guts. I also find myself wanting to write things not for here. On one of my Saturday morning Fortune Cookie times, I realized that what I have managed to do is to almost fill up a journal with beginnings of stories. The last one I did I ended up thinking about for the rest of the day. It seemed like something I could really flesh out and turn into something; maybe not something great, but something entertainingly good. I also keep trying to figure out how to tell my story. I’ve started so many different versions and approaches and all of them end up going no where. Yet another approach to my story has started to form in my head and I think it’s a good one. At least this approach is something I want to give some time to and see where it leads.

There is always some sort of ebb and flow to all of my creative endeavors. It seems that my flow and creative desires spring out of the dirt with the tulips. I need sunshine, warmth and the right amount of water. I’m like a seed. Wait. I’m like multiple seeds. I’m like a whole freakin’ garden. Right now, I’m sprouting seeds for a Spring harvest of words.

SHOCK THERAPY

With tiny pies as witnesses, I ran out space in the middle of a sentence.

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I was rerouting a plug to a new power strip. For some reason I can’t remember now, I had to remove the plug from the power strip and reset it in another position. My fingers slipped down to the metal prongs of the plug as I pulled it loose and then I felt my fingers tingle and painful zap at the back of my neck that just happened to be touching the metal table I had crawled under to do all of this rerouting. I immediately let go of every thing as I screamed more in fright than in pain. Though hours later I could still feel a slight metallic warmth on the back of my neck and my fingers had a mildly buzzy feel to them.

I can’t remember the last time I accidentally (or on purpose) electrocuted myself. In grad school, I was alone in the lab one day. My research centered around scanning bacteria with different excitation wavelengths and collecting all the emission wavelengths for each of the excitation wavelengths. The idea was that each bacterial species had it’s own auto-fluorescent map, like E.coli’s auto-fluorescent map was unique and different from Salmonella. My research advisor had built this monster of a spectrophotometer for us to take our measurements on and something was always going wrong with it. This particular day, I turned the system on but nothing happened. I started checking all of the cords and plugs. When I got to the power cord for the laser line, the cord fell off from the metal attachment into my hand. I was holding a live wire. I guess I was grounded well enough because I did not get a shock. I stood there for what felt like minutes staring at the sparking electric current coming off the end of the wire and then I shoved it back as hard as I could into the metal attachment. There was a loud ‘POP!’ but then everything worked fine and I went ahead and collected my data.

I never told a soul about that cord. Not even my research advisor, who turned out to be a bit difficult and the only one on my thesis committee to not read my thesis. Later, he would be impossible to track down to discuss revisions. Then he’d tell me that it was the worst thing he’d ever read. I paid for another semester of graduate school to take ‘thesis hours’ so I could re-write my thesis and submit it for graduation. I did a complete re-write of my thesis and sent it to him. Months went by and I never heard back from him. Finally, Chris camped outside of the man’s office for three hours with my thesis and the sign-off papers. When my research advisor was confronted with Chris standing in front of his door, he just took out a pen and signed the papers. To this day, I have no idea if he ever read my thesis. My research advisor dropped dead of a heart attack maybe three years later. By this time, I was in Margaret’s lab and I had gained back some of the confidence my research advisor had stripped from me. When I was approached by his current graduate student to read over a paper that included some of my work to be submitted for publishing, I had no qualms in telling the truth. The paper had been written in the wrong style for journal publication and I told the graduate student that if he wanted it to be publish, he would have to re-write it. The graduate student did not quit disagree with me, but he said that this was how our research advisor had written it and that he wanted to honor his memory by keeping it the way it was.

That paper was never published.

Actually, none of the research that I did in graduate school was ever published. The whole experience ruined me for scientific writing. Margaret would come to me and ask me to write up some methods for whatever current paper she was writing up and I would stare at a blank word document for half the day before typing out three sentences and handing them over to Margaret. She’d send them back and I’d write three more. She’d keep sending things back until I’d completed a full paragraph of methods. I’m sure she must have felt like she was pulling teeth from me.

This is the worst thing I’ve ever read.

Those words have never left me. When ever I have to type up methods or help write an abstract for a paper, those are the words that come to me first before I can write anything down. Some times they would even pop up before I could write anything here. Those words became lead weights on the ends of my fingers and let me believe that I could not write. Not science, not fiction, not anything. Turayis asked me if I was planning on participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I hadn’t really thought about it until she asked and I’m still not sure I have the energy for it. I’m thinking about it. I might write something that is not the best thing you’ve ever read, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing you’ve ever read. It takes time to stop believing in things that just are not true.

Sometimes it just takes some mild electrocution.

DNA

Science

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There are somewhere around thirty seven trillion cells that make up the human body. Of this trillion of cells there are about 200 different types of cells ranging from 10 -100um (micrometers). Each cell contains a nucleus full of DNA. If you take this DNA and stretch it out, it is about two meters long. That’s about six and half feet. I am five feet, seven inches tall. I am a little bit shorter than a length of DNA. That’s to help you put all of it into perspective. All of that DNA is twisted and tied up with various proteins in order to fit inside the nucleus of a cell and yet still be assessable for genes to be read for coding by messenger RNA to make more proteins for cell function. The whole process is very complicated. That’s just normal cell function. I haven’t mentioned what has to happen during cell division.

And I find the whole process extremely fascinating.

I think what is so fascinating is this organization is an intrinsic process. This is not a learned behavior. There is no molecular sized Marie Kondo teaching each cell how to fold and compact its DNA. Cells just do it and have been for a really really super long time. Sure, there are the occasional mistakes. There are contingency plans in place for many mistakes and sometimes those mistakes are missed. Those missed mistakes can have some pretty catastrophic results, but there’s no such thing as actual perfection. I mean, there is no such thing as perfection in anything. But for the most part, cells just keep their shit organized. Considering the size and scope and importance of that, it’s pretty amazing.

I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. I have started and deleted so many posts this week. I felt the need to write something, anything, but I also felt the need to edit myself (for various reasons). Sitting down and stringing words together to tell a story should be a daily practice. It should be part of my daily routine. Cindy’s daily routine: shower, dress, make breakfast, feed the dog, zip to work, wipe down every microscope with an ethanol wipe (people are gross), walk four thousand steps to get a cup a coffee, work some more, thirty minutes of cardio, one hour of yoga, more work, zip home, feed the dog, feed the humans, watch some TV, wash face and teeth, go to bed, repeat it all again the next day. Somewhere in there I should be wedging in ‘write five hundred words’. Instead I’ve managed to put a square of time to window shopping at Anthropologie or reading shoe reviews (my toes go numb in my running shoes when I’m on the elliptical and I don’t think that’s normal).

Last Saturday morning was the first Saturday morning in ages where I was up early to get some errands accomplished before everyone in the house woke up. That means sitting down with the Fortune Cookie journal while eating a biscuit sandwich. The prompt was something about life is funny, don’t forget to laugh. I proceeded to write a descriptive scene about a group of friends huddled together as they watched the casket of their dear friend slowly lower into the ground. The whole time I was writing it, I thought “hold on…wait for it…this is going somewhere funny.” Except it never did. I ran out of room before I even came close to writing something funny. I swear I had a plan, a plan that had something to do with a case of prosecco and a limo. That could be funny right? Actually, I find a scene of a woman trying to write something funny, but writes about a funeral instead, to be pretty funny. My head may not be in the right space for writing right now.

If I could organize my thoughts as well as my cells organize it’s DNA, I’d stand a better chance at wedging in that writing time.

YAYA MAGIC PANTS

Light catchers

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We gathered at the Yokalanda Lodge and Camp for Youth. The camp is nestled in the Yokalanda Woods. Established in 1957 by Earl and Rosie Feldstein, the camp has been a summer haven to underprivileged youth from all over the country. There are twenty cabins scattered through the hills and at the center of it all is the main lodge. The lodge is the beating heart of that camp. The main open room of the lodge is where all the campers gathered for meals and inside crafts. Depending on the weather, s’mores and stories were shared around the large fireplace that sat it one end of large room. In 1965, Earl died suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart attack. Finding herself unable to manage the camp, Rosie sold the camp and property to Billy and Ayleen Hershel.

Billy and Ayleen had originally planned to turn the camp into a commune. They had invited fifteen of their closest friends to join them in communal living, raising goats and growing their own vegetables. Ten of those friends agreed. That first year started off with the worst winter the area had ever seen with record snow fall and below freezing temperatures. The goats that didn’t freeze, were taken by wild animals. The hilly landscape proved to be too rocky for planting. The ten people who had agreed to join Billy and Ayleen all agreed now that communal living was not for them. Billy and Ayleen were forced to sell out to Carry and Diane McNabb. Carry and Diane turned the camp back into a summer camp for youth. After all this time, the two women still ran the camp, though in recent times and with less funding, the camp has seen better days. To make ends meet, Carry and Diane have opened up the Yokalanda Lodge in the off seasons to various retreats. Just last month an up and coming tech company rented the retreat for a managers training session. The Pakempsey Shakespearean Company rented out the camp for a whole month while they rehearsed their summer traveling program of King Lear. This weekend the Yokalanda Lodge was hosting a small group of artists for a weekend of workshops built around unlocking creativity.

The weekend consisted of various workshops of various themes such as How to Monetize Your Art, Authenticity and Integrity in Creativity , Conquering Your Fear of Success and Telling Your Story. There were trust falls and roll playing and vision board building. But the real breakthroughs happened outside of those workshops. In the evenings, after their communal vegan dinner, the artists would break off into smaller groups gathering around campfires and on cabin porches. There was always wine and the occasional passing of joint and they told each other their deep fears and they opened their souls to each other. It was in these moments that true cathartic release occurred. Tears flowed. Realizations were made. Plans were formed. Pacts were made. Bonds were formed. By the end of the weekend, as cars were being loaded up and cabins were being swept clean, the artists of that weekend retreat found themselves each quietly trying to process their experience from the past two days. Words were barely spoken until all were loaded up and ready to head out on their separate ways. They gathered to say their goodbyes. This was the moment that proved to be the most difficult of moments. They found themselves unprepared to say their farewells. They held each other tight as tears streamed down their faces. Then they got in their cars and headed out on their separate ways, fortified with their experience of this retreat and knowing that they would always have each others love and support.

That’s probably the best way to put into words what this weekend was like for me. I spent it at the Yokalanda Lodge. I have the bug bites to prove it.

CREATIVE FARTS

Ice ice, baby

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I wrote a tiny story about a woman in a yoga class. It is a fictional story, one I wrote in the Fortune Cookie journal. The prompt had something to do with silliness and I was genuinely stuck for a good five minutes before I started writing about a woman who cracks herself up when she accidentally releases a colossal fart while in yoga class. It may or may not be based on actual events. It sounds juvenile and it is, but I couldn’t really think of anything as silly as a fart. God, I remember when Quinn was really little. We were playing in his room when he farted. I said nothing because we were at that stage of trying to teach him that passing gas was nothing. He gave me that squinty side-eye thing that he does and said “I farted.” in a tone that implied he’d done something sneaky or funny. He really just wanted a reaction. I played cool and said “yup.” and then went about my business of putting Legos together. I had to leave the room a few minutes later because I could not hold my laughter in another second. I know we’re not supposed to teach them that farts are funny, but sometimes…farts are funny.

I was a little surprised that I could write so much on this topic. The story, not the fart, wrapped around the page and my handwriting is so horrid because I kept trying to write my letters smaller and smaller in order to fit more on the page. This happens every time I start writing something in the Fortune Cookie journal. I’ve talked about that here before and so you’d think I would be used to this happening every time I open a page to a new fortune prompt. I am not. I am not ever prepared to have so much to say or make up about a fortune cookie fortune. I am not ever prepared for the story that falls out onto the paper. Nothing I write is really any good. Sometimes they sound like the kind of fairytale you makeup while trying to put a kid to bed because you couldn’t find an age appropriate book to read them for bedtime. Sometimes they have a dark and sad tone. Apparently, sometimes they’re about farting in yoga class. I just keep thinking that the actual story is not as important as the practice of writing it.

Michael mentioned recently that he thought I should write a book of fiction first before I write something of non fiction. Michael thinks I should do a lot of things. He’s got lots of opinions, most of which I just nod my head in agreement and then say in a noncommittal way that I agree. I am not ambitious or driven enough to write a book in any form right now. Honestly, I don’t think I have it in me to write more than a thousand words on one topic. I have a google drive full of starters.

Elizabeth boldly stepped into what appeared to be a living room, though it was cluttered with the most random bits of things. A gramophone sat in one corner with some sort of skirt stretched over the cone. Even more piles of books and papers. Jars of odds and ends scattered all over. Elizabeth couldn’t quite make out their contents, but one of them appeared to contain eyeballs. She stopped looking and thinking too much about it. She really needed this job. Then she saw a man sitting near the fireplace, his head tilted back and resting on the backrest, elbows resting on the armrests. His eyes were closed, so he still didn’t realize Elizabeth was in the room. She cleared her throat. His eyes snapped open and sharply focused on her. “You’re not Maggie.” He said in a very matter of fact way. Elizabeth replied “no Sir.”

I started that one the summer of 2012. I wrote 3007 words before I just stopped writing. I wrote over 6,000 words for a story that was based on a dream I’d had where I was a magician’s assistant. Every night he turned me into a tree with golden leaves that would dissolve into golden butterflies and then fly out into the audience. It was a great trick. There was an idea for a children’s book about an egg with four yolks, but the story grew to a length that was not kid appropriate. Too long for a 5 year old, too simple for a 10 year old. I didn’t know my audience. I don’t know my audience. All of the stories have one thing in common and that’s how they sit there, incomplete, waiting for more words. The ideas come to me and then flutter away like butterflies. Or attack like seasonal allergies. It’s all about whether or not you think in half full or half empty terms. At least with the Fortune Cookie journal I know there’s not going to be an ending to a story only because I don’t end up leaving any room to write one.

My creative writing is more like creative farting on a page.

WRITE TO WRITE

Portrait (salute)

5 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Portrait (salute)"

Cindy paused in her reading of an article in the New York Times entitled The Right Way to Follow Your Passion and opened the door to the wood stove supplying heat to the small cabin she was currently inhabiting. The coals were gray and when Cindy blew on them smoke and ash blew up into the stove. A few of the coals burned bright red as she blew, but most them just barely smoldered. She knew she needed to add more logs to the stove, but dreaded the trek out to the wood shed to collect the wood. Instead, she wrapped the wool blanket a little tighter around her body and snuggled down into the couch. She’d get that wood right after she finished reading about the difference between obsessive passion and harmonious passion. The differences seemed pretty clear as far as Cindy could tell. Obsessive passion leads you to do things for the accolades like more money, more trophies, more followers, more likes, just….more. Harmonious passion leads you to do things for the shear desire of doing them despite whether or not it makes you famous or rich or popular.

Cindy didn’t quite believe she did things out of obsessive passion. She generally liked taking pictures. So what if she checked all of the social media platforms constantly to see her notifications on recently ‘liked’ images. She wrote consistently on her blog because writing was therapy, though it didn’t exactly feel so therapeutic lately. Cindy felt that she didn’t have anything profound to say that didn’t seem like she was staring at her own belly button, picking out lint. Stale. That’s the word she would use to describe her writing of late. Bland and stale. She was all but writing about what she had for lunch that day and no one cares what she had for lunch. Cindy shivered despite the blanket wrapped around her body. She really should do something about getting the fire going in the wood stove. It would be dark in a few hours and the temperatures would continue to drop. Cindy knew she needed to collect enough fire wood so that she could stay comfortable through the night and not have to go back out later. She grumbled as she tossed the blanket aside and got up from the couch.

Cindy walked over to the door and put on her winter coat. She leaned back against the wall as she tugged her boots on one at a time. The problem, thought Cindy, was not her motivation for the things that she did. The problem was that she lacked passion. Her passion was like the mostly dead fire in the wood stove. It had been raging, with flames flickering hotly at some point in her life. As a teenager, she pushed programs for saving the environment and promoting safe sex with a loud voice. She made t-shirts and posters. She raised her fist in the air! Those were things that Cindy believed in sure, but she also had a fiery passionate belief that she could make the world a better place. In college, that passion shifted to keeping up with her classes and student government, but she really was more of a tag-along with the student government stuff. Cindy just wanted to be around those people and most of those people would end up being life long friends. Some of those people would influence later passions, even encourage them, but Cindy did question if she really had ever even had passions of her own or was once again tagging along on the passions of others.

Cindy stomped through the snow out to the wood shed, dragging the wood bucket behind her. The wind blew the hood of her coat back and her ears froze immediately. Her teeth chattered and she shook her head at her impulsive getaway. Cindy hated the cold and the snow, yet she’d booked herself into a remote cabin in the woods during winter. She should have booked herself into a remote yurt on a beach in Costa Rica. Next time she’d ignore price tags and splurge on the yurt and the beach. Cindy reached the wood shed and yanked the door open. Then she started to load up the wood carrier with logs. She knew not to over fill the bucket so that she could not drag it back to the cabin, but she also wanted to be sure to collect enough logs so that she would not have to stomp her way back out here again. Cindy tossed in three more logs and then tugged on the bucket. It slid towards her and she moved her mouth to the side in contemplation. “Two more logs.” She said out loud to the trees and whatever woodland creature was out in this horrid weather and tossed in two more logs. The bucket was too heavy, but Cindy put all of her weight into it and, struggling, pulled the bucket back across the yard to the cabin.

Cindy opened the cabin door and then grunted as she dragged the bucket up over the lip of the door frame and inside. She stomped the snow from her boots, but left her coat on as she started to put some logs into the wood stove. Passions waned, Cindy thought as she layered the logs in square pattern with what remained of the hot coals in the center of the logs. Passions waned and changed with age and that’s just what happened to her. Granted, Cindy had a strong feeling that most of that passion had faded out after certain life events that she was tired of dwelling on. She used the metal poker to shove the logs together to enclose the hot coals and then started to crumple up newspaper to cram into the spaces between the logs. It didn’t take long for Cindy’s fire to roar back to life. Satisfied, she stood and removed her coat. She picked up the paper and read “find your passion”. Easier said than done. Then Cindy read “Your passion should not come from the outside. It should come from within.” Now, if Cindy could only find that inner passion, she’d be all set.

Cindy settled herself back into her space on the couch. She set the New York Times aside in favor of the book she had brought along with her. The room was starting to warm up from the fire that was now crackling away in the wood stove. If anything, Cindy did know how to build a good fire.