And Then Weasels Invaded Via The Bathroom Window

Christmas is coming up--it's this Thursday. (not panicking. Wrapping. Really.) What happened to November?

I seem to remember lots and lots of text scrolling across pages and pages of a Word document. There may have been plot involved. I'm pretty sure the plot was mixed in with the text, although I can't swear to that, now. All of that text has been safely extracted and placed in a black binder. It whines at me occasionally from the chair that has become an extension of my desk and which I am currently using as a footrest so that I can type on my lap rather than on the desk. This way, I can keep my eyes on the stacks of drafts and half-read books that are becoming restive in their stacks.

Paper taming takes patience (and a tolerance for sliced fingers) but I believe in keeping my drafts in a half-wild state, gnawing at my ankles while I draft blog posts.

Consequent to Nano devouring my November like a wild coyote, there are lots of incidental holiday tasks that have yet to be completed. Shopping. Wrapping. Cooking. At least the Texas weather and I are on the same last minute schedule. Today was the first day in weeks that it was cool enough to wear jeans and a sweater as we were running around. Yesterday it rained from before dawn to early afternoon and it's still grey. If I was capable of making cocoa on the stove, I would be having cocoa while making excuses for not having blogged or done much of anything in weeks. Instead, I am enjoying a Platonic cocoa in my imagination. With whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. Yum. Fun fact--we discovered over Thanksgiving that if you use a microplane zester to grate an entire bar of chocolate for pie, the fine chocolate shavings will become statically charged and stick to your skin and float over the pan as you are melting them. Chocowizard pie!!

And the weasels? Once they invaded, we stuffed them in Santa hats and incorporated them in the décor because Nano teaches us to use whatever comes up as part of the art itself...

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Interjection!

Today's post suffers from a distinct lack of inspiration. With NaNoWriMo coming up, I'm trying to organize my thoughts--which characters do I want to spend November obsessing about? Which projects can I finish before November?

Right now, I think NaNo will belong to Cupid. Cupid the maniacal, power-hungry, multi-chromatic winged bringing of insanity Spenser introduced me to in The Faerie Queene. Cupid who would like to rule Olympus, perhaps who has waited in the shadows until he's the only one left still be celebrated...every Valentine's Day getting a sugary jolt of power, like a crazy soda burst of energy.

Meanwhile, there are a few additional drafts that need work. A short story that needs expanding into a short YA novella--I had been struggling for a while to make Bastian Creek into a good magical realist setting and between the spiders, the Arcade, and the trees vying for control, I think it's finally there. Almost.

I had always wanted Bastian Creek to become the setting for several of my stories and yet I find that finishing this story to some extent drains some of the impetus away from it. I'm not sure how writers manage with serials.

Next week, Halloween posts!!

Deep & restful reading!

Links

(image courtesy of Magpie Tales)

I planned the shot like a billiard run
Where a flash of white finds each side.
We thought it just another angle.
Then the shards of myself were struck
By light itself, unfelt, into the silver.
In a small bathroom, I became shards
Sealing myself in without privacy
As we do now, in bathrooms or at table;
Lives bright as curated toy shelves.
I am easy to see, skim, select, apprehend,
Banked through random links to you.

Untitled

(Image courtesy Magpie Tales)


Wind comes like the heat, drawing the tide
Beating against her chest. Hollow land breathes,
Invisible air tangible as a touch on her neck.
She runs.

The spin beneath her feet drives her
Like the chaff of clouds racing above.
It tangles the winds; it jumbles thought.
It shoves.

Every sigh speeds its roll. Tumbling on
Until the drover and the driven, blind,
Run as if the rocky land chased them.
It does.

The wind speeds it behind her. Wire
Nets the empty land, catches her up
Like a dolphin in the sea that came
Before.

Run! Until it plucks the skin from your
Hands, the cotton from your back, the
Blood from beneath your flesh. And, then.
Then, run.

Working the Ghost Town

They built it from below, we watched.
They bricked the entrance red, a throat groaning
Below their hill that swelled among the trunks.
Their offices grew there, fading, a ghost town
From the very beginning. Someone got a deal
On someone else’s old town, used buildings.
An old Texas outpost, ahistorical, unremembered.
They bought the roofs and walls and stilts,
Painted the doors and boards and screens
Hung the signs warning of armed fairies
Floating up from the darkness.

We answered the ads, some of us ate
Cookies they’d left out, bread filled with fruit
None of us had tasted before. Baked afternoons lay
Stale across the couches stuffed with horse hair.
Bitter coffee hints kept us on edge, drowsing
Beneath pictures that creep above our hair,
Colors flickering. Have another bite, drink
This sweet darkness we’ve brewed just
Behind the door.

They say horses are turned loose at night,
Riderless hooves burning tracks around town.
We don't see them, although we sit on their hair
Or shiver as if they whicker beneath our soles.
No one steals our parking spaces; our cars
Slide through the wood, turn by the thick trunk
And fill the spoke. Orange leaves fall; frames rust,
Tires pop. Yellow leaves pile around us.
We’re paid in fairy gold, but we shed it all
When we leave, just before the night falls
Ahead of the horses.

Image courtesy of Magpie Tales.

High and Low

Lift your foot, drag the world away; break it into echoes
Trembling away from your boots.
If you stand, that vision forms again, the sky and you
Hanging from your ankles.

March away, pull the dreams thick and drowned
Shivering in your wake.
Drop a boot into your tides; your pull, your drag
Pressing our steps.

Petals on the Tracks

The following is the prompt for the 9/17/2014 WordCrafters meeting and my flash fiction response.

“You’d think she’d just let it go. Maybe write a tell-all about making mac-n-cheese dinners for her husband the villain or whatever.” Bethany stepped onto the railroad tracks, bent over, and picked up one of the daisies lying on the tie. The hot afternoon seemed to drag on her as she lifted herself upright.

Margo kept well away from the tracks, left hip cocked to one side and arms crossed. She shifted to rub her ankles together, glancing back at the tall grass they’d just walked through. Something whined and a fleet of heavy insects lifted up above the seedheads. Even in this light, with the sun catching Bethany’s hair, she was sure she was the blonder of the two. She was the only one dressed as if she preferred highways to railways, in the shorts and tank top from cheer practice. “They met at the tracks, Beth. Like, she finds it romantic?” Margo tried the other hip, canting her head for balance.

“Dinah, Margo. When we’re not at home, it’s Dinah.”

“She has daisies and you have a nickname. What’s the difference?” Margo watched Bethany twirl the flower, her dress hanging in a silent bell shape around her ankles. Margo sighed at the lack of a breeze.

Bethany glanced around, but didn’t step off the tracks. She twirled the daisy for a minute and then tucked it behind her ear. “The difference is that that’s my name. My dad gave me that name. He tied her to the tracks like some mustache-twirler from an old cartoon.”

“He let her go.” Margo stepped back until she could feel the weeds at the back of her calves. Bethany…Dinah…looked like something from an old catalog herself. “Why do you let her make you wear that?”

“He would have liked you. Your chem and biochem and spending skip day hiding in the high school.” Bethany sighed and shrugged. “If she can’t redeem him, at least she’s got me.” Bethany pressed her palms against the dress. “Every day.”

Sweat beaded beneath their hair. The Texas heat shimmered between them. Margo felt every inch of the exposed skin on her legs and arms and neck, as if the field were looking at her. Bethany just kept her eyes above Margo’s shoulder. “You want to go get a soda, cruise by the library?” Bethany’s mom would ask where they’d been.

“Do you think madness is like spandex of the mind?” Bethany asked. A whistle shrieked in the distance. Fear, Margo thought, was pretty much as a good a cool gel pack. “Wake up so early in the morn…can’t hear the whistle calling…” Bethany crooned to herself. Then she stomped on the daisies, her laughter shrieking a reply to the whistle. “Sure, let’s get a soda. Tell me again how we’ll find him, once we get to the city.”