Angst and Good Taste

Last Friday, I asked my husband to read a draft, which turned into a massive argument regarding the epithet "angsty" and whether it's possible to critique fiction in a genre you neither respect nor care for. It was a fun discussion.

--digression: Varda just popped up on the chair to give me a kiss on the forehead. Trying to determine if she's trying to play or barf up the twigs she ate earlier.--

Okay, angst. Not sure why that particular word lodged in my consciousness and is functioning like a Pong paddle (ancient reference alert) in blocking revisions. To me, "angst" is what I'm supposed to grow out of in my writing, it's self-aggrandizing melodrama. If my characters are angsty, they are annoying. If my plots are angsty, they substitute fake emotion for authentic.

When the backpedalling began (isn't lit fic basically all angst?), I was already re-evaluating what I was trying to accomplish. It seems sometimes that I am like the bug in the Phantom Tollboth who swam through the Sea of Knowledge without taking on a single drop. Critiques are difficult to take on and I'm not great at it. Not unlike this post, I'm tempted at times to deconstruct the critique while taking all the negativity on board.

I didn't want to hear the word or see the broad outlines of how I construct a story. I tend to start with an image and emotional impulse rather than a plot, a distinct voice, or a miniature movie. My characters rarely begin life in motion. Perhaps I'm just as stuck as they are?

Sunday in the Park, No George, Several Tiny Dragons

After spending yesterday working in the backyard beds, I was eager to visit a more complete garden and so headed to Mercer first thing this morning. In addition to flowers and quiet and squirrels, the arboretum is where I get a chance to poke around in my "story brain" without feeling pressure to commit perfection to paper; it is a place where writing and play and make-believe are kissing cousins.

This began earlier than usual this morning, with a beige bra strewn in the middle of one of the roads that curve through the neighborhood and a great black dog with a feathered coat and an odd bend to the back legs--skinwalker out for a morning jog? With her family, perhaps...there was a man jogging with a stroller just around the next corner. Urban fantasy isn't really my genre, but the imagination takes what it can from the morning, stealing not just scenes but, if one is lucky, the pull of the wind and the sense that you are in the same vigorous current that pushes the clouds, the imperative motion of spring

The arboretum itself more high fantasy. As frustrated as I get with my writing, there are always new nuances hiding in the delphiniums and poppies and azaleas, in the lizards rustling beneath the greenery, in my trying to walk silently so as not to scare the frogs until they've been thoroughly photographed, and in my own inevitable paranoia about spiderwebs in my hair, frog squeaks as they leap underwater, and deer. (Which I love to see from a car window or behind a fence but not perked and staring on the same path on which I'm walking.) Fear and the wonder are fairy tale elements well mined from the morning.

I was taking pics of amaryllis when I saw with pollen sacs the color of Cheetos trying for another few grains from a highrise stalk of yellow flowers. In another section of the garden a specimen yaupon tree leaned toward the path, trunk the color of old, smooth concrete. The way the trunk flattened in the middle and swelled at each side as it bent--two trunks that had merged, maybe--reminded me of the curbs I used to take on my bike when I was younger. There is a Yaupon Street in the town where I grew up. The bee and the bicycle are going in different directions, feeding divergent storylines.

There are so many beginnings that exist in the arboretum and I am sometimes surprised to find how much of it has colonized my writing. Then again, it is a pleasant place to wander.

Fairy Season

Spring has overtaken the garden while I have been clinging to my desk, fighting whatever fear or anger buffets me via the Internet. Creeping out from under last year's pots are this year's pansies, which are also peering up from the I repaired crack in the patio, carelessly broken and patched by the cheap builder from whom we purchased the house. Their slipshoddery has worn into a narrow rivulet of purple and yellow faces and one vine that is reaching up for the table like a toddler morning glory determined to ramble like it's mother through any patio fixture it can reach.

Instead of putting out needing plants, i've been discovering volunteer snapdragons hiding under the bushes in the front yard. Some of the stems grew along the ground until a thumb-stalk of pink flowers bloomed. When I knelt down for a closer look, the foot tall stalk blooming beneath the dark branches of a nearby bush was revealed. A dragon in its lair, for all the sugary pink.

This morning, the new crop of morning glories, the first to have reseeded, are blooming in among last year's dead zinnia stalks. We've had a cathedral of white morning glories and towers tufted with pink; however, each of these gave us a season and withered without remembering itself among the beds and lawn the way the purple has done this year.

It is this insistence on the part of the pink and purple remnants of yesterday's beds to slip into the rest of the yard and peer out from cover and patio that chimes with fairy footstep sneaking away from the devastation the winter and I have made of the beds.

Awake

Since the clouds are strewn silver and white from horizon to horizon, today's arboretum walk is apparently about flight--the shift of bird sillouhettes from pine to pine in the drought-thinned thicket, the drift of seeds delicate with fine, false feathers, and the shift of thought from drowsy to reminiscent to remorseful. Any alliterative embellishments are unfortunate leftovers from last night's Gloom, a card game of morbid mayhem that allows one to indulge one's Gorey/PBS Mystery dark side upon a tableful of one's friends. Perhaps that should have made this morning a grey whisper of crows; however, it is not.

Grey taffeta mockingbirds with black and white hems are slipping through the undergrowth and a fidget of tiny brown birds are zipping away from the azalea hill into the trees on the creek bank as I walk through a slow rainfall. Wondering if these large palm fronds would be effective umbrellas, I step under one and look up. Not making it underneath the tight base of the frond, I get a raindrop in the eye. The sharp fringes are not so much effective.

Following the palms through to the prehistoric section, I see that more cycads, etc. are being planted. This means that the frog pond area is under construction and I'm detoured over to the fairy tale pond, where I find a nice, large frog sitting with his face above the water as the rain continues to ring the water like a visible tone from an invisible bell. At the edge, someone has been cleaning up the lower branches of a tree that I don't recognize, save for the Froudian baby goblin frowning from just above the mulch.

The contrast of the flying birds and the falling rain runs like a bar of music through me and I find myself in a very Mumford & Sons mood as the rain drops strike faster and the birds call ever louder. A jangle of grey and a glissando of water and the begging of my own brain to be braver and hardier and less distracted push me to wake up, although I don't feel--standing in the park, in the daylight, shoes on my feet--as if I've been sleeping.

Mercer by Morning

It's not my hundred-acre wood; yet it makes a good stand-in in this suburban wasteland of green anoles and mockingbirds and cats and dogs and grass like a weathered welcome mat all around. Instead of reminding me of poetry, of which I know very little to heart, the garden reminds of specificities and ephemera from my own history.

My mother grew azaleas in the back of the house when I was little, when my bedroom formed the back wall and had a window on the backyard. Azaleas don't seem to care much for the clay soil but they do like blue Miracle-Gro dissolved like plant Kool-aid and sprayed on them in season. It wasn't until a few years ago that we traveled to her home town for a funeral and Dad drove us around their old neighborhood that I realized that azaleas looooove Port Arthur. They were not what I took away from vacations to my grandparents, however. Those were Pink Lady bubblegum slushies, green tomatoes off the vine with salt, soda in small glass bottles, tuna-noodle salad (today's lunch) and a gothic sense of family dynamics. Azalea season at Mercer reminds me to call Mom instead of long for family vacations.

The ephemera arrives as we move beyond the azalea banks and come to the velvet petunias, whose purple and cream streaks remind me of fruit and cream lifesavers and make me hungry for fake grape--the flavor of a bank lollipop, rough and sugary from the plastic, or the smell of a scented sticker ripe from the roll. This is the reason that I have "wine" candles in my bedroom. Purple grape is one of my favorite flavors/scents and it wraps around the back of my tongue while I'm looking at the petunias. I wonder what flavors hummingbirds find at the throats of the flowers at which they drink.

There isn't a concession stand in the arboretum. If you're on this side of the trail system, you're not supposed to be eating or drinking anything. The sun is warm and thoughts of grape slushies are making me too thirsty to linger, even among the red & white camellias. Instead, I head to the frog pond.

The tiny frogs in this dark plastic pond the size of a large bathtub are relaxing to observe, provided you don't startle them all into splashing into the water before you realize they are there. I've been practicing quiet approaches for days now just to stand at the edge and stare at them as they float with their eyes and nose above the surface of the water. Although I'm not a fan of the heat, the frogs are making me long for pool weather and the ability to float just like that while on vacation in LJ. Just relaxing into stillness to try to get a good photo lets me relax and ignore everything else going on around us. Part of me is worried about snakes (there are lots of yummy frogs not three feet from me), but I'm hoping it's too cold for them yet. Float, breathe, float, breathe. Watch the ripples to guess where the others are hiding. Lift the camera, focus on the eyeballs focused on you, click. Breathe.

After a bit, the hammering of the woodpeckers and the calls of the cardinals slips into focus and the trees and bushes are busy with birds. The day loses interest in you and moves on, while you float your camera to your eyes and breathe.

Distracted

There is no focus in my brain today. There is a stack of two books and a magazine beside me, several more in the bedroom, and one in the office. Some of them are sporting chic pastel page markers in the hopes that I'll either take notes or make the dishes therein. It's been windy enough that the chimney has been sighing and the table umbrella that James tied with an old belt after the last windstorm has been wobbling. I intended to start this morning in the arboretum, but I haven't left the house. The dogs are sleeping.

Not leaving the house tends to be a problem for me, because it lets me haunt Facebook and play Skyrim and in general fill up the day with the kind of chores that just keep the house together. The neighborhood feels like an experiment in isolation--how long can you shuffle clothes through the laundry room, a vacuum across the carpet, the dogs in and out of the backyard before your sense of purpose cracks?

I would have liked to walk through the arboretum on this windy afternoon and get out the last of the insomniac cobwebs lingering from a broken sleep out of my head. Instead, I listened to the hyper weather predictions and stayed here. With the stacks of books. That need to be read. Now.

Not happening. There has come to be a tension between my reader and writer selves. Neither believes they are fully compatible with each other. A good novel is enjoyable, but also a rebuke the work I'm doing. A bad novel reminds me that I'm flailing around in this same not-quite-there world and then reinforces the judginess that's already zooming around the writer self like a flock of bees. Zzzzzz. Bees are totally taunting the insomniac part of me as well.

The reader self is perfectly happy with reams of lit crit or fantasy novels, the writer self insists on contemporary romance or urban fantasy because those are genres that sell and disputes the lit crit while simultaneously wishing itself clever enough for that kind of depth.

There isn't much compromise on a day when I'm this easily distracted. I've deleted and rewritten this post several times to no great avail. It's still windy. The chimney is still thumping, the open windows whistling. Something is blowing in, although it is not yet here.

Hobbits and Donkey Kong...Spoilers and Spoilsports Ahead

Please be aware there are spoilers below regarding The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

You know that sinking feeling when you're looking forward to a book or an album or a movie and the buzz starts to turn sour? I'd been fighting that before going to see the new Hobbit movie. My own enjoyment of the movie was more than likely affected by what I've heard and read; however, that doesn't change the fact that I left the theater without any desire to see the next two films.

Which doesn't mean there weren't pieces that I enjoyed: the snorting dragon buried in his gold, Radagast and his twitchy rabbit sled, and Gollum. Radagast in particular embodied everything that I found to be right about the film: he was something new in Middle Earth and his scenes seemed more urgent and emotional than much of the rest of the film. I was concerned for the dying hedgehog, frightened by the giant spiders, and shivery as Radagast investigated the Necromancer's tower. Because these scenes weren't part of the book, my brain wasn't fighting against their rhythm or dialogue.

This was a minor problem for me for the rest of the film. The Hobbit is a swift read and Tolkien's mastery of his text means that it has a rhythm that makes for well-remembered scenes and songs. Changing these up, even if necessary for a film, still engenders a bit of mental static.

The greater problem was the lack (save for Radagast's scenes) of any sense of wonder on this journey. Bilbo and the dwarves are constantly beset by goblins and wargs (which we've seen before...it's not MORE exciting the 53rd time around) and there is little time to sink into the story or get more from Bilbo other than grumbling. Where is his sense of wonder about the elves? Where is the sense that elves are something more than really awesome warriors...just like Rohirrim, only...less blonde? More immortal? Where are the songs, Mr. Jackson? Where is any sense of mirth, merriment, or camraderie?

Oh...here it is. In the silly giant-headed goblin. Who lives in the Middle Earth's version of Donkey Kong's skyscraper, were we will spend several minutes racing across rickety wooden catwalks while I silently tick off potential hints for a future videogame. And once we're done with that, look, more wargs and goblins. Perfect for heroic last stand for Thorin and Bilbo, right?

However, Gandalf has already summoned the eagles (there is no sense, mostly because the animals still don't talk, of the eagles as beings with free choice) and so everyone is rescued and left on a giant rock. After a chance remark from Bilbo, we're treated to a reminder that there's a dragon somewhere up ahead and then the film ends. With a giant thud. I guess the dragon is supposed to inspire me to want to see what happens next, but I already know what happens next. I've read the book.

For me, this film demonstrates that the scripwriters & director were more interested in creating a prequel to the LOTR films than in telling Bilbo's story. Perhaps this couldn't have been done successfully. On the other hand, Middle Earth was pretty interesting from his perspective. I'm not as interested in it as merely a combat setting.