Distance (A/Z)

For the A to Z Challenge - Letter D.

I had a nice long chat on the phone today with a good friend. She works in the editing business, and we share a common love of snark, the Steelers, good music, travel, and proper grammar. She's been one of my strongest supporters in following my writing dream, and does a great job of convincing me I really can do it. We've been buddies for many years now. Yet I have never met her in person. We met on a music message board and a lovely friendship blossomed from there.

It's curious to take note of how people come into your life. Even more curious that geographical distance seems much easier to bridge for me than emotional distance.

Even when I was a kid, I have always made very dear friends who live far away - by pen palling before the days of email and Facebook and message boards. Technology seems to make it even easier. Sometimes I wonder if it prevents me from making friends, in real life. Then I remember that I am indeed friendly ... but no one seems interested, in real life.

Currents (A/Z)

For the A to Z Challenge - Letter C.

Inspired by another blogger, I thought I'd jot a haiku cluster for my A to Z Challenge today. I wrote this in the car while Incrediboy was at a birthday party, so don't expect much ;).

Currents running on
Perpetual, as clockwork
Obliviously

Slide in, then suck out -
Or is it down? Leeching to
Some otherworld place

Currents running on
Indifferent to this place
As any other

I imagine, hard,
Body evaporating
My soul running down

Now part of the sea
Flesh, memories, burdens, life
All left behind me.

Burley-Belly (A/Z)

For the A to Z Challenge - Letter B.

Here's a fun (and possibly funny) fact about me for those who didn't know: I love bellydancing. I wanted to learn since I was a teenager, and for the past few years I've been taking the occasional class and have amassed a "few" (ahem) DVDs focusing on learning the art.

To be honest I suck at it. But I don't really care. I have fun trying, and it's a deceptively demanding workout. Best of all it makes me feel great about myself - something I haven't felt enough of.

I spent the afternoon today doing a Burley-Belly Fusion Workshop. As the name suggests, it fused the sensual fluid movements of bellydance with the flirty sauciness of classic burlesque performance. (No stripping, just teasing.)

It was an absolute blast. We had so much fun bringing out our playful sides, but man did we work hard, too. The snake arms, shimmies and concentrated hipwork are already stiffening up my poor old muscles - but it's a sweet sultry pain.

And I felt like a superstar, no matter how ridiculous I looked.

Ancestors (A/Z)

My first installment of the super-fun April A to Z Challenge. Are you as excited as I am!?!? :D

There aren't many things I love the way I love the old family photos and jottings that have found their way to me.

I am the youngest child of two youngest children, which means most of my elders were gone before I got to know them. While I was born in the Age of Aquarius, my grandfather was born in the 19th century. He died an old man when I was only in first grade. My memories of him are only tiny vignettes themselves - whisps of a waist-high view - my eyes level with the pocket of his houndstooth coat as he'd sneak me a piece of candy. The bright jewel colors of his blanket, always on his lap in his last months.

In the photos I have, he is handsome and commanding. Hair inky black instead of winter white. In one he holds a baby that looks just like me. My mother.

Another of my favorite photos is of my grandmother and her best friend. They were all of twenty years old, wearing tweed pants, vests, ties and big newsboy hats. In an age where so many photos were stiff and posed, these two were mugging it up - fat cigars clenched tight in their teeth, laughter in their eyes.

Grandma gave me her cookbook before she died. It was published in the twenties and had revolting recipes with ingredients like suet, tripe, and chicken feet. Frugal times commanded a frugal kitchen. I imagine I'd be much thinner with entrails on the table.

What I love about this book though, are her notes. Some stuck haphazardly about the pages on scraps of paper, others written in margins or inside the blank cover sheets. Reminders scrawled in her confident, jagged cursive. As identifiable as a fingerprint, and even moreso.

In some ways, having a snatch of handwriting is even more precious than a picture. My ancestors weren't just ghostly images on brittle photographic paper. They were real. Their writing left like footprints, like whispers. Like pieces I've been looking for to complete the puzzle of who I am.

Cracks

For Velvet Verbosity's 100 Words Challenge. This round's word of inspiration is VOICE.

He earned his living with that voice, hosting radio shows featuring oldies or lonely heart dedications. Deep and enveloping, immediately familiar. Equal parts thunder and romance. And always strong.

He paid our bills with it. Put food in our bellies, put our green asses through college. Put the fear of God in us.

I never knew it to show weakness, even when Grandma died.

Until we spoke today. Over the hollow line, it was time his only daughter knew the severity. I could hear the cracks, like sugar glass. Unsure if it was in his voice, or from within me.

Protector

For Velvet Verbosity's 100 Words Project. This week's inspiration is CUFFS.

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The first few cuffs across the chops she let slide without question. If her strict upbringing taught her anything, it was that the man was head of the house. Reminding her of her place was probably called for.

As his corrective hand grew firmer over time, it became a little more difficult. At least now he only struck her where it wouldn't have to show.

But when she found streaks of blood in her daughter's little panties, that was too much.

As the officer placed the cuffs on her own blood-soaked wrists, she smiled - certain any judge would understand.

Becoming Beautiful (100 Words)

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This is my first contribution to Velvet Verbosity's 100 Words Project - a fun little exercise I've decided to invite myself to join. Each week a word or phrase is presened to participants, to build from however we are inspired - in exactly 100 words.

This week's inspiration is SLEEK.

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On any ordinary day, she sees herself as a lumpy, mousy, fairly unremarkable girl. But during these devoted hours, the constraints on her meager self confidence fall away. She allows the music to soak into her , dissolving her insecurities. New world, middle eastern, modern rock, it doesn't matter. They all seduce her instincts. Sensuality billows within her. Working boneless arms, fluid spine and sleek swiveling hips glinting with coin scarves, she transforms. Still the same body, but not the same girl. She is a goddess. Day by day, more of the goddess remains afterwards. She's becoming beautiful to herself - finally.

Finding My Way Back

When you respond to the call of creativity, you will find peace from the purge. If you do not heed, the calls of sirens become the shrieks of banshees and given enough time unrequited will drive you mad. I need to learn not only to listen, but respond. It is my condition, it is in the fiber of my being. ~ Clew, August 28, 2005


I wrote these words almost six years ago. It didn't take me long to stray from my creative soul's steps to salvation, though.

I've really been farting around with this blog for a while. Going months without posts and then wasting everyone's time (most significatly, my own) with jabber containing little to no creativity. I've missed writing. Not just blogging, but writing, as a practice. I've allowed myself to become too preoccupied with other things, and my creativity has gone into a coma.

The shock of newness will often shake you awake. Some life-altering events have happened in and around me and my family recently - and in courses I won't try to explain, my longing to create ... I don't know, something ... has returned. And I had a revelation the other day. When I was at the height of my creative production on this blog, I was most rewarded with serenity in my heart and mind. I received more satisfaction from writing a good blog post than from drawing and painting - what I have always considered my prominent creative outlets. Am I missing my calling?

So, long story short (too late), I'm going to return to creative writing pursuits here at Clew's Blues. It may suck sometimes. I feel rusty. But rustiness doesn't come from lack of capability as much as it comes from lack of practice. I'm going to devote more time (more consistently, also) to creativity here. Directly my dear readers, who are still hanging in there with me despite my lame attendance record, will see that I'm going to experiment with some prompts and challenges from some writing groups I've found. Behind the scenes, I am looking into eventually submitting some pieces for publication. Will I get rich? Doubtful. Will I even be selected? Probably not, not right away anyway. But ... who knows?

Why not me?

Wait ... What?

So, I finished The Paris Wife, and I found it to be absolutely exquisite. It broke my heart(figuratively) in 20 different ways and left me sad that there was not more to read. That's the mark of a good book.

The whole thing got me thinking about checking out some Hemingway. Somehow I'd avoided reading any of his works throughout school - and while some of his contemporaries left me ... let's say, underwhelmed, at the time ... perhaps I'd developed enough over the years to have a great appreciation for this literary genius.

I took Incrediboy to the library last night and while we were there I grabbed a collection of Hemingway's short stories (which, I have gathered from my nosings, is the forte where he really shone). These were written duting the time frame of TPW, so that made it even more fun.

I read about 50 pages last night - the equivalent of 5 short stories.

I wasn't impressed.

Other than a few dazzling lines sprinkled sparsely throughout, I found his style to be choppy, awkward, and even juvenile. THIS is the greatest American writer of the 20th century? Really?

I guess he's just not my style.

I'm going to keep reading for a while, thinking that maybe Hemingway is an acquired taste for me. I also have the desperate feeling that I'm simply missing something. Personally, I think I'm a pretty good judge of worthy writing. I like it beautiful but simple. Poetically descriptive yet not too fluorishy. Could I really be so at odds with what's considered literary gold?

I'm telling you though - my creative writing professors would have given us a C-minus at best for turning in that stuff. I'm really quite perplexed.

The Paris Wife

Not that I need to point this out, but I haven't blogged in a long time. It's not that I haven't wanted to, but inspiration just hasn't been there. Even recapping day to day things seems to be too bland. But - I miss it. So I'm going to excite you with one of my scintillating book reviews.

I don't read much anymore - and life's busyness (not to mention an insufferably short attention span) prevents me from finishing significantly fewer than I manage to start. But now and then I run across a book that I just absolutely fall in love with - nigh devour.

I was liesurely flipping through the Sunday paper last weekend when I caught a little writeup on The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. The story focuses on the events surrounding the meeting, courtship, and marriage of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley - long before Hemingway was famous, and their life in Paris and other cities as his writing career blossomed and took off.

I don't normally go for this sort of book. I'm more of a ghosts and serial killers type, actually. But this one intrigued me. Perhaps it was that it is written in Hadley's voice, and I do enjoy stories told from the perspective of the less usual subjects (a la "Mary Reilly"). Mostly I think it's because the story is based upon letters she had written to Ernest. The first of his four wives - and only for five years, Hadley is remembered as little more than a footnote in Hemingway's mainstream biographical information - but he had kept all of her letters his entire life - a tidbit I find heartwrenching.

I will confess, I don't think I've ever read a word of Hemingway's writings, and was not familiar with Ms. McLain's work. But this book - oh, this book. It's written so beautifully ... such as you want to hold phrases on your mind's tongue to savor their sweetness. Devastatingly romantic. Not just regarding young love, but the passion of writing, of creating, of chasing muses. The naivete of believing anything can happen from merely wanting it so much. All of this speckled with wisps of bittersweet hindsight which makes it so accessible and relative to one's own experiences and life lessons.

It makes me, on numerous levels, long for the writer I always wanted to be but have never quite achieved.

While I realize it is largely fictional and not a true biography, it has sparked my interest in reading some of the works of Hemingway and other writers mentioned therein. Maybe my muse is being serenaded awake by those gone before me. Inspiration, much like the Lord, moves in mysterious ways.