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a journal |
 This book is intended as a place to blog about my life and things I'm interested in and answers to prompts from various blog prompt sites here on WDC, including "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  and "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" I'm not sure yet what it'll turn into, but I'm going to have fun figuring it out. |
| “Anytime you get two people in a room, who disagree about anything, the time the day, there is a scene to be written. That’s what I look for.” Aaron Sorkin Does a situation like what Aaron Sorkin describes upset you or do you take it as a chance to write it in a scene or a story? For that matter, can you think of similar negative situations you have used or plan to use in your writing? I agree with this one—it’s not upsetting, it’s a truth. In order to have a scene, what you need is two people (at least) in a room, having a disagreement about anything. Scenes are made out of conflict—not necessarily a knock down, yelling argument, but differences in opinion about life, parenting, what to have for breakfast, who left the toilet seat down, politics, religion . . . as long as there are two people who have a difference of opinion, there is the potential for a scene, and scenes added upon each other make story. Now, I personally don’t like conflict or confrontation in my own life. But when it comes to writing, I want my characters to live in more interesting ways than I do. They have strong opinions. For example, in a story I wrote for my thesis, I brought two characters into a room together—a woman and her biological son who had been given up at birth and raised as her nephew. He was dying of cancer. He didn’t want his children to know because he wanted to die without causing them bad memories. She thought he was cheating them out of the chance to say goodbye. So, difference of opinion. Tons of back story. And emotional relevance to turn into story. In another story, I had a young girl who lived with her parents and an unrelated male on a rock in the middle of the ocean because her father and the man kept a lighthouse. During the story, the mother gave birth, with her young daughter as the primary midwife while the father stayed in the tower because it was his shift and he was afraid to come down and help. Disagreements. Conflict. Story. I don’t think of it as negative situations. I think of it as the friction that makes story worth reading. |
| What do you want to bring more of into your life in 2019? Maybe love, joy, abundance, and what else? What in your life is no longer serving you and needs to be released? Could it be anger, stress, perfectionism, guilt? This past year has been a good one. I got another nephew, and although the getting got complicated, mother and son are healthy and happy. I got to see my family—all of them. Not all at once, but I got to spend significant time with all. I wrote a lot. That was good. I could write more—I should write more. I want more family time. I want a job. I know I have probably said that over and over, but it’s more true every time. Now that I’m fixed for a while at home, I need to get that done. I need to watch my health more. Sometimes it’s easy to skip the checks, but they are necessary. I’ve knit a lot this past year. For various people. It’s something I enjoy and something I hope to continue. There’s nothing that stands out as something that I need to get rid of. I try to address those as they come instead of building them up for a grand purge in January. Bad habits are important to eradicate. As they come, not trying to do too much at once. I’m looking forward to this new year. It has the potential to be great. |
| In figuring out--beforehand--what other people will do, how often do you get it right? Does your sixth sense or gut feeling help or does it confuse you? This is an interesting question. Okay, first I have to say that I’m fairly good at reading the next layer of a plot. When it comes to a movie or a book or a television show, more often than not I can guess what the writers are going to come up with next. I remember one time I was watching a movie for the first time. The main character had mentioned her father a couple of times, so when she was standing there wrapped in a blanket, I told my sister (who I was watching the movie with) that the next thing to happen would have to do with her father. Sure enough, he was the judge who had to deal with some assorted issues. However, real life seldom conforms to script. So, I try not to read things before hand. I can usually tell with someone I know well what they will do, but they always have the ability to surprise me, and I like that. I tell my siblings that they think very loudly, so I can read what they’re thinking. In some ways that’s true—I am the oldest, and so I have spent the most time studying their faces and their attitudes so I have a feel for them. Is that a sixth sense or a gut feeling? Maybe. I think it more likely a combination of preexisting knowledge, subliminal clues, and intuition. |
| “For the twenty million Americans who are hungry tonight, for the homeless freezing tonight, literature is as useless as a knowledge of astronomy” Andre Dubus, Broken Vessels: Essays What do you think? Is literature as useless as Andre Dubus says? Okay, I have to admit that I have a stake in this question. As someone who writes, I am never going to admit that literature is useless. Any more than knowledge of astronomy is useless. I do agree that reading a book comes low on a priority list for many who are hungry, who are freezing, and books don’t feed or warm physically. However, that doesn’t mean they’re useless, even to those hungry and homeless that Dubus was talking about. First, because literature and reading it provides an avenue where these questions can be asked, and perhaps, those things changed. Dubus himself agreed about that or he wouldn’t have published a book of essays in the first place. He wanted people to read his words and come up with prompts like this, questions like this that get people thinking about how changes can be affected in the world. Second, because no knowledge is ever wasted. The bits and pieces learned from books can eventually change a person’s circumstances—for goodness sake, reading the Little House books or My Side of the Mountain can give clues about how to survive in primitive circumstances. Most of what I know how to do comes as a combination of what I’ve learned through observation and through reading. Third—and most important, learning about literature or astronomy gives everyone, even people who are frightened and hungry and cold, the impetus to dream of a way to get out. Seeing the stars, reading a story can give people hope, and sometimes that hope is what’s necessary to make things change in their lives. It doesn’t work all the time, but it works enough of the time that I don’t think we can discount dreams as a motive force. I think that this quote misses the point. Sure, the most important thing that a person who is hungry needs is food, but abandoning literature isn’t going to feed that person. It isn’t going to warm them. A writer who abandons her calling might by inaction—by those books that she didn’t write—fail to save someone who could have been helped if they just read of another way to live. A person who is hungry and fails to work—through whatever means necessary—to better their condition (and that may include reading) isn’t going to find a dream of something different to hold on to. |
| "You have delighted us long enough." Mrs. Bennet said this to her daughter Mary after she sang off key while playing the piano in Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen. When have you been delighted by people long enough? First off, I love this scene. There’s something so reassuring about Mary’s total obliviousness of her own inadequacies. I wonder sometimes, if I have that kind of obliviousness in some things. It also reminds me of that terror of my childhood, the elementary school or middle school choir. They are mandatory for the children, which means that sometimes, the child can’t sing. And as someone who has fairly good relative pitch, that can be painful. Especially as sometimes, when a person can’t hear the pitch, they assume that going higher means going louder . . . I have five younger siblings and so I have gone to plenty of Christmas concerts where it was—painful. This quote also reminded me of visiting family. There’s a point soon reached, in every visit, where if you stay a minute longer, you become part of the problem instead of part of the solution. I love visiting my siblings with their children. I love having them visit. But I also love going home or having the house to ourselves again. |
| “Take everything that’s bright and beautiful in you and introduce it to the shadow side of yourself.” Parker Palmer How can a person do this? Can you give an example, and do you agree this would work to make the world a better place? Inside everyone there are secret places—places that we don’t like to look at because they don’t fit the person that we like to show to the world. There, in the shadows, are the little jabs we give our friends, the envying, the wrath—I find myself going to the seven deadly sins, and there’s some truth to that. Now, I don’t say that we ever act on those impulses. Some people are able to control that part of them so well that it looks from the outside as though it doesn’t exist. But we, who live inside our heads, we know better. So, this is an interesting thought. To take the things that are bright and beautiful and introduce them to the shadow—that makes it seem as though it’s a way to make us better, to shed light upon our darker impulses by sharing the light. I don’t know if I think that would work. It sounds interesting in general, but when I try to look at specifics in my own life, I can’t think of an example that would work. Introducing light makes the shadow flee without eradicating it. Or maybe it makes them less by making me think about the places in my head and heart that need brightening, cleaning up. Where do I need work? And I think that a greater sense of self awareness would actually brighten the world. After all, all change needs to start at the individual level. |
| I’m home now. I’ve been home for just over a week, and have spent my time mostly sleeping. It’s good to be back in my own bed again, sleeping without having to fight the couch. It’s also good to have a break from the kids. I love them but I was ready to have a break. Traveling home was an adventure. I left at about 5am to get to the train station in San Jose in good time for my train at 6:45. I said goodbye the night before to the troops, but I gave everyone kisses before I left. Only little Fitz woke up. Well, Fred woke up a enough to grump at me as I left. My brother and his wife got up, too. I just hope they were able to get back to sleep again. The first train was a commuter, which meant I basically slept through to Emeryville. There wasn’t much to see except the farmlands of California. I wasn’t in the part of California that is having fires right now, which was at least one less thing to worry about. In Emeryville, I got off and had about an hour and a half before the long train got there and we could board. I had four bags, but all of them were relatively light weight, so I managed to go to the toilet and stake a seat claim. About half an hour before the train was scheduled to leave, the station manager told us that there were going to be two trains getting there at the same time, one going south, and the one I wanted, which was going east. She stood there making announcements for a while, but the engineers finally decided to let my train board first. We stood in line for about ten minutes before the train showed up. I was among the first boarders because I was in a sleeper. It was a long train: two engines, three sleeper cars, a dining car, a sightseeing car, and two coach cars at the back. When it pulled in, I needed to walk up to where my car was. It was the middle of the three sleeper cars—or at least it had been when I printed off my ticket. But after some wandering up and down the train with my attendant (he was very nice and helpful), I ended up in the first car, closest to the engines. It meant I had to walk further to get to the food or the sightseer lounge, but I didn’t mind. It was quieter. With a sleeper, food in the dining car comes with the ticket. That was useful because I didn’t want to spend money on food if I could avoid it. Almost as soon as we settled into the train, it was time for lunch. They seat you on the train, so I met lots of interesting people, but that first meal I was with an antisocial table. We sat staring out the window at the scenery. It was the Sierra Nevadas that first day. It was beautiful. There was no wifi onboard. It wouldn’t have been a problem except that the website says there is wifi on the trains. But there was electricity so I could get on my laptop and write. I could open up knitting patterns that I hadn’t printed out. So those were two of my activities when I wasn’t in the sightseers lounge, watching the world pass. I also read a book and a half. My roomette was cozy. It was about as wide as a double bed, with two seats facing each other with an optional tray table between. Above, a second bed made an angle that reminded me of living in an attic. There were windows but I could have privacy by closing the curtains. The two seats converted into a bed which was then topped by a little mattress that the attendant stored in the upper berth. Once I had my bed made up, I kept it up for the rest of the time I was on the train. Next door towards the engine was a Viet Nam veteran with a tiny Yorkshire Terrier who was aboard as a service animal. He was going to DC for veteran’s day. Across from my roomette was a woman moving from California to New York City for work. She was a dietician. We talked for a long time one morning while the train was stopped because of a problem on the line. The weather was perfect—cool and clear except for about half an hour after we passed the continental divide, when it was snowing. Not blizzard conditions—just a light snow and another six inches or so on the ground. I took so many pictures that I ran out of memory on my phone right when we passed over the Mississippi. By that time, we were running late. We got stopped on the tracks for about two hours while they were fixing signals. I didn’t have any trouble, but a couple of people on our train had to change their connection to get home that day like they planned. I stayed on that train for nearly the whole time—two nights, three days. We got in to Chicago late—it was nearly five and we were supposed to get in at 2:50. I got lost there. They’ve remodeled and the maps of the station are not accurate, but the janitor showed me how to get to where I was supposed to wait for the next train. I had wifi there. I spent my waiting time online and eating snacks in the lounge. They had us board the next train nearly an hour before we were scheduled to depart, and I think it was because they wanted to make sure we had time to eat. I slept most of the way down to Memphis. It was just as well. They try to avoid having people awake if the landscape is going to be uninteresting. I think the real excitement on that line comes after I was off, down in New Orleans. I want to write this up more—really shape it. Maybe send it back to the kids as a little book, but I’m going to have to shape it more. But at least I have the core of what I wanted it say, even though it’s not shaped at all and it’s all over the place. ah well. It was fun. I’d travel by train again. Especially in a sleeper. |
| Prompt: “The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.” ― Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality- Are heroes cowards inside? What do you think? I agree because people who don’t feel fear don’t have the ability to overcome fear, and that ability is what makes a hero. Being scared senseless and moving forward into greatness anyway. And I think that most heroes don’t realize it. They see the inside of their heads, the doubts and insecurities that we all face and they don’t see the shining stars that others can see. There are people who are called heroes who aren’t. The real heroes are quiet and doubtful and certain that other people don’t see the person they really are inside. Because the kind of vanity that it takes to call yourself a hero is the kind of vanity that conceals a worse kind of self doubt. I also agree with another writer, who said it’s much more difficult to live with yourself when your public honor is shining but your personal honor is in tatters—for one thing it’s much harder to look at yourself in the mirror. But when your personal honor is intact, it doesn’t matter what the world thinks. I paraphrased terribly—but it was Lois McMaster Bujold. But I have to go run after kids. I’m heading back home next Monday. I hope the illness that I can feel creeping in on me will hold off until then. |
| The new normal. You have something devastating happen to you and you have to get your life back to normal. Have you ever had a new normal? Yes. That’s the short answer, but the longer answer is yes, I have. Over and over. The biggest new normal that I’ve had to live with for the past ten years is the diabetes. Overnight I had a new way of eating, a new medication, a new set of markers that guided my days, new habits, new obsessions. And it was a definite lifestyle change. I had to do it because what I had been doing in the past was obviously not working any more. But there have been others. Every time I move, there’s a new house, new friends, new room, new town, new library. Going to college for the first time was a new normal. Coming back home after living in England for eighteen months. Going to England. My life has been filled with change. Right now, my normal involves seven children and sleeping on the couch. Who knows what my next normal will be? |
| "We don't stop going to school when we graduate." Carol Burnett Do you agree with this quote? I completely agree. We need to spend our entire lives in learning because when we stop, we’re dead. That’s one reason that I like to read so much and the reason that I like to write. Sometimes, the best way to figure out what I think about something is to write it out . . . to put my thoughts into words so that I realize what those thoughts are. I haven’t been blogging much lately. Too much going on, and there are children still awake right now reading over my shoulder as a write. It’s kind of frustrating, actually, because I don’t like to write with an audience. But I guess I make him let me watch him do his school work, so it’s par for the course. My sister-in-law homeschools (my brother does too, except here we’re dealing with the main breadwinner vs. the person who drums learning into some frustrating little heads), and because the baby is three weeks old and she’s still on bedrest, I’ve been taking over some of the pushing. She does it much better than me, of course. She knows what they’re capable of and how to coerce them into doing it, even if it does take all day. Home school has some advantages over the school I went to . . .for one thing, it’s supposed to have only a short period of formula learning followed by long periods of learning through activities and daily life. In other words, they’re being prepared to learn through their lives. I just wish it was easier to convince them that it was important NOW. Because the little eavesdropper in particular is as frustrating as my baby sister was when I helped her with her homework every night for a year while she struggled with dyslexia and thinking that she was stupid. She wasn’t. He isn’t. He’s just trying my last nerve and if he doesn’t go to bed soon, I’m going to do something nasty. Yes, I’m talking to you, you little foolish person laughing at what I’m writing right now. I would just like to also comment that this isn’t hard to write. It’s not difficult to come up with sentences in response to a prompt. Here I am, I wrote for less than five minutes about learning (or going to school after graduation—or Carol Burnett who is a funny lady that I wouldn’t mind getting another thought from in the future) and I have five paragraphs. My little eavesdropper sees a prompt and his mind goes completely blank. Trying to get him to write complete sentences is like pulling teeth out of his mouth . . . it involves pain and possibly blood. Speaking of blood, we had a bloody nose this morning because of (a different) child who got overexcited and managed to hit his nose into a table. I didn’t know that it was possible to give yourself a bloody nose, but I have a talented family. He was in the middle of an online lesson, and his teacher offered to let him stop, but he wanted to continue. Now, that’s learning beyond schooling. But I have an eight year old to terrorize and send to bed. So that I can sleep. I'm tired. And the annoying thing is that I have a hard time sleeping if the kids are up. And he refuses to sleep. And he bruises me and refuses to do chores and hits his little siblings and is generally misbehaving which is probably because he wants more attention, but I can't reward disobedience. So, he better get to bed. NOW. |
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