...when it's in a song?

Music can be many things. Inspiration. Comfort. It can be the words of our emotions and the fuel to our emotions. Music can express things no other art form can. Some people latch to the rhythm and the notes carry them away. Other anchor to the words. I am one of the latter. Below are few lyrics that resonate with me. 

“Writers keep writing what they write

Somewhere another pretty vein just died

I’ve got the scares from tomorrow and I wish you could see

That you’re the antidote to everything except for me, me

A constellation of tears on your lashes

Burn everything you love, then burn the ashes

In the end everything collides

My childhood spat back out the monster that you see” My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark—Fall Out Boy

“Want to put my tender, heart in a blender

Watch it spin around to a beautiful oblivion” Inside Out—Eve 6

“So here I slave inside of broken dream

Forever holding on to splitting seams

So take your piece and leave me alone to die

I don’t need you to keep my faith alive” Shackled—Vertical Horizon

 “Masquerading as a man with a reason

My charade is the event of the season

And if I claim to be wise man,

Well, it surely means that I don’t know” Carry on my Wayward Son—Kansas

 “Why do we have to break down to know if it’s real?

Why do we have to hurt ourselves to learn how to feel?

Why do we learn the right way by doing the wrong?

And why does it start to make sense when it’s in a song?”  Don’t Worry—Soja

First Words

First words can leave a mark. Below are some of my favorite opening lines of well known novels. 

Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. —Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. —Charles Dickens,David Copperfield (1850)

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. —Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605; trans. Edith Grossman)

Mother died today. —Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert)

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864; trans. Michael R. Katz)

It was like so, but wasn't. —Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 (1995)

All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five(1969)

They shoot the white girl first. —Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. —Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

It was the day my grandmother exploded. —Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road(1992)

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. —Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex(2002)

It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

It was love at first sight. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

You better not never tell nobody but God. —Alice Walker, The Color Purple(1982)

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.  —Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle(1948)

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. —Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

then maybe someday.....

Why am I such an idiot? --Lora Douglas, Ages from Eternity (20??)

Surgery and Writing

What do surgery and writing have in common, you ask? Besides the inherent need for the occasional slicing and dicing and the rush of knowing you are elbows deep into a seemingly alien world that is just as fascinating as it is messy?...
The is the fear. The never ending barrage of 'what ifs'. The seeking for knowledge that you hope will give you a stable place to stand before taking the next step. The craving for something to tell you which way to go, which road to take. To stand up with flashing neon signs that assure you that this way is the right one.
I don't wish to compare the craft of writing and the work of a surgeon's hand, I only wish to convey the place where my feet rest on the path of my life.
A couple months ago I was diagnosed with severe Endometriosis. It is a condition where the lining of the uterus gets a wild hair up its ass and decides to grow where ever it choose. (pardon my highly medical terminology). This condition is different for every woman that has it. For me, the growths are everywhere, infesting my pelvic wall and cuddling too close to some other organs it has no business being friendly with. In a nutshell, it is very, very, annoyingly, nauseatingly painful. (and I have a pain tolerance that should be ranked as a super power according to people that know me).
You see, I am not one to admit to pain nor do I happily acknowledge it. I prefer to ignore it, push it down, pretend it is happening to someone else. This is not healthy and I know that. No one ever forced me to mask my pain. No one ever got in my face and screamed "There's no crying in baseball." This is just who I am. But now, I am facing something that I can't ignore, no matter how hard I try. In the past year, I have undergone two surgeries and a few different treatments...all in vain. I am now looking at a surgery that will change my foreseeable future, a total hysterectomy. I am twenty six, no kids...
It is a big deal and I know that. I have researched options, I know the risks, the benefits, and I have made a well thought out decision but that doesn't make it easy.
Now what does this have to do with my writing? Oddly, some of the fears are the same. Some are not logical, I can admit that, but both put me in a place where I am vulnerable. (and this is NOT my c
omfort zone).
I am also at a place where I know that my first novel needs to be cut to pieces. It needs to be gutted, rearranged and sown together in way that more efficient, effective.
Like the surgery I face, I now it needs to happen and I know the way things are function in its own way but it not optimal...not in the slightest. And it things keep going the way they are...improvement is not in sight. I think too often we settle for how things are because of fear. We know things are bad but we would rather deal with bad then with facing the terrifying step in a new direction. We stay with bad because some jacked up part of brain has convinced us that it's safe...bad is not safe. Stuck is not progress and fear is part of the human condition. Fear will always be there but to make bad into better that fear is something we must step through....something I must step through.
These next few months are going to hard...and I hate to admit that but I have faith that in the end, stepping through the fear will be worth every second...with my writing and my health.

NaNoWriMo

That time of year is almost here. This will be my first time participating in whirl of creative abandon that is the National Novel Writing Month. The challenge: 50,000 words in 30 days. Visit http://nanowrimo.org/dashboard. Support writers, support readers. Celebrate language and the written word.

I will attempt to blog during this next month. Being my first time trying a challenge like this, should be interesting. In preparation, I needed a writing prompt, an idea. I asked a friend to give me a type of person, a place, a genre, a time period and an object. All of these things, I told her, would be worked into the story. Here is what she said,
         A person who is deaf
         Nepal
         Mystery
         1940's
         Urn of Human Ash

Here is what I am writing,

Geet wakes up in a remote village high in the mountains of Nepal with no memory of who he is or how he got there. All he remembers is the murder of a man. Now, deaf and lost, Geet must embark on a journey to find the murderer that plagues his nightmares.

With the help of Yaya, an elderly woman who tends to his wounds and Atmajyoti (Ata), a young orphan from the village, Geet sets out to discover who he used to be and ends up learning who he has become.

Wish me luck!

Heart of Darkness--Joseph Conrad

         Heart of Darkness is one of my favorite books. Written as a frame narrative, this novel follow's Marlow, an ivory transporter, on his journey down the Congo River. Conrad describes the river as, “... a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land.” 

         Through his obsession with a man named Mr. Kurtz who is an ivory-procurement agent, Marlow is drawn deeper into the heart of darkness.  The book explores the relationship between savagery and civilization, the basis of imperialism. The book is a hypnotic mixture of language and deep symbolism  I first picked up this book when I was sixteen and the words have stayed with me till this day. 

"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone..." 

— Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness )

Demons to fight

Abuse and assault plagues every race, age, ethnicity and gender. Never feel alone in your struggles. You are not the only one with demons to fight.

Male Survivors of sexual assault quote their abusers

Ivory

Excerpt from my in progress novel. Character scene flash fiction. 

Ivory

Ivory slung her bag over her shoulder as she shouted up the stairs, "Jimmy, let's get a move on."  She pulled her thick hair into a knotted ponytail, trying not to watch the clock by the door.

James appeared at the top of the stairs, wrinkled clothes and an extreme case of bed head. Hitting the bottom of the stairs, he swatted away Ivory’s hand as she began straightening his hair with her fingers. The summer had left streaks of blonde in his brown hair.

She grabbed the sides of his face and planted a kiss on his forehead, leaving a lip print, James quickly wiped away with his sleeve. Laughing, she said, "Let's go. I'll race you to the bus."

"Why do I have ta go? It's still summer," James moaned.

"I got three interviews today. Besides, you need the help with reading," she explained as she grabbed her keys and ushered her little brother out the door. James muttered something under his breath and waited on the stoop until his sister locked the door before bolting down the sidewalk.   

The normal crowd was already gathered as they reached the bus stop. Skidding to a stop, James bent over to catch his breath, coughing out the words, “Beat ya again, Iv." Red blush flushing his caramel colored cheeks. Ivory swung an arm around James' shoulders and gave him a squeeze as the bus rolled to a stop.  People filed onto the bus, chattering as they disappeared from the sidewalk. James wiggled from her arms, "Love you Ivory. Good luck today."

"Love you too." She whispered after him. She stood and watched as her brother moved out of her reach, disappearing into the morning traffic. 

            The screech of the tires pierced through the air. The world stood still, silent but for the retched sound of metal on asphalt. The car rolled. The biker disappeared into the heap of heaving metal. People watched but no one moved.

Dropping her bag, Ivory darted toward the overturned car. She reached the car at a dead run, sliding Ivory rammed her foot through the remainder of the window. Crying roared from the back seat. The woman dangled unconscious, blood tainting her cream-colored blouse. Brushing the shards of glass away, she climbed into the window, contorting herself around the woman. Ivory took her knife from her pocket and cut the straps of the seat belt allowing the woman's weight to collapse against her chest. 

Glass dug into Ivory's forearm, her hip, and her legs as her fingers found the woman's neck. A tiny pulse brought a sigh of relief as well as the sight of a man outside the window. Ivory realized the man was not a police officer, not a paramedic, but the homeless man who slept two streets away. Of all the people on the sidewalk, in the parked cars, in the buildings, this man was the only one that was doing anything. Ivory fought down words of anger. How could all these people just stand there?

The man carried the woman a couple feet away and began cleaning her face. Ivory turned and climbed back into the window. The car shifted. Fear soaked into her thoughts with the crackle of glass and the groan of the heaving metal. Adrenaline rocketed through her veins as the little face came into focus. The little girl hung from her car seat, cries pouring from her tiny lips, mingling with the sweet sound of sirens in the distance. Then came the smell of smoke… and gasoline.

"Shit." Ivory clamped her mouth shut and lunged forward, squeezing between the seats. Seconds ticked away. New waves of adrenaline washed over her as her body threatened to panic. Tick. Images of the truck engine flashed. The drip of oil, of gas and the smell of smoke. Tick. Tick. Her fingers fumbled. Then a flash of clarity. She twisted her leg, bracing against the seat and cut the child free.

Ivory gasped and she carried the child away from the mass of tangled metal. Sirens wailed. Flashing lights. People rushed about. Someone took the girl, pulling her from Ivory's grip. Tick. A man's face appeared inches from hers, his voice throbbing in her ears. He seemed to be shouting. The man turned and stepped toward the wreckage. Ivory grabbed his arm and with all her strength, whispered, "Fire."

That night, Ivory left the hospital sometime after dark. The nurse had offered to call a cab but Ivory declined. James was at a friend’s house, giving her time to ‘rest’. Ivory kicked a rock, cursing under her breath. Being a ‘hero’ hardly seemed worth it when it came with bills she couldn’t pay. The night air wrapped around her shoulders as Ivory turned down the alley behind local nightclub.

The sound of voices entered the ally brushing past with the breeze. Footsteps followed. Ivory jerked around, seeing nothing. She breathed, her heart thudding against her ribs. She was never this jumpy. Wiping her eyes with one arm, she subtly pulled her knife out of her bra with the other. It was probably nothing but just in case. With her knife open pressed against her forearm, Ivory tucked her head and walked.

The arm seemed to come from nowhere, lacing over Ivory's mouth. Her feet left the ground as the man slammed her against the brick wall. Ivory sucked in a breath as the man dipped his head into her hair. The man made a primitive, guttural noise as he ran a hand across her stomach. He grabbed her wrists, moving to shove them over her head but his fingers found the blade. He stumbled back. Ivory landed a kick to his chest. The man lunged knocking her to the ground. He straddled her, his fingers around her neck. Adrenaline washed over her as she fought. Scrambling to her feet, she ran. Head swimming, heart beating in her ears, she never saw the truck...