Bass Run

Well, for lack of time to produce anything that is actually new, yet wishing to maintain a presence in my own blog, I'm back to posting work from the past. 

I wrote this piece to learn how to use a sheet music production program called Finale Notepad about 10 years ago...or maybe more. But I still like it. I called it Bass Run because I had to call it something. This remains a good name for it for reasons that will become very obvious in the first bar.

Bass Run

I envisioned--enhearinged?--an electric bass, a jazz lead guitar and a rhythm guitar, but Notepad is a basic (but wonderful!) application where everything sounds like an electronic keyboard.

Warning

I know those trees

I ran past their groping twigs

Jumped their shattered limbs

Now you run the shadow gauntlet

Trip over writhen roots

Brambles wind around your legs

Nothing I said could

keep you to the high paths

keep you on the open ground

Not June anymore

or even summer
and yet the sun
hotter than ever
calls to the seeds

What???!!!! Almost July already???

Yes, as a matter of fact, June IS almost over! And no posts! Golly.

I have been continuing to work on my looooooooooonnnnnggg story as time allows, which isn't much but it's something.

I have also been following my bliss and working in the garden. I'm concentrating on perennials this year in hopes of establishing an irrigation-mostly-free zone. Gardening's creative, isn't it? At least just a little. I am actually the worst gardener ever. I'm very good at weeding and preparing beds, but I don't have the design sense to put a bunch of plants together in a harmonious and sensible way. Or to keep them alive. If they don't want to live, nothing I can do will persuade them to make the effort. So does that mean that the purchase of a plant by me is actually most likely a death sentence for said vegetation?

Hmm.

Should I stop buying plants? Or stop gardening altogether?

No.

In other creative news, rather than practicing art, I've been practicing craft. (I don't know how I would class my gardening forays, which are neither art nor craft.) Our plums all came ripe at the same time, so I've been making plum butter. Last night I started a batch of sauerkraut in a Belgian-style crock with a lid because I really hate scrapping off the dreck that forms on top of crocks that don't have water-sealed lids. The crock is being stored at about 60 degrees F, since every one from Joy of Cooking to J. Katzen says that's the best temperature for fermentation. I'll let you know in three or four weeks how it turned out. Next will be an experiment comparing sour cream made with a buttermilk starter to creme fraiche made with a real creme fraiche starter culture. I want to see just how different they taste. I love the sour cream, and it is certainly cheaper to buy a cup of buttermilk and make several batches than to buy just one envelope of creme fraiche starter that only produces one batch. But if the creme tastes out of this world, well, it might just be worth making on a regular basis.

That's that for now; not much of a post, but a post nonetheless. If you are having any adventures in the creative universe, what are you doing? And how do you maintain brain and imagination function in hot weather?

Summer Weather Patterns

Summer has come early this year. You can tell by the fog: the more the inland valleys heat up, the more fog at the coast. Sometimes. Like today.

A gathering of cormorants, gulls, terns, pelicans, and my favorite, western grebes, floated on the nearly glassy bay over a school of anchovies. I'm nearly certain about the anchovies because a few very fresh ones had washed up on shore, or had been dropped by gulls. I doubt they stayed exposed on the sand for long.

Grebes as far as I could see, fading off into the fog. The view didn't make a very good photo, but I've never seen so many grebes in one place, so I didn't worry about proper composition.

The water was gray. No, olive. No, silver. No, pomona green. No, steel blue. No, pewter....

Past beaches towering over the current beach.

Monuments at the edge of the world.

NaNoWriMo Winner's Badge

Gosh, this is just like getting a Girl Scout badge, though I never was a Girl Scout. I was a Campfire Girl. We got beads and patches (that weren't called badges) which we sewed in creative fashion onto navy blue vests. Which I loved.

Anyway, I finally had the time to go to the Camp NaNoWriMo winners page to copy and paste, right here, one of their several choices of winner badges:

 

This doesn't have quite the same zing as a sewable patch or wood-bead embroidery, but it gets the point across in the very small world of this blog.

I didn't really like where the story I was writing was going while I was working on it, but now that I've had some time to let it percolate, I find that there are some intriguing ideas in there that just need further exploration. And the characters aren't all boring. So I'm going to promote the percolation and see what happens.

NaNoWriMo Update--Done!!!!!

I just made it past my Camp NaNoWriMo goal, which was a measly 10,000 words, but with the way my life is going, I feel extremely satisfied and not a little surprised that I actually stuck with it. I'm not sure that this rough draft is of a story that I want to work on further, but that really isn't the point. The point is that I participated and that I kept a promise to myself.

I wish I'd looked into the badges tab sooner on the NNWM website. Ah, well.

Camp NaNoWriMo Update

I really am doing Camp NaNoWriMo! I was afraid that I would give up before I started due to the reality of my extreme shortage of free time. I'm rather amazed with myself for sticking to it. The factor that makes my participation at all possible is that while the normal National Novel Writing Month--November--requires that you write a 50,000 word rough draft, Camp NaNoWriMo allows you to set your own goal. Because I have been working 60 - 70 hour weeks, I decided to keep the stress really light and only planned for 10,000 words. Since  2500 words in in an afternoon is easy if I feel sufficiently inspired, I thought that four afternoons spread over the month ought to just about do it. Especially since I only have four afternoons per month that I can work on fun stuff like this. I'm doing my best to just let it rip and write garbage without editing. The depressing part about writing garbage, though, is that it is garbage. I'm waiting for the characters and situations to begin pulling together in that magical way that almost always seems to happen when you give a story enough time. However, I think I need to work on it more than one afternoon per week to keep the story fermenting in the back of my mind. So far, nothing. But pages are filling up, so I guess that's all that matters at this point.

Another thing about Camp NNWM is that you have "cabin mates" to cheer on and who cheer you on. My cabin contains 6 women who are all writing fantasy of one type or another. Ahhhh! Soul mates! People who take the imagination seriously and don't laugh at your interest. Yey!

And speaking of people laughing at your interests, I saw the greatest video a couple of weeks ago that I found hugely useful as ammunition in the arguments I have in my head with people who look down on things I love, and on me for loving what I love.  

Are you ever embarrassed to reveal the things you love? Are you ever afraid of being made fun of for your taste of reading or music or academic pursuits or for collecting salt shakers or loving Renaissance Faires, and so you stop telling people about things you love, or you even feel like an idiot and try to stop loving them at all? It's like being poisoned. Watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knro0i2JH44

This guy, zefrank, is aaaaammaaaaaaazzziiiiiiiinnnnnngggg. Somebody is yucking your yum "when you like something harmless and someone tells you to stop liking it."

Well, that was fun!

  That last little self-imposed warm-up exercise was silly, but fun. I'm attempting to gear up for Camp NaNoWriMo, which starts April 1st. I think I'm really going to let myself go. I don't know that I will be able to resist correcting spelling errors, but I want, for the first time in my life, to just write wildly, without editing as I go. Dive into the deepest of purple prose and improbable plots, go a little crazy with my vocabulary which I hope to augment heavily with frequent expeditions into my Oxford English Dictionary. Wait, wait, wait--Stop! What am I saying? This is not a research project. Write first with the words I can already lay my mind on, and simply [ ] those concepts that I know the mood of but can't remember the exactly correct word needed to express them precisely.
  As usual, the "fortunatelies" are matched by the "unfortunatelies." . I'm really looking forward to legitimately being able to say, Oh no, I can't [fill in activity]; I have to write tonight. On the other hand, I am going to get a late start because we will have beloved houseguests for the first few days of the 30-day novel writing session. So I will miss a few days, but it will be because my favorite people in the world will be visiting.

First drafts really ARE garbage!

I am not sure that I would even call what follows a first draft. I had a few minutes to write and so I did. I wanted to write something different from the kind of thing I normally work on. I don't think I really succeeded, but I did rather let myself go in the purple prose department, which is vanishingly unusual. Before I talk myself out of posting such a silly bit of fluff, I'd better just do it and go to bed.
-------------------------
 

Shall I tell you what I saw when I looked between the trees? Or should I keep it a secret, knowing that you will only laugh, and then get that worried look that I know so well.

Still, it bears telling, if only to allow me a chance to relive the moment.

I was in the dark beneath the trees which stood like the copper columns of an ancient cathedral. Not so far away, perhaps fifty steps, through an arch of boughs came a glow of river-tinted sunlight , nearly blinding to me in the shadows. But it was more than the glint of water. It was the glint off white sails.

Sails, I thought, on this tiny windy river, whose course takes it with and against the wind with every twist of the canyon? Moving downstream there might be the chance to take advantage of the current, making the sails irrelevant. But these sails moved upstream.

In only a moment, the gleam had passed across the window in the wood. Released as if from a spell, I dashed down to the bank, expecting to see an egret, or even nothing at all, just a trick of the light. Upstream, though, there sailed a boat.

A boat out of story, that was certain, for no such boat ever sailed the waters of this land. Silver-grey gunwales. Two white masts and silver yards. The hull was surely deeper than the river. And those sails—they took in the sunlight and reflected it twofold.

This could be no real ship.

And yet, in the stern there stood two men, or two man-like creatures. The same glow that shone from the sails shone from their faces. One looked ahead, his hand on a tiller. One looked behind, and he saw me.

He turned his face partly away and said a word to his companion, who then looked back and met my gaze.

Such eyes I have never met before. He was truly too far away for me to discern their color, nor to gather more than a blurry impression of his face, but his eyes are burned into my memory and they do not fade. All the colors of the sea at once, ever shifting, sunshine on the water after a storm. As one, they raised their hands to me in greeting, in parting, in acknowledgement.

The boat went around a bend in the river and they were gone. And just as the stern disappeared, I thought I heard the faint notes of a song as though in farewell. The sun seemed dim without them to shine upon.

I stood bereft upon the shore. I didn’t even think to run along the river trail and catch up with them. It would not have been…seemly. It would not make the boat more or less true if I rounded the bend and saw it or didn’t.

But the eyes stayed with me and have troubled my sleep now for two weeks.

In vain did I read newspapers and listen to the news. Not one report, not even a crackpot letter to the editor. And there are houses all along the banks and roads that pass over on bridges of stone and steel. If I am the only one who saw…

And yet, those sails burned themselves into my memory, and the eyes into my heart.

I know what you will say. I see the effort it will take you to keep from shaking your head. To keep you from looking down in your impatient, worried way.

I can assure you that I have not returned to the river. I want neither to look for some sign of passage, or confirm my doubt that a boat of that size, a small ship, really, could have passed up that shallow stream, under those bridges. I am afraid that my very craving to see it again would bring it into my vision, and then I would call myself mad and sully the memory. As long as I stay away, it will be real.

But what am I saying?

I once went to the river, a little farther upstream and as I sat enjoying the song of water running over rocks, there was another glint, followed by a squawk. On a weathered stump stranded on an eyot in the middle of the stream stood a large but stocky bird, green winged and rusty-necked, with yellow legs. It watched the water for a moment, then walked down the stump and into the water. A moment later, it darted its beak into the water and came up with a wriggling silver minnow. The bird leapt from the water and flew away, still pinching the fish in its beak.

I went back to the river every day for a week at about the same time and did not see it again. But I never questioned whether or not such birds actually existed, even though I’d never seen one before. Much later, I did actually find a picture of this strange bird—a green heron—in a bird book.

But in what book would I find a picture of the boat? Or of the mariners? I almost fear the answer. 

Argument

I once had an argument with a friend about whether or not the question "Does God exist or not?" was a scientific question. She contended that it is not, because it is not a question that can be answered using scientific methods. I contended that it was because there is an answer. Exist or not exist. Yes or no. Seems clear enough to me. 

She said it was a question you answered with your heart. I said that if you are going to posit that something exists, then your brain ought to be able to find an answer, too.

She said that the Bible was all the proof she needed. I said that by that logic, The Last Unicorn was the only proof I needed to claim that unicorns exist. Or ever existed. 

I conceded that what seems logical and well supported by the evidence does not always turn out to be true. She conceded that wishful thinking and hope and belief were no guarantees of truth, either.

So much depends on what you accept as proof. Even more depends on how you define God.

I am happy to report that we are still friends.

Does this post make me look over-committed?

Life gets in the way of EVERYTHING! I had set myself the goal of posting once per week and was able to keep that up for a couple of months while work was slow. However, work is no longer slow. While I'm grateful to have a job, and relieved that the hours are picking up, employment cuts deeply into creative time.
Besides that, what I'm working on these days is a book-length story (Notice how I avoid saying that I'm working on a book. A mere story feels so much less threatening.) that doesn't really lend itself to short blog posts. I've been working on this story on and off for about 15 years. I don't expect to finish it any time in this decade.
I have also been doing more drawing in the little scraps of time I find between one thing and another. I find it amazingly calming. There's something so very here-and-now about drawing. I know that real artists will plan a painting or major drawing with sketches and color tests and whatnot, but I save that kind of forethought for writing. Drawing is for being engaged with a subject NOW. At least for me.
Because I am a glutton for over-commitment, and rather overoptimistic considering my success rate with long fiction, I'm going to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo this April--National Novel Writing Month for people who don't want to wait for the traditional November session. The goal is to write a 50,000-word rough draft in 30 days. I don't kid myself that I will come anywhere close to that in the few spare hours I have, but what I want to do is find out how much I CAN write when I make a serious, short-term commitment. If I reach 10,000 words, I will consider the project a success. Why I can't find this out without a program continues to elude me...you'd think I would just write. However, I always feel guilty for spending time with imaginary people and in imaginary lands when I should be making minestrone for real humans and volunteering as a docent in a state park. But this April, I can say to anyone who asks that I have a previous engagement and not feel guilty. I hope. Is this neurotic, or what? 
If anyone is interested in joining the insanity, here is the website: http://campnanowrimo.org/dashboard.
Weeeeellllllppppp. Back to work.

Return to the Site of a Major Lapse in Judgment

Scene from a long but unfinished story.

Cutter, an interplanetary smuggler, is forced to return to the site of a disaster that he could have prevented, if his suspicions about the empathic Children of the Stone had not led him to spy on them to find out what they were up to rather than sound an alert that could have saved them.

Turillo sighed. “Might as well get started.” He and the others went over to a pile of shovels and pickaxes.

Cutter didn’t move. Turillo looked back to see what was keeping him.

“There must be nine hundred,” Cutter swallowed, “more than nine hundred bodies in there. You can’t possibly find them all.”

Turillo nodded to the two other Stones. They chose their gear and headed out to the ruins. He handed Cutter a pick, a shovel and a mask.

Cutter gaped at the tools held loosely in his hands with growing horror.

He tried again, his voice made hoarse by rising bile. “Why not leave them in peace? It’s been too long.”

“You think this,” Turillo said, flinging his hand across the expanse of scorched and broken walls, “is a fit monument for my dead?” He pushed closer until Cutter felt the breath of his words against his face. “No more than they deserve, these Children of the Stone?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant. This time, Hunter,” he spat the word as though it were poison. “This time you will understand the consequences of your arrogance and stupidity.” He picked up his shovel and stalked after his colleagues.

Cutter took a long shuddering breath. Then he strapped on his mask and went in after Turillo.

Few words interrupted the boom of the surf or the clanking of the shovels. The miasma of death intensified as the sun rose higher and overcame the filter in Cutter’s mask.

At midday, the other men took refuge under the trees. Turillo stayed in the wreckage. Cutter stayed with him. They worked while the others rested. They worked when the others came back. Together they hauled and dug and picked up whatever was left after a week of fire and sun and afternoon storms, and laid it gently on stretchers to await the burial crew.

The afternoon wind kicked up. Cutter hardly noticed. The inside of his mask stank of death and sweat and his own foul breath. Nausea came and went. He kept digging as the harbingers of the daily storm drilled pits in the ashes. Before long, the rain was coming down hard enough to wash the ashes out of his shovel faster than he could dump them aside.

A hand gripped his shoulder and shook. Cutter lifted his head and looked around. He and Turillo were the only ones left.

Turillo headed wordlessly toward the tents. Cutter set a marker so he'd know where to start the next day, hefted his shovel, and followed. Turillo pushed him toward a tent a little away from all the others and left him.

Cutter dropped onto the nearer of two cots and then, for all his exhaustion, could not sleep. The muddy eyes of the dead stared out of the dimness. Rain beat against the tent as though trying to wash him away with all the other dirt. He wished it could.

Shear

  Twenty-seven years of trying to bloom where she was planted and all she’d become was root-bound in barren soil. After years of agonizing, dreaming, pro and conning, leaning toward one option then toward its opposite, she woke up one morning, and found that the decision had been made while she slept. She would start a new story, one without the baggage and stumbling blocks of previous plot arcs. A new cast of characters, a new setting. It turned out to be as easy as saving a few hundred bucks and putting a pin in a map. Instead of tying up all the loose ends, she just cut them off. One quick shear of the shears and she was gone.

A break from writing

  Once in awhile I get the urge to draw, though I have never done enough of it to come close to drawing well. Still, I love drawing trees and eyes. As far as eyes go, if I just stopped with them, I would be fine, but all too often they want to be surrounded by faces. Not my strong point.

  Since I have a thrifty soul and no real expectation of drawing greatness, I tend to fill up whole pages with different sketches until they overlap. This is what I was working on/playing with over the last couple of days:

  I started with rolling hills and a poorly drawn, extremely improbable watchtower. More like a chess piece than a safely climbable structure. The sketchbook is too big for my scanner, so I scanned the page in pieces. The edges tend to be gray where the book hangs over the edge of the scanner bed. Also, there is some detail work that the scanner just couldn't seem to pick up. I'm not saying that the pictures would look any more impressive if I had a more thorough scanner, only that they'd be slightly more detailed.

  Then I decided to draw some tree roots. Just roots. But a tree insisted on growing from them. An old Sequoia-type tree, with a broken top.

  Then I drew a left eye...from the viewer's perspective. A nose emerged to accompany it. Then a right eye. Then cheeks. Then hair began to entangle itself with the landscape. NOBODY has irises this big...but it was fun, anyway.

  Some other weird tree of no known species grew in the lower corner. 

  I really like the Sequoia-ish tree. I'm even fond of my person looking down. Cartoon eyes and all.

  I got tired of wasting time looking around for my beloved pencil set (so much reorganization going on at my place that I can't find anything at all these days), but happily, pencils don't cost much, so I bought five of my current favorite pencils, Cretacolor Monolith woodless, in different hardnesses. I don't know how real artists feel about these pencils, but I love the weight of them and how they feel in my hand. I know that if you know what you are doing, you can do the most amazing work with a simple #2 pencil, but I don't know what I'm doing and I find that cool drawing equipment is an inspiration all in itself.

  One of my favorite artists, John Howe, conjures characters and worlds and moods out of blank paper with plain old Steadtler pencils. He shapes the tips with a craft knife--not with a pencil sharpener!--sometimes exposing more than an inch of lead (which he seems miraculously to be able to draw with without its breaking. I do not have that kind of control, though since I've never actually tried his technique, what do I know? Maybe the lead is stronger than I think. Maybe I'm not quite the klutz I think I am.) A few broad strokes and a little cross-hatching, and he produces backstory, a sense of motivation, and imminent action.

  I think I will work on my trees.