Bawdy Bard Buttons - Win Some Today!

Introducing: The Bawdy Bard Button!


I am still writing like a manic. I figure I must keep the Bard rolling, as it were. In a comment below Clair said something about Ivy and Buddy being born on Christmas. I decided to offer some of those intensely coveted Bawdy Bard Buttons to see if anyone can figure out some of my little twists. Bawdy Bard Button Points will be calculated when the book is finished and magnificent prizes will be awarded!! Be the first on your block to solve the mystery’s in the Bawdy Bard Button Questions!


The first one is easy, so whoever figures it out gets 10 BB B’s. The second is harder, it will glean you 50 Bawdy Bard Buttons! The points will be accumulated and magnificent prizes awarded! You’ve got to post your answers in the comments section to this entry.

BBB Quiz #1. (10 BBB)

Here are my main characters Birthdays. Find what the link is for 10 Bawdy Bard Buttons


December 21, 1980 - Ivy Delaria Anthony & Holen Ilex Anthony are born in Ashland, Oregon
February 2, 1980 - Emily Anne St. Claire is born in Los Angeles, California
March 21, 1980 - A. Ray Andreason is born in Amherst, Massachusetts
April 31, 1979 - Ivan Alexander Collingwood V is born in Boston, Massachusetts
May 1, 1980 - Channa Rachel Rebecca Rossenstein is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
July 10, 1980 - Mark Garnet is born in Medford, OR
June 21, 1980 Arianna Llewellen is born in Beaumaris, Anglesey, North Wales, UK
September 21, 1980 - Brandy Byington is born in Ashland, OR
October 31, 1980 - Wayne Williams Ivory is born in Ashland, Oregon
August 1, 1979 - Colton Douglas Ivory is born in Ashland, Oregon


BBB Quiz #2. (50 BBB)

2. Using just the girls names figure out what they have in common. 50 Bawdy Bard Buttons!

Ivy Delaria Anthony
Emily Anne St. Claire
A. Ray Andreason
Channa Rachel Rebecca Rosenstein
Arianna Llewellen
Brandy Byington
Roxanne Dane

Over the Top!

What follows is a detailed report on a Very Good Day for Pooh Bears . . .


which was yesterday.

I began Thanksgiving Day alone at my computer where I finished the chapter I was writing, added it to the Master File and uploaded the whole thing to the Official Word Counter of NaNoWriMo.

The count rolled in at 52,585.
{{{So.}}} I have done it. I made it. I’m over the top with seven days to go. As we used to say in my Rodeo Days: YeEH-HAW!

I lit a candle and had some orange juice to celebrate.

My calculations were quite correct, I have over 50,000 words, but I do not have a novel. Like that empty/full glass that we perpetually wonder about, there are several ways to look at this.



I don’t have a novel, but I have 52,585 more words than I did on November 1. I also have a pretty good idea where to go from here. In other words, the work has just begun. I have learned quite a lot in the last three weeks. One thing is just that: the work has just begun. Another is that I am capable of doing the work. I have also learned that I really love the work. Even if I never finish the book, going through the process was worth it, if only for those three insights.

I didn’t try to end on Thanksgiving, it just happened. It did make it possible for this to be the first thing on my Thankful list. I have a new gratitude journal that is covered with red velvet. It is beautiful and feels lovely in my hands. I saved it to give to myself as a prize when I finished 50,000 words. The first thing I wrote it was that I was grateful to have the beautiful journal and indeed the materials to write. My Great-grandmother faithfully kept a journal using the margins of old letters, the few books she owned and every scrap of paper she ever found. I appreciate this electric-light-paper where my words come up as fast as my fingers can go, and I am thankful for the beautiful, blank, creamy paper in my new journal. There are few things more beautiful to a writer than a blank page, especially when you have the confidence to know you can fill that empty, hollow space with words. I do love words!

So I’ve made the goal at NaNoWriMo, but “In Shakespeare’s Steps” will still be here.

I will still be documenting the process until I’ve finished it. Please keep coming to visit. I’m expecting to get Post Show Depression any time now and will need to be cheered up, just as I have been cheered on!

Seriously folks, thank you so much for being here with me. Your comments here and knowing that you were reading and sending me good energy made an enormous difference in my being able to do this.

This is in the last chapter that I finished.

Ivy’s Prayer

Blessed Be the song of seasons
Blessed Be the firelight
Blessed Be the dawn awakened
Blessed Be the sacred night
Blessed Be the earth beneath me
Blessed Be the sky above
Blessed Be the Goddess giving
Blessed Be the grace of love


Blessings to you all ~
~ Winnie

Story of a Turkey Not Eaten

Do you remember this guy? Wow, I do!

I don’t know, can you assume there is an extra turkey or a turkey was saved just because you didn’t eat one? By the same logic there are dinosaurs and Humid Hibberty Hoppers, because I didn’t eat them either.

We decided not to have a “big” Thanksgiving this year. We finally figured out that we are adults and we can do what we want.:-O (What a concept!) And so ~ we transferred my children’s favorite holiday from Friday to Thursday and begin our season of Fauxolidays. Stick with me, it gets complicated, but it’s fun. Fauxolidays were invented by my eldest daughter who has come up with the excellent idea of Faux-mas. This is the thing: One of my daughter’s has a very significant other now, which gives us a new son, we like that part a lot. However, it also gives my daughter a new family. Last year my son -in-love spent Christmas with us in Utah, so his family expects them this year. It’s only fair.

Fair isn’t good enough, though. Both my daughters thought they would probably die from it. They have never spent a Christmas season apart. Then the eldest (who is very crafty) came up with the magnificent conclusion that we don’t have any little children in the mix, we don’t celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, it isn’t on the date of anyone’s birth anyway (we all know that story), what is important to us is being together, so there is no reason on earth that “Christmas” can’t happen on December 27th instead of the 25th . And thus, Faux-mas was conceived. All four children have said that they intend to “ask Santa” for $$ for airplane tickets to bring the wandering children home. We will have all our traditions, and our family together, who cares what day it is?

And you see how well Thanksgiving Revisioned fits into the general Faux’ness of the holiday season.

We realized that no one particularly liked Thanksgiving, nor the way it has culturally emerged. Preparing a huge dinner is a big hassle, something always goes wrong, people get hungry and cranky, the cooks get exhausted and cranky and by the time we actually sit down everyone is tense and no one feels very thankful for anything. Then everyone eats too much rich food that we are all unused to and ends up feeling kind of icky. And no one wants the left overs since they ate too much in the first place, so the left overs end up spoiling. None of this seems a real good way to be 'thankful.'

They are telling us now that the Pilgrims (read: Puritans) didn’t really invite the Native’s to the First Thanksgiving dinner in the first place. I read that on the net so it must be true. :-) Either way, we all know what ended up happening in general between the Europeans and the Native Americans, and it wasn't all a happy feast. “Thanks-Giving” is a fantastic idea, but like much else it seems to have gotten lost, or drowned in the turkey grease.

The mad “Day After Thanksgiving” commercial crash out is really slightly nauseating all the way around, but to have it attached to “Thanksgiving” is a real nasty irony, I think. Last year I read about a shopper who ended up in the hospital because of being so severely beaten and trampled. This was because someone thought that she had tried to “cut” in front of them while the frenzied shoppers were all trying to grab CD players that were on sale. After she fell, they all trampled right over her so they could get to the ‘bargins.’ Ugh. Sounds like one of my nightmares.

{{So}} we decided to keep just a few things from Thanksgiving, combined Tree Day and the new Thanksgiving Revisioned and headed for the mountains.


It's true! It's true! With similarities they’re fraught,
Ashland, Oregon

and Cam -e-lot!

A law was made a distant moon ago here:
That all the Ashland Women are so hot.

And there's a legal limit to the snow here
Like in Camelot.

The snow falls on the mountains in December
But down here in the valley it does not.
By order, summer lingers through September
Like in Camelot.
Ashland!

Camelot!
I know it sounds a bit bizarre,
But in Ashland

and Camelot
That's how conditions are.
We often have extraordinary sundown.

In November the pearled fog will appear .
In short, there's simply nots
Two more congenial spots
For happily-ever-aftering than
Ashland

And Camelot.



Now you see? I’ve been so good for almost a month and written “Real” stuff. I haven’t ripped off with a really disgusting song or a bad poem for a long time! The upshot is we don’t have to live in the snow or drive on the snow or scrape snow off our cars, but if you want snow, it is almost always just up there waiting. Yesterday was one of the most beautiful mountain snow days I have ever seen. Alot of snow had fallen the night before and all the trees were heavy with it, the air was cold, but the sky was blue streaked with long wisps of clouds like the softest baby yarn, and the sun on the snow was ~ well, sorry about the cliché, but the sun on the snow was like diamonds. There is just no way around it.

The huge firs were holding all this heavy, wet snow making them look alternatively like Monster Marshmallows, a Christmas card , a set waiting for Wendy Froud’s puppets, a land scape painting that doesn’t look quite real because everything is too perfect and a new book by Dr. Seuss. We went very high, there were lots of house-size trees, lots of babies, and lots of the most magnificent old growth firs 100s of feet high - full of Spanish moss and snow, so tall that you almost couldn’t see the top. Literally, I couldn’t get my head back far enough. I had to lean backwards against Verlin to watch the hypnotic, lacy clouds weave among the tops of the giant trees. I had to bless them all, and incidently Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski who has fought to save our forests. (And just been reelected - thankyouthankyouthankyou.)

While Verlin and the children searched out trees, I stood for about a half hour on a ridge, all alone in the most delicious, crystal silence - looking out over a huge valley to the mountains beyond, and there was nothing to see but trees. Trees and snow and sweet, singing silence. Even all the other people who might have been out in the diamond sunshine were at home eating turkey. There were no other humans for miles and miles, you could just tell. And then I had to pray ~ please don’t let this kind of thing ever cease to exist. Please let there always be somewhere that you can stand and see nothing but trees for miles and miles. When we got home I asked Verlin exactly where we had been. He had to look it up on the map, but there were not even any names for all the peaks, he said we were on peak #36. Beautiful peak #36, Jackson County, Oregon, USA. I will name that peak sometime in the next few days.

We found the perfect tree (I don’t know how, but we always do.) We thanked it for coming to us and holding our priceless ornaments which map out our memories and create a portrait of our lives. Bringing the tree and boughs into the house is a way of connecting our existence, our daily lives with the earth and all creation. While they chopped and carried, I cut holly that will go with the ivy that I will bring in from around my house.

Now you know my protagonist is named Ivy. You see, her parents were hippies - it’s a common condition of young people in this city. So Ivy and her twin brother were born on the night of the Winter Solstice and their parents named them . . . you got it: Holen and Ivy. It gets worse. Their middle names are the Latin names of their respective plants. The character of Ivy actually began because I thought the Latin word for Ivy was so pretty. It’s Delairea. I’ve always loved the name Ivy, and the ivy is my plant. Some of you may have read a Short Story/Novelette that I wrote which also has an Ivy as the protagonist. When I saw the name I thought I would name the character Delairea, but somehow she got stuck with both of them. She is not amused at being actually named Ivy Ivy. Her brother’s name is worse, as it is Holen Ilex. Really bad. Luckily someone early on latched on to the “Holly” and started calling him Buddy. And Buddy he is. Characters. I don’t know folks, they become real and kind of take over your head.

The end of the story is that we decorated the tree, “remembering” all the ornaments. We also got out the fabric wrapping. We have a goal of wrapping all our gifts in fabric so it can be reused again and again. We’ve been getting a little every year. We got some fun Christmas fabrics last year and I’ll probably get a little more this year and that should be all we need and it should last ten or fifteen years. The fabric will probably out last me.

Following, or I guess previous (?) Are a couple of poems about Tree Day. You can also read my article about it at the Soul Food 2003 Advent Calender here:

http://www.outbackonline.net/Advent%20Calendar/Cross_Festive2.htm

Tree Day Poems

Daughter’s on Tree Day

Once their hair hung down to their waists
In swinging twin cascades of gold and chestnut
Sister Light, Sister Dark
Dancing spirits in bright, constant, bubbling motion
Now that hair is short and chicly shaped
Their eyes are shadowed, their lips shined
Their long legs encased in leather
Those spirits move fluid now, eloquent
Cursive, cosmopolitan, smooth, sophisticated
They go out into the night
Like twin stars
Burning sculpted double patterns of light
In a black velvet sky

But, today
They have come up the mountain
To choose a Christmas tree
Eyes bare of makeup glisten in the bright cold air
Stocking caps are pulled down
Over the short tufts of their unwashed hair
The icy white wind paints their cheeks
Bright little girl pink
Smoothing out an urbane curve from eyebrows and lips,
It wipes ten years away from their faces
And they are twelve again

I watch them skip away,
arms linked Sister dark, sister light
Twined shadows dancing on the snow
The tall pines echo with their bubbling laughter
And the sun on the snow sparkles, shimmers and shines
Caught in the streaming swirl and sway
Of these strong singing spirits
That time will never
Really Still

© Edwina Peterson Cross





Tree Day 2004
A Tale Told in Haiku


tall Oregon pine
heavy silence fills it’s boughs
soft snow filters down

this crepe-white Tree Day
a magical Christmas mist
haunts the mystic wood

my brilliant daughters
their studies all forgotten
run like little girls

into the forest
toward the pillowed dreamy trees
seeking Tradition

tall son dressed in black
sugared by the sifting show
vanishes in mist

small dog bounds woodward
so fast he becomes a blur
swimming Milky Snow

whipping waves of wind
close around silence once more
white mist swallows all

winter coldly smiles
soft, the Hunter speaks to wood
evergreen is found

harvested with joy
The Holly King in triumph
is gathered by all

cycle comes again
dance from Solstice to Solstice
life is woven here

and the children sing
and climb amid the branches
one more year of joy

and in the warm truck
poet’s fingers drop her pen
dreams of Christmas mist …


© Edwina Peterson Cross

On the Downhill Side of 50,000

I’ve passed the 35,000 mark where the NaNoWriMo people tell you that things will start clicking. I haven’t heard any clicking except for my fingernails on the keys. I have however come to a place where instead of feeling like I’ve got my hands tangled in forty eight different skeins of snarled, fouled up yarn, I feel like I have it straightened out and separated and I can see that it is just possible that it might come to together. Maybe. Someday.

So here I am sitting with six strands between each finger getting read to try and figure out how to weave them into something coherent. Do I need a loom or do I just braid? If I need a loom, what kind? What will be weft and what will be warp? I believe I will write about braiding today as well. And I will leave as today’s entry here one of my favorite poems and paintings, which tells about a poet who wanted to weave with the dawn. Most of you have seen both painting and poem before, but they do fit beautifully.



Spinning a New Thread


I.
The poet goes out in the darkness
in the last lifeless black bone of night
She walks barefoot up the mountain
to a dwelling where eagles take flight
She waits there on the Edge of Forever
where the hard winds of Almost blow cold
She seeks an alchemical turning
the metallic night turning to gold.

Sunrise spills over the mountains
eternal surprise fills the sky
The first blazing beams ignite riches
white clouds burst to gold as they fly
The alchemy lasts only seconds
but the poet knows alchemy’s charms
She leans precariously into the void,
bundles gold dust in both of her arms.

She comes down from the Edge of Forever
her arms full of something that shines
Barefoot in the mist of the mountains
as morning lightdances the pines.



II.
Long has she woven with words,
she has learned to twill image with light,
Today with an armful of dawn
she seeks an additional rite
She quests to spin wishes material
To use them to string up her loom
To weave justice and blessings to being
to gift grace where grace so ought to bloom.

As she cards the sky stuff to fiber
And winds it around on the whorl
She finds it distilled down to fire
the color of a heartbeating pearl
She finds when she took nature's birthing
and brought it down from above
When she pulled it through hands seeking blessing
What her spindle was wound with, was love.

So she sits to learn how to spin blessings
fire constantly flows through her hands
Until tears fall in sparks on the spinning
as the poet at last understands . . .
She smiles through the sizzling prisms
that blur the fast spinning thread
“I meant to spin something ingenious and new,
but I’m spinning plain ‘hope’ here instead”
And then the poet laughs out loud
at her strange spun state of affairs
“I brought down the dawn and held fire to find:
I’ve always known how to spin prayers.”

So she spins all day and into the night
and the fiery golden threads grow
Soon she will string and warp the loom
weft her shuttle with fibers that glow
Then she’ll weave again, as she’s done before
with quiet knowledge that needs nothing proved
The weaver knows quite simply
prayer and hope are what get mountains moved
No matter the raw material
It has always come from above
The poet has known forever
it all flows directly from love.

But she smiles at her thread, regardless,
“‘twill make a weaving that is vivid and bright
Like glitter the dawn of the mountain will shine
through my blessings, my worddancing light
‘twill be woven and rolled and sent
to the one who needs it soon . . .”
The poets eyes go unfocused and wide . . .
“I wonder . . . could I pull down the moon?!?”


©Edwina Peterson Cross
(((For Megan)))

31,302 Words and Sinking

31,302 Words and Sinking


They say there is despair in week two. You look at what you have written and call it crap. They tell you not to quit. If you are going to quit, do not do it until week three. There will be a huge upsurgence, they say, and everything will begin to click. Click, click, CLIck, cliCK, CKICK like a cricket in heat. You will yell, “Hallelujah!!” and you will even know how to spell it!!

They are right. There is despair in week two. I am going to make 50,000 words. I will probably make 75,000 or 100,000. I’m still not going to have a novel. I am going to have pieces of plot, segments of story, portions, morsels, crumbs. Crumbly crumbs . . . the dry kind that won’t stick together. Like snow that won’t make a snow man, it won’t even make a snow ball, it just sticks to your mittens. The worst part is being left with people. People who live in your brain, but will never make it on to paper in a concise enough way to make a book.

I keep entertaining myself with the size of Jean Aural’s “Clan of the Cave Bear” or “And Ladies of the Club,” which was huge. Good grief, look at Harry Potter! Word on the street has it that they paid her by the word after book one, hence, the length. Perhaps I will wake up tomorrow and find out that Bloomsbury has called and wants to pay me by the word . . .

Tad Williams! I adore Tad Williams - Book Number Three of the ‘Dragon Bone Chair’ series had to be split into two books, each topping 800 pages. That is 1,600 pages for one book! Tad Williams!! I say to myself during moments of insomnia. Tad Williams . . .


I’ve been an editor. Though in a different medium, I know perfectly well that a first novel that is too big to lift is going to be tipped into the slush pile without being opened. I know perfectly well that a first novel that won’t hang together and is piece meal . . . is going to end up in the same place. We can add cherry syrup and make a snow cone.



Tad Williams . . . says the first voice.

Slush Pile . . . answers the second.



So . . . I wrote for awhile tonight, I went over what I’ve got and then I put a conditioner pack on my hair and one of those ginseng peel off masks on my face. In the first place, when you are feeling despairish, it is kind of fun to rip your face off. In the second place, it looks like I’m going to have to rely on my good looks in the end after all.


The novel, or lack of thereto, did not cause my insomnia, it just gave it focus.
AFTER ALL SCARLET . . .

Seattle/Portland Run

cold fog question
low hanging mist of
powdered pearls
sharp plash of whetted rain
the city a basket full of stars
answers the sudden sky:
"Seattle"

©Edwina Peterson Cross
November 13, 2006

Road Trip - Seattle/Portland Run ~

I have just taken my one and only vacation from writing in the month of November. My daughter and I drove through torrential rains both ways but still had a marvelous time on our Road Trip to Portland and Seattle. It was one of those weekends where we stuffed a lot in and still seemed to have plenty of time for a lot of shopping, eating, laughing and visiting. One of the most entertaining things was that I wasn’t quite able to take a vacation from writing after all. I wrote two thousand some odd words in my notebook after the girls had taken me back to my hotel at night. I’ve just transcribed them to the computer and uploaded them to the NaNoWri Mo site. I just love it when I do something really absurd.

We visited three of my daughters-in-love who live in Portland and Seattle. They are in an interesting phase of life, a phase that I didn’t ever have, living alone in the city in tiny, darling, apartments. All three live in beautiful, old buildings that were the abode’s of millionaires in the 1920's with names like “The Delaware Arms,” “The Bella Vista,” and “The Armstrong Towers,”. The apartments look like doll houses with tiny cupboards built into the walls, scrolled woodwork and hard wood floors. The girls have painted the walls clean, bright white and then will have one wall painted a rich pumpkin, electric blue, or burgundy. They have lap tops, baskets of knitting, a few carefully selected books. The bulk of their belongings are evidently stored at Mom & Dads. I stayed at a hotel much like the apartments where I had a view of the Space Needle. At the age of nine, I attended the World’s Fair that brought the Space Needle to Seattle. They told us that in ‘the future’ buildings would all look like the Space Needle. Nothing looks like the Space Needle, but the Space Needle, but there is some incredible architecture in Seattle. It is a beautiful, very distinctive city. We ate breakfast down by the Fish Market and got to watch the “Fish Throwers” throw fish!

I spent a lot of money having hit both Portland and Seattle Landmarks - REI in Seattle and Powells Books in Portland. I don’t get to go to Powell’s enough that it has ever lost it’s Christmas Morning feeling for me. Powell’s is one of my favorite places on earth. This is a bookstore that is big enough you need a map. The books are inexpensive enough that you always buy too many, thus spend too much money, and I did. The thing is, they have books that you can’t find anywhere else. I bought six (count ‘em SIX!) books by Patricia McKillip, one of my favorite authors. Somdms These books are some out of print and some just hard to find, but there they were sitting there on the shelf together - beautiful hard back books for less than a paperback costs most other places. I also bought several beautiful blank books and (drum roll . . .) an Oxford Edition of Shakespeare’s Complete Works. Something I’ve always wanted. It’s going to take up an entire shelf all by itself. Fantastic.

Another thing I love about Powell's is watching the book lovers being so delighted to be with so many books. Powell's is a great place for people watching. Everyone is so happy to be there. You will hear delighted voices calling out to each other. “Oh! Look at this!” “Ethel! Come and see what I've FOUND! The other big activity of the weekend was the closing concert of the Dixie Chicks tour in the Tacoma Dome. I don’t do big concerts very often, but this was special. It was big and loud and really just an amazing concert. Political, a bit. Happy, yes. Music, great.

On my refrigerator I have a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes that says, “We do not quit playing because we grow old. We grow old because we quit playing.” I find this to be a great truth. Whatever your “playing” is, it is necessary to life to keep playing. I like Road Trips. I like Concerts. I like Bookstores. I had a fantastic long weekend
- and while ‘taking a break’ from writing, I ended up with 2,838 words anyway!

As you probably already know, the problem with clichés is that while being kind of sickening, they very often are true. One of the best things about going on vacation is coming home. Cliché of the worst order. Very true, as well. I had fun sitting in the cute, old fashioned hotel room writing in my notebook. I am just delighted to be back in my own room with my computer. I’m wearing my fashionable new outfit (ultra soft yoga pants and smart-sox from REI, Dixie Chicks T’shirt, Brown Powell’s Hoodie Sweat shirt) and drinking tea in my new Powell’s mug. Outside it is brown on brown on grey on brown. It is raining softly and there is new snow sugar dusting the tops of the mountains. The fog is prowling around the mountains. Yum, November!

Seattle Bound!

20,206 Words - 'Words,Words,Words' (Hamlet II ii)

She Admits

She admits to loving words
She admits to carving them, splicing them, spinning them, singing them, holding them in her Mouth like rainwater, tasting them, twisting them, touching them, birthing them, breathing them, Believing them . . .
Words

She admits to expecting too much from them
She admits to holding them on her palms
As though she thinks she is all twelve Olympians
Raising her hands skyward, trying to wring a world
From words
She admits to stretching them, tying them,
Trying to make them
Magically multiply, to breathe them away
Leaving the emptiness ringing with
Meaning

She admits to wanting words
To wandering the halls hungrily searching, to knocking over plates and
Chairs in a rush for a pen and paper
She admits to burning desires, to waking in the night on fire for
A word
She admits to looking, lusting, longing . . . finally finding the right word
And being struck silent by
Adoration

She admits to shaping words so she can touch them
Paint, pencils, pens, printers
Quick wet ink against her finger whorls

She admits to writing words on the walls of her office
She admits to writing words on the walls of her heart
She admits to finding them blue and translucent swimming inside her wrists
Floating behind her elbows, hushed at her temples
Where the skin is transparent, thin
Words

She admits to the darkness, what she admits
To so few
Words of weakness, of shaky insecurity,
A trembling terror that childhood never swallowed
A fear that never has been answered
Blood on her wrists, blood like oil
Not mixing with tears, not mixing with rain
Building a bruised, broken rainbow,
Long darkly dreamed . . . not enough, not
Enough, not enough, not
Enough

She admits to
Question still
If her dancing, her dreaming
All her blessed, beloved
Words
Can possibly be reason enough
To justify even
Breath

No less pay this long ransom
On a gift
She cannot deserve


©Edwina Peterson Cross

18,557 Words-Watching the Pieces Become Whole

My front yard looks like a faery land this morning. The lawn is covered with dandelions that have gone to seed, the roses are dreaming up their final color, pale yellow, pink and the peace rose the color of shells in the moonlight. All of this is wrapped in the first, cold fog of winter.

I have a confession. I love November. October in Ashland is incredible, the air turns crisp and the leaves change colors, but the sun still shines and the sky is still that unbelievable blue that very often truly hasn’t got a cloud in it. When November comes everything gets soft. The colors mute and the lion colored grass turns a gentler brown. And then the fog comes, soft and wreathing, the color of pearls. November is a soft time. A dreaming kind of time. It is quiet, and still and nestled with fog.

I have another confession. I wrote all night. I know, I know. I’m not really pushing for numbers, but I had a chapter that wouldn’t happen all day and suddenly at about midnight it started pouring. This is really turning out to be the most fascinating process. I knew that this chapter had to end in a certain place, but I had no idea on earth how I was going to get there. At six o’clock this morning I finished it, slap, bang, boom - just as if I were watching a movie, there it was, that was the way it was supposed to be. It was perfect. And I can sleep all day. How is that for being a retired writer?

I don’t know if the pieces of this puzzle are actually ever going to go together, but it is intriguing to watch each piece become whole. Isn’t that strange, that I say “watch?” That is what it feels like sometimes. I feel much less like I am “making” this and more like I am watching it happen.

Well, NaNoWriMo says that I am at 18,557, so I’m nearing the 20,000 mark. It’s just as well, because I am taking my one and only break next weekend and going on a road trip with my daughter to Seattle. I still have research that needs to be done on this story, but as long as the show is going on, I think I’ll keep watching, keep moving my fingers and getting it down.

And incidently, backing it up to a second hard drive and taking two hard copies. I’m not paranoid, I’m just getting smarter.

Sarasvati

Thank you Clair! How have I gone this long without knowing Sarasvati better than I did? I knew she was the Goddess of music, but I have read this morning that She also watches over painting, sculpture, dance and writing! Her beautiful picture is with Brigid on my board now. And yes! I cleaned my desk, which is never all that tidy, but at least you can see the desk now.

I followed a link to “Creative Goddesses” and found there my own Brigid, The Muses, with whom I am well acquainted, Sarasvati and Oshun, the Yoruban Goddess of love. It says she delights in the creation of beauty and art, sensual delights and self-adornment and beautifying your home. She is beautiful, but not quite my thing. Sarasvati, however, I needed to know better. Thank you again Clair. She is watching over
me now!

Along with Brigid - Brigid, whose name means "bright arrow," is the Celtic Goddess of poetry, healing and smith craft, which is sometimes translated as a metaphor for inspiration.

She is the inspiration to all bards and artisans, scholars and any who work with words. Brigid, is knows as the Goddess who survived. When Ireland was taken by Christianity, they could not suppress the devotion to Brigid. So they made her a saint and she was kept just as she was. St. Brigid's church in Kildare was built on a site sacred to Brigid. Where Her eternal flame had once been tended by 19 priestesses, now 19 nuns took it in turn to each tend the flame for a day and a night. On the 20th day, the Goddess (or the saint) tended the flame herself.

With me are the Muses. My own, of course, who changes who is on any kind of whim. The nine daughters of Mnemosyne, Memory are the expression through the arts of humankind's deepest memories and visions. Each Muse gives the gift of inspiration in a particular art form.

Terpsichore, who is the muse of dance is my oldest companion. I am well acquainted with both Erato, the muse of love poetry and Euterpe, the must of lyric poetry.

I am being joined in this different venture by Thalia, the muse of comedy and Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. Calliope, who is the muse of epic’s keeps coming in and laughing. I suspect that has something to do with my word count, and the fact that they don’t think I edit very well. I also suspect Thalia of starting it. She is like that.

If anyone else finds any other things they think I ought to know/see please send them!

"Inside this Wooden O"

I’ve finished my writing for today - I think. I may have to do the next part. We’ll see. Yesterday I only managed 2,567 words. Today I’ve finished an important link and come up with 4,667. This is extremely weird. My count from Thursday was 4,669. Two words different. Don’t you find that strange?
The total now stands at 11,903.

I've just uploaded the whole thing to NaNoWriMo. They say their word counter is "generous". I should say so! They have given me 12,621!! As we used to say in my rodeo days: YEA-HA!!

There are going to be too many words. That is something that I already know. I’m going to have to cut it to pieces. Or make three books out of it. Who knows.

I have had several people ask me about the half-timbered Tudor building at the end of my first writing entry. Some asked if it was my home. I wish. If I ever make a million dollars I will build a house that looks just like this. I’ll put it on a hill above Ashland and it will be the biggest, giant cliché that Southern Oregon has ever seen!

This building is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Elizabethan Theater. It is patterned on the original Globe Theater in London.. My story centers around Shakespeare and this Shakespeare Festival. This particular view of the back of the Lizzy and the Swan Pond is going to be very important. Here is a piece I wrote a few years ago that speaks of the magic of this building.

“Inside this Wooden O.” The smaller one in Cedar City, Utah, where I was born. The larger one in Ashland, Oregon, which is now my home. Both are modeled on the original in London. So much magic has transpired here that it is sunk deeply into the wood; yet if you touch that wood, during the day, you will not feel the magic shuddering under your fingers. It sleeps until it is time for it to come alive. When the trumpets sound, when the flag is hoisted, it will wake and begin to glow. Then it will simmer and sing for a few precious hours while the stars wheel over head, in a night breeze that smells there of sage, here of pine."

I am hoping to be able to catch some of that magic in this story. My children began going to the Utah Shakespearian Festival when they were tiny. In Utah you have to be five to attend to the Adams Theater, the Elizabethan Theater there. Both my daughters went at three, standing on their toes underneath their long dresses, they broke the law for the first time. By the time they were five they were seeing tragedies as well as comedies. We read them together before going to Utah. They acted them out. By the time they were ten they were so conversant in Shakespeare that they scared people. We went to the Utah Shakespeare Festival for ten years. And then we moved to Ashland, where we live with this magic every day.

This painting at the beginning of this entry is titled, “Closing the Lizzy.” At the end of the season, after the last play is performed in the Elizabethan Theater, there is a closing ceremony. After the darkness that signifies “Curtain”, everyone who works for the Festival comes into the theater, each carrying a candle. There is usually a single musician, a violin, a harp, a lute; who begins playing Greensleeves. Soon everyone in the theater has begun to hum along. When all the candles are inside the theater, one of the actors comes out on the stage and speaks these lines, that Shakespeare gave to Prospero at the end of The Tempest:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

(The Tempest IV, i)

When the last words are spoken, the audience hums along with Greensleeves for one more chorus, in what seems a single breath, all the candles are blown out - and the theater is closed for the year. It is simple. Elegant. Utterly magic. “Inside this Wooden O.”

4,669 Words

Yesterday I spoke my characters names to the dawn. Today I came down to the fact that now they have to do what it is they are going to do. I began a journaling process, much like Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages.” I am “dumping my head,” but I am dumping it of clues to just what is going to happen in this story. It is FASCINATING! Somewhere in my head, I have the answers and I am in the process of getting this out. It is like I am channeling myself! I’ve never read any where about this process for writing a novel, but it is working for me. It is like I am thinking in ink and suddenly things begin to appear.

I wrote 4,669 words today.

It sounds like a lot. But I wrote ten times that many words in my journal getting to the place where I could write this “scene,” this piece of story. It is not coming to me chronologically, but in pieces from all over. This will mean being able to organize it when I’m finished. Filling in spots that are empty - things that don’t connect. It should be quite a ride!

And this is what the process looks like artistically.





Surrounding the names of my characters are many, many paintings. All of these were made from those character’s names. There are so many different places these characters could go, so many things that might happen. Each painting depicts a different route, a different plot that is possible. They are very similar, but each one is subtlety different. Which will be the path that my characters will follow?

It is much like real life. One turn can make everything different, one choice can change the color of everything. Here I am looking at all these different, incredible possibilities. And listening to the voice inside myself that is telling me which way they will go - a voice that is spilling out through my hand, through a pen onto the pages of a notebook. Which one is right? What will happen?

All I can do is listen and write what I hear . . .

It is the dark of the moon on the longest night of the year. It is Ivy and Buddy’s birthday, but for Ivy things have never been darker. Today we found that against all the odds, Ivy’s friends have found a way to take her away to Darlingtonia after all. Darlingtonia by the sea - their private place of deep connections; of circles, memories and magic. Ivy can see that with the help of her circle, what looked like a maze she could never escape, is a labyrinth after all - the path leading to Center and leading out the same way. And she doesn’t have to walk that path alone. Emily, Arianna, Ray and Channa will be with her. And Brandy is flying in from Denmark to make their circle whole. Only Roxanne will be missing, Roxanne their mentor. But they will set a place for her, beside the place they set for Elijah.

“In Shakespeare’s Steps”
11/3/06
4,669 Words

The Writer - The Hero

This is my Painting titled “Writer - The Hero.” I am speaking here of an Archetype, of Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, wearing a face that is my own. This is my Hero’s Journey. Above the bookcase you will see pictures and characters from my own stories.

NOVEMBER 1
NaNoWriMo
Day 1

"In Shakespeare's Steps"

It is officially the first of November, and the first day of NaNoWriMo. I have already begun the novel I plan to work on. The working title is: In Shakespeare’s Steps. I know a lot about my characters, but I don’t know what is going to happen yet. My last attempt to write a novel ended when characters began to show up who I didn’t expect and the plot took off on it’s own. I didn’t know quite what to do about it and the novel ended up in the proverbial top drawer of my desk. This time I didn’t plot anything in advance. I started by taking the oldest writing advice on the planet: “write what you know.” I began with the idea of a circle of girls and Shakespeare, two things I know very well. That is really all I had at the beginning. The characters are the same age as my daughters and my circle of daughters-in-love; they have similar backgrounds and live in the same town. The characters became themselves very quickly, each one of them is an individual in their own right. I’ve told the girls, these characters are not them, but if circumstances had permitted, they all would have been friends. The plot hasn’t finalized itself at all yet, but I’m trusting to the process and trusting that it will.

I’m not really worried about writing 50,000 words. People who know me will tell you that I am quite capable of writing an email that has 50,000 words. I hope to make the 50,000 word goal, but it isn’t my primary focus. Truthfully, the experience is what I am after this month. Regardless of how many words I write, I know I will be changed by what happens between today and November 30th.

A Huge THANK-YOU to all those who have already cheered me on and those that will be with me for the long haul. My friend Nin Harris, a veteran of three NaNoWriMo’s, will be my mentor. My Light Dancers are here as a Special Cheering Squad. My special writing friend is Samme. Samme’s motivation and excitement is contagious. Break a Pencil Samme!!

You can follow my word count here. http://www.nanowrimo.org/userinfo.php?uid=145301

I wrote this poem very early this morning, when the sun was just coming up and turning the sky above the mountains the color of apricots and honey. I love names. Right now my characters exist only in my mind and in the reality of their names. I spoke those names out loud to the cold November air in the first light this morning. I hope someday they will be known by others as well. Of course I’d like to finish the book and have it published, but most of all I would like these people to be known. Ivy Anthony and Emily St. Claire ~ Ray Andreason and Brandy Byington ~ Channa Rosenstein, Arianna Llewellen and Roxanne Dane . . .

My desk is clean, my candles lit
New prayer flags stretched, awaiting air
I’ve come in stillness to commit
To form a simple, silent prayer

I wait in quiet joy for birth
Beside the fire’s dancing beam
Bare feet connect me to the earth
My heart connects me to this dream

There is a story I need to tell ~
May I breathe within it’s bones
May I weave a Bardic spell
With all it’s truths and it’s unknowns

May I build a worthy stage
May I shape it whole and right
A fitting frame on every page
For those I bring into the light

May I tell their truths with trust
As rainbows dance the sky above
May I paint with diamond dust
With miracles, with skill and love

Already real, they all exist
I whisper names to a morning breeze
My prayer, my pact, with dawn is kissed
I lift my hands to the waiting keys . . .