Heavy

The Word: Pan

She wondered how it would be to backpack with Dan. She didn’t know him that well, they’d dated at school. But now they were here, she was glad she came. He was at his best in nature, so happy to show off his backcountry skills and the high meadows of  yarrow and lupine and Indian paintbrush. The Colorado sky was Van Gogh blue, straight out of the tube.  Five days in the Lizard Head Wilderness, just the two of them.

Dan had planned the whole thing, traced their route on the green topo maps. He’d completely repacked her backpack, eliminating extra pants and sweaters and shirts she was sure she’d need.  Scrapping all her toiletries. Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint soap would be her major toilet item. All one, All one.

Now she saw how right he was. She hadn’t needed any of it.  He’d packed perfectly– aluminum camping dishes, fitted knife/fork/spoon sets, all nested together. Dried food, ground and measured coffee. A tiny stove, no bigger than a takeout box. Everything weighed and measured, every ounce pared away. Her pack was only 35 pounds, he took 60, all the heavy items–tent and food and fuel.

She loved Dan in the out-of-doors. Holding her hand when she had to balance on  switchbacks, encouraging her to cross a fallen log straddling a creek. He was never this nice back at school.  Mostly he kept to himself, or drank himself stupid with his roommate Chuck.

She liked nature. She had gone to Y Camp in the San Bernardinos, though it was nothing like this. He laughed at her when she woke the first night and thought there was a streetlight outside the tent. She was 19 years old and had never understood that the moon rose.  She’d stood outside the tent in her long underwear and gaped at the full moon.

They pressed on toward Lizard Head, skirting timberline, rising up into high meadows, dipping down into cool fragrant pines or trembling aspen.  He had  it down. They didn’t even have to carry much water, he’d planned the trip never to be far from a stream. They filtered the water with a little gizmo so they wouldn’t get giardia. Though it looked clean enough.

So self-sufficient. “Well, you have to be, out here,” he said.  “You can’t just run down to the hardware store.  You forget the flashlight, you’re SOL.”

They’d found the perfect camping spot–a clearing in the pines, two downed logs, the stream close-by–but not too close. Put up the tent, set up their ‘kitchen’, made some lemonade, settled in..  She took out her watercolors and painted him reading, lying on his Therm A Rest-padded log. She wandered, identifying woodpeckers and wildflowers. There was nothing they needed, they had everything–tent, sleeping bags, food.  It was perfect.

The light soaked the afternoon mountains in rose-gold when they saw the lone figure struggling up the trail.

They’d made their camp almost astride the path, having no idea anyone  might walk right through it. They hadn’t seen anyone since the trailhead.  “Who the fuck is that?” Dan said. “Look at the size of that pack. What a moron.”

Now they saw, it was a boy, wearing shorts and enormous hiking boots. He humped an orange backpack, bigger than he was.  He climbed slowly, he seemed to be making no progress at all, just this dot, green shirt, an orange pack, laboring up the mountain.

As he got closer, Jen could see he was exhausted, pushing himself, hands on his knees, as if he had to force each leg in turn to press the earth and carry him forward. But finally, he was within hailing distance of where they sat on their Therm A Rest pads. He grinned and called out, “Boy am I glad to see you! Wow.  That’s some trail, huh?”

Dan didn’t even say hello, just stared at the intruder, a boy, smiling, chestnut haired, about sixteen.

“Hi,” Jen said. Trying to distract him from Dan’s glower. “How long you been climbing?”

“All day. Wow,  that’s was some hike.”  He stood looking back to where he’d come from, gasping, cheeks red, fingers hooked around the straps of his enormous orange backpack from which a cast iron frypan hung. A fishing pole peeked out the top.  The frypan alone must have weighed ten pounds.

Jen could tell he wanted to drop the pack and join them, but he was offput by Dan’s unwelcoming vibe.  Well, unexpected things happened, whether Dan liked it or not. “Take off your pack and sit awhile. Want some lemonade? Cold from the stream..”

Dan gave her a withering look.

But she couldn’t exactly send the kid on his way, not like that. That wouldn’t be friendly at all.

The kid awkwardly lurched from his pack–it tilted and fell like a tree, hard, and clanging, the frypan and other jangly stuff that sounded like cans of soup and metal spoons.

She poured the lemonade they’d made from packets of instant and their filtered water into an aluminum cup. The kid drank it straight down. She poured him some more. What a pretty boy, his freckles, his dauntless smile.  “Where’d you come from?” she asked.

“Durango,” he said.  “My parents are staying down there. I hitched a ride, some cowboy.  It’s amazing up here, isn’t it?”  He sat down on the log next to Jen’.  Sighed. The view was tremendous, the craggy outcrops all around them.  He pulled a pennywhistle from his pack, played a lively tune.

“Wasn’t there anything you left at home?” Dan said from his side. He was rolling a joint. “What else you got in there, golf clubs?  A surfboard?”

Jen smiled awkwardly. What was it to Dan what the boy was carrying? He was always so mean to people who did things differently.  Or was it was the boy’s happiness he envied?

The kid toed his orange monstrosity. “Yeah, I guess it’s a little heavy. But I didn’t know what to take so I just threw a few things in.” He was eying the reefer.

Dan finished licking it, lay back on his Therm A Rest, lit up. Dan was one of those people who brought his own bottle to the party and drank from it.  If you went Chinese, he ordered the one thing he wanted, and didn’t share. He didn’t want to try yours, either.

He was at his best when it was just him and Jen, like on this trip. The other Dan, the one who couldn’t stand in line, the one who thought everyone else was a moron… she tended to put that Dan out of her mind. Excuse it.

The kid’s name was Jesse. He’d come up from Austin with his family, who were staying in Durango.  A friendly kid, open-faced, laughed easily. Jen stuck her hand out for the joint. Reluctantly, Dan passed it to her. She handed it to the kid.  That grin.  Sweet. “Thanks, man.”

She took a good hit on it before passing it back to Dan.

“So where you trying to get to?” Dan asked, begrudgingly entering the conversation.

Jesse shrugged, hitched his aching shoulder under the green t-shirt that said There is no Planet B. “Nowhere in particular. Just checkin’ it out.”

Dan snorted. “Do you have a map?”

Jesse said, “No, just thought I’d follow this trail, find somewhere to sleep, rinse and repeat.”

“No map?” Dan said. “You’re up in the Rocky Mountains and you have no map.”

Jen felt sorry for the kid. She was used to Dan and his mockery of what he felt was the idiocy of others.  It wasn’t so different than other guys at school.  But now, she was embarrassed.   “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Jen said, patting the kid’s sweaty shoulder.

“It’s how people die up here. They bring the shower curtain and the barbeque but no map.”

“I’m not going to die, dude.  It’s not that big a deal.  I’m going to go up that trail, and I’ll come down the same way.”  He stood up and dusted his hands on his shorts.  “Look, thanks for the bud. You guys have a good one.”

Jen wished he’d stay and play his little pennywhistle.  Have dinner with them.  She liked his attitude, his fresh, open smile. She envied his way of meeting the world, even if it was a bit haphazard. Even if that pack probably weighed 100 pounds. It didn’t bother him, he wasn’t complaining.  Jen helped him on with it.

“Get tired of Mr. Sunshine there, I’ll be right up the trail,” he whispered under his breath.

She laughed, and watched him climb up the trail, the afternoon light catching the red in his hair, the ridiculous frying pan hanging off the back of his pack like a manhole cover. The sound of an Irish pennywhistle filled the cooling air.

“Probably won’t even hang his food tonight,” Dan said.  “The bears’ll get his stuff and he’ll be one hungry puppy.”  He seemed to savor the thought.

But Jen didn’t think the bears would get his food. And even if they did, Jesse probably wouldn’t mind.  He’d be hungry, but he’d get down the mountain somehow. She’d give him half of hers.  In any case, she bet that even bears wouldn’t dent the boy’s good humor.

She lay on her log, listening to the light sound of the pennywhistle echoing off the mountain peaks, getting fainter and further away.

Part  of a semi-weekly series of short short stories based on a writing exercise, The Word.  “Inspired by a simple word, chosen at random, write a two-page double-spaced story, using the Word at least once.”

 Next week’s word is: FOIL

Italian Movie

The Word: SLIP

A youngish man with graying hair stands on the sidewalk of the elegant Via Ariosto, looking up. Across the street, an older woman follows his gaze, up the building’s third story to where a young woman stands on a balcony in her slip. A young brunette woman in a white slip, tall shutters half-open behind her.

Milan, summer, twilight.

Leaning over the art nouveau railing, lush dark hair full over her shoulders, the young woman drops a white handkerchief–no, something wrapped in a handkerchief–to the man looking up. He misses the toss. Leans over and picks the package up.

It is an Italian movie. A key. Dropped from the third story balcony to the lover below.

What she remembers are those slender arms, the flutter and flash of a white handkerchief, the white slip, the glossy brown hair, the smile, and how the youngish man unwraps the handkerchief, climbs the steps, lets himself in with the tossed key.

Now the older woman stands alone on the Via Ariosto. The youngish man with the graying hair is gone. The slender-armed, graceful, barefoot woman on the balcony, the woman in the slip, has disappeared inside the half-shuttered room.

The other woman feels it, a deep ache. That she would never drop a key in a handkerchief from an elegant balcony before shuttered doors, wearing a white slip, for a handsome graying youngish man, in a midsummer twilight on an elegant Milanese road.

She’d just come back from the leafy corner café, where she drank a vino bianco alone under the trees–elms? Her divorce already cold. She is 56 years old, and she would never stand on a balcony in a white slip… god, they’d call out the Carabinieri! Her ashbrown hair streaked with gray would make no appealing picture, her plump bare arms tossing a key–to no one.

And yet, the beauty of this movie is unmistakable, heartpiercing in the twilight. She is slightly drunk. The fierce heat has ebbed to sensuous luminous blue. A man stands on the curb reading a newspaper lying in the street. His hands remain in his pockets, he has no intention of picking it up. An older man, older than her.

It is too early to return to the hotel. She strolls along the leafy street, remembering the loveliness of the woman on the balcony. Wondering, did loveliness need to be one’s own to give one happiness?

And what if she were the woman on the balcony? That Giulietta or Giovanna. Would she even know how beautiful she was? No. Truly, she would not.  She would be thinking of her lover, of their evening ahead, the salad she would make, a light salad on a night like this. But not the beauty of this moment.

It’s all merged into one single thing–the woman, the man, the twilight, the street. How evanescent–life, beauty. But this, this is hers alone, this moment–she, with the eyes of a traveler, she is the one who caught the key more surely than the graying youngish man.

Part  of a semi-weekly series of short short stories based on a writing exercise, The Word.  “Inspired by a simple word, chosen at random, write a two-page double-spaced story, using the Word at least once.”

 Next week’s word is: PAN

 

Tribute to the Fallen Giantess

 

After the windstorm

the massive eucalypt

lies prone across the stairs

the familiar fleshy trunk

barber-poled in green pink beige

skin

pocked in places

(successful battles

with borer beetles)

pale branches

two feet around

helpless

felled.

 

The tree man arrives.

 

He says: Six men.

A full chainsaw day  and  maybe two.

Even sideways, it’s twenty feet high.

Shakes his head

and gives me a good talking to.

Had I pruned it

reduced its shaggy bulk

subtracted boughs and limbs,

it might be alive today.

“Took that wind like a sail,”

he says.

 

But I’m learning lately

maybe you can’t control everything.

 

Trees fall

and there is change.

A death, much like our own.

 

And we too will leave

a hole in our own backyard world

sun and sky where once

a great tree plumed.

A hundred feet

of shimmering fragrant grayish-green

the twisting limbs

of a sensual giantess.

 

The eucalyptus lies on its side

across the hillside stairs

stunned at the change of posture.

It’s very slow to recognize

what’s happened.

Its leaves are still so green.

such is the life locked in its woody girth

too vast for sudden death.

But the tree man says

we can’t make a table,

or even a set of garden benches.

We’ll be lucky to get it down at all.

It must be reduced

to wood chips, to be fired out

onto a freeway embankment.

Carried out as firewood.

 

Like a sail, the man said

reproachfully.

It died resisting the wind.

Huge and defiant.

 

I find myself taking the  lesson opposite

The tree man’s intention.

I say, good for you, tree.

You died whole and grand

Utterly extended into the silhouette

you were born to inhabit.

Yes, I think it’s better to live like that

Immense, ungainly even

Than to let caution trim us small

and live as half of what we could have been.

 

The Magic Flute

The Word: Flute

It was the thing about love, thought Allie, as she nested food into a lettuce leaf and rolled it like a cigar.  We called love love, but she had been in love many times, and every love was as different as… what could be so different, so varied?  Dogs maybe. Some were big and some were small, some were diggers under fences, others shed all over you, some jumped up and knocked you over.  There were lazy, lie-about loves, and nervous ones and ones that slobbered or made ‘mistakes’ indoors.  Some dogs were companionable and alert, and others were clowns, and some were just plain vicious and had to be put down.

She gazed at this man across the table in the Vietnamese restaurant, rolling a spring roll into a transparent sheet of wonton.

“What?” he asked.

And what was their love? what kind of a dog was this, this unlikely creature they were together?  A pound dog, maybe.  After all, he hadn’t dated in years, had kept himself busy reading, learning languages, collecting vintage microscopes and magic lanterns and Victrolas. He painted pictures for dollhouses.  He’d used the word ‘repudiate’ in a sentence on their first date, and ‘legerdemain.’ He knew how to pick a lock, and opened her door once to show her.  “Don’t tell anyone, it’s illegal.”  He needed a haircut.  He wore a shirt he bought at a gas station.  He could recite Shakespeare’s sonnets and half of the Tempest, but didn’t know where downtown was.

And she was a woman who knew the difference between Baskerville and Goudy Old Style, could find Surinam on a map, an enthusiast in all things.  She could solve codes and ciphers, she loved traveling and wearing wigs, she liked songs in languages she didn’t understand. She made linoleum prints and assemblage art and got a 1400 on her SATs.  She read poetry, but could never learn anything by heart.  She was sentimental and gregarious.

Their kisses had resonance, like a good drum.  That surprised her. Mostly, he surprised her.  Because he could take her all in. Not just a part.  All of it. She didn’t have to leave anything out, she didn’t have to pretend to be more conventional, or moderate, so she could be understood. He could meet her everywhere.  When had that happened in the history of the world?

A matched pair. Not dogs. More  like the parrots people let loose in the cities of America, who found each other in parks and backyards.

Yes, like birds.  Like in the Magic Flute.  Not the romantic stars of the piece, Prince Tamino and his ladylove Pamina.  But rather, the comic foils–the lonely bird man, Papageno, who finds his bird girl, Papagena, at the end of the final act.  Allie knew that for Mozart, this had just been a mopping-up of a loose plot thread. She’d never even liked Mozart operas, or comic operas at all for that part, having always preferred operas where at the end everybody was dead and the stage was awash in blood. But there was no question that this was the Magic Flute, and there was magic even for someone so ridiculous, so full of enthusiasms, as her. There was another one out there, perfectly suited for her.

She had always thought her life was a tragedy.  It never occurred to her it would turn out to be a comedy.  That she was a comic character, Papagena in her feathers, made in heaven for some Papageno in a t-shirt from a gas station.

He was looking at her.  Sometimes he looked at her like this.  She reached out and he took her hand. “What,” he said.

Part  of a semi-weekly series of short short stories based on a writing exercise, The Word.  “Inspired by a simple word, chosen at random, write a two-page double-spaced story, using the Word at least once.”

Next week’s word is: SLIP

 

Peppertree Summer

The Word: PEPPER

It was the last peppertree summer.  The fronds on the shaggy old peppers hung down like a mermaid’s long hair, their green laden boughs studded with pink berries, flowing over her as Page rode underneath.  She’d set her fine, pale hair and sprayed on half a can of AquaNet, but it never stayed put. It just wasn’t hair made for setting.  She rode over to the new development going up on Vanowen, dawdling along the unpaved streets, the horse’s hooves beating out their lazy cadence. She tried to imagine all the families living in these new houses. Hard to picture what Van Nuys would be like without this big mustard field, only houses.

Her last summer in California.  Riding Daisy bareback with only a hackamore tied across her black nose, her pedal-pusher clad legs hanging long on either side  of the mare’s round ribs. Eighteen years old.  She felt the force of time, ejecting her from everything she’d known, squeezing her out of her life like a winged sycamore seed.  She was restless, she didn’t want to be around her friends, googly-eyed over Dion and Eddie Fisher.  She only wanted to sling a blanket over Daisy’s straw-gold back and wander the sleepy dirt backroads of Van Nuys, their passage noted only by the audience of ponies hanging their heads over the fences hard by shacks and orchards, surrounded by all the green and golden smells of late summer, corn growing high at Leary’s, apples fattening at Gommer McQuade’s.  She lay down onto Daisy’s neck  and pressed her face into that sleek summer coat, drinking in the smell, drawing her fingers through the black mane, arranging its pattern against the creamy gold. The last summer.

In a few weeks, she would be going east to college. Her mother had already bought the camel’s hair coat and wool plaid skirts and Shetland sweater sets. She would see her first red autumn, her first snowfall. Her roommate had already written to her, a girl named Hillary, from New York. Page had never been out of California except for a trip to the Grand Canyon when she was nine.  She should be looking forward to it, she told herself, but she was scared, and more than that. She was sad.  It was stupid,  nobody she knew was going to college back east. It was ridiculous to be sad.

The cicadas buzzed in the dusty afternoon, and she rode Daisy in and out through the stout pepper trees, letting their leaves brush her face like they were hands, caressing her, memorizing her.  Would she like it in Boston?  Would she understand it?  People were so different there.  So sophisticated and all.  Hillary had paper with her name engraved on it.  Did they have pepper trees in Boston?  Hot dirt road summer days and horse sweat and barn smells, western saddles, hawks that circled lazily over the canyons?    And what would happen to Daisy?  She would be so fat by Christmas…

The mare grew bored and inattentive, she stopped and leaned down to bury her black nose in the dry grass growing at the base of one of the shaggy peppers, and Page let her, why not.  What did she care about Daisy’s bad habits now. By the time she got back at Christmas, Daisy wouldn’t even remember her.

These pepper trees. So ancient. Peppers came up from Mexico with Father Serra and the missions. Page was sure they didn’t have pepper trees in Boston, or buckskin horses.  She would wear nylons, and heels, and set her hair and go sledding, throw snowballs… She should have gone to Stanford. At least it was in California. Why had she been so quick to leave everything she knew and loved?

But the Valley would always be here, she told herself.  Just like this. These dirt back roads, the produce stands, the little farms and orchards, clutches of quail breaking from the brush and running across the road, roadrunners chasing lizards, standing with them proudly dangling from their yellow beaks.  Whenever she came home, it would all still be here. Just like this.

Part  of a semi-weekly series of short short stories based on a writing exercise, The Word.  “Inspired by a simple word, chosen at random, write a two-page double-spaced story, using the Word at least once.”

Next week’s word is: FLUTE

 

The Sleeper Hold

The Word: Tears

Georgia brought her mother dinner on a tray, El Pollo Loco, rice and slaw. Her mother lay propped in her bed, in a less-than-clean pink tracksuit and thin, draggled hair–which she insisted could only be washed once a week by Tami at the beauty parlor, set and sprayed to last the following week. Pro Wrestling blared on TV, her mother’s new hobby. Friday Night Smackdown.

“Sleeper hold,” the old woman called out, pointing to the TV. “Look, Georgie.  Aw, that Viper’s a monster.”

By the time she looked up, a nearly naked man in a mohawk and hip boots was smashing another man over the back with a folding chair.

She could barely recognize her mother these days, her face and legs all puffy. T The doctors had run test after test, they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They’d been trying to control the swelling with diuretics, but so far nothing worked. Worse, she’d been forgetting medication, or else pulling stunts like applying half a month’s worth of analgesic pads all at once, so they’d had to arm-twist the pharmacy to refill the prescription ahead of time.

On TV, two large oiled men grappled and grunted. One got hold of the other and attempted to pound his head into the floor. Her mother lifted the rice to her mouth, not taking her eyes from the screen, getting half of it on her bosom.  “Piledriver.”

Georgia wished she’d been firmer about getting her mother out of the house,  back when her father died. But she hadn’t, so here she was coming over after work to feed her mother before going home and throwing something together for herself and Arthur. A good stiff drink was what she needed.  She was tired. She was fifty-six years old and bone weary. Sometimes she would like to just take her mother and apply the sleeper hold.

She went back downstairs to see if there was anything that needed throwing out. She’d asked Charlene, the caregiver, to keep the refrigerator updated, but the woman wasn’t getting paid enough to care about milk souring in the refrigerator. Her mother was sure the woman was stealing toilet paper, canned goods. “Why does she need to bring shopping bags to work?”   Georgia checked the trash, the refrigerator, sniffed the milk.  Everything was fine. She went around the kitchen like a hound, sniffing.

The floor proved wet around the old Westinghouse washer.  She was tired and hungry, and now there was this leak. She saw it all.  The repairman, late. The expense. It was an old machine, should she bother repairing it? But to replace it, for what? She took a mop and some bleach and mopped up the wet floor. If only Charlene could put the damned machine in her shopping bag, and the rest of the house too, and good riddance.

She knew she should just go home.  It was almost eight, a long day.  But the smell was stronger in the hall.  Noticeably so.  With a great deal of trepidation, she opened the door to the closet. Yes, there it was–musty, stale, like old ladies.  Age, decrepitude, feebleness.

It sapped all her strength. She’d always been the youthful looking one, of all her friends, everybody said so, but now nobody said it.  Her jaw, softening, her neck had its own flesh turtleneck. She wasn’t sleeping well, and she’d noticed just this morning how much she was coming to resemble Somerset Maugham.

Steeling herself, she pushed the coats aside, freeing up the area that led to the basement.  The smell flooded up. Dank, cold.

She didn’t like basements.  Her own house didn’t have one. Who had basements in Los Angeles?  Even as a child she was afraid of it.  It was dark, earthy smelling.  You could hear the creaking old house settling overhead. She’d gone down there just a half-dozen times in the fifty years her parents lived in this house, and only with her father, holding his flashlight.  The rotting ship’s ladder of a stairway.

Of course, the flashlight was dead. She went back out into the kitchen and found a 12 pack of D batteries. Outdated, useless.  She found two more flashlights, three, but none of them worked. Finally, armed with her cell phone, she returned to the dark opening of the basement and shone the feeble light down.

Water lapped halfway up the water heater. Water covered the lower vents of the furnace. Dirty, stinking, stagnant water  Water hid the bottom two rungs of the flimsy ladder.

Georgia sat on the top step and gazed into the murky water.  She felt the weight of the house on her shoulders, the house and her mother in it.  She had no ideas. Not a single one.   Tears slid down her cheeks, and she didn’t even bother to wipe them with the back of her freckled hand.  She could feel her mother upstairs, watching men in Mohawks and skull masks grapple and pin one another, roaring with outrage and murder.  But this, this water, this is what was happening to them. It wasn’t a wrestling match.  It was the slow filling of basements, the thing that eroded the foundations.  Silently, only announcing itself by the smell of decay.

She went up to the room and kissed her mother’s forehead.  “There’ll be a plumber coming tomorrow.”

Her mother tried to see around her as a man in a Batman mask threw himself at a man in black leather pants with flames coming up the sides,  wrapping his legs around the other man’s neck. “We need more toilet paper, that woman’s been taking it by the sixpack.”

Something was being stolen here, but it wasn’t the toilet paper.  “Sure Mom, I’ll bring some tomorrow.”

Part  of a semi-weekly series of short short stories based on a writing exercise, The Word.  “Inspired by a simple word, chosen at random, write a two-page double-spaced story, using the Word at least once.”

Next week’s word is:  pepper

 

What is Art For? Last round…

I challenged the young writers on Figment to send me questions this week related to the purpose of art–What is Art For?  Not just “why I write”–ie my own personal reasons for doing this rather obsessive activity–but the value of literature as a cultural phenomenon. What art does for the human soul.

Here’s the complete post:

What is Art For?

In the past three weeks, I’ve been thinking with you about writing and writer’s issues. But when we talk about What Is Art For? we’re now turning around and asking, not just why we do this personally, how it fulfills our own creative needs and urges, but also, why we read, why we as human beings require this thing called art, this thing called literature. What is it we need here, why do we turn to literature to examine some of the deeper questions common to us as human beings?  And then how does that mesh with the needs of the artist as one individual, to create this thing called art.

Do you hate it when teens try to write/create ‘deep’ pieces of art or writing and it ends up forced and artsy fartsy?

Do you think that sometimes there should be no hidden meaning in a work? Just beauty?

Here is an interesting paradox, everyone is looking for the meaning of life, but what if there is no singular encompassing meaning of life? Do you believe that the meaning of life is different for everyone then? (Cassy blue)

I think that one arrives at deep places through a detailed consideration of the conflicts and problems of human existence. What’s cheesy and forced is to try to “be deep” without going through the work of living through something and having the characters actively moving from their own problems to the bigger issues inherent in those problems, and then coming back into the specific, the real.  A writing teacher I had once used to say, If you can have a character eat dinner and think about dinner,  or eat dinner and think about God, have them think about God.  Move to the big issues. People read literature to help them think bigger, to help them get out of just fixing dinner or drying out the basement.  Great writing has a girl and a boy breaking up, but then the character thinking more deeply about love, is it a curse or a blessing, does it exist, etc.  While dealing with the actual love and dinner and homework on the physical level.  Art is “for” thinking more deeply about what it means to be a human being on this earth. Explain it to someone from Mars.  Not in the abstract, but in terms of what really happens to us day to day.

I don’t think in terms of a hidden meaning in a work. I think the meaning, the sense of what it is to be a human, the bigger issue, is always there if a work is art–like the wood of a table. It’s an intrinsic part of what’s going on.

But I do believe in meaning, not just beauty, when we’re talking about writing.  Because you’re unpacking human experience. Words are not just colors–they’re individual capsules of meaning, like atoms, and we work them into chains, like molecules, called sentences, and they become organisms, that are called stories. There’s nothing but meaning. Or at least the potential for meaning, if the writer wants really shape a great table.

There is no single encompassing meaning of life–or let’s say, I don’t think a work of fiction is designed to carry it.  But I think each story is reflective of the writer’s sense of the world.  Do good people get screwed? Is optimism a good thing even if things don’t always work out? Each story conveys its own sense of the world, its own view of life.

Beauty is like the sugar that makes the medicine go down.

Although usually I don’t know what I think until I’ve written a story, searching always for “what the heck DO I think?”  As a writer, I come to know my own attitudes and world view by creating stories that I think are true.

I think there are some great themes in human thought and that we write, and we read other people’s work, to think about them more deeply. To become more human, more aware, more thoughtful, to expand our lives and experiences by living other people’s lives as well as our own.

Some of this week’s questions have already been answered in earlier topics. If you can’t find the answer to your question below, look at the earlier posts (and then a link to find them).

Do you think art/literature/etc is supposed to have some deep and hidden meaning or just be clear and simple in what it’s trying to express? Which do you prefer: the abstract and convoluted type that makes you think, or the clean and clear type that is easy to understand?  And thanks for answering so many questions! ^___^ (Annie)

I think things can be easily accessible or presented in a more mysterious way… it’s always the writer’s choice.

Do you see writing as an art, or just a profession? What is the difference between being an author and being a writer? (Fish Fingers and Custard)

I see it as an art.  It’s a profession for very few people (i.e. they make a living at it.)  Making a living has nothing to do with creating art.  An author is a published writer.

As an artist myself, I know that good art can mean many things for many different people. So what do you look for in art? Should it have meaning, good technique, beauty or a certain style? (Zara Olympia)

I look for all of the above.

Do you think writing is something that will always evolve? If yes, why do you think it keeps evolving? (Storm Adrian)

I think certain things keep evolving, style, formatting, attitudes, morality… but that the human being will always look to narrative to explain in some way this chaotic world we human beings live in. What’s nice about fiction, say, is that you can see the problems we all face sooner or later–but when it’s in real life, it usually happens too fast and in too overwhelming a manner to think about. Fiction is sort of our asbestos gloves, they help us handle these really hot problems before we go through them ourselves, figure out what we think.

Why do you write? (Kaitlyn Watson)

Because I don’t know what I think before I write.

Do you see your writing as a statement about yourself or a statement about the world? (Astralhaze)

Ah… aren’t I part of the world?

What makes us want to create something? Is it for us or for others? (Charlotte Jordan)

Usually it’s for ourselves–from our point of view…. but if we want to produce something more than a doodle, we’re aware that the writer only writes part of a work, the reader creates the other part in his or her head.

Why do we all keep on going? Why don’t we just stop and give up when we have writer’s block? What do you think makes us try harder? (Violet)

We don’t all keep going. Only the people who love sentences and meaning and narrative and the imagination enough to want to suffer the insecurity and doubt and sheer grunt work will keep going.  We want to try harder because we want to get it right, and because we admire writers who have gone before us.

 

How do you know you’re a writer? What makes us different from other artists? When do you know it’s the right time to let a story go and move on? (Caspian)

If you write, you’re a writer. Different from other artists in that we handle units of meaning. Our work really has no materials but ideas in the reader’s head.  We create a world in someone else’s mind.  I let a story go when I’ve finished it and it still doesn’t satisfy me.

Does art and writing really have a meaning or are we making up meanings? (Zara Olympia)

I don’t think there’s any difference, in the case of writing.  Not necessarily a hidden meaning, like a secret drawer, but the work itself resonates meaning.

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? (Incendio)

No. Especially not now in the age of photoshop!  (That was in the day of “I’ll believe it when i see it.”)  They do two different things. I don’t think they’re interchangeable.

I get inspired to write by my art, and I am inspired to paint by my writing. DO you feel the same way about writing and another form of art like I do? (Savannah Ettinger)

Yes, that’s why I’m always exposing myself to the other arts.  Definitely.

Art describes things with pictures whereas writing describes things with words. Which is better to you, describing things with words or pictures? Which one is more eloquent? (Zara Olympia)

I wouldn’t ordinate them.

Is the meaning of different stories easier to find then the meaning of different art pieces? (Zara Olympia)

The word, the literary arts, are nothing but meaning.  Visual art stirs us on other levels.

Should art show a story or convey emotions, or do both? (Zara Olympia)

The story is the means to create the emotion.

What is your favorite thing about art? (Zara Olympia)

It reaches into the deepest parts of our souls. It makes us more human, it helps us understand the reality of other human beings.  It creates empathy and dignity and respect.

What is your favorite medium? (Zara Olympia)

The word.

What is your favorite color? (Zara Olympia)

Depends. Like green a lot now. But have a lot of red in my house, my car is red.

What inspires you to draw and write? Is it the way something looks, an object that sparks an idea? (Zara Olympia)

The challenge. Can I describe this? Can I use words to capture that light, the way it’s falling on that tree?

If you could have any piece of art which one would you have? (Zara Olympia)

Piece of visual art?  Sigh… Van Gogh’s Arlesienne? Degas’ Red Room (lady with fan)?  Vuillard’s big garden on brown paper?

Have you ever seen any of your stories “come to life” in the real world? (Deepshikha)

I find that I write things and people say, “Oh, that exact thing happened to me.” Often. It’s a thrill.

What is your muse, what inspires you to write, and why do you write? (Emiana West)

Great writers of the past are my muses. They were the ones who made me want to write.

When you write, do you ever feel it is pointless, like no one really cares? What keeps you going? (Lucy)

No.  I never feel it’s pointless. I do it because I am curious, and I like the life of the imagination.

Have you ever written a small unpublished book about food, people eating food, nutella, or some food that has been poisoned? Those books are really interesting if you think about it… (Britt. That’s It.)

You should always put food in your work. Food, someone to worry about, some kind of battle or cause or desire, and light.

What inspires and motivates you? (Megan G)

Writing itself inspires me. I write a sentence I wasn’t intending to write.  Wow!  Where does that go?

How do you develop characters? Do you model them after someone you know, or make them up completely? And how do you decide on their names? (Megan G)

They’re usually a piece of myself that want to be expressed in the form of someone who’s not me.  I get their outer form from other people, even actors.  I just feel my way into their names.

Would you still write if you couldn’t share your work? (Hyphen Norso)

Absolutely.

Do you understand modern art? (In general, I don’t…so just wondering.) (Holly Blackwood)

Art needs to be felt–there’s also a history, each work is in conversation with the art of the past and the times in which it’s created.

In your opinion, what defines an artist? (Holly Blackwood)

Someone who wants to express something inside using materials of art.

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. Do you agree? (Holly Blackwood)

Depends on the picture, depends on your words.

In your opinion, is a writer an artist? (Holly Blackwood)

A writer with the goal of creating art is an artist. Without – just a laborer.

What are your favorite types of art? (Holly Blackwood)

ALL.

How do you think an artist differs from a writer? (Holly Blackwood)

A visual artist vs. a literary artist?  Fiction writers work with narrative which is meaning and time. Visual art can be seen all at once, and is not about meaning necessarily.

How do you feel about the smell of paint? (Holly Blackwood)

(I hate it.)  I like oil paints. My aunt was a painter, it reminds me of her.

What do you think motivated VanGogh to chop off his ear? (Holly Blackwood)

Don’t remember.  He was mentally ill at the time, I think.

Do you buy individually sliced cheese? (Holly Blackwood)

No.

(I just had to ask) Sorry for the question overload and thanks for your time! (Holly Blackwood)

After finding inspiration, how do you go about putting it into words? (Sofie Stone)

I start in, and the words roll. Then I question the words–’it was high’–well, how high was it?

Can I think a bigger thought here?

How far out of your personal experiences do you feel you can accurately write? (Rachel H.)

As far as the imagination will take you.  But then make sure you check after you’ve written and make sure you get it right.

When you think of art, do you think of one kind of art (such as just writing, or just theater arts)? (Maria E.B. Brandt)

Love all the arts.

Some of my friends love writing, yet are afraid to show their (wonderful!) writing to the world. What would you say to them? (Maria E.B. Brandt)

Show it to someone they KNOW will love it, loves them and will love whatever they do. Never criticize or “help” someone in this position.

Art and writing is a way of describing yourself, so how do you think your art and writing describes you? (Zara Olympia)

Ah. In some ways it’s a perfect blueprint of me and my anxieties and interests. But this will have to remain mysterious.

Do you put part of yourself in your art and writing? (Zara Olympia)

Yes, absolutely. My heart, my soul, my everything.

Which do you think can hold the most meaning at a glance: a picture or the written word? (Nox Zand)

A picture. It’s experienced all at once, where fiction or even poetry, is experienced, in time, one word after another. A person with Alzheimer’s can enjoy a painting or a bit of music but cannot assemble words into a narrative in their minds.

Have you ever written about a bad experience to cope (or maybe just a conversation with your friend, you know, something like that) and then it just blows up into something bigger? Not necessarily a novel but something developed and plotted and whatnot? (ASM Michellins)

Sure, all the time. But fictionalized, happening in a heightened or clearer way.

MISCELLANEA

Are you a writer that draws on events and places in your life for settings and book? (Cassy blue)

Yes, but in disguise.

Do you feel that writing about your hometown could mark you as being lazy? (Cassy blue)

Absolutely not.  Who knows it better than you? Ask Faulkner, he wasn’t lazy at all.

Have you ever considered turning your books into comics or graphic novels? (Cassy blue)

No. Though it would be fun to do one from scratch.

Do you draw your characters before you can write the book, otherwise it is futile? (Cassy blue)

No, I know some of them and as I write, I get to know them better.

“Which came first the chicken or the egg?” Do you hate questions like that? (Cassy blue)

The egg came first.  Because before the chicken there was a lizard, which also laid eggs. And before that a fish, that also had eggs.

Have you ever felt that you need to finish a story, even though another story calls you so enticingly? (Cassy blue)

Often that other story entices you because it’s hard to finish a story. Make a few notes and go back to your story.

When your computer doesn’t work, do you view this as a punishment by the universe? lol (Cassy blue)

No, I usually think it’s my fault for not backing up.

Do you visualize what your character will be like before putting pen to paper? (Marissa S.)

Yes, in a fuzzy sort of way.

Do you like Harry Potter? Why or why not? (Venatrix Captrix)

I am a big proponent of people reading books that are a little harder than what they can comfortably read. Harry Potter would be right for someone nine or so.  I have nothing against it, but I think people who are capable of reading tougher books should read ‘up’.