what word shall it be?

after astrid and willa went back to texas i discovered a piece of creased notebook paper written in pencil and submerged in a pile of odds and ends. as i held the paper portion of the accumulated stuff over the recycle bin—ready to release my hold and let it all slip away—i stopped. i decided to leaf through the detritus to verify that it was, in fact, junk, and not something of value in need of being saved. i'm glad i took the time to do so because under the advertising circulars, magazines, and envelopes enticing me with offers of credit cards, vinyl siding and replacement windows, i found this small gem, a gem from the mind of a young child on vacation in a place she had never before experienced.

astrid had begun to form ideas off the letters that spell "maine" (is there a name for doing this? an acrostic or something?) and then, at some point, seems to have been abruptly interrupted. she might have left her writing behind to eat dinner, or to head out on a fun excursion, or to get ready for bed; or she might have been distracted by her sister or the dog or the lure of a campfire and s'mores. whatever the case may have been, she never resumed her writing and the paper was forgotten and abandoned.

as i read the words i had found, i smiled. the girls had only left two days before, but already the events of the previous fourteen days had formed themselves into a prized collection of memories, the kinds of memories that are sweet and persistent and insist on being mulled over.

for your information, maine, it turns out, is "mainly cold"and yet it is also an "amazing place"; it is where imaginings and dreams are sparked, and the "not a warm sea" stretches to the horizon.

but then what? what about the last letter of the word m-a-i-n-e? what about that final "e"? astrid's writing suddenly ends, leaving the sorry looking "e" hanging there, and leaving me wanting more. what else were you going to say, little girl? the incomplete "e" stands by itself, lonely and unfinished at the bottom of the page. what could have come next in her thought process about maine? what might she have been thinking? what would the "e" have become? what else could she have added?

perhaps the "e" might have started off the word enjoyable. or energetic. or easygoing? or how about exquisite, extraordinary, eventful? maybe excited to explore someplace new. maine overflows with all these words.

or eating perhaps—we did a lot of that. the girls tasted lobster for the first time, although willa didn't particularly care for it. but that was fine with me—i love lobster and got to devour her leftovers.

i have taken the delightful piece of work and, for the time being, have tucked it away in a safe place. perhaps the author might finish it at a later date—at least i hope, i really hope, that's what will happen.

this missive: pulverized scabs

when abigail got down on her knees with her head bowed low, it could easily have been assumed—given the circumstances—that she was about to pray, that she was yet another whispering supplicant begging for a merciful god to save her children from a deadly epidemic. but the fact of the matter was she was on her knees searching—the praying would come later—bending over the floorboards muttering about the piece of thread she had inadvertently dropped—and the physician urgently needed—for the planned inoculation against smallpox in her boston household.

abigail adams made the decision in favor of inoculation on her own; her husband, john, was on a diplomatic mission overseas and already inoculated. besides, she knew he believed in its benefits. his wife was determined to take the risk of having herself and their four children deliberately infected in the hope of causing a mild case, rather than wait in fear for the disease to attack with its full fury.

by candlelight, after the children were tucked safely in bed, she inked pages and pages to john, unburdening her soul of doubts and fears and daily dramas, sometimes adding her dry humor or a quip about the shortages they suffered in 1776—god grant that we all may go comfortably thro the distemper, the phisick part is bad enough i know[....] a little india herb would have been mighty agreeable (suggesting john should place an order and get the damn tea home in a hurry)—until her hand ached and she put down her quill. her nights continued to be sleepless.

such a simple thing, and yet how frightening, this new medical procedure called inoculation: drag a piece of thread through the pulverized scabs and pus from the sores of an infected person, make a tiny incision in one who is healthy, and dip the bacteria-laden thread into it. done. wait for the arrival of pocks.

fat dispatches—paper covered with the sometimes blotchy markings of her dense script—held abigail's hopes and dreams and insecurities—and, at times, her deep loneliness and despair; they contained the passionate expression of her copious thoughts which ranged across the war and the children and the news of scabs and fever, but also other endless details from the management of her home and farm: the buying and selling of livestock, hiring help, construction projects, purchasing seed and equipment, planting and harvesting, drought and flood. details, details.

in past centuries, these missives were bound and sealed with wax and came to rest in the belly of a ship's wooden hull, sailing months upon the sea in the hopes of landing safely in europe or some other distant place.

i don't have a quill—but i have a keyboard. as i write i wonder what would abigail make of a keyboard? what would she think of my online missives—of all our online missives? would she think oh how i could have written! and exclaim oh, how wonderful! to have my thoughts and my news passed on fresh, not dreadfully outdated, by using this unimaginably timely mechanism, and to know that one's words will not be lost to the bottom of the sea but will be read and understood and that someone, hopefully, will find they matter and be glad to read them.

our words—the many, many viewpoints describing the funny, sad, reflective, exuberant, poignant, interesting, happy, thoughtful, crazy, introspective slices of our own lives—don't encounter the old dangers of mail delivery that awaited ships sailing on the high seas, or the perils pony express riders ran into crossing the great plains and the high sierra, or even the small problems of the modern day postman or UPS employee who must also brave weather and, occasionally, barking—and quite possibly biting—dogs.

in our century, words are mostly safe. in this, our unusual correspondence, the written tradition lives on and our "letters" journey free and easy, zinging across incredible distances through cyberspace where, in fact, there is no such thing as distance. instead of sinking or burning or being lost forever in a snowy mountain pass, our missives are transmitted instantaneously for the whole world to see. the snippets of our lives—the rendering of these astonishing pieces of minutiae, these bits of pulverized scabs—remain intact.

hit the orange rectangle and it's done.

you see? isn't that something? this missive—and yours, too—has already arrived.

confection

i look for them as if they are lost, or as if they have simply vanished, or have been misplaced like a set of keys or a pair of gloves or eyeglasses. i know i just saw them. they were right here and suddenly i have forgotten where i put them. weren't they on the table a minute ago?

(i tell myself relax. i raise my arms above my head and imagine them being pulled skyward. deep breaths.)

i continue my search, try to figure it out. i need to find them, suss them out. i close my eyes and struggle to visualize their form; i encourage them to take shape in the dark space under my eyelids. here they come. finally. i observe them round and ready as they float like shiny bubbles blown from the red plastic circle of a child's toy wand and rise up toward a heavenly blue where there's a woman's face hiding in a puff of cotton candy cloud.

i reach out my hand and grab them before they get away from me.

if i'm lucky, and the day is going well, they may fall into place easily, as if i'm following a drawing of simple assembly instructions—bolts and washers A, B, C, D fit here, tighten with allen wrench E—where they'll end up constructed like measured and cut wooden boards perfectly bolted together to create a solid structure—secure, sturdy, sound, whole.

they often have a distinctive flavor like fine food, small pieces i can nibble and turn over and over in my mouth, saturating them with my saliva to find out if they're satisfying. i slowly lick their residue on my lips and allow myself to marvel at the sweet confection they leave behind.

or they can be frighteningly bland with an awful aftertaste of disconcerting insouciance or—new sheet of paper, please—i may be engulfed with a sense of helplessness when i taste the bitter dregs of their sadness or injustice, when they force me to feel the lonely sting of tears. but i know they are good for me, they need me to spell them out, to shine a light on this existence. so i resist the urge to throw down my pen and crumple up the paper because i know, in the end, they always leave me feeling so alive.

others may come along that annoy me. i become vexed by the obnoxious bits that distract me and try to get my attention like nagging poppy seeds that get stuck between my teeth—trivial, time-wasting, resisting my efforts to remove them.

flip the page.

eventually i glance at the clock and realize i need to finish. i will make another quick revision and be done for today. the good ones i've searched for long and hard will stay, the others will be tossed. after all, they are only words, and words are so easily discarded by pressing DELETE.

slumming it

and here i was, getting good and comfortable in my cramped, humble, but always well-lit abode down a remote and unheard of lane called sweet whisper dreams, when i happened to read something that i already knew to be true deep down in my heart of hearts, in my soul of souls, but was avoiding like a plate of okra and haggis.

i had slipped off my shoes and curled up on the sofa with a blanket and a cup of steamy tea intending to relax and lose myself in a novel (something by joyce carol oates or ian mcewan) or the new book about the civil war, midnight rising by tony horwitz, but first i decided to open my laptop and check out what was happening in cyberspace. i read a new post by a charming brit—a darling of mine—who, in his post, reminded his readers of the harshness of the world in which we creative writing types of bloggers live—creative writing being that warehouse of stuff including the almost infinite forms of fiction, non-fiction, personal essay, poetry, screenwriting, playwriting, etc.

the truth can be cruel, but i am i firm believer in facing the truth, in facing reality head on when it makes itself obvious. therefore, i carefully studied his honest and well-crafted sentences and tried to be brave and tough—which for some, possibly genetic, reason i pretty much am—and not get too many knots in my neck and stomach. turns out there are many people who think you and i, fellow bloggers, are slumming it in our crummy little blog homes because we do not reside in an expensive landscape-company-tended, exotic-tree-filled, rolling-perfection-of-a-golf-course-lawn mcmansion called the novel.

hot dog, typing that last sentence felt good.

to those who think a blog filled with creative writing is not, in fact, "real writing"and who say when's your book gonna be finished? and you must be spending your time here in blogville just "killing time" until your [nonexistent] novel is done (we've all heard those comments) i say, loud and clear, excuse me people, i am hardly killing time but reviving it, resuscitating it, breathing life into it with my diligently sought-after words. frankly i don't give a damn what other people think because i enjoy what i do in my blog. i want to write, need to write, as much as i can; i want to write what i want to write, and i want to write what i enjoy writing while i still have breath left in me. above all, my motto is a girl just wants to have fun and that's exactly what i'm having right here, and i must say i am tickled to be surrounded by like-minded folks who are also really into slumming it.

that, too, felt awfully, awfully good.

to be or not to be unplugged

a small thought:

when i'm on vacation i generally like to remain unplugged and get totally away from the computer. i prefer to look through a window screen, not at a computer screen. for me, the idea is to block distractions, open up my mind, and allow new stimulation to grab my senses, so that when i do get back online i can—i hope i can, anyway—write from a fresh perspective.

but in january hannah brought a computer with her on our family vacation and i confess, i cheated.

i logged on.

but guess what? i found i only needed a little fix.

honestly, i felt better when i was logged off.

and guess what? the world kept spinning around, and i didn't miss anything of actual importance during the time i had been unplugged.

in a pearl sac

in every work of fiction there is a disclaimer which appears on the page with the copyright and the international standard book number:

this is a work of fiction. names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

good. understood.

these words, which go hand in hand with every story, got me thinking.

anyone who writes, about make-believe worlds or not, is ultimately captured and consumed, consciously or unconsciously, by the sights, sounds, tastes, feelings, textures, scents, and emotions which invade daily existence. writers do not create out of nothing. for example, seemingly unimportant gestures, mannerisms, facial expressions, a few words strung together in a certain way, a flicker of light bouncing off glass, the clink of coins falling on the floor, a sad or humorous story told by a friend, random events and circumstances, and the writer's own background and experiences are snippets which add up in the mind and find their expression through the flow of ink out of a pen, the tap-tap-tap on a keyboard. the pressure of all these pieces of life stuck in a writer's head reaches the point where it eventually needs to find satisfying release and be spewed out on a page.

inspiration emanates from these sources; stimuli is absorbed from reality and then is translated, transformed, transmuted, transmogrified into something new. what happens is the deck is shuffled to keep things interesting and unpredictable—to keep things honest.

who knows what trigger fires the imagination. something lodges in the brain and grabs hold and grows. perhaps inspiration is like an irritant. take the pearl. in nature, the creation of a pearl is caused by a living organism, often a parasite, which drills through a mollusk shell. the mollusk is disturbed by this invader and makes a pearl sac to cover and seal off the intrusive speck. but the tiny, irritating particle grows larger and larger as the mollusk continues to secrete nacre over it, and the sac expands right along with it. nothing can stop it. everyone knows the end of the story: eventually the irritant inside the sac presents itself in the form of a rather nice pearl.

something as inconsequential as a glance, a comment, a photograph, a rain shower, the scent of coffee, mist rising out of a pond, can set off the creative process. these little things won't be ignored for long. they combine to nag and gnaw inside the brain until they have to be taken care of and set straight. you never know where they'll take you.

when they enlarge, plump up, fill in they are finally ready.

ready for some fingertips to pound out a few of those pesky suckers.

the writing room

i'm flying off for a few days (but i'll still be posting) and i've got to finish packing my bag, but i thought i would write a note about this little digital place i occasionally inhabit. shhh.....don't tell my husband, but i am still having a love affair with words. i can't get enough of them! words move, excite, grab me, fascinate me, dazzle me, make me go weak in the knees, and at times make my head hurt. i fell into this nook on the web to gush about the glorious state of maine, to express my thoughts and observations, to utter rhapsodies about the lushness (and brutality) of nature, to weave stories as they pop into my head - hopefully something more substantial than the i-drank-a-great-cup-of-tea-and-ate-a-hot-scone-two-seconds-ago kind - and, quite simply, to have some fun.

in general i don't hang out in the big web much; frankly, i am not often connected to the cyber world. i'd rather be outside enjoying the fresh maine air; or heading out on the road; or hanging out with the family; or laughing with friends at gritty's; or reading a good book or my hot-off-the-press copy of the new yorker; or i'd rather be scribbling ideas in little notebooks and on scraps of paper.

when i do find myself stuck in the web (at times it's an awful struggle to get out!) i manage to read a few noteworthy blogs. i like ones which offer up great writing and which are often poignant, introspective or humorous—especially longer pieces of writing. there's some incredibly eloquent stuff out in blog land. the brits seem to have a good thing going, with posts that are thoughtful, humorous and well written. evocative. ah, only in the land of shakespeare.......

i like my quiet, simple bloggy home. some nice faithful readers drop by; they aren't necessarily "followers" and they hardly ever comment (are they either shy or left speechless by my scribbles?), but they are out there and i appreciate them. i hope when they visit they are entertained or amused, or they like what they see and read, or they are a little moved by my more serious and reflective posts.

so hello to you my dears. do come on in, grab a seat, get comfortable, take a peek and join me. that's great. welcome, welcome. i like some company after all. and i'll be right here, happily gathering my thoughts, taking a few pictures as i travel around in maine and elsewhere, and writing, writing. as long as i keep having something to say (!) and as long as i keep having fun saying it, i'll stay right here in my online "room."

this is just my own little place, my writing room, to be myself, to do my thing - a little bit of this and a little bit of that....exploring, observing, asking questions, stretching my brain, tossing around ideas and opinions, dreaming up stories (some are fiction, some are not), happily creating with words.....all for the love of writing.