Christmas and chaos both start with "c"

She could not remember a Christmas that did not start and end in clutter. Each year, the first Christmas card arrived in the mail long before a place had been cleared for it. Envelopes were piled at the edge of the desk, waiting for her to send responses. They joined books in stacks, bits of paper and work. The desk longed for simplicity.

The coffee table also longed to be perfectly itself. Instead, it gathered all the things that people held in their hands as they walked into the house. Magazines and shopping bags and gloves and keys created a community on the tabletop. Their endless chatter would have set the table's teeth on edge - had it possessed teeth.

Then, in a grand sweep of determination, the clutter cleared. Tabletops gleamed and made friends of the Christmas ornaments that appeared. Papers were hidden. Cards were displayed on neat garlands of ribbon. Christmas had come to the house.

The tree introduced its own element of chaos, dropping needles in living room, in dining room, in hallway. Its lights were not beacons; they sprawled across the branches and hinted at hope. Bags and boxes appeared and were arranged around the base of the tree. The family hoped - as it always hoped - that the tree would stand throughout the holiday.

Almost without warning, the house filled with people, with laughter and noise, with coming and with going. People ate dessert first and they ate it in every room of the little house. There was decorum in their coming and going but none in the space between them.

Then. Oh then. Wine bottles and chocolate and music and movies. Wrapping paper and bows and ribbon that sparkled on the floor. Bits of bone left behind when the dog got a better offer. The detritus began creeping back into piles.

The house sighed. And regrouped. Mail arrived, and so did the groceries. Gloves were dropped and keys misplaced.

Clutter introduced the figures in the nativity to the figures in the bill from the telephone company.

Clutter reigned as long as Christmas.

the discovery

It sought the ceiling, higher than anything ever could. The colour of clouds it was, and as Ant examined it, he was overcome with a tingling all across his body. It beckoned him closer.  Ant's feelers wiggled.  And it gave off an odour like diamonds, the diamonds their kin loved to eat so much. The kind that Queen loved the most. Joy of joys! 

Along the bottom of the pillar, built into it, were what looked like the hills his kin made every summer.  A facade of hills that had the colour of roses, and they curved their way around. The pattern must ring itself around the pillar. Ant pinched at the pillar and his two eyes gleamed with sunlight when it crumbled off and into his mouth. He swallowed. His body was flooded with energy. He was vibrating. His body knew what his mind suspected...the tower was filled with the stuff of diamonds, the diamonds of their dreams, the diamonds that sustained them during the months without sun or wind or moon.

If he brought some to Queen, then she would send an army to get the rest. Yes, it would be the expedition that future generations would sing about. They would whisper his name like a god's name is whispered. Children would be named after him. Cities would be built in his honour. He would be the champion of their kind, a hero above heroes, an explorer of the bravest category. 

He could become king, even! He would take his seat alongsi--

Hurry up, please; it's time

I remember standing on the Cliffs of Moher, looking out at the Aran islands. Was there a wind, or did the chill begin within me? So many dead fishermen. The water was deceptive. I thought of mothers keening and of warm sweaters turned to shrouds. They knew the bodies by the stitching. Men gave their lives to the sea and women gave their sons and their husbands and their hopes.

He stood laughing on the rocks, looking back towards me. The wind was as real as the spirit within him. I had so much to learn. The water reached toward him. I thought that I should reach like the water, eager for connection, alive with movement. I wanted to be known, even after. I wanted to give myself to him as he gave himself to the spirit as it moved over the waves and through his hair.

He stepped lightly off the rooks, looking out at the light. It sparkled suddenly on the water, bouncing as the waves bounced. So much light. I thought of spring mornings and of candles glowing on winter nights. It is hard to look at anything else, once a candle's flame catches your eye. I wanted to follow him across the water, bouncing like the light off the waves.

I remember standing on the rocks, knowing that thinking would not help me. The water that splashed over me was cold, cold as the fear washing over me. I would like to know him by his sweater, by the lines in the stitching. It is time to know him in myself, in my footsteps across the water. It is time to know myself in the bouncing of light across the waves. I breathe in the spirit around me, feel it on my skin and in my hair. My leg begins to move.

I watched him laughing on the water, far in front of me. I held his flame in my heart and noticed all its colours, felt it burning as I felt the cool of water underfoot.

a day at Ridgemount High School

1:47pm.

- I don't get why she's making us do this assignment. Like she wants to punish us or something. 

- Whatever, I'm just gonna finish it as fast as I can to annoy her more. She'll be so pissed. You're hair is so red today...

- Yeah, I dyed it a little. Like, I don't understand. This morning she wasn't being such a bitch but then after recess, she was, like, totally punishing us or something. Gawd. Hey, I like your new earrings? 

-I forgot to msn you about them last night! My dad came and took me to dinner. My mom wasn't thrilled about the last minute announcement, but I gave her my puppy dog look and she backed off.

-I love it when my mom visits on the weekend and we go shopping. one of the fridge benefits.

-Fringe.

-What about it?

-Huh?

-What about Fringe? Do you watch the show too?

-No, no. You were, like, fridge benefits...but the word is fringe. My dad always talks about his fringe benefits at work. He gets a manicure! I don't even get a manicure! Gawd.

-My mom said she'd get us a spa package for Christmas...pedicures, manicures, the works. Fringe, huh? With an 'e' at the end?

12:20pm.

-I don't get what their problem is. First they want to be deadbeat parents with their kids' education and now all of a sudden they want their kids to have more homework. You're a great teacher, Jessica. Don't let Cook make you believe otherwise.

-And he's looking at me like I'm the idiot! Like I am not doing enough!

-I don't get it. I really don't get it.

-I don't get it either, Paul, but I'm so pissed right now. One of their parents did this. They won't be happy when I drop that assignment I've been keeping in the bottom drawer on their heads.

12:04pm.

-I don't get why I'm being forced to give these kids more homework. They have enough as it is. They have other classes, you know.

-I know that and you know that, but I have received some concerns from parents that their kids are not getting enough homework.

-Well, I don't believe in overwhelming them either. You know that. If I give them too much then I'll lose them later on...they'll be out of energy later in the year.

-Please, don't resist on this one. Just find something that you can give them that's more substantial.

-Substantial? So what are you saying? I'm giving them fluff? That my class is a bird class? You're insulting my method?

-I'm not insulting you, Jessica. Just work with me on this one. There's pressure on all of us.

-You think? Thanks for giving me more to deal with. Now if you'll excuse me, I have 20 minutes for lunch and I've got to give these kids more work to do.

9:22am.

-Mr. Dawson...I must be honest with you. We have never received any complaints about the class being...too easy, as you put it. I don't get why you are bringing these concerns up?

-I'm not a Global news watcher, Principal Cook. I don't complain when my kids have too much homework like other deadbeat parents. My child will be ready for the real world, and she'll have the habits that I grew up with and you grew up with that brought us to our respective places in life.

-I appreciate where you are coming from. I can give you some resources that you and your wife  and your wife can use to supplement the education that Ms. Leeson is providing the class.

-No. My time is better served helping my kid with his homework, not finding busy work for him to do. My time is better served running the PTA and the football fundraiser. Wouldn't you agree?

-Well...I talk to Ms. Leeson about it. I'll see what I can do. I won't promise anything, you understand?

-I trust you'll do your best, Principal.

4:30pm.

-Dude, I don't get it. I was being all empathetic, and consoling, and understanding. She was pouring her heart out to me, and still I couldn't get the nerve to say to her, Let's talk about it over dinner. Why am I such a chicken-shit. Her nails are so manicured too. Don't laugh! I'm crazy about her nails and her dimples - sue me. I just don't get it bro....She's so hot. Argh!

exercise four - verbal & syntactical repetition

Rage – speak to me oh Muse, of the rage of the Author, chained to the poltergeist glow of his computer screen, bee to naked rose, abandoned ship to lighthouse, emptiness to emptiness, enraged at Circumstance and Necessity, thrashing upon the boundless sea of Language without a splintered board of gopher wood, deranged in his fruitless hope for salvation, lost beyond Loss, with a rage fanning out like the lashes of Apollo’s eye upon the dry tinder wood of his enraged heart, aflame with his lot, fallen from the gods’ graces, newborn without mother, leaf without tree, speech without audience, forced to travel through darkness to an unknown shore, a foreign country, with norms known only to Zeus, forced to sew the enraged thoughts cast upon all points of the world’s compass, fated to sooth the enraged cries of all those before him, the enraged pleas of those after him, compelled to silence the rage inside him unbeknownst to God, that eternal tear, oh Muse, cascading along the eternal cheek of his forever fragile Being.

Salt water flows through us

She cut her finger and cursed - loudly. "Shit." Fingers bleed and bleed and bleed. She stuck the end of the finger in her mouth and tasted the salt in her blood. "Damn tomato."

It was ironic, really, that she went from slicing a tomato to tasting the red saltiness of her finger as it bled. Ironic because she loved the crunch of freshly ground sea salt against the warm, melting red of a really fresh tomato. Ironic because getting what she wanted was difficult now. So close, and yet so wrong.

She took the finger out of her mouth, washed it, dried it, wrapped it snugly in the anti-bacterial bandaid. She looked at the half-made salad and sighed. She checked on the roast. She listened to the baseball game unfolding on the television downstairs. She looked at the clock. She sighed again.

She ground salt over a wide slice of fresh, fall tomato. As she bit into it, seeds and juice spilled from the corner of her mouth and dripped redly down the side of her chin. She tasted the salt and the sweet and sighed again.

Repetition

First, check out my most recent post at ntgr8. While I do use structural and verbal repetition frequently, it's probably not a coincidence that I read chapter 4 and then posted at my blog using repetition.

Now I"ll try to do at least the first exercise now - creatively. ;)

"Sound (by Linda); revised" (by John)

The sea washes in, spiralling around the helix of my ears before pouring into the narrow canals. Seeping in and out, creeping, coming-and-going into the tiny bones in the centre of each ear. It changes at its source, so that the whoosh of each passing car becomes a wave. I do not think of it. I stroll and stop and move forward and drag back, and my breathing is the sea against the shore. I am as regular as the waves and as uncertain.

There is no hush at the beach, no sanctuary of light. Birds cry and call, swooping low, and the salty wind follows the sea, moves over the drums in my ears and my heart is a drum that beats sound into feeling, beats sound into sensation, beats sound into pulse. And the sound of feet leaving prints on sand is subtle, shifting, the sound of air as it moves. Disturbed, seaweed crunches like paper dry and discarded.

Foot prints dimple a path to the rocks in the centre where wind and water make large red bows around the ears and rush their way into the blood. Water thrashes - erratic, juvenile. One wave sighs, is then startled by the crash of another.

The uncounted pulse at the heart of the one still at the centre of the beach gives shape to the slow silent flow .

The forest (edited by Linda)

He knew his legs only had so much before they would stumble on the rocks that bit through the earth beneath his bare feet blood and mud splashed the back of his legs he pushed himself deeper out of the forest the trees before him like charred bones avoiding each one just barely his arms searching for the spaces between where light filtered through slits light from another world the world beyond and how beautifully that light punctured the space and how it opened arms to him so beautiful his frantic breath shortened in the air before him escaping collapsing lungs and chafing mouth slipping behind him into the forest he might never escape

Long Sentence (revised)

It was too hard, life was too hard, and the long road ahead would be longer still and even harder despite well-timed nods and advice of friends, the sympathetic sigh of  family and their reassuring hugs – especially aunt Donna, when she hugged you you felt her heart pouncing through her chest to meet with yours, you felt that if she could translate her faith in your abilities in a language you could understand, then everything would be alright...the road would be long and hard but doable, it wouldn’t be an incline, like so many insisted, people who had never ventured to walk the road yet somehow were prophets and critics of the road; the road up and the road down was the same, aunt Donna would insist, and walking it is reserved for she who is brave enough to take the first step, uncertain the road will meet your heel (and here she would wink and say, please don’t wear high heels either...not at first, anyway); yes, damn hard, F-ing hard, and it would be long – and here we come to the truth of it all: the time; not the path itself but how long it would take before you realized the end of the road, were satisfied with the miles blistered on your toes and heels, and the arthritis splintering like shards of glass and ice through your knees (knees you got from your grandmother – God rest her soul); and all this because you wanted things to happen sooner, quickly, but Ithaca isn’t a destination, isn’t that what Cavafy says, and doesn’t he counsel not to be cross with her if, upon reaching her glorious shores, there is nothing left for you there, not even beloved Penelope, because, and please don’t cry, she gave you this journey, this long journey – this life – and you have smelled the sweetest scents and heard the warmest voices, and seen the tallest peaks; you have broken your bones, and tasted your blood, and felt your spirit’s last gasps (of course, they weren’t); all these things Ithaca has given to you, enough experience so that you may (no, you must) hold your shoulders back and raise your troubled head high, and – look quick – behind you stands the greatest life of all, the hardest and most painful and sweetest and most glorified life of all...your life, sweet child, your life like a shadow behind you and yes, you noticed correctly, the sun, the sun and its angels of light cast upon you, a target unlike any other, a guide meant just for you, sweet child, because you took that step, sweet child, you learned to walk and never, ever forgot.  

Sound (Revised )

Water crashes and hushes at the edge. It pushes and pulls, waxes and wanes, gives and takes back again, a sea without cease.
A shout and a sigh; a sharp intake of breath, caught and released. Listen for the silence between.

My heart is a drum that beats sound into feeling beats sound into sensation beats sound into pulse. And the sound of feet moving on sand is not no sound but subtle, shifting sound, the sound of air as it moves. Disturbed, seaweed crunches like paper. The birds do not sing; they caw and shriek and moan like the wind.

Yearning swells and breaks on the rocks; patience slips from the sand. The pulse of the waves pounds against the pounding of the wind and the pounding of the heart pulled outwards, cast back.

Pounding, beating, crashing. The waves break. The sand shifts.

exercise three: a long sentence

It was too hard, life was too hard, and the long road ahead would be longer still and even harder despite the advice from friends and their well-timed gestures and nods, the focused gaze from family members and their reassuring hugs – especially aunt Donna, when she hugged you you felt her heart forcing its way through her chest to meet with yours, you felt (it was momentary but nonetheless powerful) that if she could transmit her faith in your abilities into you, then everything would be alright...the road would be long and hard but doable, it wouldn’t be an incline, like so many people insisted, people who had never ventured to walk the road yet somehow knew everything there was to know about the road; the road up and the road down was the same, aunt Donna would insist, and walking it is reserved for the person who is brave enough to take the first step, unsure if the road will be there to meet your heel (and here she would wink and say, please don’t wear high heels either...not at first, anyway); yes, damn hard, F-ing hard, and it would take a long time – and here we come to the truth of it all: the time; not the path itself but how long it would take to come to fruition, how long it would take before you came to the end of the road, were satisfied with the miles you put in and the blisters on your toes and the arthritis splintering like shards of glass and ice through your knees (knees you got from your grandmother – God rest her soul); it was how long it would take and all this because you wanted things to happen sooner, quickly, but Ithaca isn’t a destination, isn’t that what Cavafy says, and doesn’t he counsel not to be cross with her if, upon reaching her glorious shores, there is nothing left for you there, neither beautiful Penelope nor Telemachus, because, and please don’t cry, she gave you this journey, this long, F-ing journey – this life – and you have smelled the sweetest scents and heard the warmest voices, and seen the tallest peaks; you have broken your bones, and tasted your blood, and felt your spirit’s last gasps (or so they seemed); all these things Ithaca has given to you, enough experience so that you may (no, you must) hold your shoulders back and raise your troubled head high, and – look quick – behind you stands the greatest life of all, the hardest and most painful and sweetest and most glorified life of all...your life, sweet child, your life like a shadow behind you and yes, you noticed correctly, the sun, the sun and its angels of light cast upon you, a target unlike any other, a guide meant just for you, sweet child, because you took that step, sweet child, you learned to walk and never, ever forgot.  

exercise three: short sentence

Daddy would say that this wouldn’t do. The boy knew this. He felt it in his throat. He didn’t know what to do anymore. He had given up trying. What was he trying though? He only knew that it wasn’t right. He only knew daddy would disapprove. What should it look like after all? He bit the inside of his lip. He felt sparks of pain. He released his lip and breathed. The room felt tight. The windows were confining. The door looked sealed forever. An intimate dread spun webs inside him. He gazed at the canvass. The canvass daddy paid money for. How to explain his lapse in judgement? The brushes like weapons on the floor. They surrounded him so he couldn’t escape. He was imprisoned to the bare canvass. I can’t paint, he whispered.

One long sentence

It is fall and I am aware that I could fall, could slip on the rocks which are shiny and cool and which step down towards the valley floor, or on the sticks and leaves and pebbles that make a trail, treacherous and worn; and I pay attention to what is underfoot and not to the sunlight that finds the spaces in between the leaves and not to the leaves that move lightly in a light breeze, and not to colours splashed through the trees or to the water that clings here and there, splashed by yesterday’s rain; I pay attention instead to the edges of each step, to bumps and imperfections and the places where my ankle could betray me and I pay attention to the little slips and I wonder if I should clutch at the trees or simply bump down on my bum like a child, unsteady on my feet, but that won’t do because I am not a child and it is fall but I am not falling; I am climbing down to find myself deeper in the woods and deeper in the valley and more than this, I am descending on my feet, keeping my head and my balance so that, as the ground evens slightly, I will lift my head and see the trees as they close around me and hear the birds and the leaves and the rustling of life around me and in me and my heart will beat faster and my spine will stretch to hold my head up as a mother holds her baby to the skies and claims a blessing.

Short sentences

“No,” she said. “I don’t like that.”

It was a lie. She very much liked chocolate. She liked all kinds of chocolate. She even liked chocolate with coconut. That was not the point.

The point was that she could not be distracted. She could not be bought. She would not fall for the chocolate.

Her mother sighed. She knew what was coming.

“I like to paint.”

Painting was messy. Painting meant changing rooms and changing clothes. Painting was creative. Like all forms of creativity, it was inconvenient.

Good mothers do not say no to creativity. They get the clothes and the water. They get large sheets of paper. They get the paint.

Her mother got the paint.

She smiled.

“I think I will paint a chocolate cake.”

the forest

He couldnt go any faster knew his legs only had so much before they would give up and would find a way to stumble on the rocks like grey teeth biting through the earth beneath his bare feet puncturing him feeling the blood and mud splashing the back of his legs pushing himself deeper out of the forest the trees before him like charred bones avoiding each one just barely his arms searching for the spaces between where light filtered through slits light from another world the world beyond and how beautifully painful that light looked and how it opened its many arms to him so beautiful his frantic breath shortens in the air before him slipping out of his collapsing lungs and chafing mouth slipping behind him into the forest he might never escape

The writing class

no one could film this class with sound for the sound is overwhelming as the students who are really kids talk and chatter and laugh at their keyboards clicking as the fans whirr as the water drips from the pipe overhead which it should not be doing should it and the teacher raises her voice just for a moment or two just until attention focuses and she can laugh and mark out the instruction the key to doing the next part of the assignment and the key to noticing who is stuck at the keyboard and cannot get to the screen with the example some of them notice that the teacher has exuberance and patience at the same time a combination that surprises them briefly and then they go back to facebook and pictures of african safaris and parties and wondering how they will get to work and get school done and see boyfriends and girlfriends the teacher does not wonder because she is focused on letting them learn that all of it is communication the clicking and chatter the assignment and the listening she does not wonder because she is busy answering nudging shifting perspective and letting them know that stress is okay when necessary but it is not necessary here because this room is a safe place because real communication requires that moment of getting in touch with thought and experience and the person across the divide when it is safe people laugh more when it is safe then eyes meet and lips curl in a smile and it is suddenly quieter although all around the keys click and the fans whirr and the voices are raised in laughter and talk

(283 words)

Exercise 1: Sound

The beach washes against the edges of my hearing. It seeps and creeps and comes-and-goes into the tiny bones in the centre of each ear and its washing changes sound at its source so that the whoosh of each passing car is a wave. I do not think of it. I move and stop and move and drag back and my breathing is the sea that moves in and out. I am as regular as the waves and as uncertain.

There is no hush at the beach, no sanctuary of light held silent. Birds cry and call and swoop and the wind moves over the drums in my ears and my heart is a drum that beats sound into feeling beats sound into sensation beats sound into pulse. And the sound of feet moving on sand is not no sound but subtle, shifting sound, the sound of air as it moves. Disturbed, seaweed crunches like paper dry and discarded.

Foot prints the path to the rocks in the centre where wind and water wrap around the ears and rush their way into the blood. Water pounds - erratic. One wave sighs, another crashes and startles.

Pulse shapes the slow silent flow at the heart of the one who is still at the heart of the beach.

time for take off

The convection oven we have makes a ticking sound. I'm listening to my bagel toast, and there's the first smell of sesame seeds browning. 

The task before me is to fill out a few lines on this white post screen, read the first part of Steering the Craft, try to not pretend I'm racing with Linda (bad habit from grade 6), come back and complete the exercise for the world to see. Feels like I'm about to take off for a fun trip, with a fun co-pilot (or are we co-passengers?...we'll have to see who or what is steering what or who).

There goes the ping! My bagels ready.

And the water is whistling for my cup of (instant) coffee too!

 I'm smiling. Time to start crafting. 

I wonder if we still have some french vanilla coffeemate...

This is the beginning

It's Wednesday morning. I've set up the blog format.  I've sent an email to invite John.  We're ready to go.  In a moment, I will make a really good cup of coffee, resolutely hide from all the different work screaming and crying in corners, and curl up with Steering the Craft.  Shortly after that, I'll post my response to the first exercise.

The sun is shining.  It's a good clear day, a day that promises smooth sailing.

Exercise One: Sound

Did you decide to dash the decree I dropped upon you? Yes, mamaka was huffing, puffing, not bluffing, straightening her shoulders while strapping her arms across her strapping bussom. Did I not demand you deny yourself the delight of delving into a department store filled with the devil’s devices? A mouse could have fallen into the valley made by the peaks of her mountainous brows, fallen into that valley and become lost forever. Jingly-mingly, that’s what this is! The froth that issued from her face, mostly from inside her mouth, fell upon our crestfallen faces. Jingly-mingly! I will not condone this direct defiance to my didacticism! My sibling and I lobbed glances at each other, lob and snatch like we learned from our football lessons, helping the other lick his laceration at the lingual licking we were loaded with. Mamaka scooped the Zest Chest, tomatoish, redish all over its portliness, with greenish stem at its top, nucleus for spices from all over the cosmos, each in its own clear tear-dropish capsule, scooped the Zest Chest, unfastening it from the floor, and unsheepish in her gaze, darkened the blemish upon her cheeks. Janger-minger, she blurted, not bemused by this beacon of buffoonery defenceless in the destructiveness of her dactyls. Do you know what janger-minger is? Have you heard of jingly-mingly? Do the dulcet of these words display themselves as duplicitous to your eardrums? Jingly-mingly, she declared, is junk-stuff, goods that grow into garbage the instant you bring them home and don’t use them, letting it garner alcoves for spiders to spin their webs. But mamaka! My brother’s voice bobbed up from the basement of his belly, bubbling brightly from his buccal cavity. Boy oh Boy oh Boy, you are asking for a beating, she blurted. My brother snatched one of the viles from the vine unripened tomato, snatched it and scorched a seam through the sandalwood shag that stretched itself to the scullery. Mamaka was stunned. I was stunned. Even the stenograph of my granny Stella was stunned. No turning back for my brother. Nor did he turn his back to cast us a glance. We ran after the sound of his maniacal laughter emanating from the kitchen with the smell of simmering sizzling slippery sauce. Paprika! he proffered, pinching a pinch of paprika, placing it parallel to the popping  pastiche in the pot. It will please you to know that paprika will pressure this suppertime sauce to be more piquant, peppery, and more pleasing!  Bimbo, I bellowed, don’t do it!