Why I'm sometimes pissed.

Simple. Things anger me. Circumstances, people, news, events ...

For example, I become infuriated when my stinking fax machine makes copies instead of faxing my material. I want to choke some sprout-eating wiener hipster geek at Google when I constantly have to re-set my lousy password just to access my blog.

I get pissed when my truck tailgate drops down at 65 miles an hours and I lose a garbage can; when the dog pees in the entryway as I come home, when I can't unscrew a tube of paint, when I get rejection letters from agents and editors who don't want the story I labored to write. I'm angry about being spied on, listened to, and watched because I have the freedom to do what I want, and that fact pisses some power-hungry bureaucrat off.

Yes, I know. I let little things tick me off whenever I fail to keep sight of the big things. I know such is true in my head, but my emotions - well, there are times when I just need to vent, blow off stream, kick a can, curse, and go eat a Hershey bar (no, two Hershey bars!)

Then I'll go and hug that damn dog after I've let him back into the house, I fix the stupid truck tailgate, I'll keep querying agents, and then I'll take a hot bath. I still might throw that crappy fax machine out the second story window and delight as it splatters into the pavement. But that will give me an excuse to go out and buy a better one.

Looking Forward As I Look Back

April has finally arrived, and as I sit watching the sunset colors of ochre and slate, I mull over the transitions to come. Moving day will soon be upon me.

Changes are never easy, especially big, life-changing ones. By this time next year, I will no longer live at this farm, my home of the last twenty years. My youngest who was born here will be moving on after high school, as has her elder siblings. It will be my husband, my eldest special needs daughter, and me.

We will leave New York, and on one level I shall not regret that, given the ever-escalating encroachment by this state's tyrannical government. I spoke today with a deli owner who summed it up succinctly, "They just take everything you own," meaning personal income, freedom, etc.

What I will miss is this state's rural beauty, its wildlife, and the forests I have come to know as well as my own backyard. I will recall the days of autumn foxhunts; I loved a good gallop cross country. The memory of cool early-May mornings and the sound of the first birds as I waited to hear the tom turkeys gobble will probably fade. And would you believe, there may even come a time when I think I will miss cleaning out poop and pee from my horse's stall every morning.

But Pennsylvania horizons beckon. I look out the window of my studio and notice the sky changing from a pale cerulean to a pastel mauve, with the underlining of clouds reflecting the setting sun's glow. As I write, I will certainly miss these New York skies, and wonder if the skies of Pennsylvania will glow as beautifully, as brightly. I pray they inspire me with the same creative inspirations as I've known here.

Back From a Long Winters Nap

Okay, so I wasn't napping. I was busy with my writing, and editing my novels with the help of J.J. and Amy Murray's Editing Service. Love those guys!

I sat so many hours sitting bleary-eyed in front of my laptop, munching on sesame seed crackers and guzzling mineral water, to polish a manuscript worthy enough for the eyes of literary agents.

I recently dusted off a novel I began in 1990 and completed in 1992. It's an epic fantasy, suitable for the new adult market; the new adult genre being stories for the 20-something age group who are still too old to be young adult and too young to be adult-adult.

I looked at the message I was trying to impart in this romance morality play. I was happy.

It turned out to be more relevant today than in 1992, and far more entertaining given our current cultural shift towards interracial couples/families becoming mainstream. 

Looking ahead to getting it published. Wanting to be ahead of the trend. Getting ahead. Period.

Transitions

     Got up this morning. Sent hubby and the higher-schooler off for the day. Let out the dogs. Poured my morning tea. Checked the outside thermometer and I read -4.


     Minus four degrees! I mumble, "No matter what they say about global warming, they lie!" I look back at the calendar. Next month is March. March is an iffy month at best. Wind, snow, balmy sunshine, more wind, cold rains, mud, freak snowstorms, morning ice ... Did I mention wind?


     But March - for all its lion/lamb unpredictability - is a month of transition. Transition from how our planet angles itself toward the sun, from frigid to temperate, from a gray-brown landscape to a green-brown landscape, from minus four degrees to plus anything.


     Transitions are good. Why? Let us say that I hope all transitions mean forward movement. Progress. Onward and upward. Not backwards, and certainly not standing still stuck.


     As I approach my 60th birthday, I view seasonal change as a time for moving forward to new horizons, new challenges, new adventures. It is the Year of the Horse (yes, I was born this year-no coincidence), a year of blessing and freedom. I was also born on St. Valentine's Day, which I'm sure fate had a hand in, since I've always been a slobbering romantic, and I'm even more so now.


     Leaving the fifties and transitioning into the sixties makes my perspective on all transitions of time something that I see as far more relevant. It's clearer to me that life moves forward, whether or not I embrace it as something to be anticipated and appreciated.


     Perhaps that is why I have always looked forward to an unwritten future. As such, with another day at hand, I put my creative pen to page and write on as I wait for the frozen land beneath me to slowly transition into another spring,

Interracial Love Bothering You?

 

      I recently watched a CNN report about the horrid experience suffered by a tearful Tamera Mowry who is interracially married to her white husband. Someone jerk accused her of being nothing but a “white man’s whore”.

      Think back. Remember the recent controversy over the Cheerios commercial featuring an interracial family? How General Mills had to pull the comments section from their website because of hate speech? Many ads today include interracial/multicultural families, like Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Hershey’s Chocolate, etc. Now Procter and Gamble, the makers of the Swiffer duster has an interracial family where the white husband is an amputee. Lord knows what kind of hate mail that’s going to generate.

     Which brings me to my point: And please indulge me while I get my vulgar Black Lady on. All right, y’all. I’ve had it. Now I axe you. Interracial love bothering you?

      Society calls it racism when white people hate everyone who isn’t white; and there’s so-called reverse racism when non-whites hate whites. Stupid from the start. All racism should be called mirror racism, the racism where you, the hater, look at other human beings of different skin tones, and you project on to them what you hate about yourself.

      Know what I mean? For example (and pay attention): You hate a white person because s/he is rich. That just means you hate yourself because you’re poor and too effing lazy to get off your people-of-color ass, get off welfare, get some education, and get yourself a damn decent job so you can be rich.
 
      You hate that a black woman has a white husband. No, you hate the fact that you ain’t got no decent love of your own in your own damn life where you are being respected for who you are regardless of what you look like.

      Keep going? Fine.

      You despise a black person because s/he is highly educated. Well, you’re just pissed because you ain’t never had the discipline to get off your lazy ass-of-whatever-color long enough to learn to speak well, read well, and write well, so you could carry on an intelligent conversation and be successful.

       You see? For the most part, racism is nothing more than a mirror in the mind-sight of the hater. It’s a twisted, wishful thinking contagion of envy, self-hatred, and vengeance based on your own despised image. And you act out by ridiculing, persecuting, committing violence on someone who is both content and innocent. May you burn!

        So what’s the best way to END racism? Man up or quit your bitchin’, and marry a different race. And guess what? You don’t become white if you’re black and marry someone who is white. You don’t become black if you’re white and you marry a someone who is black. If you like your race, you can still keep your race. Period.

        If that bothers you, what are you? Are you that stupid? How in the hell do you think we’re supposed to end racism when stupid racists bitch and moan about the love choices of others? You’re upset because of someone else’s choice in love? Damn. You need to put aside your ignorant, churlish, self-hating, arrogant, myopic, simpleton weenie-brained putz of an asshole mindset and grow up. Most people marry because of love. WTF is so hard to understand about that?

       Now for those of us who are interracially married: We are happy, and doing our damnedest to laugh in the face of the egotistical, ill-bred losers among us, because we know what the problem is: Jealousy, plain and simple.

       Our kids come out prettier, our hair is cooler looking, we love contrast, our cultural horizons are broader, and we eat better because our cross-reference recipes tastes better. We are different in the best way possible. And we are in love. Know what else? God and Jesus love us, too. Now there!

 

Taffy Days

When I was young, one of my favorite candies was Bonomo Turkish Taffy, which was about as Turkish as chopped liver. It came in a rectangular foil wrap in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry flavors. I loved strawberry the most.

As kids, we would run outside the store in search of the nearest cement stoop (a stoop is the mortar stairway leading to a house, for those of you unfamiliar with the term). There, we would hold the taffy flat in the hand, raise our hand high overhead, and with all our might, we would slam the taffy against the stoop, shattering it into bite-size, chewable pieces.

But some of us were far more adventurous. We dared to sit (yes I said sit) on the taffy, incubating it until it was soft and pliable. Then came the magic. We opened the wrapper, and with aplomb, we pinched an end between out fingers and stretched out the taffy into long, drooping strings, and gobbled it down.

Which brings me to my point. I often feel at one with that taffy. There are days when I feel sat upon. Yes, I said sat upon. I feel stretched until I droop, only to be consumed because I lack the strength to resist the pulling. And there are other days when feel that I've been smashed and shattered into a million pieces.

Sometimes I wish I were one with a Hershey bar. I could melt under the heat, and still be sweet. Maybe a piece of bubble gum: Get chewed up, and instead of being spat out, be molded into happy bubbles that appear and re-appear with more chewing. (Then again, I may end up underneath some stinky table top.)

Alas, there are days when I revert to my more primal instincts. You know, survival. I am like a jawbreaker. Go ahead. Bite all you want! Lose a tooth, so I can laugh and say I told you so.

I tell you, there are days when I can relate to the entire candy store. Yes, the ingredients are sweet to the taste, but beware. The after effects of all that sugar may result in your regretting having entered into my realm altogether.

I think if I tap into my original mind, the mind that sees being smashed, chewed, melted, etc., as being something positive, perhaps I should seek to feel more like cotton candy. You remember cotton candy. Wispy and light, delicate, and spun from pure sweetness. One taste on the tongue and you close your eyes, each mouthful is as good as the last. It reminds you of being young, innocent, and full of fun.

Yeah. I need to be more like cotton candy.

Bipolar Meteorology

Falling snows drift by my window. Too bad it isn't  sticking to the ground. Why is it that in the northeast, where you would imagine the cold would arrive and stay, that we get such a miserable fluctuation in weather.

Two weeks ago I dropped off my daughter and daughter-in-law to go skiing on a crunchy pack of crystalline powder. The only reason that I did not join them was because of the expense. But it was cold; damn cold.

Yesterday, I went out with a sweatshirt, sans hat, and thought about sitting outside for a suntan and a healthy dose of vitamin D3. My backyard was, as E.E. Cummings would have noted, "mud-luscious and puddle wonderful". I thought for a moment that I heard a far and wee whistle.

I fully expected that January and February would be the coldest time of winter here. I hoped so. It's getting frustrating to watch the logs by the wood stove gather dust, look at the mail lady in a tee shirt shoving my mail into the box, and having to pick muddy dirt from the hooves of my daughter's horse.

It's winter! I want it cold, damn it! I want it cold so I can sit by my window and stare out over a dreary white landscape in a melancholy mindset. That's when I do my best writing. Brings out the real poet in me.

Poet. Hmmm. Or perhaps I should take a page from old Mr. Cummings works and envision the coming days of a warm spring. I've written some good stuff at that time of year, too. Brings out the romantic in me. And you know, I am a romance writer.

Maybe I should keep my mouth shut about winter. Instead, I think I will look forward to longer days and overhead sunlight. Soon, I bet, a little lame goat-footed balloon man will whistle far and wee over the lands outside my window.

And just as I write that, I look outside my window at the falling snow. It's now sticking to the ground.

Write! Write! Write! The Lament of an Unknown

Write! Write! Write!  I suppose this is what an inspiring unpublished novelist like myself should live and breath to do. To read voraciously, write incessantly. Well suppose I don't feel like writing. Suppose I don't feel like forming a cohesive sentence with eloquent language to impress some literary professional long enough for them to tell me that they are willing to represent me to publishers. 

 

Suppose I don't feel like sitting for hours at a laptop to string paragraphs and thoughts and scribed images along just to satiate my need to create and a readers need for stimulation. What if I feel like sitting and staring at four walls when my creative juices go toxic and need purging with a little positive reinforcement - dare I say praise for a job well done.

 

Fuck it, I say. I don't feel like writing. My heart is wounded; my desire to re-enter the world of my characters and their environs ain't tugging at my heart strings, nor is my inspiration to re-join them burning. I miss them, yes. I love them, too. But what good is writing when the efforts of the hours, the missed dinners, the late nights, yields nothing but the rejection form letters from holier-than-thou literary agents who delete my query letters. I'm an unknown. A new author. Unpublished. A literary newcomer from the ranks of the great unwashed who seek to share their stories, only to be chastened by the shunning of literary giants.

 

It would be fine by me if everyone said my writing lacks what it takes to enter the published market. But my editor is willing to write a blurb for my book and he's an award winning, best selling author. He said it took him three years to be represented. But he's an English teacher. I'm a horse person. Not a college graduate in English literature or creative writing. Hell, I never took a remedial class on the studied works of dysfunctional lesbian authors who made good.

 

Since I have little collegiate credentials, maybe I should write about my life. I've got a story there. Write about how I ran away from home at age nine because I wanted to live out west and raise a bull calf. Something that was impossible to do in 1960's Englewood, New Jersey. Maybe someone would be interested to read about my anti-war activities and how I volunteered in the breakfast programs with the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party when I was in 10th grade. And how I caught the number 84 bus from the GWB bus station to get back to Dwight Morrow High School before my first class at 8:00 a.m. My parents never knew a thing.

 

Wow. I wonder if anyone would care to read about my college days at then West Virginia State College in Institute, West Virginia (WV being my ancestral home). I bet no one knew that I was nearly date raped, not once but twice in my dorm by guys I knew and considered my friends. I should have kicked their asses. I guess I didn't have to since I told them they would have to kill me before I would let them "stick it in".

 

I left. Burned and jaded about college. So I worked at WCHS-TV in Charleston, a CBS affiliate station. Humph! I guess that's where my writing career began since I was a copy writer for the local commercial spots. Hated that job, too. Loved to read though.

 

Read Reverend Moon's Divine Principle. I did after someone met me at a bookstore (duh!) in downtown Charleston. Joined the "Moonies"(I fucking hate that pejorative) in 1973. Sold my horse. Six months later, got four more. I taught Rev. Moon's children how to ride once I move to upstate New York.

 

I was more into painting than writing. Took some art classes at a community college. Helped edit student papers. Idiots couldn't write to save their Master's Degree butts. Got some of my poetry published in an anthology, my first real published works.

Got engaged to a white guy from Minnesota. Not a college man either. A farm boy and as innocent as they come. Wrote about that and got published in several church magazines. Got married at Madison Square Garden by Rev. Moon in a mass marriage. Good times, good times.

Lots of changes. Lots of travels. The pits and the peaks. Four kids, four dogs, and about a dozen horses later, we live in upstate New York and I'm still trying to get published as a novelist.

Write! Write! Write! I'm damn sick of it. I should have written about the real tragedies. Editors love that. How I missed my father's last sickly days and how I never got to say good-bye. They would love to read how my husband and I had to cut my nephew's body down after he had hanged himself from a basement pipe. I'll never forget the blue-black color of death on his face.

Had to bury my mother, too. I held her hand twelve hours before she passed. I missed her last moments, too. But that not what upset me. Some fat slob of a women in my church said to me hours later, "Let the dead bury the dead," quoting Jesus Christ in her self-righteous, cold-as-ice, heartless way. Bitch.

How about the days of chemo when I had breast cancer and refused to wear a wig while I taught riding lessons with my bald headed self. As soon as I finished radiation and was going to fly to Korea for a respite, I had a dream that my younger sister had died. The phone call came from my niece seven minutes later in the middle of the night. My sister was dead for real. Drugs and alcohol overdose. Saw her spirit ascending when I was in Korea. Wow.

Yep, I bet editors would love to hear more of that stuff. So here I am, trying o get published. Worrying about my health, worrying that my days are numbered and I'll have nothing to leave behind when I go.

I think deep down that I'm worrying for nothing. I get published and then what? Another book? Then another book? Would be great, but of all the stories that I could flush out of my imagination, my reality might be a better read. But that would bore me to tears.

I'm still with the Unification Church with all its traumas related to dramas since Rev. Moon passed. The caretaker home my family has lived in for the last 20 years is being sold. Fine. I'm ready to get out of New York anyway. Love the state, hate the assholes in the government. Setting my sights on Pennsylvania. I like what I see in the Poconos and so does my family. New home, new friends, new adventures. I just hope I survive the stress of moving day upheaval.

Having to start anew never bothers me though. It's having to write, write, write to impress readers that sometimes pisses me off. I can't sleep. I don't feel like it when a thought train rolls into my creative station. So here I am, sitting at this damn laptop at 12:10 a.m. writing, writing, writing.
 

 

 

The Man Song

I sat in my doctor's office this morning perusing the magazines when I chanced upon two popular men's publications. GQ. Esquire. Perhaps you've heard of them. Yes? Good. I enjoy looking at ads, images, articles of what is important to men in the way of fashion, food, women, recreation, etc.

What occurred to me as I sifted through the pages was what I call, a redefinition of the modern male. Let me qualify that. The modern metrosexual, uber cosmopolitan, swag hip-switching 'gentleman' who wears skinny jeans and black lace wing tips with no socks. They don their black ankle length jeans and sport coats, and have impeccably coiffed short hair. Did I mention the face stubble? It's as if none of them would ever be caught dead clean shaven. I guess face stubble looks sexier with their mouths slightly agape  to give us that breathless expression. They are slim and trim, tall (or should I say, elongated) in stature.

I looked through several periodicals and was surprised to see this "type" depicted over and over. Then I asked the question: Where's is the image of my man?

My man that in his farm boy youth had heavily muscled shoulders and arms from slinging a pile hammer when he worked on the railroad in North Dakota during the winter. He had shoulder length hair tied with a bandanna, was clean-shaven (beards are a bad idea during North Dakota winters), wore his belted Wranglers around his waist and not drooped around his hips. His nails were not manicured, his chest was hairy, and his face was tanned without aid of a sunblock. He had (and has) the stature of an inverted triangle and not one that looked like an anorexic pencil.

Well perhaps my man's type isn't as fashionable. After all, one never sees Armani, Calvin Klein, or Hugo Boss attire in the middle of a corn field when it's time to harvest. I will certainly feel uplifted when "city boys" as I like to call them, yearn to shed their finery and spend their days outside their comfort zone(s) outside with other men. Really outside. Not a city park, but a place where the paved road ends, there are no street lights (because there are no streets), no taxis, and coffee is taken with real cream and not half-n-half.

Maybe we should encourage GQ and Esquire to include the kind of modern male that we might readily see in Outdoor Life and Field and Stream. Just to change things up a bit. Then I would happily sing the song of men that reminds me of my man. Maybe I might even buy a subscription.

On this afternoon, I gaze out my southwest window to the barn and arena. Spent the whole day cleaning and organizing my writing work space. Music now playing and my ambient music bubbles in the background. My sound tapestry is only complete when I add my small table top fountain which has a minute chime.

Well, I'm done. I thought it would help in inspiring me to attack the edit of my next novel. I still feel like it's going to be pulling teeth to get myself in gear, start writing, and get this sent to my editor.

Eureka! Maybe it would help to eat something since I haven't had anything all day. Who knew food could be so important.

2014 Sunday Morning 9:00 A.M. (no, not the song)

Couldn't sleep last night. Dealing with dramas related to traumas, and the meaning (hence value) of my life. Didn't receive an answer, but sure got some wonderful insights to supplant in the novel that I'm currently writing. Finally got to bed at 12:30 which is super late for me since we live on a farm.

I came downstairs on this overcast January morning. It's Sunday. Normally, I love to do the Sunday morning breakfast feast. But when I looked at the counter, I stopped. The counter resembled the remnants of a trailer park after the passing of an F5 tornado. My life is like this counter, I thought. A disaster of jumbled dishes with half-eaten, stuck-on, discolored and smelly leftovers. Yes, it only takes minutes to organize everything into the dishwasher, wipe the counter tops clean so there is room to prepare something new and tasty. But another F5 tornado would  just come through again, making another day's disaster of my good intentions. 

Then I recalled my late night prayer and its 'results'. What am I afraid of the most? My family's safety and happiness? Finances? Mortality? What slapped me upside my head was this: Insignificance. The fear of insignificance hits me in two ways. First, that I'm downtrodden. Second, (and worse) that I'm being taken for granted. After all, the dishes were placed there with the mindset that someone else would deal with it.

That someone else is me. But really; no one put a gun to my head and demanded that I marry, have a family, and set up a household. I did that and have no regrets about it. Scratch the notion that I'm downtrodden.

Being taken for granted is another matter. Still, it's my matter.

So rather than play victim and engage in the blame game, I head to the waters that replenish, the outlet that blows off steam, the cathartic Zen breath that sustains me when all else wants to make me crazy. I pray, I cry, and I write.

Do I feel better, you ask? Enough to get in there and clean that counter top tomorrow morning.

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