The purpose of a story

“The purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world."

— Umberto Eco

Prime

Slowly, I am regaining my mornings, now, welcoming the hour of Prime.

This seems just right as the earth tips into Autumn, a gentle easing through the predawn dark.

The darkness holds me as I check news and texts, lends a sense of ritual to making tea and putting on gym clothes. My trainers feel like a uniform as I secure the laces and walk out of the building with the first rays of light. 

This is my favorite time of year.

The air is a perfect chill, inviting me to walk around one block, then another, before going up the steps to the gym, the glass doors sliding open to spill cool light onto the concrete steps. Inside, the October greetings are quieter than summer greetings, but no less welcoming. Good morning, good morning, hi girl, good morning, good to see you our convocation litany invoking the new day and tolling the canonical hour. The laps around the track are walking meditations -- jogging seems reserved for brighter hours. The sun comes up fully as I leave the track and head to the steam room, the sauna, this restoration before I face the day's toils. 

There is reading, and then there is writing, but before either, there is tea, comfort in a cup as I kick off the trainers and shed the gym clothes, molting into my awake self, dropping the clothes into the washer. 

Reading.

Then writing.

Then, with a second cup of tea, the day begins. 

24 hours, she said.

24 hours, she said.

It’ll be fun, she said.

What could possibly go wrong?

Inspiration

I'm going to have to write a whole short story about this picture.

Unpunishable

For reasons I don't understand, I am unpunishable.

When I was in the seventh grade, the same as Vivian is now, I was sent to a hyper religious fundamental private school. One afternoon after being forced to spend my recess cleaning the blackboard because I hadn't done my homework, I took the chalk and wrote The Declaration of Independence from Homework on the pristine board. The next day I was in the headmaster's office for my crime . He pulled out a paddle and told me to drop my jeans. I was appalled and said "you're an adult. And you're going to hit a child. With a board. For writing." "Yes" he replied. I complied and he hit me. I waited, silently, because Holy Mary that stung like sitting on a red anthill, something I had done back when I was six and wow. It took my breath away. Just as I figured he was waiting on me, he did it again. This time it didn't sting so much as it just *hurt*, and I was confused. While I was trying to figure out what the difference was, he did it again, and I wondered how long this would go on. I turned and looked at him, the sunlight slanting across his face and the paddle as he stood at the ready, behind me. "How long will this go on?" I asked. He sighed as if he were tired.

He was a quiet man, tall and thin and usually unseen in the halls of the small school. When he did make an appearance he often seemed uncomfortable at addressing the student body or parents, and usually had few words, quickly retreating off the stage. He looked like he wanted to do that now. "Until you cry," he said wearily. Oh. I took a deep sigh, and faced front again, squaring my bony hips up against the desk, spreading my fingers and planting my palms on the cold unfeeling surface. I looked out the window and said, not really to him, "this is going to take a while."

The haunting of the qualifier

I adore everything about this piece from Benjamin Dreyer. The topics, the brevity, the pacing, the low-key passion, and the unshakable belief that I, his reader, am a writer worth his cautions. I love the way he takes very to task, outing it as fraudulent, casting harsh light on the thin wateriness of qualification, and presenting us a moment to which any of us can aspire: an unqualified compliment.

This is crafty writing.

Well done.

Writers, be wary of Throat-Clearers and Wan Intensifiers. Very, very wary.

The Way of the Writer

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. 

---Ursula K. LeGuin 

The smell of paper

The sun is starting to come out once again and all I want to do is write.

Tell Them I’m Writing

Even if I can’t change the world, 

I’m still going to write.

Even if no one ever cares,

even if it makes absolutely no difference 

that there was a person named Heidi 

who sat in this little room 

day after day 

and wrote things down 

just because she felt them.

Scholars

Writing that shuts out the world is as good as dead.

To be a scholar, we must seek the truth, and share it. 

The point is to change the world.

Half-finished Love

A half-finished book is, after all, a half-finished love affair.

—-Frobisher, Cloud Atlas

Resurrection

In what will likely be my last trip to the cinema for a bit, I went to see the matinee of Matrix: Resurrection. Taking the bus is incredibly intimidating for me whenever I go a route I havent’ been before. (Afterwards, it’s immediately pase, completely old hat and NoBigDealWhatsoever™️, so I don’t know why I drag my feet so petulantly, but I do.) I took the bus to the Grandin area for the first time, and of course it was just fine. I really like the updated interface with Google Maps that lets me know which bus to get on and where the stop is, all the way down to showing which side of the street to be on. The bus dropped me with 20 minutes to spare before the film started, so I went across the street to the Co-op and picked up a couple cups of rye flour from the (ever-shrinking) bulk section. My sourdough starter got trashed in this summer’s move, and I haven’t had the strength of spirit to undertake making a replacement. People have feelings about their starter, and I’m definitely in that category.
 
No spoilers about the movie. I loved it.
 
In a bout of serendipity, I stood around talking with one of the other folks who came to the matinee (I think there were a grand total of five of us, all told, in the show, and I don’t think any of us knew each other. Is this a thing, going alone to the matinee on opening day? I thought it was just me.) The conversation was surprisingly good, and none of us knew each other, and it was refreshing to have a thoughtful conversation without also feeling as though we were trying to one-up each other. Maybe it has something to do with being a matinee. Anyway, near the end of the conversation, one of the guys asked if I edited other people’s work, and I raised an eyebrow and said, In fact I do and I was just mentioning that I’m open to take on a few more authors. Apparently his roommate is moving out post haste due to changing demands of the PhD program at Tech, and in losing his roommate, he’s also losing an editor. We talked a little about what he write (fiction) and what his goals are (publication) and what I do, and he was interested and said, I guess I don’t have to take out a classified ad anymore! I gave him my contact information.
 
The milk delivery folks switched to glass containers only and ditched the plastic option. This is great and I always preferred it, but the management of getting the containers back is a bear, and they are heavy. A half gallon of milk already weighs quite a bit, and in glass weighs ever so much more, and I get five half-gallons a week. The bus goes near the delivery location, so I’ll be scouting how much walking is involved in getting There And Back Again. It may well turn out that I need to make a couple trips a week to be able to manage the weight, and if so I’ll be scootering instead of paying for the bus whenever weather allows, bringing home a gallon at a time in the backpack.
 
At home after the movie, I put the starter together for Day One. It will take some time to get going. It feels homey to have it up on the top of the fridge, perking away.
 
Movies take a toll, and just being conscious does too. Then the conversation was good, but by the time I got home and settled, I was worn out. I made tea and changed and settled in with aspirin, a glass of milk, and a bit of a rest.
 
It was a Very Nice Day indeed.
This morning as I made a pre-writing pot of tea, I was thinking about the Carrie-Anne Moss quote from yesterday. Choosing not to have pressure is serious emotional work, no less than developing and maintaining washboard abs. Unlike washboard abs, though, it's possible for any of us, at any time, to take up this work. And the results are amazing.
 
I like it.
 
I woke up and jotted down a thought while the kettle heated. A thousand words later, I really like what I have written, the kettle is cool, and there is still not any tea. No matter. Tea can be made. The muse must be entertained when she arrives.

Writing life

It’s been a long week of nesting, resting, reading, and writing.

This is my comfort zone.

All books are travel books

All books are travel books, in this sense – or at least they should be; they exist to transport the reader to some place geographically or emotionally distant from their own, setting them on a journey that will expand their horizons and leave them transformed.

Catherine Marshall, Travelling by the book along Virginia’s Tinker Creek

Brain Fog

Being an academic with a TBI is bizarre, weird, and unsettling. Like Billy Pilgrim, I came unstuck in time at the moment of my injury. A. H. Reaume writes beautifully and accurately about the atemporal condition emanating from a neurodivergent temporal lobe, and I love her for it.

What if we need to spend our energy tracing the future? Analyzing the not yet?

That is craft theory. A naming of a thing to call it into being. A kind of summoning.

The Egg

 The Egg, by Andy Weir

Editing

Write with fire. Edit with ice.

A Day That Starts with Prince

I've been up since the predawn dark, my favorite time of day, writing the last paper for the term. As the sun makes its final push above the horizon, I have thirteen pages and Prince queued up.

 

Because a day that starts with Prince can't go wrong.

 

 

Via con dios

 Just submitted a memoir piece to one of my favorite magazines. Via con dios, little piece of my soul.

Home again

This morning I woke up in my own bed for the first time in weeks. It's nice to be home. 

 

I was tidying up and settling back in, watering the plants and sorting the post, when I realized that the next policy analysis paper for the Politics of Leadership class is due tomorrow. I had been so focused on the paper for ethics (due Tuesday) and the editing work for the APA Blog that the policy piece had dropped off my radar altogether.

 

I made a fresh pot of tea and walked the dog while I shifted my focus, then decided to jot down a few thoughts before they disappeared, taking stock of how far along I am with the analysis thus far. This paper is the second in a three-part series in which I'm analyzing elements of school budget formulas, looking at the assumptions and systems in the formula factors and how the matrix perpetuates underlying assumptions and systems of inequity.

"Just a few thoughts" turned into two pages, and the structure is on paper. I really like the work that I'm doing this term and more than ever I feel like this is where I belong.