The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pen

Writing is a solitary addiction.

Because of my craving for writing time and solitude, I’ve never been a person to have many friends.  I held people at a distance, my emotional force field protected the real me. Like any addict, my addiction was my life.  

So, imagine my surprise when I found, not one, but four women to share my writing journey.  From agonizing over plot, through the publication process and the challenge of marketing, these four ‘sisters’ have eased my pain, sharpened my skills and just generally made my life more joyful.

A few months back, we officially became The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pen. Our first speaking engagement was yesterday at the NW Arkansas Writers Workshop Conference.  Our hope was to get our message across AND to entertain.  I think we accomplished our goal.  

Ruth Weeks started us off by acting the part of a humble, frightened writer trying to pitch her work to a snooty agent.  Thirty seconds in, she flung off her jacket and revealed more bling than Liberace.  And cowboy boots.  Hot damn, those boots of hers.  Ruth strutted a demonstration of stepping out, believing in yourself, and making the magic happen in your writing career.  I mean, the woman showed us how it was done.

Once Ruth had folks fired up, it was my turn.  

I pointed to my tiara. Yes, you read that right. Touched the giant, gold star hanging around my neck, whirled my feathery pink boa.  I held my book over my head danced and yelled, I’ve been published!  My sisters yelled and stamped their feet and threw confetti. The celebration lasted approximately thirty seconds when Ruth, holding a sign that said Reality Check stepped up and, foot tapping, demanded my lovely glittery crown and my adorable star.  The bitch even took back my lovely pink boa. I spoke on the reality of having a book published and likened the experience to running a small business.

Next, Jan Morrill acted out a skit she’d written about how, while the rest of The Sisters took that fork in the road marked Small Press and skipped happily to publication, she choose the road to New York Publication and spend a year waiting for the phone to ring.  This presentation came complete with the song Let it please be him. It must be him.  It must be him bursting forth into the conference room to demonstrate her reaction each time the phone rang while she waited and waited to hear from her agent.  My favorite part was when she skipped down the path to stardom in her sunglasses, the frames of which were in the shape of glittery gold stars. 

In stained chenille robe, pajama bottoms and soft, fluffy slippers one of her dogs may have chewed, Claire Croxton demonstrated what happens when you sit down to write, but first, just for a minute, you check your email and your favorite blogs.  Social Networking is vital to building a platform after all!  As Ruth moved the hands of a giant clock, Claire tapped on her laptop, commented on blogs and just networked her little heart out until the clock showed eight hours had passed and she hadn’t written a word on her new novel.  Claire spoke on managing your time.

Linda Apple stepped up with a rubber snake around her neck which, like Marlin Perkins with the giant Anaconda, she successfully wrestled into submission.  Her opening line was “Most people would rather wrestle a poisonous snake than speak in public.” She then beautifully demonstrated how to speak in front of an audience with ease and grace.  Linda spoke on the importance of building your platform as a writer.  

Lord, did we have fun.  Who’d have thought that a lifetime of living in my own solitary little world, mainlining words and struggling to reveal the truth through fiction–who would have even suspected that this would bring me into the glorious company of a sisterhood like this?

Times Change

I have three sons.  They’re all grown men now, but in the 1970’s, from the time the oldest was about three up until they discovered girls, the older two boys were obsessed with the question:

Could a person jump from the Empire State building into a pool of Jell-O and live.

Answering this burning question required many trips to the local library where they learned, serendipitously, thousands of interesting answers to questions they hadn’t even thought to ask.  

A professor of physics at Humboldt State University met with them, talked about interesting stuff like variable terminal velocity and demonstrated the practicality of math and physics.

They sent a letter to the Jell-O’s headquarters. The company didn’t have an answer to the boy’s question, but they did send a coupon for free pudding.

Basically, my boys still argue about this burning question (though admittedly now it’s mostly after a beer or two) and the only thing they’ve ever agreed upon is that the first to try the jump should be their youngest brother.

Here’s my point.

Today, a child would find the answer to this interesting puzzle on the internet.  She or he would learn a lot of miscellaneous information while ciphering the answer.  Of that I have no doubt.  But, almost certainly, the child would do this research alone, in his or her room and any interaction with people would be through tapping on a key board.

And that’s a shame, I think.  Not just for the kids.  But for the parents who miss out on these adventures in learning with their children.

Well, times change and every generation bemoans the loss of the past. 

The other day I stopped at a garage sale on the way home from Walmart and an old couple was selling one of those blood-red sets of Encyclopedia Britannica.  One whiff of that book glue and dust and the feel of those old pages under my fingers and I was transported back to a simpler past.  A time when the world was a place I discovered every day, right alongside the most important people in my life

On the Move with Chesty and Rocca

Here's the third installment of the true story of how my husband and I sold everything and moved to The Republic of Panama.  If you've tuned-in late, just drop down and read the previous couple of blogs.  Think of this story as House Hunters International - the rest of the story.
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Okay. So, the dogs. Chesty and Rocca. Male and female. We got the male first and the Veteran’s Administration sent Jack to school in Hutto,Texas to learn to train the dog to assist specifically with his disabilities. Because part of the dog’s job is to watch Jack’s back, Chesty is big. He weighs just over 110 pounds. That’s a lot of dog to take everywhere with you, so Chesty had to be trained to behave perfectly. No screwing around here or the whole deal wasn’t going to work. It took a lot of time and cussing and patience and fussing and energy to achieve this goal.

Our biggest mistake, I believe, was in naming the dog after a Marine. Chesty Puller. The Marine. At any rate, precisely like a Marine, the dog had to be re-trained every day. Like a Marine, Chesty was the handsomest thing on any block, especially in his red and blue working-dog cape. And, once again like all Marines, he forgot everything he’d ever known the very instant a pretty woman paid any attention to him. Still, eventually, Chesty was ready to begin his working life.

Then, because we have very little common sense between the two of us, and this is going to become increasingly clear to you as I continue with this story, we got a female pup to train as a backup for Chesty. Making herself comfortable in our home in the desert, our baby girl, Rocca, now weighs 148 pounds. Fully trained, she is calmer than Chesty and more protective, but not as attuned to Jack’s moods. She’s also the undisputed boss of our macho Marine-named boy. Except, of course, on those occasions when she has a need for that lovely appendage he carries between his legs. Then she’s the quintessential southern belle.

All right, so now you’ve got the picture a little more clearly. We’re bored. We’ve been in Arizona long enough for the minimalist beauty of the desert to have long ago worn off. We’re ready for our next adventure and, on this journey we’ll be traveling with two humongous canine companions.

The house is on the market, the recon flight is booked and we’re entertaining ourselves by reading everything we can get our hands on about The Republic of Panama and visiting all the chat rooms for ex-patriots living in that central American country. The place continues to sound good. We’re told that the Caribbean island section of the country, Bocas del Toro (translation: Mouths of the Bull) is thirty minutes from a hospital and a Price Smart. So civilization is within easy reach, but far enough away not to encroach too aggressively. We figure we’ll get a little panga boat instead of a car and take the local buses once we get to the mainland. When we go out for the day, we’ll be able to leave the dogs with the maid or the gardener. Everyone down there has one of each according to our research. It’s the way of life in Latin America and expected as a boon to the local economy. Panama is looking like an undiscovered tropical paradise. Clear blue water, little verdant jungle islands edged in white sand and most of the comforts of home too. Plus, they speak English.

Okay, okay, okay. I know. Way too good to be true. But you’ve gotta remember how bored we are, how desperate to find something with which to entertain ourselves besides looking deep within our souls to discover the truth that surpasses understanding. It’s time to move on and Bocas del Toro in The Republic of Panama looks good. We’ll go and check it out and, if it looks as good as everything we’re reading, we’ll head on down. If not, well, Jack assures me it’s a big world out there. Here’s how that conversation went:

“I don’t know Honey,” I say. “I mean, if it were just you and me, then I agree, we could go anywhere. Assuming we can find a buyer for the house. We could just leave the money from sale in the bank and travel the world and explore. But we have these two giant dogs.”

Try to see this with me, the exact condescending tilt of Jack’s big white-haired head, the slight cocking of the left eyebrow indicating irritation, the precise tone of voice as though speaking to a not-too-terribly-bright child.

“Why do you have to be negative?” He sighs. “There won’t be any problem with traveling with the dogs. Trust me.”

“But, maybe we should wait to sell the house until we know exactly where we’re going.”

Yes, I know. It was me who had the bright idea to move in the first place. I’m the one who mentioned greener pastures, where the summers didn’t feel like walking into a pizza oven each time I stepped outside. But we seem to be building momentum at an alarming rate. I can almost feel that boulder shifting its position ever so slightly above our heads.

Marriage and Drinking Your Own Urine

You know that guy in Utah? The one that went hiking around Moab and ended up trapped by the boulder from hell and had to hack off his hand at the wrist with a pocket knife? I’m beginning to think of that tragic tale as a near perfect analogy for marriage.

I mean. Think about it. The guy works like a fool just to get himself to this glorious, starkly beautiful environment of lurking death. He be-bops along, enjoys the rose tinged boulders, thinks he’s the luckiest, cleverest fool in the history of the world to have discovered these deep clefts and smooth surfaces.

Next thing he knows, he jumps down into this inviting crevasse and looks up just in time to see this bitch of a boulder falling through the air to pin his wrist to the side of the mother of all rocks. You know he’s gotta be looking up at that stone prison falling toward him in slow motion, like an innocently smiling virgin stepping inexorably down the aisle, and part of his brain has got to be screaming, “N-o-o-o!”

And the boulder. Let’s think about that for a minute. Birthed by the bedrock, prepared for eons by rain and wind and the natural erosion of the mother rock to fall with no more thought than, well, than a bride going to her goofily smiling groom. Slipping, as easily as nature herself, through the golden, red-tinged air, to fall precisely, pinning the hapless young man to the side of the canyon he thought to plunge into with the reckless joy of ignorant youth.

Okay.

So he’s pinned.

He spends a day or two trying to think his way out of his predicament. He denies he’s stuck. He wiggles and squirms and stretches and moans. He enjoys a sunset or two. Prays to the God that created the freaking boulder. Watches a couple of killer sunrises. Decides to cut off his hand to save the rest of his life.

If you’ve ever been married, go ahead, tell me you’ve never been right there.

But, nuh uh, nope. That hand’s not coming off that easily. His tiny little pocket knife is not going to cut through the solid bone of the good wrist given him by a loving Lord.

So he waits. He gives up. He resigns himself to living the rest of his short, miserable life, trapped by this rosy stone to the side of the bedrock. He waits. If he’d had a TV, he’d have watched it, remote clutched firmly in his good hand, proof of his amazing control over his life.

He thinks about all the people he knows who seem to skip merrily through their little jaunts in the countryside. He wonders what the hell is the matter with him that he didn’t just leap over the abyss and keep enjoying his sunny freedom.

He remembers the life he had before he trapped himself in the wilderness. So long ago now, it feels like it happened to someone else. Someone happy. Someone free.

Maybe he thinks about his mother and the lies she told him about the joys to be found in committing to that leap of faith. He waits. He drinks his own urine. Watches the fuzzy black images of the circling buzzards.

He waits. He thinks about what he’d do with the rest of his life if he could just get out of this mess. He drifts for a while in a haze of pre-death exhaustion. He thinks about those dark, feathered portents of rot and decay gathering silently over his head, drawn by the smell of the gangrene. He smiles. He waits just a little longer, letting his hope build his strength and courage.

Then he plunges his tiny steel blade into the now rotten bone of his wrist. Even now, nothing is quick or easy. He cuts and scrapes and digs for the joint. He screams and rants and gives up a dozen times. Only his sure knowledge that he will die if he can’t escape, keeps him hacking away at his stinking flesh.

In the end, he’s free. Missing a part of himself, half-dead from the ordeal, but free. And still miles from safety or any solid hope of survival. Now he puts one foot in front of the other, prays he’s lucid enough that he’s navigating in the correct direction, and just keeps walking. For many, many steps, long past the time when common sense dictates he give up, curl peacefully in a fetal position and embrace his death, he walks. One painful step at a time. Not letting himself think about the reality that he’s hacked off a vital piece of his own body. He just staggers toward what he hopes is the direction of progress and life.

Having done all he can to save himself, it’s a combination of luck and love that save him. Other hikers, strolling blissfully along on their own adventure, stumble across him, very nearly dead on his feet, though still standing. At the same time, his mother, frantic for days now at his disappearance, has begged, prodded and threatened the authorities into putting a helicopter in the air to look for him. That helicopter is less than a mile away when he’s discovered by the happy family of hikers.

At the hospital, the experts bring him back from the dead. Then they cut off his arm again. Higher up and cleaner. They rig him up with an artificial hand. He even has a prosthetic with a climbing hook. Unbelievably soon he convinces himself he’s come out of his ordeal better than new. He gets on with his life with a new joy in each new dawn. He rushes right out and looks for another virgin wilderness to explore and enjoy. After all, he’s better prepared this time. Why, he even has a steel hook to replace the soft, vulnerable puny hand he had during his first ordeal.

Admittedly, I might be having a bad day. But, seriously, isn’t that whole trapped-in- the-desert-drink-your-own-urine ordeal a perfect analogy for marriage? That platitude that everyone tells you when you’re going through a rough spot in your marital life? You know the one.

“If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.”

Bullshit.

Life can be hard enough that it leaves you crippled and panting on the side of a forsaken road, just praying for the rot to set in so you can scrape, hack and saw your way out of yet another disaster, leaving an additional appendage to feed the earth off of which you’ve managed to drag your sorry ass.

And yet, we love, we risk, we throw ourselves into that narrow canyon and thank God for the opportunity.  Because love, when we get it right, changes everything.

Arkansas Invite

A year and a half ago my husband and I relocated to northwest Arkansas.  Cupped in the rolling Ozark hills, the area is home to the U of A Hawgs, Walmart, Tyson Foods, and some of the prettiest land east of the Mississippi.  We bought season tickets to the Walton Art Center and, for the first time, had the opportunity to see high quality Broadway plays, dance performances and music concerts.  The people are friendly and the livin' is good.

Our favorite part of living here though are those inevitable Arkansas Invites to a barbeque or potluck at 'The Farm'.  These invitations generally come with ten page instructions for how to get to the country home of the party giver.  The paved road ends in the middle of page one (generally at the intersection of Lee Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard) and is followed by, and I'm not making up much of this, instructions that include, but are not limited to:

Hang a left at the Baptist dunking pond.  You'll see the bullet pocket sign nailed to the sweet gum that leans out over the gravel road.  Do not follow the metal crosses nailed to the fence posts that point the way to the Chruch of God immersion pool.  If you come up on a chain stretched between a windfall hickory and a chain saw art statue of Jesus, you're at our only gated community and y'all missed the turn.

At the purple house with the giant neon razorback on the roof of the barn, turn right.  Use caution as the piglets like to lie in the mud holes after a good rain.  If you do hit one of the little porkers, press the accelerator.  The owner is generally settin' under the oak tree, a .30-06 balanced across his overalled lap waiting on some darn fool like you.

Bear left at the warning spray painted on a yellow sheet and stretched above the road.  The threat says, 'Don't even think about coming any further,' but you don't need to worry.  That's my uncle's house and he's invited to the party so he'll give you a free pass today.  If he does happen to stop you, don't get out of your vehicle if he's drunker than usual.  The goober's got a big ass dog named Hunter Thompson that he's trained to sic balls.

Slow down at the Pentecostal Church of the Risen and Trimphant Living Jesus.  The field beside the church is chuck full of rare fainting goats.  Honk the horn and the whole mess of 'em'll fall over on their sides.  Wait long enough and every last smelly critter will resurrect and go on about their goaty business.

Do not veer to the right at the Nathan Bedford Forrest Museum of Fine Arts and Confederate Paraphernalia.  The reason ought to be self-explanatory, but suffice it to say that a couple of Yankees a year disappear off the face of the known earth right around in this area.  If you do happen to get caught in this vortex, drop references to the War of Northern Aggression and make mention of your personal deep mistrust of the Muslim currently holding the office of presidency of the great U. S. of A.  It probably ain't gonna help you none, but, sure, give it a shot.

Directly after you pass the stone house with the 'Knife Sharpening and Dawg Training' sign, you'll come up on the Second Baptist Church.  Keep going, that's not your turn.  Go on past the Central Baptist and, pretty soon after the drive-thru liquor store, you'll come to the big brick First Baptist Church.  You're almost there now.  Another two blocks and you should see the placard advertising 'Gun Smithing and Meditation Classes - Tuesday nights 6:00 and Prayer Service with Child Care - Wednesdays 6:30.'  This is the One True Baptist Church of Jesus Christ the Beautiful and Victorious. 

Hang a sharp right and you'll see our house set up back in the pines.  Honk the horn, we'll lock up the dogs.

Aging Awkwardly

     I've got a book coming out next month.  Very exciting stuff.  I'm going to need a photo for the jacket cover.  So I have my husband take a few pictures of me posed in various natural settings.  Well, the man is no artist, I'll tell you that.  Each picture is worse than the one before.
     Obviously, I need a professional photo shoot.
     I make the appointment.  Get looking at my hair and decide I'll go in and get it puffed up a bit before the session.  I mean, this is not the last book I'll have published.  Unlikely I'll look any better as time takes its inevitible toll.  May as well spring for the picture now.
     The day comes and I go into the gallery.  Walls covered with glowing brides and soft skinned babies.  Wow.  This guy seems good.  The photographer, thank you Jesus, turns out to be about my age.  The last thing I need is some thirty year old looking down the length of the camera with those eyes that telegraph, 'Gotta make arrangements.  If I ever get this old, have someone shoot me.' 
     The guy takes about twenty pictures in three different poses.  He reminds me that in the old days (meaning forty-five years ago when I had my high school picture taken), they put all kinds of filters on the camera before they took the picture.  Nowadays, everything's digital.  The proofs come back harsh, sort of -what you see is what you get.  He's careful to explain that he'll send them to me via a webpage.  Then, once I choose a couple of poses, he'll go in and retouch, soften, do whatever I ask him to do.
     Okay dokey.  So, I got the proofs today.
     Holy crap!  Who is that old woman?  Have I had some kind of silent stroke?  Why is my face all cockeyed?  Did it used to be symetrical?  And when did my shoulders get all hunched over like my grandma's used ot be?  Mother-of-God!  Could I really be that fat?
     Twenty-two pictures and in every single freakin' one, I appear shockingly old.
     Very humbling and a teeny bit frightening.
     I immediately chose the three least horrible photos and fired off an email telling the photographer to remove my double chin, the black circles under my eyes, and the forty excess pounds the camera seems to have added.  Airbrush my right eye so it's the same size as my left.  Straighten out my mouth so it looks less like I'm grimacing and more like I'm smiling.  Basically, I ended the email, just retouch the photos to within an inch of cartoon character.
     Sheesh!  Good thing I've spent a little of my extended years doing my best to develop some inner beauty.  Lord knows my outer beauty has gone straight to crap.