Threnody

When Galetea emailed me the word "threnody" for a story idea, I thought that whatever I wrote would probably involve a main character who took "Threnody" as her goth name. I didn't actually want to write a threnody (a poem of mourning) because I had "been there/done that" throughout much of my writing life. I'm gleeful, I kept telling myself, gleeful.

Still, it would be dishonest of me to reject the thread of melancholy that is ever-present. In my life, there is much I would have done differently had I the wisdom and perspective to have carried it through. Then again, as e.e. cummings says, "kisses are a better fate than wisdom."

Galetea, here's the story inspired by your word:

{THRENODY}

Even though Justice Alba Root had short, stubby fingers, she wanted to play the harp.

“All the focus and drive in the world is fine enough,” Ms. Angevine, the school music teacher said, “but at a certain point, you’re going to have to come to grips with the physical limitations. I wanted to dance ballet, but I was bow-legged. Technically, I knew all the steps, but when it came time to audition for the Company, I flunked every test simply because of my knees. There’s nothing fair about it, but that’s the way it is.”

“I don’t want to be a famous musician,” Justice said. “I just want to play the harp.”

“Well, do it then,” Ms. Angevine said, “but I’d hate to see you dedicate yourself to the harp only to find out that in the end, you could only do so much.”

That was two years ago. Justice wished she could have proved Ms. Angevine wrong, and showed her that with enough determination and gumption, she could play just as well as anyone with long fingers, if not better. The fact of the matter was that Justice was a tolerable harp player. She played in the school orchestra only as long as there was no other harpist. However, in her junior year, when Elias Beck transferred into the school from out of state, Ms. Angevine had Justice give up her chair. Elias was a prodigy, and the adults said he played like an angel. Justice was skeptical, as she was sure no one she knew had actually listened to the musical performances of angels, but she had to give up her chair anyway. Elias wasn’t mean about it, but he didn’t go out of his way to acknowledge their mutual appreciation of the instrument. Justice had wanted to be a good sport about the whole thing, and she was. Still, when no one noticed that she was being a good sport, the general effect was lost upon her peers.

Justice could have become resentful. She could have carried the bitterness with her throughout the rest of her teen years, and perhaps have written a book about how no one had believed in her, her dreams had been “shattered”—all the elements that were so popular in the memoirs she saw on the best-seller shelves at the bookstore where she worked. That was rubbish, though. Justice was no Salieri, and she would write no threnody. She’d had no aspirations of greatness. All she had wanted to do was to play the harp.

Eventually, Justice found a harp of her own in the back of a second-hand music store. Half the strings were missing, and the other half had rusted. There was also a bit of warping around the base. Justice simply restrung the entire instrument and avoided playing the high notes. In college, she played her harp by her open window at night during breaks from studying her accounting homework. Other students in their dorms listened for the music of the harp. Unlike the radio, the harp music wasn’t distracting. Somehow, it made them think and focus more clearly. She had a nickname that she didn’t know about: The Dorm Angel. If she had known about it, she would have laughed. “Angels don’t have short, stubby fingers,” she would have said. And then she would have returned to playing her harp.

Happy Stuff

If you ever need a boost to your mood, check out ABCGirl's blog, Happy Stuff. Fear not: it's not sentimental goop that would make Nigel Molesworth run for the hills (though if he did, that would be his loss) nor even "chicken soup" for the wayward soul. It's more along the lines of Brad the Gorilla's chocolate and bananas.

The Last Tender Thought

Five years ago, Bede started a story for me called “The Last Tender Thought.” The story was a serialized epic in which three main characters called the Tzaddik, the Gadgeteer and the Little Girl Who Came From the Land to Which You Can Never Return set out on a quest to rescue the Last Tender Thought, trapped under a glass dome, from the clutches of the Machine King. The Machine King lived at the North Pole, so the heroes had quite a trek to reach the kingdom. Along the way, they encountered many perilous adventures. Unfortunately, I don’t remember what they were, because I often fell asleep while Bede was telling me the story. This was the whole point of the storytelling, but all the same, I was sorry I had missed out on important plot points.

What I do remember about the story spanning five years (with long gaps between episodes) was that the Tzaddik taught the polar bears to speak, the Gadgeteer shut down the cruel oil mines, and the Little Girl freed the clockwork mice from the enslavement of the Machine King. Last night, Bede presented the finale of the story, and I stayed awake for the whole thing. It was quite a show-down. Everyone was integral to the rescue, but it was the Little Girl who seized the icicle and threw it at the glass dome, shattering the prison of the Last Tender Thought. The Last Tender Thought gummed up the gears of the Machine King, and his merciless reign was no more.

All of a sudden, I feel so sleepy. It’s way too early to take a nap, but perhaps if I just rest my head on the keyboard for a moment….

Puppet Show: Boxing Day Grudge Match

I'm posting this link to a silly puppet-show courtesy of Brad the Gorilla.

Letters from Father Christmas

Letters from Father Christmas is my favorite book by J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien wrote and illustrated these stories in the form of letters for his children from Father Christmas almost every year from the early 1920's into the 1940's. The North Polar Bear, Father Christmas's assistant, is the most compelling character of the letters, as he inevitably sets off chain-reactions due to his clumsiness. While Polar Bear is more bumbling than mischievous, he is definitely a prototype for Brad the Gorilla.

My mother intended to follow Tolkien's example by writing St. Nicholas letters for us, but due to time and energy constraints, wrote only three letters over the course of our childhood. The one I remember best was around the time Ulric wanted a fire-hat with a siren akin to the one his best friend had. St. Nicholas had full intentions of delivering one, but when one of the elves tried it on, Polar Bear thought there was a real fire and turned on all the sprinklers and hoses. After Polar Bear found out it was a false alarm, he felt bad, as many of the presents were ruined. Somehow, the firehat got so water-logged that the siren stopped working. Ulric was a bit disappointed that his plastic red fire-hat was of the quiet sort, but he made up for it by supplying siren noises of his own.

This post has been updated since its original publication.

Monkey's Deep Thoughts and the Family Folkmanis

I have to share a link to someone else's creative output. The blog of Monkey's Deep Thoughts is a true delight. The post called "Spinning Girl and I Make Hot Cocoa" had me in stitches. Over the phone, the blogger Spinning Girl guides Monkey (pictured left) through the process of making delicious Mayan hot chocolate, complete with real vanilla beans and chili peppers. However, Monkey becomes disoriented, and unbeknownst to the cooking instructor, changes the plan to something slightly simpler.

Monkey is from the Folkmanis family, and I suspect that my toddler storytime helper, Chester, is a close cousin They may look similar (though note Monkey's close-cropped haircut), but their personalities are quite different. Monkey is a bit of a jet-setter who gets to travel to exotic places like Boston and make movies. Monkey's blog is rated "R", not because of anything terribly risque written in the actual blog posts, but because of the uncensored comments.

Chester (pictured right) has a simpler existence. He is a perpetual toddler whose main job is to help the children in storytime feel at ease. A number of children like to pet Chester's soft fur and the brave ones will let him nibble their fingers. Chester respects other people's space, though, and will wave to the more cautious children. Every March, I tell the people in storytime that Chester's birthday is that month, and I bring in homemade cookies all the week of my birthday. The children sing "Happy Birthday" to Chester, and sometimes make little cards for him. You may think it's sneaky to have Chester pretend to have my birthday, and to have him turn 3 years old every year... but how else are we going to get the cookies?

Lamb

Yesterday, I picked up Anne Rice's book Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and ended up skimming most of the text, hoping to find something to grab me. I found Rice's post-script more interesting to read than the novel. I was a fan of her writing throughout my teenage years, but after awhile, the hopelessness got to me. It's not that I needed books with happy endings so much as stories that celebrated a new world order.

For a livelier imaginative account of Christ's "lost years," I enjoy Christopher Moore's novel, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. While Moore often lets his narrative escape beyond his control, there are quite a few moments in which I laughed so hard I practically cried. Of course, humor is subjective, and I am fond of material that is simultaneously respectful and irreverant. Some may argue that "respectful" is not a word they'd apply to Lamb, but then, I don't recommend the book to everyone I meet. This is not a proper book review a la Wordswordswords, but an informal book recommendation that doesn't want to ruin any of the jokes by repeating them out of context.

For the rest of the week, I'm going to take some time off to read other people's creative efforts without feeling the need to post my own. As far as blogging goes, I won't be inactive. Quite the contrary: I will take the time to read your archives, comment if I have anything to say, and probably end up inspired to write again.

Thank you, everyone who's taken the time to read Saints and Spinners. I do appreciate you.

Song: "Casimir Pulaski Day"

One evening, not too long ago, I took Lucia out for a walk up to the cupcake & coffee-shop so that Bede could take a 20 minute nap without Lucia wanting to play "Hop on Pop." As Lucia devoured her coconut cupcake (icing first), I heard for the first time the Sufijan Stevens song "Chicago" . The lyrics, "All things go, all things go," stayed with me. I downloaded the song off of iTunes, but didn't feel compelled to download any other songs by Stevens until I heard Casimir Pulaski Day on Amazon.com. It was a free download, which was a bargain any day, but especially so on that day.

"Casimir Pulaski Day"* is about dealing with loss. Sometimes people think that having faith in the Divine makes it easier. I've always been in the "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" camp of thought. Of the three theological virtues, the strongest one for me is hope. It's not as comforting as faith (belief that doesn't require logical proof or material evidence) nor as selfless as charity, but it gives me courage and strength to get through the days and beyond. It also helps me deal with the things I dread most, which is mainly:

1) loss of my loved ones
2) my loved ones' loss of their loved ones
3) their loved ones' loss of even more loved ones

What I appreciate about "Casimir Pulaski Day" is that Stevens does not offer simple answers. He doesn't say anything remotely resembling, "Just trust in the Lord and everything will be fine." Stevens doesn't turn his back on the Divine, but neither does he let the Divine off the hook:

"Oh the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications when I see His face
In the morning in the window

Oh the glory when He took our place
But He took my shoulders and He shook my face
And He takes and He takes and He takes."

Lately, I've been thinking of a number of people close to me who are going through some rough issues dealing with mortality. Whatever blessings that may come from these thoughts, may they extend to you.

*The historical figure of the song is an American Revolutionary War hero originally from Poland. In Illinois, he is commemorated yearly on the first Monday in March.

Light

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."
--Leonard Cohen, Anthem

Avatar diversion

Here is the picture of what I've come up with for my Yahoo Avatar. The pig and the spider represent the two main characters from Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White. The backpack holds many of my nifty finger-puppets, books and other props. Unfortunately, there was no tiara option.

Hey ho, the Rattlin' Song

For those of you who read yesterday's post and wondered where it went, I pulled it back onto the draft table. I wanted to write something new, but it rambled without any sense of focus. It was neither a story nor a song, and really, I cheated toward the end by writing only the first three sentences of a story.

I write regular letters for an e-group for people who are interested in the family life of the House of Glee. The letters used to be newsier, but now they're more anecdotal. Last night, I sent out this note:

Lucia likes sequential songs. One of her favorites as of late is a shortened variation of "Hey, Ho, the Rattlin’ Bog." At her request, a dolly has taken the place of the egg. For example:

"Now in that nest there was a dolly, a rare dolly, a rattlin’ dolly,
The dolly in the nest, and the nest on the leaf..."


A few nights ago, Lucia was in bed singing a wildly altered version of the song:

"Now on that dolly there was a piano
a rare piano, a rattlin’ piano
The piano in the piano and the tree and the tree…

[pause]

Now on that piano there was a dolly,
a rare dolly, a rattlin’ dolly,
And the leaf and the leaf
And the apples fell down the piano."

After awhile, Lucia switched to the song "Aiken Drum," which she treated in a similar fashion:

"The dolly was made of piano, piano,
The dolly was made of piano, and his name was Aiken Drum."

These songs are quite fun to hear the first 10 or 20 times. I have a high tolerance for cumulative songs (with the exception of "There's a Hole in the Bucket"). However, on the rare occasions when I drive alone, I listen to the sweet country gospel acid house music of Alabama 3.

St. Lucy of the Eyeballs

Today is the feast day of Saint Lucy, patron of people dealing with eye issues. As I have mentioned before, my daughter, Lucia, is blind in one eye, due to a folded retina. When people ask if there ever will be any surgery to correct the vision, I have often replied, "I doubt it, but maybe someday she'll be eligible for a cyborg eye." You may think I have a macabre sense of humor, but if you look at various portraits of St. Lucy, you will note that this saint is often shown holding a plate upon which a pair of eyes sit as if they were eggs sunny-side-up. How can a cyborg eye not be far behind?

In other news:
Today, a good friend of mine gave birth to a baby boy named Gabriel James. I was rooting for "Arlo Cash," but no matter; "Gabriel" will do nicely. Mazel tov!

Paper Dolls

In 6th grade, I accidentally let it slip that I still played with paper-dolls. I told the person who scoffed at my “babyish” behavior that I was just kidding, but what I didn’t tell her was that an 8th grade friend of mine played paper-dolls with me. We had important stories to tell. The paper-dolls dressed in Victorian and Edwardian outfits, but their adventures were more along the lines of Sweet Valley High meets Star Wars* than Upstairs, Downstairs.



In subsequent years, I made my own paper-dolls in accordance with the stories I wrote. Paper-dolls were more like two-dimensional puppets than stand-ins for three-dimensional dress-up dolls. One of my favorite paper-doll stories was “Women Go on Strike.” In the story, the women and girls decide that they will live in the mountains (i.e. the couches) until the men and boys acknowledge that everyone is equal and should be treated with respect. The men and boys were always so sorry that they had thought otherwise. I don’t remember what they had actually done in the story to drive the women away, but I can gather that I was working out my frustration over the injustice going on in people’s daily lives. In the latter-half of the twentieth century, people paid lip-service to equality, but when it came down to reality, we were expected either to conform to traditional stereotypes or reject them completely.

I loved to play with dolls, and I loved to play with trucks. My dolls battled monsters. My Star Wars figures engaged in activities that would have made Darth Vader blush (no Barbie dolls in the house). I thought playing “house” was the most boring concept possible. However, I worked out quite a bit of passive-aggressive anger while playing “school,” especially when I got to mark other people’s answers wrong with big red X’s.




As much as I enjoyed playing with dolls on my own, I preferred to play with other children. Other children brought different perspectives to the stories and made them new again. As an adult, I enjoy eavesdropping upon gamers’ RPGs when there’s plot and character development involved beyond excessive dice-rolling. Currently, there are more men than women playing RPGs, but perhaps that will change when we incorporate paper-dolls in our grown-up storytelling play. If you like, you can start with these internet paper dolls.


*Lots of fighting and kissing, etc.

Blast/Past/Aghast/At Last

The summer after my freshman year of college, I commuted by bus to a government job in Greenbelt, Maryland. One day, a man I'd seen a number of times on the bus came up to me with photocopies of charcoal pictures he'd sketched of me. I asked him if he would sign them, and the man said that he would only sign originals. He then ripped the sketches out of his note-pad, signed them, gave them to me, and took back the photocopies. As it turned out, the man wasn't a total stranger, but the ex-boyfriend of one of my mother's coworkers. I don't remember his first name, but he signed his last name, "Kamp" on the sketches, so I'd like to give him full-credit for his own sketches.

These sketches, along with a host of other objects, arrived in a large box this afternoon.What struck me most about the portraits was not so much that they looked like me then, but how I would look ten years later.

As I looked through ancient journals, juvenalia printed out on an actual typewriter, and other potentially embarrassing things, I expected to reel in disgust. I didn't. What a relief! Of course, the poems were filled with murky, overblown images inspired in equal parts by my adolescent struggles and Simon LeBon's lyrics. (Does this sound familiar, O Goddess of Clarity?!) However, I can read the poems and remember what I was thinking at the time I wrote them. For example, I submitted a poem to Cricket Magazine. The subject matter was supposed to be about clouds. This is the poem I sent:

Beneath the clouds of midnight
The gale of dream blizzards blow
Sweeping icy splinters of hate into the hearts of mortal men
Chilling the bare hope that eternity exists
Where wishes live between the songs of lemon trees
Ever convicted to lie in wait for the rebirth of the moon’s daughter
Shadowed silhouettes dance on blades of grass
Stained with the blood of a thousand years hence
One hundred whispers sway in the breeze as one:
“Pass by quickly, child, pass by quickly.”
But I will never be a child again.
--Alkelda the Gloomy, age 13, 1985

Nevermind that nonsense about "songs of lemon trees"-- that was classic Simon LeBon obscurity. I stuck in the "clouds" so that the poem would technically be eligible for the contest. My mother gently pointed out that this poem was probably not what the editors had in mind when they asked for "clouds," but I was undeterred. I wanted to be treated as an adult. I had no idea what that concept truly entailed, I equated innocence with naivete, and I wanted to stop being treated like a child. I wanted my writing to have the depth of a grownup's.

Ironically, it was around the time of my brother's death that I finally got it: there is enough world sorrow. There is more than enough pain. No matter what we do, we will always have struggles. Therefore, why not encourage joy? Why not remind you of the times you laughed? Why not make you laugh again?

Blog Tree Ornament

Ever since Brad the Gorilla made a blog-themed tree ornament, he has been pestering me to do the same. "I am not inclined to craftiness," I said. "I can't even draw a straight line. Who, after all, is the person going to art school?" Brad then told me that he had just been kicked out of art school that very afternoon. He muttered something about the panel of instructors not fully understanding his final project, and that throwing rotten melons at the professors was part of the whole presentation.

"No one appreciates texture," Brad grumbled. "As the juice dripped off their faces, the instructors refused to acknowledge the symbolism inherent in the living sculpure that was my final project. All they could say was, 'Eeeew, I'm sticky!' and 'Get that gorilla out of here!'"

I felt so badly for Brad that I didn't even cringe when he got out the finger-paints and started working on a mural... on our couch. At least the paints were water-based. (Bede threw the couch-cover into the washing machine before I could get a photo of it. Sorry.)

In any case, I have made a feeble attempt to rally Brad by making a simple Christmas tree ornament using clip-art. If you decided to make your own blog-themed tree ornament, I'm sure it would cheer Brad up to no end.

P.S. Lone Star Ma, how's that for "texture?"

Ornament front:


Ornament back:

Waiting for Saint Nicholas

Footwear left to right: Bede, Brad, Lucia, Alkelda (as usual, Ulric has too much dignity for such an affair)
We have put out our shoes and boots by the fireplace and hope for good things from Saint Nicholas, whose Feast Day is December 6. When I was a child, Saint Nicholas came first on his Feast Day to put presents in my shoe, and then stood in for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve to put presents in my stocking. In the early years, I did receive lumps of coal from time to time, in addition to an orange and a present. Yes, I was a difficult child, but I was also whip-smart: my father was a coal-miner, and I figured he put the lump of coal in my shoe for a joke. Sometimes I received a switch in my stocking along with the presents. Again, I suspected my parents of sneaking it in.* It wasn't that I believed someone actually came down a chimney (or on horse, as the historical St. Nicholas would have traveled), but I had a sense of wonder and gratitude that someone was rooting for me. Most of my relatives assure me now that they doted upon me, and I believe them, but many of my memories involve making people cross without understanding what I had done to upset them. St. Nicholas was someone who believed in my goodness.

It was only many years later that I realized the person who was rooting for me the whole time was my Grandma Orpha. Of my three grandmothers, Grandma Orpha was the one who was actually strict with me. However, she was the one who scolded my mother for putting the switch in my stocking. Grandma was not materialistic, but she paid attention to my various worldly wishes. As a teenager, I wanted a black leather skirt. I envisioned something small and scandalous, but when I opened my Christmas package, I found a full-length, wide-sweeping leather skirt that I could actually wear to school. In that same era, I wanted a crystal necklace akin to the one my idol, Joan Jett, wore. It showed up in my stocking.

I don't like to accumulate possessions, but I do like presents. I like to give and I like to receive. There is something thrilling about quietly noting what someone desires or needs, and finding some way of granting those wishes. While it is nice to have a little money to spend upon gifts,especially for the raw materials one needs to create something lovely, it is not necessary. (Yes, Brad the Gorilla, I know you absolutely positively NEED a fancy new sportscar, but you will have to make do with a knitted hat.)

Happy St. Nicholas Day! Place your wishes in the comments section. For what do you long that money can't buy?

*My parents are actually quite loving and generous. I think the stress of having a wild and wooly child probably took its toll in various forms of comic relief such as the ones I mentioned. Can you tell that I'm slightly more sympathetic now that I have a child of my own?!

Compendium of Nastiness

Most nights, I have to limit my puppet-show attendance to fingerplays in my living room. Yesterday evening, I left my neighborhood home to attend a puppet-show in someone else's neighborhood home. The twelve audience members nibbled on chocolate cookies and sipped champagne before we were led downstairs into the dark recesses of The Womb Theatre to see a gothic melodramatic puppet-show called The Compendium of Nastiness. For an hour, we cringed and shuddered over the nefarious deeds of the evil Uncle Osmond as he terrorized his niece, the innocent Angela. Ki Gottberg of Seattle University wrote the play, and Elizabeth Kenny acted out all of the parts of the characters including an ambitious turn as Percy, the heroine's hobo romantic interest. (Percy attempts to disguise himself as a monk but inevitably betrays his true nature as Elizabeth Kenny's thumb.)

Ki Gottberg


Elizabeth Kenny





Are you intrigued yet? If so, read more, or better yet, attend the puppet-show. Show dates have been extended into January 2006.

And now, I have grand ambitions once more to stage my own puppet show. Attack of the Combs was just the beginning. Somehow, I need to figure out how to fit fourteen audience members into my home. Then, I will have to think about lighting and sound. I'm sure I'll need to make a poster or two. Sometime before actual opening night, I will figure out an actual story for the audience. (That is exactly how I used to plan my puppet-shows, as my parents can attest. Unfortunately, I rarely made it past the poster-making stage. Early on, my mother informed me that "dress rehearsal" meant doing an actual run-through of the show, not simply deciding what costumes the puppets would wear.)

Blog Bucks

My Mom just sent me this:

My blog is worth $11,855.34.
How much is your blog worth?

At this point, if I hold onto the blog for a little while longer, then sell it to the highest bidder, I might have enough to pay for one credit hour of Lucia's college education. The person who bought my blog would probably turn it into a "convenience blog" with sub-rate stories at cut-rate prices. Oh! I cannot bear the thought.

A year later: my blog is now only worth a little over $6k. What happened? I don't remember spending the money. If I had, I would have bought a new banner with sparkly stars sprinking silver fairy dust.

Online Advent Calendar 2005

Online Advent Calendar
"Tate and the Dogsford Don"

I have found for us an online Advent calendar that tells a sequential story. I realize I dropped the ball in terms of posting it for December 1st, as it just now became tomorrow. For the month of December, I will link the Advent calendar on the sidebar so that you may find it easily. I can't make any promises as to the quality of the work, but the calendars from previous years look promising, so I'm willing to give it a go.