Carolina Mourning Dove

I can't imagine life as a person who isn't driven to create.  When I was younger, I wasn't convinced that my talents were really gifts because they never gave me a moment's peace and not that much obvious reward.  A part of me always knew that because of my creativity, I would never suffer boredom because I am constantly experiencing things with newborn eyes, ever preoccupied with what to do about what I have witnessed, seen, experienced.  Not being bored is a good thing.  Bored people are sad, dull creatures.  I was delivered from that.  My creativity also helped me remain somewhat sane. I have always had a place to channel the stuff that makes some people go bonkers, become axe-murderers, and other destructive possibilities.  I don't claim complete and total sanity, but I am steady enough as I go that people forgive my eccentricities as being something cool rather than deranged.  That is a good thing.

One thing I don't consider myself is a poet, although I have written verse all my life.  My first real, honest-to-goodness published work was a poem, so maybe that counts for something.  But I never took seriously the idea of trying to get someone to publish more of my poems much less to self publish.  I am going to blame my Aunt for the upcoming book, she who is "Garnet" in Precious Jewels, A Seventh-Day Adventist Family Saga.  It is her fault that I wrote Church School Blues, also, so she deserves full credit for pushing me into this new endeavor.  Because of her, I finally looked at my collection of poems that span literally a lifetime, and they fall into two clear categories for the most part.  I'll tell you about the second category later, but the first category is that of poems of longing for coastal North Carolina, written from the age of 16 and continuing through all my decades in which I considered myself an exile from my true home.

There are thirteen poems in Carolina Mourning Dove, with photographs and drawings.  In some ways this is the most personal book I have put out there for all to see because in the poems I opened my heart and wept onto the pages. If you have ever been homesick, if you have ever been an exile, the poems of Carolina Mourning Dove will speak to you and cry with you.

I will let you know when it is available online.  First I have to get a proof copy and see if my aunt approves.

WHEN THE SNOW CAME TO DIXIE

Everyone knows by now that a big snowstorm has crippled the Southern U.S.  Now that the danger is mostly over, people are saying how poorly everyone with any authority handled the situation, ignoring the fact that no one, not even the weather bureau could predict the exact time or quantity of the storm to come.  Everyone made their own choices that day. No one was certain which was the right one, not even the police who were expected to be everywhere simultaneously and are now being criticized for failing to do so even though it was not physically possible; not even the heads of schools; nor the mayors of cities, and certainly not we who felt, nearly to a man, that we would be cowardly not to get into our cars that morning and go to where we normally go.  Despite the warnings, despite the knowledge that a storm was coming, very highly likely, very soon.  

Not seeing a snowflake in sight, most chose to continue life as normal, which they regretted a few hours later when the snow and ice came swiftly, turning the streets into frigid parking lots, separating children from their parents.  It was a sort of Pompeii scenario where people were caught in action and then unable to move, frozen in place for eternity, but most of us in the American South thankfully got up alive from our positions and eventually made it home, eventually were united.  Thankfully, above the voices of spoiled brats who expect everything to be taken care of perfectly at all times and complain when mere human beings take charge, we also hear stories of courage and generosity.  Those are the stories that will endure.

All of this reminds me of my own story in a long ago January when my grandmother died.  We had no choice but to get into our car and venture into the storm because the family needed us in another state.  I will never forget the huge, motionless trucks lying on their sides, as we moved perilously through an eerie and treacherous landscape, our hearts already breaking.  Here is the excerpt from CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES of our journey through the snow that January:

Part of the selling point of moving over here <to Chattanooga from coastal North Carolina> was that I would get to see snow. I have seen snow only twice in my life—once the canal froze solid! I was told that it snows in Chattanooga a lot more often, but so far, not one single flake has appeared. This is very disappointing and I am wondering if perhaps I was given false advertising.

Christmas comes, and I am still hoping for snow. We open the rest of the presents that Aunt Garnet brought Thanksgiving. We get two long distance phone calls, which are very expensive. We can talk for only sixty seconds before the charge starts doubling and tripling and quadrupling itself. One of the calls is from Aunt Faith and the other is a big surprise because it's from Grandma. She was still learning how to use her phone when we left, and now she is calling long distance! The seconds fly by. We have hardly heard their voices before they are gone again, into the cold winter distance that separates the Green Swamp from Chattanooga. 

Then on the twelfth of January, I see a few snowflakes before the sun goes down, but it is so cold that I don't stand around outside trying to call more flakes. In one hour, I can see through the window that the ground is completely covered and it is pouring down sleet with the snow. We are toasty inside the Duplex on Dupont because we have ceil heat. It drifts in gentle waves down from the ceiling all over the house. Always before, we had heaters you had to crowd around to get warm. We had a wood heater when I was little, and then oil. After we came to S. Saint Marks, there were heaters built right into the walls which was pretty nice, but this all-over heat is like a cozy blanket.

About 9:30, Daddy opens the kitchen door and says we have four inches of snow and there is no end in sight.

"Close the door, honey!" shrills Mother when a cold blast flies into the house, and Daddy is glad to oblige. "Brrrrrr!"

It's hard to settle down with so much excitement, but the house rocks gently with the wind, and the walls shift and the floors crackle with the cold outdoors, and it's like bedding down in a warm igloo.

The phone rings at about 1:30 in the morning, waking us all up. It rings and rings, and I can hear my parents stirring and mumbling, until Daddy pads down the hall in his bare feet to the phone.

"Honey, you better come to the phone," says Daddy to Mother.

I can hear Mother struggling with her bathrobe, and she says in a thin voice, "Hello?" And then, "Oh, my soul!"

Suddenly I'm on my feet beside them, not knowing how I got there, and Mother is sobbing. The last time I heard her cry like that was when she got the news that Jacky was killed in Viet Nam. The time before was when Grandma's old yellow cat, Goldie, killed the ten baby rabbits.

Daddy turns to me and says, "Your Grandma Denton is dead."

He has his hands full taking care of Mother who is sagging against him and still crying into the phone, so I creep back down the hall to my bed and sit there on top of the quilt that Grandma made, listening as Mother brokenly tells Daddy that Grandma had the flu, but she has always been healthy and nobody thought it was serious. She had been pretty sick with it, sure, but Aunt Faith was taking care of her and Grandpa was right there—but in the middle of the night she gasped for breath and just died.

Grandma's mother, my Great-Grandma Pearl, lived into her eighties, but Grandma was only just turned sixty-nine years old. She was planning to teach at least ten more years because she had promised God to devote her entire life to teaching. In those ten summertimes, her granddaughter in Tennessee is supposed to come stay with her and Grandpa in their cabin near the canal.

But summer is long gone and far away, and there are twelve inches of snow on the ground in Chattanooga. The ice and snow are still falling, as we throw clothes into suitcases and drive into the storm in search of North Carolina. Finally, after months of longing to go home, after months of dreaming of snow, I am getting both things at the same time. But the snow has become a blizzard, and home has lost its light.

Daddy manipulates our speed through his varying pressure on the gas pedal and avoids using the brakes, so we keep our traction on the snow-thickened highway while other drivers lose theirs. We pass cars that have braked too hard and skidded into snow banks, and we thread through the hulking shapes of tractor trailer rigs which are mostly lying on their sides.

Mother is sobbing about throwing away the last pie her mother will ever give her. She says she would have waited to move out of the Green Swamp if she'd have known that she would never see her mother again. And on and on, varying her weeping with attempts to rest. She has already cried up a migraine headache.

In the back seat, I am silent, chewing my bottom lip until its bleeds, but I cannot cry. Our car is a lone bubble of life, moving through a Salvador Dali painting that mirrors the unnatural landscape of my life.

--CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES

Pictured: Me in the CHURCH SCHOOL BLUES days.

The Third Alternative

An unbelievable quantity of nonsense comes across my Facebook page from friends who forward what appear, on first glance, to be wise sayings to live by.  I find myself picking apart a great many of them, after which I am probably perceived to be a curmudgeon who will leave no good idea unpunished.  I don't care who uttered the quote.  I am as likely to attack Einstein and Plato as your next-door blogger.

I try to control myself, I really do, with varying degrees of success.  So I thought perhaps if I am to have any online friends left that I would begin to publish my own words of wisdom and leave their forwarded wisdom alone.  It is true that I haven't come up with an idea to rival the Theory of Relativity, but I know something about something, and if I keep on at the rate I'm going, I'll soon be to the age where I might qualify to possess a sage's wisdom.

And so I shall presume.

And in so doing, perhaps I can occupy myself so as not to attack the likes of Einstein and Plato and even Mother Theresa, complaining of their seesaw thinking.

An example of seesaw thinking is the either-or choice:  If you are this, then you cannot be that.  If you are on the up end, you're not on the down end.  The possibility of a balanced seesaw is ignored.  You must be up or down, and there is no third alternative such as being on the swings or slides, and not interacting with the seesaw at all.  Such quotes often start out "There are only two ways to...."

A close relative of seesaw thinking is all-inclusive thinking.  These quotes usually have the word "all" in them.  All something is this, without exception.  All immigrants.  All Christians.  All Liberals.  All women.  All-inclusive thinking is the birthplace of prejudice.  When we don't know the individuals, we tend to speak in terms of "all", and upon this comes the first the stereotype and soon along comes the paper tiger that must be destroyed.

Most of the quotes that raise my hackles fall under these two categories.  At the risk of being all-inclusive, I will say that I have observed them coming from "all" belief systems and political persuasions.  As a result, I offend everyone, as I run, tilting my sword equally at quotes that assure me that all Republicans, all vegetarians, all animal lovers, all all all....  I don't believe in all, probably because I have been the exception to so many rules.  I am the third alternative in a two-alternative universe.

Here is my first constructive response.  It is inspired by a post I saw recently that assures us that we aren't as broken as we think we are even though we may have "a couple scars and a couple bad memories," and that all great heroes do.  I like the gist of the quote, that heroes are scarred by definition.  What I dislike is the way it downplays the damage a person may have endured, minimizing it as merely a couple scars and a couple bad memories.  I dislike the sweeping generalization that we aren't as broken as we think we are, for some of us are exactly that broken, perhaps more so than we think we are, and denial does not help heal us.

But rather than attack the post, and thus the person posting it, I have sheathed my sword and created my own words of wisdom.

I NEVER KNEW SANTA CLAUS

I was never taught that Santa Claus was a real person who rode in a sled bearing gifts for good children, sliding down the chimney at night.  For one thing, we didn't have a man-sized chimney.  Even an elf would have wound up in our wood stove instead of an open fireplace, so that part of the story fell through even if my parents were inclined to tell me this lie.  I was a child of dual cultures, although it is seldom expressed this way.  I lived in a community off Highway 211 where my mother's people were Seventh-Day Adventists.  Some of them barely tolerated Christmas because its traditions were a mishmash of several religion's festivals and, therefore, not considered purely Christian.

Most of my mother's community did tolerate Christmas.  We had a Christmas tree in the foyer of our church/school house, we drew names at school for gifts, and we always had a Christmas play where every year I hoped to be chosen for the part of Mary and never was.  When I was very small, I was one of the adorable line of angels in paper halos covered with gold glitter who paraded down the aisle with candles dripping on paper candleholders. Later, due to the shortage of boys at the small country school (grades 1-8 in one room, one teacher), I was drafted to serve as a shepherd.  I rather got into the role, proudly stomping around, carrying a crooked staff (or a close approximation.)

We always had a Christmas tree in our house, beautifully decorated by my mother, and always Christmas gifts although there was no hanging the stocking by the chimney with care.  (no chimney, no money to fill a sock with extras.)  One of my favorite Christmas eve memories is of spinning merrily with my arms outstretched in pure glee -- right into the Christmas tree.  My mother didn't scold me since I didn't break anything and tipped the tree only a little bit.

My father's people, across the marsh near Delco, weren't Adventist, and they embraced all aspects of Christmas.  Nativity scenes melded with Santa Clauses and I was aware that my little cousins on that side of the family actually seemed to believe that Santa Claus was not only comin' to town, but that he was coming way out into the woods where we all lived, none of us with a working fireplace, but comin' just the same.  My mother turned up her nose at such silliness.  She made it clear from the minute I heard the name Santa Claus that he was just another fairy tale, same as Mother Goose.  My mother wasn't an especially religious Adventist, so I don't think her objection to Mr. Claus was religiously based.  Her reasoning was simple and practical:

Every gift under that tree was acquired through hard work, scrimping, and sacrifice, and the idea that some bozo in a red suit would get all the credit was outrageous.  Children should know, said my mother, that their parents were the givers. 

Despite the fact that Santa Claus was nobody in our house, Christmas was still exciting.  My parents concealed larger parcels until Christmas morning, and one Christmas when we were house-sitting a friends' hotel (long story there), I was banned from going upstairs for several weeks while my parents merrily and secretly rode my new English Racer down the long upstairs hallway.  We didn't need Santa, and I never missed him, although there turned out to be a downside to this for my mother one December day in downtown Wilmington. That was the day that she suddenly got it into her head that it would be cute to have a photo made of me sitting in a storefront Santa's lap.  I knew his visage from drawings and wrapping paper, but Santa in the flesh was an alien concept to me.  Mother pushed me toward his bearded form before I knew what was what.  "It's just Santa!" urged my mother when I balked.  "Santa Claus!"

But Santa had no reality for me, and certainly no appeal. I was causing such a scene that she had to give up the idea.  Later, I recall that she patiently explained to me all about costumed Santas, and that it was just a cute way to take Christmas photo.  So the next year, I willingly approached the bearded man and had my picture taken although I was perplexed when he asked me what I wanted for Christmas.  That wasn't a question that adults usually asked me, although my mother would give me a fair hearing on the matter, usually explaining to me why we couldn't afford a swing set or a dollhouse. 

One year, though, they got me the Jumping Shoes I craved.  They were bright red strap-ons with springs, and I eagerly tried them out, expecting to fly over the roof.  But alas, the shoes wouldn't budge because I didn't have enough weight to make an impression on the springs.  Still, I'll never forget the wonder of the illustration of an airborne kid, and the thrill of opening the package and realizing that my parents had somehow managed to purchase my dream.

I never felt that our Christmases lacked something by not having Santa central to the secular side of it.  For me, it was every bit as wonderful to have gifts from my parents, family, and friends as it would have been to have gifts hauled in from the North Pole.  In fact, I have always wondered about the breach of trust involved when children learn that their parents lied.  There are enough lies floating around in families that we surely don't need a Santa Claus lie on top of it all.

However, from my observation of families who lie about Santa, no one seems to suffer permanent damage from that particular lie.  It appears that it is a sort of rite of passage when a child realizes that Santa is a fairy tale.  Along with the disillusionment comes the privilege of stepping into the knowing circle of older people, and the merry mischief of fooling the little kids.
     I get that, I really do, I think...

THE JESUS, JESUS PICTURE and Other Stories

THE JESUS, JESUS PICTURE and Other Stories is now available on amazon.com. 

I had fun with this cover.  Since most of the stories were taken from my teenage years, I did a drawing from a photo of me at about the age I was when I wrote "The Shell" (which is included among the stories.)  I always felt so cool in that hat!

WHY I BECAME AN INDIE WRITER

People always ask, when you say you are a writer, "Have you ever been published?"

This is especially true when you are an "Indie" writer, independently producing your own books.  The idea behind the question, I think, is two fold.  1) Okay, you're a writer, but how serious are you?  And 2) Are you any good?  Being good at something, in our society, is measured by how much people are willing to pay you. Or if they are willing to pay you at all.

My personal opinion about becoming an indie writer is that it is wise for the writer to have proven herself by at least having sold something to a publisher.  One doesn't have to be famous, one doesn't even have to have sold enough to give up the day job.  But one should at least once have submitted some sort of writing to a publisher who paid for the privilege.  One must prove oneself worthy.

That is my prejudice, and it may be a cruel one because getting published isn't easy.  It isn't easy even to get a response from a publisher.

It is trial by fire, as is acting or creating art.  You tear off a piece of your soul and offer it to people who don't want it, and usually you get ignored for the effort.  There is a reason that there is such a high suicide rate among creative people.  It isn't because you have to be crazy to be creative (although that helps).  It's that you have to be very tough indeed to endure the amount of rejection that comes with plying the trade.

I am very tough.

I have been rejected many times.

I have continued to ply the trade.

And I did get published.

And then, despite the notion that it's easier to get published once someone has slipped up and published your work once, it is not easier, not really.  But I eventually did it again.  And again.

It is good if one can find one's nitch.  If you find your nitch, it does get easier.

And it is good to take the advice of writing what you know.  This helps you find your nitch.

I was published in several genres, but the one with which I was most familiar was the Seventh-Day Adventist youth market, because I had been a Seventh-Day Adventist youth, and boy did I have stories to tell!

The Jesus, Jesus Picture and Other Stories is a collection of the stories I sold to SDA publishers.  Several of my stories won prizes, two of them were published in a book.  

I proved myself to myself.

But when it came to publishing my books, I have chosen to bypass publishers because it takes so long to get through the process, because some of the process strikes me as unfairly biased against writers, and because I simply love to design and illustrate my own books.  What I have given up is publicity.  My fame is spreading slowly because I don't have a publisher behind me.  Maybe in time, after I have satisfied my urge to produce full blown books all by myself, I will submit again to a book publisher.  But for now, I'm happy being an Indie writer.

So in case I failed to mention this clearly before, my soon to be released new book is The Jesus, Jesus Picture and Other Stories.

I'll let you know when it is available.