Category Archives: Uncategorized
Pub Fiction Notes and News—February 19, 2015
Today I’m writing from The Boathouse, billed as Kenosha, Wisconsin’s only authentic waterfront pub. Settling in always takes a few minutes, but I notice that once my computer is set up and I’ve ordered my spicy chicken wrap, the sounds and sights begin to recede into the background and I begin to hum (not literally, I realize that might draw unwanted attention). The hum is silent, comfortable. I may not be a local, really, and definitely not a regular here at The Boathouse, but I feel plenty good about being here alone, not bothering anyone and not being bothered either, just a lady writing in a pub all by myself.
I find I’ve been doing this long enough now that I can bring people, music, food, and any combination of those things in and out of my perception to examine or ignore or just to color the environment—whatever I choose—like focusing a lens. The space is roomy and filled with that particular cold bright light that only people in climates such as this can truly appreciate. Sunny does not always equate with warm.
It is currently 3 degrees outside, yet there is a lively crowd celebrating a birthday at the bar, and I, after all, have driven into town from my remote and forever under construction antique railroad cottage out in Salem, undaunted by the temps. I’m in the back of the establishment, in the bar area. The entire back wall is lined with large unshaded multi-paned windows that face a small bay, then a narrow strip of snow-covered, pine-tree dotted parkland, then the blue vastness of the great unfrozen Lake Michigan. It is too big to freeze, so I’m told, though I’ve heard it’s come close to freezing clear across in the past. I remember my dad telling me it happened once, back when American Motors was still cranking out Rambler cars. I could probably Google it…but I’m not here for fact checking. This, my friends, is Pub Fiction.
I went for a short walk with my brave dogs and husband this morning. We would have walked longer, but we started to worry that the pups’ little bootless paws might develop frostbite.
The music is early rock. The television is on too, of course, but for once there are no sports being played. It is late afternoon and the news is on, out of Milwaukee. The last story featured two little Girl Scouts dragging a sled full of cookies across a frozen lake (not sure which lake as there are so many around—only know it isn’t Lake Michigan because Lake Michigan is too big to freeze. I really need to Google that…).
Anyway, the Girl Scouts are dressed in the brightest of orange and pink fuzzy hats and mittens imaginable, with jackets to match– two small smiling bright dots on a pure white glacier. They head out toward the little wood shacks further out on the ice where the ice fishermen are gathered. I would include ice fisherwomen, but there aren’t any in evidence, just a bunch of men. Go figure. The news announcer says, “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.” Every fisherman buys a box of cookies.
My attention returns to the birthday celebration—just three guys now, two of them, older than the birthday guy, mention Hanoi, then birthday guys says that just once in his life he’d like to be on a white sand beach for his birthday, “Just once.”
Hanoi waves his arm at the windows. “What about that water?” he says. “Is that not beautiful?”
Yes, I think. It really is.
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To Memoir, Or Not to Memoir? What Do You Believe About the Moral Imperative?
Should I Tell My Story?
Maybe, the questions are, since I obviously have to, am compelled to, write it all down… maybe the questions are: How honest can I be? (No use writing it if the answer isn’t 100%) How much disguised? (There’s the rub! How about if I keep the heart of it honest, but change up the details so that it can be marketed as fiction?).
That’s got to be it.
The struggle continues, the writing struggle, but if I can at least be free of the weight of guilt felt at even the idea, the glimmer in the bottom of my mind, of telling the raw truth, the audacity of it, then perhaps I can carry on.
How about you? What are your thoughts on writing down the unspeakable truths? Please respond. I value reader judgment highly. Thank you!
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2014 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 850 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 14 trips to carry that many people.
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Celebrate Banned Books Week With Your Favorite Comic
Almost all comics published between 1954 and the 2000s bore this seal, indicating they met a set of rigid standards pertaining to sexuality, violence, and other things.
Yesterday began this year’s Banned Books Week, and lists maintained by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the American Library Association show that comics are as susceptible to banning as their prose cousins.
In a way, it’s flattering to the medium that comics and graphic novels are being challenged and banned in public school systems and libraries each year alongside well-known literary classics (“challenged” means someone wanted the book removed but was unsuccessful in their bid, and the book remained on the shelves).
It means kids are reading these books, that they’re making it onto curricula and reading lists, and that they’re making people uncomfortable.
But kids have been reading comics since adults have been publishing them. And the history of censorship…
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Thoughts on the Healthy Writer
Health is related to writing. All areas of health. And conversely, today my writing is very specifically related to health. The two, I have found, are closely entwined. I wrote very little when my health was at its worst. I did entertain thoughts of writing when first diagnosed—lots of time during recovery and chemotherapy to write that new novel. Some writers, tougher than me, have used similar circumstances in just that way, I’m sure. Writers with full-time day jobs, perhaps especially. When else is a chunk of time that big going to show up, unplanned for, unasked? The time, and privately, I even thought, the added depth of character this new ordeal was going to provide me with, could be put to good use. Hadn’t I been too overwhelmed with responsibilities to focus on my writing of late?
It all made good sense until the surgery came, and then the six months of chemo. I was on one mode, and it wasn’t writer mode. It way surviving the effects of cancer treatment by laying on the couch mode. I couldn’t even read a book. Well, I did write some CaringBridge blogposts that kept my family and friends informed of my progress and helped me sort out my hopes and fears. But the novel never came. For me, it just didn’t pan out. I had time, but no energy, no ability to concentrate, no creative spark.
Today’s short piece is inspired by that connection, with appreciation and gratitude for the gift of health I am experiencing right now. I took a gorgeous long walk this afternoon past the wooded hills and ready-for-harvesting fields of corn near my cottage. I was stepping pretty lively, sucking in the newly changed chill in the air, and smiling my ass off! And now, as directed (Blogging101), I’m writing.
Tomorrow is Froedtert Day. Froedtert is a hospital/medical center in Milwaukee, WI, USA. It’s pronounced ”fray dirt.” I am new to Wisconsin and Froedtert, but not to the fray. In California, where I used to live, I began my cancer journey. Having a rare form of a rare cancer made me feel uncertain during diagnosis and treatment. Had my doctor ever actually treated this before? This type of cancer isn’t call one of the “orphan diseases” for nothing.
Though I was well taken care of, I always had questions that went nowhere. We are monitoring you closely and believe you have an excellent prognosis. I came to accept this answer, but I never stopped scouring the internet for detailed information. There isn’t much out there, at least not that I was able to find.
Enter Froedtert. With final instructions from my California docs to find an oncologist and get some new tests and scans done when I reached Wisconsin, I began my search. One of my husband’s coworkers suggested Froedtert, as his wife had been successfully treated for cancer there. And it was covered by our insurance. Good enough, I thought. Looking over their website at cancer specialists, I couldn’t believe it. An actual, honest to God Appendiceal cancer specialist was listed on staff.
Fast forward. I got an appointment with this man, this very nice, personable, intellectual giant of a doctor, and in less than forty-five minutes had all three years of my accumulated goblet cell specific questions answered, my tests scheduled and all of them carefully explained. Some done religiously in California weren’t needed at this time; others not done regularly, were.
I go in tomorrow for those tests. One short week later, I’ll see my oncologist again, and he’ll suggest a plan for the future. The future! I am nervous in a whole new way, actually excited to get on with it, believing that a veil has been lifted. I’m several chapters into writing that new book. Out of the fray, and hitting pay dirt.
Mahalo!
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A Little Memoir Madness
“Mr. Wonderful”
The first time I now remember hearing Keely Smith sing “Mr. Wonderful” was the first time of many I heard my mother truly weep. I was four-years-old and I knew that song had once been a happy song but that now it was sad, sadder than anything I had yet encountered. Sadder than the day my dog, Ginger, died. It played over and over on the big maple stereo in the living room, and it became scratched and skipped in places, while Mom sat motionless in a chair looking out the window, or while she paced around the kitchen, coffee cup in hand, or while she lay on the floor and I held a warm wet washcloth to her forehead just the way Aunt Mary had carefuly taught me. And it played while I tried not to look at her eyes, which were vacant and blue and dripping tears in a constant stream that mixed with the warm water from the cloth that my hands were too small to squeeze. The music played. A lovely song. And my mother was ruined forever and life would never be good again. I may have been four-years-old, but I knew it.
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LakeArrowheadLadyWriter 