Author: Admin

Old Post Resurrection Hop: The Magic Faraway Tree

Posted on by Admin

I’m re-posting this blog I wrote in March, 2011 as part of  Old-Post Resurrection Hop:

An unpublished Enid Blyton book has just been discovered: Mr. Tumpy and His Caravan. It’s about an anthropomorphic caravan that befriends a dog, develops wanderlust and goes off on an adventure involving a dragon. Lovely stuff. Who’s Enid Blyton you might ask? A prolific British author who died in 1968. And still selling.

As a kid, I devoured everything I could find of hers in our dinky library in the copper mining town of Nkana, Zambia. This was a room half the size of the “Men-Only” bar on the other end of the T-shaped Mine Club, social center of the mining community. As you can imagine my choice was limited, but with holiday trips down to South Africa to visit the relatives, I managed to get my hands on enough of her books to satisfy my addiction.

I loved Ms. Blyton’s The Famous Five and The Adventurous Four series: kids embarking on adventures and solving mysteries. But my favorite was the Magic Faraway Tree in the Enchanted Wood where the trees, “a darker green than usual,” whisper their secrets: “Wish-wisha-wisha.” This wonderful tree, laden with fruit of all kinds from acorns to lemons was inhabited by colorful characters like Moon-Face, Mister Watzisname, Silky, and the Saucepan Man, draped with all kinds of saucepans. Its topmost branches led to ever-changing magical lands above the swirling clouds. All this took place in the lovely English countryside, so regular and so civilized.

We had our own version of The Adventurous Four, only our adventures took place in the jungle which wasn’t so civilized, all kinds of snakes, notably, the deadly black mamba, and crocodiles, along with lions that lived in the bush at the bottom of town. The “foofie” slide we built across the croc-infested Kafue River featured in our adventures. This was a purloined mine cable strung between two trees across the river, a homemade metal cylinder the size of a toilet paper roll providing the ride down the cable. Wearing your cozzie (bathing suit), you climbed the tree on one side of the river, wrapped your hands around the roll, leapt into the void and zoomed fifty yards across the swiftly running water to land on the other side. Hopefully you made it. Fun. Belly button tingling, pants pissing fun. I don’t remember anyone not making it.

But the thing is I also wanted Enid Blyton’s world, filled with high teas, hedgerows, badgers, Peter Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh and fairies, where magic was part of its history. A Magic Faraway Tree could only exist in the lush verdant English countryside; a black mamba would make short work of all those fairy folk in their buttercup dresses and foxglove caps. Truth is, I probably wouldn’t have made it in Ms. Blyton’s world, my wild African roots and all that, but I’m grateful to her for instilling in me the love of ceremony and magic. It showed up in my first book, Monkey’s Wedding, featuring English fairies along with the African equivalent, tokoloshi. I can’t wait to buy Mr. Tumpy and His Caravan, so I can read some of the passages over the phone to my two grown sons (one in South Africa, the other up north in Davis, California) and see if they connect to the characters from the days I read the old Enid Blyton books to them.

This is a Blog Hop!

Click here to read more resurrection blogs

Old Post Resurrection Hop: Twilight

Posted on by Admin

I’m re-posting this blog I wrote in December of last year as part of  Old-Post Resurrection Hop:

It’s twilight, I’m driving up Laguna Canyon Road to dinner with friends, and thinking about how much I love this time of day.  I sneak glimpses in my rear view mirror to catch the last glow from the setting sun behind me.  Ahead, the snow-dusted San Bernardino mountains are turning into a barely delineated dark hump in the gloaming.

And then like one of those scenes where the camera pans in, I notice the glimmer of lights in this one house to my right.  It’s not a particularly homey place or anything, yet, I’m filled with a sense of well being, of belonging; all that’s missing is the smell of freshly baked bread. This isn’t the first time this has happened.  But this is the first time I’ve given it any thought.   The last time I got snagged on the glow of lights in a random dwelling, was a single apartment in an otherwise dark building by the side of the freeway in Reno. I was on my way back from that writers workshop in Lake Tahoe. Again, nothing spectacular; in fact, the sight of that apartment would be downright depressing during the daytime.

 The time before that, that I can remember anyway, was seven years ago on a trip home to Africa, Zimbabwe this time.  Off to the side of a narrow dirt road at the base of a massive rock, sat a solitary hut, its scruffy thatch aglow from a flickering light inside.

This phenomenon is not about missing having someone waiting for me at home, or family all under one roof, that much I’ve figured out.  Who knows who lives in these places I glop onto, could be a single guy.  All I know is that when this sensation comes over me, I feel connected to whomever is inside that dwelling; it’s like we’re linked by the light.  And by twilight, that time of day when sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere illuminates the lower in a most magical way.

This is a Blog Hop!

Click here to read more resurrection blogs


Old Post Resurrection Hop . . . Crackling Grass

Posted on by Admin

I’m re-posting this blog I wrote in November of last year as part of  Old-Post Resurrection Hop:

If you’ll remember I attended an essay workshop up at Lake Tahoe.  Turns out it was actually at a house in Squaw Valley, site of the 1960s Olympics, the entrance complete with Olympic rings and flame:  six women, a massive stone fireplace, hammered iron balconies, and a dining room table that belonged in King Arthur’s court.  This was where we dined, but mostly where we wrote.  I’m not going to tell you about how I stalled time and again on the page in response to the writing prompts. And how panicky I felt.

Instead, I’ll tell you about the desperation run I took in 25-degree weather that second day to clear my head.  Dressed in my winter clothes—Laguna Beach style—blue jeans, a sweatshirt and gloves, I tried to ignore the cold as I charged down the road and into the meadow that is Squaw Valley proper, evergreen trees not yet dressed in their winter white.  It was only at a point where the trees converged into a dark narrow path, lowering the temperature by a couple more degrees that I finally turned around.  By now, my nose was dripping, my toes about to snap off and I was shivering so hard I veered drunkenly off the path.

There’s a soft crackle and I stop.  Around my feet, a carpet of tiny frozen spears of grass pokes up this way and that.  I drop to my haunches and press down on an untouched area with my gloved hand, feeling the resistance there.  Another satisfying crunch.  Feeling a sense of wonder, I shift around and press down on another spot, then another and another.  I finally have to stop; the cold has become unbearable.

I run back to the house, feeling some kind of reintegration beginning to take place inside of me, something I vaguely recognize.  I’ve undergone this experience before when beguiled by nature, whether it’s here in my adopted country or in my native Africa.  I’m reminded that as in nature everything in its own time and that I have to trust myself.  The words will come.

I wish I could tell you I aced the rest of the writing prompts.  I didn’t.  But I did come up with a killer ending to an essay I’d been working on.

Ah, the writing life.

This is a Blog Hop!

Click here on how to enter


The Next Big Thing

Posted on by Admin

Remember that trip I took to Santa Barbara to meet up with my tribe (five women writer friends I’d met on-line but never in real life?) Well, as a result of that hook-up, I got tagged by the fabulous Deborah Batterman, whose Leonard Cohen quote on her blog—“there’s a crack in everything . . . that’s how the light gets in”—first drew me in to read her posts.

What she did by tagging me is to give me an opportunity to strut my stuff, to showcase my memoir, Loveyoubye. Is my “stuff” good enough to be the Next Big Thing? You be the judge. In turn I’m tagging three other authors to take part. By the way, I welcome questions or comments on my answers that will help me hone this kind of presentation in other venues when the time comes.

My answers to the questions:

What is the working title of your book?

Loveyoubye

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I needed to make sense of the break-up of my marriage

What genre does your book fall under?

Memoir

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

My girlfriend/best reader thinks Meryl Streep should play me because the woman can transform herself into anyone (she’s also thinking Oscar, more attention on my book: bless her); other suggestions: Jennifer Grey, Nicole Kidman and Helen Mirren (my son’s suggestion). For my ex, Sam Elliott would be perfect, same looks, same easy drawl and charm. My brother would have to be played by someone who could do Forrest Gump justice a second time around

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A journey home to South Africa gives a woman the key to her past and her future allowing her to move forward from a disastrous marriage

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I’m seriously thinking of going with SheWrites Press, an independent publishing company is how they list themselves. I want to get the book out there. Going the agent/publisher route would take at least two years 

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I can’t answer that because I rewrite as I go. Actually, one of my goals in life has been to write an entire first draft all the way through, without looking. Loveyoubye has taken me five years (during which time I was still going through the break up)

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

 Breakup by Catherine Texier with a beloved dog as go-between, meets Nature Lessons

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

 It was a matter of survival. I had planned to write a memoir of my childhood, but got high-jacked by what was happening between me and my husband. And so I wrote through my feelings of anger, disappointment and rejection, and tried to make sense of how something like this could’ve happened to me at this point in my life

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

 The settings and the funny, poignant interactions with a dog of great character. Thirty percent of the book takes place in South Africa, ten percent features said dog (an essential part of the story), and the rest takes place in a quintessential beach town on the coast of Southern California

 Now it’s my turn to tag people:

Please visit their blogs. They will be publishing their answers to the questions in week 12 (between the 10th September and 17th September)

Message for the tagged authors and interested others:

Rules of The Next Big Thing

***Use this format for your post

***Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (Work In Progress)

***Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.

Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing:

What is the working title of your book?

Where did the idea come from for the book?

What genre does your book fall under?

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.

Be sure to line up your five people in advance.

Old Post Resurrection Hop: My Happily Every After

Posted on by Admin

I’m re-posting this blog I wrote in January of this year as part of  Old-Post Resurrection Hop:

I was just reading this blog by Heidi Munson called Dateless this New Year? Online Dating?  (okay, so New Year is past: I’m a little behind on my reading).  This is what she suggested for New Year’s Eve–or as we call it back in Zambia, Old Year’s Eve, makes sense, right?–a do-it-yourself beauty makeover, eating in with a fabulously set table, Frank Sinatra playing in the background, and that special dessert you’ve been meaning to make.  Next, a movie marathon with titles that inspire you to believe that there’s still a chance for Happily Ever After. She goes on to suggest that you reinvent yourself online by spying on the competition and then reworking your own profile so that you don’t attract “toads,” the term she uses for unwanted prospects.  Her blog is about online dating tips and other toad evasion techniques.

The latter didn’t appeal to me at all.  No online dating for this 100-year-old single woman.  And no Frank Sinatra.  How about Bon Iver and Beirut?  That’s who I had playing on my iPod on New Year’s Eve.  I had on my yoga clothes from my yoga session followed by a hike I’d taken with my dear maniacs up the “other” hill (after my incident with The Law up the regular hill), but no beauty makeover.  It may be too late.

In the oven, I had a leg of lamb with potatoes that turn oh so crispy at the end; sauteed chopped kale and cannellini beans, mint sauce, chutney, and fresh green peas completed the dinner.  But here’s the best part. I made myself a Bloody Mary with salt around the rim of the glass along with a stalk of celery and a lime wedge: the first I’ve ever made.

A little preamble here, I’m not big on hard liquor but I had just read an article on how to make the perfect Bloody Mary and as I was craving that spicy tomato taste, that’s what it had to be.  Yow!  It was the bomb.  I had two and then amidst a cluster of lit scented candles, I ate my repast on my Thai traveling trunk that serves as a coffee table as I watched MI-5, a British import and very guilty pleasure, with Fergie and Jake’s eyes glued to my fork.  But they’re polite little Staffies, averting their eyes when I looked back at them.  Life is good.

This is a Blog Hop!

Click here on how to enter

Connection

Posted on by Admin

I left my house at 6:30 a.m. on Friday morning for a meeting with my tribe—five women writers—in Santa Barbara, three hours away up the coast. I didn’t return until 9:45 that night. And then I couldn’t sleep for two hours because I was so wound up. I also had a sore tongue: a tiny rip on the right side from all the wagging it did. I didn’t shut up the entire time. Neither did they. It was a love fest. And I had never met them, well except for Britton, the gorgeous blond on the left in the photo below, who drove me from Laguna Beach.

You can read all about the actual meeting, on Jayne Martin’s blog, injaynesworld. There’s no way I can top her brilliant account, except to tell you what I took away from the meeting, other than fun, camaraderie, and encouragement: connection. It’s what I needed on the cusp of sending forth my memoir. A circle of women, strangers even, supporting each other as only women can do with their intrinsic thrust to support and nurture.

How might your life have been different if there had been a place for you? A place for you to go . . . a place of women, to help you learn the ways of woman . . . a place where you were nurtured from an ancient flow sustaining you and steadying you as sought to become yourself. A place of women to help you find the ancient flow already there within yourself . . . waiting to be released . . .

A place of women . . .

How might your life be different?

~Circle of Stones, Judith Duerk

 

Moving On

Posted on by Admin

For the past two weeks I’ve been sitting on the second round of edits I need to make to my memoir Loveyoubye and then it will finally be done.

Five years of working through all the emotions, the tears and anguish. Five years of waking in the middle of the night, filled with doubt that I had the right to tell my story. Five years of sorting through what to put in and what to leave out. Five years of memoir writing classes and workshops, learning how very different memoir is from fiction, getting past fiction’s iron clad rule to “show don’t tell.” In memoir, it’s tell, tell, tell.

I spilled my guts. And then I sent the manuscript to Thomas White, an editor recommended by my memoir writing mentor for a comprehensive edit. I didn’t realize just how comprehensive his edit would be. He picked up each line, turned it over, examined the bottom, sniffed it, held it up to the light. And asked questions. Difficult penetrating questions that made me realize that I’d held back, that there was still more to tell. His questions took me down paths that unearthed tiny pieces of the puzzle of my experience I didn’t know were missing.

And now all I have to do is make those last few changes. Easy ones, especially after what I’ve been through. But there’s been a force field around my manuscript. I haven’t been able to crack that file. I’m anxious and miserable. I think what’s happening is that I’m afraid of finally being done. I’m afraid I will have nothing more to write. I’m afraid of sending Loveyoubye out into the world where others will get a peek into what I’m about. But you know what, I have to do it. Writing this book revealed a whole lot of me to myself and provided a healing I wouldn’t have found any other way.

Maybe now that I’ve been able to write about it in this blog, I can make those changes. And get on with writing.

Don’t Pet The Sweaty Things

Posted on by Admin

I want to thank Don Williams of New Millennium Writings for giving me the idea to add to and expand upon his list of what I’ll call “suggestions of how to be a better human being.” Here are a few of mine.

Think with your mind and your heart.

Keep an open mind and when it slams shut, and plays a tape from your upbringing, your fear, your prejudices, your religion, your education, your philosophy, pry it open even if your fingers bleed and you lose your fingernails.

Think “us,” there is no “them.”

Interact with respect and compassion with all kingdoms in nature.

Wake each day and let your first thought be gratitude. Just because.

Meditate—it isn’t just about lowering your blood pressure, or emptying your mind; it isn’t in opposition to praying; it isn’t some exotic eastern discipline or “devil” tool. It’s about being open and receptive to that life that is so much greater than you, and that any philosophy or religion is able to fully define.

Love wastefully.

And . . .

Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things—George Carlin.

Following The Muse

Posted on by Admin

About two weeks ago, I came upon the Circle Painting project on Facebook. It was the colors that drew me in, but then I became entranced by how beautiful and vibrant these works of art were, a little bit of Joan Miro, some Frederick Karl, perhaps some Picasso? This, despite the fact that the creators are a random group of people coming together to make art.  Even little kids!

The project is the brainchild of Hiep Nguyen, an artist and teacher who believes in making art accessible to all. Since 2007, he and his group of fellow artists have traveled to 10 countries and engaged over 100,000 participants. Here’s a blurb from his website that explains the process:

Inclusiveness: Circle Painting embraces everyone into its circle of playful and easy-to-follow activities. Together we paint away stress, isolation, and creative block. Our motto: Art for All, All for Art.

Collaboration: You have an idea, I make it happen. I start a line, you complete a shape.We accept each other’s sizes and shapes, colors and values. We make everything big, bold, and fun.

Imagination: Expect the unexpected! See the world in a drop of paint and heaven in a piece of cloth. When we interact with each other’s lines and shapes, colors and forms, new images emerge at every turn, stirring our imagination.

This makes my heart swell, brings tears of gratitude to my eyes. This is what I need right now. This is what it’s all about. So this Sunday, I’m off to spend three hours at The Great Park in Irvine, with a bunch of strangers to paint circles, squiggles, dots, sun rays, zigzags, starfish, jelly beans, moons, vortexes and . . . and whatever my heart desires.

The Grateful Dead and Other Gratitudes

Posted on by Admin

This is me trying to put into words a flash from the past while I waited for Laural and Patty to catch up to me after Music in The Park at Bluebird. Along with a couple of friends from down the street, we’d picnicked and boogied and waved our arms and jumped up and down for two hours in front of Cubensis’s, Grateful Dead Music Tribute, see picture below. Tie-dye city. As Patty said, “Now, It’s officially summer.”

The gods must’ve known this, because our persistent “June gloom,” cleared up and the sun broke through in all its glory, not two hours before the session. Next Sunday it’s “Smooth Sounds of Santana.” Should be great. Same time, same place for a total of six weeks of music and fun. Speaking of place, this is what I was writing about, or trying to at least. A memory from my first days in the U.S.

It was the sight of the treetops across Bluebird Park swaying in the breeze. I’m not sure what kind of trees they were, probably maple or sycamore. But I was suddenly back on that Greyhound bus from New York City down to Charlotte, North Carolina, gazing out at the thick forest lining the road, filled with elm, maple, flowering dogwood, alder, cedar, cherry, crape myrtle, all beautiful and green and civilized with names I’d read about and seen pictures pinned on St. John’s Convent School’s bulletin boards by the American nuns, that I’d been longing to see in living color. I was filled with awe and appreciation.

And then I realized that’s what had happened when I saw those treetops now. Except at the same time, I felt a longing for the trees I’d grown up with in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, in which I’d built tree houses, tire and rope swings, played Tarzan, dangled from the limbs like a monkey, all the while keeping a constant lookout for snakes, especially the black mamba, the most deadly snake in the world.

Ah, a lovely flash from the past. I’ve had the best of both worlds.