Sunday, December 19, 2005, 2:56 PM We are on our way to retrieve Graham from Ant Sandy's via Upper Huron metropark for a walk. This computer, Sylvia P, has been down for a while, and I think there are files on her that havenever been downloaded,printed, or dealt with in any way.
Christmas is coming and I don't feel ready. I am a LONG ways from ready. Dawn was saying everyone brags about how much they haven't gotten done. I'd like to simplify but I don't knowhow or where to start and am loatheto give up tradiitons. But it is so hard to keep up. I don't have the energy I used to have!
I don't get enough sleep..
The sky is sort of metalic looking, the sun is shining through a haze of clouds looking a sort of pewter and bronzey yellow.
Iwant to write a poem. I haven't written a poem in a long time. But I can'tthink of anything to write about. Or, I'd be happy to write a very short story.But no ideas there. I have lots of ideas for longer stories, but no time for that.
If I could only come up with an idea that could be written in stages. 1)Ideas, 2)tenative outline, 3)characters, 4)fleshing outline, 5) chapter by chapter.
4:38 PM We walked 47:44 and then walked down to the river, another ten or 11 minutes.
The place where we first walked was called the Bobwhite trail and the place where we walked to the river was called Sycamore Bend. The park is the Lower Huron Metropark.
Thename Sycamore Bend is very evocative and resonat, but the river bend itself is rather dulls and uninteresting. The next riverbend is more interesting, but we are out of time. It is 4:42 and weneed to pick Graham up at 5:00 so we are off onto 94 east and then 75 north.
I think I want to use the sname Sycamore Bend in a story. Yesterday, we walked at Woodmere Cemetery and saw lots of gorgeous old Sycamores. I also saw lots at Dodge (happening again this year!). I can picture a bend in the river with huge old Sysamores and yellow-goldlight.
The sky right now is gorgeous with sunset colors, dark and ornage clouds,and a sun pillar.
It seems that Sycamore bend is down south somewhere, and there is spanish moss hanging off the sycamores, and the bend in the river is shallow on one side with a sand andgavel bar, and steep on the other side and the boys swim there, mostly boys, about Graham's age, In my picture there are currently no girls. The boys are swimming in raggedy cut-off jeans. Some are sitting on the river bank fishing. One isreading a book in rolled up jeans. There don't seem to be any bugs at themmoment, except some huge golden dragonflies. One boy gets a leech and the others rip it off his ankle before it gets a good grip. They are catching minnows and putting them in mason jars to watch the silver and gold sides flash in the sun. These may be the same boys who on another day might use these minnows for bait,but today,they are just enjoying the light on their sides, the sudden flash like lighting in an approaching storm.
Becky is coming down the trail,barefooted,and in pig-tails. She is David's younger sister, and shecomes with news that will change Davi'd life forever. Mama has been taken to the hospital.
Alyce has had an anurism and dies. David lives with his father, and Becky goes to live with their aunt Caycee. It's supposed to be temporary, but Becky never comes home, except to visit briefly.
This story starts with (we got Graham and are headed homenow at 5:14 PM)
Iamimaging this story starting out with a young man and a psychic or psychic girl friend and she is telling him about Sycamore bend, describing the scene that is now forever seared in his mind. It is clear to em that something happens, but it is not clear ot me that it has to be the anurism. Whatever happens remains opaque to David until he talks to the psychic and she gives him, or he find sin her words a key to understanding what happened,something that has always haunted him. Or maybe HE gets taken away to live wth a grandmother. But what is the secret?
I feel as if I'd like to write a childrenn's story, but this doesn't feel like a children's story.
How would it have to be different if it were a children's story/
It would have to take placein childhood. David could not be a young man. The Psychic who is seieing these things would have to be a strage trcher or a magician or a someother personin a child's life. Maybe a little girl who no one likes because she's weird. His first girlfriend as a child
At 5:24 PM, it is pretty dark. I can't really see to write any more.
David meets Heather at his new wchool,sitting alone at a table. He sits on the other end and doesn't talk to her for almost a week,and then they start talking. She tells him of a ~dream~ she has of syacmore bend and helps himsolve his proble The problem is his living with his rleativve because his Dad is so depressed about his mom'sdeath and has to worka lot extra hours. Only he hasn't been told any of this,and thinks his parents don't love him. Heather helps him retun home at the expense of losing her only friend. They solve this problem by introcucing Hearher's aunt to David's Dad ~after a while~ and then heather comes to vost.
David is twleve and heather is eleven. David is a little immature, so they are similar socially.
David acts oit a lot and speaks out of turn..
Saturday, March 12, 2006, 4:04 PM. I wrote a poem, just now, sitting in my car at three rivers, but the batteries weren't strong enough to save it and the back-up battery won't work, and the poem is gone.
It's warm and sunny and now I'm discouraged. All that time writing it and nothing to show for it.
It wasn't very good anyway.
It was warm and sunny earlier and now it is clouding up and cooling off. I load on my camera gear and set out for my walk, hoping I don't get too cold, wondering if I should put a jacket on, still feeling depressed about losing that poem. I wanted to work on the assignment for Monday poetry, two people meeting each other. I did one last night, it was Monica Lewinsky meets Cleopatra. I also would like to do Patty Hearst and Persephone. I've done so may of those though, I was going to try something differtnt.
I wanted to do someone who might be here and see this. Ansel Adams maybe. If it were Ansel Adams, who would be a good foil for him?
I wrote somemore. Who knows what. I'd put new batteries in, but when I went to save what I had written I got the same unable to write to disc low battery message.
So I lost more stuff. I wandered through beaver skullmeadow all depressed. I felt as if something was stolen from me. But every moment, I am losing my life, it is draining away ad I amracing toward death. The loss of more ofmy words hardly seems significant in the face of death and decripitude.
For some reason, I keep thinking of Ansel Adams and Dolly Paron. But the title I came up with hardly works: Ansel Adams and Dolly Parton take on the rednecks. guns,mud, trcks, clay pigeons, trash, toilet paper. But is Dolly Parton on Ansel Adam's side? I don't really know enough about either one of them. I wonder if Pat Lawler does research for his poems. Some of them don't even mention the people in the title. Some chacteristics of the people or their situation appear in another guise.
I can't even remember what kind of camera Ansel Adams used. A Graphic or Graphlex? The redneck trucks have to spray mud on it, but it better be the right camera.
I am back at my car. I came back fornew bateries. I'd alreay put new batteries in once, but theymust not have been new enough or there is something wrong with Psion tat quickly drains them. I checked these. There power is good.
i used to carry a chair in the back of my car so I could sit--right here--and work. Wish I had itnow. BUT I have too much else to do. I need to finishmy walk and go on to the next thing,not sit and work on my silly poem. WAHN!
I rest the clock and of course, it zeroed out.
This is Sylvia P. Sylvanna P also needs attention. There's a poem on each of these that needs to eb downloaded, but I never seem to have time.
AK!
It's 4:53 PM It was 4:04 when I set the clock before, over near the ponds swollen with snowmelt. It's lovely here today,in a warm spring fever muddy March way. A waning gibbous moon is out. Geese babbing on the marsh, I heardmy firist trilling red-winged blackbird. Nuthatches. Woodpeckers drumming.
Yesterday while I was out walking here, hundred and hundred andhundreds of Vs of geese were flying over. Now a good hundred, hundred fifty fly overhead, hope gabbling. Hope none of them poop on me.
Not as many as yesterday, but there go another 200 or so. They may be just going out to the marshes for their evening feeding,they aren't really at crusing altitude, though fairly high. The Vs of the second group just broke up and changed direction. Now severla hundred more are passing over. Waht a delight to the soul.
I take, for Keith, some water pattern in mud, because flow pattern seem to interest him. And I take some reflections in a puddle, not for their beauty, but to determine the rotation point of the reflection. I hope I remember this when I download them, I want to measure the length of the reflection relative to the height of the trees in the photo and determine,if I can,exactly where the halfway mark is, or the place where the reflection begins.
Severalmore groups of geese fly over. It is sunny again, somewhat hazy, most hazy in the west around the sun, but the sun s still warm at 5:02 PM! Amazing. It really makes a difference.
I'd walked 21minutes. 45 minus 21 is 24 divided by 2 is 12 plus 21 is 33. So I have to turn back at about 33 minutes, to keep on schedule. When Ileave here, I wantto go visit my mother at Loretto. Darn if I didn't forget the candy I got her, so if I want to bring some, Ieitherneed to go home again, or stop at the dollar store again. AK!
Dolly Parton and Ansel Adams take on the rednacks
The pick up truck donuts in the wet field, spraying mud
on the Graphlex. Dolly Parton giggles. Her breasts jiggle.
Ansel Adams doesn't notice. He's wipling the mud off with a
white hankie. It's not enough. The next truck,
following behind, shoots not only mud, but
a half-filled beer can. The spay when it hits the camera
gets Ansel in the face.The third truck is shooting
at the first, and red shells pop out the window.
Buckshot whistles around Ansel Adam's head.
His geese rise from the pond, the heron from the shoreline.
It's not hunting season, but three of the geese
fall on the ground around Dolly. The plump thuds
get her attention. She's thinking goose dinner.
until one moans, soft and gurgly. She rushes over,
want to be sick, wants help it. But the rednecks
are splashing by again, spraying her dress and the round
flesh above is with mud. It's cold, and Dolly shrieks.
She picks up the tripod and swings it at the next truck,
cracking the windsheild. She runs toward the third truck,
screaming and swinging the tripod. Ansel gets a shot of it.
Not his nomral thing,but hey. The shadows he'd wated to capture on the rock above the posn have faded and shifted.
The birds flown, drama gone. He wishes the rednecks
would slip into the pond and drown, except for the pollution,
But they're still shotting at Dolly. How could they miss such a target, he wonders, and takes another shot through the muddy lens.
Then the rednecks shoot them both? Did you expect them to win against such odds?
I painted myself into a corner, How could unarmed Dolly Parton and Ansel Adams win against three truckloads of rednecks anyway?
I blew it. There were long tree shadows over the rotted ice of rock pond and I could have snapped it, but was thinking about the poem. I lost the shot, the sun is too deep in the trees now.
Too bad Dolly didn't have a ski pole like in the book, Kinflicks. Is there another ending?
I ddn't put in the skeets or the chair shot full of holes or the beullet holes in the no hunting signs etc.
The sky is uuge and the clouds dramtic. Shadows on the rocks areperfect, but Dolly doesn't notice.
What she sees are pick up trucks on the horizon, and
the thinks of a new song. Underfoot are cly pigeons,broken
by birdhot or bullets, and the no hunting sign is full
of holes. Ansel's on his knees fiddling with f-stops and shutter speeds. He doesn't noticethe trucks coming or the song Dolly is humming now
When she begins singing about forsaken love, thinking about how Ansel is ignorning her,
he says, shhh, you'll scare the heron.
I find not only shattered clay pigeons, but a real pigeon,deadon the ground, ats neck blasted away.
My "poem" ismore like a story than a poem. I need to open it up, insert somespaceand osme images.
The puddlebehind the car dried up just in the timeI've been here.
Oly, the oldOlympus, isn'tworking. I give her new batteries,but that does not help at all.
Then I discover she has no card in her. DUH! what a DUNCE!
I think I should go straight to Loretto, butnow there are two reason to go home--the candy and Oly's card, leftin the card reader upstairs. And a third: the bathroom.
I wanted to write about dreams, but I couldn'tbecause the Psion wasn't working, then I was trying to write a poem. Not sleep dreams, but Hopes and dreams,plans and dreams.
--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary
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