20140420 Easter Sunday
April 20, 2014 10:17 PM I am sitting in the trunk of Keith's car in the dark while Keith and Neil have a long long long long long conversation. We are in ML's driveway after Easter din I am glad that I finally discovered the map reading light in Keith's car. I did pretty well writing in the dark, but my hips and back hurt and I had not idea what I was writing.. ner.
10:23 I had to move into the car
I was too sore.
Monday, April 21, 2014, 4:32 PM I am out walking. I did not get to walk yesterday. I missed two days of walking the last 7-day.
Earlier, it was sunny. Now it is overcast and breezy verging on windy. Yahoo said it was 77 degrees, but it doesn't feel that warm to me. But I am out in a T-shirt and relatively comfortable (temperature wise, that is.) My rashes have worsened and are pretty itchy during the day, whereas before, they mainly bad at night. My hands, feet and inner thighs are sollen, red, and covered with itchy weeping rashes.
I'm also tired, as usual, was up late last night. Didn't get to bed until after midnight, was still awake at 12:30 and was awake many other times as well. I also gained 6 pounds from last night's eating.
I worked on cleaning up a 3D orchid shot in photoshop. It was probably a waste of time. And I worked on a poem that came from a recent story. For class tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I got my nose frozen. And I have my poetry class. It would be nice if I could wal extra to make up for the walking I didn't do yesterday. But being tired is not helpful to that process.
Today, Keith is over at his Mom's washing dishes and cleaning up after the party las night. Tomorrow, he has Dr. Beeai and since I have poetry, we may not be able to eat together, it depends on much he's delayed in seeing her.
As far as the story I am working on below I know I wrote a little bit more. But I don't really remember exactly what I wrote. And Iw as eager to get going on my walk before it got any later and so I didn't thing to reread what I'd written. Most of it was a note to Mrs. Dietrich.
Tiny wanted to write a novella (or even a short story) for the 3rd person Omnicient, but neither of us have thought about what to write.
5:30 PM, I walked 57:30, almost an hour. I should walk a few more minutes to make it over an hour so that I can count 15 minutes toward making up lost walking time. Then cut veggies.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014, 12:56 PM I am at Ferrara Dermatology clinic for my face-freezing. I was stupid this morning in several common ways for me. I got up late because I was up in the night and went back to bad after taking some Benadryl for itching so then ended up getting up late and instead of getting ready first, as I always tell myself I should, I wrote down and commented on two dreams I had, took pictures of the hellebores with the 3D camera, lying on my belly in the grass in my nightgown, and worked on my poem for tonight, which I also worked on when I was up earlier, before going back to bed.
I sat on the couch with only other person in the waiting room, an African American woman named Roxanne. We were just having a nice conversation and she was about to tell me why she was here for the first time when she got called in. I must be hungry for female conversation because I was sad when she had to leave. She started by telling me she was new here and asking me if Dr. Ferrara was good. I said he was and showed him my "scars".
I was thinking I would walk after this, in the park behind the City offices which are next next to the clinic (and then maybe check with the health-food store to see if they got a delivery.) I don't have a lot of time and need to print copies of my poem and have dinner before class. But after being frozen, I may not want to walk, I don't know. I've already missed two days.
I didn't braid my hair or shower, and washed very hastily.
1:53 PM It's over. It hurt, but wasn't unbearable. It still hurts and is all bubbled up. He said that would happen. It's stinging and "burning." I hope it settles down.
Now I am at the park. In flower: Veronica, shapherd's purse, chickweed. Dandelions. I saw my first dandelions yesterday, so I ought to do a dandelion Day diary.
But I may not, unless I just call whatever i write today that.
I' not dressed warmly enough, the wind is very cold.
Some kids are playing baseball. I think they are on vacation this week. No longer having a kid in public school makes me less aware of such things. Buds opening.
A kid climbes over the fence to get a ball, heaves it back. Stands kicking the fence rhythmically over and over.
Squirrels, mourning doves, a nicely tended gardeen with Hellebores, daffodils, hhyacinths in brilliant hot pink. Tiny yards with tiny gardens, kids rding by on bikes, ffast, boys about nine or ten. A few forsythias in bloom, jus5t a branch ort two, like at home. I am walking along the perimeter fence looking into people's backyards. The day lily leaces are up 6-8 inches. in our backyard, they are, too. The spruce that came down back there messed up the yard (poor spruce, I miss it.).
By the old schoolhouse, I got down on my hands and knees and photographed some of those "weeds" with the 3D camera. I put it around my neck, but then stuckit back in bag becuase it interferes with the psion. I am trying to come up with an idea for fiction that Tiny might write.
Wild basil in flower. I photograph it, or attempt to. Someone painted their fence silver and some oak leaves are silver, so I try to phtograph those. I hear girls giggling. This house I am passing has had an addtion and comes almost right up to the fence. They have almost no yard. Two houses down, there's a house with a (relatively) huge yard, campared to may of these houses.
This park is very small, so I will probably have to walk more later, but I'd like to get home before Keith does and clean up the mess I left in the kitchen.
2:48 I walked half an hour and am stopping at the Health-food store. I won't make it back before K.
5:58 PM I am downtown on Farnworth. I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. My other class at Ewald was 6-8 and I got confused and thought I had to be at class at 6 and I got there after skipping vcarious things and was half an hour early so I parked on Farnworth thinking I'd go in the Scarab club bt itls not open mondays and Tuesday and closes anyways at 5 PM so now I am walking alone on John R whoch is not my favorite thing to do but I need a walk. So I am walking. I wish I could the whole half hour but I have to get back in car and drive back to Woodward and Warren. I could walk there from here, in fact I am almost at John R and Warren now, but of course, I do not want to leave my car on Farnsworth and walk back in the dark and anyway, my poems are in my car. I'm like totally not happy with the poem. For one thing, there's no turn and "discovery" and for another, there's an unearned epiphany and for a third (fourth), it's clunky. Too new. I really basically just started working on it yesterday and today, I was too busy to work on it much.
The other thing is that since I thought I was running late and would be going right into the building and then driving straight home, I didn't a coat, just my "sports jacket," and the wind is very cold, I haven't braided my hair and it's blowing al around getting messy.
Poop, I am back at my car, freezing, and have only walked 12 minutes. I am sure as heck not going to walk a whole lot more. But I'd like complete 15. That would give me 46 for the day. I was hoping for 60 since I missed yeatday (no Sunday, Easter, and another day. I wanted to make up some or all of that time.
I am almost back to the car and will probably mnake 16 minbutes. Yup, and that good enough for now. No made up time, but no los5t time, eitther.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014, 4:48 PM I am out on my first walk of the day at R'dale and woops, I forgot to water and mark the newly planted pansies. They also need to be mulched. I should have bougt a second bag for R'dale. (Spent $65 at the garden store on mulch, potting soil and pansies and Ranunculous [something that looks like a rose}) Judi in Alabama must be rich, she bought 49 bags of mulch and then 40 more. How can people afford that?
Anyway, I walking at R'dale on the small loop and then I am going to walk hime, hopefully after watering the newly planted pansies, and marking them and dumping the Afrucan violets. I may also download the Psion and send it to myself, AK! All that takes time!
That terrible rash I have is fading a little, not sure why. I stopped the hysdroxyzine and also the Niacin I may add the Niacin back in later.
I meet a man, maybe hispanic, tall and cute with a dog named Riley. He points to where he lives. Then I see a man who looks like he has an igauan but the I decide it is maybe a plastic or stuffed or toy dinosaur. He is sitting corss-legged and the ground and looks as if he is shaking it fairly violently (or, if it's real, it's tryung hard to get away?) He's on the driveway next Riley's house, behind the house, so I only get a fairly short look at him. Then he's out of sight and I cannot satisfy my curiosity.
A young woman with a black dog on a leash jogs by. Now that it is nicer, I see more people out walking.
There are very large bugs on the magnolias, but none are open. Over near the Moran house, there a magnolia that is open or nearly open.
Which reminds me that I also walted to stop at Balduck and check for Fawn Lilies.
I think I will skip downloading the Psion today, as that will require turning two computers on andtwo off again. And kieth worked late and is making dinner tonight and will not be stopping intil I mean will not be starting until I start home from R'dale. I'm sure he's hungry.
5:19 And now I am headed home. I did skip downloading the Psion, this one, the one and only one I have. It makes me nervous to not download once I have somehig on it, not the journal, but the other stuff, for fear I will accidentally erase it--itls easy to do. But I din't want to keep Keith waiting any longer than necessary.
I am feeling slightly queasy.
The small magnoia at the corner of Canyon and Rolandale is in flower, but only a few flowers near the top are open. It's a white one.
I am going around Balduck the back way, hope I can still get in that way. Yes.
5:30 I found Fawn Lily leaves, but no flowers or even buds. I guess Belle Isle, where we saw buds, is ahead of us. And Clark has trout lilies.
And the chances of my ever seeing hepatica and bloodroot are dismally small. We will see wilflowers at the Pinery, probably, but they will nbot be hepaticas, bloodroots, trout or fawn lilies etc. They will maybe be columbines and hairy puccoons etc.
We could go to 7 Lakes state park, but it is fairly far and we would only catch what's in flower, if anything, on the weekend we go. It's not close enough for ready repeat visits. Same with the metroparks. It's a kind of a crap shoot. I miss home. Spring wildflower season is one of the times I most miss B'ville and Centraol NY.
I just ran into Kathy (Cathy?). She now lives in the old lady's house where the bicycle shop kids were living for a while. She's paying $4375 for a 2-dormer upstair flat (very small) and access to the downstair bathroom and kitchen, BUT the bike shops sister wants to have an office there and Kathy thinks she's a bitch. Kathy had been living in a small house on Warren. She says she hates all blonds. Kathy Kathy Kathy. I tell generalizations are sually wrong. At least about my beautiful daughters and grandson. I tell her she should trim the suckers closer to the tree. I explain that the tree will heal better if she does. I tell her I'm an old stumpy. Keith doesn't mind if I thing he's either stupid or lazy or impatient. I am still angry with him for butchering the forsythia.
Earlier today, I dug everything out from under the sink looking for the rooting compound which I thought I'd put there, but did not find it, so I need to buy more. Start some forsythias for Rolandale. And I was going to use it on the fig cutting Fran Morano sent.
Thursday, April 24, 2014, 4:58 PM I am out walking. I just planted 6 pansies and a red rose Ranunculous in the back yard where the spruce used to be. Keith said he wanted to rake there and do something with the area, but there are day lilies already growing, so it probbaly shouldn't be raked. And we need to decide what to with the area. I'd like to plant some everygreen shrubbery along the fence for privacy and put a garden in there. But only if we can afford to buy sufficient Mulch because gardeningwithout Mulch is very labor instesive and I probably am not up to that any more unless I start sleeping. My health needs to improve before I can do much physical work in the yard or anywhere else. Not sleeping also affects my motivation and enthusiasm.
It's partly sunny and partly hazy clouds and cool. I'm not quite dressed warm enoigh. There's a poetry reading tonight at the Jazz cafe. Not sure if we're going or not. I'm so tired it's difficult to get motivated. Keith is taking a nap. He often takes naps. He gets up very early. But I was up OUT OF BED until 3:40 and awake until after 4:30 and did NOT get enough sleep. I'd like to nap, too!
But I'm out walking inastead. Not racewalking or walking at all fast, but at least I'm walking. Also, I finally list more than 2 pounds after the Easter glut.
Actually, I am kind of staggering along in a stupor, not writing or even really thing, have dreaming, half asleep on my feet.
* * * * End Journal
from last time, Taming Uncle Beast:
Now, sitting on Harmon's lap, she remembered Boris the Bug, how he's been kind, or seemed to have been kind, how he'd made her feel special. He was someone who seemed to care about her who didn't have to care about her. She snuggled closer to Harmon, feeling safe and loved, and then thought, I still don't really know what was going on with Bugsy, and what about Harmon? I don't even know him. And a few minutes ago, I was furious with him. She leaned back and looked up at him, and he smiled beatifically down at her. Neither Jake nor Trey seemed concerned any more.
"Feeling better, Little Lady?" Harmon asked. If someone else had said that to her, Tiny would have been pissed, but coming from him, it somehow seemed just right.
"You are absolutely right. I deserved that, every bit of it. I deserved to be defrocked. I did the wrong thing, more than once."
"Then why do I feel so safe with you?" Tiny asked, feeling more confused than ever.
* * * *
"Because I'm not a bad guy at heart. I have a problem with alcohol. It's like a monster riding me. It lives inside me, and when I drink, I forget to be all that I can be otherwise. The shadow slips out and swallows me."
* * 8 8 NEW Taning Uncle Beast
"How about if I come with you?" Harmon asked. Everyone stared at him. "I mean all the way downriver."
"Harmon," Jake said, looking distressed. He didn't want to hurt Harmon's feelings. "The tent's already overcrowded.""I'll get another tent." It had occurred to Harmon that if Jake was succeeding at staying sober, maybe he could, too."
"We don't have room for another tent. The raft's too smalll" Jake said, considering implications for Tiny being on a raft with 3 testosterone poisoned men."
Tiny was still sitting on Harmon's lap. She jumped up and pointed at him again. "You can't come!" she shouted, all the serenity gained from his comforting arms lost in a moment of fear. £"You'll be a bad influence on Jake.!"
Harmon stoof up, picked up the remaining beer, and chcuked it into the river, with Trey's shirt still on it. "I'll buy you a new shirt, he said. I'll buy a 5-man tent. Jake can sleep next to Tiny to protect her. I'll buy us some food. I'll cook. I'm a good cook."
"I'm not strong enough to stop both of you from drinking. I am only 14." Tiny liked Harmon, but she wasn't sure she trusted him.
"I'll help," Trey said. "It'll be fun!" Trey liked Harmon, Jake and Tiny. He didn't know how he'd get back from the river's end, but getting there was sure to be an adventure.
"Okay, okay, listen, we'll try it on a trial basis. You were planning to come along part of the way anyway, right, as Far as Bon Matin? When we get to Bon Matin, Tiny can decide if you're in or your out for the next leg. But what about your commitment in Bon Matin?"
"That won't take long," Harmon said. "If you guys would join me for the services, I'll treat you to a huge all-you can eat brunch at Mon Cher Ami."
"Does the congregation at Bon Matin know you've defrocked?" Tiny asked, wrinkling her brow at Harmon.
"No, not exactly," Harmon admitted.
"And you're going to tell them . . . ?" Jake asked.
"Yes, course," Harmon answered. He was planning on telling them, after the sermon. After he got his money and left. In an email. Maybe.
"And when were you going to tell them?" Trey asked. He didn't really care. He thought it was kind of funny. If Harmon could preach a good sermon before he was defrocked, he probably could still. That's Trey thought.
"I will tell the, Harmon finally said, after a long pause. "I will tell before I finish the sermon." He was thinking it might be the last thing he said, before he surrendered the pulpit. He was hoping they would pay him the promised () first, because it would making buying the tent and the big brunch a little easier. But, if they didn't, he's have to figure something else out.
* * * *
Okay, Mrs Dietrich, I wrote that part in the 3rd person Omniscient. Like I said, it would work better in fiction. As it was, I had to pretend to know what other people might thinking, and I might be wrong. In fiction, if I were making it up, I could have everything think whatever I decided they were thinking, if it served the story, as you always say. I may write some fiction, but I've gotten another assignment from you that seems even stupider than the third person omniscient.
You want me to write in the second person, with the second person being the protagonist. I think tat would work better in a letter (if the second person was the person to whom you were addressing the letter), or in a poem. And then in the second person omniscient. Is that just for torture? I can already see it won't work. Unless the second person is God.
It seems to me that if I can see it doesn't work, I shouldn't have to do it at all. Having me do it would be meaningful only if I leanred something from it. But here goes. I'm going to the bite the bullet and try, 'cause Iw ant you to give me a good grade. I like your suggestion that if I can do all the work, you'll put me in a special class where I can work at my own speed. I guess sitting in on the regular gifted and talented class once a week would be okay, so I can hear what everyone else is doing and maintain my friendships. I hope no one is jealous. I know you said they wouldn't be when you told them how much extra work I was doing, but I don't want them to think I'm a brown nose. (EEEyyyooo!!)
* * * *
You are excited to be leaving the raft with Jake, Trey and Harmon. Harmon knows where there's a Dick's Sporting Goods store. He's going to buy a tent. Jake's got Amigo in his special working harness and is pretending to be blind so he doesn't have to leave him behind. He's a pretty good actor most of the time, but you can't help laughing sometimes, when he slips up.
No one at Dick's seems to care. But there are no 5-man tents. There are 4-man tents and family tents. Harmon leaves his driver's license with the clerk and borrows a tape measure and you walk back to the docks where you left the raft. A bunch of kids are playing on it and Jake shoos them away. Luckily, he'd locked the storage cabinets. He tells them that if they're back on the raft when they return, he sick "Killer" on them and Amigo obligingly growls low in his throat. His ruff goes up and he crouches as if to spring. The kids scream and run off.
You're just thinking that Jake was unnecessarily mean, when you spot a tear in the tent.
"We'd be in trouble," Jake says, "If one of them fell off and drowned or got hurt playing on the raft. And we'd be in trouble, too, if we weren't getting a new tent.
Jake and Harmon measure the spot where the tent needs to go and record the measurements on a scrap of paper you find blowing around above the docks.
You all walk back to Dick's and Harmon hands back the tape measure and retrieves his license. You happen to be standing beside him staring off into space, when something catches your eye. Harmon's license. It says Joseph Bellows, and the guy on it does not look much like Harmon. He's big and hairy, like Harmon, but everything else about him looks different. He's got the wrong eyebrows and squinty eyes. You file that note away for further thought and find yourself glad that Harmon looks like Harmon and not like Joseph Bellows, whoever he is.
You finally settle on a tent that's almost too big for the available space, and then you get another two sleeping bags, very lightweight, a patch kit and two shirts for Trey. One is a plain baby blue and matches his eyes (?) and the other has a picture of an Osprey with a fish. Harmon pays for everything. You wonder if the credit card is his own. But you don't ask.
Back at the raft, the kids are spraying shaving cream all over everything. They take off running when they see you coming and Jake groans a huge groan that turns to a roar. You're afraid he's thinking, "I need a drink."
But Harmon drags the raft up on shore. One the rest of you realize what he's doing, you pitch in. It's still difficult.
There's a boat cleaning station attached to Marina and Harmon talks a couple men into helping. The position the raft over the sewer and hose it down. Then you and Trey and Amigo stay with the raft while Harmon and Jake take the sleeping bags to the laundromat.
After they leave, you worry that they may have gone to a bar and consider sending Trey after them. But the docks aren't a good place for girl alone some days, and this seems like one of them.
When the kids come back, you, Trey and Amigo chase them. They split up, and you go back to the raft. A little while later, a stone hits you on the side of the head. You have a goose egg, and it hurts. Tears of frustration squeeze from your eyes and you wipe them on the hem of your T-shirt.
When Harmon and Jake come back, they are carrying not only clean sleeping bags, and tent, but also a big bag of tacos, nachos and soda. No beer, and neither of them stink.
You cast off and are glad to be back onto the river. You pitch into the tacos as if you haven't eaten in weeks. After eating, you set up the new tent and lay out your bags. Jake points to the places. "Tiny, Killer, me, Trey, Harmon," He says.
You wonder why he's put Harmon at the opposite end of the tent. Maybe for protection. But if that's why, why you on the other outside edge? You wouldn't be as good protection as Jake.
* * * *
It is interesting, I think, the way each different POV produces a different feel. It's interesting, but I still think it's inappropriate for nonfiction memoir. I hope I did enough of it to satisfy you. You didn't really say how much I had to do. Now the even harder part, I think, second person omniscient.
I keep thinking about the fiction assignment you gave, to write what you know That's what I am doing with the nonfiction. All my fiction ideas have nothing to do with what I know, really. But what about science fiction, fantasy and horror? That stuff is all made up. I mean take Ann McCaffrey for example. DragonSong. I love that book. But it takes place in a whole other made-up world. She couldn't "know" from experience about thread and red suns and living in a cave community.
And how about a post-apocalyptic dystopian world? There are hints of that in the world already, but I don't have much first-hand knowledge of them. Like Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. That vision is different than Margaret Atwood's Trilogy, which is different from (). ((and . . ?)) I haven't finished Parable of the Sower yet. I am reading it between chapters of Huckleberry Finn. I know you said not to do that, and I am sort of sorry I am disobeying, but if I can keep my own life story separate from my Uncle's (when it is separate and my parent's and all the books I read and the stories of my friends and Aphrodite and Mars and all the stories of animals we learn about in science and the parenchama and schlerenchyma and the edible wild foods in the survival class and the Native Amnerica stories at the corn Festivals, it seems to me I ought to be able to differentiate and keep straight the parable of the sowers and Huckleberry Finn.
I think I will try a post-apocalyptic story of my own, since my memoir is following Huckleberry Finn.
By the way, I was madly writing on your mini iPad and Harmon asked what I was doing and I told him I was writing my Memoir, which was true, and he said, "You are too young to write a memoir" so I told him it was a summer assignment for my English class and he laughed. He said, "whatever happened to the obligatory assignment at the beginning of school, 'what happened during my summer vacation.'" And I said, "That's the assignment I'm doing now, writing about what happened on my summer vacation. This is it." He said that was the name of a book by Alan Watts and laughed. "What is the name of the book?" "This is it." He said, they used to give you the summers off and make you do it at the beginning of the year, in September, and I told him most of the kids would be doing that, but if I get all the work done ahead, I can go ahead maybe even a whole grade, and he said, why would you want to do that? I couldn't give him an answer right away, and he said, don't wish your life away, and I said, my Great great grandmother, Ina, used to say that.
That reminded of her. She died a long time ago, but I have a picture of me sitting on her lap as a toddler. I look very skeptical. It's weird that I can remember that.
I look up the book Harmon mentioned, This is It, by Alan Watts. It's a free download, so I download it onto your mini iPad to look at between Huckleberry Finn and The Parable of the Sower. Then, I google Joseph Bellows. I find a lot of hits for an art gallery in La Jolla California, and then, when I'm about to give up, I find a small obituary for a soldier who died a few month ago in Iraq, and the services were done by a minister named Harmony (Qrst?). Hmmm. If Harmon was the one who sent the man effects to his family . . .
I joined the story site you told me about, called Cowbird, as you know, since I've been posting my stories like you told me to, and people were posting about their earliest memories. I didn't think of that one, it almost seems impossible I could remember it. ((Kids jumping the fence over and over to retrieve balls. a girl runs in the road after a ball.)) I was going to post this memory. I am just learning to talk. I can't be more that 18 months or two years old, at the most. I say "gaw" for girl. My mother enunciates "girl" over and over. I say "gaw" to myself, I say, "girl" I practice. I do it in private when I think she can't hear me. But to her, I always say "gaw." Then I forget and say "girl" and she is so excited. I am disappointed that I didn't succeed in keeping my little secret longer.
I don't think I like what that says about me, that I am sneaky. I don't want to be sneaky. But of course, I was sneaky, too, when I ran away to go with Jake. (I keep almost writing Beast, and have to stop myself and write Jake.)
OK, so a post apocalyptic piece of fiction. I feel as if write that I will be stealing or borrowing ideas from all the authors I've been reading. I'm not as smart or well-educated as Margaret Atwood. I read online though that she calls her novles dystopian romances, which, considering the lierary view of romances, strikes me as strange. It's a goood thing, though, if she succeeds at elevating the status of romances for those of us who like love. I'm suddenly more interested in romance than I was.
I was thinking about the wild dogs in Parable of the Sower. I want to inlcude them in my own story. Not to Copy Octavia Butler. And Not to copy, Tom Brown, either. I read about wild dogs in one of his books. But a couple years ago, I wrote a story about wild dogs. I hadn't yet read Parable of the Sower of Tom Brown. I had read a story about a kid getting mauled by wild dogs. I can show you the store. It is actually ahnd-written in pencil in y notebook, and it's kind of a dumb story because the dogs win. They kill everybody. They make these huge packs and break through windows and kill people and eat them.
Of course people have guns. Some people do. I know lots of people who don't, though.
I was pretty naive when I wrote the story, and of course, I am probably still naive. Pa says I am, so does Jake. I feel like I'm not as naive as I was, but I don't know. Anyway, I want wild dogs. I guess I need to decide on a likely apocalypse. There are so many of them. Republicans, big business, people too stupid to believe in global warming, global warming, ice caps melting, new diseases, the fools who believe that we're supposed to have the end of the world and so they want to make it happen. Ozone and holes in the atmosphere. Nuclear winter, war, rampant terrorists, big greed (I know, I'm repeating myself, I can't help it. I'm resentful toward big business and rich people. [án you tell?]) I guess rather than trying to determine which scenario or scenarios are the most likely (I saw some movie about a plague caused by something that jumped from pigs to humans but I can't think of the name of it; I carefully put it out of my mind), I should maybe instead choose a scenario that would be fun and interesting for me to think and write about. And then there's the Hunger Games, which I am afarid to read after reading about them. Should I read them? If thinking and writing about Global catastrophe could be called fun. What would be interesting for me would be some situation that is extremely challenging but where there is hope for humanity. Margaret Atwood succeeds at that, I think. In other words, no comiet crashing into the earth and destroying all of humanity. I am not saying that can't happen, I just don't want to write about that ot a nuclear winter, if we all die. In my apaocalyse, people survive. Good people who are challenged to remain good or become good again after failing, bad people, ordinary people. Really, it is the people, pitted against the difficult challenges and each other that makes the story worth writing and maybe worth reading.
A long time ago, when I was like in 5th grade, I think, I read one of my Mom's books, I think it was calledSpiritwalker. We are in wild section of the river here, and don't have any wi-fi, so I can't look it up, (or send you my work), but I will try to find out more later if it seems relevant. The point is, that story was post apocalyptic. What happened, if I remember right, is that global warming caused the oceans to rise so precipitously that most of the major population and government centers (I may not be getting quite right because it was a long time ago and I've read so many other books since then) were destroyed along with infrastructure, electricity, phones (I think the book may have been written before cell phones) that civilization essentially collapsed. Looting robbing, shooting for food and all that broke out. The only people who were surviving were Native Americans, survivalists, and other people with survival skills. A group of people were wandering out West somewhere. I don't remember what happened because the book got all spiritual, thus the name, Spirit walker. I'm having an urge to read it again though. (Later, I look online for it and find a lot of books with that title. I am bummed out that I can't determine which Is the one I read, and will try later to find it at home or in the library or maybe I will buy ALL the books with that title. Yeah, right, that's almost gonna happen.)
What I do NOT want to write about is something like the book, The Death of Grass. Jake told me about it, he'd gotten it from someone else and I downloaded on your mini iPad and was reading it between some of the other books, but it was so awful I stopped reading it. The protagonist were murdering people in cold blood. The "good guys" aren't supposed to be that bad. They can do bad things, but not that bad. I'm talking about in my world, the world I create, if I succeed in creating on.
I know, I know, the good guys can't be all good, that have to be human, and the bad guys can't be all bad, they have to have some redeeming value. Although I am not sure that some crimes leave any redeeming value.
I guess I am saying, among other things, that my story must have at least a partly happy ending, or hope for the future or something. Some redeeming value. Life doesn't have a happy ending, since we all die, but it can have happy middles. Like right now, gliding down the river in the sunshine with a breeze playing over the water keeping us cool and keeping the bugs away. Jake is steering, Trey is fishing, Harmon is napping I, I am cogitating.
Sometimes, I find your assignments easy and sometimes difficult. These two are difficult, but maybe because I was trying to combine them. That is, make the second person Omniscient part of the fiction piece. But in some ways, good fiction more difficult than memoir. For Memoir, I don't have to dream up a whole story, I just have to tell what's happening. That has it's difficulties, trying to decide what to put in and what to leave out. Your word and page suggestions are helpful. They remind me not to ramble on endlessly about lying on my belly with my face close to the water watching the fish that swim out from under the raft or lying on my back watching the birds. Right now, seven vultures are circling overhead. Mr Ony says they are turkey vultures. Most everyone I know calls them buzzards, but they aren't actually buzzards. I looked it up, and buzzards are something else. ((put in more info here)).
I am also fascinated by the flotsam and jetsam. Some of the things that float by, or float along with us, since we're riding with the current, are truly amazing. Whole dead aniamls, (), all kinds of trash, bottles with notes in them. I opened two of them, read them recorked them, and sent them off again. They were both from kids, one named Alex and one named Alicia. Both As, maybe the Bs will come tomorrow. They had cute crayon drawings of themselves. But I said I wasn't' going to go on about it and here I am doing just that!
Tonight, Harmon is supposed to preach. I'm waiting to see what he decides to do.
So, yeah, I may have to delete half of what I wrote, but you say that's normal. It seems sort of sad to put all that thought and effort into writing something coherent and then have to delete it.
I was just scrolling through my notes above to see if I had mentioned the names and couldn't find it, but I may have missed it. Or, I may have thought it and forgotten to write it down. I was thinking of the two main characters being Leigh (me, a more sophisticated version of Lee (I am named after Robert E. Lee), and Troy, for Trey. I'm imagining a romance of course, even though no romance is actually happening between Trey and me.
I am going to start my fiction piece from where I am now and then diverge. Sounds like a plan, since I have no other.
*
You watch vultures circling, and you count them. Seven. You've always thought of seven as a lucky number, but somehow, seven vultures doesn't seem lucky today. Nothing seems lucky any more, except maybe hooking up with Troy. Not the the kind of hooking up kids talked about in seventh grade. Not yet, anyway. You and Troy are more of a team to escape the chaos thaan anything else.
"Is something dead?" Troy asks. "Or is it just thermals?" He sounds worried and you get a flash from the tone of his voice of dead people. The chaos.
Something is dead, though, you can smell it.
Troy smells it, too. He wrinkles his face. On most people, that expression would make them look stupid or ugly, but on Troy, it's cute.
Stop it! you tell yourself. Pay attention; this is no time for mooning." Then you laugh aloud thinking of two different meaning of mooning, neither which has much to do with the moon. Then, you stifle the laugh. Troy is looking at you. He's thinking you are really weird to be laughing when something or someone is very dead nearby.
The smell sticks in your throat. Troy's too, by the look of him. Troy is thinking, Let's get the fuck out of here! but where to? That's the problem.
And then you see them. You can tell by the color of their skin that they are dead. Their skin is kind blue-grey and translucent. And then one of them moves and you start to scream, but clap a hand over your mouth.
Troy spots it too, and you both sit with paddles posed ready to dig in and take flight. You stare. A woman's body, blue and sickly looking, covered with blood, with one a leg hacked off and missing is rising slowly as if being lifted by an invisible crane. Then it thumps back down and there is a kid, wild eyed and filthy. She has blood smeared on her face and clothes.
As if by mutual consent, you and Troy paddle the canoe up to the dock, which is also covered with blood. The kid begins to run, staggering, tripping, falling. Troy runs after her, tackles her. She screams and claws at him. He picks her up and carries her to the canoe.
"It's okay," you say. "We aren't going to hurt you. You're hoping Troy is as good as you want him to be, and isn't planning to hurt the kid.
He isn't.
* * * *
OK, Mrs. D! You may have to give me a bad grade. I can't do this omniscient stuff. Even in fiction, I prefer (I've decided) one person's POV. I don't see how Leigh could know what Troy is thinking. God could, but I'm not God.
* * * *
Hi This is God speaking. (Hoboy!) I will tell you what everyone is thinking. Troy and Leigh are both innocents at this point. They think they can survive without doing the horrible things others are doing. Troy does not intend to hurt the girl. What he might do on the verge of true starvation, we don't know yet.
*
You've told the girl it's okay, but of course, it's not OK. The woman with her leg hacked off is probably--was probably-- this girl's mother. And she's dead. The girl is probably an orphan now.
She struggles and thrashes and you hold her down on the floor of the canoe. "We're not going to hurt you," you repeat, over and over. The girl is pretty strong. "Sit still," you tell her, "before the Amokkers come back. Do you want them to eat you, too?"
"We're trying to help you," Troy says, soothingly. He means it. The girl lets go of her terror or swallows it and goes limp in your arms.
* * * *
I hope that that is enough of a fairly failed attempt at writing in the second person present omniscient. GAK! Please do make me do that again. I know what you're going to say, that it's a teaching moment. I hate to brag, but I think I'm smart enough to figure out certain things without having to do them. Like sticking my hand in the fire or shooting up heroine. Neither would be good. And the second person present omniscient is downright succulent. And I do not mean juicy in a good way. OK, 'nuf said.
I get your point thought, that there options, and each one produces a different result. And it's probably good to consider the options before choosing one. But the range of possibilities that work well seem fairly limited to me.
I just reread what I wrote and got rid of a couple verys and stuff and it occurred to me that I could write the whole story in the 2nd person as long as it wasn't the second person omniscient. But I'm not sure what the benefit or value doing so would be. It has an interesting feel to it, a resonance. But I'm not sure if I like it or not. I'm almost tempted to write some more that way as a sort of challenge and experiment--which is probably what you had in mind all along. Exploration. Okay, I take back all the bad things I said earlier.
*
You've been heading downriver, because the paddling is easier. You settle the girl in the center of the canoe where she sits with her head on her knees crying. You let her cry.
After a while, Troy says, "What's your name?" He's talking to the girl, obviously. A few days ago, he didn't know my name, either.
The girl stops crying lifts her head. "Alys," she say, "A-L-Y-S, but is sounds like Alice in Alice in wonderland."
"This ain't no wonderland," Troy says. Troy is in the front of the canoe, supplying the power. I'm in the back, paddling and steering.
Alys asks us our names and we tell her. Troy and Leah.
You've decided to call yourself Leah instead of Leigh. Troy just smiles.
*
OK, Mrs. Dietrich. I've had it with the second person. I keep forgetting. I know. If this ever turns into a real story, I need ONE POV, probably first person, and One time preior, except for flashbacks etc. I think, like my journal/memoir, 1st person present for ongoing action and 1st person past for past action and anything else is told by other characters. In their first person voice, either in immediate conversation, first person present, or in stories told about the past. OR Leah could relate a story told to her in her voice, as long as she says something like . . .
*
We find a sheltered spot under some overhanging trees. A breeze off the river kept the bugs down. We didn't have much food. I'd collected some groundnuts and hog peanuts earlier, despite the difficulty of digging them, and I washed them in the river and divided them between the three of us.
Alys stares at them and then at us.
"It's food, I said. And it isn't bad, try it." Troy crunched his down and I did the same. Alys takes a tentative tiny nibble, and then a bigger one and then stuffed them all in her mouth, looking anxiously around as if she expected someone to take them. Se tried to chew, but there was too many. I thought she would choke.
"Spit them out," I say, as forcefully as I can. "No one is going to take them. Eat one at a time."
She bends her head over her hand and spit out a couple. Sge chewed with her mouth still too full, swallowed, and immediately ate the others.
"You'll get more nutrition from them if you chew them better," I said. She looked at me like I had three heads.
"I want my mother." she said, sounding defiant and a little petulant.
We stare at her. Her mother was not only very dead, but also partly eaten. But I had no idea what to say to her and neither, apparently, did Troy.
"The Amokkers got her," she says, and starts crying. They got us all, except me. I hid."
Apparently, there was a depression in the ground and when the Amokkers attacked, Alys's mother had thrown Alys into the depression and laid on top of her, whispering to her to be still and silent no matter what. Alys knew what to expect. She'd seen the work of Amokkers before. She did as she was told, even when she felt her mother's body go limp, even when she felt them sawing away one of her legs.
She told us this in fits and starts between tears and long silences. TRoy and I were patient, because we were well-hidden and didn't know where were were going anyway.
AMOK is a drug. It's an acronym for Amylase Mertensia Oligartin Keratinylaaise. (?) People who take it get high from violence, particularly murder and cannibalism. It's known for giving a contact high, so that even people who have not taken the drug can get caught up in the murderous fever, even if they are the targets for murder.
I wonder if the contact high could affect Alys and if so, for how long. Even without the contact high, anyone could be dangerous, including little kids. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and kids will rob and kill for food. Even without the drugs, people have resorted to cannibalism since the Chaos. They all should have taken Mr. Oby's Survival 101 and 102. Then, they would know that there is food available that doesn't require murder. Of course, it can very difficult, as Troy and I learned the hard way.
For one thing, we don't have any of our books with us. My books. Troy's not from my school and didn't take survival 101 and 102. But his father was a hunter, trapper and tracker. I probably shouldn't say was. Troy doesn't know what happened to him. He could still be alive.
Troy told us how his father had left him in a tree stand. He said he'd be back in couple hours, but he never came back. Troy had waited all night and all day, ad when he went home, his house was a smoking ruins and there was no sign of any of his family. No bones, either, in the ashes and ruins. He is still smudged with ash and charcoal and has burns on his skin, probably from hunting for them.
We, all three of us desperately need baths.
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