Haibun #4

Housebound for days, I've watched the snow and listened to the sleet fall. Despite the cold, I must go out. Tonight, clouds are sailing past an almost full moon. The night is silver and indigo, splashed with gold from the streetlights. So bright for there to be no stars, light reflected and refracted everywhere.

Cobalt shadows hide
each hesitant, crunching step

in the frozen snow.

Book Number Six

I have a co-worker with whom I swap books. It's fun, helps us both with our limited shelf space, and it's just nice to have someone at work with whom you can connect on more than a business level. I've introduced her to the fun of Charlaine Harris' vampires, and she's gotten me into reading mysteries again.

It may not even be middle brow level reading, but it's enjoyable, and as a writer, I've found that good mysteries can really teach you about plot development. Too often I've figured out whodunit early in the book, but when a mystery makes you want to skip ahead and read the last few pages, you've got a good one. That was the case with Shiny Water by Dr. Anna Salter, a clinical psychologist known for her work in the field of sexual abuse.

Like the author, the main character of Shiny Water is a psychologist in this field. Michael Stone is a dedicated, female psychologist who has testified in a custody case where the care of the children was awarded to the father. Stone is convinced that he is a molester. The day the children have been given to their father, the children disappear are found dead in their mother's house. Since she had testified on behalf of the mother, Stone finds both her personal and professional abilities questioned by others and herself. As she delves deeper into this murder, both to find if she did miss something and to help find who murdered the kids, she finds herself at risk from both the law and the murderer.

It's a good story line, but what makes this story really work is the excellent character development of Michael Stone. You can easily visualize how this woman lives, and her internal life is revealed gradually. The wonderful tension created by Stones' efforts at self-control among predators who try to control others and their victims keeps you reading.

My friend found this book on the sale rack at a dollar store. The price ($1.25) was printed on the cover. It's a good reminder about the thing about books and covers.

Filling the time

Learning how to live alone after decades of family life has been an adjustment. One of the biggest lessons I've had to learn has been not to rush. The only schedule I have to consider is my own. There's no need to push dinner later because of piano lessons or doctor's appointments or finish early because of some homework project. I don't have to push (nag) people to get ready faster so they won't be late for school or work. I've been surprised to find that it really doesn't take me two hours to go from from shower to walking out the door. I thought making myself look decent just took that long, but with no change in routine, it's minutes. It was everything else that was devouring my time.

So living alone has given me more time. Figuring out what to do with it has been surprisingly difficult. There are always books to read, a movie to pop in the DVD player, and of course the time consuming black hole of the internet.

I like having more time to write, and putting the emphasis on a handwritten journal has been good. The feel of a pen in my hand and its scratch along a piece of paper hold a pleasure that typing never will. It also slows me down. I scratch out lines, paragraphs. I toss sheets into the wicker wastepaper basket beside my favorite battered chair. I look more carefully at the visual effect of a poem on a page when it's handwritten. I just think more. Beyond that, I like having a calloused groove on my third finger that perfectly fits a pen.

I had to learn again how to cook things slowly. The quick and easy meal doesn't always satisfy, and letting a meal develop in its own time has become almost a Zen practice for me.

These are good things. They've brought me pleasure, and that is actually part of the problem. As my incessant whining in this blog has shown, I've lived a lot of the last couple of years hurting, mourning, depressed and frustrated. I've wanted these simple pleasures as a way to make my life better. The little pleasures made the pain stop for awhile. That's just not enough anymore. I need meaning. I need a purpose.

I'm not going to find it in the ongoing emotional autopsy of my life as wife and day-to-day mother. It's definitely harder to find than a re-run of Buffy. It took me months to find things that I enjoyed again after losing R. So, finding purpose and significance in this new life of mine will probably take me awhile longer. I don't take time for granted the way I used to, and I'm impatient. I want it now, and even though the thought of this makes me grind my teeth, I'm just going to have to have faith that I will find it.

What's significant about this though is that I am ready for something deeper, something substantive and real again. I haven't noticed all the steps that brought me to this point, but it's nice to know that I'm here.

Haibun #3

Silence used to be the friend I rarely got to visit whose presence I sought. Now, she's more like company who has overstayed her welcome, smiling at me in the mornings before the coffee has been made and keeping me up late night. I turn to the radio or TV and get memories I don't want or people who make me angry. My old friend, annoying though she may be, is preferable.

A home, clean and warm,
the necessary comforts,
tainted with absence.

Book Number Five

Just minutes ago, I finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. This is a book that's worth staying up until 3:00 a.m. to read. I first heard of The Help on NPR's All Things Considered and knew that I'd have to read it. This is a story about black maids and their white employers in Jackson, Mississippi in the the 1960s. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the stories are intimate, personal, unsettling, uplifting and deeply, deeply moving. The Help captures these complicated relationships beautifully -- the ill treatment, the kindnesses from both sides, and the depth of the connections. This book excels in showing the heirarchies of the Southern social class system, all the lines that are drawn between the many levels of haves and have nots. Only a Southerner could have captured these nuances so accurately.

Told primarily in the voices of maids, Aibeleen and Minnie, the novel is centered around the relationship that develops between Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan and Aibeleen. Skeeter is a new graduate of Ole Miss returning to her family's plantation without the MRS expected of southern college girls in the sixties. She plays bridge and tennis with her old sorority sisters who now run the local Ladies League and grimly follows her mother's advice on how a tall, ungainly, frizzy headed girl can catch a man while she dreams of becoming a writer. When Skeeter lands a job writing the housekeeping advice column for the local paper, she turns to Aibeleen for information, because having had a maid all of her life, she knows nothing about keeping house.

Aibeleen has spent her life raising and loving white women's children and seeing them grow to hold racial prejudices, even though some still show their love for her. She has also recently lost her own son. That loss, including how he was treated because he was a black man, is close to the surface.The relationship is awkward. Aibeleen is scared of the potential consequences of getting too close to her employer's friend, but when Skeeter gets the idea of writing a book about the stories of black maids, the relationship grows in fits and starts. Aibeleen, who is also a writer, feels the need to tell her story, even though she knows if it gets to the wrong people (of whom Skeeter might be one), the consequences for her could be literally deadly. Over time, she brings in more maids to tell their stories, and in the process, she, Skeeter, and most particularly, Minnie, Aibeleen's closest friend change and grow.

Ever since I started reading this book, Verleen, the maid who worked for my family when I was a small girl has been on my mind. I don't even know if I'm spelling her name correctly, but I know I loved her with the intensity and purity only a small child can possess, and I still remember the last day she worked for my family and how sad her leaving made me. I'm remembering Letty, who followed Verleen. She had such great dignity and a smile that just glowed. I'm remembering the few times we would drive them to their homes after work and how they had to ride in the back seat. That is not a comfortable feeling, and it stayed with me all through the whole book. The Help made me think, remember and feel, and it will stay with me for a long, long time.

Haibun #2

I didn't want to go inside today. The wind held a promise that won't be kept for several more weeks. My daydreams held floppy hats, fresh berries, bare legs and muddy feet with polished toes. Hundreds of blackbirds swooped over the field and then landed all at once, their wings, loud and sibilant. They sailed off immediately, in great arcs and curves.

Spring was conceived in
the single candle lit on
a cold winter night.

Haibun challenge

Theresa challenged me to join her in keeping a haibun (a Japanese poetry form combining prose and haiku) journal. I'd never tried this form before and have found it a bit daunting. That's always a good thing when I sit down to write. I find myself doing my best work when I'm a little intimidated by what I'm writing. So, here's my first attempt.


The drive to work is rote, curves, rough road and speed traps engraved in muscle memory. My mind wanders, eating miles, and I find myself surprised by where I am. I notice the sky while going down an exit ramp. It's a richer blue than just days before, making the bareness of the trees on this cool mid-winter morning look out of place and temporary.

The wheel does not stop.

Change is inevitable,

secure as routine.

So much red

Today I arrived at the home of a friend who is in her eighties to take her to the beauty salon. When I knocked on the door, she called for me to come in and said, "Watch your step." From there I had to tip-toe around literal pools of blood.

While getting ready, she scraped the top of her foot with her support stocking. Her home looked like a violent crime scene, red splatters and footprints in her living room, kitchen, bedroom, hallway and bathroom from where she tried to get bandages and new socks to stop the bleeding. As I gathered more towels, the fire department arrived after having been notified by her personal alert system. They peeled from her foot a sock so saturated it was no longer recognizable as fabric. They were able to stop the bleeding, but we decided a trip to the emergency room was in order. The firemen helped get her in my car, and we spent the next several hours in the ER for observation and re-bandaging.

While we were in the hospital, more friends came over and cleaned her house. I'm glad she didn't have to go home to an abattoir. I have never seen so much blood in my life ... and from such a tiny wound. Less than an eighth of an inch long, no wider than a cat scratch, and it was everywhere. Blood is really intensely red.

Throughout all of this, she was steadier than most people I know would be in the same situation. When the firemen asked her if she thought she could walk, she said she was a bit light-headed, then laughed, and said,"I'm just a dizzy dame."

Almost 85 years old, weak and bleeding, my friend has definitely got moxie. There might still be time for me.

Book Number Four

I just finished my fourth book of the year minutes ago, and it is officially the first book of 2010 that I love. To be honest, I enjoy most books that I read. I like a lot of them. I can find something of merit in most books, but loving a book is something else. A book that I love is one that I'll come back to more than once. A book that I love will not end up in the big tote bag that I carry to the used book trade-in store every couple of months. A book that I love will always have a place on my limited shelf space and usually ends up in a stack by my favorite chair. I'm not one to usually write in or underline a book, and if I do, you can count on it being a book that I love. Loving non-fiction is extremely rare for me, but I'm planning on starting Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell again tomorrow.

The subtitle of Outliers is The Story of Success. Now I'm a sucker for motivational stories. I like learning about people who achieve goals and make something of themselves. They inspire me, at least for a little while, to get more focused and get things done. However, I also get a little nauseous when I hear someone talk about how somebody achieved great things all on their own with little or no help along the way. My first thought is usually "that ungrateful bastard."

Outliers is the very first book I've read about successful people that looks at the multiple factors, sometimes beyond an individual's control, that go into somebody being an exceptional success. The profiles include Bill Gates, Robert Oppenheimer, The Beatles, and people I've never heard of before but who have broken ground in fields like hockey, computers and corporate law. With all of the successful people it profiles, Outliers starts with talent, discipline and hard work as factors that they all possess. It doesn't minimize their importance. In fact, it gives people credit for possessing gifts beyond the ordinary. It stresses the importance of hard work. (10,000 hours of practice before mastery is achieved will stay in my mind for a long time. I confess I started calculating the number of hours I've spent writing but gave it up to get back to the book.)

Quoting Gladwell is the best way I can express why I love this book so much, "Everything we have learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed. If it were, Chris Langan would be up there with Einstein. Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities -- and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them." On the next page, he continues, "To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success -- the fortunate birth dates and happy accidents of history -- with a society that provides opportunity for all."

I can already hear my conservative friends snorting at the idea of fortunate birth dates. This isn't talking about astrology or something unquantifiable. Outliers explains in detail how one generation, born in a population trough, came of age when a previous boom generation was leaving a job market, and the boom following them was just beginning to show greater consumer needs. I can't help thinking about the difference between a college graduate in 2008 when new grads were a hot commodity in the employment market and someone who'll be facing the 2010 job market. That 2008 grad will have logged some professional hours in their first couple of years of adult work. How many upcoming graduates will be in dead end jobs for a couple of years trying to get some stability on their resume but not building additional skills? Two years is a blink of the eye, but if I were looking at two job candidates with identical collegiate experiences, one with a few of years experience in my field, the other with clerical work and high hopes, I know which one would have the advantage even before an interview began.

I enjoyed the research that went into this book. We have charts from scientific studies, sport stats, samples of IQ tests, airplane black box interviews, and just good documented research whether you agree with Gladwell's conclusions or not. The book has wonderful asides in the footnotes that just add to the reading pleasure. There's just so much good stuff here that it needs going over again. Outliers has also made me want to purchase Gladwell's other two books, Blink and The Tipping Point.

Outliers: The Story of Success was published by Little, Brown and Co. in 2008.

Book Number Three

I'm a little embarrassed about my third book of the year. It was a gift from my sister, and I'm wondering if someone else gave it to her. She's really not a reader, and not only was this one obviously read, it had been underlined, written in and dog-eared. That alone made me curious, and I thought I'd give it a chance. Now, you might be wondering what kind of book I'm a little hesitant to talk about reading. After all, I enjoy sci-fi, horror and romance -- just the good ones, but still. Most of the books in those categories are rarely seen as literature. Self help books never are.

In general I hate self help books, but that's what I read. I only had to read a few self help books years ago to get sick of over generalizations, platitudes, mind games and just flat out bad advice. I really gave them up completely until this one when I found that a highly recommended marriage advice book had been written by someone with multiple divorces. This next confession is even a little more difficult. I also don't really enjoy most Christian books. While the advice can sometimes be sound and the basis for the advice excellent, I haven't really found many contemporary Christian writers who really engage me. (One of the reasons why I keep returning to Lewis and Bonhoeffer who consistently challenge me.) I would really appreciate suggestions on good Christian writers.

So, my third book of the year fell into a category I despise from a category of writers I don't usually enjoy. The title is even more embarrassing -- How To Get A Date Worth Keeping. Can you just imagine how badly I'm blushing now? So, yes, I'm interested in dating again, but I read this for more than that reason. I went hermit for so long I've forgotten how to meet people and make friends, and I basically like people too much for that. I thought about it a bit and realized that making friends is really a bit like dating, thus I gave this book a chance.

What I liked about this book is that it completely avoided a lot of typical dating advice about how to make yourself into somebody who attracts people. The main points were about being your self and doing what it takes to be an emotionally healthy person of character. It was really all about taking responsibility for your own issues, having realistic expectations, setting clear boundaries and not playing games. It emphasized that the point of dating is really to meet and get to know people, not necessarily progress into a relationship. This was all good stuff that reaffirmed what was in my gut. It also emphasized that dating means you have to suck up the courage to actually meet people and give them a chance. The book had very clear eyed advice without being preachy. I was also surprised by a surprisingly mature discussion of sexuality in the chapter, Unleash Your Libido or Reel It In. I did feel this book was aimed at people who weren't emotionally much past the flush of teenage dating and realizing how different adult relationships can be. Years don't have to be a factor in this.

How To Get A Date Worth Keeping was written by Dr. Henry Cloud and published by Zondervan Books in 2005. On the cover, it says "Be Dating in Six Months or Your Money Back." Well, since this was a gift (and probably a re-gift at that), I won't be finding out if that's true or not, but I am planning on trying some of the advice -- primarily about taking the responsibility to get emotionally healthy and screwing up the courage to do things and go places where I can meet people again.

Despite this good stuff, I just had to slog my way through the book. I'm a fairly quick reader, and it took me over a week to get through a book of less than three hundred pages. In comparison, I'm almost two hundred pages into my next book, and I started it yesterday. There are parts of How To Get A Date Worth Keeping that just seem overly repetitive, and more than once, I caught myself going over some pages I'd already finished. So, it's not the best read, but it has good to stuff to say.

The Friday Five

I haven't done The Friday Five or any other blogging meme in a long time, and I've got the urge to blog and nothing else to write about, here goes.

1. Do you tend to daydream?
I think of daydreams as Walter Mitty-esque flights of fantasy, and I don't really indulge in those. However, I do indulge in memories, wishful thinking -- all too often about what I should have said, and thinking about things I'll write. An idea will drift across the brain, and the next thing I know, I'm trying to turn it into a poem or a story. Those can all count as daydreams though, so the answer is yes.

2. Do you usually remember your night dreams? Do you find them symbolic and meaningful or just quirky?
I don't usually remember my dreams, so when I do, I pay attention and usually find meaning. When I remember my dreams, it's usually my way of consciously accepting something that's been bothering me that I either couldn't or didn't want to identify. Often it's something I'm stressed about, and thinking through the dream's images becomes the first step to handling it instead of just worrying over it.

3. Have you ever had a life changing dream which you'll never forget?
I'm still not sure if I'd call this life changing, but it's definitely something I'll never forget. As a child, I had a recurring dream that everyone thought I was dead. I was laid out in a coffin and only had a limited time to make people realize that I was really alive before I would actually die. There were creatures (for lack of a better word) trying to thwart my efforts. The setting, the characters, the actions, even the dialogue were always the same. It terrified me then, and thinking about it still gives me the willies. I had that dream for years, my dream self aging as I did. It finally ended in my early twenties, coincidentally around the time I started developing some self-confidence.

4. Share a long term dream for one or more aspects of your life and work.
I'm just now regaining the ability to dream in the long term. I've been focused for years on just getting through the challenge of the moment. Because of that, those dreams are still a bit too delicate to share, except for one. Publication. I've taken the action step of purchasing both The Writer's Market and The Poet's Market and have begun some research. It's time to do more than dream.

5. Share a dream for 2010....How can we support you in prayer on both the short and long term dreams?
I was thinking a lot about this subject today before I read the Friday Five. A better job tops the list. The dream is a job that will use my talents, allow me opportunities to feel truly useful and return some financial stability to my life. The next biggest dream is to reconnect with people again. My hermit life has grown old, and I want to learn again how to make friends and relate well with people again. A date or two along the way wouldn't be bad either. Prayers are most definitely welcome.