A Novel Setting

where my novel is right now...

where part of my self is all the time...

Not Cat People

Us. We're not even pet people. People who talk in baby voices to their dogs do not have our sympathies. When our friends J. & J. used to tell us that they fought through their cat -- attributing maelovelent motives to "mommy" and "daddy" as they sat in the same room not talking to each other, we were amused, we laughed. But really, we said to each other, in the car on the way home, who does that? Who treats their pets like people?

We both grew up with dogs and liked them, but in a vague platonic way, you know? Not with the fierce devotion that pet people have. I'll be honest: we're pettists.

And Lynn and I have always agreed about cats in general -- any animal that thinks they're better than humans doesn't really deserve to be treated like a pet. You're going to snub me? Fine. Go snub me in your own space and time. I don't have time to devote my energies to servility to a (literally) dumb creature who disdains me. I mean really...don't you wonder if people who do devote themselves to such creatures may just have a masochistic tendency?

Don't get me wrong. I do like cats. I think that in a nice cassoulet they can provide just the right tenderness to complement the sausage...

So anyway, in the face of such feline animosity, our family has been recently adopted by Emma the barncat.

Emma -- named for our cherished cousin in Michigan.

the barncat -- because thats the category of intimacy that we can handle, Lynn having grown up with barncats and this cat DEFINITELY not coming into the house.

adopted -- how? i know not. why? again, i don't know.

but I'm having to reformulate most of my thoughts on the species. When Jaelyn steps out the front door every morning and calls: "Emma!" the cat (?!) comes bounding across the yard and practically jumps into Jaelyn's arms. She's affectionate, patient, gentle. Jaelyn carries her everywhere; Addison chases her and then dodges away when she turns to sniff him. And she's completely cool with such odd childlike behaviour. She never snubs, never turns up her nose at any of the dinners offered on the front porch.

The kids have been playing in the sunshine for the last hour with her. Building her new beds with other carpet rolls stored in the garage. Carrying her everywhere. Following her everywhere. Running inside to report her poop. Yelling and happy and giggling and screaming. And Lynn's beaded two bracelets and I've written a thousand novel words....

I mean really she's *not* coming into the house -- and I feel nervous because i don't understand how Barncats survive winters & the cold -- maybe we'll get a haybale in the garage. But i have to admit that every night before I go to bed, i stick my head out the front door and check to make sure she's tucked into her carpet roll that I've positioned right next to the basement window which she had (apparently) chosen to sleep beside anyway for its leaky heat.

So we're still not cat people, but we seem to be being led around on a leash by an animal anyway. Who could predict the turns life will deliver?

Status of the Novel

“Mmmm.” She said, and her breathing disappeared. Even with the hiking boots she would lace up later, she moved quietly; in the early morning padding from room to room in her socks she made no sound at all. The faucet betrayed her. She must be in the kitchen drawing the same tall glass full to the rim with water. Every morning, the same glass of water. It washed away the night from her body? Cleared her mind? Baptized and sanctified her soul? In twenty one years, I've never asked. Once the glass was overfull, she would sip twice and then slowly, patiently drink it all. These traits: utter silence and a devotion to a ridiculously tall glass of water were, perhaps, another reason I preferred mornings to any other part of the day for Kathleen and I.


WORD COUNT: 6256 (out of 50,000)
PERCENT COMPLETE: 12%
GOAL WORD COUNT FOR TOMORROW: 1687
WRITING HOURS LEFT: 41
BIG REALIZATION: writing stories heals me and makes me whole; politics, administration and bueracracy gut me like a rotting corpse opened by vultures.


nanowrimo

the monsters roared...

jaelyn (who is five) left kindergarten after a day where they talked about voting, having been one of 3 (out of 21) five year olds who voted for Kerry, and said to Lynn as she left:

"They said that John Kerry kills babies."

...

On my way home from school yesterday, in our freshly minted GWAmerica Part II, I listened to Gary Bauer, formerly of the Family Research something, now head of the American Conservative something, explain that the one value that united Americans was an opposition to any kind of civil union for homosexuals. (this in the face of exit polls that described americans as 20% supporting gay marraige, 50% supporting civil unions and 30% opposing unions of any kind.)

...

It's an odd experience to live in a village where the MONSTERS who roam outside of our borders are:

-- teenage girls who fear being labelled as "loose"

-- and young welfare moms and women who have no power at all in the worlds where they "pass" terrified that someone will find out that about their pregnancy or their lack of choices

-- people who have been ostracized and minimized and hated all their lives based on desires they did not choose and who desperately want lives inside of the village

Have you not seen the village yet? if you haven't then you won't remember who gives the monsters their awful voice....but its worth remembering....

ahh the "moral values" of american evangelicals....

back burner cooks at a lower heat

Sources close to A. Rudd indicate that the backburner will be turned to a very low heat for the month of November. Spurning rumors about mid-winter depression and new workaholic commitments, the author refused extended comment. Cryptically he whispered into the microphone:

nanowrimo

but could not be cajoled into further explanation.

Remember...

your chance to interact with destiny...or at least take responsibility for what you affirm...

crabapples on the tree

For two weeks he was distracted by the gradual progression of fall in the foliage just outside of the kitchen window.

The crabapple tree still had all of its crabapples, and he was quite sure that it shouldn't. Didn't they usually come midsummer? Didn't they usually ripen and fall before September?

But across the span of two weeks the leaves turned yellow and the redness of the apples was severe and tantalizing and it made him completely disinterested in doing the dishes that he was usually not-doing when he stood and watched out the window of his kitchen, ceramic plates in a neat pile submerged in lukewarm soapy water.

At the end of two weeks, he thought about the fact that all the crab apples were still there on the tree. They were gorgeously red. Almost burgundy. The leaves had all fallen and they were stark like kissable lips against the sky or the grass or the grey brown fence depending on how close he leaned toward the window.

He had not done the dishes once in these two weeks. Every day he had neatly organized the plates into piles, the cookware into groups, the silverware into a long red plastic cup and run the water and sloshed the bubbles and then stared. Utterly transfixed by the overripe, never falling crab apples. The others in the house must have been doing the dishes and they must have appreciated his preparatory work because no one had chided him yet. But it wouldn't have mattered if they did. Their scolding would seem so incredibly mundane (like the grass), profane (the grey brown fence), quotidian (the sky) against the color of the apples. They were that red.

What if they were some kind of signs? A beckoning portent of his own fate? A passage to Greater Truth? He knew he looked for too many signs, but:

what else could you look for in order to keep going? Certainly not the lukewarm dishwater.

And *fruit* on trees seemed an unneccessarily mythic temptation in any case, didn't it? The prosecuting believer and disbeliever bantered in his head on this point. He couldn't sort out which was which on this point.

What could possibly come of at least tasting the little fruit? He had heard them rumoured to be bitter, poisonous and too hard to chew, but two weeks of looking had eroded his confidence in this information.

What would happen if he partook? He couldn't shake the question even though no human lips had ever uttered it about his dilemma.

And he did also, yes, of course, understand, that such obsessions. Such persevoration. Such wanton desire --> might well, and fairly be described as a portal to mental instability. He might, just because he was asking the question, ignoring the dishes, weighing the absurd pros and cons --> be moving into the realm of the "mentally imbalanced."

His line of work gave him plenty of opportunity to work with the mentally ill. And frankly he thought that the lines between them and him were weak and tenuous. And maybe most important:

post hoc.

the mentally ill always became More So once they were labelled As Such.

And the nice thing about this fruit obsession was: that there were no obvious labellers. Even if, once he tasted the fruit he received some knowledge:

(yes, there was a god.)

(no, this world was not the place for him.)

(maybe: he would see Another Sign now that his eyes were *opened*.)

--> no one would be standing by to label his action as:

crazy.

so that unlike most of the mentally ill he knew, who became more so once they were labelled as such --> he would not neccessarily need to be thusly labelled. He would have a hundred new decisions that faced him (new knowledge or none: the later (none) confirming that the label (mentally ill / crazy / whatever), would-->indeed-->actually>>>be suitable for him...) if he found himself to be crazy or enlightened after the apples. He would still have many other choices to make before anyone would actually use the label on him.

And the label, by that time, may be a more comfortable fit for him. Or not. But he would have those choices later, because right now the only choice he could imagine was to:

drop the dishrag into the water, glance furtively back and forth at the front door and creep toward the tree....

He sucked in his breath, and his lungs felt cramped and too small for the possibilities of the air. He couldn't bring himself to drop the dishrag clenched in a wrung-dry ball in his hand. The bubbles in the water were gone. The color of the water was dingy and grey like the sink itself.

who ever thought of the name "choice" didn't understand what it was actually like to make one. choices were made for us, before we inherited appetites or saw the world for the first time and before we ever cared about anything in the world...