Origins

I've written in this space before about the various fictional projects I have underway. The current one on my plate, Purple Holly, is a novel and it's going well.

I decided to publish my daily excerpts in a separate blog, and invited a select number of people to check in occasionally to read the progress. It's an interesting way to motivate myself. But, given my penchant for slacking off, it's a good idea.

My daughter, Fallon, sent me an email from school (she's a junior in high school) yesterday which started a brief exchange that went like this:

Fal: I know you're not looking for opinion right now, but I really like what u have so far on your blog for purple holly.

Me: Thanks Fallon! How are you getting to KFC by the way? (she just landed a job at KFC)

Fal: walking it. haha

Me: Get a ride with Kyle! (Kyle's her boyfriend. He drives)

Fal: i would but he's walking home because his mom has to use the car today. hey, by the way.. what is your idea for purple holly? like what is your story line idea so far?

Me: The story line? Um...well. That's top secret. You'll have to keep reading :-P

Fal: Oh that's real cool. haha. didn't i have a doll named that or something?

Me: Yes. You had a doll when you were about Gabi's age and you named her Purple Holly. There is a doll in my novel. Named Purple Holly. There's also a girl in my novel. Named Purple Holly. I'm not saying anything more.

Fal: i know u want to tho

I share that for a couple of reasons. First, to illustrate that I do actually communicate with my children, even my 17-year-old. And this is the form in which in typically takes. I take what I can. She's a busy girl. She's 17. And I'm not cool. I do cringe at the complete evisceration of the English language at the hands of her generation, but beggars can't be whiners.

But also, I wanted to point out an example of how a story has its origins. How flimsy and fragile the idea-getting process tends to be.

The Purple Holly Premise: A 17-year-old boy, in a rural Maine town, aspires to be a great journalist someday and manages to convince the editor of the local newspaper to allow him to write a feature article. The editor, whom the main character looks up to, tells him he must choose a person and write their story. The main character, as part of his non-paying apprenticeship at the paper, collects arraignments at the county courthouse every Monday and one day spots Lucinda Jones, a girl his own age. Her mystical sense, her strangeness, attracts him in a journalistic way: He MUST write her story. So he pursues her, and after some resistance, she relents. But only if he agrees to give her a pseudonym, to protect her identity. She chooses Purple Holly. Through the course of the story, the main character comes to understand a lot about Purple: that she lives in poverty, that she is a wild girl, mystical, carefree, childlike in her view of the world. In the face of adversity, she has an optimistic, bright outlook. When the main character discovers the most shocking truth of Purple's existence, he decides he's ready to write his story for the paper, in large part to reveal the truth so that someone might intervene on her behalf. The end of the story is explosive, shocking, and nothing what people expect.

So that's the story, generally speaking, without giving anything away.

Now the pieces:

- I was a journalist for about a dozen years, so I draw on my experience, particularly as a court reporter who saw stories of physical, mental, and sexual abuse against women. Real stories.

- I've lived in rural towns in Maine and Vermont my entire life, so I draw on that.

- I knew a Lucinda Jones once. We all have, probably. She's the "strange" girl in class, the one who wears odd clothes, says odd things, is estranged from her peers because of her oddity. She's the one people pick on.

- Fallon, when she was about three, had a doll her mother and I gave her as a gift. She carried it everywhere. But it didn't come with a name. We would ask her the name of her doll, and she would always say she was thinking about it. Then, one day, while driving, from her car seat in the back, she said "I know the name of my baby." Playing along, I asked her for it. "Purple Holly."

I have no idea where she came up with it, but it hit me so hard I nearly drove off the rode. Not because I thought it would someday make a great novel. It was just a lightening strike kind of moment of inspiration. I put it away in my mental catalog for future use.

Fast forward 14 years and one day I'm playing the "what if" game that all writers play. In this particular case, I was stuck on a very simple premise: why are the Lucinda Joneses of the world so fascinating? What makes them the way they are? Non-conformists, against-the-stream, happy-in-their-own-world, etc.

I loved the notion of Lucinda, but notions don't make good stories.

After a few days, though, I had a newspaper, I had a courthouse, I had domestic violence, I had a narrator who wants to be a reporter, and I also had the ending.

See? There's no magic to it. Novels come from the far corners of your experience, get mixed together, and when the ingredients flash, and you see smoke, then you know you've created something that just might be a good story.

My Pretty Faces

Watched On Golden Pond with Corrine yesterday, a movie I have spotted in our collection from time to time but skip over deliberately. There are certain types of movies that illicit fear when I think of them.

Movies about cancer, particularly (Terms of Endearment, for example) and then there's On Golden Pond, the story of a curmudgeonly Norman Thayer and his wife Ethel, who own a camp on Golden Pond in Maine.

It's a movie about death, and the inevitability of the ends of things we love. Throughout we see images of decay and death: the screen door that has come off it's hinges; Ethel's wooden doll, Elmer, who took a nose-dive off the mantel and into the fireplace; the death of Miss Appley, the 90-year-old "lesbian"; and of course the loons. The loons are a constant symbol of lifelong companionship and when one is found dead during a fishing excursion, it becomes a symbol of the eventual demise of Norman and Ethel's companionship.

We don't see anyone die. Not like in Terms of Endearment, which has that horrible scene in the hospital when Emma Horton's children come to say good bye.

Yuck.

On Golden Pond has a different effect on me than the cancer movies. On Golden Pond is about a camp, on a lake, and a couple who have lived and loved for many years, but who now are faced with not having that anymore.

One of the more poignant scenes comes early when Ethel sends Norman out to pick strawberries and he gets lost at the end of their lane, a lane in a wooded thicket he has visited a million times before.

He manages to find his way back eventually, and when Ethel presses him on why he came back so damn quickly, he explodes.

Do you want to know why I came back so fast with my little bucket? I got to the end of our lane and I ... couldn't remember where the old town road was. I went a little way into the woods, and nothing looked familiar, not one tree. And it scared me half to death. So I came running back here, to see your pretty face, and to feel that I was safe. That I was still me.

I get all choked up when he gets to that part. Every time. Because I feel it for him. This bent old man hobbling down a wooded lane, looking for the pretty face he's known his whole adult life, his safe harbor. The one that makes him feel that he is still himself.

The thing is, there's a lot going on here, for me anyway. I suppose that's what makes fiction so powerful. You can relate to the really good stories on multiple levels.

There's the fact that my parents, who turn 70 this year, are celebrating their 50th this Saturday. They are Norman and Ethel, just younger. And by no means is either of them close to retiring from this earth. But, they will not go on forever. They will come to the end of their own lane at some point, and not turn back to hurry home.

Then there's a couple I knew who actually had a summer camp, on Hogan Pond, and whose son was and still is my best friend. I used to spend a lot of time at that camp, and it is as close to the Thayer's in its rusticity as is possible. We boated, we swam, we listened to the pine needles tapping on the roof.

Fran and Larry, the couple who owned the camp, saw their companionship come to an end with the death of Fran this past winter. She was barely in her 60s. I spoke to Ted, their son, recently who mentioned opening up the camp for the season. The first one in Ted's life without his mother. The first one for Larry without his wife's pretty face. And it was a pretty face. For many of us.

And then there is my own mortality. It's a ways off, I would hope, but it is there nonetheless. Like for all of us. And it isn't the end part I fear. Because when it comes, I won't know. Not consciously. What I fear is the notion - the one presented in the story - of something beautiful ceasing to exist.

It's a heady reality. An idea that shakes me up: of all those strings of my life falling away - the ones that connected me in a thousand ways to beautiful things. Pretty faces all.

Fragalicious

- I received my course preference form from the University of Maine this week. It reads like a 1040 Federal Tax Form, complete with muddled directions; a heart-felt Greetings From Farmington form letter with NINE reminders that I need to have the form to them by June 26; and the assorted assembly of paperwork, each in contradiction to the other, and therefore underscoring the imperative that I get a degree so that I can understand long forms.

- Play rehearsal for Never Too Late entered the full-run-through stage this week. This is where we run through the entire show three times a week on the lead-up to the dress rehearsal which is June 16. Out of books and on their own, the actors are now responsible for their own lines, NO PROMPTS. Two weeks from last night, we're live, ladies and gentlemen. Muahahahahahahaha.

- Griffin, who turns one at the end of the month, waves, growls, says "kitty" and puts up both hands and shrugs when you say "Where's ______?" He's flirty and handsome and a comic. To the ladies of the class of 2026, watch out!

- I woke up with some sort of rash on the palms of my hands. But no hair, so masturbating is still a safe bet. If I were to ever resort to masturbating, I mean. Does it bother you that I keep saying masturbate? They say that 98 percent of all men do it, and like, 10 percent of all women blush when you talk openly about it. But, you can make statistics say anything. And besides, who can trust a survey conducted by Vaseline? Am I rubbing you the wrong way? Is this subject matter hard to take? Oh, get a grip.

- My oldest daughter, Fallon, had a job interview Wednesday. She's 17. This is her first foray into the workforce. Did you hear that? It was seven new strands of gray hairs sprouting upon my head.

- At some point I'm going to have to see a dentist. I lost a part of a filling, and my tongue cannot leave it alone. Always excavating and investigating, it has turned the tiny hole into a full-blown cave. And now the nerve is starting to throb. Should I wait until it's infected? Should I put it off until the decay invades my jaw bone and half my face balloons up and it becomes an abscess and requires sedation?

- Corrine and I are trying to adopt, something I have not blogged about here. Her blog Buckfield's Mad Momma has been chronicling our adventures in DHHS Land. You should check it out.

Your Love Is a Green Hill

Big brother you
How do you do?
Come play with me Today

For tomorrow you'll be
A busy bee
And I shall miss your stay

A moment in the grass
Is all I ask
With a ball and a little sun

Upon this hill
We'll roll until
We've had our share of fun

Big brother you
How do you do?
I know your time is Gold

But keep in mind
Your gift of time
Is a treasure at least 10-fold

So when the time has come
That green hills are done
And we've moved onto something new

I know I'll recall
My love above all
For the hill and Big Brother You

Good Fellers

Had to drop an old tree today that had died over the winter. I looked out our kitchen window a week ago and noticed, in the foreground of our lush acreage, a lone biddy, naked from the trunk up.

We're not sure how old the tree was. We inherited it with the mortgage, along with the pond, the two-and-a-half acres of forest, the rock wall borders and the leaky leech bed.

The tree, looking down the property toward the east, stood to the southerly side, 50 yards from the pond, 20 or so yards from the south wall, and a million or so leaves from being a sapling.

We wonder the story of her; did she have a stiff upbringing? Was she tall for her age? What was her favorite autumn color? Did she have any friends, like the blossoming apple tree up the hill? Certainly not the thicket of snobbish firs out past the pond.

My father helped, bringing with him his oily, toothy chainsaw. He angled out a thick slice of the trunk first, laboring mightily. To and fro, slicing the spinning chain through and out and through again. The saw screamed and sputtered, kicked and growled. The tree stood.

Dad went 'round the other side and cut a thin line with the saw, deep, and we then took turns hammering a wedge into the slit as a way of encouraging her topple.

She stood.

A bigger saw was then employed, six inches longer and fatter and meaner. Dad sliced deeper still, pulling the saw back and forth, revving the engine, backing off, plunging it further still.

She stood.

I had an up-slope view of the trunk and could see daylight through the cut on one side and the pizza-slice wedge missing on the other. In the dead middle, an inch of wood kept the whole lady upright, an aging ballerina on point.

We drove a thicker wedge into the slit and both of us in turn pounded it deeper and deeper, and slowly we began to hear cracking, as if the knuckles of her toes were popping.

A breeze came down from the west, over the top of the house, across the upper lawn and nudged her upper branches.

And then, gracefully, she tipped over and landed with a remarkable softness across our lower lawn. Pointing north by northeast, branches straight upward like a diver's arms.

Now, she lay across the lawn, and from the deck of our house, the property seems out of balance. Where a pillar once stood we now find clear blue sky, while below, old biddy finally rests.

A Question of Verse

I don't like fads very much. I don't like following the flock of lemmings to their inevitable cliff edge, and then descent to their deaths.

Which is why I reluctantly chose free verse for Purple Holly

Purple being the novel I'm working on.

Verse being a form of novel-writing that, over the past decade, is gaining popularity.

I chose it, however, because the form felt comfortable in my hands. The way it forces the writer to be very sharp in his writing and the way it evokes emotion with an economy of words.

The verse novel hit it big time with Out of the Dust, Karen Hesse's story about the Dust Bowl of the mid 30s.

It came out in 1998 and I bought it back then. That was my introduction to the verse novel. I was intrigued. I liked the story. I was at first put off by the verse.

But I got used to it. And came to appreciate its power.

Fast forward to 2009. And here I am, doing initial character work for Purple Holly when it dawns on me just how much verse fits the style and tenor of the story.

Here's an excerpt.

A woman in a black suit

Sits in a chair at the foot of my

bed

Smiling the smile of a compassionate aunt

A vague relation at a funeral

Head slightly tilted

Dull eyes. The eyes of a woman who has seen

too much sad


Andrew?


I nod.

I think I nod anyway. A haze

of unreality makes my

head swim

There's the hint of pain in my

side. A searing stitch

And then there are the tubes in my arm


My name is Hester Lynne.

I'm with Child Protective Services, Andrew


Hester? Did she say

Hester?


The police want to talk to you

But I told them I needed to

first

I'm a psychiatrist, Andrew

I have to establish that you

are stable


Hester the Psychiatrist is

here to make sure my

head is not going to roll

off my shoulders


What?


Trauma affects people in different ways

Andrew


There is a window in my hospital room

through which I can see

the leafless maples and elms

of autumn

down on Fair Street


The brown of the dead

the mirthlessness that

the end of October brings

before the start of snow


I want to talk to you about

what happened so that I can

determine your

state of mind


Fair Street is straight

and bordered by the naked trees

before it intercepts Main Street

with her soldierly brick and historic

wooden buildings


I can see the clock tower of the

Opera House at the end

of Main Street

And beyond it, the ridge of

forest: denuded hardwoods, stoic conifers


Over that ridge somewhere is

Owens Mills, last stop

before the White Mountains of

New Hampshire


It affects our memory

Trauma I mean, Andrew

It can play tricks. When someone has

been through a tragedy


I look back at Hester the Sympathetic

Psychiatrist


Tragedy ... ?


Suddenly I know what it feels like

to be high on something

There's stomach-tickling levitation

A disconnectedness

A lifting up out of reality, not fully

Slightly

Just barely

Toes hovering above the ground

A giddy feeling, where words seem spoken through

a gauze


Yes. A tragedy

Andrew, maybe we should start with your story?


Story ... ?


A blink takes me an hour

Hester holds a sheaf of papers in her

hand

Holding it up


You write very well, Andrew


Yes. I know


I'm getting higher, it seems, and the stitch

in my side is slip-sliding away


Tell me about Purple Holly

That's the first chapter. So far. It could very well end up not in it at all, or greatly altered. The point is, that's verse. A free-flowing, non-rhyming, chunky narrative. When it's well done, it's evocative and direct and powerful.

In some recent verse novels (written primarily for the preteen and teen groups) the verse floats all over the page, and in others, dialogue is offset to the right while the narrative is on the left.

I'm going to finish it in this form, and delay judgment until then.

We'll see.

Pic This

Took six rolls of 35mm film into Walgreens yesterday. Thought I'd offer a few of the results here.

Ty got glasses this year, and is hitting the ball better than ever in the local organized town league, where 10-year-olds are just learning to pitch curve balls and stop picking the uniforms out of their asses. Some anyway. Here, at home, Ty gears up for a homer.


Gabrielle's kitty, Peekaboo, thinks she's a dog. She wrestles with Samwise and bullies Gimli away from the food dish. Here, she's the master of the jungle, on the prowl. For that elusive, vomit-inducing blade of grass.

Easter, 2009. Corrine, Griffin and Nana Greene commiserate. Griffin wants to know how Nana keeps her hair that way. You know. All white and fluffy like clouds.

Fallon's Prom. I like this picture a lot. I'm not blinking, drooling, yawning, or sneezing. I like that our earrings almost match.

Lupines we planted this spring. One of a few out front. Aint it perty...?

I love Griffin's expression. Doesn't it say "You expect me to get in there? It's got Gabi's ass in it."

Griffin loves his Mommy. And the camera.

If this couldn't go on the cover of L.L. Bean's catalog, nothing should. She takes this blanket everywhere. It smells it too.

I had to ask Corrine what this was. And then I had to look up its spelling. It's a rho-do-den-dron.

Fallon, prom again, this time next to someone cuter than me, Harrison. Here, she is impersonating Carol Burnett. He's thinking "Who the hell is Carol Burnett, Dad?"

Fallon and Gabrielle. She cried when Fallon drove away with her date, Kyle. "My best friend,' she calls him. I fear for the lives of every girl Gabi ever meets. They don't stand a chance.

Fallon a la Macarena.

Alyssa, with weapon, and Harrison, weighing his options. Memorial Day whiffle ball game in our back yard. These two are the same age, and one of them is supremely competitive. Hint: it's the one with the legs.

Gorgeous meets handsome. Alyssa's prom 2009. Same prom as Fallon's. I did her hair.

Gorgeous meets adorable. Gabrielle was terrified of being held by Alyssa because, in her words, "I all dirty" If Alyssa could not pose for a magazine, no one should. And people wonder why her father is bald...

Alyssa, Memorial Day whiffle ball game in our back yard. She may not be athletic, but she gets an A for effort. (And, truthfully? She's much more athletic than people give her credit for.)