Derailed - the embarassing update

Thai style hot sauce

Leaving my private practice and going back to full-time-with-benefits is a great decision, a very interesting new opportunity, and a little stressful (nightmare! What was I thinking! Why oh why did I not check their references? I know they checked mine!) 

My leave-taking was emotional for me and my families; I’ve had several in tears this week. This is good work I do: meaningful, personal, heart work. I see the results of my clinical and personal skills and really, how could I ask for much more?

Well, I have asked for more. I’ve asked for a job with health insurance and paid holidays and less driving around. And I’ve gotten that, and delighted to have it, in this unstable economy.  (But in retrospect, having work that I enjoy and doing it for as long as my beautiful and incredibly supportive wife has health insurance that covers me too — well, there is just more than one way to do things, isn’t there?)

So I’m saying goodbye (so I said goodbye to some and said hello to some new kids just yesterday ) to my current families (with the little ones, I sometimes work with them weekly for as much as two years), and it’s stressy and exciting, and that’s made me tired and the long and short of it is now I’ve got strep throat (babies = germ vectors). Derailed my Nablopomo commitment to post every day for the month of July (topic of the month is food).

Oh well. Maybe next month I’ll earn my merit badge.

I’ll be back after the cold medicine kicks in and try again.

Recipe:

Hot and sour soup is a terrific remedy for sore throats. I make it like this:

Chicken or vegetable broth
Lemon juice
Sriracha
Lemon grass

Heat it up. Drink it hot. Kills germs or at least stuns them.

Drafty in here

On my fiction blog, Cuentos, I am in the habit of tossing in freewrites without judging or editing, and this has worked well for me, I think. Here at Trees, though, where I am theoretically exploring creative non-fiction, I’ve got actually dozens of drafts rotting in my manage files, and I am afraid they are stuck there. Why is that? I am somewhat reminded of my journalism internship back in dark wet moldy Seattle. I believed I was an unreliable source of factual information, and found myself wretchedly unsure of my ability to report the facts of the council meetings and “about town” features that I was assigned. To report “facts” at all, actually. I’m given to hyperbole, equivocation and dithering (the robin was 7 feet tall, well almost, well metaphorically, and maybe it wasn’t a robin, maybe it was a shadow or something someone told me or I just heard it somewhere). And sometimes I say things because of how they sound instead of how they mean. I’m pretty sure my internship advisor would still shudder and turn away if she ran into me in a back alley somewhere.

So for no other reason than here I am, awake and ungrounded, here are a few fact-lets (or they may be fict-lets) about my life of late:

1. The geese are frisky due to spring. This is a good time to pat their soft chests (they come running when called) and chat, but a bad time to turn your back on them (they do not ask for your phone number first, they just grab ass and go for it).
2. The elder patients are feeling good with the warm sun heating their bones. Less dying, more sparking.
3. The babies are rowdy and physical, and prone to throw things in one’s face. Exuberant, but no finesse. One split my lip a couple weeks ago. Ha-ha-ha-HA! he said. Little heathen.
4. The lilac is in bloom. It is too big to be a bush now, more like a lilac tree.
5. The friends are lining up to visit. Ah, the bosque in the spring! Warm, green, sleep with the windows open.
6. The missus and I will take a week off in May and stay home to play lady farmers together. Don’t tell anyone, cause we want quiet time in the garden together.
7. We rented our friend’s fire station to a children’s theatre troupe, because they will use the dance floor (used to be the firetruck bay) as it is intended to be used. And because we liked them. They have a St. Bernard named Menaleus.
8.  I am paying attention to the primaries, but even thinking about what a mess it is makes me want to talk about the seven foot robin mentioned above. So never mind.
9. My mom has moved home and is walking, making her own meals, dressing and bathing herself, and getting physical therapy at home three times a week. Pretty good after almost five months in a nursing home.
10. I’m saving money to build a new chicken coop. I’ve almost got it now, but usually something happens to eat the money before it gets done.
11. Our very sweet nephew, Ed, graduates from high school next month. He wants a membership to the ACLU for his 18th birthday, and cash for graduation. He is a good boy. In my head he is often still six years old, playing pirate in the yard.
12. I think I’ll give up private practice and go work in the schools for a while. Summers off. Benefits. Still ambivalent, but the academic schedule is very appealing. Last summer driving around all day doing home therapy was like getting in and out of a pizza oven. I’m dreading the coming months already.
13. It’s about time for another all-day writing retreat here at Casa de Bosquechica. More planning this time - the last one needed more structure.
14. Mrs. Bosquechica is looking for a job. Her funding is way gone now. Anyone need a brilliant systems analyst with a background in medical research?
15. I’m in the mood to go hiking, biking and camping, but have been spending weekends working. This seems fundamentally wrong.
16. I’d like to go back to sleep now, or if not that, I’d like to write a great play or a poem, or decide what to be or do next with my life. Maybe that’s the problem.

Goodnight or good morning, wherever and whoever you may be.

 

Apes and aphids

A few thoughts about writing:

I’ve started writing fiction and poetry in small groups again after a long break. In these I work freewrite style, loose and open associations with timed writings — see Red Ravine for more on that, they are the awesome goddesses of writing practice. I love fiction and poetry, and often have no idea what I’m writing about until I’ve read it aloud.

My latest piece of timed writing, The physics lesson of Australopithecus, (written Monday in 30 minutes) is sitting percolating over at Cuentos, my fiction and poetry blog. It is a circular prose poem about time and evolution (I think). The phrase “apes and aphids” is tucked into the piece somewhere and it caught my eye.

Now, in writing practice it’s not unusual to write things like “apes and aphids” without thinking about it, and then wonder where the phrase came from. Typically, I can’t resist the urge to google and today found that ”apes to aphids” referenced both other poets and the biological sciences. Nice. I am a poet with a background in the sciences; it all makes sense.

Then I keep looking: From the Universidad Completense Madrid, I find lists of published works on the biological sciences, housed in the Royal Society of London.

These include:

Self-sacrificing gall repair by aphid nymphs;
Humans deceived by predatory stealth strategy camouflaging motion; and
A naked ape would have fewer parasites

I love all of these titles.

 Then, as I’m fiddling around linking at will, I discover that wow, Red Ravine is writing about bugs today too! Coincidence? But then again, I just stepped on a bug in my hallway in the middle of the night and had to scrub my foot in the sink (ugh), so I guess it’s just spring.

In summary, isn’t writing amazing?

Chickens with singers’ names

  Today someone found Trees for the Forest by searching “chickens with singers’ names”. I love that. I wish I had a chicken named Aretha Franklin or maybe Lori Anderson or Bono. I replicated the search (not having anything else to do, apparently) and was surprised to find Moonbeam McQueen at the top of the list. Small world, isn’t it?

I’ll be getting back to work here at Trees. So many things to say. Marriage, family, animals, springtime, woeful feelings, career indecision, poetry, politics, my ongoing discussion with myself about what I want to be when I grow up and I wish it was a beachcomber, like it always says on the Chinese astrology placemats. But enough about me. My main point is I’m trying to come out from under the bed and join in again.

Five Years Ago, I . . .

(To keep things moving, I’m tossing this out there without the pictures from Africa and without the links that my good intentions wanted me to provide.) 

 

Lost my grand-dad. Bye old guy!

Scattered his ashes in the mountains outside of Las Cruces.

Finalized buying the old adobe house from my wife’s parents.

Worked mostly in Spanish that year.

Had tea in bed every morning, with the globe and an atlas propped up between us, learning the names of all the African nations and their capitals.

Grew tomatoes, grapes, pears, plums, onions, garlic, basil and apples. Daffodils, tulips, irises.

Wrote one piece of short fiction almost every week.

Went to Uganda for the international dance festival at the Ndere Centre in Entebbe, where I discovered exactly how white I am. I was one of six light-skinned people in a festival attended by over 6,000 Africans from various nations (three of them were Austrian). The festival took place about six weeks before we started bombing Iraq; I was angry, outraged, and pretty-well petrified to be travelling at that particular moment, with our government hijacked by criminals and my fellow-citizens apparently having lost their collective minds.

On the opening day, I sat roughly 10 feet away from Ugandan President Musevene while he made a very angry speech about the interference of American and European white people in African business, cultural and political affairs. My two friends and I had been seated more-or-less next to him, but were separated by a ring of armed guards. The festival was incredible, high stomping, enormous drums, colorful, with movement that blended some of the conventions of missionary teaching with older dance traditions that expressed sexuality, war, hunting, with the relatively recent influences of modern dance, mixed media performance and pop culture trends from African, European and American sources. For the traditional African dancers, it was the first time most of them had performed together on a single stage.

Attended the going away party of a retiring Anglican priest who was moving to Scotland after 45 years of teaching dance and self-sufficiency to young women in Kampala. Kampala is a hot crowded city, smoke rising in trash can fires all over the city, maribou storks hovering like crows in the mango trees. My friends were tense and angry and closeted and sarcastic. I smoked American cigarettes on the balcony and choked on the urban air. The storks were enormous, prehistoric, almost hip height to me.

After the festival, I flew alone (at last!) from Uganda to Naorobi to Amsterdam. I wandered the streets of Amsterdam late at night until I came to the Café Kale, where I ordered beer, soup and kale pesto with crusty bread.

Back at home, we were maced at a peace rally by mounted Albuquerque police. Hid in a sandwich shop with two dudes who kept saying “Whoa man, we should really shut down.”

Acquired two new cats, the blue-eyed husky and a pair of lovebirds.

Took sides when my friends in Uganda split up. I’m a big fool sometimes.

Saw the little nieces and nephews frequently. Their favorite games at the time were role playing, yoga, fencing and playing dragon in the yard, storytelling and making scrambled eggs.

Had a major flood (in an act of rural vandalism) that almost collapsed the house (it is made of mud). Moved from room to room for almost three months as we rebuilt, keeping the fridge in the front yard the entire time. Good look, that.

Learned to make pie crust.  

Next: Five years from now, I . . .

NaNo Nanette

Nanowrimo? Nano-Nanaimo? Nano-Nano? Nanoblomo? What to do? What to do?

Here is a synopsis of musical comedy No No Nanette (distilled from the already distilled Wikipedia):

Jimmy Smith, rich Bible publisher, is married to cheap Sue. Their ward, Nanette, has an untapped wild side and wants to have fun in Atlantic City. She is being courted by Tom Trainor. Rich Jimmy is being blackmailed by three beautiful women (Betty, Winnie and Flora). Tom Trainor’s lawyer uncle, Billy, helps him get the girls out of his life, and advises him to hide in Philadelphia (?). Meanwhile, Billy takes Tom to Chickadee Cottage (in Atlantic City) to meet the three ladies. The wives, hearing that the husbands will be away on business, also go to Chickadee Cottage. After much singing and dancing, Jimmy also takes Nanette to Chickadee Cottage, chaperoned by a grumpy maid.

At Chickadee Cottage, everything happens. Tom and Nanette sing wistfully about getting married, wives and husbands confront one another about naughty thoughts and jaded ladies.  Tom and Nanette quarrel, the chaperone leaves in disgust, Jimmy pays off the ladies, and there are explanations all round. Tom and Nanette make up,  they all have a party, and cheap Sue wows Jimmy with a fancy dress and a final dance number.

Ta-da.

Which leads me to a non-binding resolution, that I will write something, or some things, this year, although life being complicated even without musical comedy, I do not guarantee that I will participate or not in the assorted Nanos floating around in the cyber playpen.

How’s that for commitment?

Maybe I need a trip to Atlantic City.

Here’s a link

To the novel-in-progress.

Crazy. 

Mayhem, Texas.

Nanowrimo and how it’s working so far

I’m writing on a word document, researching on-line, pasting the bits and pieces into Nanowrimo, and trying not to worry about the process too much. Here and there my instinct is to identify a section as the beginning of a chapter, and I’m assuming things will change.

My characters do seem to have their own thoughts and pasts. My job seems to be to provide enough information for them to tell their own stories. Like the fascination with storms that goes back to their (Zola and Billy) adolescence, and how some people need to run away and others need to stay. 

I have a certain amount of fear of my own ignorance, also of creating a fictional town in a real geographical location. So I’m blending what I know with what I don’t, to try and get a composite.

I haven’t figured out how or if non-participants can get in to view, but when I update the story this weekend, I’ll take another crack at that.

Approaching

I am working on my novel (Mayhem, Tx) at Nanowrimo. Right now I am researching historical descriptions of storms approaching. I have 1400 words so far; a little behind. I’m afraid of my main character. Or I’m not sure that he is the main character. Probably should blast through that. They are all dancing on sticks in my head, like a little puppet show. More like Punch and Judy than characters in a coherent story. But the outline is there. Writing is an act of faith, que no?

Excitement!

I’m just getting started on NaNoWriMo; will write a novel in 30 days. Pulled up this piece I’ve been meaning to work on for ages. I’ll be posting the process on the NaNoWriMo site, if I can get it to work. I’ve been kicking at it for about 30 minutes now; I think the traffic is too heavy.

Update: their interface is clunky, but it still beats sitting around whining about how I “should” be writing more.

Off to write fiction.