Visit

I will dress carefully for our visit with you. Powder blue dress with the lace in strips down the front,  string-thin spaghetti straps slung over each shoulder Hair heavy, red with the scent of lavender, lemon grass, orange blossom bright and curly; a mane you’d call it if you were playing mother and I daughter. I will wear my mustard yellow suede pumps, the gold bracelet that you gave me (the sharp cut shell Grandma put on as an afterthought catching the light as it dangles from my right wrist).

I will dress my son in a new turquoise and white plaid button-up shirt and brown shorts, comb his too-long blond hair (I never comb his hair)and wish that I had been able to get it cut.

My daughter’s hair (going gold in the sun) I will leave wild like mine , curling as she grows. Don’t brush it, I keep telling her, the thick locks arranging themselves in waves around her still-round face that looks so much like my own. She will wear a dark blue dress with white embroidery on the chest and a brown braided belt. I will wish she had matching sandals, but the pale gray sports sandals will have to do.

And I know that when we arrive at your house you will be immaculately dressed and your house put together like a house out of a magazine, and you will offer me a wide smile and a hug and we will treat each other like strangers or rivals. We will be incredibly polite but there will be no warmth in it.

 

 

Unfinished thoughts…

A pair of birds are courting in a small tree in the backyard.

Green is coming through in such a pale shade that it only registers as green when you take in the  entire tree, the long row of trees that lines Wells Gray Avenue. The rain is so fine that it gusts like petals, blowing out, a skirt of moisture wrapped around the waist of the hill outside the sliding glass door. Serene, as my stormy son sleeps and my daughter attends school.

 

I want to write but to write–really write–means to draw blood, to tear open this sense of peace and find the turmoil beneath. Look at the ugliness inside me, the sense of failure and defeat. And it isn’t even the pain of my childhood that I shy away from, what hurts the most is the sense of uselessness of our lives, the cowards that we all have become.

 

As I get to know people it is always disappointing to see that they don’t seem to know what they are doing in love any more so than I do.

on Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

It’s the kind of novel that you don’t rush through, there is such a languidness to it. There is no way to walk quickly through the tall grasses along the shores of the lakes or through the repulsive, colourless landscape of the coal mining town that Lawrence describes. You cannot rush the interactions of the characters who must have their long silences where they wait unblinking for understanding to come, for a connection to be made. There is no turning away from the raw anguish that consumes Ursula or the iridescent love that passes like fire between Birkin and Gerald. The questions are asked slowly and carefully because they are big questions.

 How I abhor small talk, the meaningless little words, the surface chatter that is as dry and lifeless as dust. How one must steel oneself to exchange pleasantries, to smile impersonally as though the seething, dark, blood-red emotions beneath the surface did not exist. Sometimes it seems that such a long stretch of time passes between meaningful conversations that I hardly know how to have them anymore and I find myself shaking like an old woman with the barely contained emotions. And I am ashamed of myself for the strength of my opinions, for not being able to keep my cool. What incredible pleasure to simply be yourself, to feel without masking or attempting to alter how you feel in order to be more socially acceptable. What a sense of release one would feel to be unashamed and naked to speak only when there is something meaningful to say.

Sunny Day

I’m siting on our patio as my son has his morning nap with my Nook and a box of chocolates beside me, and my cat, Six-Toes, sitting at my feet. It is a brilliantly sunny day, though there is a cool wind blowing, but if you sit very still, stretched out on the warm red bricks you barely feel the wind at all. In this moment I am perfectly content and completely present.

Sensory Exercises adapted from: http://www.ehow.com/list_6507941_sensory-writing-activities.html

 

 

1. • Pick a place or room familiar to you. How would you describe it to someone who has never seen it? Write observations that fall into the categories of things, colors, sounds, smells and feelings. Write a description that calls on all the senses or just one or two of your choice.

   Here is an interesting exercise that draws attention to how and why we use different senses in our writing:

   • Bright Hub offers a lesson plan that asks readers to recognize the different senses to which a writer is appealing. Teachers give students crayons or colored pencils in five different colors. One color is assigned to each of the senses. Students go through a piece of writing and circle each sensory description with the appropriate color so they can see how the different senses are used in writing. They can also determine what sensory information is not being used and think about why.

     If you do the above exercise feel free to share what it was like on here. Was it interesting or surprising? Helpful?

 

Alais on the Hill (no dirty puns needed:D)

Here is post #3 which I put together in the pain and agony of the aftermath of falling clumsily down the mountain skiing on Blackcomb Mountain yesterday. I don’t know what happened, I just kept falling! My sweet husband didn’t laugh once, though my daughter and I were breathless with laughter as I lay there with snow up my back and down my pants. But how could I have been anything less than cheerful with the sun (mostly) out, a view that left me speechless, and Grandpa watching Henry the whole day ( oh, he made me pay for that last night. “What’s that Mommy? You want a day off? I’ll give you a day off…by crying for an hour before falling asleep! How d’you like them apples?”). So, not only am I one human-sized bruise, I’m also exhausted. But still smiling because it was SO worth it! And we’re going to do it all again today:D

This is not a photo blog but I promised pictures:

“What’s this?” you might be asking yourself right now. Unless I happen to be a fat baby an d the ski hill looks strangely like a subdued cat, I’ve put up the wrong picture. Well, for some reason I can’t put up those pictures so I decided to put a picture of my son harassing the cat instead….because I can.

Writing exercises:

• Take a piece of your writing that you have written in first person and rewrite it in third person, or vice-versa. You can also try this exercise changing tense, narrators, or other stylistic elements. Don’t do this with an entire book. Stick to shorter works. Once you commit to a style for a book, never look back or you will spend all of your time rewriting instead of writing.
• Try to identify your earliest childhood memory. Write down everything you can remember about it. Rewrite it as a scene. You may choose to do this from your current perspective or from the perspective you had at that age.
• Remember an old argument you had with another person. Write about the argument from the point of view of the other person. Remember that the idea is to see the argument from their perspective, no your own. This is an exercise in voice, not in proving yourself right or wrong.

Key

Key–Children’s Fiction

 

A key is full of possibilities. It can tell you things you would never have imagined if you hadn’t bent down to investigate the dull gold glint that caught the sun just as you were walking your usual, boring route to school at 8:35 on a Wednesday morning. A key can fill your head with ideas even when you aren’t the kind of person who usually has ideas, and you aren’t usually. But on that Wednesday morning when you found the smooth gold-coloured key the sheer volume of ideas and possibilities was so overwhelming that were late for school (you are never late for school. Your teachers call you “punctual” and your parents are always proud of the fact that you never have any Ls on your attendance record). As you rushed into the office to ask for a bright pink late slip you didn’t even think to be ashamed and when you walked into the classroom it didn’t bother you that all the students had turned their heads to look at the last person to get into class (usually it was Thomas, but even he had already hung up his backpack and sat down with his black binder on the desk) what was foremost in your mind was the warm feel of the gold key in your pocket, as though the key had captured a little bit of sun in it and now it was your little piece of sun, caught in the key that you had found.

You aren’t sure why this key is important but you are sure it is, it has to be. At recess you are reluctant to show it to your best friend Andrea, not just because she is playing elves with Rachel (who you don’t really like) but also because you’re not sure Andrea is going to understand how special this key is, or she might tell you to turn it in because it might belong to somebody. It belongs to you.

Post #1 for this week: Discovering the mirror in contact with threes

Written last night but I was too tired to finish it…..

Here are a couple of writing prompts for prose writing.

Prose Prompt – Write about someone discovering a key.

Prose Prompt – Write about a reflection in the mirror.

Prose Prompt – Write two pages (500 words) with the scenario of a character urgently needing to get in contact with a family member.

Prose Prompt – Write using the adage, “these things happen in threes.”

I am currently watching a movie called The Divide about a group of people in an apartment building who take shelter in the basement as they see their city get blown to bits by unknown invaders. Very suspenseful……