Playing Catch-Up

Three forward, one toe back,

Trailing scribbled lines across the snow,

Footsteps dance around the scattered birdseed.

In spite of neglecting this blog shamefully, I have been sticking to the resolve. Each day I HAVE been working on some creative act. (Well, with the possible exception of the last Steelers' game day. I do believe I was a waste, eating chicken wings and jumping up and down and screaming so as to wear myself out.) Not only a poem called "Winter Chickens", but also an Aser story "Sidelong", and two other short stories, one called "Fire" and the other "Wasting Time."

I think the poem and "Sidelong" are done. The other stories I'm still snarling over.

Then there is the pastel project I've been working on in the studio. Some days lately have been too cold and wet for working out there, and I have come to really hate the project, which is a practice lesson. Bernie observed my frustration, read the book I was working from, and pronounced that it was like Kliban's cartoon on how to draw a cat. He had drawn three circles in the first figure, added ears and whiskers and a tail in the second, and in the third, shown a lovely, realistic pen and ink of a sitting cat.

At this point, I agree with Bernie. The step-by-step photos look like the instructor started over on his sketch several times. Maybe he did. Maybe that's what we're supposed to do. Still, he could have said so. Shithead.

Excerpt from "Wasting Time:"

"Every day was the same, and that was good. Every day was the same, and that made me wish for anything different." She sat up on the ledge of the bath and looked at her reflection in the water. Pulling at her dripping hair, she turned her face from side to side, considering what she saw. "I hate my hair like this," she announced.

"Be patient," Margot muttered. "It'll grow out."

"I don't mean that! I mean it's already down to my shoulders in back and my nose in front and it takes an hour to dry! I look like a haystack with eyeballs."

And from "Fire:"

Kish opted to take two flat rocks and a stick, and roll three glowing embers onto one rock, covering it with the other. No one sleeping along the walls moved or noticed; he was free to stand, drape his blanket fur over his shoulders (making sure the edges did not drag on the ground and make a noise), and pad noiselessly on bare feet away from the fire.

To her, the dark-eyed one, who pleaded for fire. "Donai," she called it. He named her in the moonlight, "Ka-be-Donai" -- "Who Pleads For Donai."

He backtracked his own steps under the shine of the moon, glad that snow had stayed in the sky for so long

and not dropped to the ground to make his trail visible.

And from "Sidelong:"

Melody had to learn that however great her changes in her life had been, they didn't give her the right to quarrel with her company. And the Life That Guides the World knows that there are times in one's life when no amount of explanation is ever going to be enough. You could be the greatest orator on the crust of the world, but if you've somehow managed to fall afoul of your colleagues, you might as well just write the whole thing off and take your show on the road; either that or grow an alligator's hide and settle in to outlive them, hoping they don't have a penchant for reptile handbags.