RIP – Walter Cronkite
Posted on 17. Jul, 2009 by Deb.
Most of you wouldn’t know that I have a degree in Broadcasting. I worked for the NBC Affiliate in Dallas as well as ABC News. I majored in broacasting because of Walter Cronkite. It’s heartbreaking that he is gone.
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Magnetic Words: Rhythm
Posted on 16. Jul, 2009 by Deb.
Music is as much a part of my life as words. Not that many nights ago, I had mentioned to The Boy that a constant soundtrack plays in my head throughout the day. My tastes are quite pedestrian to most, but still diverse. I like music I can sing or music that makes me want to dance. Especially music that I can sing, as I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember, though I haven’t done it in public in ages. When I listen to a song, I hear the rhythm of the words and the melody. I’m not much of a poetry writer, though I have dabbled there. I admire a good poem, just as I admire a good book or a good song. Poetry often depends upon the rhythm of the words.
Maybe it’s time I dabble back in poetry a bit.
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Magnetic Words, Day Five
Posted on 15. Jul, 2009 by Deb.
The pile of magnetic words originated from two collections: Art & Literature. I knew eventually I would draw a color. Today, the word of the day is blue. Two thoughts come to my pre-caffeinated mind: “Robin Egg’s Blue” and “Cerulean”.
Several months back, I was suffering from a severe case of writer’s block. When The Boy asked why I hadn’t written in weeks, I told him I couldn’t think of a thing to say. He suggested I baby step back into writing and describe my morning walk. The sky that day was a beautiful Robin Egg Blue. I baby stepped into writing again after that.
And Cerulean. I love the way the word rolls off my tongue when I say it.
I had wondered what a simple color would say to me when it came to writing and I immediately knew when the simple blue appeared on my refrigerator door. Words are another form of art, and getting a reader to see through a writer’s eyes depends upon descriptive words. Blue is the parent to a whole rainbow of blues. It’s an angel’s azure eyes, an officer’s navy uniform, a teenager’s teal prom dress, and my cotton cornflower nightgown.
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Magnetic Words: Observe
Posted on 14. Jul, 2009 by Deb.
I wrinkled my nose when I first saw my word for today: Observe. Wasn’t the point of this exercise to get me doing, not just watching? Then I recalled the words of those who have gone before me. Writers who have published multiple books. In order to write, you have to live and observe life.
From Breena Clarke author of River, Cross My Heart and Stand the Storm:
There is balance as a writer. It is a solitary profession in many respects. One thing that has been fortunate for me is that before my first book was published, I worked full time in an office and part time at my writing. After River, Cross My Heart, I was able to write full time. I do have a lot of buddies and friends, I’m married and I have my dogs. I have a nice little social circle, and when I was working full time, I used public transportation. Having contact with people, just looking at them and watching them, is a great asset. It’s interesting to try and read what they are thinking, seeing their faces and bodies and attitudes and being sketch out them as characters. I have continued to do that when I can. Now that writing full time, one thing that was most difficult was (took an early retirement) was the thought I could write all day. I thought how fabulous it would be, but it doesn’t work that way. No one works twenty-four-hours a day. It took me quite awhile to achieve a schedule. For the first time, I was in charge of my whole schedule.
From an interview with author, screenwriter, and television producer George Pelecanos:
It was at a point that many hardboiled detective novels were more about the WHY rather than the WHO. I had gone down there (with the police) and hung out and done the street work, and I saw a different possibility and changed direction. I look at it as a form of reporting and you have to feel the dirt between your fingers. I talk to people, and I listen. An afternoon of work can consist of walking into a bar and ordering a beer and listening to people talk, riding the bus down the avenue, or just getting outside and hanging out with people. What I try to do is to front load all my research – spend a couple of months being out there – with police, prison, parole officer, humane society officers. It’s part of the job. You have to get enough ammunition to write a book, then come home and lock yourself in for five or six months – day and night – and everything (due to my research) is there at my feet.
When you are researching, I keep it all in my head. It intimidates people when you pull out a pad or a tape recorder. Then, when you get home, you make your notes.
The trick now, is to take those observations and write them down into something substantial and cohesive.
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Magnetic Words, Day Three
Posted on 13. Jul, 2009 by Deb.
In the dark last night, I shuffled the magnetic word pile, allowing my fingers to grope and pluck until five words had been chosen.
I held them in my hand. I could feel the heat of the words; it was as if they would burn through my fingers if I didn’t look at them. But I couldn’t. Look, that is. It was against the rules of the game as the word of the day cannot be seen until the morning when it is placed on the refrigerator door do the right of the handle. And even though I am the one making the rules, I can’t break them.
At least not yet.
The kitchen still dark, I open my hand and gently place the words – one by one – on the side. These would be my words for the work week. My hand was still warm from the words as I climbed into bed for the night. I could hear them whispering to me in my dreams, begging me to “pick me” in the morning.
***********************************************
Pre-coffee, I reached around the side of the fridge and chose a word. I could feel the heat emanating from all of them, but I can only choose one. I slide it into its space for the day and allow myself to finally gaze upon it. Today, the word is from The Boy.
I could hear this word roll off his tongue and into my ear. It’s whispered to me with his growly bear voice, the one reserved for mornings and intimate moments. When I try the word upon my own tongue, it sounds foreign. So I will keep it in my ear all day. And when I think it or type it, it it comes out only in his voice, a gift to me.
“Glorious,” he says to me. “You, my baby, are glorious. Now be a good girl, and write.”
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Magnetic Words: Compose
Posted on 12. Jul, 2009 by Deb.
I closed my eyes, reached into the pile of magnetic words, and gingerly plucked one. I kept the word face down until I made my way to the refrigerator, turned it over and placed it in the space beside the handle. I find that, though quiet at times, my guiding spirit is ever present and speaking to me, so I am sure that it was a purposeful nudge that sent me in the direction of this word today instead of canvas or green.
I look at the word and listen to my heart as the voice whispers in my ear my word for today: “Compose.”
“Create,” says the voice. “And while you are at it, pull yourself together.”
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Magnetic Words: Grace
Posted on 11. Jul, 2009 by Deb.
I mentioned the pile of magnetic words the other day. In some ways, they are still mocking me, but I am beginning to make friends with them in small ways. I figure if I make friends with them, they won’t be mean to me. Well, maybe not as mean to me.
This morning, I found a single word on the refrigerator door: GRACE
From Webster’s:
2 a: approval, favor barchaic : mercy, pardon c: a special favor : privilege d: disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency e: a temporary exemption : reprieve
I took “grace” to heart this morning as the words played through my head: mercy – kindness – pardon – reprieve. It was the perfect word to find as I struggled to wake and began to prepare my first cup of coffee.
I’ve been off the last month or so. Nothing most of you around here would notice, unless you knew me pre-Tumblr. Know on days when I am reblogging a photo someone posted or sending you to interesting news pieces from around the globe, I am doing it because I care about the world around me and I care about what you care about – because it’s important enough to you to make you laugh or make you cry.
When asked what I am, for years I have said I am a writer. It isn’t about a want, it is a need. Words play in my head from the moment I wake and often haunt me when I sleep. One of my biggest problems is that I allow reality to creep in too much and lose sight of my inner child. Needing to be in touch with that inner child is critical, but you cannot behave as a child when it comes to craft. I am too undisciplined and too emotional – and that has got to change. I must find the way to corral the child’s enthusiasm and love into a disciplined practice.
I know that it may start slowly. Discipline isn’t something you can just strap on and wear as you would a new pair of shoes. It is something that has to be cultivated and tended. And in some ways, it begins with grace.
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Magnetic Words
Posted on 08. Jul, 2009 by Deb.
There is a pile of magnetic words on my desk and they are mocking me.
green angry purple who
soft stroke drunk instrument
grace nude white free
death give art canvas
I used to arrange them in little phrases on the dry erase board that hung next to the desk. But then they became relegated to a few phrases on an old food tin with the balance of the words gathering dust in a coffee cup.
While I was at work yesterday, my daughter found them and joyfully pulled them out of their dusty home. And rearranged the phrases on the tin container. Laughing, she showed me how the words “hard” and “on” had become stuck together. She showed me the words she put inside a compartment of the tin “so empty”.
The words above were in the pile, but to the left, all alone, is the word “approach”. As much as the pile is mocking me, the word to the side is reminding me that the words are still there. They are just waiting for me to get away from some of my fear of stringing them together to once again form phrases and sentences and paragraphs. Fear is a powerful thing and I must master it and overcome it.
I need to focus on the new phrases that my daughter set out for me
I can feel the joy
live life
create music
passion
I see why you write
imagine
shimmer
impression
they demand it
passion
from me to you
glorious experiment
Here is to overcoming fear. Finding my words. And focus on the new word that I’ve pulled aside: “soon”. Time for this girl to head to my client’s office. I hope ya’ll have a great morning.
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The Back Porch
Posted on 21. Jun, 2009 by Deb.
I have reclaimed my back porch. For the first time in four years, there are flowers and herbs for the pure pleasure of having them.
A combination of work and travel and household dynamics led to the almost abandonment of the backyard as a place to be and was a part of the burden of upkeep of a house. This house had become a burden, not a home.
Through the mirth of a happy accident, I fell in love. I began to realize this house could, if desired, be a home. A home where I could build my life with someone who I was madly in love with. A man who loves me back with as much (or more) passion. Bit by bit, as we began to plan for our future, I began to see this house as a haven from the storm.
And I began nesting.
About once a week, I would clean out a drawer or clean out a closet. I had realized that, although we had been divorced for more than four years, my ex-husband still had stuff here. Not just little stuff, significant amounts of things. Because it was easier to leave stuff he didn’t want to deal with as he created a new life with a new wife. I finally broke the hold this stuff had on me the day I took the wedding gown I had found in the back of the hall closet and put it in the trash and carried it to the curb.
It’s a fabulous story, a story to which I will not digress, but I will tell you this: it was freeing to break the hold my former life had on me. When I finally realized I had been given the chance at a real life with a man who loved me for me. And that it was ok to let go of the trappings, feelings, and burdens of the past.
After my eldest daughter moved out, I went on an all-out-full-scale cleaning binge. I reclaimed this house for my future. Bit by bit. Room by room. Including the back porch.
I’ve swept and cleaned. I’ve planted marigolds. I’ve planted herbs that I will cook with, like basil and sage and dill. I’ve also planted a couple of tomato plants, a cucumber plant and a zucchini plant. I finally took the indoor/outdoor George Foreman Grill out of the box in which it stayed after I bought it a couple of years ago and put it together. And I hung a beautiful little copper wind chime.
Every morning when I water my plants or sit and enjoy my first cup of coffee, I am reminded you are never too old to find love or contentment. Every time I step out on the patio to pluck a basil leaf for something I am cooking, I am reminded it is possible to reclaim yourself from your past, just as I reclaimed the porch. And just as I watch my little tomato plants grow, I am reminded that good things come to those who wait.
My back porch may be simple from an outside observer, but to me it’s a symbol. It’s a symbol to remind me you can give yourself permission to love. And you have to let go of some of the past and purge it out to allow someone to love you back.
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Teeny Twitter Diet
Posted on 15. May, 2009 by Deb.
I love Twitter.
Twitter has kept me connected with old friends, helped me make new ones, kept me informed on the latest news, and allowed me to read the snarkiest thoughts of my children. It is a fabulous piece of technology and networking that allows me to instantly be aware of the world around me. Some days, however, especially on days when I am already stretching to maintain my focus, Twitter has become a distraction. I have discussed this with other creative folks and many say the same thing: Twitter is reducing their productivity, especially on creative projects such as writing.
Yesterday, I stumbled upon “Adult Attention Disorder: The Splintering of Communications“. I clicked to read the article, thinking it was about ADD. Instead, it was more about the perceived need to divide our attention between the many avenues of communication. Tom Steinert-Threlkeld consulted with Dr. David W. Goodman, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University.
What is happening with the splittering of communications instead is an overload of distractions, on individual plates.
This puts strain, instead, on what Dr. Goodman calls the “executive functioning” of the brain.
Some people are able to intuitively and naturally organize and prioritize endless streams of inputs and respond accordingly, rapidly.
Others, though, succumb to the distractions and can’t get out from under them. The barrage of communications and trying to figure out what to do with their contents – and the emotion that goes with some of it – “disrupts the ability to accurately prioritize” what to do. Or not to do.
I understood exactly what the article was talking about. Some of us, in order to be more productive, require more structure. I am always disciplined when it comes to work for my clients; I need to be more disciplined when it comes to making progress on some creative projects. As part of that need to be more disciplined, I decided that I would put myself on a Twitter Diet.
Like any diet, the same one doesn’t work for all of us. For me, my Twitter diet will consist of not keeping TweetDeck open all the time, catching up on all my Twitter friends three or four times a day, and restraining myself from sharing so many thoughts that I irritate my own friends. I’m not abandoning Twitter, just cutting back a bit. Like any diet, I will re-evaluate as time passes and make adjustments as I need. I hope you will stick around and continue to “follow” me, but I understand if you don’t.
I welcome your thoughts and comments on my diet, as well as how Twitter has affected your productivity and creativity.
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Black Hole
Posted on 13. May, 2009 by Deb.
“My room is a black hole. I never find half the stuff I bring.” So was the lament of my youngest child on Sunday night and Monday morning. Missing were a camera, IPod headphones, a white camisole, and a blue blouse. I managed to find most of her things before she left to go to her father’s – except the camera.
I don’t know how she loses random objects as she goes through the day. To be honest, I don’t know how I do it, either. Finding some things is a snap; other objects never appear no matter how diligent the prayers to Saint Anthony may be.
Today, I sat on the sofa in my office to read for a bit. The gold hoop on my left ear managed to come unhooked and fall between the cushions of the couch, and as I reached down to retrieve it, I found the missing camera.
The black hole of the couch cushions, however, ate the earring. Maybe it will turn up under her bed.
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Less Moo
Posted on 11. May, 2009 by Deb.
For years, my parents filled the freezer by splitting a cow with my aunt and uncle. Yes, you read that right: half a side of beef. I’m Texan and beef was the staple of my childhood meals. As an adult responsible for cooking, I tended to mimic my upbringing, until recently when I began eating more consciously. I now substitute more chicken, turkey and more beans. There were many reasons, some health related, some spiritual. In the past, Chili would have been made with lots of ground beef (or worse, out of a can). Tonight, I altered a recipe from Cook Yourself Thin; alterations were made to match what was in the pantry and the spices were increased for taste.
Ingredients:
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 pound ground turkey
- Salt
- Pepper
- 4 teaspoons chili powder
- 2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- dash ground cinnamon
- 1/2 white onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 2 carrots, roughly chopped
- 1 14-ounce can chopped whole tomatoes, with juice
- 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
- 2 14-ounce–15-ounce cans dark red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
Instructions: Put olive oil, salt, pepper and turkey in pan. Brown turkey. Add onion, chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, oregano, paprika, and garlic. Simmer for 5 minutes, covered. Add carrots, tomatoes, cocoa powder and kidney beans. simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. I topped the chili with grated cheese (2% Cheddar) and served with Blue Corn & Flax Seed Tortilla Chips (Archer Farms brand from Target).
I was unsure of the cocoa, but then I thought about Mole and was thrilled with the results. When cooking with turkey, I’m finding I need a little bit more spice. Otherwise, it’s been a very easy switch from beef.
I’m curious: have you cut back on beef? Are you substituting ground turkey or chicken in a favorite recipe?
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Nothing
Posted on 10. May, 2009 by Deb.
Some of the best days are when you do nothing in particular, yet feel everything. And that was my more-than-wonderful, perfectly-perfect Saturday. I heard this song, just not this version, last night while watching a movie with my sweetie.
Hope you are having a lovely weekend!
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The Learning of a Heavenly Virtue
Posted on 08. May, 2009 by Deb.
Early Christian teachings focused on seven deadly, or cardinal, sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. In 410, Prudentius wrote of the battle between these sins and “heavenly virtues” in his epic Psychomachia. The Roman Catholic Church officially recognized the virtues in positive contrast to the sins. These virtues are: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility. The 8th virtue, by the way, is justice. We tend to hear more about the sins, I think, especially in classic writers like Dante and Chaucer.
I mean to write about the virtue of patience today. But as it tends to do when left on it’s own, my mind twists and turns. I begin to wonder who first said that Patience is a Virtue. At least now I know, that it was Prudentius.
I have always considered patience to be an outstanding virtue, though it has never been one of my strongest. Patience is difficult to learn, especially in a society that values instancy. Being a child of the 70’s, I can recall life before microwaves and computers and cell phones. I had pen pals and books and remember waiting for dinner to be cooked. I have at times fallen into the trap of the instant. I worry, at times, that my children will never understand that sometimes the best rewards in life can be found when you wait for it them My oldest may learn this, however. As a Culinary student, she is finding that slow, old-fashioned cooking is much better than what is thrown into the microwave.
Patience, while not perfected, is a virtue appearing in my life more often. Adding meditation to my daily routine has helped foster that growth. So has the practice of abstaining from eating meat on Friday’s. Especially when my children make tempting dishes. I am learning I can wait for the leftovers on Saturday instead, savoring he flavors and the care that went into the dish. I must say, patience seems almost out of reach on days in which I get my nails done and have to wait for them to dry. And then suddenly, I am rewarded when I realize that my nails are dry. There are other rewards in patience beyond my gluttonous lust for foods and a cute manicure. The greatest of these is Love.
Love, you see, is a reward of patience that demonstrates why early philolsophers considered it a heavenly virtue. It just took me 41 years to learn.
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Help Others.
Posted on 08. May, 2009 by Deb.
It’s simple.
Leave non-perishables next to your mailbox tomorrow, Saturday, May 9th, and your mail carrier will pick it up – and take it to a local food bank.
