Who She Needs

All day at work I was thinking about Sharon and about the rough turn in her life, about having to face up to all the stuff in her own past. I think she needs a break, Barbara, or at least the hint that a break is coming along. She needs somebody who is worthy of her.

Here's a poem I wrote a while back. The working title is "Psalm".

Your embrace is my amazement
Waking me, restoring me
Like water to the thirsty,
Like sleep to the tired,
Like wide-eyed wonder to the
One who has forgotten sanctity.

You throw yourself altogether,
Teaching me to catch you -
To receive you as myself.

Your embrace is full and empty,
A passage and a song of praise
Whose words are these:
Catch me now.
I trust that you will catch me.
Trust us now to teach you this.
Trust yourself that you at last
Will learn to sing this song of praise.

Bob;-)

Lobsters for Thanksgiving?

Astonishing. Simply amazing. You know, I'll just bet the pilgrims had lobster along with their turkey on that first Thanksgiving. I wouldn't be surprised... What did surprise me, though, was finding out about Sharon, that she had been a kept woman. Now that, Barbara, was heartbreaking. And then the way you ended it, with her listening to the palm fronds and the Brown Pelicans.... You really got me. Beautiful and sad. She is a survivor.

You like Claudia! I wasn't so sure about her. You really did get Oliver exactly right, though. The woman with silvery curls would have been able to see right through him in a glance.

So, Barbara, you and your husband have a wonderful Lobster Day. I get to work tomorrow. Whoo hoo! But then I'll be eating leftovers out in Pulaski on Friday.

Bob;-)

Brown Pelican

Twenty-four hours until the Turkey Day craziness. Forty-eight until Black Friday, the day shoppers go wild. We decided not to "do" Thanksgiving this year, we're buying lobsters from Walmart (how decadent!) to have with baked potatoes and salad. And there is no desire that would get me out of bed in the chilly early morning dark to do battle with sweatshirt-clad crazy women in a discount department store aisle. I love me a crowded airport, but the shopping riots? Not so much.

When she got back from the police station it was nearly dark but Sharon didn't turn on any lights as she walked through the villa. She, or someone, had turned off the lamps when the Detective Inspector courteously escorted her out to his police car. He had held her arm as if she were an invalid or as if he thought she might collapse with emotion. He had lost some of his sympathetic tone once they were settled in his brightly lit office downtown, and it had taken what seemed like hours to convince him (if she had) that Jack hadn't told her where he was going or who he planned to meet. It had been necessary for Sharon to baldly admit that she had been kept by Jack for years. That she was his arm candy, his sexual plaything, his brainless admiring mirror who reflected back his egotistical preening, cleaned up and polished as flattery. The naked truth of the situation she found herself in sickened Sharon. She sat long into the night outside on the patio with the clattering of the palm fronds overhead sounding like gossip and the dives of the Ganshi, the Brown Pelicans, feeding on a school of grunts coming regularly like the rhythmic shelling of enemy artillery.

Enjoy your day! I have to work.
--Barbara

Hats!

It just occurred to me that Christmas is rolling around again, and I'm making hats again, this time with knitting needles instead of a crochet hook. Once again I used my big percent off coupon at JoAnn's and Michaels last weekend to buy books, one with 100 hats and the other a knitting how-to with lots of stitches listed and detailed in it. That's where I got the Twisted Rib Hat pattern. I frogged the girl hat ribbing which wasn't turning out the way I had hoped and used the yarn for the new hat. It's my kind of pattern--thick yarn and big needles (US 17s) and quick. In fact I made one this afternoon and I'm a slow knitter. I used doubled yarn for both hats. I'm such a slave to variegated. *sigh* Someday I'll make something all in solid colors. Nah, probably not.

It was a Good Rejection..,

with my name in it and everything. They did say that it was strongly written and I should try again. Again. You think the sex did my story in? Hmm, I thought that was the funny part that made the story real. Thanks for the encouragement, Bob, I liked the body language too. It's always a surprise what comes out when I write at night.

Nice Post, Barbara

I especially liked it toward the end where the guy, frustrated, throws a chunk of coral at the sea gulls. And then the woman crosses her arms. Outstanding body language. A picture is worth a thousand word, to coin a phrase.

Sorry about the rejection from First Line. If you ask me, it was the implied sex scene that did it for them. Sex between Kris Kringle and his wife? Might as well imagine sex between ones own parents... No, on second thought, not a good idea. You mentioned that First line received a lot of entries for this upcoming issue, but did they take the time to give you any encouragement in their reply?

Bob

Wonderful

Oh, I want to meet Claudia, to have supper with her and kick off our shoes in front of the fire and talk into the night. I love your description of her, how she acquires opinions, and your final comparison of her with the silver-haired siren Oliver's infatuated with. Who, it sounds like, would have him figured out in a second and dismiss him even quicker. Fascinating, Bob.

The pair of laughing gulls stood side by side on the sand facing the tradewinds and watched the couple walking toward them. The gulls, dressed in black with white bellies, looked to her like a pair of prim butlers standing with their hands behind their backs watching the antics of their employers with a superior air. "Look at those birds," she said to him as they neared the birds. "Don't they look like they're judging us?" He glanced up and nodded, the smoke from his cigarette riding the breeze to twine around his face before streaming away. "They're just gulls," he said, aiming a listless kick at them. The little puff of sand he scuffed in their direction sent the birds running up the beach a bit, making her laugh. Frustrated that they hadn't flown away, he stooped, picked up a fist-sized chunk of coral, and tossed it at the birds. They squawked and flew up to circle out over the waves, filling the air with their laughing call. The couple moved on, the man oddly cheered by his act of harassment, the woman wrapping her arms across her midriff as if she were cold.

And that's it for last night. I'm coming into the home stretch, picture wise, so soon I'll be looking at all these disparate pieces and putting them together into a cohesive story. Maybe.

I got a rejection from The First Line--again. They said they got a truckload of Santa stories. So much for being original. Oh well, I'll try again. I'm determined that some day they'll accept one; I'll wear 'em down if I have to.

--Barbara