Untangling Tales

Seriously.  I’m only doing this to make myself write.  Don’t click through unless you want to waste time.

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Well, in case you missed it, I was invited to give a 5-minute (re- and re-emphasized: Five-minute) talk about my mom at her church today. Mother’s Day.

I called the pastor to clarify his goals and was able to organize the following talk. It was really hard to begin, looking right at her and knowing how she dislikes being the focus, but once I started in with the actual words of the poem I was in control of my voice for the most part. Though I did have to pause a few times.

I’m here today to honor you.

I’m blessed to have this poem apply to my husband and dad, too, but this morning it’s for my mom:

These words are from the poem, “Love” by Roy Croft.

I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.

I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can’t help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.

[And then I must change it a bit to say,]

You have done it
With a touch,
With a word,

You have done it
By being yourself.
Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means,
After all.

© Roy Croft (1907 - 1973).

I am proud to say my mother is my friend, and I hope she is too. Beginning when I was young, my mother’s availability, acceptance, and ability to challenge me, shaped my assumptions of how friends take care of each other.

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Still don’t really think so.

It’s just that I’ve started “composting” the idea of whether I could break up my current story into self-contained elements.

i.e., I need to poke around and decide if there is enough story to make the opening “Beauty and the Beast” section it’s own story, and if so whether the later adventures are also possible to disentangle from one another.

At this point I think they would still be pretty intertwined and dependent on one another. Kind of a Spiderwick series, highly interdependent, not a Redwall or Narnia type.

It would mean I’m looking at an utterly different animal, but maybe that could help work out some more kinks.

So I’ve mentioned I got addicted to the show Bones on Hulu.

I didn’t mention they have a “limited commercial interruption” style of sponsorship. That basically means that the same commercial (or product) comes on at each normal commercial break.

*But* Firefox’s ad blocker blocks even those, and once we were watching together on my husband’s computer (which has AdBlock enabled) we watched nothing but show. Very cool.

DH (dear husband)’s gift to me arrived Saturday: Seasons one and two of Bones on DVD.

I’m still re-watching Season One with Jay (as we get the kids down early enough), but I’ve started watching Season Two ahead of him (since I’ve finished One already).

The direction is very different between seasons. I didn’t think I was the sort of person to notice that sort of thing, but everything from camera movement, costuming and scene-cuts has changed, so maybe it’s impossible to miss.

If you’re familiar with the Harry Potter movies it’s a little like the shift between (I think it was) movies 2 and 3, where the kids went from school-robes all the time to “normal” every-day sort of clothes.

Disclaimer: This show does require a high gross-out threshold. Glimpses of the dead are not gratuitous, but neither are they obscured or made “artistic” in any way (frankly I don’t know how that could happen, but I’ve hear some people try).

Other than the pilot the ladies are generally dressed as you’d expect self-respecting, emotionally-healthy professionals to be, and the namesake lead, while being emphatically her own woman, does not emphasize or accomplish that by being disrespectful toward men (a first in my viewing experience).

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The primary selling point for this show is its characterization, and I really appreciate the way the writers have handled the someone’s-dying-every-episode element that plagues (or I think should) the conscience of every show like this.

Having established that the characters talk about significant things, the writers use them talking about the affect their work has on them and the value of every human life. Better (I imagine) than most body-a-week shows, Bones works to make each victim an individual and shows how the cases affect the lives of those working on them.

It’s not because he’s some prude or fancy-pants, holding a fluffy, lace-edged handkerchief to his nose when he pretends to smell something distasteful.

It’s because Sin is to God what Death is to us.

Actually, it would be fair to say that sin is worse than death, because those of us who are believers have the joyful expectation that we will see our loved ones again. Some of them at least.

Sin is the ultimate separation.

Indeed, the LORD’s hand is not too short to save,
and His ear is not too deaf to hear.

But your iniquities have built barriers
between you and your God,
and your sins have made Him hide [His] face from you
so that He does not listen.

Isaiah 59:1-2

It isn’t just that God doesn’t like sin. It’s also that sin builds barriers between us, and while God has made a way to remove the barrier (through his son’s voluntary death in our place) He knows not everyone will jump at that chance.

I doubt anyone has noticed, but I’ve updated my Infant Novel page half a dozen times in the last 3 or 4 months.

Mostly changes to the “What’s the novel about?” question, because it’s always been cluttered and convoluted. I know you’re supposed to be able to explain your story in one or two sentences, and I’ve not figured out yet how to do that.

The 9- or 10-year-old little brother of one of these kids came over to me while the 13-year-olds were reading my first chapters and asked what the story was about. I tried to rattle off my one-sentence summary and realized it was absolutely useless.

So I went home and changed it that night. Still no better.

But I just updated it again, because (seriously) the older version was worse. And since this one made me laugh— though I suspect it will be equally opaque to most readers— I’ll post it here too.

Getting a stranger out of a bad bargain he made with Hell wasn’t the first thing on the Beauty’s mind after disenchanting her Beast, but she needed something to do while on the run from the executioner.

I am definitely open to suggestions on how to do this better.

One plus about this rendition is that the situation sounds almost humorous. Which is weird, when you think about it.

From Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett, 14th Edition (1968)

“My men, yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds and ten pence a man. Are you worth more? Prove it. Tonight the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Sparks sleeps a widow!”

— John Sparks (1728-1822), before the battle of Bennington, August 16, 1777

The portfolio I mentioned last week was my final for an “intermediate” creative-writing class.

I titled it The Partial Histories of Often Confused People and filled it with three poems and four short stories. Most of the stories were strongly based on real occurrences, or how I imagined reality to be from a smattering of facts I’d gleaned.

Mostly “downer” stuff for some reason.

Each of them hold hope, but they’re all very heavy. I re-read the ending of one and it actually got me choked-up.

This class was the place I first learned to consciously vary my sentence structure. The teacher called me on my repetitive tendency to start each sentence with the subject (e.g., these two sentences).

Now whenever I start a sentence not that way I’m aware that the reason is that class. I think it made me a better writer.

Here’s the teacher’s response to the work (where the title of this post comes from). It’s interesting think this is from four years ago, and I think about how I’ve changed and how I’ve stayed the same.

Well, thanks much for The Partial Histories of Often Confused People. It is a good collection and seems very Amy, standing up for what it believes in, assembling moments with no small sense of conviction.

Having said that, I’m not sure just yet what sort of a writer you’re meant to be, someone writing stories or literary nonfiction — or maybe essays that allow you more room in some ways to tackle the issues that clearly matter so deeply to you.

I’m somewhat inclined to see you in that final sense, using your training as a journalist and your affection for telling stories to create different kinds of essays.

Whatever you tackle it will be spirited. And perhaps if you go the essay route, the sense of humor you display in class will also find an outlet on paper (humor is almost totally absent in your stories, which seems odd considering how downright goofy you can be in class— that’s meant as a complement, honest).

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Finding God in 5 Steps

Because 5 Things I Learned the Hard Way That I Believe Fostered the Right Disposition for Gaining a Better Understanding of God but Since I’m Just Some Fool With an Internet Connection and Not a Pastor or a Theologian You Should Take This and Everything Else I Write With a Big Grain of Salt, just felt too long.

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I Can Live

The artist’s story of his mother leaving the abortion that would have killed him.  While completely outside my usual style of music a very intriguing and moving piece (H.T. Sarah)

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Stuff Christians Like is already a terrific place to go for a grin, but for more of a blink-and-think than a laugh I encourage everyone to read Letting Porn Win.

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Ten Commandments of Trying a Case

A smart evaluation of the weird J.K Rowling vs. Biggest-Fan case by Bluestocking.

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Two writing blogs I’ve just discovered and enjoyed.

Book Therapy and So You Wanna be Published…

Their very usable writing and noveling advice makes their archives more of a trap than many blogs’.

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And as a side note, I’m 29 today. Jay’s coming home a bit early to make a cake with the kids and we’ll have a family night.

It is interesting how much our (however temporary) present reality can affect our thinking.

I wrote that pair of posts about “Not just staying home” while I was still recovering from my severely twisted ankle, and while I was still basically useless around the house.  (And feeling a higher need to justify non-house activities.)

Today, while I still think it’s good to have a vision beyond my days with children at home, I got to tire myself out in a satisfying return to my “domestic duties.”

Jay came home from his evening meeting at church and saw the work I’d done. “Well, we totally blew that Sabbath,” he said, referencing my accomplishments and his work on his car.

I didn’t have words for it at the time, but now I’d say that my cleaning felt like an act of worship, in a way it maybe never has before. I was so *delighted* at what my recovering body could do.

Despite my clingy boy’s protestations (no guilt here), I cleared and swept the floor of the front part of my little-ish house. That would be the living room, kitchen, and dining area.

Those, along with 2 dishwashers and 4 racks of sink dishes cleaned over the weekend (Jay’s good help) and a cheery new (hand-me-down) floral couch, have transformed my home and me. I am positively Miss Domestic again.

For the moment.

After being physically-incapable of maintaining my home for about a month, I am reeling. Giddy. I am doing my job and getting back to doing it well.

I was telling my husband just last week, “When I feel absolutely refreshed and energized when I come home from a writers’ group or a critique meeting, I feel like that’s an indication it belongs in my life. The question left is, where?”

I felt like that tonight only about homekeeping. Without the hanging, Where?.

And I made two (good) meals from scratch in the same day, in addition to cleaning, and cooking’s been a challenge as long as the cleaning, so this also feels like a victory.

I feel a disproportionate delight when I see these accomplishments that will (in theory) mean nothing tomorrow.

But what I think God’s been teaching me about this homekeeping stuff during my convalescence is that it is meaningful the next day.

By maintaining daily the accumulating areas, I keep stress and additional clean-up times minimal, providing more freedom to do fun and creative things with my kids.

And I (almost) never do creative –read, messy– stuff with my kids when the house is out of order.

The fact that I have had seasons of fun, creative stuff-doing reminds me I can get (and even keep) my house in order. But, as in everything, it is only by the grace of God.

Happy Monday, everyone.