I don't
remember the last time the whole family came home for the
holidays. Not hard to imagine in a six-sibling family. One by
one, my brothers and sisters drifted off to their own lives and
families. They're busy building new traditions.
I do, however,
have fond memories of a year when five of us made the trip. The
only one missing was big brother Jim, but he was in Inuvik--two
miles from the Arctic Circle and closer to the North Pole than
the rest of us would ever be.
By
then, Mum and Dad had moved to Three Mile Lake, a coastal
village on Nova Scotia's eastern shore. Erin went home a few
days early, as usual. Sharon and I took the bus together on
Christmas Eve. Mary and Roy, with soon-to-be-wife Joanne,
arrived shortly after.
The blizzard
struck five minutes later. A white blanket fell over the house
and soon nestled under the night sky. Scattered flakes danced in
the glow of outdoor lights. Bing Crosby crooned in stereo to
complete the mood.
I dreamt of
more than a white Christmas that night. Call it sugar plum
visions or too many smoked oysters, but my Christmas Eve dreams
involved a jolly fat man driving his sleigh along Three Mile
Lake to my parents' back door. Snow whirled and swirled around
him but never touched his furry form.
Mary played
morning elf--her traditional role--shaking everyone out of bed
at dawn. "Come on. Get up. It's Christmas!" She had a
grin you could hear in the dark.
We learned a
lot about the dark that morning. The blizzard messed up the
utility lines. We didn't lose power completely, but the lights
flickered and sometimes went out for a few minutes at a time.
With the storm raging outside, we had little natural light.
Mum fretted
over the turkey in the oven. Would it cook in time for an early
afternoon dinner? We might end up dining on pop and chips. She
did manage to brew a pot of coffee, so the morning wasn't a
total wash.
Someone
pointed out how pretty the tree lights looked, flickering in the
dimly lit living room. Jim Reeves hiccupped through "An Old
Christmas Card." If the power dipped for more than a
minute, the re-surge made the phone ring. Somehow, that kept us
amused for hours.
Overall, what
might have been the worst Christmas of our lives turned out to
be one of the best. That was the year I realized that nothing
mattered to me as much as the simple gift of spending time with
family.
May you
experience some of that joy this holiday season.
Provided the introduction--including
the poem "Sustenance"--for "Poetry Slam! 2004"
in this month's issue of Apollo's
Lyre. Cast your vote in our first ever Poetry
Slam by December 12!
Originally,
being a poet meant conceiving, memorizing and speaking
expressive words to an audience. Some poems were so startling,
they required a way to record them as in the epic of Gilgamesh
when writing was new. Even so, for thousands of years, most
poems were spoken, not read. This changed some 500 years after
kings David and Solomon, because written language began to be an
easier way of remembering so many complex expressions. It
commenced in Babylon. Almost at the same time, the Greeks
reverted to the older way of memorizing their poems until the
authors perished. Then they were written down for the sake of
posterity.
From
the beginning, there was a distinct difference between casting a
story in verse or phrasing it poetically. Prose tended to deal
with enormously complicated plots and side issues whereas poetry
more or less conveyed simpler themes, based upon images. A prose
writer, for instance, might write about a vase, tell how it was
constructed, who made it, why it was painted the way it was, how
it was used and so on. The poet's angle was to compare the vase
to almost anything in the imagination that might appeal to an
audience or get a reaction. Almost all early poems were about
God or gods, their whimsical nature, and how people were
affected by their deeds.
Poetry
cannot die so long as people have imaginations and appreciate
saying anything quickly and memorably. The rules of poetry
change constantly over the years, so it is not possible to say
that one form is more important or better than another, or that
you cannot create a form of your own. You do not have to be a
master of your language to engage in this art, but the more you
know, the better you will communicate.
One
of the side issues of modern poetry is that so much has been
written, few people pay attention to reading or hearing words
made common by repetitive use. The art demands fresh, new,
original insight to be unique. It's relatively easy to think of
beautiful things, but much more difficult to express them in
ways that have not been done before.
Techniques
are generally related to specific forms such as rhyme schemes,
though there are some constants. Licence, the stretching of an
idea to deliberately make it unique, is very common. So, too, is
the practice of coining new terms. Alliteration, the keying of
many words using the same letters or syllables, is also well
known, but still invaluable. Onomatopoeia, the formation of a
word based on the sound of what is named, can be very useful. In
free verse, words and phrases can be deliberately written to
reproduce images on a page.
Age,
of course, has nothing to do with it unless you wish to argue
that experience makes a better poet. If you have a good
imagination, age will not prevent you from being one. Poets who
write a great deal are called prolific, though our works are no
more or lessattractive
than those who indulge once a year. One difference recorded by
prolific writers is the ability to achieve what I call flow,
where the words pop out of one's mind with little effort, each
phrase suggesting others. The amount of time you put into
writing is often a factor in the quality of your material. I
have lots of time and no longer need to work to sustain my
family. On the other hand, I know poets who work constantly at a
business, come home to attend to their family, and still manage
to write a great deal, the majority of which is very high
quality.
No
one can say definitively, do this or that and you will be a
great poet. There are no hard and fast rules. Simply put, one
experiments with forms and themes, and tries phrases out until
they seem to gel. Recalling the past, it almost always seems to
be of benefit to actually speak, or have someone else speak your
poem to gauge its impact on the ears. The spoken word is much
more powerful than when written.
Finally,
if you are going to master this art form, it is necessary to
develop a discriminating ear, to decide which combination of
sounds in terms make a phrase most appealing. Being a member of
a literary group or poetry society can also be invaluable if the
members go beyond praise and give you honest critiques. There is
nothing worse than your getting continuous praise unless you
really deserve it.If no
one is saying anything about your poem, you can be certain there
is something wrong with it and the members are simply being
tactful so as not to hurt your feelings. You can always ask and
perhaps get the truth. "What's wrong with it?" You
don't want to hear, "It sucks." Rather, "The
pulses don't make sense in that scheme," or "Your
rhymes sound forced." That informs you of something to
change. And change is the nature of art, so don't be offended.
Most
often, in literary groups, members will say they don't like a
particular word in a certain place. Listen to them, because
their insight may be just what you need to get things right. It
never hurts to try something different.
That said, whip out your pen
or keyboard and weave us a mist of images never before seen.
#
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR: William
Alan Rieser, B.A., M.A., has had careers in teaching,
conducting, composing, performing music, umpiring, electronics,
supervising and finally writing in his retirement. He is now a
professional editor and has published 16 novels and hundreds of
shorts and articles.
William
Rieser (a.k.a. Penumbra) joins yours truly (a.k.a. InkSpotter) to
form the team "Pen & Ink." Each month, we'll
feature poetry
and prose from The
Writers Association's growing list of
anthologies.
Mike Weir's "Sunset" and Adam Wieland's "In
Pursuit of the Imagination" originally appeared in The
Artist Tree, currently
available from Lulu
Books.
The surf lapped
at his feet, a cool counterpoint to the sun beating relentlessly
on his exposed flesh.The
ocean had already swallowed his bottle.He longed for the taste of the rum that had once filled
that hopeless vessel.All
he was left with was a faint glimmer of hope.The thin sliver of wood on which he had engraved his name
represented everything he now was.
James
Copper sunk to his knees in the wet sand.It's not enough.It
would be just his luck if the bottle washed up on a nearby island.The gods knew what isle he was on today.Flitting from one to another whenever it took his fancy, he
no longer knew where he was.Sometimes,
the distance he would swim sapped him of his strength for a day or
more.
The
shark was still fresh in his mind.Was it the second week or the third?Third.It sounded so
alien, lacking any context after so long.The shark had circled him a mile offshore from his
destination.Luckily, James'
body had been in good condition at the time.'Never be afraid' was the rule with the kings of the sea.A buccaneer once told him that when he was yet a green boy.He stared long and hard at the fearsome creature and pushed
it away by the nose.Instead
of swallowing him with its gaping maw and barbed teeth, the
creature fled for easier prey.
With
a lot of luck, large fish had not since bothered James, but a
man-o'-war stung him a few days past.Even now the venom was wending its way through his blood.It's only a matter of time, he thought glumly.If the venom did not slay him, then hunger or thirst or the
cold would.The shark
could have done me a favour.
It
was not the first time that the usually intrepid James Copper had
given up on life.Possession
of contraband in a royal port had him thrown in a dank cell and
off to the gallows.Only a
fair maiden's word saw him escape with his head and a smaller
purse.The maiden turned
out to be a harlot and he was lucky to escape her with no
purse, worn boots and a tattered hat for cover.
James
rose gingerly to his feet.As
he trod across the sand barefoot, his nose caught a specific odour.The salt air was a smell with which he had no grievance; it was the
decaying stench of a whale carcass further along the beach that
worried his nostrils.
His
feet took him to his favoured perch upon a jutting rock atop the
narrow cave he called home.The
cave fit only one person, which suited James, as he had not
planned on having any guests drop by.It compressed to the size of a mouse-hole two score feet
within.
He
looked out across the ocean's vast blue-green body, shielding his
eyes from the imposing brilliance with one hand.The horizon was devoid of land, which told James that he
was gazing in one of four directions, an ever-so-helpful piece of
knowledge.He laughed.All I need is a compass and a boat.
It
occurred to James as he sat in contemplation that he had
accomplished nothing he had set out to achieve in life.A parcel of land with a cozy house never quite
materialized.He did have a
few islands, it seemed, but not the means to build on them or the
world to show them off to.Wealth
eluded him, too.The
freebooter's life had never agreed with James Copper.He was too much of a gentleman at heart, though he had
learned to be a scoundrel when circumstances required it.Perhaps, if he had found his luck on a good ship with a
capable captain, instead of operating solo, things might have been
different. Last but not least was a hearty woman to warm his bed
and tend his woes whenever he returned to that cozy abode he
dreamed of.Sweet Lysa
captured his heart a number of years ago.He could picture her now, though her features were a little
blurred.The closest he had come to love.All
for naught.One day,
she decided he would not return from his latest voyage and shacked
up with a local blacksmith.The
last he heard they had three little smithies running underfoot.
He
picked up a loose stone from beside him and pitched it high into
the air in frustration.It
thudded somewhere on the rocks below. He lay flat on his back on
the relatively smooth rock platform.The sun, blazing on his eyelids, forced him to his side.
* * *
James
awoke with a crick in his neck and half a sore body, but he had
slept in more uncomfortable places a few times.The sun was sinking on the horizon, a fiery orange disc
that spread its rays even as it descended.What seized his attention was the idle sloop, its prow in
line with the island, and the rowboat moving swiftly to shore.James blinked.It
has to be a mirage, he told himself.Pinching his arms brought only pain.
Scarcely
believing his eyes, James clambered to his feet and scrambled down
the slope behind the cave.He
raced around to the beach.Two
men had rowed the boat ashore and were dragging a heavy chest.Booty.They
were burying treasure on a remote island!It made no difference.He
had found his passage home.He
was rescued at last!He ran
like the wind to greet his saviours.
* * *
The
chest sunk into the soft sand.Diego
ignored it.There was a
body a few yards onto the beach.Carlos
was taking a closer look. "Looks
to have been dead for a few days or more," he reported.
Diego
took a look for himself.Carrion
birds had clearly nibbled at the decaying corpse. "Look at
this mark on his leg."On
the skin beneath a hole in the tattered brown breeches was a
festered purple mark. "A
man-o'-war did that I'd wager."
Carlos
nodded. "Not much meat
on him.Could have been
hunger."
Diego
shrugged, scratching the irritating stubble on jowls. "I suppose."He
kneeled beside the body.A
bottle lay half-buried in the sand.It was empty, but the smell was unmistakable.He tossed it up to his partner.
"At
least he went out in good company," Carlos said.
A
search of the body turned up a thin piece of wood, on which
something had been etched.Diego
squinted, his eyesight not what it used to be.
"James...Copper.Well,
James Copper, you missed your berth, old son."
"Come
on," Carlos insisted, shovel in hand.
"Let's bury the loot and be off.Twilight's a comin'."
Diego
rose to his feet and turned back to the chest.
Deadline: December 30, 2004 Length: Flash Fiction - 1,000 words or fewer; Poetry
- 60 lines or fewer
Entry Fee: Flash Fiction - $2; Poetry - $1 (all in
Canadian funds)
First
Place: A subscription to the e-tutorial Freelance Writing:
Formulas for Success from JEDlet.com;
published in Beginnings
magazine
Second
Place: A subscription to the Absolute Markets: Premium
Edition newsletter from AbsoluteWrite.com;
a copy of the e-book 2000 Online Resources for Writers, by Moira
Allen of Writing-World.com
Third
Place: A copy of The Freelance Success E-book, by Itay Paz of
Freelance-Tips.com
Deadline: December 5, 2004 Length: 5,000 words or fewer
Entry Fee: $5 per story, unlimited submissions
Prize:
70% of entry fees (minus Paypal's
deduction); 1 hour live interview on Keep It Coming radio show,
where winner can read his/her story; and more.
Literary
Lapse is a prompt-based
mailing list. Members receive weekly writing prompts and are
encouraged to share their work with the rest of thelist and give each other feedback.
Once
a month, I select
my favourite story, essay or poem for publication and pay
the winner $5 (US funds).
The
Prompt
Use
the following 12 words in a short story, poem, etc. along
Holiday lines.
Alder
Tarmac
Fire
Original
Icing
Swing
Sycamore
Photograph
Sizzles
Artist
Pepper
Lichen
The Winner
Congratulations to Linda
Hamilton of Arkansas for her short story "Cosmic Holiday."
Special
thanks to list member Kevin Craig for pinch hitting as prompter
during most of November!
Cosmic
Holiday by Linda Hamilton
"Passengers not proceeding to Cyrus 720
please return to the deportment chute." The robotic
attendant hovered at the end of the aisle. "Spaceship's
engines will fire for take off in a few moments." Escaping
air sizzles as the hatch closes. Attendants floated among the
travelers. "Please adjust space belts to their anti-gravity
positions."
"Will you turn on your breath regulator?
You are icing my tentacles." Lunart rubbed his facial
appendages with a de-icer wipe.
Shin'do's jellied eyes misted with
embarrassment. "Sorry. I'm always forgetting to do that
after the Triton field trips."
The spacecraft's engines hummed and the
platform disappeared beneath the moon's surface. Stars,
elongated blurs, whizzed by the windows.
Lunart slurped down his sea pepper. "You
taking Professor Ort's Universal Studies?"
"Yes, I'm in the advanced class. We are
studying twentieth century Earth customs."
"When I had his class, we re-enacted
Middle Eastern customs. It took forever for my mom to remove the
Dead Sea water from our bedding sand." He guzzled another
pepper. "What custom are you stuck with?"
"Something called Christmas. Professor
said it involves dressing up in red fur, gorging on nutrients,
putting useless things under a chlorophyll life form, and
celebrating a human's birth." Shin'do's regulator gurgled.
"Have the instructions on me somewhere."
"That's all right." Lunart's
tentacles wiggled. "Sounds like nebula dust to me."
His claw tapped the polymer case between them. "Is this
your useless thing?"
"Professor Ort checked them out of the
Unity Worlds Centre for me. Two forms of original,
Earthling communication known as a painting and a photograph
recorded by a worker called an artist."
"A what?"
"I'll show you." Shin'do eased the
forms unto his lap. "This one is a recording of a
dwelling." His slender nails traced the shape's outline.
"These lighted bits are Holiday decorations and these life
forms are called alders and sycamores."
Lunart's claws clattered. "This?" He
pointed to the smaller item.
"I think he said it was a primitive form
of space travel called a swing."
The flight attendant whirled up to their
seats. "Shin'do Tratin, your lichen nourishment has
thawed."
His eyes shined with hunger. Blue slits
smacked.
"Don't see how you can eat cave
slime." Lunart grimaced. "You told your mother about
the assignment?"
Shin'do grinned. "No, Professor suggested
I start my project by donning the red fur, playing the part of
Santa and surprising her. I just have to figure out how to
replicate a sleigh."
Schematics flashed on the computer.
"You could rent a couple of Cyrus slugs
and force-field them to an atmosphere raider. Don't they have
booths next to the tarmac?"
"Lunart, you are brilliant!"
The spaceship landed with a soft thud. The
robotic attendant hovered by the opened hatch. "Cyrus 720.
Please adjust space belts to one-quarter gravity."
"Well, good luck getting the red fur
off."
Shin'do waved. His cold breath fogged as he
removed the regulator. "Happy Holiday and a Merry
Christmas!"
In addition, I'll be writing a monthly column
titled Women
In History, in which I will highlight a different woman
each month and write a story about her. This will appear in Penwomanship.
Both that article and the story on there will be printed in the
online version in December, as well as the print version in May
2005.
Jean Madigan
Hello Betty,
Just wanted to let you know that my latest
column at The
Columnists will be published in their Anniversary issue
(December 6). It's an article on the month
of November and the ups and downs I experienced with it.
Thanks,
Kevin Craig
Hi
Betty,
Thanks for the reminder to send you news.
I'm proud to announce I've been selected as the
ghostwriter for a local television celebrity. Her name is Good
Golly Miss Molly, and she is the co-host of a local morning
television show, "Your Life A-Z" which is hosted by
Heidi Fogelsong. Molly's column is posted online minus my name, of
course. The column also appears in Loving
Pets Magazine. LPM kindly acknowledged that Molly,
a golden doodle, needed a little help putting paw to paper.
However, my successes haven't ended there. Inspired2Write
will host "Photography for Writers," an online workshop
to help writers use photos to make more money, beginning in 2005.
Did I mention that you don't even have to have a camera to add
photos to your stories? The first workshop will begin January 10.
To kick off this new partnership, I'm running an essay contest.
First prize is a free workshop. Second prize is the free e-book, Writing
& Photography: A $Winning$ Combination. Details are
available on my web
site.
Have a safe and healthy holiday season.
Sincerely,
Penny J. Leisch
Jacqueline
Seewald's short story "Rose in Bloom" is featured in The
Romance Rag.
The first
book of my circuit rider series, Mysterious
Ways, will be released by River
Oak Publishing on December 20 to be in stores after the first
of the year.
C.
Hope Clark had a good month. She published an article in Writer's
Digest about writers joining Chambers of Commerce
(December issue). She also published "Organization - How Do
You Do It?" at Write
From Home and "Christmas Planning for Writers"
in Busy Freelancer, the newsletter for Write From Home.
"Shyness Busters" made its way into Writers
Weekly, and Absolute
Write accepted an article about shyness and public
appearances that is forthcoming in their publication. Overall, a
great month.
You would think that Mesche, being a
Rigellian, would insist that our children, Pobox aged five and
Mirthy aged four, would be exposed to at least some of Rigel's
highly extensive religious roots, but that was not the case.
Having lived on Earth for the first four of our seven years (so
far) together, she became enamoured with our alien rites and
festivals, though it is clear to me that the philosophies that
prompted them had little or no impact on her complex mind. She was
particularly struck by the Christmas holiday and insisted that our
kids be exposed to the full enchilada every year, especially the
part about presents. When I got assigned to distant Ultima Knippe,
she brought that desire with her, along with the children, of
course.
"I want a decorated tree, hanging, labelled
stockings, oodles of bright, shiny toys, cards from the family to
display along the mantle of the fireplace, a real turkey with all
the trimmings for me to cook and most of all, Bill Simmons, a
visitation."
"I can understand the fireplace on frigid
Ultima," I replied. "In fact, I'm willing to go along
with the other things too, for the kids' sake. But a
visitation?"
"Santa Claus, dummy. Him and his reindeer.
Oh, it doesn't have to be real imported reindeer. The kids will
never know the difference, but a smart engineer like you ought to
be able to fix up something that will fascinate them, yes?"
I always tended to cave in to Mesche's requests,
though this one was rather challenging. Still, she was a very
loving female and doted on the kids like mothers universally do.
Still, the prospects did not look very favourable once we got to
Knippe and I saw how things were. For one thing, we had to live in
a hybrid commune, a place where Earth festivities were not a high
priority. Secondly, though the Knippers were a decently
intelligent species, in appearance they looked rather like small
grinches with unwieldy ears. Definitely not holiday material.
The other difficulty lay in the fact that Pobox
and Mirthy were hardly what you might consider dumb, awestruck
kids. Oh, they were impressionable, all right, but they were
smarter than I ever remember myself being at that age. Pobox was
already a CPU jockey, though mostly in the matter of games. Mirthy
knew how to research words. In the matter of pulling a "fast
one" on their tender intellects, they had both caught me
quite handily several times and thoroughly enjoyed "proving
daddy wrong." In fact, they had outsmarted me about puzzles,
hidden things and a whole gamut of fatherly activities, so good
were they at dissembling. Naturally, they get most of that from
Mesche. She encouraged behaviour like that, insisting that it
prepared them for the realities to come. I suppose she has a
point.
Anyway, there I was, establishing myself as an
engineer on the Pretian Mine project when the month and climate
equated to December on Earth. I suddenly realized the nearness and
impossibility of complying with my wife's demands and started
looking for solutions with my spare time. My two partners,
Lovelace, an Earthling like myself and Snard, a Knipper, made fun
of my predicament.
"You don't expect to fool kids nowadays, do
you?" asked Lovelace, a successful family man with a large
brood of his own. "You'd be better off telling them the
truth."
"What? That there is no Santa Claus? That
it's just a marketing scheme for a segment of humanity? I can't do
that. Mesche will flay me."
"You know," he continued, "being
Rigellian-Earth hybrids, they are going to know it's you under
that red suit. You'll never pull it off."
I took a long look at Lovelace, a big man with a
hearty laugh and a jovial manner.
"Yeah, but you could, especially if they
know where I am."
"Ah, but what about reindeer and the
sleigh," he answered, more or less agreeing to go along with
the idea. "How are you going to manage that?"
"I don't know, yet," I replied.
"I could convert one of the mine cars and make it look like a
sleigh. We certainly have plenty of snow. But, the reindeer are
tricky."
"Have they ever seen a reindeer?"
Snard asked mischievously.
"No. Maybe book pictures, but not real
ones."
"I was only thinking about Loochies. My
family does own a farm, you know. And Loochies love the
snow."
"Can they be harnessed?" I asked,
falling into the vision.
"Certainly. My Uncle sometimes uses them
like that for local races. It's a lot of fun, actually, not unlike
your Alaskan husky competitions."
"Yeah, but what about antlers? The kids
will see they have none."
"Only Rudolph needs antlers," added
Lovelace. "I'm sure we can rig something up."
Well, to make an incredibly long story shorter,
my partners decided to help me out with the charade. Maybe they
needed a new challenge. This one seemed to motivate them and we
spent a lot of time on the details. Then it hit me that we didn't
have a chimney in the house, just a typical Knippe heating duct.
Snard solved that by offering to pose as an elf, opening the front
door for master Santa with his bag of goodies.
"No good," I said. "Knippers
don't have noses. Elves do. They'll notice that and they've seen
enough little Knippers in the colony to realize it."
"Not if I wear a false nose," replied
Snard. "And besides, I'll wager they've never seen a blue
Knipper. They haven't been tainted by school yet, Bill. My wife
polishes her skin with syamite. Turns her blue for a week. Quite
attractive really, to a Knipper at least. They'll think I'm an elf
all right, especially if we strike up a conversation."
"Right, right," I replied, getting
excited. "They'll be up and hiding somewhere, waiting for
Santa to make an appearance. It could work."
"It will work," Lovelace stated with
authority. "That'll be the day we can't fake out children.
Snard is just the touch needed, eh?"
There it was, as bold a deception as any I had
ever planned, all for the purpose of convincing two innocent minds
that Kris Kringle still existed and included Knipper colonies in
his Christmas Eve agenda. Naturally, the hypocritical nature of
the fraud bothered me, but the sight of seeing my children
mesmerized by Santa delivering presents to them especially,
convinced me that Mesche was right. I wanted to see those glowing
eyes, filled with wonder. I wanted my kids to know that their
goodness was worth a reward. The plans matriculated considerably.
Mesche, when I confided in her, was absolutely delighted.
The preparations went forward very smoothly.
Usually there is some kind of hitch with elaborate subterfuges
like this, but nothing in the way of a gremlin appeared. Lovelace
even had a Santa outfit stored in his attic and it still fit.
Snard took me by surprise one day, showing up at work with a nose
on his face. It really did disguise his other features and made
him look elf-like. I got enthusiastic and purchased all the other
requirements. Mesche handled the cards from Earth, made and filled
the stockings, and prepared the feast. I wanted to invite the
Lovelaces and the Snards for turkey dinner, but was vetoed.
Everyone thought it would be too coincidental, that Pobox and
Mirthy would memorize the men's features. I let that stand.
You have to admit, we went to an awful lot of
trouble to pull this off. I haven't told you about the practice
runs with the Loochies or the difficulties we had to overcome with
Rudolph's antlers. The sleigh was incredibly difficult to
manufacture because runners were an entirely alien concept to
Knipper mechanics. Eventually, however, the matrix coalesced and I
began to think of myself in Machiavellian terms. Oh yeah, the
thought of being able to pull off a hoax like this on my babies
was just irresistible. You can't imagine the pride we all felt at
the brilliant duplicity.
Then there was the tree. For that, since nothing
in the Knipper forests was even close to an evergreen or pine, I
decided to spring for the real thing, an expensive import on the
next shuttle. Mesche made the ornaments herself, spending days
carefully constructing fragile doodads and crystalline artworks to
decorate the symbol. She even made a star for the top, a
beautiful, shining little sun. There were plenty of candles and
loads of tinsel to spread around. We put the tree up as a family a
week before the event, just to get the kids excited and committed.
We also put a few meticulously packaged presents under the tree so
that Pobox and Mirthy would understand that some of the presents
came from us.
Finally, the day arrived. I couldn't get off
work, but by the time I arrived home, Mesche had the table laid
out for a feast. It was a truly wonderful dinner and we wound up
singing songs and having a great time. There were a bunch of
questions asked and, since Mesche and I never talked down to our
kids, we did our level best to comply.
"Why a Christmas dinner?" Pobox asked.
"I remember it from Earth, but not why?"
"It's a birthday celebration," Mesche
answered simply.
"Yes," I hurried to explain. "The
birthday of a man who was the son of the being that created all
the planets, like Earth and Knippe."
"Then where's the cake?" Mirthy
queried stubbornly.
"This dinner takes the place of the cake
and the candles are on the tree," Mesche replied.
"Well, why do we get presents?" Pobox
asked with a frown. "Shouldn't we be giving presents?"
"Your gift is in the way you listen to your
parents," I added. "Santa Claus appreciates it when boys
and girls behave themselves. He spends the whole year with his
elves at the North Pole making rewards for children who are
good."
"You mean like telling the truth
always?" Pobox asked.
"Seeking the truth is the best of
presents," Mesche replied simply.
"And knowing if people are fibbing?"
Mirthy continued with wide eyes.
"Absolutely," I agreed. "Also,
going to bed when you're told."
"Yes," Mesche continued. "You
have to be prepared with plenty of sleep for Santa, because he
comes in the wee hours of the night with his reindeer to deliver
his gifts. You can't let him see you though and you can't talk to
him."
"Why not?" Mirthy asked, hunching her
shoulders.
"His elves do the speaking for him. He's
much too busy with the presents and the reindeer and all. I
wouldn't bother him if I were you, not if you want to get some new
toys. Otherwise he'll be so absorbed listening to you kids go
yakety yak, he might forget to leave the gifts."
"Oh-h-h," my children answered with
dawning surprise.
"So that's it," Pobox stated with a
settled smile.
"Got it, daddy," Mirthy said.
Whereupon my children went instantly to bed, not
their favourite pastime and certainly not with their traditional
arguments against doing so. We suspected they might set their
private timepieces for midnight to wake them in order to glance
out the window and search for traces of Santa. In that, we were
correct.
It was 3:00 a.m. when Lovelace brought the
sleigh around according to plan. Snard jumped down and spotted the
kids in the window. Mesche and I had all the cameras trained in
and around the house, keyed to the scanner. It remains the most
costly film in our possession and one we will never forget. We
didn't want to miss any of it. Snard held up his finger, warning
the kids not to make a sound. He entered through the front door,
knowing the combination. Pobox and Mirthy had already secreted
themselves under the couch and easy chair to get a furtive look.
"Sh-h-h," Snard said. "Don't wake
mommy and daddy. You'll spoil the surprise," he warned.
Lovelace followed Snard into the living room,
carrying his bag of toys. He placed them gently under the tree,
ignoring my children as instructed while Snard cautioned the kids
not to make a sound. When Lovelace exited with a few ho-hos and an
admonition to Rudolph to ready the other reindeers, Snard told the
kids to go back to bed. They could awaken mommy and daddy when the
sun came up. Pobox and Mirthy obediently crawled to their room and
feigned sleep for a few more hours.
They "awakened" us at the first
glimmer of sunlight, though in truth we were waiting. Our hands
were grabbed as they pulled us into the living room. I immediately
lit the fireplace as Mesche distributed the stockings. There
followed a two-hour rapture as Mesche and I gleefully watched them
open their gifts to the accompaniment of squeaked oohs and ahs. As
parents, we shook our heads at each other, resplendent in total
mastery of the situation.
Much later at breakfast, while Mesche and I were
feeling particularly good about ourselves, the children, our
innocent little darlings intruded on our self-praise with the
following:
"I think Mr. Lovelace can colour some
radical eggs for Easter," Pobox said.
"Yeah. He's too fat for a bunny. Better let
Snard do it," Mirthy added.
By the end of
this review, a fair number of you will probably be screaming,
"Scrooge!"
Believe me, I
wanted to like this book. Who wouldn't? Christmas is near and
dear to so many hearts, including mine.
The idyllic
Christmas scene on the cover sets the proper
tone for a Christmas anthology. Cox-Bilz's artwork is scattered
throughout, in fact, and adds a welcome folk art feel to the
entire e-book.
As
one would expect, the stories, essays and poems are full of warmth and fond memories,
although many are heavy on sentiment and seriousness. When an
entry reveals a lighter tone--as in the poem "Twas a Week Before
Christmas"--the shift is refreshing. Unfortunately, "Santa Dies of Heart Failure" turns a funny premise
into a sad tale where "the world was better off without the
old jelly belly man"--needlessly mean spirited considering
the denizens of this make-believe world all know that Santa's
real.
A
few more entries stand out from the rest and deserve special
mention here.
Ann-Marie
Irace's "The
Stuff of Christmas" is a nice change of pace from an
endless stream of stories proclaiming "the true meaning of
Christmas." (The lesson turns to lecture after countless
repetitions.) Similarly, Amy
S. Pierce paints a lovely portrait of "Yuletide
Spirit" in general terms that feel nonetheless specific.
The experiences recounted by both writers are universal.
Daniel
D. Molinoff's "Christmas Day" is a terrific story
about feeding Christmas dinner to the underprivileged, although
it might have read better as prose rather than poetry.
Chuck
Render's "A Tiny Christmas" looks at the holidays
through the eyes of a mouse. The story is cute but not cloying,
as even the mouse is blessed and able to "Sleep in Heavenly
peace."
At
200-plus pages, this is a massive e-book and a daunting read
when one story is much like another. Cox-Bilz could have put
together a slimmer, less repetitive book and had a real gem on
her hands. (If anyone feels like sending me a lump of coal, on
the other hand, my mailing address is on the Contact
page.)
We spend so much time writing that we often
forget the value of conversation, especially with other writers.
The following sites include chatrooms for writers.
All
chats are Eastern Standard Time.
Word
Museum - Chats are scheduled each Wednesday evening at 9 p.m. A different guest writer is featured each week, and door
prizes are given out to participants. There are also special
chats on different nights, such as the Enchanted Holidays
chat on December 9. Check out their online schedule for more
information.
Writers
Chatroom - Formerly known as the Fear of Writing
Chatroom. Open forum on Sundays at 9 p.m. Scheduled guests
authors each Wednesday at 10 p.m. Door prizes, too.
The
Writers Association - Members gather each Monday at 10
p.m. to discuss works in progress, future projects, and
literature in general. No guest authors or door prizes, but
expect plenty of warped humour.
The first time I read "Modestina" I
knew I held something special in my hands. This story resonates
with every word and haunts long after the last paragraph. I hope
you enjoy Dr. Caroselli's tale as much as I did.
Modestina
by Dr. Marlene Caroselli
In that room of shadows and half-lights, the
crucifix on the wall stood silhouetted by the sun. I remember
that--the memory is carved, a wooden memory. I moved to give that
infant a regular if abrupt passage from his world in the womb to
the light outside his mother's stomach. I saw her weep then.
But I did not have much time to think about
them. The child had come through the passageway. There was no
wail, though, and I soon saw he had somehow tied a knot in the
thread that bound him to his mother's inner life. The baby was
nothing more than a limp, grey lump. One look at his charcoal skin
and I knew: the cord that lay tangled around his neck had
strangled him after all.
Hoping the tone of my voice would be like
sawdust on the fire of her unspoken question, I told her she would
be fine. But Erminia would not be fooled. "My baby, my
baby," she cried. "What have you done with my
baby?"
"Stop!" I scolded. "He came out
dead. Forget him!" I hurled the words at her, hoping to
startle her into concern for herself. But grief clambered from her
heart, too awkward, too grotesque to be stopped with mere
syllables. She raised her white arms in that room of terra cotta
shadows. "Give him to me," she demanded, her voice
rasping against the soft stillness of the afternoon.
Again, I told her the child was dead and she
wrapped her arms around herself as if she were sheltering a ghost.
She pulled that sadness into her being and sank back upon the
pillow, her mourning already begun. She was not speaking words,
only sounds that came from deep within her. I stood there
helpless. Finally, I began to clean up the room, my thoughts
punctuated by her half sighs and stifled moans.
And then we heard a mewling. I looked at her and
found the same perplexing question in her reddened eyes that I had
bouncing in my head. From that placenta-shrouded bundle we heard
it again. It was fainter this time, almost like the whispered
good-bye of a lover reluctant to leave, an utterance more felt
than heard. "Lui e renato," she shouted.
Could it be? Was God so good that he would
restore life to this bundle of flesh and provide another chicken
or two for me? I reached for the blanket that would offer an early
protection from life's sorrows.
She held out her arms, beseeching me to give her
what she had carried inside for nine long months. The baby’s
colour was restored by now. The danger had passed. I helped her
cradle the tiny form in her arms. She cooed the whole time, "Renato.
Renato."
This is how he came by his name. He came to life
a second time.
This
is your chance to provide
feedback on the newsletter. Tell us
what you did and didn't like. Make suggestions for future
issues.
We
want to hear from
you.
InkSpotter
News
232
subscribers
in
Australia
Canada
Finland
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Africa
United
Kingdom
United
States
Betty:
Thank you for running the little note I sent
you. It is always fun learning more about writers I know from the
Web. We are getting to be a wonderful little community.
As you probably know, I am a frequent
contributor to Apollo's Lyre--you know, that wonderful
magazine for writers that you work with as poetry editor? Isn't is
exciting that AP won that award. I have to tell you that I
think you are working with one of the best group of editors
around--Brett, Lea, Patty and Betty. You all deserve the best!
I also wanted you to know about another
"find." You may know of it already: Dotsie Bregel's Boomer
Women Speak. I'll be answering questions on her forum
until the first week in December. This is probably too late for
your InkSpotter but I figured you would want to know about
it. A great place for women to connect with women!
Best,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Betty,
The November issue is superb. Good job.
Bill Rieser
Sorry I didn't get a chance to
comment earlier...or more fully. Well put together, as always. I
found Wendy Whittingham-Favaro's "Elusion" very
interesting, starting with the format. Serial haiku style, indeed.
I do rather wish she hadn't used " She languors in
solitude." I'm not terribly fond of "verbing the
noun." Otherwise, though, I wouldn't have guessed this
started as a random word prompt.
Mary E. Gray
Hi Betty,
I received your check in the mail today.
I'm planning to purchase some tinned food items
and put the cans in the food drive box at the local grocery store.
Just wanted to express my thanks again and let
you know the money is going to a good cause.
;o )
Thanks again - you're the best!
Wendy Whittingham-Favaro
Betty
Nice newsletter. I enjoy reading it and the
format is unique and easy on the eyes. Good job!
C. Hope Clark
inkspotter:
Put your site in my favourites a few months ago.
Never got to it before I had PC rebuilt and lost it. Have it again
and will be sure to check this out thoroughly. From the main page
I see it is full and will keep me occupied for quite sometime.
