I've taken out a pair of shears and am slicing and dicing my words.  Just revised chapter one and boy does it need a haircut.  Got the important bits shoved in there and now the poor little darling is all bloated and sluggish and has a serious case of the doldrums.  SIGH.  I'm almost ready to dump it, keep the outline and start from scratch.  It's Dion's voice that's killing it.

He's a stodgy ol' ancient cuss anyway.  Add to that the fact that he's been stripped of emotion, and the only useful way he interprets the world is through his...ahem...I'll say anatomy, and it's a bitch to write in any remotely interesting way.  Ah, so we could go with the human as POV, but she has no clue what he's trying to do--and he's too grand and arrogant to fill her in on his plan.  (He barely wanted to tell me, imagine!  I had to threaten to tie him upside down and castrate him before he spilled.  Some.)  And the plan must be spilled.

Oh, and then there's the drugs.  Here's Dionysus before the drugs (cold, isolated, arrogant bastard), then here he is after (luke-warm, arrogant, flowery bastard with even greater delusions of grandeur).  Yeah, and the flowers...I mean that quite literally.  Ever try to write a Georgia O'Keefe rendering...yeah, I bit off more than I can manage with this one.

I'm toying with throwing in a prologue--which I promised myself I would not do--just to kind of help nudge the reader over the hump in the road that is his desperation--which incidentally torches off the rest of the novel.  It's a great place to start, it just doesn't SOUND right yet.  It lays there like a lump of word masturbation.  I need drums and pounding and gently rising tempo that careens out of control and...a verbal rendering of Bolero.  That's what it needs...Mr. Ravel, meet Ms. O'Keefe.  

Eep.  

Excuse me, I have to go do something impossible now...(Lord Almighty, what have I done?!)

 Tony Bennett eat your heart out.

Stopped by for a quick visit with another brother and his family--in San Francisco.  Out of the smoke and the heat and into the summer fog.  They live in a part of The City (and, yes, people who call this place home call it that--call it Frisco and you might get decked) that is constantly in a fog bank.  If I didn't live where I do, I would love to live there.

Not in the fog, but in The City.  Had a good visit with cousins and all; wish it could have been longer.

Had a chance to cross the Bay Bridge and point out the sights to the kids.  Crossed the Altamont pass and gaped at the windmills--and wondered why there weren't more of them all over the place.

It wasn't such a bad drive home; I think we're probably going to be making this trip more than I had expected.  Of course, there is nothing to see in the central valley--except the water project, cows, and an endless ribbon of highway stretching between mountain ranges.  Still, it felt good to be in my home state, where summer gets good and hot, but dry.

Coming home felt more like home than we expected.  The first glimpse of the pacific--blue in the setting sun--tugged at me in that sweet ache of homesickness relieved.  Huh.  In just this little time.  I could leave the bustle and the traffic and all behind and be just as happy on that lonely road in Nevada, but I couldn't leave the ocean behind at this point.  The green water in the white breakers as we rolled south toward home churned like temptation.  Palm trees don't have roots in my soul the way conifers do, but I need to give them time to grow.  Don't I?

Oh, how gorgeous she is.  So like my little girl, with the ticklish back and a tendency to arch right up out of your arms, despite being so young and floppy.  Ah, it's good to be the Auntie and be able to give them back, though.  So tiring to care for the wee ones.

It's strange to hear my sister in law call herself grandma--she's only four years older than me.  Eeep.

Little Kate does have to take some medication for her heart, and they are watching her closely.  The meds are helping and we're all praying that things heal up on their own without surgery.  She's a scrappy little cuss, though, so like E.  I'm so happy to have met her.

 
So we didn't quite make it out of the Great Basin in one swell foop, we pulled over and stayed in Fallon.  Some family history in that dirty old town, and ghosts of it haunted at the edge of my thoughts.  I'm not going to talk about it, but 15 years later it's still a bad thing--so, it wasn't just something like got a flat in Fallon.  When I got home and told my mom where we stayed it was the first thing she mentioned, after groaning.  Let's just say it was an education into the injustices built into the justice system--and it's better now, but lives were irreparably altered because of Christian intolerance; fear of hormonal teenagers and their SCARY music with angry words; and (my personal favorite) idiocy.  Let this be a lesson to you all:  he who has the funds to hire the best lawyer, wins.  Every time.  Right, wrong or indifferent.  Appeals are only for those who have $$$$$$.  Nuff said.  So don't be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And, by the way, that's Nevada that rhymes with ladder (or ladduh for you extreme eastern types). *g*  It doesn't rhyme with hotter.  Nevahda is not a state, and the locals want you to know that--they get a little tetchy about it too.

We crossed the great basin in a day, navigating the self-acclaimed "loneliest road in America," Highway 50.  These are the only towns on the map, and that isn't because of scale--these are the only towns as you cross the basin:  Ely, Eureka, Austin and Fallon.  From there you can head to Reno/Sparks (which we did) or Carson City.

Here's what it is like to cross the great basin:  climb a steep, barren ridge of scrubby brush and sage and brown dirt.  Pop your ears, because the summit climbs about 2,000-3,000 feet above the valley, peaks at around 5,000-6,000 feet.  Then groan, because there at your feet is another deep valley, 20 to 30 miles across an you can see the ribbon of highway as it cuts straight across the floor--see where you will be for the next stretch and where the road will bend straight back into the sky to climb the next opposing ridge.  Then, down you go, across a carpet of blooming sage.

My boy gave me some hair and we gathered some, grateful for the gift.

We stopped at the Great Basin National Park visitor center and learned some things about the geology and the water shed, relieved to have left the masses of tourists back at the more popular stops.  Somewhere in the desert we finished Pratchett's The Last Continent (for those unfamiliar with this one, it's set in an alternate Austrailia and riffs on every Aussie joke you've ever heard--no worries).  It was a pretty appropriate read for this little road trip.  So when we ran across yet *another* Austrailian Couple at the visitor center, it was hard not to chuckle at the synchronicity.

Petroglyph Campground as the sun turned toward setting.  I love petroglyphs, I could sit and contemplate them for hours.  Like omphaloskepsis only with rocks--paleoskepsis? *g*  Anyway, the ancestors had much to say--I only hope I was listening well.  Scars of recent grafiti scratched stupidly and incompetently over ancient glyphs cut something in my soul.  "Melissa 08" scratched with a knife over the top of some glyphs that may be thousands of years old for all I know.  Yet, I understood the drive--the desire to leave one's mark somewhere on the world--to have let everyone, forever, know that you lived and breathed and walked the earth.  I do understand that.  I just wish Melissa could have found her own damn rock.  Or a more meaningful message.  Or both.

Had an interesting dinner in a cafe in Austin--a little town where racial divides are noticed but kept simmering just under the surface.  I knew we were in trouble when we walked in the door and the cook/owner gave us "that" look.  Yet, it wasn't that bad.  Bill and I imagined that there are probably brawls at the saloon every Saturday night over the tensions boiling just below the surface.  We weren't the only natives in the place--and things seemed civil, and friendly even (in a tense way).  It was kind of fun to listen to the ranchers that sat behind us, with their tales of glory and intelligent rebuttal that was prefaced with the phrase:  (often heard from my dad) "horse shit."  Yeah, I could relate to the people on both sides of the room a little too well.  Whites on one side, reds on the other--and us in the middle not white not red and certainly not pink.

I've been told that mixed race people are the ones to build the bridges between cultures, to bring understanding and healing to both sides.  Yet, when I sit here in the middle--why do I just want to crawl under the table and not be noticed by either side?  What is it about the way I have lived that makes me scared of both sides of the room?

Made a last trip into Zion to hike above the mile long tunnel, the Kanab firefighter/scout leader we met in the grocery store tipped us off.  And what a tip.

Once again, the hike would have been life altering if it hadn't been for the people.  Hey, folks, I'm just saying...if the hike is gentle enough for me to do it in a skirt and a pair of sandals, you probably don't need the fancy walking poles and $500 worth of gear from REI.  

It's funny, with the dollar down the way it is, there were a lot of foreign tourists, and you could pick them out by how they were dressed.  Europeans walked around in sandals and flip flops, strolling the trails and talking.  Americans came decked out with loads of "hiking gear" from REI and the like.  Nalgene bottles, $100 day packs, hiking boots, fancy walking sticks and expensive silly hats with all the whistles and bells on.

Once upon a time I was a serious hiker.  Once upon a time I cherished an expensive pair of boots and was grateful for them every step I took.  I can't say that I missed them once on the hikes we took in Zion, as not one was strenuous to warrant bringing them out of the closet.  But I guess it's all about looking the part, not actually living the part, right?

So up above the east side of Zion's main canyon, this easy little trail was a great way to greet the day.  Sweeping views of the canyon, the peekaboo windows in the great tunnel road, the river far below (nearly covered over by eroded banks of sandstone), and the towering mesas on the west side couldn't be beat.  No, I didn't take pictures; I left my camera home.  Had some private moments there, at the overlook, despite the chatter and the photo opp'g tourists--with my bare feet firmly on the cool sandstone.

I walked back bare footed, just because I'm that way--see, you don't need your boots.  Also, I wanted to feel the soft powder of dirt eroded from sanstone, feel the rocks as they warmed in the rising sun.  I stopped to admire lizards and a great tree root spread back along the path for twenty feet.  This tree grew straight and tall, many branches had died, but others held jealously to the needles, clinging to harsh life in the rocks.  The tree root across the trail was fully exposed and was trampled on daily by hikers.  Its circumferance was the size of a thick man's waist.  Roots dangled off the other side of the rocky cliff face, also fully exposed, like the thick tendrils of a coarse beard.  Now, who am I to complain of hardship, when life can be that tenacious.  Thrusting toward the sun like a great middle digit, firmly telling the elements to swivel, this great tree will be with me for a long time.

Bryce canyon was a pleasant drive down the road, and once again the views were spectacular.  Bryce looks like people have been frozen in the rock and then melted by the rain.  I found the landscape eerie, due partly to a deeply spiritual dream I had a long time ago.  I won't go into that, but it was odd to cast eyes on a landscape I had only seen in dream.  Everyone else hiked down into the canyon, but I wouldn't go.  I can't quite tell you why, except that it felt to me an unsafe place to be--and raven sat and laughed at me in that hoarse way of the mountain breed.  The fact that high pine forest covered the slopes of the surrounding hills put me more at ease than in scrubby Zion.  The distant whisper of trees, that slowly grows into the roar of a coming wind--this is the sound of home.  So I avoided the twicky feeling canyon and had a nice nap under the rolling hush of swaying pines.  I think I got the better deal.

More on the Great Basin tour later...

So I've been on a whirlwind tour of the Great Basin, an odd geographical anomaly where water falls from the sky, travels down rivers to...well, nowhere.  Rivers in the Great Basin empty into land-locked lakes or disappear underground.  I'm still puzzling over this, because it violates everything I ever learned about the water cycle.

stolen from lisamantchev, this quizzy thing... 

We have some friends visiting from--let's just say "near" Seattle--and it's just really good to be able to say what we're really thinking out loud, in public. We all tend to have a wicked sense of humor, a little scathing, a little naughty...and you kind of have to censor yourself when in certain circles. It just isn't professional to make sideways references comparing a power cord to a bit of male anatomy. I haven't had such a good bit of bawdy laughter since...the last time they visited.

And then J told me about the Pemco adds, where certain Northwest Personalities (and they are dead accurate if any of our experiences are a measure of what life in Washington is like) are simultaneously mocked and used as a sales pitch. So I clicked the site and howled again. This one, in particular I think was shot at one of the camping trips we took together. It is, frame by frame, a tale from our past.

We were blue tarp campers, and whether it was a trip to Deception Pass, or Neah Bay or Quinault--we always brought the blue tarps, and we usually had to hang them.

There was that one trip, where we schlepped our gear 2 miles up a steep slope in the Cascades, only to have it pour (no, really, like we were under a car wash) nonstop. And no one got any sleep because a river started running through the middle of the tent, and I just giggled all night at the sound of the wind rushing over the tops of the trees.  I think people wanted to kill me well before dawn--it had been my idea after all.  

We just kept saying, "surely, it has to let up soon. It can't rain this hard the WHOLE time. I mean, this isn't the RAINforest...it doesn't even rain this hard in the Olympics." Ah, glory days.  I think it took 5 years before my camp stove dried out enough for the self-ignition switch to function again. But I kept testing it, then having to light it with a match. Then suddenly, one day it worked. *g   

At any rate, here is a glimpse of my past. Hope you enjoy.

This comes to me from imafarmgirl, who interviewed me with the following questions (the trick here for me is to answer these without writing a 5k essay).  If you want to play, make a comment and I'll come up with questions you can answer in your blog.

1. If you could change the world, in one way, what would it be?

2. What recipe, song, or other tradition, passed down from your family, means the most to you and why?

3. Where do you find strength and motivation to keep your life moving forward?

4. What trait that seems common in people is most irritating to you?

5. Whom do you admire?

Twenty years ago today I realized I loved him, and he never had a chance.  Twenty year old men are easy to seduce; I was lucky.  I told him that night that I loved him, made it sound like a joke through the restaurant's kitchen door.  Our coworker heard it, and I thought I would be ridiculed the rest of the night, but he knew better.  It wasn't something to joke about.

We really haven't been apart from each other since that day.

Sixteen years ago today, we both said I do, but we had already been saying it every day for the last four years.  It's funny how different it felt, though, when our commitment became a publicly acknowledged certainty.  It didn't change us, but it changed how others felt about us.

We have gone through many changes over the last 20 years.  I was a musician then.  He was a biology student.  Now we have very different careers and have gone through the mess that is terminal (PhD) education together.  And still truly together.  

I thought our discussions of God were going to break us way back then--me the mystic and him the cold hard scientist.  And instead we have somehow melded both points of view and come up with a larger definition than either of us had before.  

From times when we had no paycheck and grew a garden in a communal space to keep fed--to times that are very different from that indeed, we still understand each other, and there isn't anywhere else we would rather be.  

There is no one else who laughs (at all) at my stupid jokes or can sink to my level of adolescent humor when I need to let off steam.  Who shares my same geeky interests and yet can talk heavy philosophy with me at 2 am.  There is no better father in the world for my children, than the one I get to lay down next to each night.  

We've gone passed that point where we finish each other's sentences and into the place where we have each other's thoughts.  

I suppose in another 20 years we will have mixed together completely, a part of each of us in each person's skin.  Happy anniversary, love, there is nowhere I would rather be than by your side--where we are, what we are doing, that shifts around us and becomes like dust.  Doesn't it?

Snagged from

imafarmgirl

snicked from 

lisamantchev

canarynoir

Snagged this from

canarynoir

On my way to the bathroom I saw the following sign closing the passage to my kids' rooms:

The Crimson Pearl

No scurvy dogs alowd!


Hee.  I think I need to finish this chapter so I can get attacked by my little pirates...

I just realized I'm up to 85k words and still have some chapturds to write.  Damn it!   Somebody, quick get me a gag...kaopectate for the frontal lobe...better yet, a hatchet.

Um, fingercuffs?  A keyboard lock..."thou shalt only access the keyboard to hit DEL"

Welcome to the world, dearest little Kate Marie.  Happy first day.  I can't wait to meet you.

Love, 

your Great Auntie

(huh, now if that isn't the weirdest thing I've called myself in a while...I be so oooooollllld!)

I'm digging in my heels and procrastinating again.  But I don't want to completely restructure the last three chapters...and as I move the crap around I feel like I'm just hauling the dung from one pile to another.  So I end up looking for 10 other things to do, which includes downloading the latest Naruto for the family.

Aching for inspiration.  Begging for it.  Once the spark hits it's going to come pouring out, won't it?  Or is this one of those things that if you push through, even if you have to toss it all out later, it gets you moving?  Don't know.  But if this were a plane, I'd be holding my breath waiting for the inspiration masks to drop from the overhead bins.

My tolerance of talkative ignorance immolated when I finished my study at last.  Spare me from practitioners of vincible ignorance spouting off about what they don't understand.  

I guess that makes me a snob, to want to cover my ears at those who:  sound ignorant, admit--at least in part--that they are not informed, express no desire to rectify their fuzzy information and yet...still insist on spouting off anyway.  Just venting.  Wishing for wisdom on how to wake that kind of evil up from its self-induced sleep--without making it worse.

If only there was a way to strike the match, and let them take the rest in hand.