Heads Up, Writers!

Heads up, Writers! 

It’s time to save the world! We need a Charles Dickens, to show us what the census numbers really look like walking; we need a Thomas Paine to tell us just what might really work; we need a Rachel Carson to bring us to our senses; we need a Martin Luther, to bring us back to God.

We’ve had plenty of minor players.  Who’s going to write the story that brings us fully back to center?

People who are great in their various professions, skills, and callings think profoundly but narrowly.

Only writers think of all the connections and the what-ifs; and some of you must wrap your imaginations around all our ideas, events, and characters, and write the words that will save the world.

You know who you are.  Heads up!

Writers Forum Find Your Muse #10 - Holiday Disaster

For this week's Writers Forum I am again attempting to hone my skills at writing fiction:

 

Saturday, December 16, 1972

Dear Carole,

          I have so much to tell you!  Every day I ask God why you had to move away just when school is getting good.  We aren’t the shrimpy little 7^th graders any more.  Yay!   The boys at school are so dumb but I met a freshman from the high school yesterday and he is so cool.  I hope he asks me out.  Of course, Mom and Dad probably won’t let me go out until I’m 20 years old or something.  I don’t care.  He is soooo dreamy, and his name is Nate, and I am sure that some day I will marry him.

          Oh!  I suppose you want to know how I met Nate?  Well, Mr. Harquin, my English teacher, asked me to take a note over to the high school office yesterday morning.  I had to wait for Mrs. Shoreby to get off the phone when I got there.  This very cute boy was waiting right in front of me, and he smiled at me, and he even talked to me.  I am just in heaven ever since.  I hope he sees me again and asks me for my phone number.

          Last night we had to go to Rita’s dumb wedding.  I didn’t tell you she was getting married, did I?  Ha ha.  I know I didn’t tell you because nobody in the family even knew about it until Monday!  How dumb is that?  Rita just met this guy, and he is really strange, if you know what I mean.

          Rita still thinks her name is Gracie.  Rita used to be so cool when she first went to MSU, but ever since she thinks she found Jesus or something, she is like a zombie from the Twilight Zone.  Remember when my mom and grandma took us to Lansing last spring to see Rita?  She was still Rita then, but she was already talking kind of weird, don’t you think?

          If you wouldn’t have moved away in August, you would be able to see what I mean.  I didn’t get any letters from her for a long time.  Maybe I did, but Mom and Dad hid them.  They say Rita is “subversive.”  Isn’t that romantic?

          Well anyway, she came home all of a sudden in September, but then she’s no sooner home and Mom tells her she had better go stay with Grandma so she won’t be a bad influence on little Judy.  Mom heard Rita telling Judy some of her strange “end of the world” ideas, is why she sent her to Grandma’s house.

          Oh!  Speaking of Mom, she is calling me to set the table for supper, so I will be right back.

          Well, I’m back.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, Rita/Grace.  They made her pick a new name in that group she lived with.  Mom made us watch a show on channel 8 about cults so we would understand.  Rita’s biggest worry from what I could tell was that America was going to end on Election Day.  Rita was staying with Grandma, and she could have voted for the first time this year, but she didn’t even vote.  She was too worried about the end of the world.

          When the world didn’t end, she went and found a new group of people in downtown G.R. to live with.  She likes communes, I guess.  Maybe that’s romantic too.  I don’t know.

          Anyway, she moved there just before Thanksgiving, and she handed out food to poor people on Thanksgiving and didn’t even come to Grandma’s house.  I think Grandma told her not to come, because my mom gets so irate every time she sees Rita.

          Well last Monday out of the blue Rita calls home from her new church place, and she wants to come over, and we missed Glen Campbell on TV to meet this guy God told her to marry.  I think he was a hippy out in California before he found Jesus.  I think he still smokes loco weed.  He has creepy eyes.  He looks like he is lost in space, if you ask me.

          Well, they got married last night, and it was a weird wedding, and now they are off on a honeymoon in a car somebody loaned them.

          So that brings you up to date on life here in Wyoming.  J.V. basketball starts in a few more weeks, and I think I will go to all the games just in case Nate is on the team.

          Don’t forget to play Daydream Believer every night before you go to bed, and remember me.  I am pining away for next summer when I can come and see you or you can come and see me.

          Rita and her new husband will be home from the honeymoon in time to come here for Christmas, and that is going to be a disaster – I just know it.

          Write me back as soon as you get this.  Maybe I will send you a picture of Rita and the creep, as soon as Dad develops the film.  Ta ta for now!

Love,

 Sherri

Writers Block #52: The Agnostic Shepherd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is dismal.  Some have heard angels sing.  Some say that star leads to a faraway hope.  My feet are wet, and I have no idea why it has to snow again tonight.  I am looking for a lamb that wandered off at sunset.  Perhaps we’ll both be dead by dawn. 

 

Centuries from now, people will hate and kill each other, because of differing interpretations of what was seen and heard tonight.  If, indeed, anything remarkable has happened tonight at all.

 

If God was real, and he was going to save us, you would think he could just start over, and get it right this time.  What could be so important to him about my wretched life?

 

And where on earth did that lamb of mine go? 

His Story

     The Sovereign had angelic children, all of them bright and promising, each of them well-brought-up, and well-provided for.  The eldest knew his father well, and envied his father, if truth be told, though why this should be so, I cannot say.

     In due course, upon attaining his maturity, the eldest took his place and ruled at his father's right hand.  He was well-equipped to fulfill this destiny, for his father had personally taught him everything that he, himself knew.

   The eldest was said to be so like his father: he excelled in science and art, mathematics and music; and his understanding of all these things was very keen.  It was said that the eldest was every bit as creative and capable as the Sovereign himself.  Every bit as creative and capable.  Furthermore, his countenance, much like his father's, was very stunning to behold.

     The Sovereign, being very ancient, had a goodly number of angelic children, and governed his kingdom with incredible wisdom, setting each of his children in positions of authority perfectly suited to their particular temperaments.

     This, then, was a peaceable kingdom.

     You have heard of what once happened, though, have you not?  It has long been told that the eldest once led many of his siblings to usurp the kingly throne.

     You have heard of what the Sovereign did, to preserve the peaceable kingdom: how he banished the usurpers to the pain of his own heart. 

     Have you heard, though, of the anguish of the other angelic children?  Have you heard, dears, of the anguish of the ones who did not rebel when their brother led a band against their father, and was captured, and was banished, to the pain of the Sovereign's heart?

   Oh, they did not understand -- these angelic children.  They could not say why the eldest took upon him what he did.  They could not say why so many followed in this horrid train.  Nor could they say why they were not also caught up in this folly themselves.

     Hence, the Sovereign himself would teach them, telling stories -- many stories.  So creative was the Sovereign that a whole new world was born of his words, as he taught his angel children with a wisdom full of nuance, rich with color, music, logic, justice, humor, mercy, irony.

     The stories first began, though, with a single metaphor:  how in overcoming chaos, there had been the first dividing of the darkness from the light.

    The stories have continued since before the dawn of time.  Many stories every evening, many stories every morning.  Every nuance, every possibility, is explained to angel children, as the Sovereign tells his story.

     Sometimes, still, the angel children, as creative as their father, when they know just how the tale should go, will write part of it themselves; never usurping, though, for that brings chaos.  Mostly, though, they watch and listen.  With eager faces they urge him on, as he creates new characters, new situations, amazing stories, all intertwined, a tapestry that is really one story yet seems to be infinite as the heavens themselves.

     Have you guessed, yet, who the Sovereign is?  Why the Creator of All, my dears.  And the angelic children are the Watchers and the Holy Ones.  And we, dears, are his story.  And this is not the end.  So creative is the Sovereign that the characters in his story have been crafted in the very image of the Sovereign himself -- have, in fact, been given life, and that not merely fictional, either.

    The angel children continue to watch, but we who are the characters of his story have been created to be more creative, even, than the angel children themselves.  We always write our own places in his story, whereas they only write a few lines.  Yet we are limited as to time and place, which they are not; and our stories are collective and diverse, overlapping with each other's as we co-create and tell the tale of all that can ever be.

Fiction by Rani Kaye - All Rights Reserved

Writer's Forum Find Your Muse #9 'Language Barrier'

"Lost in the Scenery"

Drat!  Now this is EXACTLY why I won't let myself imagine in color:  Because I ALWAYS get lost in the scenery if I do.  I have absolutely no sense of time.  I am "directionally challenged" in my home town.  So what am I gonna do now?  Just HAD TO gaze into that painting, didn't you, girl?

I'm in Rome.  I was in the Sistine Chapel with a tour group.  Why did I let Joyce talk me into coming on this tour?  I NEVER go on tours.  Joyce is so dang visual.  Joyce is so into experiences.  Joyce is so gregarious.  Yeah, and Joyce is off with the rest of the tour, because she can see things and remain connected to reality.  Not me, though.  Oh no.

In the sixties they started calling this phenomena "tripping out."  Mom and Dad just called it "day dreaming."  "Earth to Rani," is what my sister Vickie would say.  Yeah, well, earth (or the part of it I'm familiar with) just walked away and boarded the bus without me.  Yeah, I don't just get lost in the scenery in my imagination.  Oh no, I'm more lost than that.   I am a wall flower.  Absolutely forgettable.  I am so quiet, nobody notices me.

Yeah, they probably said "last call" or something.  But I was reading Michelangelo's mind.  I was living in his world.  So now how do I get back to my hotel before they all head back to America without me, for crying out loud?

"He is a foreign man.  He is surrounded by the sound, sound.  Angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity.  I said hey, hallelujah!"  Paul Simon.  I love Paul Simon.  What would Paul Simon do?  He travels all over creation, and he's a poet.  THINK, Rani!

I need to ask somebody how to get back there.  NO!  I need to beg somebody to GUIDE me back there.  Or I need a map.  In English.  Okay, now what am I going to do.  Think!  Think!

Hello ... does anyone here speak English?  No.  Well how about this one then, Parlez-vous Francais? 

Yeah, like that will help if somebody says, "Oui, je parle francais."

When I was foster-mom to Than and his English wasn't so good, I tried to remember my French, because he'd told me he'd learned French in school in VietNam.  But my schoolgirl French and his schoolboy French didn't sound the same, so THAT didn't work.  I had wanted to impress upon him some concept, and I just could not find the English words he knew to do it. 

Oh!  I remember!  Finally I found something along those lines in my Bible, and then copied the same chapter and verse out of HIS Vietnamese Bible.  I don't remember if that worked, though. 

But what the heck!

Bibles, Bibles, this is a CHAPEL for crying out loud.  Do they have any Bibles here in Italian?  More importantly than that, is there ANY dang verse in the Bible that says, "I am from America and I am lost.  I do not even remember the name of my hotel, let alone the street it is on."  Obviously THAT is not in the Bible.  So pointing to a verse in an Italian Bible and using that to express myself is NOT going to help me out of this situation.

Yeah, well, quit thinking about that.

Universal language.  Music is the universal language.  Yeah, but not all songs are universal.  What songs do I know in English that your average Roman is going to know in Italian?  Think!  Think!

Pavarotti is the only Italian singer I know.  No, wait, Placido Domingo.  And he sang a few in English: "Perhaps love is like a resting place, a shelter from the storm ..."  SHELTER!  Where is my shelter in this foreign land?  And WHY isn't my group coming back in search of me?

"Stop and stare.  I think I'm moving but I go nowhere ..."  Now WHY am I hearing that song by One Republic in my head?

No, wait!  That isn't a song in my head.  That is the ring tone on my cell phone!  Cell phone!  Answer it!

My son!  Back at home in the USA!  Hi, honey; how ya doin'? ... Oh, ... Well did you look in the study?  Yeah, under Dad's desk, in that little drawer thing.  Say, listen, do you have your computer fired up?  ... Good.  Listen, honey, could you do a Google Earth for me?  ... Yeah.  See if you can find the Sistine Chapel in Rome.  ... Okay, I'll wait.  ... You've got it?  Great!  Now could you look on my desk next to the calendar for the copy of the itinerary of this tour I'm on and see what the name of my hotel is supposed to be? ... You found it?  Great!  ... No, I don't need to know the name of it.  Just do a Google map for me of the directions from the Sistine Chapel to that hotel, and then STAY on the phone and talk me back there. ... Yeah, I know.  Just help me, okay?  STOP laughing and start Googling.  Thank you!

Fiction by Rani Kaye - All Rights Reserved