Armchair Adventures

I can do things. I can read a map held upside down if I have to and I don't get lost. I can pick out the tune on a piano. I don't panic in the kitchen and my three-chip chocolate chip cookies are the talk of the block, but from my armchair, I dream of what else I might do. I dream of what else I could do.

A bowl of ice cream, scoop piled upon scoop, reminds me that I could climb Everest. I could master the vernacular of pitons and belaying ropes, and I could master their use, too, but my hand is a little cold holding the bowl of ice cream. Perhaps something warmer would be more to my liking.

What if I biked across the United States? Nothing Tour de France-style, but at a steady pace, bent over the handlebars, tucked into one position the entire way across Iowa or Nebraska. Hmmm, this cushion I sitting on feels awfully soft as I type this. I think I'll ponder something else.

I could sail around the world. I can imagine the feel of the wind on my face as the sails fill and the boat sweeps along atop the water. As long as the boat stayed atop the water, I'd be fine. I wonder how long a person can dog paddle?

My cat is stretched out along the back of my chair. He's looking right at me. Maybe I should try lion taming? I stare back at my cat, but he yawns, his kibble breath making my eyes water. Sadly, I realize there is no way I could stick my head in a lion's mouth.

However, I think I have everything in the house to make those three-chip chocolate chip cookies. Thank goodness I don't panic in the kitchen.

Four Hundred Word Autobiography

I have known my life since the beginning. I knew the circus that set up in the field across from the house in which I grew up. A nighttime deluge of colors and lights, sounds and smells though gaudy and forced during the day. I have known people who were the same.

I’ve been a rustler and a card shark. I’ve created old shops that would not be out of place on a Dickensian street. I’ve been a flapper with a flask tucked into my rolled stocking and I’ve danced with Al Capone. I’ve been in lovely pine-paneled studies with fires crackling on the hearths and the lingering smells of tobacco and leather in the air. I’ve been courted and wooed. I’ve seen fall colors on East Coast weekends. I’ve developed a new rose. I’ve trod the boards as the ghost of Hamlet’s father. I’ve opened old trunks in dusty attics and found both treasures and empty spaces with only the lingering hint of perfume left behind.

I have no favorite day in my life, no day I would live over again. The best day of my life is today with tomorrow the runner-up. I rarely look back for memories wander too far from where I want to be. The rough edges of old recollections have been smoothed though the sharpest peaks still jut through, inhospitable islands or gorgeous snow-covered peaks.

I’ve learned few lessons except for the importance of allowing neither mistake nor ego to get in my way. I’ve seen good and bad examples and not always taken either to heart. I’ve been frightened by the nonsensical, taken figurative blows for a friend and competed with Shaharazade in spinning tales to stay alive.

I know others would make little sense of the world I see through my eyes, but this is the tale of my life not theirs. For me, whatever I’ve imagined, I’ve also done. Life, as defined by the one I’m living, is clouded by memory and cheered by visions, prodded by goals and dreams and illuminated by the flickering light of an old movie palace projector. I am a queen, a slave, a teacher, a student, a mountain, a gully, sunshine and shadows, gently falling rain and fierce blizzards. I can swing on a trapeze above the crowd and wave or hide from everything. I am the unreliable narrator of my life.

Coming Attractions

I'm taking a creative writing class. This week's assignment is to do one of the following:

1. Write a six word story

2. Write a 400 word autobiography

3. Begin a story with the prompt "Give me back--"

I managed to think of two six word stories before I got home from the class and I didn't have much interest in 3 so I took the challenge of writing the 400 word autobiography. I'll post the result tomorrow. It's been an interesting exercise.

Oh, the six word stories are ---

I remembered too late. Faulty brakes.

Tried to kill me. Marriage over.

Performance pieces

When my uncle was in high school, he and a girl friend used to go into a store where they were not known and stage a mock, ad-libbed break up fight ending with her either slapping him and storming out or kissing him to make up. Once, when in a Vegas casino with his sister, niece and friends, he convinced staff that he was a man of the cloth there in Sin City with members of his flock. They got a very fancy dinner comped at which he said grace and after which they got the heaven out of there.

My grandfather once acted like a complete lunatic while stuffing kerosene soaked rags into the runs of the moles infesting his lawn all because someone pulled over to the roadside to ask for directions and seemed to expect him to stop what he was doing and walk over to the car so they wouldn’t have to get out. He fell about laughing when their tires squealed during their rush to get away. He also scared off a door-to-door salesman who ignored the “No Salesmen” notice on the door by complaining loudly to my grandmother, who had also come to the door, that her efforts were keeping him from seeing the salesman’s wares and the salesman had promised to show them. This while she was dressed in a nurse’s uniform for work with her arms around grandfather pulling him away from the door while saying in an undertone to the salesman, “If you back away slowly, you should be okay.”

My grandmother also used to dress as a witch at Halloween and sit in a chair beside a tree stacked around with pumpkins halfway along the sidewalk to the house. My grandfather would pass out the treats at the door and as the little ghouls, cowboys and princesses came back along the walk she would suddenly lean forward and say, “Did you get anything good?” The screams still reverberate through time.

All this is just so you’ll know I come by it naturally.

Opening gambits

I’m trying to come up with a good opening for my novel and have decided to have fun and take inspiration from others.

“Tom glanced behind him and saw the man coming out of the Green Cage, heading his way. Tom walked faster. There was no doubt the man was after him.”
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

“It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

“It was a dark and stormy night.”
Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen."
Red Wind by Raymond Chandler

“Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.”
Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

“In the beginning....”
The Bible by You Know Who with various guest writers

February

I find February to be an odd duck of a month. Compared to the other months it's Pluto, stuck in a cold and barren part of the year most people don't like. The best thing about Pluto is its name and the most cheering thing about February is the quirk of Valentine's Day. Unlike Pluto, however, I don't see February being struck off because it's not quite a "real" planet, I mean month. I'm sure January won't agree to take any of February's days, January is long enough as it is, and I doubt March would like to do any of February's time since March tries its best to be a part of spring.

And what's with a month that isn't even consistent about its number of days?

Embracing my inner Anglophile

I’ve always loved England. It’s the England of my imagination, I’m afraid, since I’ve never been there. I did see England once, from the window of a plane on my way to the Netherlands. So close and yet......

Part of “my” England is what I gleaned from old movies, always in black and white. Winding cobbled roads and paths, styles over fences instead of gates through them, loads of magical things like cream teas and playing sardines and murder in country houses. Things I can imagine though I don’t really know about them.

More of my England is from illustrations by Arthur Rackham. I find his work reminds me of something familiar but almost forgotten like waking from a dream and not quite remembering the details.

The rest of my England is from books. Mysteries from the golden age where a murder in a country house means a death instead of a game. Children’s books, most especially the Famous Five series where the four children and a dog rambled about having adventures and solving mysteries with no adult supervision. Dickens. And then there is Holmes. I suspect I carry a little bit of Holmes with me always. He was my first, best and most consistent British love. How could I not love someone who quoted Shakespeare, “the game’s afoot,” and made it his own. Who was not a policeman, but who solved crimes by deduction and became the world’s first consulting detective. Someone who was so interesting.

Interesting, like my England.