Zelda Fitzgerald

"It's very expressive of myself. I just lump everything
in a great heap which I have labeled 'the past,'
and, having thus emptied this deep reservoir
that was once myself, I am ready to continue."
Zelda Fitzgerald

"We Have Mrs. Brown And Her Dancing Bears"

excerpt from Eleanor,
a novel by Geoff Schutt

She put her hands together and welcomed everyone to the show, said she hoped they would have a wonderful time, said we have such a treat for you tonight. We have Mrs. Brown and her Dancing Bears, and we have Merle the Singing Dentist. But first we have me. I am called Eleanor.

Eleanor said to the emptiness: My father works in public relations but that doesn't mean he likes it. You can hide from a job like that. I am his niece or I am his god-something. He is too young to be my father. I am twelve, too old to be his daughter.

I wish I were bold. I would like to run my tongue across your cheeks and taste what smells you have absorbed during the day. Do you find this appropriate behavior for a twelve-year-old? I am not like other girls. I am not as bad as you think I am. But someday I would like to be bold, you know?

She stepped around, put her arms behind her back so her hands were toward the empty seats. She wiggled the middle finger of each hand and whispered, This is what I think when I think about you.

The custodian was here. He was pushing a mop bucket. Eleanor hid stage left, crouched way down so he couldn't see her. She watched him.

The custodian pulled the mop from the water, rung it dry, used both hands and set it on the stage. But he did not see Eleanor, now in the shadows. He walked to the side steps and was actually coming up to be with his mop! Eleanor slid back a little further. There was no way he could see her. He picked up the mop, looked both ways, held it like a microphone and began to sing.

Oh my God, Eleanor thought. Everybody wants to be a star, she thought.

He was singing an Elvis song. This one was from "Blue Hawaii." Eleanor recognized it. She'd seen all of the Elvis movies. Two years before that, believe it or not, right around the time her mother was gone, she watched an Elvis movie marathon on TV. It was the perfect way to forget anything was wrong with the world. The absolute perfect way to forget.

The custodian let the mop drop, flipped it up with his foot and danced with it like he was a rock star. He left the stage. He put the mop into the bucket and began pushing it down the center aisle. He gave a little bow to his right and a little bow to his left and it was all Eleanor could do to keep from clapping her hands.

When he was gone, Eleanor stood up, walked into the imaginary spotlight, said, We're terribly sorry, but because of a previous engagement we were not aware of, Mrs. Brown and her Dancing Bears could not be with us today.

"This Weekend You're Writing Again ...."

"A Poem For Geoff"
by Cher Bibler

This weekend you're writing again and
I'm thinking of you alone
in a room I've never seen
wrestling with demons I can't see -
I only read the finished words -
finished being a relative term
finished for this minute till
a new idea intrudes
a better word,
a deeper thought
a clearer way
I am thinking of our time together -
long ago now -
we didn't treasure it the way we should
we carelessly threw days away
laughing at them as they went
and now we're left with echoes of the
laughter and our words thrown like
dice, shifting and turning with
each throw, telling a new
story each time

The Zen Thought For Today: Life Is Like A Game Of Cards

My Little Book of Zen says this: "Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will." (attributed to Jawaharlal Nehru)

Almost sounds like a fortune from a fortune cookie, doesn't it? Okay, your lucky numbers are: 12, 18, 37, 38, 43. Good Luck!

*
Today should be the last day of the month, but we are graced with Leap Day 2008. An extra day, and an extra day for me, on deadline, to work on revision for my novel manuscript, hereby known as Eleanor. After that, it's back to Barrymore.

I like to refer to my novels-in-progress by the names of the main characters.

I feel like the utility baseball player who finds himself in the World Series as a pinch hitter, his team's last chance, bottom of the ninth inning, bases loaded, two outs, and he needs to crack one out of the park to win it all. Heroes are made at times like that.

Of course, my heroics will be much more internal, and to my characters, and especially, most of all -- to Eleanor.

"Life is like a game of cards," yes -- and I'm in the free will stage. Keep checking back to see how I'm doing. Life doesn't suddenly stop with the finish of one project. It continues on. And so will I, with a healthy dash, I hope, of "pluck and luck," a la Horatio Alger. The part that's mine is the pluck. The luck -- well, you already have the lucky numbers!

*
from Eleanor,
a novel by Geoff Schutt:

There was once a house where three people lived. There was a mother, and there was a father, and there was a daughter. The daughter was very special, everyone said so. Her parents said so, but parents always say that about their children. Other people said the little girl was special too. She was very pretty. She didn’t want to be beautiful, because she knew that beauty fades. So she was pretty, because she could be pretty for the rest of her life. People would always say, “There goes a really pretty girl.”

Everyone wanted to know what made her so special. They even asked the girl’s mother. They asked the girl’s father too. But the girl’s mother and father didn’t have any answers. They both said, “She was born special, like she came from someplace else, someplace far, far away.” They both said, “We can’t take credit for our little girl being so special. All we can do is love her.”

And that’s exactly what the mother and the father did. They loved their daughter like she was the only little girl in the whole entire world, like she was the last living child, like there had been some kind of plague that made all the other children dead. That’s how much they loved her.

Her mother said to her, “You are so beautiful.”

But the girl told her mother, “I’m pretty. I don’t want to be beautiful because every beautiful person grows old and gets wrinkles and dies.”

So her mother gave her a kiss on the forehead and said, “This is what makes you so special, because you know so much, because you are so wise.”

Her father said, “I will always love you.”

Her mother said, “I love you more than your father does.”

Her father became angry and said, “No, don’t listen to your mother. I love you more than your mother does.”

The girl became unhappy. She wanted her parents to see that they could both love her just as much as the other, that they didn’t have to fight over her. The daughter loved them just the same.

And when she did grow up, she grew up pretty and not beautiful, but she stayed pretty for the rest of her life.

Eventually the girl’s mother just said, “I love you.”

Eventually the girl’s father just said, “I love you.”

Eventually it was the same kind of love. It was good love. The love was pretty. It wasn’t beautiful love, the kind that dies. It was pretty love. It would never go away. Ever.

Longfellow's Evangeline & The St. Martinville Oak Tree

Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ... most of us have at least read or heard the opening line: "This is the forest primeval." It's the tragic and beautiful love story of Evangeline Bellefontaine and Gabriel Lajeunesse, separated by the politics of the day, or rather, the British expelling the Acadian people in 1755 to "anywhere but here."

Today, Feb. 27, is Longfellow's birthday. In the left-side column of this page is a short poem by Longfellow that I just adore -- "Loss and Gain." Evangeline, of course, is an epic, and still easily readable today.

The original Evangeline was published in 1847. My copy is an edition from 1868, published by Boston's Ticknor and Fields. I know the book traveled through St. Louis at some point, as there's a tiny sticker inside the back cover that reads, "From J.H. Cook Newsdealer & Bookseller, Southern Hotel, St. Louis."

I did a little research on the Southern Hotel, and apparently it was destroyed in a famous fire on April 11, 1877. It was a six-story, luxury hotel, and filled with guests that night. I don't know how many people survived the fire, but I read that many were saved. Whether my copy of Evangeline was inside the hotel the night of the fire and escaped with one of the guests, or left in the years beforehand, I will never know.

*
Evangeline (Or The Cats) Will Find You

On a trip across Louisiana in the year 2000, I found myself in the small city of St. Martinville (southeast of Lafayette), which is featured in Longfellow's masterpiece. St. Martinville was once known as "Little Paris," and has been called by many the birthplace of the Cajuns, who were among the displaced Acadians from Nova Scotia. There's such a mix of culture in St. Martinville. Many of the older folks still speak the Acadian-style French, along with English.

And there, on the banks of the Bayou Teche, mentioned in Evangeline, is where our lovers Evangeline and Gabriel, after being separated in Canada, just miss one another in their quest to be reunited.

There's a huge oak tree along the Bayou, though I understand the oak was planted years after the Longfellow poem. People will tell you different stories, and the oak is known as the Evangeline oak tree, so we can leave it at that. Why mess with literary legend.

On a warm March day, I sat by that oak tree and soon was greeted by a friendly parade of cats and kittens, who seemed to make this area their home. I did not want to leave. I felt a sense of peace, a calm, and perhaps in that moment I was within Longfellow's work, either with Evangeline or Gabriel, each searching for the other. (They finally do reunite, as you probably know, at the end of the poem, in Philadelphia.)

According to Wikipedia, "The name 'Evangeline' means 'good news' or 'bearer of good news,' from the Greek euangelion, meaning 'good news' (generally translated, 'Gospel')."

So here I was, shaded by the Evangeline oak, with plenty of cats, young and old, clamoring for my attention. They were bringing me the "good news" of course.

"Evangeline is still with us," one of the cats purred.

"Evangeline is inside all of us, who yearn for what we can't have, but we still keep on trying," meowed another of the cats.

And a small kitten came and sat on my lap, and stared up at me with those big kitten eyes, as if to assure me that my time would come, too.

*

If we love, we must follow love. And we must keep following love to the ends of the earth if need be. In time, we will reach it.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Longfellow.

Sagrado Corazón de Jesús

"Eleanor put a match to light the candle, and she waited. She did not sleep. She tried not to blink, but that proved difficult. After some time, she did sleep, but woke up, as though it was Jesus Himself shaking her shoulder. The candle was burning down. First, past the cross, and Jesus' forehead. Then his entire face became illuminated. And finally, the candle burned down enough, after three or four days, so His heart became visible. 'Jesus is revealing His heart to me,' Eleanor thought."

*

At this point, Eleanor, as Muse, spoke to her storyteller: "You need to be willing to risk everything. This isn't about fear at all, you silly fool. It's about my story. It's about what you're willing to risk, to see the heart, to find out what the heart says. Once you find what the heart says, you find me."

And so, the storyteller listened, and soon, he too was watching the candle as it flickered, as it burned down.

"How much are you willing to risk? How much?" he asked himself. "Are you willing to risk everything for the story? Eleanor is waiting, but she won't wait forever."

There Will Be Smudge.

I begin to write this as the clock goes from morning to afternoon. Twice, or three times, I've already forgotten what day it is. Tuesday. For a while, I thought it was Wednesday, and that scared me. One less day to write. And yet, this week, I have in fact one additional day to write, because of Leap Day on Friday. Twenty-nine days hath February this year.

The fear has returned.

The fear that my words will not be good enough.

The fear that I am not working hard enough.

I have plenty of confidence, don't get me wrong. I know I can write a decent sentence. But can I write a novel's worth of "better than good" sentences, and all joined together in some cohesive way that it makes sense? That it tells the story I want told. That it tells the story Eleanor needs told.

My muses are pushing me, but perhaps too much. I've locked myself into The Little Room. From beyond the door, Holly Cole singing Tom Waits (the record "Temptation") sounds so -- so -- so what I need my own words to be. Beautiful, or striking, or angry, or ... meaningful. "Meaningful" -- I like that word. No, I like, "relevant" better. I like "essential" even better.

We need to make fiction -- the act and art of storytelling -- essential again. It can't all be up on the movie screen, or on the television set, or in a song. There's a place for storytelling most anywhere you look, and this includes, yes, on the page. In books. I love the smell of fresh ink.

*

Right now, I'm wondering how I'm going to get through the afternoon to my peak creative time, which is after dusk. The middle of the night.

Funny, perhaps, that the night doesn't scare me. Pitch black doesn't frighten me. I don't see ghosts or monsters -- I see opportunity. I see stories. During the day, there's too much light. The daytime does indeed bring fear.

I can go off on plenty of tangents, but yes, I am afraid right now.

There will be the burning of smudge. The cleansing of mind and spirit. The washing away of the fear. (I hope.) A clean heart and a clear mind. I want the darkness now. I'm ready.

Please stay tuned. Please return to this spot later -- tonight or tomorrow. Soon. Please. I need to know that you'll be there. Here, I mean. That you'll be here. (Maybe that's Eleanor talking.)

Would It Be Okay If I Tried To Be More Like Greta Garbo?

An excerpt from Eleanor,
a novel by Geoff Schutt

Would it be okay, she thought, if I tried to be more like Greta Garbo, if I talked less and just stayed beautiful for all time? If I were like that, would you come to visit me sometimes, if I were a movie star? Would you be my friend? Would you care about me? Would you love me, as if I were your daughter? Would you love me as if I were your best friend?

Would anybody still care about me, if I never became famous for anything? I have to become famous first before I can stay quiet like Greta Garbo. How will I know that I’ll be remembered, no matter what happens – that I’ll mean anything to anybody?

We are connected, Eleanor thought, all of us, we are connected, you and me – the entire world. Somehow we are connected, and it’s supposed to be that way. No one is supposed to feel lonely, or forgotten, or invisible. Nobody.

She needed to feel this connectedness. So she kept repeating in her thoughts, as if someone might be listening, We are connected, all of us, you and me and the entire world. Somehow, we are connected.

*

"Fairy Dust"
by Cher Bibler

In this world, there is no
chance for us; we have to hold
in our feelings and pretend we
are just like the rest of them.
When my door is closed and
they can't see me, they don't
know what I do; they have no
idea what goes on in here.
If only I could get you here,
I could show you this
secret place; I could let
you live here a while until
their world washes out of
you and you're clean and
whole again, but you're afraid.
I can't speak to you because
they're all around, and when
I try to whisper you back
you look away and pretend you're busy.
Maybe I'll abduct you
and prove to you there's a better life.
Maybe I'll capture you and
bring you home kicking and screaming.

Jack Kerouac: "One Fast Move Or I'm Gone"

One of my favorite musicians, Jay Farrar, of Son Volt and Uncle Tupelo fame, has composed the music for a new Jack Kerouac documentary based on Kerouac's novel, Big Sur. The film is called "One Fast Move Or I'm Gone." This should be a welcome addition to the Kerouac archives -- especially with new reflections from people who knew him, and those whose lives were enriched by his writings. In addition to the score, Jay Farrar collaborates with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie on some songs. You can check out the trailer at:
http://www.kerouacfilms.com.

Full Moon Rising

I don't know how long I've been fascinated by the moon, and especially, the Full Moon. (Yes, I capitalize "Full Moon" out of respect for the heavens, and also out of respect for all that I do not understand.)

This month's Full Moon officially occurs at 10:31 p.m. (ET) on Wednesday, Feb. 20.

Indian tribes had a variety of names for the Full Moons. According to The Farmer's Almanac, "Since the heaviest snow usually falls during this month, native tribes of the north and east most often called February's Full Moon the Full Snow Moon. Some tribes also referred to this Moon as the Full Hunger Moon, since harsh weather conditions in their areas made hunting very difficult."

What I love about the moon is that it brings a kind of solidarity to our lives, to all of humanity. The Full Moon, at its brightest, usually will find a way to shine through whatever clouds there might be, or it could be a completely clear night, filled with stars -- and that glorious orb, like a first-place trophy for something magnificent.

If I look at the Full Moon and you look at the Full Moon, well, time zones and any distance between us don't matter anymore. The Full Moon offers us a chance to just look up and be amazed, to go, "Wow," or to keep our thoughts to ourselves as we once again realize that human beings do not own the Earth, but are residents or guests of this planet, along with every other living creature.

It's interesting that on the night of this month's Full Moon, the United States is planning (as of the time of this writing) to shoot down that errant satellite. Lots going on in the sky Wednesday night.

But back to the moon for a moment. For me, the moon has become a friend (larger than life, to be sure). And each month I can watch the moon start all over again, working its way from the New Moon to Crescent Moon, and finally to Full Moon. It's an act of creation that's readily available to inspire me.

The other morning, early, I wrote these words: "I release myself from fear." That's been a part of the current creative process. The fear I'm talking about isn't a fear of a blank page, but instead, the fear of how deep inside I might need to go to find the right words, to reach my figurative hand inside my brain and NOT be afraid of what I might discover.

My secrets tell me much. Some I'm not even aware of, until they pour onto the page. My secrets become my words, though heavily layered. My deepest secrets put into my writing become my therapy. It's an ecstatic release, as much a drug as any mind-altering substance -- except this is one that my own body produces, and therefore, it's pure and clean, and "right."

The Full Moon reminds me that I am a flawed human being. The Full Moon also reminds me that I can work on my flaws and become a better person. The Full Moon tells me that everything's going to be okay. After a few days have passed and the moon seems to disappear from view, I am reminded that the cycle will continue, like clockwork.

Birth and rebirth -- you can make almost any analogy here.

*

"I release myself from fear."

If I say this three times, each on a different day, and click my heels together, will it enable me to go as far inside my typewriter-filled head to get the truth I need?

"I release myself from fear." And the Full Moon is telling me, "Good for you -- good for you!"

Writing

1.

I release myself from fear.

"Come Monday," Week Eight

Jimmy Buffet is a guilty pleasure -- especially the early Jimmy Buffet tunes, before he got all rich and famous and had his fans convinced they should call themselves "Parrotheads." But okay, it's probably those boat drinks, and I must admit that every time I hear an old Buffet song, I'm tempted to bring out the blender, find myself some fresh fruit and all the drink fixings, and lots of sun of course, and if nearby, a boat -- though I must also admit that I've never actually had a "boat drink" while on a boat. (No dream is too small.)

Once more, I'm off on a tangent. "Come Monday," with all of its pop-simplicity, is one of my favorite Jimmy Buffet songs, along with "He Went To Paris." The Paris song mostly because of the "He Went To Paris" line. Nothing more complex than that.

And the tangent continues. Come Monday, we enter Week Eight of 2008, and during Weeks Eight and Nine, I need to work on finishing up my revisions on Eleanor, a novel I've been working on -- no kidding -- for 18 years or so. (In the meanwhile, there have been other novels, most of them pretty awful, a good idea or premise gone bad ... but there are also a couple close to my heart, that sit waiting patiently on the shelf, for revisions of their own. And then there's my novel-in-progress, call it Barrymore, that's been in various stages for almost as many years as I have fingers. Did anyone call Flaubert?) (If Flaubert answers back, please take a message and let him know I'll get back to him in a few years. I think that's how this process works.) (Anyhow....)

Anyhow. (Insert fancy transition here.)

Eleanor is the special one right now. Eleanor got me my agent. Eleanor has opened doors for me; at least she's opened doors enough for me to get my foot stuck as the person on the other side tries to close it.

Eleanor is not the name of the novel.
But Eleanor is the main character.
I've been through too many titles to count,
and I'll be through a few more in the next few weeks/months.

It's about time that Eleanor went off to college. She is 18 years old after all. Time to graduate.

So, "Come Monday," I'll be locked in my Little Room until I finish. And yes, I will add entries to this blog (or "thog," as my friend Jason is starting to call it) -- some of the entries seeming wild and sleep-deprived I'm sure, if a blog-thog entry can be "wild" or "sleep deprived." In any case, this is the locking of the writer in the room (though self-imposed in this case), and until he gets his words out ... well ... did someone out there just offer me a boat drink? Is that Jimmy Buffet playing off in the distance? Guilty pleasures can inspire us, in the oddest of ways.

And in case you're worried about me already, I have a fresh batch of smudge to cleanse my spirit, and a tiny drum to shake as I listen for the muses. If that doesn't work, I also have a healthy supply of Red Bull to get my blood running hot, and my fingers playing the computer keyboard like some concert pianist. Have to think large, or you end up settling for less, and Eleanor will not let me "settle" after this long.