Dear Reader,

I recently ran across a video in which Bill Murray talks about being discouraged and hopeless after what he considered a bad performance. He wandered Chicago, going the opposite direction from what he intended, until he ran into The Art Institute. Being drawn inside, he stood in front of the painting The Song of the Lark by Jules Breton, and a heartsore Murray took solace in the painting that he now credits with saving his life.

I’ve stood in front of that painting myself more than once, seeing its beauty and its depth, its message, or at least what I understand its message to be. But I never dreamed it had saved Murray’s life.

It turns out Willa Cather, too, was moved by the painting, enough to write a novel she named after it.

Until I read it (and now I will for sure), I can only imagine the intertwining, if any, of the two, though a quick read of a summary of the novel makes me think I already see connections. Apparently the young (fictional) protagonist repeatedly visits the painting, long before Murray did.

I know what it is to be inspired by paintings to write stories, poems, and even novels based on them.

I know whereof I speak.

What we can’t know, Dear Reader, is what our life’s work, what our art, can and will mean to someone else. Sometimes a brave soul tells us, but often no one does and we keep going, keep creating, anyway because we must.

It’s the ultimate act of hope. (Am I overstating things, Word Raccoon? I don’t think I am.)

There’s an accumulation, maybe even an accretion, of art from this one piece, too, and the possible effect on others: Breton painting a work that moved Cather to write a novel. Her work in turn inspired others. Van Gogh was an admirer of Breton’s work. On and on.

Word Raccoon and I soothed ourselves this afternoon after distressing world news by listening to the song of the lark, ironically from an online source (the only immediately available one) and gazing at the digital painting of The Song of the Lark.

The Art Institute is particularly on my radar right now because my early-birthday event (the ghoulish one that I might name later if I’m not too embarrassed) is in the vicinity of Chicago, and now Word Raccoon and I are dreaming of a train trip into the city beforehand (scheming, more like) to see the Cassatt exhibit.

Psst…there’s also a Lee Miller photography exhibit there that beckons. WR and I admire someone who knows how to remake herself and live multiple lives.

Drema

Dear Reader,

I’m about a third of the way through The Historian. I’m taking my time with it. Word Raccoon read eagerly beside me today. When we arrived in Istanbul in the novel and she read the description of Hagia Sophia, she jumped up and down and begged me to look for photos online.

I found a Rick Steves video, but that wasn’t enough for her. We read about the Hippodrome, and the city’s history. (We knew some, but not as much as WR wanted to know.)

So she ate history along with her breakfast, not only of Istanbul, but also videos of Bulgaria (also portrayed in the book).

She and a group of her writing/teaching friends applied for a grant to teach there for a couple of weeks for the summer a few years ago, but alas, it did not work out. Maybe another time. One friend in particular is kinda a grant wizard.

When WR saw footage of the interior of Istanbul’s Blue Mosque in a video, she wept. The blue-and-red tiles remind her of those she put in the kitchen just months ago, and they are so beautiful.

Naturally, WR now wants to visit Istanbul.

I guess she kinda is visiting, via The Historian.

We have Reaccessioned open and are going in soon for some revising. I’m reminding myself to write what I would like to read.

WR clears her throat and says she needs to be included, too.

Fine, wee beastie.

Before I was truly up for the day, I read more Allende. In her craft book she mentions taking a fencing class so she could more accurately portray it in a novel she was writing. In the end, however, she ended up just jousting in front of the mirror with a feather duster before writing the scenes.

WR believes there needs to be a poem about that.

This afternoon WR watched The Masterplan starring Stanley Tucci who plots to steal the Mona Lisa. She doesn’t think it deserves the low marks many gave it. In fact, she rather enjoyed it, even if she did figure out a plot twist or two ahead of time.

And Tucci’s character mentioned the painting’s pentimenti in the movie, which made WR swivel her head and smile at me.

The novel awaits.

Drema

Dear Reader,

It’s inevitable that every time Word Raccoon interacts with or reads another artist’s words, she will be sparked into action.

This morning, when she couldn’t sleep, she wandered onto her Kindle app and rediscovered the Isabel Allende book she’s reading, Story Telling: A Writing Life.

Turns out WR forgot for a moment that she was reading a book on writing disguised as a memoir, or maybe it’s the other way around. Regardless, she began making notes to herself for both poems and essays.

She looked up a word and its opposite and interrogated both, researching a bit of their origins.

She wrote notes about one of her obsessive ideas sparked by Allende, who “disappoints” the readers of her first novel, The House of the Spirits, who have written dissertations and lectured on the dog in the book.

Reader, she claims it was just her grandfather’s dog.

However.

However, Reader, this is one of the topics I will opine on if given half an opportunity.

I do not disbelieve her. How could I? If she says it was just her grandfather’s dog, okay. I mean no disrespect to her, but I offer another perspective.

As an author, I know that not only do we sometimes purposely add in symbols, etc., but I believe we subconsciously add things, and if a reader can go back and make a case, well, they might be on to something.

That smacks of the death of the author, though, doesn’t it?

I wish I had more to say about this, and maybe I do, but not just now.

(WR is feeling a little under the weather, her medicine, she thinks. But she’s watching Homeworthy: The Collection and enjoying the homes very much. I told her not to go getting any ideas because we don’t have that kind of budget, but she did see a decorating feature or two she might try.)

Allende’s book also has delicious quotes. This Ingmar Bergman quote set WR to writing, too:

“I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.”

That set WR to thinking about the difference between film and novels, the cumulative effect of language versus the approach/reveal of a camera. In fact, she sometimes complains when she sees a camera pushing too hard or “cheating” a shot, in her opinion.

One of her pet peeves about film is when they show a flashback using footage the viewer has already seen, and the person having the flashback sees themselves in the scene just as we, the viewers, did…uhhm…POV problem, anyone? I know we accept it, but should we? (For all I know, there may be films that avoid this. Dear Reader, if you know of any, I’d like to hear about them.)

It’s a good thing WR was feeling fine this morning, because she completed most of her list early. As soon as her (counteracting) medicine kicks in, she will be able to open her novel and start in, I’m sure.

She whispers to me that today is Friday, the beginning of a weekend. I, borrowing from The Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey, ask “What is a weekend?”

Drema

Dear Reader,

It’s still fairly early yet, I suppose, but Word Raccoon managed to get sidetracked this afternoon and I just don’t know if I can get her back on course.

She was supposed to be writing, but did she?

Nay, nay.

Instead, with one innocent question: What are we doing on (such and such holiday)?, the need to schedule the annual writing retreat came upon her.

It could have been easy.

It should have been easy.

But our gorl never takes the easy way out.

There were calendars and schedules to consult.

There were seemingly endless options to explore from “The usual?” to “What about the cute place your aunt rented on Airbnb?”

WR shook her head fiercely.

We puttered around the Airbnb site, once we had the days for our stay chosen. So many options! So many cities, nay, states, to choose from.

I tried to convince her that when we’re writing, place is almost irrelevant.

She had opinions about that.

She almost settled on a great loft space but when she read about the traffic noise, she said no.

There was the adorable cabin, but the decor was teddy bears in overalls and she could not.

She scrutinized every photo, looking for the most important things: a comfy place to sit while writing, a comfy place to sit when not writing, inspiring surroundings, proximity to nature, and good restaurants.

At least I convinced her that a kitchen would be nice this year.

Of course cost was important, too.

She finally settled on a place not too far away (in case of bad weather; one year she missed a whole day and a half of her retreat due to the “inclements”), but far enough so she’d be away from life on repeat.

The winner is the cutest two-bedroom bungalow, with the most gorgeous wide woodwork and it comes with a turntable and a stash of records! (We spied a Nina Simone album in a picture.) WR is very pleased.

Oh, and there’s a white sun porch with a desk!! A more enclosed, presumably more climate-controlled one, than her usual spot. But of course she chose the light. As I’ve said before, this creature is solar powered!

The interior is cozy without being cluttered, equipped without seeming maximalist. That WR can work with. You’d love it.

WR means to finish up this novel draft over the retreat, if at all possible. She will bring her hooded robe that feels like living inside a stuffed animal, her writing table for maximum writing flexibility, and, of course, her “magic box,” which is what she calls her Macbook.

Also a pile of books.

And her journal.

Let’s not forget Book Goblin either, her stuffed friend, and BG’s special friend you have not met yet, though she’s lived here a few months already! (I’ll introduce her eventually.)

WR just wishes she didn’t have to wait so long for the retreat. I will try to keep her from posting every day while she’s at the retreat, but you know her affection for writing to her Dear Reader.

Here’s hoping that all of my creative readers (I define creative broadly) are giving themselves the time and space to create.

In the meantime, maybe I can get WR back on task before dinner tonight. Doubtful, though. She’s too busy staring out the window imagining our writing retreat.

Drema

Dear, Dear Reader,

First of all, Word Raccoon and I received a poetry acceptance!

Ink of Genesis Literary Journal has accepted my poem “I Have No Beef with God” for an upcoming issue.

Yes, you read that correctly. A poem in which I suggest (redacted, redacted) has found a home in a journal called Ink of Genesis.

I find that delightful.

Word Raccoon, naturally, is taking full credit.

She would.

And she’s complaining because she wanted to be the one to share the news. Glory hog, er…raccoon.

Admin tasks still have Word Raccoon up to her eyeballs in what she calls folderol, though I think she’s stretching the definition. But I know what she means.

I helped her get a jump on them by starting in at 4 am, even before caffeine. Her Highness, High Princess of Coke Zero was not amused at that, but she did cooperate. 

For a time.

(We did not want to be awake but we were having a bad dream and noped out of it. When I found myself in my dream trying to defend my brother with nothing but a coat rack, WR and I decided that dream was optional so bye-bye. But also we were very tempted to text and ask if he was ok. I’m sure he would have loved a pre-dawn text.) 

I managed to get WR to accomplish several of the items on the list with her early start. Then I told her we really ought to get to the gym. (Little Miss had already eaten an unauthorized handful of pumpkin yogurt pretzels. You’d have to ask her how they tasted, because I wasn’t given the opportunity to find out.) 

She hissed about the gym until I reminded her that we could get ahead of the Cardio Bunnies if we left right away. (The CB’s want to talk to her when she’s half asleep and that she will not tolerate. Also, the one is…evangelical.) 

I didn’t notice until we got in the car that she forgot to put on socks! WR!! 

We did manage to get there about half an hour before the bunnies usually do, so we were spared, although WR could not park to save her life this morning! (And she didn’t even have a coat rack!)

Anyway, WR cooperated with making out a birthday card for my niece and dropping it and a gift off after the gym, but when I told her we really ought to make some real breakfast with protein and all she growled, but I insisted. 

I compromised and made her an egg and tomato sandwich on toast with dried capers so she wouldn’t think I was feeding her breakfast, but early lunch. 

And yet another item from the island has been rescued and returned to the refrigerator, the capers. Although yes, being preserved in salt, they are briny! 

Before she knew it, I had her cooking red lentils which had also wandered onto the endangered food island hoping to be rescued, and darn it, I turned my back and she overcooked them, hoping I’d give in and let her have more yogurt pretzels. 

But I told her too bad, so sad, I will just make lentil hummus (it’s a thing!) and might even blend the remainder into her pasta sauce (a recommended trick to include more fiber and protein in your food). 

For Pete’s sake, I was going to write about a fun thing I’m writing about in my novel, but tomorrow, I guess? 

Also, “Use It Or Lose It” Island only has two contestants left now, a box of pasta salad and a strip of yeast packets. I looked for the flour I liked yesterday but didn’t find it at the specialty market. If I buy the flour, I will put the yeast packets back in the baking drawer because I know they will be used then. 

And I’m not at all convinced that this new blog post schedule is really getting me any more sleep. I may have to reconsider it. WR says she does not like schedules. 

Drema 

P.S. We still managed to not only finish many of our obligations (more to come tomorrow, sigh) but we submitted our Waxing chapbook two places that are closing tomorrow as well as submitted three packets of poetry elsewhere. WR liked that because she totally flipped the POV of one of her poems, “intellectual domme energy” as well as gnawed one a few lines of other poems. Sometimes the rough, raw poems surprise her, the ones she barely remembers writing, and sometimes they embarrass her. Other times they delight her.

Dear Reader,

Must every exceptional writing day be followed by one that refuses to allow even a moment of writing time? 

The interruptions were all important, even top priority, but irritation piled upon interruption. Worry upon concern. 

Taken separately, no big deal. But together…oy. 

Anyway, here Word Raccoon and I are, eager to put the day to bed, say a little hello to our dear reader before we attempt reading. Or submit poetry (the 15th is upon us, and with it, deadlines!), or even, please, please, write.

The porch isn’t quite as warm tonight, it’s “only” in the lower 90s (in mid October, no less), and the temperature will naturally go down over the next couple of hours if I do attempt to stay the course and write. Which I should. 

If you stay away from writing long enough, you forget that you’re a writer. Isn’t it funny how I just wrote yesterday, but not having written today feels like I’ve been eons away from it? 

Maybe that makes me needy. Maybe that makes me devoted. But I do need writing. And I am devoted to it. 

The upside to having so much admin work to do today (yes, my Power Hour turned into plural) was listening to the Russo novel during it. I only have an hour of it to go! 

Although part of me wants to enact my “worst first” policy tomorrow, I know I will feel so much better at the end of the day if I begin the morning hours with writing. 

P.S. Just had another round of “What is that horrible sound the squirrel is making now?” I tried talking to him, shushing him, anything for him to move and let me know what was going on. He was high in a tree, and I’m not even sure our ladder could have reached him, but he was clearly in distress. Or so I thought. 

Turns out he was fussing at a squirrel in a tree across the street, or maybe flirting, who knows? When they were finished conversing, he jumped down and scuttled away. 

So much for WR’s squirrel communication skills. 

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Today has been mostly novel. Novel writing, that is. 

Word Raccoon’s morning oatmeal requires ¾ cup of water, her usual measuring cup was dirty today, and she was not awake enough to futz back and forth between four and eight ounces in the larger measuring cup because the cup did not have a six ounce line OR fractions on it. So she gave it the heave ho and improvised.  

Despite her “trying” time, just after breakfast without hesitation she opened her novel and began. 

For half a minute she thought about renaming it, and while I haven’t completely ruled her choice out, I haven’t assented, either. Let’s see if she even remembers it next week, though.

We must confess, we truly are revising. We have tried to pretend that we are not, even to ourselves, but what else do you call it when you are drilling down a couple of levels in your prose? 

(As my blog posts all too frequently display, first efforts are often not best efforts.) 

While revising, I remembered a few sentences from an earlier draft that didn’t make it into this one, so I will be hunting for them. I have a revision list I’m adding to daily. I’m highlighting passages that don’t land yet, that aren’t what I mean to say and yet I don’t quite have the words for yet either. 

Some events are (slightly) out of order, or need to be updated according to a changed plot point. For instance, three boxes have been condensed to one. (That’s all I can say about that for now.) 

I spent quite a bit of time researching and then writing about James’s desk, one I’ve decided that his father built for him. I love the idea of that. In the novel, the father adores woodworking and yet has become a farmer because that’s what his father was. 

Of course something that conspicuous can’t be just a desk, and so I have to make everything of it that I can but not too much, either. The desk must be a device. The desk must be a conversation. The desk must be a symbol. A poem. A prayer. 

Similarly, I spent part of the afternoon researching what scent James’s younger sister, Susan, wears. I don’t want to tell you yet, because it’s a delicious tidbit that is not as hearty and sprawling as the tale of the desk, and so I don’t want to give it away.

You could say I’m decorating the prose now. But I’m also subbing in and out verbs to see which I prefer, so I’m working on multiple layers at once, and that’s fine. When I begin enjoying it again instead of feeling fearful and overwhelmed, I know all is well. 

I reminded WR when she was a little concerned today (she has really learned to enjoy novel writing, finally!) that we have done this before. We know how to do this. We just have to forget what an act of courage writing is and do it already! 

On the way to the library today, I took a picture of an awesome leaf that the internet tells me is from an American basswood.

At the library, I harvested some cherry tomatoes and some green ones, too, to fry tomorrow. (They encourage you to take what you can use, especially since the season is almost over. The tomatoes I grew are all gone now. But yay, Dad, I actually grew a few.) 

They were not able to fix my Libby account right away, but they called me later hoping they had managed to fix it. They had, and I downloaded the Russo book and listened to part of it at the gym. It’s about a country music star. Hmm…been reading my novel/essay, has he? JUST KIDDING!! I WISH! 

For lunch I made one of the items on the fabled use-it food island, a pasta salad, and opened the sherry vinegar to mix it with olive oil and added the tiny tomatoes that tasted somewhere between a fruit and a tomato, the last bites of summer, the kind that make you despise the winter’s forthcoming tomatoes trapped in a clamshell.

 When I came out to the sun porch after dinner I was shocked to discover that the thermometer registered 95 degrees! I quickly opened a window and between that and a couple of fans, the temperature dropped. It’s still at 84 degrees now but with the fan on me, it’s bearable. 

As much as I am into the novel right now, WR and I are going to have to have a power hour or two in order to get some things over the finish line tomorrow. 

Then, the novel? WR thumps her tail and says yes, yes, yes! 

We are still reading The Historian and when we texted our friend to tell her our experience with the three copies haunting our house, she had her own odd story about the novel. What a mysterious not-so-little book. 

Drema (and Word Raccoon)

Dear Reader,

Across the street the neighbor’s college-aged daughter is sprawling on a plaid blanket with her boyfriend, carving pumpkins which are sitting on tree stumps. 

I’m actually on the porch swing so I can only see them if I turn, because I don’t want them to feel like I’m staring at them. Which I’m not, but they are just the perfect fall painting.

Word Raccoon’s eyes are hearts right now. She wants to paint them.

(The young woman was the same one who came over and claimed the garment rack I put out at the road with the other furniture, what was it, a couple of weeks ago? She suggested we get together for coffee sometime – I gave her a Bradbury comic book I found once because we had talked about him at her workplace.) 

Indoors, the kitchen smells of chili, another fall dish it seemed time to make, regardless of the temperature out. The chili spice was on “use it or lose it” island, so I thought it was time to turn it into something before I had to lose it. Bonus: chili is better the second day, so tomorrow’s dinner now exists. 

WR was not happy that I made her organize the utility closet today, but it was bothering me. I took out every last thing that didn’t belong and put back only the few things that did, thereby assuring the safety of my beloved steam mop, the upstairs vacuum, the upstairs step ladder, and cleaning wands and such, all hanging now. WR thought it was going to be so much more difficult! And she did not trust me that everything I wanted to fit in there would. Done and done, my raccoon. 

Before all that, WR woke up and began reading The Historian. She pinkie swore that she wasn’t going to go down any rabbit holes this morning, but before I knew it she was looking up organdy and its history and the traditional headdress of what is now Croatia called a počulica, made of organdy. Kostova described it as being butterfly shaped and WR wanted to know more, naturally. Then WR wanted to know the difference and history between organza and organdy. 

That being said, WR is only on (sigh) page 85! And it’s over 900 pages long! 

But she’s enjoying it. 

There’s no rush, except that other novel came in the mail I’ve been excitedly waiting for, and then the Libby app said “Surprise, here are two novels” and then WR was told she had to verify her card but whatever she did, she could not get it verified. 

At first she thought it was because she tried to verify it with her CVS card, and she laughed but then when she tried to fix it, the real library card didn’t work either. 

So now she has to go to the library tomorrow and ask them to please, please fix this before the new Russo she has been waiting for goes away (Under the Falls.) 

The second novel Libby offered us we nobly said to send on to the next reader in line and we will jump back in line when we’re ready. (We’re not totally selfless; they let you cut the line when you do that.) 

We feel poetry at the back of our head, coming this way. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming. It’s dessert, writing poetry is. But let’s not call it pumpkin spice anything. That’s too banal for my writing partner. Are fizzy desserts a thing? If so, it’s that. 

What a beautiful fall day!

Drema 

Dear Reader,

I began reading The Historian this morning, but I didn’t get very far because I had to stop and examine the opening pages to see what Kostova was doing. I thought for a long time, questioned how it might interweave with the whole novel, tried to visualize it, and interrogated my own writing process versus hers, which, of course, I can’t possibly know. 

Word Raccoon and I spent at least half an hour on the opening 15 pages. Seriously. 

 (I chose my friend’s copy of the novel to read, though it was the smallest print, both because it has her name in it, and because the yellowed, well-loved copy seems perfect for the plot of the novel.)

After lunch, I returned to the novel, but not for too long. While I didn’t suffer many ill effects from the flu shot, yay, I was feeling restless, so you will be shocked to hear that I returned to fine-tuning the house, this time sorting my tea collection. Word Raccoon howled when I threw some of the older tea out, saying it was perfectly fine. I shushed her with a cupcake. 

(A quick aside – my EMG is scheduled for late January, so until then, we wait, I guess. That was the earliest appointment they had available.) 

WR had all of these poem ideas before and during our reading time, one idea including a scratch-off poem (don’t ask; she was trying to figure out how to make it happen but I think she was overcaffeinated at that point)

She also has a poem collection idea that she hasn’t begun but that she thinks some of her poet acquaintances would write stunning poems that would fit this: Pentimenti. (If you write one, please send it to me, Dear Reader!) 

A refresher for those who might need it: a pentimento is a visible trace of what a painter later changed and painted over, a ghostly image. It’s fascinating to imagine what might hide just under the surface, hiding what the painter first intended and then tried to hide but ultimately couldn’t as the first elements make their way to or through the surface. 

It might be lying dormant, so to speak, for years until one day it starts bleeding through. Maybe some things can’t, shouldn’t, remain hidden, but then is that fair to the painter if the artist’s intent was to cover it up and never let it show? Is it fair to the world to keep it painted over, though, when it might lend something unexpected to the world?

Is it heroic or dastardly when art historians use X-rays to plunder secrets the painter wanted to keep?

Well, I’m not very far into this book and so far it doesn’t have much if anything to do with art, but the secrets aspect fits it very much.

Maybe it’s because it’s October and spooky season, but would that make a great chapbook or what? WR is opening the Notes app as we speak, though I wish she’d remember we’re writing a blog post right now. 

We are sitting beneath the light cast by the fall garland that Woolf rejected. We repurposed it on the stair rail, and WR and I like it. 

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon and I intend to curl up with a novel after our flu shot this afternoon (writing this on Friday) and recover, whether we need recovery time or not, because reading.

It’s actually a literary mystery that we will be reading, and the mysteries don’t end with the novel itself.

Remember my friend who moved to Spain? Beforehand, she and her husband had a garage sale, and at it my friend pointed out a novel she loves that I have never read.

It contains vampires, which are not usually my jam, though WR whispers that we do enjoy Stoker’s Dracula, naturally, having read it when we were maybe twelve, and we were surprised at how different it was from what we knew about vampires at that point from TV and Halloween.

Though we might not have fully understood it, we knew there was more to understand. 

Also, Anne Rice’s vampires are dope. A rock star vampire? Yes, please.

I actually met Rice once and later exchanged maybe two or three emails with her, too. We discussed novel writing.

Anyway, Reader, I brought my friend’s recommendation home.

Alas, I have not gotten around to reading it, but when Barry said he’d finished reading a vampire book (not his mainstay either, but for some reason…), I told him about the one my friend had recommended and asked him if he wanted to read it first. He asked me to point it out for him, so I pulled it from the shelf and handed it to him.

He laughed.

And laughed.

It was a different copy of the book he’d just finished reading, except he had picked up his on our last trip to the beach at St. Stan’s thrift shop, and I hadn’t noticed what he was reading.

Something he had mentioned to me about the book reminded me of Middlemarch, so once I realized we were talking about the same book, I wanted to read it even more.

You think that’s the end of the story? It’s not!

WR is doing a cartwheel here, because she’s so delighted at the twist.

The next day Barry pointed to a huge book on his bookshelf.

“What’s that book?” he asked.

I loosely identified it as a book I remembered him buying at the library book sale.

“But what’s the title?” he asked.

The same book. AGAIN! 

The book’s title?

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

A literary mystery with vampires and historical research AND in October? I mean…how can I not read it? It’s been thrice recommended by the universe, and hello, WR and I are writing a literary mystery! 

Maybe it’s the just upcoming flu shot talking and not the universe at all, but WR lurves any excuse to curl up with a book.

BTW, my poem “Bonnie and Clyde Without Guns” is in the latest issue of Molecule: a tiny lit mag. So many thanks to them. I’m honored to be in such good company.

Drema