The Story of the Queen and the Selchie

Long ago, the greatness of a warrior was measured by the strength of his adversaries. In all the known lands, the children of the Lochlann king were by far the best fighters. There were eight of them, four boys and four girls, all of them beautiful to behold with their fair skin, dark hair and wide, brown eyes.

At that time, and in that place, the mothers were responsible for training their children in combat, and the Lochlann queen was an unrivaled teacher. Each of her children held a special gift in endurance, strength, speed, grace and many other qualities beside, so that a band of eight of them might defeat a whole army. As they grew, they became the target of many who wished to be remembered in the songs for their bravery.

But the children were still quite young when their mother was laid to rest on a great flaming ship sent out to sea, as was befitting such a queen. She had been as beautiful and strong as the children she bore, and when she died the King had no eye for a woman for many years. In the end, it was his own children who persuaded him to search for someone to fill his loneliness. He left half-heartedly, but returned with a renewed glow in his eyes and a beautiful wife. Although still very young, she was already a widow left frail from the disease that had killed her first husband.

It was not hard for the new wife to take the children into her heart as if they were her own. She loved the king dearly and his children were an extension of that love. But there was always a distance between them, because the children saw no strength or bravery in the new queen.

Even with their differences, the family might have found contentment if a great force had not gathered to attack Lochlann. The Lochlannach, each and every one, prepared for the upcoming fight. The fragile queen was the only one unfit for battle, and the king was uncertain how best to protect her. At last he decided to send her to a remote cave in the cliffs high above the sea. He trusted only his own children to act as her guards. The children did know all the love and happiness the new queen had given to their father, and for this they cared for her, but they cried out and rebelled against being left out of the clash. Surely the Lachlannach could defeat anyone before they came so far as such a remote cave.

The queen also fought the plan. If the invaders were able to cross to her, it would mean her husband must be dead. How could he let her live a second time as a widow? She called attention to the fact that her life in the hands of the enemy might be far worse than death. But her husband would not be swayed from his plans. He did not have the heart to lose another wife.

When she saw her persuasions had failed, the queen contrived a plan of her own. The Lochlannach did not understand that courage is not only found in battle. One day, as she walked among a group of rocks exposed at low tide, she spotted one of the Finnfolk who are powerful magicians and shape shifters. This Finn looked young, which might have deceived her. Even a young Finn has been around a long time by human standards. They are not immortals, but because they make their homes in the Otherworld, they do not age at an Earthly speed. This Finn had assumed the shape of a man, with his head and torso in human form, but his lower half he had shaped into a thin pointed boat.

Not many humans would call out to a Finn, especially a woman alone, for the Finn men are known as powerful seducers. The queen called out to him because she also knew they were gifted in sorcery. If the queen could learn his secrets, she might contribute to her new family even if she was physically weak. And so she called out to him until he turned to her. Once he saw her, he was beside her before she could blink an eye. The Finn are powerful oarsmen.

The queen pulled three silver pieces from a purse she carried at her hip and held them out for the Finn to see. Finn folk have a great weakness for silver and can’t resist it.

“Three silver coins for three magical secrets,” she said.

The Finn had a dilemma. What did he wish for more, the beautiful human or her silver?

“Lie down with me here on the rocks, he offered, “and that will be all the magic a human would need for her lifetime.”

The queen kept her hand out and made her bid again. Three silver coins for three magical secrets. The Finn stroked at his chin.

“Are you aware that my magic will be considered dark arts in your world?”

The queen nodded her head.

“Don’t you believe your soul will be tarnished? And to what purpose? For children who hardly notice you?”

The Finn folk are mind readers. They understand thoughts better than emotions. He searched for the queen’s weakness in the hope that he might attain both her and the coins. But the queen was not swayed.

“Three silver coins for three magical secrets.”

Too fast for human eyes, the Finn snatched the silver from the queen’s hand and took hold of her face. He blew a magic breath into her as they plunged into the sea. They dove deep into the black water far from the sun and the air. The queen thought she was stolen for sure and would never see the surface again.

But the Finn kept to the queen’s bargain. He took her to a place where she might learn from him for more than a year, while in her own world only minutes had passed. When the queen reappeared on the shore, she was, by mere human standards, a powerful sorceress in her own right.

She returned with eyes that radiated bright understanding of our true world. The king, too smitten with her, was blind to the change. His children noticed, and they shivered whenever they were near her. They tried to warn their father that their stepmother was different, but he would not listen.

The day came for the queen to hide in the remote cave with her stepchildren as her defenders. Before she left, she put a spell over the king that would make him untouchable in battle. She told him it was just a small prayer she had brought with her from her own land, but it was really something much more powerful. She left with confidence that she would see her husband again. From the far-away cave, children and stepmother waited out the uncomfortable silence. For three days they watched their army as it camped unmolested below them.

It was daybreak on the fourth day when the attackers swarmed, but it was not the camp they sought. The enemy had arrived on the other side of the rock, hidden from the view of the Lochlann army. They had not come to do battle with the people of Lochlann; they had come for the king’s children.

The Lochlannoch children formed a circle around the queen. Soon she was surrounded by the cries of battle, the crash of metal, the smell of blood and sweat and fear. She formed her own circle of enchantment around her family and held it as long as her mind would allow.

The children fought well. The floor of the cave could not be seen beneath the bodies of fallen warriors, yet more lined up to meet the children in combat. The queen felt the strength of her magic begin to fade, and though they were not injured, the children were spent from the fight. She raised her arms and, in front of all who were present, she began to chant a powerful spell. The winds swirled and the waves smashed against the rock. The warriors dropped their swords to their sides, and the fighting stopped as they watched her. After a time, the seas became calm and stretched smooth as the best woven fabric. The queen opened her eyes and looked to her stepchildren.

“Make haste for the sea,” she commanded them. “I have cast a great spell that will allow you to hide deep in the ocean, as strong and swift and courageous in the water as you have been on the land. If your captors wish to follow you, they will drown in the attempt.”

The children knew they could fight no longer. They clambered down the rocks with their approaching captors at their heels. As soon as the feet of the children hit the sea, they cried out in pain, but they did not stop. By the time they were neck deep in the waves, their human forms were gone and in their place the heads of seals bobbed up and down in the waves. Some of the enemy did attempt to catch them, but each one who tried was pulled under by the powerful current. Many were more prudent. They did not give chase as the children ran to the sea. Instead, they turned their swords on the queen. In her haste she had protected everyone in her family but herself.

She knew she could not defend herself and return the children to their human form at the same time. Even if she did turn them human again, who would protect them until their father’s army arrived? She turned with uncertainty out toward the sea.

An enemy near the queen saw the indecision cross her face. He made his move, plunging a knife deep into her chest while her guard was down.

The air grew hot and still. No birds called from the sky. No waves crashed against the rocks. Every human breath suspended.

Something…or rather someone…emerged above the taut surface of the ocean. He appeared without causing so much as one ripple on the water around him, and his presence seemed tied to the stagnant suppression of life that had settled upon the world. The face that stared up at the group on the cliff was inhumanly emotionless, but when his sharp eyes fell on the limp body of the queen, the sea began to churn and froth around him, clouds gathered in the sky and great gray waves rose toward the opening high above in the cave.

The terrified warriors ran as fast as they could from their destruction, for they knew that it was unlucky to cross the sea folk. They hoisted their sails and sped away, only to face storms the likes of which have not been seen before or since. The abandoned body of the poor queen dangled over a rock high above the wild sea.

A drop of blood rolled from her chest down the smooth curve of her arm, over her hand, along her finger until it hovered for a moment like a teardrop from the tip of her nail. It fell reluctantly into the water. One spot of red suspended in a wild gray sea. One spot of red, a combination of the queen’s own life force and the force of the magic she had created, merged with the rage of a Finn. The unspoken spell to bring the children back to human form was forever altered by the sea.

The children and their descendants became the seal folk, neither meant for land nor made for sea. Each full moon, the seal folk shed their sealskin to walk once more in human form upon the earth. They live between two worlds, always wishing for land while in the water and for the water while on the land. If they are held to the land, the wild ocean will always call to them. They might close their eyes, but no dreams will come, because with sleep their souls will return to the sea.”

March 27, 2013 12

This City

I took your city to bed
Under a rain soft and bitter
Her streets wet
Her buildings part for me to enter
I know you found her first
But now I walk inside her too
Now I make wishes on her stones

She wrote him a letter
With library pencil and blue lined paper
They parted at the corner
She made wishes on his stones
He threw away her seashells
When he thought she wasn’t looking
Wait, she whispered
Look, she cried
He drown in a street of umbrellas
Like a river dark and cold

I woke before dawn
Watched her colors spread across the sky
Red and gold and violet as the fire inside me
Wake up, I whispered
Look, I cried
But no one answered
I always sleep alone

Meet me on the steps, she whispered
Meet me where you kissed me, she cried
She chased the colors he once wore
Tapped the shoulders of a thousand men
A thousand strangers
None were him
She walked home alone
Under a rain soft and bitter

Stop someday in the place I stood
To watch umbrellas weave from sight
Like a river dark and cold
To pick out the colors I once wore
In the street signs
And brake lights
The smile of a cab driver

The train shudders
Comes to rest beside white tile
The valiant flicker of electric lights
He leaves his umbrella on an empty seat
Wait, she whispers
Come back, she cries
But the doors close
The train weaves from sight
Like a river dark and cold

When I have stolen your city
You will see my colors spread across her sky
Her streets wet
Her buildings part when you enter
You will burn with red and gold and violet
Meet me on the steps, you whisper
Meet me where you kissed me, you cry
But too late
This city has granted your wish
You walk alone
Under a rain soft and bitter

March 13, 2013 9

Perfect Pitch

A few weeks ago, I signed up with WriteOnCon to work on the pitch for my young adult novel. It’s got me musing…what is the perfect pitch?

Perfect pitch. I am not a musician, so maybe I am about to make a statement that is too simplistic. I believe in music, perfect pitch is the ability to hear a note and name it, or sing a note without hearing it first. In other words, perfect pitch is the ability to pull a sound from the cacophony of noise and define it.

As I learn about the process of pitching a novel, I see it no differently in novel writing than in music. The perfect pitch is one that pulls that one kernel of truth and order from all the noise so that an author can say this is what my story is. Go ahead and love it as much as I do.

“One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you.” -Insurgent, by Veronica Roth

One sentence to define the truth of a 525 page book.

To stick with musical themes, as I skimmed through the backs of books in an attempt to understand what sells me as a reader, I discovered it is that moment of dissonance. The promise that careful order is about to fall apart. The characters I am about to meet are going to rub up against their world, sparks will fly, and from the ashes the author will unveil a glorious note.

“Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.” – The Light Between Oceans, by M. L. Stedman

I am sold by pitches where the characters move quickly out of their stereotyped roles, where their world is about to become dangerous, out of order, uncomfortable.

“Stifled by the monotony and restrictions of his boarding school on the coast of England, sixteen-year-old H has a chance encounter on the beach with a beautiful boy named Finn, who lives alone in a fisherman’s hut by the sea.” – What I Was, By Meg Rosoff

Where stereotyped plots, such as forbidden love, not only raise the stakes but are used to guide us to that kernel of truth, that glorious note.

“David Power and Clare O’Brien both grew up dreaming of escape from the battered seaside town of Castlebay, but they might as well have the ocean between them. David is the cherished son of a prosperous doctor, while Clare lives with her large family behind their faltering store, longing for a moment of quiet to study. When they both go to university in Dublin—he as a matter of course, she on a hard-won scholarship—their worlds collide. They find freedom in each other—until families, lovers and secrets they left in Castebay come back to haunt them…” – Echoes, by Maeve Binchy

These are characters I know. I’ve meet their type before. Rich boy with everything in the world going for him. Poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks but with big dreams. What sets them apart isn’t that their families don’t approve, it’s the promise that they will never fully shed the lives they left behind. That is the kernel of truth, the perfect pitch, the solitary note that Maeve Binchy has pulled from the noise of ill-fated love stories. If I hadn’t seen that on the back of the book, I never would have opened it up to read it. I wouldn’t have known where it might take me.

The books I put pack on the shelf have a pitch in the flap that never moves beyond basic character constructs and plot points. Here is a made up, chicken soup version of what makes me go “meh…”

“Beautiful Sandra is head cheerleader and self-appointed leader of the “it” crowd. That is, until she fails history. Now she has to be tutored by friendless nerd Bobby. But the more Sandra knows about Bobby, the more she likes him. Can she face her friends with a public relationship?”

To my mind, this pitch has all the plot points without the kernel of truth. I’ve seen my fair share of after school specials that cover that theme, and I’ve already read every Sweet Valley High. What makes Sandra and Bobby’s story different from all the others? What do Sandra and Bobby learn from one another? How do they grow in a way that makes them unique?

It would be no different if I were to walk up to Sandra and ask, “Who are you?” and she answered, “Oh, I’m head cheerleader and front man for the “It” crowd.” I know a million of such Sandras. But if she said, “I’m Sandra. I really want to love deep and hard and real. I’m willing to sacrifice everything I have for love, and if in the end I find myself alone, well, at least I tried, right?” Now I might stop to listen because Sandra has flaws and strengths and room to grow.

Like music, a perfect pitch takes time, training and craft, but when it’s right you can feel it in your bones. As always, I’m so glad I signed up for WriteOnCon to work on my pitch with other authors. To me, the most perfect pitch is one I don’t have to write alone. The ability to find kindred spirits and work on craft with others is an invaluable tool. Writing might be solitary, but writing is meant to be read. It can’t be read tucked away in a file on your desktop. So get out and share.

Good luck to everyone entering the WritOnCon Pitch Fest! If you haven’t thought of it yet, click here to learn more.

All the best in your writing.

March 6, 2013 0

In Defense of the Muse

A few days ago, Freshly Pressed shared a fantastic post by a writer named L.C. Spoering which began “let’s talk about muses…Or not. Because that’s just stupid.”

You can read it here.

I read her post several times, not only for the topic, but the quality of the prose. How I wish I could write so concisely. I can’t. And I’m here today to do the stupid. I am here to defend the muse.

The concept of the muse and what it means to art (and storytelling in particular) is one of the most important conversations we can have about how the craft of creating stories has been passed down to us through the ages. We should be careful not to throw the muse out with the proverbial bathwater just because we believe ourselves more logical than our forefathers. What would we be without the historical significance the muse has had on the act of making stories? We would have no Odyssey, no Divine Comedy, no Annie Hall. Not to be biased against my own sex, Virginia Woolf fought this erotic but safely heterosexual bond between poet and muse. She denounced women who wished to write being told they must have male muses to torment and intimidate them. She called instead for female writers to look back to the women who mothered them both in life and literature.

In my defense of the muse (and therefor inspiration) and the inextricable link to the craft of telling stories, I venture to disagree even with Virginia Woolf. The muse is sexless sex. The muse turns you on by being everything you never knew you wanted. The muse strips you down, forces you to stand naked and makes you write your own shame into a story you started working on because you think you like dogs. The muse knows the best words you will ever string together are the ones you hope your mother and your ex never read. The muse never touches any artist who sits and waits for inspiration to strike. The muse only uses pack animals unafraid to strap all the luggage on their backs and show up to climb the mountain every day. The muse is the path and the guide to the top, where you either find a majestic view or another mountain to climb.

In other words, I would argue that it isn’t inspiration VERSUS sit down and work. It’s sit down and work FOR inspiration. The second will never happen without the first.

Is it divine? No, not the wear your Sunday best kind of divine. It is the zone of an athlete, the Ole of a dancer, the intuition of a mother. It is Lois Lowry transforming her father’s dementia into The Giver, Dante expressing unrequited love in The Inferno, Shakespeare having the audacity to invent words we now take for granted because he saw what others did not…that there was a way to say it better.

I was once at a writing conference and the prolific Jane Yolen was stationed at the table next to me. A young author lamented that she was afraid to think outside the analogy box because she wasn’t sure she was as yet artistically worthy of knowing when she had gone too far.

“That’s the imposter complex,” Jane Yolen responded. “We all have it. If I’d listened to mine, I’d never have likened snow to a bowl of milk in Owl Moon.”

The muse is not a waifish, half clad woman who whimsically whispers creativity into the ears of worthy men, but if it helps you to see it that way, if it needs to be personified for you to get to work, have at it! The muse is a psychological safety net beneath our sense of self when we step into our imaginations. It is a way to navigate the mental chatter of our own brains. The chatter that hisses, “Imposter, how could you write that? How dare you?”

The act of stringing words together in a way that shifts a world from our own heads into someone else’s is a very, very hard job. It can feel like a sacrifice at the altar of all we consider sane in modern western society. Internationally bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert has pointed out that creating stories has killed some of our most talented minds. We should look at that, and we should not be ok with it. Ms. Gilbert sees the muse as a “psychological construct…a safe distance between me as I am writing and my very natural anxiety about what the reaction to that writing is going to be…”

Is it dangerous to see the process of creating something out of nothing as evolved and elevated? Hell yes! People don’t open books to immerse their minds in someone else’s safely lived life. May it always be dangerous. Destructive to the status quo. A revolution against the easy and complacent. That is the job of writing. But may it not be destructive to you the pack animal who toiled away day in and day out for one glimpse of the view. May the muse wait at the door, and hang onto your wild, gypsy self when it is time to return to the real world where the dishes did not get done and your family will be eating sandwiches for dinner the third day in a row because you lost track of the time.

Inspiration is not a religious experience. It is the grail within the quest. Sit down and write every day is the religious experience. It requires faith that this time spent trying to share something that only exists inside of us…the toil and the doubt and the rejection and the perseverance…somehow it will matter. We are not the guy who sent the flood, but we are the guy who smelled rain and built the boat.

I leave you with one more quote by Elizabeth Gilbert:

“So I just lifted my face up from the manuscript and I directed my comments to an empty corner of the room. And I said aloud, ‘Listen you, thing, you and I both know that if this book isn’t brilliant that is not entirely my fault, right? Because you can see that I am putting everything I have into this, I don’t have any more than this. So if you want it to be better, then you’ve got to show up and do your part of the deal. OK? But if you don’t do that, you know what, the hell with it. I’m going to keep writing anyway because that’s my job. And I would please like the record to reflect today that I showed up for my part of the job.”

All the best to you in your silent toil. All the best to your inspiration. Now sit down and write.

Watch Elizabeth Gilbert: your elusive, creative genius on TED

February 28, 2013 6

The Center for Fiction

On my last day in New York City, I decided to make a pilgrimage to a bookstore I visited last year. I walked until my feet were blistered, but I could not retrace my steps back to that little bit of nostalgia. I wandered off in a different direction instead. It started to rain. The wind pressed against me, but I’m not one to let weather ruin a chance to wander through any city.

I’m glad I didn’t give up.

Nestled amongst a nondescript row of office buildings, a burgundy banner waved in the wind heralding The Center for Fiction, located at 17 East 47 Street. Whether you are a writer or passionate about the written word, here is a warm and welcoming place for all lovers of story.

I was wet and cold and the word fiction makes my heart beat faster. The combination of warmth and a center dedicated to my favorite word was more than I could resist. I was not disappointed. The Center for Fiction is not large, but it manages to be at once a library, a bookstore, a quiet space for authors to work, and a location of great literary events. So good to find a little corner of the world still celebrating, maintaining and supporting the advancement of the art of telling stories.

The staff was very friendly. The girl working behind the desk chatted with me for a long time about their section dedicated to translations of European authors who are still relatively unknown, at least in the States (and most especially to me). I ended up walking away with a lovely gem of a book, The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker. I might never have discovered such a good read on my own. That in itself was worth getting lost in the rain, but I also managed to walk away with a pile of used books that came to a total of $10.

The Center for Fiction is open to the public, but it is also one of the few membership libraries still in operation in the United States. The benefits of membership include attendance at events with free or discount admission, reading discussion groups, access to their lending library of over 85,000 titles as well as discounts at their bookstore. Above all, membership supports an independent, not for profit organization dedicated to keeping the written word alive and well.

If you find yourself in mid-town Manhattan, leave your friends at the souvenir shop and stop by The Center for Fiction for a gift of good books and memories that are just as much a part of the city as another tiny replica of the Empire State Building (and yes, I bought my children tiny replicas of the Empire State Building too).

For more information on The Center for Fiction, visit their website: www.centerforfiction.org

February 20, 2013 2

The Old Italian Woman

What became these days
Here behind frosted glass
Here where patience still won’t answer
And my children echo on yellow walls
This living down to threadbare rugs
This hope to tease despair
To turn a longing into song
There was the smell of sun warmed grass
There was a drink of sea worn tears
The flavor of a kiss I never tasted
Those broken words
Those nightingales turned to larks
Old letters turned to an old man’s scars
What stumbling
What chance breath
Became these days

Angie Flanagan

February 13, 2013 3

The Annual Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Winter Conference in New York

The day before I left home for the SCBWI Winter Conference, I was touched by a little bit of literary magic. Finding myself with a free afternoon, I went to browse my favorite little bookstore. On one of the shelves, What I Was by Meg Rosoff caught my eye. I didn’t know much about this book, but the quality of the prose caught me immediately. So I bought it.

My actual voyage to New York happened in fits of flights and delays and hours waiting on cold, dark tarmacs. I doubt anyone has had a more dehumanizing, bumpy, travel sick trip to New York since my peasant ancestors landed on Ellis Island by tall ship.

When I finally settled in at the hotel, I opened up my conference schedule and discovered that one of the main speakers at the Friday Novel Intensive was none other than Meg Rosoff. This was the moment I took to be a spark literary magic, a bit of serendipity, a promise that the long haul to get there would soon be rewarded. I was not disappointed.

If you love the writing, telling or reading of stories and you ever have the chance to hear Meg Rosoff speak, do not miss it. She is brilliant, warm and giving. She spoke about the challenges of plot. It might seem obvious that if three people were given the same plot and asked to write about it, three very different stories would emerge from the assignment. What Meg got me thinking about more deeply is that I am, at heart, all of my characters. Not just the obvious protagonist. The other supporting characters, the ones I think are based on the girl I hated in third grade or the boy I loved at twenty are all my projections of myself. My unique experiences. That’s my plot. As I write it now, it sounds more Freudian than when Meg Rosoff was speaking. Read her books. Read about her. She is an inspiration.

“What is the difference between an artist and a craftsman?” Mo Willems asked during his closing keynote address. I think this question sums up the lessons on craft that I took with me from the conference this year. Mathew Kirby planting the seed of inciting events both internally and externally, coming to a climax and then meeting to find resolution. Margaret Peterson Haddix shaping and reshaping a story through research. And of course, the legendary Jane Yolen with her infectious joy of language. She not only opened up my understanding of landscape as a living, breathing character, but how it can be molded and shaped to affect the rhythm, texture and emotion of my stories.

The highlights of my weekend were Shaun Tan and 2002 Newberry Award Winner Linda Sue Park. Both of these authors tell stories lyrically but concisely, and in the case of Shaun Tan with hardly any words at all. Shaun Tan weaves images of ordinary life into the surreal. His pages are full of pictures, but he makes it as simple as possible so the reader can take their own journey. Linda Sue Park uses nouns sparingly and makes certain that they are woven throughout her story, never appearing just once.

I’ve come home revitalized and ready to write, as I always do from SCBWI events. This organization has brought such value to my work. To learn more about the SCBWI, visit their website: http://www.scbwi.org/

February 6, 2013 8

Ophelia

She exhaled. Her breath moved warm and moist against his cheek. His mouth slid off hers. He shifted her underneath him. The heat of her burned through the fabric of his clothes. Her thigh made bare as the short summer skirt fell back onto her hips. Pink Floyd called to him softly from the tape deck on her nightstand and carried him along toward his own state of comfortably numb.

“You still listen to this?” He whispered.

“Mmmmhmmm”

She stopped and sank into his kiss.

The music. Her body. His breath.

She lifted like the sea, like the time his parents brought him to a swank Mexican resort. He’d stood ankle deep in water. The waves had moved gently over his skin like caressing hands. The breeze had moved over his face as warm as her breath.

Dive in. Learn the mystery of her depths.

All the invitation he needed to ignore the litany of doubt that plagued his mind. He rolled off her, propped himself onto his elbow and began a slow journey along the buttons of her skirt.

“You don’t have to unbutton all of them.” She laughed.

“I know, but I love you.”

She raised herself up and pressed her mouth against his.

The spell slipped away. After all, he had never taken the plunge in Mexico. His mother had called him back to the cabana to put on more sunscreen and told him the under tow was too dangerous.

I’m an idiot if I stay, he thought.

She parted his lips with her tongue.

No. I’m an idiot if I go.

Do not stay. Do not stay. Do not stay.

But leaving hovered in the air with the resonance of a funeral bell. Time turned on itself. The trunk of his car packed, and he would never be back.

Make her a memory before she becomes something more.

It would be easy to let her spread across him. Too easy. She always made it too easy.

He raised the gate against her with the courage of a lock keeper. The water dammed again and under control. As the hero of a system he neither designed nor understood, he refastened the buttons that held the airy fabric of her skirt.

She came up off the bed behind him and waited amiably for a kiss. He didn’t give her one. He wanted her to believe there would be another time for that, wanted, in fact, to believe it himself.

Someday.

He eased himself out the window, dropped into the grass of her yard and crossed over to his own. He went to his room and threw himself onto the bed. He fell asleep to dreams of her spread beneath him. Her hair and sighs and an undulating sea. In the dream there was no doubt. He forgot the moment he woke.

In the soft yellow light before sunrise, he dropped behind the wheel of his car. Her window was dark. He half expected and half hoped to catch a glimpse of her. He waited until the first red glow of morning reflected in her window. On the passenger seat sat a small box that contained the letters she’d written. He placed his hand on the cover, remembering her words, forgetting her heart. The car door slammed shut and echoed down the empty street.

She woke, looked over the open windowsill, and saw his car swallowed by the edge of her world. A tiny porcelain dancer, the only token he’d ever given her, sat on her bedside table. She threw it against the wall.

The garbage man made slow progress down the street in his rusted dinosaur of a truck. One by one, lights glowed from the windows of perfectly equal, perfectly similar, perfectly perfect two story houses in various shades of inoffensive gray. Across the street, Mr. Anderson laced up his shoes for a run while he thought about how much he wanted to crawl back into bed with his sleeping wife. Because there was no obvious achievement to be found in the warm invitation of her body, he forced himself out the door. Mrs. Anderson dreamed that her tennis instructor bit her damp salty neck, his body pressed against her back as he guided her arms in the arc of a perfect serve.

Next door, the Johnson’s dog let himself out the doggy door and took his morning piss in the same spot as always. It had become a bare patch where no grass would grow. Mr. Johnson could do nothing to improve this open admission of imperfection in his yard. At the end of the cul du sac, Janet Oliver had come into the kitchen to bake a cake while her two boys slept blissfully in their bunk beds upstairs. A half built city of plastic blocks and match box cars left scattered over the taupe carpet.

The girl picked up the fragments of her broken figurine and dropped them out the window. A shard split the skin of her index finger. Blood fell like small drops of rain that break the silence before the storm. The dam burst. She held her breath.

January 23, 2013 2

Write it Down

It was a hot New York City summer. I was living in a tiny little box of a place while I studied at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. I didn’t live close to the school, but I still walked everyday to save myself money and soak up everything New York had to offer. On my way home, I usually wandered through Central Park or went to a museum. I was growing, filled with art and music and of course all of the wonderful ideas of Martha Graham (she had just died, but her spirit was alive and well).

I didn’t go back to my little room until after the sun went down when I knew it would be cooler. I stretched on top of the covers, my body all used up from a day of dancing and walking, and read Joseph Campbell. I fell asleep happy and exhausted.

One night, I had a dream that a red headed goddess came up to me in Central Park and asked if I would like to see what is behind the Collective Unconscious. Yes! Of course I did!

She pulled back a curtain, and off we went into the back of a theater. It was full of pictures, movement, words, entire stories. A world that connected every idea together. The red haired goddess turned to me.

“Now go write it down,” she said.

I pulled myself from sleep and fumbled in the dark room for my notebook and pen.

“Write it down. Write it down. Write it down.” I said to myself. I scratched away on to the paper, barely awake, my eyes still closed. I shut my notebook, dropped my pen and fell back into bed.

When I woke in the morning, I couldn’t remember the details of my dream, but I did remember what the red haired goddess had said to me. I rushed to my desk and flipped through my notebook. What great work of genius had been handed to me while I slept? I turned the page, and there it was, right in front of me, penned in my very own hand….

“Write it down.”

January 2, 2013 0

Marta Becket

This is Marta Becket, one of my earliest inspirations not only as a dancer but as an artist in general. I first heard about Marta when I was five years old. I’d come home from kindergarten, and my mother was serving me lunch. She was talking to a neighbor, but that woman’s face is blurred in my memory. I wonder if the herald to our call to adventure is often painted faceless?

At the time, we lived in the California desert. To this day, I have not been able to drive through that area of the United States without seeing the magic of childhood, Sam Shepherd plays, the migrant workers of The Grapes of Wrath and Marta Becket. I still see their stories mingled with mine in the tiny square houses painted the same color as the sand. Very little is built to stand out in a place most people come to disappear.

That day in my little kitchen with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, my mother and our neighbor were discussing a woman in Death Valley who went to her little theater and danced every day, even if no one came to watch her. That woman was Marta Becket.

“Why would anyone want to dance in the hot desert with no one watching?” My neighbor pressed her now-blurry mouth into a disdainful frown. “What a waste of time.”

And that is the moment Marta Becket became my first muse. What my neighbor saw as a waste of time, I saw as the most beautiful mystery ever laid in front of me.I couldn’t believe something so wonderful was happening less than an hour from where I lived! A dancer who performed because her soul demanded it, not because someone else asked her. A dancer who performed in her own theater by her own terms. I couldn’t form the words when I was five, but this is what I felt. Marta had called to me, and I could not forget.

Marta will never let me forget, though many times I have tried, that we have lost what it really means to make art. Art isn’t about where you live, it is about the individual creative stamp you put on the place you find yourself. Our creative power does not reside in a certain city. It is not made valid by a certain critique. It can never really be bought or sold. We become powerful when we make an appointment with ourselves, not our audience, to create something out of nothing every day.

The most important part of making art is showing up.