Rainwater and the Human Eye

This afternoon I paid tribute to the first warm rain of the year, by cavorting through puddles in the streets of Chewelah.  There's something about a warm rain, about getting soaked to the skin, which makes me happy like a lunatic child.  And now my neighbors are probably even more thoroughly convinced than before of my state of insanity.  However, I have come to the conclusion that people will scrutinize you whatever you do, so why not do or wear or be something worth their while?  People watch the Kardashians.  They also watch Cirque du Soleil.  I'm pretty sure I know which one I'd rather be.


Growing up, I always thought that nobody noticed me.  Not to pine, or say, "Oh poor me!"  It was a simple fact in my mind.  I did not think myself very noticeable, so I assumed that I was not noticed.  Gradually, as I opened my eyes a bit more, I realized that I was noticed, not necessarily because I was noticeable, but because people will look at anything.  Car wrecks or cathedrals...it doesn't really matter.


Aaron and I often walk about town.  (A boring sentence, as walking about town is a perfectly normal thing to do.)  But we are constantly amazed by the number of people who will go out of their way to stare at us...as in full-on neck-crane out the car window.  Granted, sometimes we are doing strange things, but as often as not we're just...walking.  No toilet paper stuck to our shoes, no disfiguring scars, no strange behavior...


So, for a while the realization that people watch you no matter what you do made me curl up inside myself, made me afraid to do anything that might seem unusual.  Then, gradually, I came to the decision that if people are going to watch me anyway, I'd rather give them something interesting to look at.  Don't misunderstand me.  I still have inhibitions.  Some fairly major ones.  But I'd rather be the person you see traipsing through the puddles with a ridiculous smile on her face than the one hunched over with her head down.  I'd rather be Cirque du Soleil than the Kardashians.  I'd rather be a cathedral than a car wreck.

Happy Thanksgiving

Just a short post to say Happy Thanksgiving before I go downstairs to bake pies for tomorrow. After several days of heavy snow, it has warmed up into the 40s. I took a walk in the rain this morning, enjoying the rain-smell and the freshness that comes with it. I love walks in the rain. I always feel better afterwards, as if my body and soul have been washed clean.

I'll leave you with a song I've only recently discovered. A gem, and it also happens to be on my pie-baking playlist. Cheers! And Happy Thanksgiving!

Thoughts On a Rainy Wednesday Evening

I have decided to commence a massive rewrite of Ashford as a summer project, so this morning I tore quite ruthlessly into chapter one.  I think I've had the necessary distance from it to look at the thing a little more objectively now, so we'll see how it goes.  I am not, however, finding it any easier to cope with scathing critiques, particularly when they contradict each other.  And not, I don't think, because I can't accept criticism.  I've had critiques before from people who didn't like everything about the manuscript, who thought this or that could stand to be changed, improved, or simply taken out, but last week brought two reviews from separate individuals, both of whom clearly (and rather nastily) had very poor opinions of just about every aspect of my writing.  One claimed I didn't describe things enough.  The other insisted that I spent far too much time on the descriptions, even going so far as to say, quite spitefully, "it's no wonder the description is good, considering how much time is spent on it."


I am trying to take these conflicting opinions as gracefully as possible without letting them discourage me.  After all, a good friend, (who has, by the way, great taste in literature in general) read it through, then started again, reading it aloud to her younger sister, who then had to read it a second time herself.  Surely if she'd been thinking only of not hurting my feelings she wouldn't have felt the need to be quite so enthusiastic.  They are both in love with Perry now.  Not that I blame them.  I'm quite fond of him myself.


So I'm going back to the beginning and scrutinizing every sentence, determined to weed out cliches and unnecessary adjectives, knowing that I won't please everyone, but doing my best to please those whose opinion is most important: the would-be reader whose vision sees what I have feebly tried to show.


It's been a chilly wet day, but I'm cozy inside, wrapped in a blanket, listening to the combined sounds of rain on the roof and Aaron practicing for his album release party.  He recently completed his first album, and we're hoping to schedule a release soon.

A Moment

It is cooler today, with a light rain.  Inside, the house smells of freshly baked bread.  Outside, the breeze brings the scents of rain and lilacs.  I've been gathering up my sewing for Sunday, when some of the girls are going with me to help take photos for my portfolio.  I like looking at the fabric, lying in a heap, all the colors together.  It's been an idyllic, dreamy sort of day.  I've been alone since Aaron left for work, and it's been one of those days when I think sometimes I will forget how to speak.  The silence goes so deep that I don't like to break it.  In a moment I will leave for class and there will be music, life, movement, laughter.  That is a dream of a different kind.  Just as pleasant, but as alien to this other as the fresh-baked bread to the lilacs and rain.

Recollections on a Rainy Day

This will be a short post, as I spent most of the day crafting query letters to send to literary agents, and my brain is fried to that degree that only a walk in the rain can save it now.


This time of the year always makes me feel close to my childhood.  Chilly autumn days gathering firewood; evenings curled up in the couch-corner reading Lloyd Alexander, Elizabeth Goudge, or Susan Cooper, and imagining myself into far away places...  I was always a fairly contented child.  My mother remembers that I could spend hours by myself playing with bobby pins.  I remember it very well too.  I nearly always pretended they were keys -- magic keys that could open any door.  I would unlock all the doors and go through and have adventures.  We never had many toys growing up, but I can't remember ever really caring, so long as there were books and bobby pins.  The only exception, I remember, is a secret longing I had for a Chia Pet, so that I could cut it's hair off and have it grow again.


Strange how books from childhood stay with you.  For me, at certain times of year, I always feel compelled to re-visit certain favorites -- Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard in the Autumn, Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising in Midwinter... Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda at any time of year.


I want to be that kind of writer.  The kind people keep coming back to.  George MacDonald said, "I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five or fifty or seventy-five."  The best books are the ones we keep coming back to, no matter how our lives change or how we age or mature.


But now the rain is calling.