Yeti, our last dog’s favorite treat was a Greenie, a green starchy chewable bone-shaped object she could chew into bits and swallow in a minute of two. Green meanies are something else and they hurt my hand to hold, as I am in this photo. I wish people would pick them up so I didn’t have to.
In a two-year-old article, Ann Patchett explains that as a teenager she did not consider cream soup spoons essential when she bought sterling flatware as a 14-year old. I do. I will say that I already gave away all the family silver and have bought only odd pieces which I intend to use daily in the new year—using her sterling was something my grandfather’s third wife, Genevieve, did too. Patchett wonders what to do with her dozen champagne flutes that will never find a dozen people wanting champagne, but we have kept fourteen flutes purchased over the years on anniversaries. Though we have no better idea when or if they might be used, they line a high shelf and give me pleasure every time I take down a plain water glass. Throw them on a beach after I die.
Gary and I are working on our future. Eventually the upkeep and isolation of the Arch Cape house will be too much. Our sons do not seem attached to the coast—oh, they say they miss it, but they seldom come out to visit. Once a year, or twice. They lead busy lives. That means we’ll be on our own for day to day assistance with what we’ll need if we try to stay there forever. Shopping, repairs… No simple workaround in our unincorporated community and no fewer local political issues. In our 70s and in good health, we manage fine now. We did, after all get the new roof on and Gary spread compost. We drive to Costco once a month. I’d like to think we might become ninety-something-year-olds who manage on their own till death takes us. But as a compulsive planner, I’m not counting on that.
We are working up courage to let go.
This is not one of “our” pelicans. Our pelicans are Brown Pelicans. This is an American White Pelican, snowy white with black flight feathers. Handsome, but this species does not belong on our beach except in passing. The Browns sometimes stay from spring until late fall.
NaNoWriMo offered me a very specific goal for three years: 50k words in 30 days. I wrote over 70k. During April, National Poetry Month, I wrote the draft of a poem each day + posted poetry prompts for several years running. Here I am blogging. One of my longterm goals was to be published in Brevity Magazine and that happened three months ago. I have also set goals for reading—fifty-two books this year, and I was done by October.
Now what?
I like a challenge, and though I never take dares from others, I like making them for myself. I like challenging myself to do something hard, something within my ability, but a little beyond my comfort zone. Maybe a lot outside my comfort zone.
For next year, I am thinking about committing to a regular post of a very specific type for 2019. What got me thinking about this was the story I wrote for my grand children about an angry rabbit. And then I wrote a downright creepy story about a space traveler trying to leave Earth, titled “The Tatooed Girl.” This story is my contribution to a class effort they don’t know about yet. We are all writing stories triggered by The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, and next week I will create a little booklet of them. It is my Writing 121 warm-up assignment, and I generally write whatever my students write. My story started with the knife in the illustration with the pumpkin. My story was uncharacteristically violent.
Then this morning I wrote another weird little story about a boy reaching out to grab a little girl, and his hand disappears. Where are these coming from? Maybe this is the result of spending all of my NaNo month working on “Impossible Stories”? Maybe it’s because I am reading slowly through Ghostographs: An Album by Marian Romasco Moore. Very weird, very wonderful, and highly recommended—I want it to last!
My brief stories for class are about 500 words, which is what I assigned for my students, and therefore what I wrote myself. I went over that length and had to carve back again and again, and I still think the “The Tattooed Girl” story wants to be a lot longer. That’s something I can address later.
In the mean time: could that pelican above be a changeling? Is that too easy? No princes or princesses in my stories, so how about a genetic mutation, a Very Smart Bird? Maybe that bird is entirely self aware and a philosopher?
So now I am thinking: Could I do this on schedule? Could I post a story a week, or something, and have fifty-two weird little stories by the end of the year?
Would anyone read:
Anyone have an opinion?
&PRIDE Press 