The Life of a Book

There was a wonderful and inspirational author named Madeleine L'Engle.  You may recognize her as the author of A Wrinkle in Time and other imaginative and symbolic novels for young people.  I know her as a writer of great faith. In my years of searching, when I was much younger, her adult non-fiction books, taught me that faith, art, and science are all gifts to be used. She led a practical Christian life and claimed that all types of art could be inspirational whether they used words like "God" or not, which I found comforting at the time.  I recently pulled two of her books off of my bookshelf and found something I'd underlined long ago:

The writer does want to be published; the painter urgently hopes that someone will see the finished canvas; the composer needs his music to be heard. Art is communication, and if there is no communication it is as though the work had been stillborn.

 I spent five months last winter writing a novel. It is my third one. The previous two novels were self-published. It was disappointing to have resorted to that, but I desperately wanted to see them as a book, not just a stack of paper or a words on a screen. They would have been dead, stillborn, if I'd done nothing with them.  Their lives would have been like my grandmother's novels––pieces of looseleaf paper in cardboard boxes for someone to find after she died. 

I have no formal training as a writer beyond local classes and critiques by various authors and writing groups. However, I've written a novel of historical fiction based on the life of a real person. I had no intention of ever writing fiction again, but it was an idea I couldn't resist. Oh, how I want to see it published. I know this one is better (or maybe just the query letter is better) because it has had the attention of several agents. Some wanted to see a portion of the work and two have asked to see the entire manuscript. This, in itself, is exciting and encouraging. The agents who have read portions of it all have had something positive to say about it, but...it just didn't grab them quite enough. 

I have been told that the satisfaction should be in the creative process, the journey––but no, that is not true.  A book is a part of you, a piece of your soul, and contains, in some way, everything you believe in. This holds true for all manner of art and creativity. 

All of my life I have a deep desire and urgency to express myself through writing, singing, painting, crafts and playing instruments. I'm sure that will continue no matter whether this new book finds life and breath or not. The most ubiquitous advice is to never give up. I will try not to.

The Pile (A Ferri Tale)

With great optimism and hope the couple decided to combine their former lives into one new life and one house. The man and the woman packed up everything they had from their old loves and moved it into the new compromise house. Strangely, they both brought many boxes of manure with them, and every time one was brought into the new house is was promptly dumped in the center of the home - that area you must move through every day in living there.

After a short time the family noticed a putrid odor hanging in the air. It was difficult to have fun with the smell permeating every room of the house. They spent a lot of money on air fresheners, but nothing seemed to work. The children got angry and the adults were just annoyed. They really wanted to hang on to everything they brought with them.

Occasionally a discussion lasting through the night would cause one of them to take up a shovel, fill a box, and put it out in the trash. But most of the time everyone just stepped over the pile, getting some of it on their shoes and tracking it out of the house and into the car, leaving bits of it everywhere they went. Family and friends would often sniff the air and wonder what the foul smell was, but they were too polite to say anything.

On a particularly volatile night she fell smack into the pile, her tears wetting the dried up chunks, and the pieces that had stopped stinking started to smell again. The man usually avoided the pile altogether even when she pointed it out to him. This made her very angry.

She yelled, "I'm sick of your shit!"
He said, "It's mine and I'm keeping it."

As the years passed the pile diminished slightly. Sometimes they noticed the reduction of manure and were pleased, but sometimes old manure they thought they had dispossed of reappeared, and they were discouraged. It didn't smell quite as bad, but the stench was always present. They kind of got used to it.

After many years they saw something start to peek out from the pile. It looked clean and bright, but they were afraid to uncover it. The scent of something new hung in the air and sometimes even overpowered the bad smell. They looked at each other and smiled. What could it be? What could have lasted all these years under all that crap?

Finally, one day it surfaced. It smelled sweet and was well-preserved. It glowed from its place in the center of the pile. Apparently it had been there all the time, but neither of them had had the courage to dig down and uncover it. The dried up pieces of manure were easy to toss out and the sweet spot was revealed. It wasn't really a surprise. It was what they had started out with - a beautiful, unbreakable box of trust, respect, admiration - and true love. Then they remembered. They left the box in the central place where it could not be ignored. If it began to grow dim, or new manure rested on top of it, they swept it off, took out the trash, or flushed it down the toilet where it had always belonged anyway.

And the man and the woman never forgot how long it had taken them to uncover something beautiful that had been there all the time - and they knew it always would be.
The End.

Blue

Blue is what she remembered about that day. The periwinkle sky and the way it melded into his eyes. They wrapped the Navajo blanket around them in the April chill. A blue jay cawed in the skeleton of the bare branches above. He laid her down on the blanket and she watched as his finger traced the crooked path of veins across her breasts.

She sighed and turned her head towards the violets peeking out of the dead leaves, and reached for the lapis lazuli necklace that had slid behind her head. Out of the blue a US Navy flight team demonstrated their precision in the azure beyond the silhouette of his head. After the roar of the jets dissipated she could hear Lee Ann Rimes singing on the car radio.

"That song is so sad, depressing really. Sometimes the music comes from only the dark notes, you know." She reached for her navy sweater and brushed off her jeans.

"You're not paying attention to me." He grabbed her and pulled her up off the blanket, leaving a bruise on her arm. "What can I expect from a working class girl like you?"

"If you touch me again I will call the police. If you hurt me I will call the hospital and tell them it's an emergency."

On the way home she gazed at the sapphire ring he'd given her long ago, but all she felt was blue.

If you get it send me a comment (it's not rocket science). The magic number is 20.

Now that some time has gone by - if anyone is interested - there are 20 references to the color blue in the story. Nothing profound - you didn't have to be so afraid of guessing.

Excerpt from Flying Over Midnight

She silently leaves the bed and moves down the stairs and out onto the creaking wooden front porch. She stands barefoot on the damp floorboards. There is a lavender light from above that leaves her colder than the halo of the moon. Elise looks up to see the mantle of purple sky that holds stars like twinkling satellites blinking a code to earth. The ambrosia of the lilacs sends a riptide of night air into her hollow lungs.

Out of the dark a car door slams and Elise looks across the street to see a neighbor returning home from a date. The young woman wraps her arms around the young man and they eagerly kiss each other in the glow of the streetlight. Elise quickly turns her head away, and wrapping her transparent nightgown close to her body, creeps into the house and back to the unwelcoming bed.

She pulls the covers tightly around her neck to remain untouched. She closes her eyes and the blanket becomes a body, a hand, a tongue, and she is once again cloistered in desire and need. As Elise moves in and out of consciousness throughout the night, she is waiting to understand - but peace does not come to her.

Flying Turns (A Healing at Euclid Beach Park)

My daughter and I were going to show at the Beachland Ballroom. In my usual way I drove right past the street we were looking for. I found myself on Lakeshore Boulevard and pulled into a driveway to turn around. I looked up to see a very familiar sight - an archway - and said, "Oh, we're at Euclid Beach!" That prompted me to ask my dad about spending his summers in the tent city at Euclid Beach as a boy.

"Did you really ride your bike down the Flying Turns after the park closed?" I thought maybe I had misheard the familiar story in my own childhood, because it now seemed implausible.

(The Flying Turns was a slalom sled-like ride)

"No...(whew)... I had a sled with wheels for that," Dad answered, "I rode my bike down the Racing Coaster . . . but only once."

"How do you ride a bike down a roller coaster?"

"On the wooden slats between the rails," he replied, as if that would be obvious to anyone.

In 1933, when my dad was 10 years old, he contracted osteomyelitis, which is an inflammation of the leg bone caused by an infection. He almost died from the fever and was packed in ice, while in a coma, to bring it down. The treatment was to remove part of the bone and, (the details are a little vague now) pack the leg with some type of material until it healed. He was bedridden for a year and a half of his boyhood.

Dad's lower lip trembled as he told me of a nurse who came to his home to help take care of him. She was also a certified teacher and was soon to be married. The family wanted her to be Dad's teacher, so she asked her fiance' to delay the wedding for five months so Dad could finish the school year. Years later he would graduate from Cleveland Heights High School only a half-year behind his classmates because of her generosity.

When Dad was able to leave his bed, the doctors told my grandparents that he needed as much exercise as possible. There were not many opportunities for sports on the busy side streets of Cleveland Heights in the 1930's, so they rented their house to a professional golfer for the season, and took up residence in a tent on the grounds of Euclid Beach Amusement Park. The tents had electricity, but no running water. There were communal pumps and bathrooms. There, my dad played baseball and tennis, and roller skated everyday. There were other children to play kick-the-can and badminton, swimming at the pool in the mornings and access to the pier and the beach in the afternoons. They lived there from April to October for seven years.

When I was growing up, no matter what sport or game was being played, everyone wanted to be on my Dad's team. He was good at everything, and now I understand why. I always knew he was a champion Skee-ball player too. When he was 11 years old, the man in charge of the Euclid Beach Skee-ball gave him the job of retrieving balls thrown out of the alley. If he would crawl in the dirt and dust to get them, he was allowed to throw for free. When he was 15 he got the job of running the Skee-ball alleys. Dad claims to be the reigning Northeast Ohio Skee-ball (long alleys) champion to this day because he won the title the last year the contest was held.

"Because of the osteomyelitis I was behind in school, and then I was deferred stateside in the Navy during World War II. If you had the disease they wouldn't let you lead a battalion because they thought your leg would break. Now it would be different ... now they would know better..."

"But Dad , if it weren't for that disease you never would have had that magical childhood at Euclid Beach. And if you'd gone overseas and not returned like half of your buddies, maybe I wouldn't be here," I said, grateful in my heart for having this wonderful man for a father.

Of course, like so many Clevelanders, I have my own memories of Euclid Beach Park: the custard and popcorn balls, being terrified of Laughing Sal, the old-fashioned calliope music filling the park, riding the Racing Derby horses with my grandma. My grandparents took my brother Jimmy and me there for a last visit in 1969 before it closed down. I could have never know then how connected I would feel to a place that no longer exists, a place that helped to heal my father.

http://www.euclidbeach.com/, http://www.euclidbeachpark.com/

Dominique

I think her name is Dominique, and her tender arms cannot cover all the injuries. Her happy hair cannot lift up all that weighs her down. The hunger that blisters within her is not for food - it is the cavernous void of a different life - the one she was supposed to have. Lipstick and mascara intact, safe in her frame, there is a nascent hope in the fragility of the morning light.

Charlotte's Website

(In honor of all the spiders decorating the outside of my house. You have to know the story of Charlotte's Web to get this.)

Charlotte A. Cavatica here, your host. Today on the webcam you will see my guests: Wilbur Zuckerman, his wife Fern, Mr. Templeton and Mrs. Goose. Fern, Let's start with you.

Charlotte that's a lovely silk suit you have on, and I love the eight dreadlocks.

Thank you. I make all my silk threads. I catch all my own food. That's how I stay so trim, but once I was fat like Wilbur.

Yes, my husband has an eating disorder called Slops Addiction. He can't stop eating the leftovers in his restaurant!

Mr. Templeton, you work for Wilbur. Is this true?



It sure is Charlotte. Wilbur is SOME PIG.



Mrs. Goose, you also work at the restaurant. What do you observe?



Mr. Templeton has repeatedly stolen my egg dishes to tempt Wilbur off his diet. He's a RAT!



Wilbur, I suggest my all-insect diet. I'll give you a free copy of my book. Will you try it?



I will, Charlotte!



We will invite Wilbur back to see how much weight he can lose on the Charlotte A. Cavatica all-insect diet.



Well we're back - let's bring out Wilbur Zuckerman. Wilbur has lost 100 pounds on my all-insect diet!



I have a surprise for Wilbur today. I stayed up all night spin. . . I mean makting the sign above your head Wilbur. It says TERRIFIC! Because that's what you are!



Thank you, Charlotte. I miss eating my slops, but with your insect diet I will be a winner at the Weight Loss Fair next week!



Guests, I'd like to announce that I'm starting a family. You may have noticed the huge egg sac that I have. Five hundred and fourteen babies! Wilbur, you have been a HUMBLE guest.



Charlotte I will miss you when you're gone, but remember everyone - you can buy the diet book and see pictures of the babies on Charlotte's Website!