Sketch From the Country #1

Moving to the country a few years back was one of the best things we've ever done, but it was also a cultural shock, reminiscent of the book Funny Farm. The difference is that the deer on our land pass across the lower valley of their own accord and the people are, for the most part, genuinely friendly. We never had to pay them to be nice to us. (Okay, we paid them once, but it was the only way we could eat our dinner in peace.)

Our local general store, three miles up the road, is a hangout for all the old men hereabouts. It's a typical white-framed building with all the usual signs for Coca Cola and cigarettes. There is one very large sign outside, one of those signs where you can change the words yourself by sliding letters and numbers across slatted rows. It reads gas, cigarettes, lottery, live bats and acks. After seeing they actually sold live bats and acks, I was curious and dying to know what an ack was. After all, the sign had been there for years and ... well, okay, I was being a smart ass.

"I'd like to buy some live bats and an ack," I said.

The man behind the counter is usually grumpy and I never know what to expect. He is short, perhaps 5'.4" and just as wide. I interrupted his breakfast of canned stew and potato chips. "We don't have any bats. You might try the hardware store for an ack," he said. "Chopping firewood in this weather?" The stew dribbled onto one of his chins and bits of potato chip fell out of his mouth as he spoke.

I smiled. Was it condescending? I couldn't help it. "I don't really want live bats. I'm just pointing out the sign. It reads 'live bats' and 'acks'."

"Oh, that. Well everybody knows it's live bait and snacks. What else could it be?"

"Live bats, of course." He looked at me strangely and wished I'd hurry up and leave. I can tell these things, you know.

"Well, I know somebody who traps 'em." he said. "Name's Henry and he usually comes in on Wednesdays. But can't help you with the ack."

"I don't want it really. It's just that sign," I said. I must leave here as quickly as possible.

"Is it broke?"

"No, it just needs adjusting." Enough now. Be polite and leave.

"What for? Everybody knows what it says."

"Thank you." I said. Well, what else could I say? "Uh ... have a good day." Found something.

"Yea, take care, eh. I'll tell Henry you been lookin' for him."

"Um." I didn't finish the thought. I can only hope he didn't see me roll my eyes as I left.

A few days later, I had to nip in there again. I forgot it was Wednesday. The little bell jingled above the door as I entered and the saggy eyes of six old men were upon me. "Oh here's the lady looking for the bats, Henry." said the shopkeeper.

"Good morning," I said. I was instantly reminded of a typical old general store in the old west. "All you need in here is a barrel full of pickles, a wood stove and all you gentlemen smoking corn cob pipes."

"Oh, there's no smoking in here," he said.

Now, I don't want to sound smug, but really? "I'm kidding. Just the milk, thank you." I just wanted to leave and never come back.

"What you want with all those bats?" said who I presumed was Henry.

"I don't want any bats." I said. I really, really just want to leave. "I think there's been a misunderstanding."

"Heh, Bob. I got a box full of bats in the truck freezin' their n!ts off."

"Lady, you said you wanted bats." Bob turned to me. Seems I put him in an awkward situation.

I was becoming more than a little uncomfortable and more than a little irritated. My husband always says I'm way too friendly with strange ... I mean, strangers. "It was a joke. I was making fun of your sign."

"There's nothing wrong with that sign." said Bob. As he spoke a middle-aged woman came into the store. She was out of breath and panting as Bob pulled what I presumed was her usual cigarette brand off the shelf.

"What's up, Bob?" she asked.

"Nothin' much, but do you see anything wrong with that sign?" He pointed out the window and all the old men got up to follow his finger. I stood there with my hand on the door handle.

"Nope," she said and they all nodded in agreement.

"But ... but it says live bats and acks. How can you not see that?" Why was I still there?

The woman looked at me like she was ready to pounce. Nobody messes with Bob. "But everybody knows Bob sells live bait."

I smiled at them as I left. I know it was my best patronizing smile, the one I pull out to hide my shame. I don't shop at Bob's General Store anymore. The other is fourteen miles in the other direction. And even though the other store sells "oca ola," I've never felt the need to try it. It's for the best. The next closet convenient store is thirty miles away.

(names changed to protect the locals)

2009

I can't believe it's been a year since I posted anything. So much for that "discipline/diligence " thingy among my 2008 resolutions. Nevertheless, it's in this years mental list as well.

Still busy with revisions of my 2007 Nano novel and I'm hoping it'll be ready for beta readers by the end of 2009, hopefully before with discipline and diligence. I enjoy this part -- playing with phrases, moving this to there and that to here.

Haven't come up with a decent title yet though. A Twist of Rotten Silk is the working title for my witch wip. This one? Haven't a clue. My MC's name is Swithun, born on St. Swithun's Day. I was considering Swithun's Day for a title, but ick. Too ... something. Charming, perhaps? I like coming up with titles, but this has me stumped

A Snippet from A Twist of Rotten Silk

I actually put this novel away for a bit. It lost its muse somehow, but I pulled it out tonight for a look/see and made a few edits here and there. I miss her. Anyway, Beth over in Books and Writers is going to be doing a workshop on metaphor and imagery. I wondered if I had anything. I think this may fit, especially the last paragraph. Must scrounge up some others.

A Twist of Rotten Silk copyright L. Syratt 2007-2008
(my old witch wip) (unfinished and in first draft)

The path to the stream wound like a serpent through the forest. Every bend glowed with torches of twisted rush, smoking with pig's grease. A mist was rising, moving across the forest floor like fairy dancers, changing shapes with every gust of wind. I shivered like a child afraid of the dark and squeezed William's hand as we walked.

I wanted to tell him I wasn't gripped by fear of the dark. Darkness kept no secrets from me. I was gripped by memory and the sudden chill of that remembering. There was still so much I hadn't told him.

I found myself thinking of Mary again, pulling from my memory all the wretched things she said to me in that cell, the constant bray and cackle of her bitterness. “No man will ever want you lass. Look at you, so full of ruts and ridges. They'd as soon spit on you than touch you.”

Some things from those years I'd forgotten, but memory is a mystic thing – always showing itself when you'd rather it didn't. It doesn't allow indolence. It is raw and bloody with a shrill voice. And there, on that serpentine path, I was haunted with it, listening attentively as it slithered behind us.

John O'Donohue Rest in Peace

John O'Donohue 1954-2008

I was listening CBC radio on Sunday, during a three-hour drive across to northern edge of Lake Ontario. CBC is always good company. It was a Tapestry interview with John O'Donohue, ex-priest, philosopher, theologian, poet and lovely speaker. You can hear the interview on podcast. I'm not catholic, but couldn't help but be awed. He had a wonderful view of life, lovely. He said there is a part of every man's /woman's soul that is pure and good, innocent of the ugliness we see in the world and the ugliness in our own lives, free of the mistakes we've made, the guilt we feel. He said this is the place to go to when you need to feel that purity and beauty. Oh, the things he talked about. His voice was a choir and his words were poetry. Sadly, John O'Donohue died two weeks ago at the age of 53. I wish I'd known him.

‘I would love to live

Like a river flows

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.’

John O'Donohue

Inspired ... I write the post below.

The Garden in Winter

I resolve to find beauty everyday, to read a poem or write a poem, for that matter. I resolve to see with my heart and not just my eyes. Beauty hides itself in anything, everything. The guttural giggle of an infant. The words "I love you" from a parent, partner, sibling or friend. The way the sky looks on a stormy day and the way we feel when a song brings tears to our eyes.

This morning, I woke to see the frost dripping from every bare branch and clinging leaf. The winter garden is beautiful even without the pinks of gallica and damask. We have those rosettes in the icicles dripping from branches of feathery tamarisk and lilac. We have the naked shapes of things poking up through the protection of snow. The winter garden has its own magic, changing with the years and every snowfall and thaw. Always a wonder. No footprints mar the perfection this snow brings. It is preserved, pristine and crisp like freshly-ironed linen. Smooth as the thick petals of a summer lily.

I finished!

Yay, it's over and Yay, I finished NaNoWriMo. It's an awful mess. Needs a ton of work, but it's a fair beginning and I like the story. Can't wait to get at the first proper writing of it. I can't even think of this as a first draft. It's too dreadful and not even fit for my eyes, but wow....that took discipline, I didn't know I had. What an exercise. Oh and this is the first novel, I've actually finished. Doesn't matter that it's awful, but the finishing is a big deal to me. And Beth, if you happen to be reading this...thank you for the mantra. "Finish something, so you know you can." I can't remember who you got it from ... Eve, was it? Anyway, it help push me along.

Rebecca

My favorite novel. I must have read it a dozen time over the years. Not for the melodrama, however, and it was certainly melodramatic, but for the writing and the lovely words and phrases Daphne Du Maurier put to the page. I actually swoon when I read such wordiness. It stuns me.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw the lodge was uninhabited.

No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me.

And later....

There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the grey stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand.

And then there is the first paragraph of chapter five....

I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden too, whatever the poets may say. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. ( I love that line) They are full of little cowardice's, little fears without foundation.

Oh, I do love her writing. She was a master mood-setter.