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Cita's Blog – January 2010 Archive (7)

The Village

I cannot stay in the house any longer, and curling up with a good book in front of the fire is not as appealing as it was when I contemplated it in October.

I leave with half a bale of alfalfa and a small smile because the old mares view me as Santa Claus Come Late.

I can see in my mind that place where the pottery sherds were scattered like potato chips at a child's birthday party, had noted their location several weeks ago as I rode over them as my cows were moving too… Continue

Added by Cita on January 15, 2010 at 5:06pm — 2 Comments

LGB

I have fallen in love--again--and this time it is with the dark-eyed junco, that LGB* who looks like he wears an executioner's hood.

He stays around all winter and hops in the dirt gathering the seeds that spill from the tray or scratches in the snow hunting them down until I can't stand it any more and go out while the coffee makes and throw more seed where it pits the pristine white, little pockmarks of goodness for him.

He is just a little poem, nothing you'd take much… Continue

Added by Cita on January 15, 2010 at 4:11pm — 3 Comments

What Its All About (longer than 6)

I am not sure that these young men nowadays know anything about how when the world is waking up around a man on a horse, there are little surprises, like the bull snake that crawls past, sated from a night’s hunting, and disappears down a hole you never would see otherwise.

He always drags his tail in after him.

Maybe a little ground squirrel will crawl up onto the boulder right in front of you and give himself a thorough bath, doing a job on his hindquarters with an… Continue

Added by Cita on January 7, 2010 at 4:59pm — 11 Comments

Needing Mercy

My brain is jello and I feel like jumping off the barn roof.

Who's great idea was it for me to write a novel?

And how friggin' long IS a novel, anyway, a readable work of fiction?

Fiction... hello!!!! I am an essayist, a la Verlyn Klinkenborg, E. B. White, and Merrill Gilfillan. (I wish.)

But, three or four drafts later, there is a novel, and I sent it out to first readers.

Shoot me now.

Added by Cita on January 4, 2010 at 10:00pm — 5 Comments

Lost in the Mail

My daughter lives with my sister and I only get to see her a few times a year due to the price of airplane tickets and gasoline, plus the fact that she must also spend time with her daddy.

This season, while she is away, my sister and the rest of her family gutted my daughter's bedroom and painted it turquoise and sand, put up raffia window treatments, built a new bed, hung a surfboard painted with her name above it.

She will get home to a whole new room, all of her socks… Continue

Added by Cita on January 2, 2010 at 5:48pm — 4 Comments

I Remember

I remember sitting at my mother's upright piano, the one her father gave her, trying to learn "Carry Me Back to Ol' Virginny" from John Thompson's Third Grade Lessons book.

I remember playing the same phrase over and over again and stumbling over and over again in the same place, playing the same note wrong over and over again.

I remember how irritated my father became as the melody grated on his nerves over and over again, always coming to the same sour note.

I… Continue

Added by Cita on January 1, 2010 at 12:30pm — 7 Comments

Serious Question

This is to all of you who are writing in order that your writing will feed you and pay the bills, those of you who wish to write for a living, full time, put "writer" on the line that says occupation.

I keep encountering editors and publishers who want to read material that has never been seen or posted or published anywhere else and that includes blogs or online journals.

Over and over I see great writing splashed across the internet, writing worthy of The Sun or Orion or… Continue

Added by Cita on January 1, 2010 at 12:11pm — 22 Comments