BlogHer - Words in a Row: Chewbacca Rides Shotgun - Comments

Lia, mine always to the same

Birdie Jaworski — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:35:59 -0500

Every story I write is completely different from what I expect and even want it to be. But somehow, I am grateful for the way this happens, it is as if my heart has a mind of her own, has stories that must be told.

Big hugs to you!

Birdie
Birdie's BlogHer Blog
La Pajaro

Stever, if you visit...

Birdie Jaworski — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:34:34 -0500

Then I would write a story about you!!! I might do that anyway, about the old days in sunny So Cal. I'm so glad you're reading these at least, even if you're not writing. : )

Birdie
Birdie's BlogHer Blog
La Pajaro

I finally got myself compatible with the new BlogHer site!!!

Birdie Jaworski — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:33:05 -0500

My old config wasn't compatible, but now I am good to go... so sorry I am so late to respond, sweetie!!!

I LOVED that story, girl. (As I told ya in email, and will tell ya on my blog in a bit...) It made me cry, and made me want to continue writing these crazy lessons. : )

Birdie
Birdie's BlogHer Blog
La Pajaro

Will do...

Heresyman — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 12:46:20 -0500

Thanks Denise.

stever...

Denise — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 17:49:02 -0500

Can you email me at denise@blogher.org with some system info, please?

Mac or PC?
Browser and version?
Operating system?
Telephone connection or broadband?

Do you only get a blank screen after you reply? Do you get one if you click preview? Any other blank screen issues? You're person number 3 reporting this and we're trying to figure out what the problem is. Any info you can provide will help.

Thanks

~Denise
Fast Times @ Homeschool High & Flamingo House Happenings

Damn the bugs... "the only good bug is a DEAD bug!"

Heresyman — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 11:24:36 -0500

Question EVERYTHING!

Everytime I try to post a response to a specific post, I end up with a blank screen I can do nothing with... where are the Starship Troopers when you need them?

Anyway, in response to milifes last post:

I loved your story... and was intrigued by the italicized internal dialog. My story would be like that, but the italicized bit would far outweigh the regular bit. (When you live behind a wall... there is a lot more internal bickering.)

I thought the soulmate bit was not only good, but crucial to the story. I agree with renaming "The Girl" though... because I sometimes mixed her up with Birdie.

What struck me most about the story was the fact that Birdie doesn't have a soulmate... she has a SOULPOSSE! (An awesome accomplishment, that!)

Stever

OK, perhaps I take class to seriously

milife — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 07:45:01 -0500

Which might be why I would like to be a professional student. Anyway, after letting my post sit a few days, and after getting my inner critic to pipe down a bit, and after really trying to look at it from another perspective, here are the things I would change:

I wrote with some assumptions, the biggest being that I don't think anyone reads my blog who doesn't read Birdie. There may have been too much assumed background (e.g. dancing over a death might seem weird if you didn't know why.)

I'd give The Girl a better name, I think it hurt the flow.

While the soalmate part is true, it doesn't flow, I think I would remove that section.

I'd make it clearer what I was trying to do with "finding a way to tell her." I think it reads that I wanted to tell Birdie she's wonderful, which she is, and I did. But the initial intent was to write a great story so that she could see her teaching had an impact on my writing. In other words, if I write a great story, she will see that she is a great teacher. I don't think that was clear.

There's more, but it's the girl's nap time so I will leave it there.

Can't wait for the next lesson, Birdie!

The Wall...

Heresyman — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 23:34:29 -0500

Hmmmm... another brick! (Perhaps the reason I haven't actually published anything yet.)

I wrote a note to my twin sister once... confronting her with something, thinking the note would give her a chance to think about what I said, as well as a clear way to drop it if I was wrong. (Sorry, details will not be provided...) I intended it as a paper trail, in case I was misunderstood. I also intended it to be confidential... just between us womb-mates. She never mentioned it... and I let it go, since I had finished it with an escape clause, telling her I would never mention it again if she didn't.

Well... silly me! I DID hear of it again, but from my brother... much later... during a family squabble. It was taken completely wrong... and it was just fuel for the fire.

Since, I have been VERY careful with whom I show my writings to. (In fact... I don't keep a journal because I am afraid of someone reading it. Explains why I am blogless too.)

That being said... the only writing I can say I changed because of concern of the reader would be some emails I have written. Sadly, the ones I have changed I am not willing to discuss in an open forum... because of that DAMN BRICK!

So, I am batting a thousand with these assignments... (They don't call me sarcastic Stever for nothing!)

Loved the story Birdie... I have GOT to come visit that wacky land you live in. :P

Question EVERYTHING!

OK, I did it - again!

milife — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 20:44:17 -0500

This one was really hard for me. Every character I invented was just my inner critic dressed as a bus driver, or a crab fisherman, or an old lady in a bad wig. I had to tell her to pipe down so I could write. Maybe if I were a more confident writer this would work better for me.

Anyway, the post is up. Birdie, make sure you read this one!

http://milife.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/assignment-3/

Thinking Cap

Lia — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:14:42 -0500

Your story was so alive with characters. I could almost, but only almost, understand how you could choose your beautiful home above the beautiful Ulak.

Going to put on my thinking cap about your assignment. It is odd, but even with the list of three things, etc. and even with an outline of what the story is going to be like, they always turn out completely different. I tend to morn the lost stories.

lia from luebeck, germany

Author of the yum yum cafe and coauthor of the Red Tent Blog.

Thanks, Cary!

Birdie Jaworski — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 13:34:30 -0500

I'm glad you enjoyed this. I'm having so much fun writing these posts.

Birdie
Birdie's BlogHer Blog
La Pajaro

Nancy, you can do it!

Birdie Jaworski — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 13:33:58 -0500

Even with the alienette, you can do it! I'm so excited to watch you write, you have no idea. It makes me feel like I'm making some kind of strange difference somehow with these nutty articles. : )

Birdie
Birdie's BlogHer Blog
La Pajaro

This...

Cary — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 12:04:28 -0500

..."Click, I tell them. Click. My camera speaks the only words we have in common."...is the reason you are a mentor of writers, Birdie. Beautiful!

Thanks, Birdie!

milife — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:41:18 -0500

Thanks for the kind words, Birdie. You are too kind.

Loved the story, and loved how you tied the lesson to the story. Your talents as a writer never cease to amaze me.

This next assignment sounds hard. It sounds like I need more interrupted writing time than The Girl lets me have, but I am going to try my best.

Thanks again!

Words in a Row: Chewbacca Rides Shotgun

Birdie Jaworski — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:32:53 -0500

The clouds that blanket the Plains of San Augustin rarely notice the science traveler, the Mescalero Apache, the patchwork family with a bag of marshmallows and one unused match. The clouds push from Arizona toward Texas, push across the reservation, the dried lake flats, push past the twenty-seven radio antennas without a second glance. Every time I drive past the installation, I feel those wandering jewels mock me, tell me I don't belong in this wilderness.

Click, I tell them. Click. My camera speaks the only words we have in common.

I tried to describe the sky to Hector as he bagged my groceries. I wanted to tell him that his skin looked like the San Augustin clouds - mysterious, dark, rippled, old. I bit my tongue.

"Hector, I can't believe you've never visited the Very Large Array. It's incredible! Even if you don't like astronomy, it's worth the drive. The sky always looks like she wants to dump secrets, ya know?"

Hector shoved my jalapenos into the pink reusable bag I brought from home. He dumped a bag of rice on top of them, a dusty box of tofu, an ear of corn.

"Bye, Birdie. You need help outside?"

My Turkish friend, Ulak, grabbed the tote and grunted.

"No, thanks. We're walking. Good day."

I patted Hector on the shoulder and chased after my friend.

"Geeze, man. You didn't have to be so rude. What's wrong with letting him walk us outside? He likes to do it. He's my friend."

"Birdie. How can you let such an old man pack your food? He must be 80 years old. He should not be packaging groceries for young mothers. Where are his children?"

Ulak's long legs carried him across a vacant lot seeded with sweet grass, across Friedman Drive where the New Age acupuncturist presses needles into the taut skin of the pained. A starling squawked warning as we lifted angry foot onto compact dirt.

"Well, Ulak, he is old, but he likes to work. I don't think he has a family. Why not let him do what he likes to do? He's always so nice to me. Besides, I'm not a young mother. I have adult children now, and I am now officially middle-aged. Hector just wants to work. He probably needs the money. Heck, I know what that's like."

Ulak, didn't let his leather sneaker hover, didn't slow his long-legged pace. I struggled to match his stride, even though he carried the groceries, carried the heavy piece of twisted mesquite I found in the alley on our way to the store.

"You are not old. You are younger than me, and you look like a young mother. You are like that old man, you know. You don't let anyone take care of you. What is wrong with all you people in New Mexico? It must be something in the water. I think I need to visit more than once every six months. You need someone to watch over you. No camel route is long with good company. "

I stifled a giggle. Ulak let right foot lead, let his weight shift from one slim hip to another. His arms rippled with muscle, with years of hauling one bag of coffee beans after another. His salt-and-pepper hair flew behind him. So long, I thought. His hair got so long this year. We're all changing in ways we don't realize. He looks older, stronger, as if some artist continued carving him out of the mesquite he carries, carved a Turkish man on vacation in New Mexico, a man out of time, out of element, a man in love with an aging woman who can't love him back. I know I look my age, look forty, look forty-one, look as tired as the months behind me.

"Yeah, it's the water. Or the lack of water most years." I laughed. "But honestly, Ulak. Would you like me any other way?"

That night Ulak prepared coffee the way of his ancestors, let the ground beans boil with a thousand exotic spices. He poured sweetened milk into a tiny cup, topped it with the black pitch. My mesquite acquisition leaned against a stuffed bookcase, one end splayed with exposed root, the other pointed, firm, arching toward the sky.

"Birdie. Tomorrow we go to the Very Large Array. And then I must leave. You know I am returning to Turkey for a year to buy coffee and make new business arrangements. I wish you'd come with me. The boys would love it. My family is very wealthy and the schools are good. Please think about it."

I pictured myself in Turkey, in a land rolling more conservative, more modern, all in one breath, all in one confused breath, a woman with tattoos in a land she can't reveal them.

"Ulak, that's sweet, but you know I belong in New Mexico."

He didn't say another word until the turn at Socorro the next morning. The boys slept, still exhausted from a late night of Scrabble, from sneaking the rich coffee I saw Ulak hand them before bed. I kept my eyes on the road. Ulak cleared his throat.

"Birdie. Tell me again about the Plains of San Augustin."

He closed his eyes. The tires spun across a road tired of tourists, a road the Apache took when they left the reservation, a road covered in bird pitch and the skin of a thousand dead lizards. I let him rock to sleep. My cowboy hat pressed into my forehead, protected me against the rising sun. We passed the Bosque del Apache - a nature preserve filled with thousands of migrating cranes. An eagle squatted on a decaying cedar, his talons sharp and ready. He gave me the evil eye as my car sputtered past. I heard the flap of hungry cranes in the distance. Ulak snored. A strand of drool hung from the left side of his mouth. Ick.

I recited the story to myself as the men slept. The Plains of San Augustin. LLano de San Augustin. A flat place of deserted water, of mystery. A place said to contain the crashed Roswell spaceship. A place now studded with the Y-shaped formation of disks known as the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Each disk measures twenty-five meters in diameter. I said this out loud, though I knew Ulak and my boys couldn't hear. But together, they create a virtual disk twenty-two miles across. We can meet the heavens here in New Mexico. We can carve the sky.

My charges awoke as I pulled into the empty visitor's parking lot. A signed warned us to turn off our cell phones, as our life signs interfered with Science, with ancient alien discovery. I pressed the Off button of my phone first, then Ulak's, as he groaned aware, stretched his legs below the dash. My watch read 9:00 a.m., still a wee bit too early for a tour, too soon to enter the Visitor Center and watch the endless film loop spout azimuth and incline.

We can watch the clouds and just rest as the sun continues to rise, I thought.

"Whoa."

My older son, Louis, age 12, scanned the horizon. The radio antennas stretched forever, one white flowering bud after another, each rising out of earth impossibly green with wild grass.

"Mom, it's not the desert anymore!"

Martin, age 10, opened his door. A blast of spring heat met our chests, our faces, our legs. The land shone green, looked strange, like a Midwest meadow, like the lake bed it once was. I glanced up at the sky, at the clouds moving in swirled formation, the beginning of a scheduled storm. I smiled.

Ulak stepped into the heat. His t-shirt clung to his back with sweat.

"Birdie."

He couldn't say another word. I knew this moment, knew it myself the year prior. You step into a land not-quite-New-Mexican yet all-too-familiar here, an intersection of wire and metal and sage. I lost myself in the moment, in Ulak's first breath of science-gone-loco. I didn't see the little black 'n white fella tiptoe around our car.

Spraaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

"Holy shit!"

Ulak swore! My boys whipped around - as surprised at Ulak's impropriety as they were with the stench that began to fill the field.

"Yuck!"

A skunk hustled toward the array, his tail high and mighty, tiny butt wiggling back and forth with aromatic pride.

"Fuck."

"Ulak!" My boys admonished him in unison. They laughed, too, as Ulak stood near the car, his body pulsing with disgust.

"Um. Did you bring a change of clothes?"

I sounded hopeful, helpful, as if my words would manifest a new t-shirt, jeans, sandals, and ten gallons of tomato juice to wash away the odor.

"Birdie. I did not."

I scanned the horizon for something, anything, to kill the smell. A garden hose rested next to the visitor's center, wound like a snake in the center of a small desert flower garden. What could a mom of boys do but the obvious?

"Ulak, take off your clothes. I won't take no for an answer!"

My friend spun around, tried to ascertain whether any other tourists might see his naked butt, and figuring he was safe, stripped down to navy boxer briefs and his socks. His copious black back hair stuck up in tufts along his spine.

"Ulak, I'm gonna turn on the hose. Sorry, this is one of those times where you're just gonna have to suck it up, okay?"

I twisted the spigot. Frigid water arched from the hose to Ulak's back. He flinched, screamed. The boys exploded in laughed. I continued to hose him down while offering instructions.

"Okay, now try to rub down the smelliest parts with your hands."

Ulak flipped me the bird. I squirted him in the butt.

"Excuse me? Hello?!"

A middle-aged man in khakis and an orange polo shirt strode toward us. His eyes still held sleep, still spoke of late night science, of listening to the pitch and roll of electrons against computer, of a wife most likely tired of abstracts and peer review. My boys leaned against each other, their sides against the car, holding stomachs ready to burst from an excess of mirth.

"Oh, sorry! We're just borrowing your hose!"

I continued to water Ulak. He held his hands in front of his boxers, but the cold water prevented any embarrassing displays.

"What the hell are you doing? What's with Chewbacca?"

The scientist nodded toward Ulak, who now was shivering from both the cold water and abject fear. I stared at my friend for a moment, realized that he did look a bit like a hairy visitor from another world.

"Oh, he got sprayed by a skunk. You know. Does that happen a lot around here?"

The scientist slowly backed away from us. He kept his hands ready, as if I the array had called me down from some lonely planet. I rolled my eyes and bent low to twist the spigot off.

"Ulak, you're gonna have to leave your clothes here. Your boxers, too. Can you imagine what they might smell like over four hours on the road home?!"

The scientist ran.

Two hours later, Ulak snored once more. My boys played rock, paper, scissors in the backseat, grand prize the last handful of Hot Cheetos. And my trusty cowboy hat - my beautiful black malevolent hat that knew the clouds of two hundred New Mexican afternoons - sat on Ulak's lap, shading his you-know-what from the desert sun. His natural covering of man-fur protected everything else...

Just a few days ago Ulak sent two postcards from Turkey. One for me, one for Hector. The one he sent me features a blue-tiled mosque glinting in the summer sun and a jaunty Wish You Were Here scrawl. Hector's is more simple - a man as sunburnt as roasted chile and a bored-looking camel in front of a sand expanse, not a cloud in the sky.

Hector, it says. I was wrong about you. The skunk sprays the old and the middle-aged and the young. He sprays us all. May you enjoy all of Birdie's groceries.

********

Like Ulak and his opinion of Hector, sometimes I think my stories need to follow a certain path, an outline that makes sense for my age, my state of being, the characters in my written life. Most of the time, though, I get tripped up. A skunk sprays my ideas, my keyboard. I can let the skunk win, let the scientist lock my ideas in a pre-determined cage, a Visitor's Center with an official opening time, an official close. But life doesn't move like that - why should my stories?

When I sit to write, I usually have an idea of outline, even a skeleton of my story prepared with paper and pen. But I let the skunk spray when he must, when my characters need to jump up and down in fear and horrible scent.

In writing this story, something crucial changed: I started with the simple story of Ulak and the skunk. I wanted the story to be funny, short, to take place during the forty-five minutes we graced the VLA parking lot. (I'm sure they remember us!) But I realized that Hector was as part of our journey as the Hot Cheetos; he provided spice and sustenance we wouldn't have otherwise received.

An easy way to tell if your story is stuck in an outline, stuck in a place without magic, without an old man who bags groceries to provide framework and perspective, is to create an imaginary character - one who will never, ever be a part of your story. Make your character strong, unusual, the type of person that doesn't come around your parts. In the case of this story, I created a woman who dances ballet in New York City. She is young, I decided, and comes from a priviledged family. She has never seen a skunk.

Ask your imagined Character Who Can Never Be a Character whether she (or he!) cares about what you wrote. If she doesn't, your outline is flawed. It needs something to leaven it, to add a dimension that makes your words move beyond a simple anecdote about skunks and astronomy. You don't need to spend a lot of time creating a persona. My ballet dancer often tells me whether she likes a story or not. Most of the time she doesn't. I fiddle. She does.

Tell me about a story you've written, about the ways you've changed it because you realize that a new person, a new reader, just might miss the entire point.

Over the last week, I heard from three writers who used the last few weeks' ideas to craft stories and poems. I want to highlight them here. Please visit each of our daring authors and read their incredible stories. They each worked hard to craft something special, something they would not normally write. Writing takes more guts than anything else I know. These women have spilled certain blood on the page, and deserve a hug from each of us:

Jeana of Days to Come wrote a gorgeous story of her encounter with two women at BlogHer. Read how her story comes full circle - the aching passage of time, of time unfullfilled, of moments that pass too quickly. Really a lovely piece. I'm so proud of her! Her title is wonderful, too: Far from Gilead.

Nancy of MI Life wrote a poem - something scary and unusual for her. Her poem is a love letter to her sweet girl, and I guarantee if will make you cry. Nancy doesn't realize that she has a heart of a poet. Please tell her that she does, she does. She should be filling this world with her poems, with the beauty this one contains.

Lia of the Yum Yum Cafe wrote a story called Icing on the Cake, or Cake Icing. Lia has an amazing writer's voice. She's been doing each of the writing exercises - you should click through her archive for more of her stories. Her story takes place in an airport hotel restaurant. As you read, you will see through her eyes. She made me touch and feel and see everything around her.

Previous columns in this series:
Write With Birdie
Marty Cherryseed and the Good Bad Idea
A Case of Mysterious Identity
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Birdie Jaworski blogs at La Pajaro.

The new BlogHer upgraded site hasn't been working well with my Mac. This column is late, but the next one will be ready this Tuesday, as usual. I am borrowing my neighbor's machine in order to connect with all my BlogHer friends! Thanks for your patience. Big hugs to all!