beldarzfixon

(LJ Idol folks: feel free to skip this and scroll down.)

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

I know that was the famous opening line by Bulwer-Lytton, but years ago, when I got my first typewriter, I remembered that as what Snoopy wrote. My parents got me the new electric because I had just started high school typing class, and from then on through college (and beyond!) I'd need to type things.

So I was taking this new machine out for a spin. I thought of the line, and how to restate it so that it was still a dark and stormy night without being so cliche -- or at least without plagarizing the beagle. So I started writing, and before I knew it, I had written a short story. It was liberating that here at last was a means of writing at the same speed as I was thinking up the words. On a whim, I showed the story to my English teacher, and she loved it! Just a simple one-pager with a twist ending, but it was probably pretty good for a 10th-grader.

I haven't written like that in a while, here's my place to do it.

And this is the post where you can

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to the friends list for this journal.

I'm keeping most of my writings friends-only for the sake of limiting my audience prior to publication (yes, I'm hoping this will lead to that) and limiting drama (if any) over anything I write. And if this is on your friends list, you'll know when I've written something. It may be a while between posts, but I do plan on writing stuff here.

As most of you may know, I finished LJ Idol: Exhibit A at the end of March -- 17th place, but still high enough to win one of the prizes.

Now, the second mini-season, LJI: Exhibit B, is in its sign-up phase. I encourage everyone who is at all interested to give it a shot. But as for me, I've given it a lot of thought and decided to give this round a pass.

I could give as a reason that I'm very busy -- but I'm always very busy. I have other writing projects I'd like to work on, but merely taking "time off" hasn't spurred much action there in the past. The best reason for not jumping in this time, to put it simply, is "I'm not feelin' it." When I seriously consider entering XB, that Russian Youtube cat appears in the back of my head going "NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!" Maybe my brainmeats need a break from Idoling. I'll save my energy, and if there's an Exhibit C, I'll reconsider then. If there's not, then I'll rejoin the fray for LJI: Season Nine.

Another consideration regarding Exhibit B, since there are a limited number of seats on that bus, I'm giving up one that could be filled by any of you reading this. So please, get on board!

( Dearest grandson,Collapse )


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This is my entry for LJ Idol: Exhibit A, Week 9, contestant's choice topic: "Pig in a Poke."
The term relates to the centuries-old scam of selling sight-unseen a young pig in a sack, only to have the buyer find he has a cat or other less-valuable animal in the bag, thus warning against purchasing without due diligence.
Once again I'm writing in the world of Winnie the Pooh -- Trespassers William was Piglet's grandfather, and original owner of Piglet's home (which still has the sign saying "Trespassers Will"). As far as I know, no official lore is written about the elder pig, so I took license. A bronze pig related to a plush piglet? Why not.
A lawn jockey is a smallish metal statue of a man -- traditionally African-American -- in jockey garb to stand by the front gate of a home, originally for tying one's horse. Though they remain popular with some people, they are considered by many (most?) to be an offensive racist stereotype. I don't have feelings for or against them, and wouldn't want one of my own, but in a world in which inanimate objects have hearts and minds, ethical dilemmas such as the one illustrated above are likely to happen.

The pianist sways; the drummer thrashes his head in a mad trance; the guitarist leans in to his instrument, barely aware that his face makes expressions only his girlfriend should see, his hands conjuring as much as playing, his whole body willing the riff to expand into one more anthemic, crying note. With feet and arms moving in and out, everyone shaking, it is as though the hokey-pokey IS what it's all about.

Before "eurythmics" was a band, it was a word. It's the force making the musician part of the instrument and vice versa, taking up the rhythm in her movements, the way she breathes and fingers the buttons, keys, strings or bow. It makes the old man tap his feet to the fiddle. It makes the toddler jump up spontaneously and dance.

And before I knew it was a word, I knew it within me as a musician -- something I felt, something I lived.

I resist the urge to say I play by ear, though I can, because of the silly joke, "That must hurt, playing with your ear; you should use your hands." And, for me, that term is not enough. I played by ear, by hands, by heart, by mind, by memory, by feeling, by soul. In my youth, during piano practice I sometimes let my fingers wander, rolling through musical phrases and themes that loop through the mind and back to the hands, nerves and muscles in harmony -- sometimes endless harmonic ramblings I never visit again, sometimes choruses for a new song to write.

Feeling my way through, I'd take on the songs I loved from records and radio. I was the Piano Man, senses taking me to Hotel California and Paradise Theatre. With 88 keys and 10 fingers at my command, I'd take on more than the keyboard part -- emulating the bass-line, solos, vocal melody, percussion. Someone once overheard me when I thought I was alone and said in awe that I sounded like a whole band. As I recall it, I felt I was just along for the ride -- I in the music, the music in me.

I'd marvel at the people who play instruments with strings, requiring the hand to contort itself into seemingly random configurations. Then some would lament to me how hard it was to learn piano. But, I thought, the keyboard has all the notes laid out in a row. It's almost cheating!

Then I realized the difference is the form of the art. The linear keyboard moves in strokes like writing or painting. But watch the hand moving on the neck of the violin. It molds and sculpts the sound as though it were clay. Watch a master of a stringed instrument and you see the music formed as fingers grooving into pottery, intricately folding origami. The player feels its substance, the grit of the baroque or jazz oozing between the fingers. Like the potter, she will finish with a lasting thing of beauty; still, it was the process that mattered.

This ability to feel sounds of song as so much more than the sum of their vibrations never goes away. Though several years out of practice, I still catch my fingers responding to music -- they form into chords, they dance with the melody. Many years ago, I traded my faulty electric piano for a much-needed computer printer. We got a small keyboard a few years ago, but it rests in its box in the basement as I have no place and little time for it. Still, as Neil Young would say, my rust never sleeps. As Irving Berlin once wrote, "I know a fine way to treat a Steinway." I know that if I spent a weekend locked in a room with a piano and some sheet music, I would be good again. In the end, I couldn't give you perfect Gershwin (never mastered him), but I could sure lead your church revival. Souls would be uplifted!

Most of all, mine.


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This is my entry for LJ Idol: Exhibit A, Week 8, contestant's choice topic: "Grok" (I linked a definition to the word, simply put, it's to know, understand and accept something so thoroughly to the point that it is internalized). I would like to thank my backup band The Beta-Readers: lilycobalt on bass piccolo, tatdatcm on 7-string trumpet, lrig_rorrim on slide kazoo, unmowngrass on the foot-powered bagpipes, and audreybuttercup on electric cowbell.

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This is my entry for LJ Idol Exhibit A, Week 7, Topic: "Honey Badger don't care!" All characters herein (except for it-which-shall-not-be-remembered) are properties of the Disney corporation and Milne estate, and no profit is intended from their use here (except votes in an online writing contest). A hunnyed heartfelt thank-you to whipchick for the beta-read and notes.

It’s only a ride, and soon it will stop.

It’s that ride at the fair – every fair, from the smallest county fair to the big state and regional shows, or even that parking-lot full of rattling contraptions that spends a weekend by the church or the summer at the mall – the one that whips you around, feeling out of control, yet weightless, somehow free.

It’s the one usually called the Scrambler, sets of seats that whirl around, set up so that your car and the one on another spindle flow by each other, barely a yard apart but it feels like inches. You’re in a set geometry, yet you get the illusion you will collide every time. And part of you wants it to happen, but most of you know it won’t, and sure enough, you whip-whoosh past those people feeling the same wild joyous sensation you do, carried on that arc towards the next close encounter. Again and again. Until the whole sequence of turning again and again slows, the whole world slowing with it as your body and senses adjust, until it all stops.

It’s the Tilt-a-Whirl, always a favorite. The simple design like the compass you used in grade school: the car you ride in has a tongue fastened to the floor where that center pin of the compass would go, and you are the pencil. Because of the uneven, wavy, merry-go-round style platform, you travel gently up and down, but the car doesn’t have to be so gentle – it turns its circles at varying speeds. There’s the gentle rocking, back and forth, or the lazy circle, then as the car crests the wave just at the right point of its turn, it whips around a brisk circle or two, then catches the upside of another wave, then travels as quickly the other direction. Within the car, you’re carried along, feeling momentum and gravity toss you like an empty bag in the wind. You want to swirl another big spin, but then you’re back to the rocking, maybe another, slower three-sixty swirl, as the ride slows, and stops.

It’s not one of those rides that put you in a little capsule or cage, spinning endlessly in tight little circles until your inner ear tells your stomach to evacuate everything. - One chili dog, coming up! - No, my young body never got sick on the Scrambler or Tilt-a-Whirl, only that whole-body spinning feeling, more elation than distress.

These are the rides you take your date on. Even if she’s not quite up to holding hands with you, you know she can’t fight the laws of physics.

Sit on the outer end of the Scrambler car. The motion of the ride pulls her into you (never let her take the outer seat – no matter how small your boy-body is, it will crush her like a mighty he-man, or she’ll act like it did, and your relationship is doomed). If she likes you at all, she’ll let the momentum carry her into you – can’t be helped, after all. Feel the warmth of hip against hip, or her shoulder naturally nestling into your chest as you lay an arm across the back of the seat – to hold on to the ride, of course. She knows you won’t get fresh because you’re getting whipsawed by the machine, too. And both of you are looking more at your friends in the other cars than each other. Waving and reaching for them as they come so very close, then turn away.

On the Tilt-a-Whirl, you’re more equals, making it a better test of: “Does she ‘like me’ like me? Or are we just having fun on the ride?” Either way is cool – the ride is great, her hand on yours holding on to the safety bar is bonus. You lean into her, she leans into you, as you try to give that car a little more oomph to go around for another, faster, three-sixty spin. Can you really influence the motion of this object that weighs much more than the two of you together? You believe you can, and you really don’t care.

It’s only a ride.

That’s what I tell myself as this car swirls in an uncontrolled circle across the highway. The momentum presses me into her. Maybe we should have switched seats. My friends in the front seat are screaming, but not from joy. We flow toward another car, its horn blaring. I pray it will turn away from us at the last moment, as I feel it must, as it’s only a ride. I feel the spin in the other direction, whole body momentarily free from gravity. Let’s go around again, my inner child screams, as the inner adult freezes in horror. I hold on, willing myself to influence the course of this two-thousand-pound machine. It’s only a ride. The hospital, the funerals, the questions -- they will come later. Right now, it’s only a ride.

And soon it will stop.


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This is my entry for LJ Idol Exhibit A, Week 6, Topic: "Tilt-a-whirls"  The incident in the last paragraphs is fiction, though we've all experienced something like it, or know ones who have.

( I am highCollapse )


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This is my entry for LJ Idol Exhibit A, Week 5, Topic: “This is your brain on....” A fictional story, based on a true memory (names changed, time-frame moved up to recent years). In my case, weeks after my day with her, I sent “Trish” a copy of the Eddie Money album “Can’t Go Back,” hoping she’d take the hint. Instead, she was overjoyed I’d sent her a present. I haven’t contacted her since. Still, I hope she’s doing well.

What are the dreams of those who spend their lives gazing into stars?

As distant light travels for eons, the watcher knows looking into the sky he sees deep into the past. Instruments strain for the faintest whisp of history. His awe increases, as vision slips backward through time.

This morning, following Sunday ritual: “…And he took the bread, blessed it, and broke it, saying, ‘take, eat, for this is my body…’” Half-listening, he caresses his wife’s belly – “a bun in the oven,” his friends called the life he helped create. This form taking shape, turning in tight orbit, preparing to emerge.

A past winter: The stargazer financing his astronomy degree by spinning dough. Pizza in primitive state turns above his hands, comes down, joins his process of creation. Toppings placed, nebulae and constellations upon a galaxy of grain. Wielding the paddle like St. Honoratus, placing bread upon stone. Old-world pizza stones orbit slowly in the brick oven. Boss demands it cook properly, cook thoroughly. Especially today. Why? Old-world reasons, lost to time.

A past century: A baker looks out at the stars before turning back to his ovens. In a few days, priests bless his bread for St. Peter, patron saint of his and all other humble professions in Holy Rome. But now, he takes utmost care, remembering whispers declaring this night’s labors vital long before the Church swept all of life into its gravity.

Ages before: A Roman artisan proves his worth, creates life-giving bread from simple grain, the spelt spent upon his hearth an honor to Fornax on her feast day. The baker looks into the skies, to her three-star hearth, somehow sensing that each burns -- its own furnace -- with light born before Caesar.

Within that space dedicated to a minor deity, forces even older spin their creations. Cosmic toppings on swirling platters -- feeding each other, feeding themselves, giving rise to greater creation. Fire baked from fire baked from fire – born of the first fire.

On this Fornacalia, the watcher turns Hubble’s unblinking eye into the furnace of eternity, to see the father of creation, of fire and gods and grain, looking back.


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This is my entry for LJ Idol Exhibit A, Week 4, Topic: “Ultra Deep Field.” In researching the UDF, Hubble’s window into the distant past, I found other connections, including an obscure ancient Roman holiday that just happens to be the date of the Sunday while this week’s entries will be read and voted on.
For the curious,

( Dragon goes to marketCollapse )

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This is my entry for LJ Idol Exhibit A, Week 3, Topic: “Shenanigans!” The critter is based on one of my favorite D&D characters.