The winter months around Maine are hard on a lot of people.
There's the snow, that blocks those who don't get around as well inside whenever the big, beautiful flakes like we're having today come falling down. Those who can't shovel themselves out or don't have family or friends who will come and do it sit inside and get depressed.
There's freezing rain, when Mother Nature decides we're having precipitation even though it's not cold enough to snow, but the ground is still cold, so the rain turns the whole world into a giant ice rink. People who don't know enough to slow down when the ground looks glassy end up sliding off the road, sometimes just feeling foolish because they need help getting pulled back onto the road, but sometimes they end up injured - or dead - because other cars or other things on the sides of the road ended up being involved in the mistake.
For me, winter tends to get depressing because, in quiet times, I think of the friends and family I've lost over the winter months.
There's the friend who was working for a company that rents moving trailers who was crushed between two trailers he was picking up to return to the office when his equipment malfunctioned.
There's the friend with Cerebral Palsy who had survived two rounds of cancer only to have his muscles jump at just the wrong time as his aide was helping him get dressed, snapping his neck and killing him instantly.
There's the friend who was in a lot of pain from slipped discs who accidentally overdosed on his pain medication.
A recent addition to this group is my aunt, who passed away just a couple of weeks ago at the ripe age of 101.
And although the veil between this world and the next is traditionally said to be the thinnest on Halloween night, I feel all of the other friends and relatives who passed at other times of the year just on the other side, some of whom are encouraging me to use this period when I can't go out into my garden or go for long walks in the sunshine to feel close to the Great Spirit to put all of the images that my latest characters are showing me into my computer to be included in the next great novel.
Sometimes, in the darkest hours of night, when I'm too tired to be able to pay attention to what's coming off my finger tips and adding itself to the computer page, but I'm too awake to be able to go to sleep, the spirits of those who weren't exactly my cheerleaders on this side of the veil come with their nasty commentary on whether or not I actually have the talent to "pull this off". If I'm trying to read something I've written when these demon voices from my past come to call, I have to force myself to walk away and come back to edit another time.
The demon voices have come often as I'm trying to prepare what I want to say to anyone coming to the Local Author Series talk that I have coming up next month.
As I learned in speech classes I took in college, I wrote out what I wanted to say in a moment of clarity, including stage direction on when to pause for a moment for a joke to sink in. I have been using a small voice recorder, so old that it adds it's own little sound effects now and again to the speech, but working well enough that I can't see spending the additional $30 - 40 for a replacement with a newer digital model that won't have the odd little cassette tapes that I have to keep replacing because they wear through after a point. I read the speech aloud, pausing at all the right points, then play it back. As I listen to my own voice, complete with the odd little scraping noises and pops and crackles that the machine adds in, these "anti-cheerleaders" whisper in my ear.....
"That sounds stupid." says one voice. "Clearly no one cares about THAT."
I rework that part of the speech and try again.
"Even worse." says another voice. "Now you sound like you should have been on the short bus to school."
In the middle of all of this unconstructive criticism, my little voice recorder, which is about 20 years old now and owes me nothing, suddenly stops dead. Thinking the batteries have gone, I go to my stash of batteries (because, as a former Den Mother for the Webelos Cub Scouts, I have taken that "Be Prepared" motto to heart) and put in a fresh set. No go. Another old friend whose death in January should be mourned......
(I jest. The voice recorder will get an honorary "funeral" as befitting something that has helped me with my work numerous times, but it's voice won't be added to the clamour of those who have gone to the next world before me. It really has never had anything critical to say about my work.)
So while the voices of my deceased friends who supported me and the voices of those who wanted to break my spirit fight it out in the back of my head today, keeping my mind working in the background even as I go to work to stock shelves and perhaps chose a new recorder to help me in my work, my speech for the Local Authors talk sits in limbo until my day off tomorrow. Perhaps when I read it to my new recorder tomorrow, all will settle into place and it will be ready to be put onto index cards in preparation for the speech. Perhaps it will need a little more help here and there to make it sound better.
In the meantime, Kelly Starbird is showing me little bits of her story, which has been getting worked on between loads of dishes and laundry, between shifts at the store, and between forays into the search engines as I still search for the perfect face and body to represent Stefan Savoldi, a man who has been modeling since the age of 11, who lifts weights every day to keep his muscles sharply defined, but whose agent keeps bringing him down by telling him he's getting fat and wrinkled and needs to consider retiring from modeling.
Have you ever noticed that, when you put in a specific description of what you want (i.e. Italian male model brown eyes thin) that you can sometimes get everything BUT what you were looking for?
I'm still trying to figure out what that black rhino had to do with my search for Stefan a few days ago.......
(And the voice of one of my anti-cheerleaders says "MAYBE it's because you haven't a clue what you're doing.......")
*shrugs and pushes the voice off an imaginary cliff*
There's the snow, that blocks those who don't get around as well inside whenever the big, beautiful flakes like we're having today come falling down. Those who can't shovel themselves out or don't have family or friends who will come and do it sit inside and get depressed.
There's freezing rain, when Mother Nature decides we're having precipitation even though it's not cold enough to snow, but the ground is still cold, so the rain turns the whole world into a giant ice rink. People who don't know enough to slow down when the ground looks glassy end up sliding off the road, sometimes just feeling foolish because they need help getting pulled back onto the road, but sometimes they end up injured - or dead - because other cars or other things on the sides of the road ended up being involved in the mistake.
For me, winter tends to get depressing because, in quiet times, I think of the friends and family I've lost over the winter months.
There's the friend who was working for a company that rents moving trailers who was crushed between two trailers he was picking up to return to the office when his equipment malfunctioned.
There's the friend with Cerebral Palsy who had survived two rounds of cancer only to have his muscles jump at just the wrong time as his aide was helping him get dressed, snapping his neck and killing him instantly.
There's the friend who was in a lot of pain from slipped discs who accidentally overdosed on his pain medication.
A recent addition to this group is my aunt, who passed away just a couple of weeks ago at the ripe age of 101.
And although the veil between this world and the next is traditionally said to be the thinnest on Halloween night, I feel all of the other friends and relatives who passed at other times of the year just on the other side, some of whom are encouraging me to use this period when I can't go out into my garden or go for long walks in the sunshine to feel close to the Great Spirit to put all of the images that my latest characters are showing me into my computer to be included in the next great novel.
Sometimes, in the darkest hours of night, when I'm too tired to be able to pay attention to what's coming off my finger tips and adding itself to the computer page, but I'm too awake to be able to go to sleep, the spirits of those who weren't exactly my cheerleaders on this side of the veil come with their nasty commentary on whether or not I actually have the talent to "pull this off". If I'm trying to read something I've written when these demon voices from my past come to call, I have to force myself to walk away and come back to edit another time.
The demon voices have come often as I'm trying to prepare what I want to say to anyone coming to the Local Author Series talk that I have coming up next month.
As I learned in speech classes I took in college, I wrote out what I wanted to say in a moment of clarity, including stage direction on when to pause for a moment for a joke to sink in. I have been using a small voice recorder, so old that it adds it's own little sound effects now and again to the speech, but working well enough that I can't see spending the additional $30 - 40 for a replacement with a newer digital model that won't have the odd little cassette tapes that I have to keep replacing because they wear through after a point. I read the speech aloud, pausing at all the right points, then play it back. As I listen to my own voice, complete with the odd little scraping noises and pops and crackles that the machine adds in, these "anti-cheerleaders" whisper in my ear.....
"That sounds stupid." says one voice. "Clearly no one cares about THAT."
I rework that part of the speech and try again.
"Even worse." says another voice. "Now you sound like you should have been on the short bus to school."
In the middle of all of this unconstructive criticism, my little voice recorder, which is about 20 years old now and owes me nothing, suddenly stops dead. Thinking the batteries have gone, I go to my stash of batteries (because, as a former Den Mother for the Webelos Cub Scouts, I have taken that "Be Prepared" motto to heart) and put in a fresh set. No go. Another old friend whose death in January should be mourned......
(I jest. The voice recorder will get an honorary "funeral" as befitting something that has helped me with my work numerous times, but it's voice won't be added to the clamour of those who have gone to the next world before me. It really has never had anything critical to say about my work.)
So while the voices of my deceased friends who supported me and the voices of those who wanted to break my spirit fight it out in the back of my head today, keeping my mind working in the background even as I go to work to stock shelves and perhaps chose a new recorder to help me in my work, my speech for the Local Authors talk sits in limbo until my day off tomorrow. Perhaps when I read it to my new recorder tomorrow, all will settle into place and it will be ready to be put onto index cards in preparation for the speech. Perhaps it will need a little more help here and there to make it sound better.
In the meantime, Kelly Starbird is showing me little bits of her story, which has been getting worked on between loads of dishes and laundry, between shifts at the store, and between forays into the search engines as I still search for the perfect face and body to represent Stefan Savoldi, a man who has been modeling since the age of 11, who lifts weights every day to keep his muscles sharply defined, but whose agent keeps bringing him down by telling him he's getting fat and wrinkled and needs to consider retiring from modeling.
Have you ever noticed that, when you put in a specific description of what you want (i.e. Italian male model brown eyes thin) that you can sometimes get everything BUT what you were looking for?
I'm still trying to figure out what that black rhino had to do with my search for Stefan a few days ago.......
(And the voice of one of my anti-cheerleaders says "MAYBE it's because you haven't a clue what you're doing.......")
*shrugs and pushes the voice off an imaginary cliff*
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