Lynn Hesse's Blog: Book Signing, page 2

After The Performance Glow

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For some people the endorphins kick in and the high lasts for a couple of days after a performance. For me my body’s engine keeps running while I am physically and mentally exhausted. My sleep patterns and eating patterns are minimized. I am ravenous, but nothing satisfies until I solve the next gap in the work. The extreme focus of rehearsal, the act of performing, and then the critiquing process afterward takes days and days for me to recover from. I feel depressed, and at the same time elated about the accomplishment. I find it next to impossible to concentrate on a new project the next day, especially a scheduled project meeting with the goal of polishing my latest manuscript.

When the meeting ended, I escaped to my home into my bedroom with the door shut behind me, and regrouped for several hours.

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I will avoid this self-defeating pattern. I definitely need to rest.

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My Spirit Is Dance

 

While working on a piece for the upcoming Altered Book Project performance about sisters, these thoughts bubbled to the surface.

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When I am gone

No epitaph for me.

Instead, give me a little dance in your garden

With the pumpkins, spiders, and rabbits watching.

 

A jig on the stone steps of the church,

In your favorite chair with your socks off,

On a mountain top with the wind blowing,

Near the banks of the Missouri.

 

Pound the earth with feet and hands

Under the live oaks in Mobile,

The Trail of Tears in Arkansas,

And on the graves of your mothers.

 

When I am gone,

No epitaphs for me.

If you can’t dance

Swing up high, jump, and fly.

 

Cat Tips on Being Neighborly

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Kyle Brooks & Black Cat Tips                      Pete the Cat Artist James Dean

Kyle Brooks is a Lithonia artist who leaves his art around town for the public to enjoy. If you’re paying attention, it might be on a telephone pole, on a tree stump, or on the side of the building.

Pete the Cat by James Dean holds a special place in my heart because James Dean gave this signed piece of art to my grandson. Mr. Dean could tell he loved it. By the way my grandson just went to his first homecoming dance.

September 28th is Good Neighbor Day. Each of us has something we can share with a neighbor. I consider conversation with a friend over a cup of java an art form. As a friend of mine said, “Remember to look up.” I would add look up, down, and all around.

Review: White Leopard by Laurent Guillaume

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Solo Camara is a former cop from France with a dark past and now, a P.I. in Mali. He takes an ordinary missing-person case and ends up dealing with murder and corruption. The translation of French into English hasn’t diminished the poetic rhythm of the language, or the use of setting as a character. The desperation of poverty that drives men and women to do awful things to survive and feed their families is palpable. You can feel the heat and sweat.

Solo has lost his wife and child. He lives life unafraid of death. This bull-headed protagonist pulls the reader through the blood and beating scenes making your heart race. I had to cheer for him each time he survived and continued his plot for revenge against the bad guys, but the sex scenes with the French lawyer are brutal. The “Me Too” movement wouldn’t approve.

I didn’t approve, but I kept turning the pages of this modern noir classic. Rated: 5-Star

Miraculous Random Rain

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There is a weather line about halfway between my home in Stone Mountain, Georgia and  where my sister lives about 30 minutes north of Macon. It is not uncommon for rain to fall on one side of this visible line across I-75, but not on the other. However, I’ve never seen rain fall on one side of a house, but not the other, or as in this case, sunshine without any rain on both sides of the rain column. It looked like someone was using a gigantic sprinkler can creating long slow-moving drops of rain.

Natural phenomenon is fascinating. I might call my sighting a miracle. I’m sure there is a scientific explanation, but as a writer, I prefer my interpretation. Also, I enjoy pondering how the Mayans and other ancient people knew how to build huge temples without using mortar.

They used the stars. Of course, they used slave labor.

Modern life lacks the mystery for me. For example the homeless, present wherever I go, make me think about how little we have progressed in our understanding about a fair and equal society. I think about how much I compromise my values to remain stable and comfortable. Maybe the homeless are the last rebels against tyranny.

In the movie Glass Castle based on the bestselling memoir by MSNBC gossip columnist, Jeanette Walls, we see the life of her parents who had money, but chose to swat in abandoned buildings and be homeless with their brood of children. “You’ll always have your star,” is said to each child as they pick and name a star with their alcoholic father, played by actor Woody Harrelson. At times the grand gestures seem idyllic, but their is real, every-day hunger for the minor children. Another line: I never kid about food,” is said by the grownup, now wealthy daughter–played by the superb Brie Larson–as she puts her leftovers in a doggie bag in a swanky restaurant in New York, and then asks the client if they’re finished with their food. Priceless.

Miracles are priceless. It just takes so much dang money to eat.

Note: Naomi Watts shines as the mother in the movie, Glass Castle.

 

MY SWEET ICED TEA and ME

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Traveling can be tricky for me if the region or hotel doesn’t serve sweet-iced tea. Headaches ensue, and I find I am more disagreeable. Because I am not a bubbly happy gal at my best, I can in a withdrawal state present a problem for others around me.

Let’s break it down. Sugar and I go way back. I know sugar has a bad name, and nutritionist cringe.

I was raised on sweet-iced tea instead of milk with meals. Bless mom’s soul. She loved to bake, and a cake or pie was always on the countertop near the breakfast bar dad fashioned from scrap lumber. She and daddy would talk and eat dessert at midnight after we, their wayward children, finally went to bed.

I digress.

I compromised how I make my tea a few years ago with boiling raw sugar and guava, a natural sweetener, in the tea water, and I added real lemon slices to cut the acid. (By the way, I have a special saucepan for this process.)

The bottom line: most foods don’t taste the same without my tea. For example, an egg salad sandwich or a BLT lacks the endorphin kick without tea and potato chips.

I am addicted. I am ok with it. It could be whiskey I crave. Tea comforts me like petting a dog.

I control my environment since I retired from law enforcement. I allow myself quiet every day. Sometimes, I nap, but the joy of simple food with my beverage of choice, and a peaceful mind can’t be beat.

Humpty Dumpty Disorder

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“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,”

BY MOTHER GOOSE

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

 

After the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, I feel like Humpty Dumpty. Nothing has sorted out my brain. Rest, exercise, contemplation haven’t helped. Sitting in a dark quiet room and listening to my blocking-Beta-wave music hasn’t balanced my introverted self. It is still hard to focus and items from the conference are everywhere. Clutter bugs me. I close my eyes as I walk by to fold a load of clothes or go to the kitchen to fix myself another PB&J sandwich.

Of course, the people made the conference, and I met many interesting people. An English woman living in Japan sat with me at lunch, but the noise in the auditorium was so loud I couldn’t hear most of her answers to my questions. Otto Penzler spoke after the luncheon about how he helped to make mystery writers’s stories respected and revered by establishing Mysterious Press and the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City in the 1970s.

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After my name and work were read with a yawn by the presenter, who read the long list of cozy-writer nominees at the award banquet, an author and lawyer from Kansas, William Mott, PSEUD. Leonard Ruhl, made me laugh. I didn’t win the Silver Falchion Award for “Another Kind of Hero”, but I was in good company. Thanks, Bill.

Reading the nursery rhymes below gives me a strange sense of wellbeing. Maybe, I’ll read Mother Goose poems for the next couple of days until I feel better. I do enjoy the faded pictures in my copies, and the smell of the pages as I turn them.

 

“Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”
“Hey, diddle diddle”
“Hickory dickory, dock”

For info about the origin of Mother Goose https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...

 

 

 

 

The Chicken Versus The Rabbit

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The assembly line made the chicken a popular industry in Gainesville, Georgia and a statue was erected. Rabbittown, a former hamlet in Gainesville, still had people who remembered the importance of the raising and selling of rabbits in the past, and they proudly erected a 20-foot, BIG rabbit in 1993.

BEWARE. It’s still illegal to eat chicken with a fork in Gainesville. https://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/visitor-arrested-for-eating-chicken-with-fork/

As a writer I see the humor and conflict in this situation. A short story is forming involving a mayor, a town council, and a couple of elderly men who have held grudges  over a woman for 40 years.  The guy who didn’t marry owns half the town now, and the other guy, a widower, retires and moves back to his hometown…

 

Met A Clever Spider: Quite a Character

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Photo by Dean Hesse

The female yellow garden spider has many admirable, intriguing traits:

“The writing spider” makes zigzag lines in her web. –Plot twists abound

She is clean. She remakes her interior web every day. –A born editor

She has an additional claw to spine her intricate webs. –A secret weapon

She is larger than the male. –A strong female protagonist

The male is brown, but she is yellow. –A colorful, exciting female

The male roams from female to female and seeks out the female by plucking at her web. –A musician, no doubt, and my antagonist

Many males die shortly after mating. –What can I say? A body needs to appear early on in a mystery.

The female eats the dead male. –Quirky, a little OCD

She is stable and stays in one place to reproduce. –Maternal instincts, or other likable traits are necessary for a heroine

Her presence is a sign the ecology is healthy in your yard. –She protects the other characters in the story.

She isn’t aggressive as a rule, but she will bite you if provoked. The human reaction to her poison is similar to a bee sting. –You’re going down if you commit the crime — no get-out-of-free jail card.

 

Preparing For A Retreat

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At the last minute, I’m scheduled to go on an Alternate ROOTS retreat in Arden, N.C. in the mountains with trees, one of my favorite recharge and meditation spots. I will be in a cabin with bunk beds and plastic covered dorm room mattresses. (My back will let me know it’s not happy.) My assigned roommate or roommates might snore, or be late-night people who like to go to the open mics held from 12-2 p.m. and make noise when they return to the cabin, and then talk about the rambunctious, outrageous performers.

It’s a bit like summer camp, but the session have a special purpose for the artists dedicated to creating art with social justice themes and working with community to bring about positive change.

This year I have paid attention to my neighbors and neighborhood in S. E. DeKalb. I joined NextDoor.com and began to listen to their concerns. I started with a neighborhood coffee, a community group, and a monthly subdivision clean up based on what my neighbors expressed an interest in.

It’s not a trendy inside-the-perimeter area around Panola and Redan Road, and we have a long way to go to trust and work together, but we are trying. For September two women volunteered to speak about their domestic violence experiences, and how they are thriving now.

At the retreat I expect to learn more about myself in connection with gender bias, racism, and cultural stereotyping. To do this I must go with an open heart and mind, give what I can, learn what I can, and rest. It’s not my job to fix anything, but to listen and try to understand. As a writer I’ll be taking notes, being curious, napping, and playing at recess. Whatever I bring back to community is a bonus.

This self-care offering looks interesting.

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