Baxter Clare Trautman's Blog, page 5

Mary-El Tarot Deck

7 of Cups - Mary-El Tarot

The Mary-El deck had been on my Wish List for quite a while. A few months ago, I had to have it. Since then the deck sat unopened, it’s beautifully designed box propped in front of the cabinet with all my other cards. Today I finally opened the box. Not much takes my breathe away but as i laid out each card, I honestly forgot to breathe. It’s a disturbing deck. Combine Meinrad Craighead, Charles Vess in Neil Gaiman’s “Stardust”, add a sprinkle of the Thoth Deck, and you begin to get an idea of the Mary-El’s dark complexity. The words that came to mind as I turned each card were “stunning, shocking, visceral, vivid detail”. I’m not even sure how to use these cards other than as 78 pieces of art. They don’t seem to consistently follow conventional tarot themes or design, so I wouldn’t recommend this as a beginner’s deck. They are profoundly, frighteningly powerful – this is a deck for those ready to delve deep into the real work of their lives, with nothing held back, no secrets, no holds barred. The Mary-El takes no prisoners. Each card is graphic and immediate; more than with any of my other decks, I had an instant, physical reaction to each card, with no time for a cooler, more objective mental interpretation. There is nothing light and fluffy here. You might even be hard-pressed to find friendly, yet there is an odd comfort in the deck’s brutal honesty. Every card is unflinching, unforgiving. Each will pull a little piece of truth from you.

If you liked this post, please share it!

Rosemary’s Baby in a Lesbian Romance

I know, I know. I’m probably the only lesbian in America that doesn’t like lesbian romances. Makes for quite a dearth of fiction with lesbian characters. Imagine my delight when romance writer Gerri Hill announced she had written a new book that was a little different than her normal fare. I bought it straight away,

The story starts with four FBI partners. Girl CJ is pared with boy Billy, and girl Paige with boy Ice. CJ is an out dyke and Paige, well, Billy and Ice aren’t really sure about Paige. But CJ knows. They spent a wild night together a couple months back and haven’t talked about it since. Then the boss tells CJ and Paige they have an assignment at a spooky girls school where people keep disappearing, and that CJ and Paige are to pose as undercover teachers at this school. So far, so good. Then the boss says they have to pretend to be a couple.

EEEERK – (screeching of brakes) not only for CJ and Paige but the reader, too. Hill casually explains that because its a girls school most of the teachers there are coupled lesbians. What? Where was this extraordinarily liberal school when I was growing up?  Growing up, hell, I’ll go there now and teach. That’s the only explanation we get for this scenario, one so implausible that I had a much easier time believing in the unearthly “he” that lived in the cave than a girls schools where they welcomed lesbian teaching couples.

For the next 150 pages we are tortured by the unrequited passion CJ and Paige still feel for each other, which would be fine if there were an explanation for it other than they are not each others type. Ladies, if you’re in that hot a lather for someone, who cares about type? While the sexual tension was exquisitely drawn out it was more titillating than central to the plot, which of course makes Keepers of the Cave your standard lesbian romance.

That being said, about halfway through I got bored with the unrequited passion (oh, for God’s sake, just do it!) and skimmed through to the horror scenes. A couple dozen pages later I was rewarded; Hill began to concentrate more on the sinister goings on at the school than she did yet another explanation that Paige/CJ couldn’t possibly sleep with CJ/Paige because she wasn’t her type. From there the action took off like Lucifer being drop-kicked from the pearly gates.

Being a fan of good police procedurals I was immediately drawn in by the rapport and humor between the four partners, and although they were quickly split up Hill kept the boys engaged in the story. Unfortunately, the case they were working sat pretty much in the backseat for the first half of the book, acting more as a vehicle for the tortured romance than it’s own story. Although the flirting between CJ and Paige was cute and playful, their agonizing refusal to sleep with each other grew tedious by mid-book. As I had been hoping for more than a romance I was disappointed in the novel, but Ms. Hill need not worry about putting off any of her fans. While the implications of the horror story are indeed disturbing Hill never goes into explicit details, so I’m sure all but her most squeamish of followers will be perfectly delighted with Keepers of the Cave. 

If you liked this post, please share it!

Let Sally Ride

Sally Ride

I was moved to tears yesterday when I heard at the end of Sally Ride’s obit on NPR that she was survived by her partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy. I am moved almost to tears again today when I hear there is backlash that she didn’t come out sooner. Sally Ride’s passion, from all accounts, was being an astronaut. She wasn’t an LGBT activist. Not all of us are. Some of us are deeply locked in closets, for whatever reason. Ought we be pilloried? I think not. Let us remember her first and foremost as a woman with the courage to strap herself into a rocket and shoot into deep space. I sure as hell couldn’t do that. But that was her passion. We change the world by following our hearts. For some us that might mean staying in closets. For some it might mean being loud and proud. Whatever method we choose to express, or not express our sexuality it is our right. No one should shame us into doing it any other way. She’s out now. She will go down in history, and herstory, as a lesbian. Everyday there are more and more role models for young, and not so young, LGBTs to look to. Now, there is one more. 

If you liked this post, please share it!

A Matter of Grace

The four o’clocks volunteer every spring. As late summer’s heat bears upon them, they will become brown and leggy, but now at midsummer the plants are dark, plump, and glossy-green. Their flowers are fresh and bright, inflamed and sunny. Hummingbirds feast at the funneled amphoras. They drink voraciously, stopping only to chase other hummers from the stash. Their window of opportunity is short; there are only so many blossoms to go around. By mid-morning, those there are will close in upon themselves, remaining shuttered until the cool of dusk teases them apart.

I water the plants by hand. I have left the hose trickling while I go inside to get coffee. When I come out, I stoop for the hose. A female Anna’s buzzes by my ear. She feeds on a pink blossom less than a foot from my head. I stay bent. She darts from pink to yellow, yellow to pink, thrusting her needly beak into each flower, gorging quickly, nimbly. She turns from her feast to beat the air in front of my eye. I hope she doesn’t find it’s blue inviting. Apparently she does not, for she revisits the flowers, each in turn. Satisfied for the moment, she zooms into the bee-humming cover of the pepper tree. 

I straighten and begin to spray the plants. My thumb on the nozzle creates a shimmering arc of diamonds and rubies, emeralds, sapphires and topaz. The hummingbird drops from the pepper tree. She hovers before the display, a queen considering her jewels. I, the queen’s devoted handmaid, hold the hose perfectly steady. The queen lifts her white-trimmed gown and steps forward into the dazzling bath. She pirouettes, wetting her back, her front, and then her back again before flapping with wettened wings back to her tree. 

I finish watering and return to the porch. I sip coffee. The flowers close. Hummingbirds doze. The bees drone on.

Grace is given.

If you liked this post, please share it!

The Language of Blood and Bone

I set off at dawn this morning on the hill trail, with the dogs and four small apricots fresh from our tree. After the second hill I came to the manzanita decorated with old, stuffed animals. Who left them there, and for what reasons I can’t know. But suddenly it felt important to leave my plumpest apricot there, wedged on a deep red branch between puppies and teddy bears bleached white by sun and rain. The sacrifice was an impulse as ancient and ordained as drawing breath. The act came not from my head but from the marrow of my bone. The gods ask for what they want. Listening with blood instead of ears, we hear their charge. 

Like yesterday. Driving home I flushed a crow from the road. Just around the bend I passed it’s dead companion. Instinctively I thought to stop and move it’s body off the road. Logically, I kept driving. Yet the impulse whispered. Crows, all the corvids are social creatures. Worried another would get hit while keeping vigil, I turned around. Pulling off on a dirt drive, I picked up the bird. It was warm and limp. I smoothed it’s feathers and laid the black body in weeds by the edge of the drive where it’s family could safely mourn. I don’t know that crows mourn. That might well be a fully human interpretation. But I do know they search for missing flock members. The dead bird was part of some crow’s flock, maybe the crow that had been pacing in the road. I don’t know. But I do know that moving the lifeless body off the road felt like an honoring, an abeyance to something old and wordless that speaks only in the whispery language of blood and bone. 

I got back in the car and drove home, hte words of blood and bone stilled, the rough, old gods appeased.

If you liked this post, please share it!

“If the Wind Were a Woman” – Kelly Sinclair

Poignant, funny, and brave. Sinclair could have gotten preachy about being gay in the 80s in a small Texas town, but instead of straying into anger or bitterness, her characters accept the people and situations for what they are while remaining determined to change the only things they can – themselves. The romance is realistic and refreshingly mature. There are the inevitable doubts about a new relationship but the two women deal with them sans the emotionally under-developed drama typical of so many lesbian romances. Well done! Looking forward to reading Sinclair’s other novels.

If you liked this post, please share it!

A Distraction of Birds

I’m working from the porch today.  

Well, in theory I’m working but the black-headed grosbeaks and Bewick’s wrens are having such a boisterous sing-off I can’t think. Oblivious, white-crowned sparrows splash in the bird bath, scrub jays drink at the pond, and every winged creature vies for a turn at the feeder. Pecking beneath it are California towhees, thrashers, and quail.  Beyond the feeder, turkey vultures soar over the canyon. A raven gurgles from behind the house. Titmice and house finches grab sunflower seeds and fly to their nests. And here comes a roadrunner, strolling up from the canyon for a sip at the pond. I don’t usually see them until later in the year when all the water has dried up below. The dusky-throated flycatcher announces his raspy presence and a western tanager flashes like feathered fire.

The sun is almost overhead and as the birds begin to settle into their afternoon naps I hear the falling ping-pong ball song of wrentits across the canyon. An Anna’s hummingbird buzzes in the sage by the steps and one of the red koi breaches in the pond like a bloody, mini-Moby Dick. The scrub jays have moved out and a pair of tanagers take their place. I’ve never seen a female here and hope they’re a breeding pair. They’re timid and a flock of goldfinches (lesser and American) easily displace them from the water’s edge. I can’t see it but from high in the eucalyptus tree comes the chatter of a Bullock’s oriole. A spotted towhee screes from the thick cover of chaparral. 

Then, for a moment, there is only a shushing wind. It comes cool, up from the canyon, bringing hints of buckbrush and wild lilac. “Shhh,” it tells the birds. “Go take a nap.” The birds listen. Maybe now I can get some work done. Or take a nap, too…

If you liked this post, please share it!

The Bigot’s Road

I was at the dog beach this morning and a very casual acquaintance approached me. She said, “I hope I’m not being presumptuous but I thought I heard you introduce your wife to me last week.” I answered yes, and she proceeded to tell me how her niece had come out to her over the  weekend, and that the girl was upset that her mother had disowned her. She asked if I had any advice, and truly I didn’t. The niece sounds very healthy and well-adjusted. She is carrying on with plans to marry her partner, and will invite her mother even though the woman has disowned her. I said that sounded like the best thing she could do –  live her life with honesty, joy, and integrity. She can’t change her mother, as none of us can change the unfortunate bigots in the world. All we can do is live well despite them. (And isn’t that really the best revenge:)

I find great hope that this woman and her husband are extremely supportive of their niece, and that the girl’s partner’s family (from Iowa – yea for the Midwest!) are also very loving and supportive. There will always be bigotry. There will always be people like this girl’s mom and the North Carolina preacher man. But I see everyday, even from strangers on the beach, that there are increasingly more supportive people. Folks like this girl’s aunt, who takes the trouble to approach a virtual stranger out of love for her niece. Folks like the partner’s family that have welcomed their daughter-in-law to be and are hosting the wedding. Anyone who has ever been hurt by bigotry wants it all to go away. We want to stamp it out and make it disappear. It won’t. As long as there is fear in the world, its cousin bigotry will walk right next to it. That’s the bad news. The good news is, as long as there is love in the world, its cousin tolerance will be hand in hand with it.

So congratulations to this unknown young woman for continuing to love her mother and her partner. Congratulations to this almost stranger for loving her niece so much. Congratulations to the public outcry against that poor, sad preacher soul. And congratulations to each of us every time we choose the high road of love over the bottom road of fear.

If you liked this post, please share it!

What is the central question at the core of your work?

Bethany Hamilton

This question was posted on Writer Unboxed a few weeks past. I opened the docs on my WIP this morning, feeling the need to answer that question. The book is at least a third, maybe half written, and I’m not sure I know the answer. Should I know? Should I have a burning question at the heart of my work? Or should I let unbridled instinct have it’s head? I rather like not knowing, but for the sake of plot and pacing I need to choose whether my character is gradually developing her spirituality or diving straight into a battle between good and evil. I’m ambivalent about committing. (Ambi, meaning both, and valence, meaning strong – I have strong feeling about both. How do I choose?)

I started the work as an immediate confrontation between good and evil, with the good character needing to develop her spirituality in order to even have a fighting chance against a strongly evolved evil. That could work because I have already set her up in another novel for this kind of confrontation. She is primed for growth and subsequent battle. The stage has been set. It is a plausible scenario.

At some point, I decided I didn’t want to go the good/bad route, that I wanted to take more time developing her spirituality before thrusting her into battle. At the time it seemed enough to foreshadow the upcoming struggle, to suggest that her previous work was merely prelude. This leads me to another question – will readers be patient with this concept? Do I have enough of a story to keep them interested?

When I decided the above, I must have had a reason, but damned if I can pinpoint what that was. I can’t remember if I decided to abandon the good/bad plot or if the story turned from it. If it was the story’s idea, I should absolutely follow where it leads. If it was my idea, why wasn’t it important enough to remember the reason for it? Which makes me think it was the story’s idea. The story never lies. It tells the pure tale. I, however, as author, am a compulsive liar, insistent on deleting, cutting, copying, adding, etcetera, that I might make the final product palatable to THE READER. With no tongue for truth, I writes in term of sales, rejection, and review. The author’s words are suspect at best. The story’s are true.

I think I’ve just answered that question. As for the central question, it’s the same as it is in all my work – will my characters grow or stay small? It’s a question I face a hundred times a day – will my next action push me beyond my comfort zone and make me grow, or will it keep me comfortable, safe, and small?

What will you do today that’s risky, that nudges you off the couch of your comfort zone?

If you liked this post, please share it!

Weeds

It’s spring in California, which means rain and green, green weeds. I’ve let them go around my house. The place looks wild. Not abandoned, just wild. Like crazy ladies that spit and wear purple might live in that yellow house on the hill. I used to yank the bromes and foxtails out from between the iris beds, pull the mustard up from along the driveway, and dig the mallow off the hillside. This year I’ve let the the weeds grow tall and thick. It’s hard to watch them, because I know someday I’ll have to cut them all back before they become a fire hazard, but today, they are growing. They are as happy I think as weeds can be. When I’m not dwelling on the ordeal of weed-whacking come summer, I can relax into their fertile, unforced beauty.

[image error]

Writing is like tending the weeds. I can pluck, trim, and shape each idea as it arises, or I can let each sprout into it’s full potential. I can allow them to grow wild, untended. It’s been my habit to push my stories where I think they should go. I prod, fuss, and  meddle. I force my plots to go where I think they must, that they will convey what I think others want to hear. All this shaping, paring, and trimming eventually creates a book, a book that while quite lovely and acceptable, is clearly controlled. What if I just let my ideas grow where they wanted? What if I didn’t limit them to perfectly manicured plots, letting them root freely instead? The resulting story might not be pretty. It may be too wild for some. It might stir their own managed wildness, making them shy in fright.

Too bad. For I am becoming that crazy woman that lives in the yellow house on the hill. I am letting my beautiful green weeds grow wild. I won’t let them take over and become next season’s tinder, but today I am giving them their full, glorious head. If they frighten you, look away. If you’re curious, come closer. For in their wild swaying beauty, you might just find your own.

 

 

If you liked this post, please share it!