Barrett's Blog, page 14

Working the high ropes course

This morning I listened to a  TEDxWomen — Suzanne Braun Levine  on FB.

(well worth ten minutes)

It reminded me of a long ago story when I joined with a bunch of people to do a challenge course. I knew most of them peripherally but none of us were what I would call close friends. All I knew was that it was some kind of "team building" exercise that would take up one of my Saturdays.

We all met at a small private hospital that had the Ropes Course built on the grounds. There were probably a dozen of us with two instructors. They explained the general plan of how we would start with the low course in the morning and moved to the high elements in the afternoon. None of us really knew what that meant. (I conveniently forgot that my brother had an irregular part-time gig 'building' ropes courses.)

We worked, laughed, and collaborated to try to do a series of challenges. Like four of us trying to "ski" two parallel railroad ties with ropes attached. What we all learned was who the leaders were, who the followers were, as well as how to work together. (it was much funnier than it sounds, and a little annoying.)

The afternoon events were much more challenging because they involved harnesses, ropes, helmets, and belay lines. The high elements were essentially trees were telephone poles lashed together with ropes and safety lines while everyone was attached to a watchful instructor. The final element was what they called the "pamper pole".

We all gathered the base of a 40 foot telephone pole. There was a stepladder leading up to the spiked footholds reaching to the top. There was nothing else attached to this gigantic pole. Approximately 10 feet away, were two poles with the bar between that held a trapeze.

As you might guess, the goal was to reach the top of the telephone pole, (the diameter of which was approximately 12 inches), stand on top—there is NOTHING—to hold onto, gradually turn around 180°—because the trapeze is now behind you and… That's the only way down. Unless you jump off this four story pole.

I sat under a tree with two friends watching if one person after another attempt this death-defying feat. A couple of the guys managed to get up the pole with ease, but only one was able to jump far enough to reach the trapeze.

Some quit halfway up the pole or fell when the attempted to stand upright.

I said, more than once, "that's nuts, there's no way he'd get me into that harness."

Now here's the interesting, kind of woo-woo part of all this. After one of my friends got down and began to unfasten the harness, I literally found myself replying when the instructor said, "who's next?"

What the… A force completely outside of me was moving my body toward the bottom of that telephone pole. I'm serious. This is where the team building comes in. I distinctly heard the voices of people who, only that morning, were casual acquaintances cheering me on, and encouraging me to do it.

I started up the ladder and never looked back. Something inside of me focused on the top of that pole and whispered, "You can do it". Of course there was another voice whispering, "are you out of your f***ing mind?"

I heard the voices and I kept going. When I reached the top, I had my left foot on the highest spike, my hands on the sides of a 12 inch dinner plate, and nothing to hold onto.

I somehow had to get my right foot between both hands and raise myself up with the strength in one leg—my right ankle, by the way, had been the victim of numerous sprains. And these clinical facts raced through my mind like a freight train.

Below me, I could hear cheers and words of encouragement flying towards me. And once again I heard that voice, "You can do this" and I answered, "Yes. I. Can."

I slowly straightened up and watched as both my feet covered the top of the pole. I could feel the pole swaying slightly as I looked over the tops of the trees. I was completely at ease and filled with a kind of exhilaration I had never felt my life. It  felt as close to heaven as I could be and I knew with absolute certainty that I was not alone on that pole. And I never would be again.

I inched myself around until I was facing the trapeze. The 10-foot expanse between the handlebar and me was even greater than I imagined. If it had been 10 feet lower, I might've stood a chance. But it was directly opposite and no matter how hard I pushed off, gravity would get me first.

What choice did I have?

Securely harnessed. Attached to a safety line. Wearing a helmet… "On the count of three."

(photo: this guy is actually on a zip line, Not free-falling. Imagine this without the bar in his hand.)

I pushed off as hard as I could and fell for couple of seconds before the rope caught. They lowered me to the ground and one of the guys caught me. As soon as he did, I burst into tears of joy, victory, and immense pride.

There are no words to describe the complete elation of accomplishing something that seemed absolutely, totally impossible. I knew with that moment, with complete certainty: If I truly believed in myself, there was nothing I could not accomplish.

Over the years, that moment and those very feelings have resurfaced reminding me of one of the one of the most profound life lessons I've learned.

Photos from http://www.adventureassoc.com/index.html 

High Ropes Courses Using harnesses, helmets, cables, ropes and wooden beams strung 20 to 50 feet high among trees or poles, teams explore risk-taking, trust and coaching. Each moment is rich with discoveries, whether you're climbing, simply encouraging others or on belay.

Today Book Reviews, tomorrow…World Peace and Prosperity!

well, that might be an exaggeration. Still, believe it or not, writing about another author's work is more than a little daunting.

Salem West suggested I take the chance and I was so goofily flattered to appear on her site, I agreed.  Let me tell you, that is NOT an easy job. And now that it's posted, I'm wringing my hands and pacing the floor like an expectant father.

Ruth, Salem, thanks for letting me play in the big kids sandbox…

If you're so inclined go on over and check it out, and while you're there, look at the gut-busting awards for 2011.

>>>>>        http://rainbowreader.blogspot.com/

less talk, more photos…

A pause from our regularly scheduled verbiage…

First, Dalwhinnie D'Muse

…sunrise from the office.

…The many faces of south mountain.

…10 degrees, 20mph winds…Winter is here.

…three foot drifts.

…staying indoors.

Stay safe and warm.

And the Winner is……

Many thanks to everyone who stopped by for the first ever one-stop-blog-tour!

The Winner of the double-blind, placebo controlled drawing is…

C.P.Rowlands!

Congratulations, C.P., hope you enjoy the The Girls Club. Please contact Sally at sbellerose@comcast.net to give her your address.

Thank you, Sally, I really enjoyed meeting some of your readers and hearing their comments. Let's do this again.

Reminder, the first chapter of my next book, Defying Gravity is available at Affinity.

The Fabulous Sally Bellerose!

Drum roll……….signal the music!

I have the great honor my first ever Guest Blogger, none other than the fabulous…Sally Bellerose!

She has graciously agreed to talk about one of my all time favorite stories "Fishwives". And as if that wasn't enough, she will offer a copy of her newest release "The Girls Club" to a random commenter to this this blog.  Without further ado…Sally,

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sally Bellerose's novel The Girls Club won the Bywater Prize and was published by Bywater Books in September, 2011.  Bellerose was awarded a Fellowship from the NEA based on an excerpt from this book. The first chapter won first place in fiction from Writers at Work.  Excerpts from the novel have been anthologized and featured in literary journals including Love Shook My Heart, Sinister Wisdom, The Sun, The Best of Writers at Work, Cutthroat, and Quarterly West.  The manuscript was a finalist for the James Jones Fellowship, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, The Backspace Scholarship, and the Bellwether Endowment. Chapter Two won the Rick DeMarinis Short Story Award.

Reach Sally at sbellerose@comcast.net on facebook or  http://sallybellerose.wordpress.com

* * * * * *

I am excited to have the opportunity to exchange posts with Barrett (appearing today at http://sallybellerose.wordpress.com)

Thank you for having me as a guest and for asking me to discuss my newest writing obsession, Fishwives, a group of linked short stories.  The collections takes its title from the "anchor" story which won first place in Saints and Sinners Fiction Contest and can be found in the anthology Saints and Sinners New Fiction from the Festival, Queer Mojo, 2010.  Proceeds go to No/Aids Task Force.

Fishwives is a group of stories which feature the love, trials, and tribulations of two elderly impoverished lesbians who have been together for over sixty years.  Or, if you prefer the pithy version, the collection is about old ladies behaving badly.  In truth, the collection is not finished.  Recently the main characters' younger selves, as well as two contemporary adolescent Puerto Rican boys, have insisted on being part of the story.  So a synopsis of the collection is premature.

I didn't have to look hard for inspiration for Fishwives.  I am a sixty year old lesbian with friends and family, all of whom, even our five year old granddaughter, are aging.  Some of my beloveds are women.  Some of them are lesbians who have been together for a long time.  Some of them are poor.

I had to look harder to find older lesbian couples represented in literature, especially poor women.  And I had to look harder still to find stories that allowed old women of any sexual orientation any sexuality whatsoever.  And, of course, I had the hardest time finding sexual old lesbians.  Infuriating, that we should be defined by our sexual orientation while denied our sexuality.

So I started to write a sex scene between two old ladies.  Of course the story took me where it wanted me to go, which involved sex, but not exactly a sex scene.  Now I have several finished stories, none of them exactly a sex scene.  I have written erotica involving older women.  Writing sex is not the problem.  Getting these two women and the characters in their neighborhood to settle down long to have sex is the problem. There is a lot going on.  These old ladies need health care and heat and proper nutrition.  These characters, and my own lived-life, inform me that for some of us anyway, sex and sexuality gets more nuanced and complicated with age. And I would not deny that aging usually diminishes sex drive, if not sexuality.  However, aging does not preclude a sex scene between elderly women, definitely does not.

If anyone has read great sex scenes between older women, please do let me know.  I'd love to read the passages.

Here is the opening of Fishwives followed by a link to the story.  Thanks for reading.

Fishwives

My wife Jackie and I teeter-totter, arm in arm, through a few inches of unshoveled snow before stepping over a dead Christmas tree to get to our car. We missed the city's curb side tree pick-up by over a month. Between us, we're 161years old, me and my Jackie. The maneuvers to get down the walk and over the tree take a few minutes.

We're both wearing puffy down parkas, the kind with fake fur around the hoods. The coats cost a fortune when they were new, got donated to the Survival Center because the fashion of encasing yourself in four bushels of airy feathers went out of style when new synthetic fibers came along. I try not to care about being out of fashion, but can't seem to stop.

When we reach the car, I flap my hand at Jackie. "You could at least drag the tree away from the curb."

Jackie winces. Her right hip still hurts from falling off a folding chair while pushing poker chips across a table. She gambles when she's depressed. Losing makes her more depressed. There's a cycle here. I give her my serves-you-right-to-suffer grin. We stand there, hanging on to the door handles, thinking our separate thoughts while we catch our breath.

I think about being old and poor. And queer. I love that the young ones have rehabilitated that word, queer. Poor, I'm afraid, is a word beyond a face lift. Poverty has always been the third woman in our marriage. We consummated our three-way lesbian alliance decades ago. We lived beyond our means and worked shitty jobs without putting a single penny toward retirement. Who knew gay marriage would become a reality? We thought the whole business of IRAs and 401Ks were a pathetic middle-class scam. Even a simple savings account was too bourgeois for us. We were too unconventional to be bothered by the unlikely fact of old age; we were radical. We flaunted being poor like it was some sexy illicit arrangement and worked nights while we got liberal arts degrees. This made Jackie a fairly well-spoken fork lift operator and me a failed novelist. We borrowed what we could and paid as little attention as possible to the bills.

But poverty is a fishwife who gets louder when ignored and meaner in old age. If it weren't for poverty shrieking, "Where's the milk money?" Jackie could skim off a hundred bucks once in a while and I'd never know. For us, a hundred dollars is a week's worth of groceries, ironic, because the grocery store is where she usually gambles. Lottery tickets: a dollar, five dollars, ten dollars a pop. Hate the lottery. At least when she finds a poker game that welcomes a not-so-little old lady she exercises her mind.

People suppose your thinking slows when you're old. Sometimes my mind spins like tires stuck in a muddy field. Now, while I'm hanging on to the car's door handle, my thoughts move like an old dog circling back on its tail. I want to concentrate on a way to get her to get rid of the tree, but looking at Jackie through the little clouds my breath forms in the February air as she unlocks The Bucket, our once gold, now faded to tan, 1992 Buick, distracts me. How did Jackie get so old? The calendar, the mirror, and our joints, scream, "You're old!" I look at her all day, every day, and elderly is still a shock.

http://sallybellerose.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/fishewives-winning-story-in-saints-and-sinners-new-fiction-form-the-festival-2011/

Thanks, Sally. Be sure to leave a comment, with an email address for a chance to win The Girls Club.

Guest Blogger and more

I can no longer torment you, in good conscience, otherwise I might.

Tomorrow, Tuesday November 29th, 2011.  I have the great honor of cross-posting with the fabulous Wicked-Word Wizard…  wait for it….  Sally Bellerose !!   

I know, Right? We will pop the cork tomorrow morning. Sally Bellerose on http://wordsofbarrett.wordpress.com, Barrett on http://sallybellerose.wordpress.com

How cool is that? Not exciting enough?  Okay. Then Thursday, December 1st on my publishers site: http://Affinityebooks.com, They will generously offer the first chapter of  "Defying Gravity" Book two in the Damaged series.

Whoot! ….more?

sigh, okay, one more and then I have to get back to nanowrimo.

I will be submitting a guest review…soon. That's it, NO Mas. Get back to work, but remember tomorrow morning…

Bloggy excitement

I have been lost in Nano land but I plan to make it up to with a treat.

A guest blog AND a book give away. Stay tuned!

I can hardly wait!!!

Deep Editing Power: Margie Lawson

I have been remiss in my blogging…but not so much with my writing. As of last night I crossed the 21,705 word mark for NaNoWriMo. This after spending the entire day before at an editing workshop, which I might add was superb.

My local art RWA chapter, LERA sponsored a one day conference featuring the remarkable and renowned   Margie Lawson. The woman is a dynamo—a brilliant and talented dynamo.

We hit the ground running at 8:00 AM and I straggled out to my car around 5:15 PM. Every synapse still crackled and my brain was bleeding–but in a good way. During that period we got down a number of different topics including: Powering Up Emotion-four levels of writing success, The Edits System … (embrace your pink!)*, Writing Dialogue Cues Like A Psychologist, and Writing Body Language Like A Psychologist.

World Class Wordsmithing. Uh Huh. Do you see what I mean? Brain. Bleed.

She barely stopped for oxygen, the rest of us were surviving and caffeine and numb     butt-cheeks. (To be fair, our extremely capable event coordinator, Tammy Baumann and her team created a beautiful space in a warm comfortable room with a view of the Sandia Mountains. Hello. What's not to love?

It was a small group, which allowed for some wonderful interactions with some very talented women,with whom I've been associated for the past two years. It also gave us an opportunity for one-on-one time with Margie. And we were provided an incredible buffet luncheon created by the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. (which is a great place for meeting.)

I was so overloaded with information that by the time I got home all I could do was walk the dogs(mumbling affectionately), prescribe an adult beverage, and stare at the TV screen while Tia and her parolees rescued pit bulls.

Sunday morning, I jumped out of bed ready to grab my five colored markers and rip through my work-in-progress hoping to find the perfect spots to insert a small, medium, large, and big gulp "emotional passage". Instead, I opted to work on my nano project—which I did with fury. 2,887 words in approximately five hours. And, damn it, Skippy, I had some pretty friggin-fine phrases in there, if I do say so myself.

Today I'm flagging a bit, but the coffee is beginning to kick in and I just infused my blog site.woot. So thank you LERA ladies and my special thanks to Margie Lawson, teacher extraordinaire.

To all you writers out there, if you want to kick start your words into something much more powerful, check out: Margie Lawson.com

Really. Do it.

(Need more encouragement? Our LERA president, and Best-selling author to Darynda Jones,"First Grave On The Right"—is a proud Margie grad.)

Too Good to be true!

It's like an early Christmas for those of you thinking about a new book to read. 

My first novel Damaged in Service, was released in July of this year. I have blithered about it often and fondly and now a treat.

Not only is it up on The Bar Rag "Cocktail Hour"  I read the prologue and first chapter in glorious hoarseness, (see below)

Cocktail Hour

cocktailhour.us

And then, serendipitously, Lynne Pierce offered …wait for it… Chapter Two!

"This week's Sneak Peek is from Damaged in Service by Barrett.  Some of you have already commented that you've read and liked the book, so this will give others a chance to check it out.  You can find it in the Sneak Peek file or at this address http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lesfic_unbound/files/Sneak%20Peeks/"

 

(you may need to join the group)

Lynne

http://piercingfiction.blogspot.com

Could it get any better?

Well, yes, it could, for me. You can find a copy at : Affinity eBooks, Amazon, or B&N.

As always, thanks for stopping by. Barrett

Day 5 = 9,034

Sliding into the writing challenge is exhilarating, daunting, and a tad intense. [image error]

Day One flew by, ended with 1,779. Day two started slowly and picked up speed topping out at  2,653. Today was harder (the story got a little more complex) but I managed a respectable 1,732.

Update: Saturday. I couldn't get it in gear yesterday, but the cushion helped and I'm ahead of the curve now with over 9K. They still haven't provided the little widgets…oh well. 

Past Wrimo's have taught me to pace and try to inch ahead gradually so I have a little cushion, in case of unforeseen circumstances. Things like the holiday, day long events and the like, suck the life out of an introvert like me, rendering me "wordless".

Hopefully I'll be able to get a word count widget soon  so I won't be posting every lurid detail of this, oft agonizing, ordeal.

So Far, so good! (and I'm really liking this story)

[image error] [image error] [image error]