Barbara Froman's Blog, page 9

Bones

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I’m not going to talk about writing.

There are these bones, you see, almost 32,000 words of them, strung together in a fairly reasonable order.

I think they will function well. All the joints are properly connected, in the right places—foot, ankle, shin, knee, and so on. It took a bit of effort. A few bones didn’t seem to fit, and had to be moved. Bones do have their logic.

And now that they’re properly fashioned, as bones should be, they look, well, skeletal.

They need padding.

I can’t put...

Wrong Way

[image error]Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Have you ever found yourself heading in the wrong direction down a one-way street?

That happened to my mother when she was driving me to a late rehearsal in Manhattan. It was the first rehearsal, and she was unsure of the best route to our destination, so she made a wrong turn.

I was nine, and I remember exactly three things about that turn: the volume of rush hour traffic heading toward us; my mother’s curses in three different languages; and the speed with whi...

The Beginning

[image error]Painting by Vincent Van Gogh

What is the story I want to tell?

How do I start?

There’s the town, the shop, the house, the pianos, and letters…

…and the man, my God, the man….

***

I didn’t come from here. My mother and I left the Hungarian city where I was born in July of 1938.

My mother died in 1965, yet I still see her in my kitchen salting stocks, and kneading dough.

No one bakes in the suburban cul-de-sac where I live. I suspect few know how.

They buy their breads and cakes in quaint Midwe...

Screensaver

[image error]“Playing the Piano” — Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905)

I’m taking a sanity break. Or maybe not.

Someone posted the painting above on Twitter and it’s been haunting me…which is perfect, I guess, for my new—truthfully, not-so-new—novel about a woman, a house, two pianos, and a man.

Over the past ten years, the novel has gone through so many incarnations I’ve lost count. But three elements have remained constant: the house, the pianos, and the man. The woman has now become women—two.

When I saw Edelf...

Descent

[image error]Pexels Photo by Danne

I promised myself I wasn’t going to get political again.

I’ve lived long enough to remember the Cold War, bomb drills, race riots, Vietnam, assassinations, and Watergate. They were terrible times, often seeming as if they would go on forever. Yet they didn’t. Even if it was only in small measures, reason and decency prevailed.

This feels different, though. This feels familiar in the most malignant way.

It amazes me that some reasonably intelligent people are still rati...

The Color of….

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Because I can’t find the right prose. Because I am heartsick and furious that hate has been stoked, allowed to fester, and gain a stronghold here, and that so many are content to be silent, complicit in the resulting cruelty. And because my great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were victims of such hate and cruelty….

THE COLOR OF….

It is not rose,
much more like snow
that coats each velvet petal,
or dims an apple’s blush,
the pear’s suggestive charm.

Nor is it fire,
for each hypnoti...

Along the Way

[image error]Photo by SplitShire on Pexels.com

I tried a bit of ice cream the other day, a popular brand, and didn’t like it. The taste of sugar was so overpowering, it was impossible for me to taste anything else.

When I bake, I under-sweeten. I want to taste nuts and fruit and chocolate, experience how they complement each other. Sugar should tone down acidity or bitterness, or simply enhance flavors, not dominate them.

Domination is too prevalent these days, too accepted. Maybe that’s why sugar came to...

Tyranny

[image error]Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

You have to use it. Of course, you do. And take that video. Naturally.

The moments were too infuriating to pass up.

And it’s good, what you captured, isn’t it?  When you look at the recording again? You know it’s good.

So you take those good, significant moments, and post them.

Because you were shocked and outraged by all or part of what you saw, and you want others to agree, share your reaction, your clip.

And of course they do.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t reco...

Honesty

I vowed not to return until I had news about some piece, or poem, or what-have-you being published, knowing that at the rate I finish work and submit, that could be years… …but then Philip Roth died. *** I came... Continue Reading →

Retirement

I was reading—or thought I was reading—a lovely book when it occurred to me that my attention had drifted here. It’s been a long time since my last post. I was distracted…by what I’m now referring to as a perfect... Continue Reading →