The Fickle Gardner

I stooped this morning with the late summer sun beating my back. In spite of my jug of tea, my mouth was dry, thirsty. I cursed the bermuda with its long zipper-like tendrils growing literally over my everygreen shrubs, hiding them, concealing them, draping them in its green arms.

At spring break, I was out here toting hoes and garden tools ready to embark on this new journey. My plans were clear, my faith secure, my heart open to the beauty that would soon be mine. As I went about my work, I marveled at the spring miracles and each new leaf, each new bud was a thing to be celebrated.

Now, after weeks of sapping 100 degree heat, I look at my garden from the cool of my porch and say, "Maybe tomorrow I'll go into the garden."

It's not that I don't love my garden. It's just that it hasn't quite realized my original expectations for it. The weeds,particularly the bermuda grass, continue to plague me. Each day I have weeded only to see more weeds the next day. Did I miss some warning in a garden magazine: NOTE: Weeding bermuda actually creates more bermuda. Forget your high-minded ecology. Just spray the stuff and be done with it.

There exist big gaping holes in my garden border where I thought there would be color. I understand now where I should have planted a shrub and should not have. The pavers that I worked so hard to level now appear as if a small earthquake has shaken them from their original space. Moles have feasted on the grubs and have made my clean-lined path look like something from a Dr. Seuss book, all lopsided and topsy-turvy.

I lamented the holes from some unknown pest that has devoured my sweet potatoe plants. I languished at the sight of my pond, scummy and green. The bright left over blooms of my roses aren't as alluring as I picked off the spent blooms and brushed them under the plants.


Whereas before I jubilantly looked forward to each new day, the heat and the weeds and the bugs have taken their toll on my passion, made me cautious, stand offish. I don't drop by as much to see the objects of my affection. I don't bring it new friends or water it like I should.

Like a fickle lover, I dodge my responsibility, play coy.

I'm like the bride who, after the honeymoon, is upset to discover that her new husband would really rather watch ESPN than "The Notebook". What really did I expect? That my garden would have no weeds? That my roses wouldn't wilt from the Oklahoma heat? That my pond wouldn't need cleaning out after months of standing in the piercing sun?

Yesterday a friend gave me a copy of one of my favorite gardening magazines. I sadly took it and laid it on my table, next to my unwritten novel and the books I've been meaning to read. I leafed through it but had to put it down, the pain was too great. It was like reading a Harlequin after just filing for divorce.

Four years ago I began in earnest to create this illusion drawn from the pages of glossy photos that seduced me mind, body and soul. In the throes of such passion, I did not stop and think about watering requirements, drainage needs, sunlight hours. My heart was set on some eden-like moments, where I would walk through my lovely garden and point out the objects of my affection, like a boy at the prom with his beautiful date. It was all about appearances and ego.

Now, four years later and in the throes of a late summer heatwave, my daylillies need dividing, my grasses are a mess and my roses need deadheading. I wonder through this garden of mine like a lover betrayed. I'm jealous of its lackluster blooms. I'm weary from its incessant needs. How could it need this much work? Where is the beauty that I thought would be mine? Where is the joy that I first knew?

I have on my desk a photo of my garden from four years ago. In it, the water birch is tiny, hardly able to be seen. There is no pond and no pergola. No roses, no shrubs. Only a small
dark ribbon of fresh earth where my dreams warmed in the pale spring sun. The rose arbor stood tall, erect but bare. It is on days such as this that I pull out this photo, remembering those early days. Like a old woman remembering her wedding day, I know the rush of new love is now long gone, like the wind in the dustbowl. It was not meant to last and perhaps this is the most difficult of all the cosmic laws of love. That slightly crazy-love is like the cast on a broken arm, holding two pieces together until the right growth can bind them together never breaking in that same place, never letting go.

Thought for today

"If you don't work at your art because you feel like a beginner or because the work frustrates you, I would ask you to stop using those facts as excuses. If you believe that celebrated artists are not beginning for whom each new creative project is a trial, now is the time to reconsider. You will remain a beginner and find the work hard until you die: you need no longer feel sad about that. So will ever other artist: you no longer need envy them their supposed maturity or ease." -- Eric Maisel, from "Fearless Creating"

Blogging at Panera

Since Panera has free wi-fi, I've started hauling my laptop with me on appts and stopping at lunch time to write. I'm motivated to do that today after having some good interviews this weekend with some people that helped me fill in the gaps on some facts that I needed.

I had an opportunity to interivew some Tulsa Co. Sherriffs this weekend while going about some business. It was kind of a fluke, but since one of my novel characters is a narcotics officer I thought it might be good to interview a few, since I don't know any. I never really thought about it before -- I've never thought about what a sheriff does in his or her line of work. I've never thought too much at all about police work. So when I had some time to talk to a few of them on the Tulsa force, I found out a lot about the work of Sheriff's and narcotics officers. I also made that discovery that most writers must make and that is that my own life is so incredibly boring (in a good way, I guess) that I'm drawn to those whose lives are different than mine. I think that must be a quality of a good writer -- finding novelty in others lives that are different than their own.

I always feel like I have to somehow explain to those that I'm interviewing or researching in this process -- that yeah, I'm writing a novel but y'know, I'm not a REAL WRITER, I'm just learning how to write by writing...I don't know why I feel that I have to qualify myself like that, I guess I'm afraid that someone will think that I'm impersonating a great novelists or something, or worse that they believe that I BELIVE that.

What I'm finding is that most people aren't so impressed with the fact that I am writing but are very much impressed that I find them interesting enough to ask questions about what they do, what's an average day like, what do they like best, etc. Come to think of it, if someone asked ME those questions, I'd be kinda impressed too.

So here's my announcement to those that care -- I know I'm not all that in the writing world. I'm learning. I have so much to learn and yet the process is becoming more real to me every time I stay with the structure that I'm imposing on myself.

After cleaning out my office and making room - literally and figureatively -- I've also looked at my daily calendar and moved some "non-essential" (read: BORING) meetings off my calendar and started spending that focused time in writing. This is where the laptop and Panera come in handy...instead of traisping all the way back home, I just turn on the laptop, have lunch and do what I came to do.

Which today is blocking out chapters 4 and 5 of my great American Novel. I'm learning how to find a form that works for me at this point which is to write and when I get stuck somewhere, I start writing down the questions that I need to answer for that scene to take form and flourish. So my notes look pretty garbled but when I do that, it starts creating the characters and their actions.

The best writing advice that I've received so far is to "think like I'm watching a movie". In other words, if my story were a movie where would I start the action, where would the scene take place. This has been so helpful and yet it seems so obvious. THANKS JORDAN!

The advice also has helped me while watching movies to find ways that the writers may be moving their story forward. It has kind of made watching movies and TV shows a little less fun to watch, because now I start finding all this stuff that they (the writers) could do and not do to better the story. Not surprisingly, I find is that the best written stuff allows the viewer to get past the mechanics of the story and become more involved in the story itself.

So, onto chapters 4 and 5.

100 Great Movie Quotes

I spent late last night recovering from a long day at a vendor show. I could blog on this subject for an eternity -- the times I've done shows like this, how to do it, what NOT to do. Yeah, maybe that would be a good topic to discuss.

I arrived home late and was looking for something to help me wind down. Bravo (www.bravotv.com) had the perfect solution - 100 Great Movie quotes

AFI: 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes.

From DeNiro's "You talkin' to me?" to Hepburn's "You do know how to whistle don't you..."
there are a million quotes that we toss around that come directly from the movies. Funny thing, though, of all the quotes the most quotes came from one movie, "Casablanca" which is why it is sometimes called the best written movie of all time (I could disagree on a million points but I'll save that, too, for another blog time).

The thing I found interesting is that so many of the quotes that we "remember" weren't in the movies at all. Or they weren't in the movies as we remember them. Example, "Play it Again, Sam" is actually, "Play it Again, will you Sam?" or something like that. And yet some of the original "quotes" are burned into the American psyche and we remember them a certain way -- a way in which they were never said.

I loved this walk through the movies and enjoyed especially the comments made by some of my favortie actors and actresses. I spend Sundays writing, reading and watching movies - its become a new kind of religious experience for me. Which is interesting, because so many of the best movies deal with themes that often are associated with "religion" - redemption, salvation, evil and good.

I'm off to see "An Unfinished Life" and I'll share my thoughts on this movie later.