What Is Your Sunday Ritual?

Rock Ritual & Rote

with rote of ritual

rock bottom can become our

solid foundation

© Perle Champion

Ritual can be elaborate, but many are simply the rote tasks we perform on a daily basis and never give a second thought unless life or the weather interferes.

It’s early Sunday morning (really early as I forgot to fall back) and, as with all my days, my first tasks are cat-related: put kibble in one bowl, pour fresh water in the other, put the coffee on.  But, it’s Sunday and Jazzmine somehow always knows when it’s Sunday and waits impatiently for her can of stinky, shrimpy, Fancy Feast for breakfast.  Seven days a week she gets kibble, but Sunday she’ll save the kibble for later and devour her stinky treat.

Sunday breakfasts require an audience, so I sit at the table with my coffee and keep her company whiles she eats.  I open my journal and begin writing my morning pages, much of which made their way into today’s Blog.

No hurry. No walkabout this morning – I’ll probably ride my stationary bike while I watch Today and later do yoga stretches while I watch Charlie Osgood and after I’ll make my way to my desk to transcribe my pages and begin my 2000 words for my NaNo novel..

Finished eating, Jazzmine dashed down the hall, and I know she’s gone out her window kitty door to the balcony.  Her rituals are simple, eat then outside to scratch her post and preen, before retiring to whatever pool of sunshine she can find to snooze in.

Moments later, she is back inside, and staring at me as only a cat can.  Jazzmine feels betrayed, and lets me know it - it's 31 outside.  The odd throaty ‘meorrow’ seems to ask accusingly, ‘what have you done to the weather’. She stares out the window and ventures out once or twice more before giving up and curling up on the electric leopard throw that kept us warm at my desk yesterday.

On the bright side, this is the south and it will be 65 tomorrow and back to a shirtsleeves 70 Tuesday and Wednesday.  Jazz will be able to resume, at least briefly,her daily balcony ritual foray – Winter southern style – gotta love it.

How to Over-Book November

Talking to a friend on the phone this past Monday, she commented that omg it’s practically November.  I looked up from my coffee to the kitchen calendar and noted that in my Kitchen, it already was November and it was already booked solid - omg indeed.

I had turned the page early Sunday morning to jot more than a few items down for November and as I could see from Sunday the 26^th all the way through to November 1, I just migrated the few events left in October to the November page.

Yes I still use a real calendar, two actually.  I have one in the kitchen for day to day life and one in my Aerie (that’s what I call my office/studio where I write and paint) for various deadlines and some duplication of the kitchen calendar.  Later I will put everything into my Google calendar which syncs with my iPhone calendar.  If they aren’t already there that is.

So, I’ve been looking at November since last Sunday, and still November 1 surprises me with all that I have committed to do this month.

• Write a 50,000 word novel for National Novel Writing Month – NanoWriMo.org
• Post a Blog a day for Blogher.com’s NaBloPoMo.
• Enter 3 poems in the Two Sylvias Press competition for the Russell Prize due tomorrow.
• Write a brand new poem and submit by the 30^th to Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal competition for the Jane Lumley Prize.

Oh, and lest I forget,

• Luncheon lecture at Lister Hill next week - History of Medicine thru the Ages.
• Three open house events I never miss in the little neighborhoods which make up some of Birmingham: Homewood, English Village, and PepperPlace.
• Three or four of my favorite art galleries all have November Christmas shows.

Oh, and then there’s

• Thanksgiving - the family gathers and cooks and it all starts the day before and runs through the weekend.

What’s your November look like?

Are You Ready to Write Your Novel?

It's almost that time again. National Novel Writing Month is a mere 16 days away.  

The gauntlet has been thrown down, and I've picked it up again. Every year the good folks at NaNoWriMo invite novelists and wannabe novelists all over the world to write that novel they've been ‘gonna write some day'.

Not only do they challenge you to write the novel, but write it now or at least 50,000 words of it within the 30 days of November.  I've never had a problem with writing the 50,000 word first draft - Whether any of them qualify as a 'Novel' is another question entirely.  I have a few in a drawer somewhere that I edited from time to time.  The best of the lot was my 2012 novel written in early 2001 or 02, which I procrastinated into obsolescence. Yep I was still editing and rewriting when 2012 didn't happen

Ever the optimist, I'm taking a few of my characters from that 2012 novel and my Murder

is a Primary Color novel from last year and involving them in a mystery.  I’m bringing a lot of the backstory forward as it informs the characters. 

I’ve got a working title (Witch on a Witch Hunt); designed a quick cover on PowerPoint; and I’m clipping pix from magazines for my storyboard for different characters, rooms, locations, etc.  I need pictures in my storyline. 

A shout out to Nathan Bransford's for Blog post on the One Sentence, One Paragraph... Pitch.  I managed to construct one of my own and here it is.

Here is my one-liner: A real bewitched teams up with a Sam Spade wannabe to solve a series of anomalous murders in the year 2025.

Enchanted Realms

Songs for Ophelia by Theodora Goss. A book review by Perle Champion.

To call Theodora Goss’s book, Songs for Ophelia, a poetry book would not do justice to the stories that lie beyond the gossamer illustration gracing its cover.  This is a collection of hauntingly beautiful stories some new, some old retold – a storybook for grownups.

The term songs instead of poems suits this collection of prose stories.  It puts one in mind of the bards of old, who with lyre in hand, sang their tales.  In Songs for Ophelia, we accompany our own bard through enchanted realms, traversing the wheel of the year in the ancient way season by season, song by song.  Strewn through this collection are songs populated by names out of legend and myth whose stories we thought we knew full well until we read Goss’s deft retelling.  In her hands the stories are at once familiar and not.  She adds a depth as she explores and exposes possibilities giving each character and place a richer more well-rounded existence on the page

.

Reviewing poetry is so very different from reviewing a novel, so I’ve chosen to give a small glimpse of one poem from each season of Goss’s enchanted collection.

Spring: In The River’s Daughter, the river morphs from like a father to father in this homage to the death of a much admired writer. “She walks into the river/ with rocks in her pockets, / and the water closes around her/ like the arms of a father…”

Summer: In By Tidal Pools, Goss gives new dimension to Circe affair with Odysseus.  She elevates Circe from the flat stereotype of Homer’s telling to a fully imagined woman with real yearnings.  “At first she watched in case he should return/ by tidal pools…Does he lie on some shore/ where snails leave glistening tracks upon his eyes,/ or has he found his home?”

Autumn: In A Walk in Autumn, Summer becomes a maiden and slain.  Although I prefer to raise a glass to Persephone descending into hades, the imagery in this song is haunting.  “Her name was Summer – her hair the grasses/ her gown the forest’s leafy cloth… She lies unburied, exposed to weather/ in tattered garments the worse for wear…”

Winter: And lastly, there is The Last Night That She Lived.  Who has not pondered these lines in some variation? “When soul from form is rent,/ do streams run over stones/ in valleys of content?/ Or dust, on bones?”

Ray Bradbury once told me to read good poetry or an essay before turning out the lights at night.  He said he kept a good book or two of poetry or essays by his bed and read from one or the other volume every night. He said it turn the mind away from the noise and garbage of the day and prepared the mind for dream.

Since that conversation, I’ve followed that ritual with various volumes – Gibran’s Sand and Foam, Leaves of Grass, and Rilke’s Book of Hours to name a few.  Each brings its own brand of dreaming. I’m adding Songs for Ophelia to that short list, perhaps to walk enchanted realms in dream. Thank you Theodora Goss.  

Perle Champion