Sanibel Writing Conference Exercises

Posted on November 8, 2013 by McPhedran

The Writing Conference on Sanibel Island, Florida is underway.I have begun the day with some writing exercises, led by John Dufresne:

1. Write what you are feeling right now:

Still the pain in my back, the lower blade, dull, deep. Don’t want to move my arm the wrong way. It’s an odd big room with glass doors bringing clanging light in.

2. Expectations for the conference:

Above all, get someone interested in “my bad side”, any thoughts, any moment that will lead to that. Meeting people seems to be the key, getting anyone to know who I am so that the next email isn’t trashed without a decent look. I am always very happy to be given the time, space and freedom to write in any way, for “Anori”, anything else, and revising “bad side”

3. Reflections on childhood, remembering/imagining a moment before going to school, even your first memory:

The water was far away, everything was, through the fence, looking below, imagining what it would be like to be on that floating log, or was that even remembered? The monorail turning high in the sky, metal and glass and movies on the curving wall, the sun coming in the outlet.

4. Who was your first friend?

Ronald was a bear with a big face, flatter than he should have been, little chubby arms and a long hanging belly, tiny legs. I stuffed my things in his back. Charlie was there too, a sad little monkey puppet with a hard bobbling head and cheap brown cloth for a puppet body. They were always together, Charlie inside Ronald, always there on my bed, beside my pillow and then in my closet. I don’t remember not having them, getting rid of them. I wish I did. I probably forced myself not to remember that, growing up and throwing them away.

Airplane Window

Posted on November 6, 2013 by McPhedran

I was on a long flight, the in-flight movie about hapless criminals, depressing. I stared out of the window, the drone of the plane’s engines coming through the fabric walls, and tried to imagine the ocean below. I pictured the ice bobbing in the swells but had the smell of the plane in me, antiseptic, and nothing of that smell was in the ice, and opened my eyes, the interior lights off, and it came to me, that pristine crystalline moment of a thought, something from nothing, the genesis of a book – prostitutes driving across the United States in an 18-wheeler. That was it, prostitutes in an 18-wheeler. And west; they were going west. I knew that too. I had my book just like that, in the thin light, timeless, constant, an arctic summer, my hand down the plastic handle, on the plane over the stark Greenland mountains.*

*Extract from Buzz

Vegas: All That’s Bad

Posted on October 11, 2013 by McPhedran

Forget “What Happens in Vegas….” It’s cliched out.How about this instead: “Vegas, All That’s Bad.”.Or maybe not.

Al Worden: Reflections in Lunar Orbit

Posted on October 9, 2013 by McPhedran

While fellow astronauts of Apollo 15 explored the lunar surface, Al Worden piloted the command module. His solo journey in lunar orbit lasted three days. I didn’t feel lonely or isolated. I was much more comfortable flying by myself than with others. In fact, I most enjoyed the back side of the moon, where Houston couldn’t get hold of me on the radio. The moon looked enormous from such a low orbit. I glimpsed tall central peaks of craters before I saw the surrounding low rims. With no atmosphere to soften the view, every crater and boulder was sharp and crisp. Mountains cast long slashes of blackness across the landscape, and features stood out as if I had placed a flashlight against a rough stucco wall. The moon was overwhelmingly majestic, yet stark and mostly devoid of color. Every orbit, however, I was treated to the sight of the distant Earth rising over the lunar landscape. (Pages 188-92, Al Worden, Falling to Earth.)

Being Las Vegas – Extract from “my bad side”

Posted on October 7, 2013 by McPhedran

I wanted to lose all of my money and played craps.* I was Big Tyree. Everybody loved that. I watched the dice snap up against the wall, knowing they would be like that, not gambling, winning money, trying to win, but more of a story in my head, the numbers one after the other, each into the next – 4, 6, 12, 11, 3, 6, 8, 9, 4, 7, 7, 9, 8, 6, 5, 4, 9, 9, 7 – a sequence meaning something I didn’t know but wanted to see how it would turn out, and played each one and took my money and had a stack of chips, so many of them. It was funny, but I had to get rid of a guy and went up to my room and thought about how I loved being in Vegas where it was just numbers and chips and money and nothing else but that. *extract from my bad side

Ancient Ice: my bad side excerpt

Posted on August 22, 2013 by McPhedran

I was cold and afraid. It was too big or I was. I leaned forward to get my sense back and banged my cast against the gunwale. The sound echoed back, low, like the closing of a door, and the white wall went out of focus and I blinked to make it clear and it was broken, the spires gone, what looked so small and distant, and dissolved like a monster into the water, splintering in a massive rush, dissolved like snow. Part of the other side slipped off too and another shelf, each part vanishing into the water. It spat back up in a lurch of bright blue and ice, rushing out of the darkness right at us. My head was empty, my hands balled tight. Ray ran in a short heavy stride to the cabin.

“Take that, b’ys.” Charlie slid the oars to Fitz and Tommy, and they dug them through the water, hardly moving the boat. Another section of the iceberg rose up out of the water, dripping, and collapsed. The vibration of it came up through the water into the boat’s floorboards, a humming, hollow and deep, a pure force, and then a rising in the water, a vast dark thing, coming toward the boat. Ray couldn’t get the boat to start, and as much as everyone was doing, scrambling and pushing and turning, banging, no one spoke. The silence was louder as the wave rolled up to the bow, Apollo and I there, and pulled us up, higher, steadily to the top and back down again. The second wave was bigger. We couldn’t see what was left of the iceberg now, everything gone, and I was almost panicked, thinking it was too high and we would go under. We rose up, the stern coming up past us, shards of ice at the bottom of the next wave. I stepped back with it, thinking it was easy now, and lost my balance as the third wave came, almost as big, and my foot was sliding out and I was fine with that, and would have hit my head against the bench if Fitz hadn’t caught my arm and put me back on the bench. “That’s 10,000 years old,” he said. “It was snowing 10,000 years back and then it got all packed and floated down here. 10,000 years of history that is, before the Vikings, before the Romans, before the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Incas, the Mayans, everybody. People had just got out of the caves and begun the farming then.”

Facebook: “Liking” technology above all else

Posted on August 13, 2013 by McPhedran

My facebook subscription to NASA provides updates on space missions as well as remarkable photographs of the universe. NASA also posts photographs of our planet, including a recent shot of forest fires in Idaho. This photo has been ‘liked’ by over 2,212 people, to whom I posted the following comment: Facebook is weird. Why would you ‘like’ these images? The electronic world just makes everyone further and further from what is actually real.

Moose Mellios replied: You can appreciate the technology of an image without liking the subject.

I posted a reply – That is what I mean; we are distancing ourselves from the subject – but I get the feeling that Moose, and many others in facebook world, just won’t get the point.

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

The Stone Eggs of Djupivigor, Iceland

Posted on August 9, 2013 by McPhedran

Sigurdur Gudmundsson’s stone egg sculpture, an homage to bird species from the area, looks out over the bay in Djupivigor, Iceland. Although initially intriguing, the polished rocks come across as sad, almost pathetic, juxtaposed against the dominating landscape. The topography of Iceland is a tough act to follow.

Thorbergur Thordarson’s Memories of Iceland: The Stones Speak

Posted on August 8, 2013 by McPhedran

Thorbergur Thordarson is one of Iceland’s great writers. Sadly, little of his work has been translated into English, and what little has seems only to be available in Iceland. His autobiography, The Stones Speak, recounts his childhood in the hamlet of Hali at the turn of the 20th century, detailing the tiniest aspects, including every person, animal, building and room of his young life, as well as his profoundly personal relationship with the land and rocks.

Many things in this landscape had names that made you stop and think and stirred your emotions. There was a story behind them, but it had usually been forgotten. This is why thinking about them was always just as exciting at the end, as in the beginning. (191) I enjoyed listening and talking to rocks when I came up to them, and sometimes I pressed my ear to them and listened to hear if they were telling me something. For me it was quite natural to think that you could hear voices from them and understand their thoughts if you just listened hard enough and were astute enough to understand. (239) Is it possible that the rock has really stood there for a thousand years? Just think! To stand in the same position for a thousand years! What an eternity is the life of a rock. (251)

Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik, Iceland

Posted on August 5, 2013 by McPhedran

Hallgrimskirkja – or Halgrimur Church – sits on a hill overlooking Reykjavik, Iceland. Views atop the church afford a 360-degree perspective of the sprawling city. However the 15-meter tall organ is the greatest attraction. Organists frequently practice their craft, providing makeshift concerts and a magnificent means to contemplation.

my bad side

a writer's blog

Category Archives: other places