How To Dig Your Father's Grave

We got our six chicks yesterday!  Max immediately named one Anna, and another one Bob.  Then Philip came in and named on Mohawk.  I hate mohawk hairstyles (always have, even back when it could have been supposed I would like them,  I did not,  I hate all versions of mohawks,  just want to make that abundantly clear) so I will call her Mo instead.  But this sparked a chick name brainstorm between Max and Philip that included these gems:

Doo-boy, Leroy, Larry, Carl, Carlito, Jamie, Boo-doy, Bouffant, Curly, and Spikey.

If we're going along those lines then I may have to name one Cooch in honor of the weird insistence Oregonians have of pronouncing "Couch Street" as "Cooch Street".  It gets me every time.  Perhaps they figure that if "Proust" is pronounced PROOST, then it's obvious that couch is cooch. 

We also got pea sized hail for about 10 minutes!! 

People who've seen golf ball sized hail up close and personal will not be impressed. 

Max and I went out and stood in it like idiots just like we do when it snows- it was fantastic! 

Also kind of painful. 

The "word" floggerific just crashed my head. 

Which belongs in the same universe as hair shirts.

Max was sick this morning with a bad sore throat which has apparently improved dramatically because by 12pm today he claimed boredom.  This morning Philip and I were talking about politics, as we often do, and Max joined in as he often does.  Nine year olds joining in political discussions must be frequently be tempered with careful explanations about the moral grey area that exists within all political parties and historical events.  I actually found myself having to explain to Max that not all Nazi's necessarily were quite as evil as Hitler himself just as not all American soldiers think we should have declared war in Iraq.  It was difficult and surreal.  Of course everyone wants to say that all Nazi's are evil and but that's like saying all Republicans are evil.  Which is patently untrue. 

I found myself explaining how everyone thinks their own side, their own views, or their own agenda is better than everyone else's, which is merely a matter of perspective.  Who is evil is often more a matter of opinion than of fact.  No one argues that Hitler was evil because he organized one of history's largest acts of genocide.  Iraqis see Americans as evil.  Are they wrong?  It's all shades of grey morality and viewpoints  being skewed to suit ourselves and justify whatever agenda we have and think is right.  Absolutely everyone engages in the grey area and rarely is life or it's conflicts a simple matter or right or wrong.

So here it is, Thursday.  I haven't worked on my book in over a week and I'm getting antsy.  I feel like these days every day is a complete frantic scramble to get a minimum done.  Meanwhile this whole separate fictional world is clamoring to be listened to and transcribed.  I want to come home and write tonight after Kung Fu but by then it will be 9pm.  Will I be able to jump into my chair upstairs and ignore my Johnathon Kellerman book to work on my own?  I need to get knee deep in the work. 

No matter what other things I'm doing, juggling, or thinking about, this is something that must move forward. I feel a pressure to set it down before I lose it or someone else finds it.  It's one of the few pressures that I find unpleasant.  Sitting down to write a book is not a negative pressure but it does take a tremendous amount of energy and concentration.  I've made three false starts to this book before finding the right one.  Even saying I've found the "right" start is misleading because it may take a few more rewrites even to get the introduction to deliver what I need it to.

I was weeding yesterday and conversations and revisions of previous ideas were going through my head and it felt like my characters were moving ahead of me in their story, barely waiting for me.  I thought "If only I could go in and write this all down right now!" but when I came inside there was food to make, my kid to hang out with, dishes to do, and Kung Fu to take Max to.  By the time I got home from Kung Fu (Max's class, not mine) I was beat already.  We had to keep checking on the chicks and more dishes, Max to feed, and then I just wanted to fall into bed. 

I could hear the footsteps of Cricket and Grey running off in the night without me.

Disconcerting.

So tonight, I need to find my way back to them.  I've only just begun and I don't see how I'll find the time to catch up with the story which keeps on living and moving and existing without my pen.

I want an opinion from any of you who care to share yours (do any of you truly NOT like to share your opinion?!) about relationships in books and/or movies.  I am trying to build one in this book and I was thinking of all the relationship traps that writers fall into that annoy me.  I was wondering which ones annoy you?  For example: I hate it when writers write two lead characters to have sexual tension in an antagonistic relationship and tease you constantly with the possibility that they might get together because they obviously like each other but then they just end up pushing each other away in an agonizing, torturous push-me-pull-me routine (think "Moonlighting" or Maggie and what's-is-bucket in "Northern Exposure").  Or if they do get together they continue to have only antagonistic tension, usually the get together is brief and they declare it to be a mistake.  I find that tedious.  Or sometimes they really get together but then have nothing NOTHING but difficulties staying together as unfortunately written between Tommy and Helen in the Lynley mysteries written by Elizabeth George.  I LOVE her books, love them, but I hated that relationship.  It was torturous, tedious, and I just wanted to hit both those characters over the heads for being such idiots.

So obviously I don't want to write my two main characters to have that kind of relationship.  I expect many of you to have different ideas of what you find enjoyable in fictional relationships.  I know some people really love that very thing I just told you I hate.  Otherwise writers wouldn't do it so often.  That's a very popular model of fictional relationships.  Please open up and tell me what your fictional relationship pet peeves are.  Or if you prefer to discuss only positives, tell me what kind of fictional relationship style you enjoy the most.

But mostly I like to hear pet peeves.  (More revealing in many ways than positives.)

Today, for those who are interested, I offer up the beginning of of chapter one of Cricket and Grey.*  I probably won't share a lot of this work as I go along** but it seems strange and kind of mean to talk about a project all the time and then not give some taste of what it is and what it's becoming as it evolves.  I feel like so many of my online friends come with me on so many of my different adventures and misadventures, it seems natural to share some of the fiction as well.

So this is how the story begins...

How To Dig Your Father's Grave

 

 

          When your father, who helped bring you into the world (whether you are glad for it or not), is laid out on your living room floor made of dirt, as dead as your mother gone 5 years now, you must first clean his body.  How much time you will have to accomplish this sad task depends entirely on when he died and whether or not you are one of the few who still have the money to embalm your departed.  If your father is laid out dead on a dirt floor, it can be assumed that you don't have the money to embalm him and therefore must work quickly, for nature takes back what she gives with compelling speed. 

            You will need warm water, not for him who cannot feel it, but for you who have a long night of digging ahead of you.  You will need clean rags.  In truth they need not be especially clean if you can't find any, it is more a matter of respect than it is of necessity.  Your hands will thank you for warm water and clean rags.  You must clean his skin.  Even if it seems useless for the dirt that will soon touch every cell of his skin and quickly claim it as was always going to be the case.  You must clean his skin because your mother would have wanted you to set him in his grave as clean as she remembered him.

            Once you have carefully washed his body, as though he had in the end become your own child, you must dress him.  Not in his best suit, because there may yet be cause to need such fine garments, but in his favorite most loved clothes.  The ones he felt most at home in, because you want him to feel like himself in his strange new darkness, but for your dead mother's sake be sure they are clean.  It is to be hoped that you don't need to do laundry on the night you dig his grave.

            Dressing a corpse is a difficult task when there are several pairs of hand; with just one pair it is near impossible.   During the first 24 hours after death, when a corpse is as stiff as a plaster mannequin from rigor mortis, bones may need to be broken to get arms in sleeves.  It is to be hoped that this exigency is unnecessary, for a daughter never wants to break her own father's bones just to present him to the great dark crust of earth that will soon swallow him whole. 

            You will then gently roll him aside so that you can push the rough wood stretcher beneath him for carrying out in the morning.  Rigor mortis will impede you once again, making this a surreal task.  You will have already laid a shroud across the stretcher so that when you roll your father's body gently back to rest comfortably for the night you can wrap the ends of it across his body and face so that the insects that have already divined the secret of death in your house cannot insinuate themselves into your short mourning. 

            You will need a sharp shovel.  If it's not sharp enough you will need to sit down on your porch with the sharpening stone, in the approaching dusk, and grind it just as your father showed you how to do when you were no more than ten years old, back before you knew that mothers and fathers die.  When the shovel is fit for digging, mark out your spot.  Until you have dug many graves you must mark the corners with string and stones or you may dig a hole that would be undignified to bury a body in.  Beyond this I can only instruct you to dig.

            You have no time to waste now.  The only thing left to do is to lift the blade of the shovel high and bring it down to the earth with force.  The sound of the blade hitting stones and slicing into the clay soil will quickly become a natural rhythm and your bones will recognize it from time immemorial; your body will lean into it as though it always knew how to dig your father's grave, as though it knew this was coming the day you were born.    It will need to be 6 feet deep and 6 feet long.  It can take a whole night to dig that deep with one shovel.  Breaks for whiskey are recommended. 

           As morning approaches, you will see the layers of soil change in color and texture the further down you go, like a deep watercolor brushed in iron-ore; you will be tired from lifting large stones from your path and over your head out of the hole, your arms will be numb with the labor, and for hours afterwards you will hear nothing but the relentless sound of the shovel against earth.  You are done when it is deep enough to allow a body to return to its mother in the padded quiet and scentless safety of the dirt, beyond the reach of night predators that may, even now, be circling your orbit of death looking for a scavenged meal.  When you are finished, be sure to put your shovel away, out of the morning dampness, and return to the house, where your father waits to be laid in the grave you dug for him. 

*Is it necessary to mention copyrights and all that?  Do I need to say to anyone who isn't here as a friend not to copy my work or my words?  'Cause if it isn't obvious, this is my work of fiction and I will bring wrath down on anyone who violates my rights or plagiarizes my work!  There, it has been said. 

**Actually we all know I probably will.