Spousal Support – Sort’of

My husband Earl joked that I would take pen and paper with me to the grave. He’d tolerated a lot of time when I would sit at my computer to type while he played golf. Most mornings, I would finish about eleven and walk out on the golf course to join him as he finished his last four or five holes.

We had both retired when we married. He’d been wintering in southern California, enjoying 18 to 36 holes every day under the endless blue skies of the desert.

He had earned the privilege, having started in the woods as a boy. He was a high climber while in his teens and had spent decades logging, buying and selling land.

An avid reader, he was never an author—with one exception of which he was very proud. He kept a copy of his letter to the editor that had been printed years before. But if writing wasn’t his forte, he smiled at my endless hours trying.

You can read more about the wonderful, charismatic man Earl was in my book EARLY: Logging Tales Too Human to be Fiction here.

Tiered Colors

tiered colors
of the sky
touch my soul
as the double-arced rainbow
or the gold horizon
layered with pink and mauve
glimpses of blue
between purple-gray clouds
stretched to contain fullness
of loving hope and promise

Classic Case of Owing

It’s been suggested that as I work on a script that I play tapes of music from the period I am writing about. To get into the mood of the time. And sometimes I do. But there is something about classical music. Something enveloping in the intertwining rhythms. Something in the blends and harmonies of vastly different instruments reaches for richer meanings in my writing.

The effect is subtle. I am not truly aware of what is being stirred in my mind. Or of what connections are being made with memories or experiences or the flow of words. But if I ever create a best seller, I will need to mail my local classical radio station a substantial check in gratitude for what is going on around and within me as it plays.

For me, it is one of the joys of writing to have created a personality with the gumption to yell at me. Not so much fun when characters in my non-writing life contradict or holler at me, though.