I am dedicated to my stories. I love my stories. I am so tired.

Lines to preserve, cutting them out of the present scene,

A shaft of sunlight covered the floor as I stood flush against the wall. It extended just to my toes, no further. I brushed the line between light and dark with my toe, lost in my vague, rambling thoughts, till the sound of footsteps brought me to awareness.

I see this paragraph in a studio scene instead.

As I remove so much in this story, I see the real characters and situations revealed. It is so much different than what I would write now, and yet I feel impressed by the simplicity and directness of the plot. I feel like I have a lot to learn by looking back into an uncomplicated storyline.

I am really enjoying this! Snow White is a sorcerss, Sleeping Beauty a rogue, and Cinderella, I'm not sure. She summons animals to protect her, but now that she has a long glass sword she tends toward barbarism. Detailed descriptions of their fairy-tale themed weapons ensue. The weapons all sound very pretty. I wish it was a game. It sort of reads like one. LOL.

Labels: Bible verses, treo photos

Recipe book with recipes from 1920's-present, a cookbook periodically published by the Fredricksburg PTA. Many German recipes I am longing to try. (Not pictured)

Antique reproduction cookie stamp from Kuchen Laden. I reversed the image for a better look. The Kuchen Laden merchant explained they are used to make Springerle cookies (there is a recipe for them in my cookbook), which are able to receive a detailed imprint. As the unbaked cookies sit overnight, the imprint becomes distinct. According to her, they are meant to be rock-hard and dipped in one's beverage during the long winter. There were many creepy stamps. One had four frames like an antique cartoon, telling a story I could not understand. There was a dog sitting in a chair like a man eating in one frame.

This stamp was our favorite though. I will have to share some of the cookie with my bird.

Black delight violas from Wildseed Farms. On our way out of Fredricksburg, we made a stop. I also bought a cocoa rose plant, which is supposed to bloom chocolate-brown.  

Labels: towns

Day dress for a pioneer hausfrau in early Fredericksburg.

I loved the idea of making my own cross stitch and embroidery samplers in German. I don't speak German, so I photographed what German text I could find to collect phrase ideas.

However, they do still speak German in Fredericksburg. Our museum docent told us that German is spoken in her home as it always has been. As Fredricksburg expands, interest in the German language is waning, but older townspeople are doing what they can to maintain the tradition. 

Hair jewelry made from Fredricksburg women.

Lovely German sampler.

Detail from a very large wreath made of beads and hair behind glass.

I have never seen a cross-stitch like this before. The background is punched paper, which was very interesting to me since I have never seen an old example of cross-stitch on paper. The stitching is laid over in gold thread, fine ivory cutwork and pressed ferns.

Very cute, I would love to make one of him.

I love the year in paper at the bottom of the brown needlepoint bag.

The larger piece was labeled, I think, a caddy or pouch. I was not sure if it was meant to be worn. However I think the design would make a wonderful embroidered girdle. The small pillow or chatelaine was made to match it.

Labels: towns

I loved the face of this angel. In person he looked straight into my heart. But I did not feel like he was a Catholic, more of a Greek god.

I loved his arm. Broken, repaired with marble? It looked like a wound.

The Confessional. It looks like a guillotine.

When I was younger I was enamored of Catholicism, like the sensualist Modernists were. The dark, perfumed sanctuary decorated with decadent art. The suffering, the drama.

However, my feelings are different now. I almost didn't say this, but this is my journal. I can say what I want to. I don't like Catholicism, and I never will have an immature sensualist fascination with it again. Guilt hung on my heart like lead as I looked at the stations of the cross high above me, images of Jesus suffering cartoon-like at the hands of villains. Then, dismay. I muttered some disparaging things but didn't say a hundredth of how I felt.

My heart is free. God made it so. I felt those pitiful faces and bowed forms in painting and sculpture attempting to bind it in misery. I hate guilt and self-imposed mortification. I hate some things I used to love. I see them differently now.                

Labels: towns

After our day in Fredericksburg we walked in Enchanted Rock park until evening. Trails encircled the rock, a large structure of pink granite appearing to shed layers like an onion.

Labels: towns

In a music store we found a collection of autoharps on display. I have never heard the sound of one before; unfortunately there were none to play.

In the old schoolhouse.

Scenes in an early pioneer home.

Labels: Texas, towns

Not written after 1922, can't find the exact copyright date at this time.

I think one thing this story needed was a good editor. The same kinds of things I find and quickly delete in my own work.

To me, this passage would have been far more effective if the dramatic voice had been toned down:

He dropped into a chair, burying his face in his hands, and the utter despair in his voice tore at Ann's heart. What had happened--what could have happened that Tony should seek to take his own life? Mechanically she stooped to replace the revolver in the opened drawer from which he had evidently taken it. A few loose cartridges still lay there, together with some torn scraps of paper and a blank cheque. Almost unconsciously her glance took in the contents of the drawer. Then suddenly it checked--concentrated. She caught her breath sharply and looked at Tony, a horrified, incredulous question in her eyes. But he was still sitting with his head buried in his hands, silent and motionless.

Very slowly, as though she approached her hand to something nauseous and abhorrent, Ann reached out and withdrew one of the torn sheets of paper and stared at it. It was covered with repeated copyings of a single name--sometimes the whole name, sometimes only one or other of the initial letters to it. And the name which some one was taking such pains to learn to write was that of her godfather, Philip Brabazon... Philip Brabazon... the sheet was covered with it, and some of the signatures were a very fair imitation of the old man's handwriting.

Ann snatched up the blank cheque. It was one that had been torn from Sir Philip's cheque-book. She could see that at a glance--remembered so clearly noticing the same heading on the cheque which he had given her towards her trousseau--the Watchester and Loamshire Bank. She held out to Tony the two pieces of paper--the sheet of scribbled signatures and the blank cheque.

"Tony," she said, her voice cracking a little. "What--what are these?"

The tense, vibrating horror in her tones roused him. He looked up wearily. Then, as he saw what she held, a dull red flush mounted slowly to his face. For a moment he did not speak. When he did, his voice sounded dead--flat and toneless.

"Those," he said, "are attempts on my part to forge my uncle's signature."

There are many moments like this in the story. The characters ask obvious questions or parrot back what someone just said. It makes them seem stupid. I know when I write I don't even notice myself doing it, and I do it a lot, but when I edit, I find those lines and delete them.

I disliked many things about this story, but the lesson I learned is that no matter how much the reader may dislike the characters, situations or even prose style, when the plot drives, the reader will still read. I think this story had a very good plot. The beginning introduces the problem which reaches throughout the whole story, and the problem is solved unexpectedly at the end. I was actually very surprised and pleased by the ending. I didn't think it would be very satisfying. There were many characters and tangled relationships, and they were all tied into the ending.

I had so little sympathy for one of the reaching dilemmas. The character quoted above, Tony, has a terrible gambling addiction which is certainly not solved at the end of the story, unless you consider having a friend pay his enormous debt a solution. Ann risks her love relationship to pay Tony's debt. The unexpected part is that her fiance finds out what she does and proves that he trusts her faithfulness, so if she had not endeavored to help Tony she might not ever have learned this. I mean, this story is not like real life, but if you think they way the story does, you can appreciate the ending.

I really cringed when Tony's debts were paid. The author doesn't mention what happened to him, probably for the best, since she seemed aware that reforming him was far beyond the scope of her novel.

Something else kind of off is that Eliot, Ann's fiance, was hurt by a woman who left him because he was poor. She broke off their engagement and married a rich man. However the perilous situations that Ann gets herself into put her fidelity into question, not her greed, so I don't understand why it touches his nerve so badly. It seems like a stretch, but I guess I don't know. Maybe the author knew someone like that.

Labels: reading notes

I can't believe it. I was thinking about my run last night. Things have been going so well, no problem, and I have been meeting my goals, but last night the accumulator went over pressure and my system never entered the cleaning cycle, so it was plugged with salts from my buffer. I have never been able to unplug the system with hot water, till now. This morning running boiling water through the lines actually worked. You don't know what it would have meant if I lost this system for a day or had to spend any more time on it. I was so glad I left it to rinse water and came on my break. Today is going to be extra-busy since I am also doing microbial, and the column I needed came in, so I want to prep that sample today too. Sometimes I feel like if I were older that I could have a heart attack from the rush. I'm so glad I'm not old enough to worry about that yet.

And I wrote a whole lot more about art and writing and now it is lost because my copy/paste failed, and now my break is over, but that's okay, I remember what I said... :/

Work is going to be really tough for the next month and a half. There is really no margin for error in the goal I have set. I will have to make and run at least one sample, sometimes two, every day. I am going to have to work overtime in the beginning just to leave myself a little room.

Long ago I read this story about people who colonized Venus. The storms cleared, the sun shone, and plants grew only one day every hundred years. On the day the sun was to come out some children locked the nerd (I'm sure that would be me) in the closet, and after the day was over, they let her out.

That is how I felt yesterday. I could only get a table far in Starbucks, so I didn't know what the weather was doing. I had planned to shop for my spring wardrobe and I did that very well. It took two hours, which is really a lot less than it would take in person, and the things I got were very much to my taste, but I stepped out into warmth, sunshine, and balmy air, and there was only an hour left in the day. It may sound stupid, but it hurt me so deeply. It had been beautiful all day. I did not come outside at all. And then, to spend my whole afternoon in a dark indoor place of my own will. I felt like such a fool.

Next week I am going to start going to River Legacy again. I have some old/new media projects I am going to revive this spring/summer for Winter Light.

Stories that have stayed with me--
that story about Margot on Venus
Anna to the Infinite Power
The Fairies

All sci/fi, fantasy! Apparently it was always right that I be a scientist, and write sci/fi, fantasy. Apparently I am right on track. Just about anything feels on track in the sun after a winter. All I can feel is, I made it, and before I know it, there will be sunflowers again.

I am overwhelmed with restlessness and cannot concentrate on my book. At some point this morning I truly felt my stress, and since the realization it has grown worse. I am trying to stay calm and collected, but it is so hard. I have the best things I can have this morning, my Isabel Allende book and my coffee. My Dunkin Donuts is so refreshing, my book so good, but I can't concentrate. I keep being so driven. I only want to relax.