L'aura del Campo

In your acting nightmare; Sweet Baby James

...Now the first of December was covered with snow... "Sweet Baby James" sung by James Taylor.

In your acting nightmare

Dracula appears on the big t.v. screen.
He steps out of the picture, sees you
cringing with pain. He offers to put on a pot
of hot tea, asks if he could bring you some scones.
He steps back into his castle. You blink
and he's gone, but Morticia appears with a bunch
of roses, white dripping red. She snips off the buds,
arranges the thorns, cries out, "Is the tea ready yet".
You get up to pee, make it there just in time.
You look in the mirror, see bones looking back,
brass coins in the sockets. You try to scream,
but your jaw falls and shatters the sink. You run back
to your room, dive under the covers. You hear
a bell ring and a soft gentle voice. You peek, see
Morticia smiling, holding a cup and a plate.
You say thank-you and sip the red rose-hips,
bobbing in steam. It takes sweet like czernina
and you don't see Dracula approach. "Is it
too sweet?" You say, "Perhaps a bit more cream."
He holds up a head of a woman and takes out
a spoon to catch some red drops. "I'm glad you
approve. It's my mother and I only had one."

© Kåre Enga [166.324] 2009-11-30

Sketching it out:

Montana poet, Richard Hugo (1926-1982) wrote 31 Letters and 13 Dreams. His 31 letters have influenced much of my writing over this past decade. There is a certain cadence and rollicking rhyme scheme. The 13 dreams... are different. I took a second look at them and decided that they would fit into Blood of the Garlic as nightmares. The dreams are in second person, usually have an odd juxtaposition of images. The lines are 9-12 syllables and about 18-27 lines long. They may include short sentences. Dracula, Morticia and a vampire joke from a Mexican movie "Doña Herlinda y su hijo" are mixed in the strange nightmare above. It's most likely referring to the character, Lark.

Thou:

Debi Wharton has moved to Mississippi near Memphis. Eric is holding on: "Quick family update" 

I responded to a NaNo post by Joy

I didn't keep track of my daily word count. Partly because I write by hand and wanted to concentrate on writing. I also was doing it in short-stories-vignettes about my characters and the structure only became apparent much later. I am a poet and usually write poetry of less than 20 lines, so being wordy goes a bit against the grain. Because of that, I felt I had to complete 80 such shorts. On Nov. 22 I had written 64 and decided if I could focus for 4 days I could do it. I did. The last 16 pieces = 11,257 words or 2,800/day.

Were I to do this again...

1. I'd set aside 4 weeks and make daily goals of 2,500/day so that it would be done in 3 weeks.
2. November may be good for some folks; it's lousy for me. I'd pick a different month or stretch of 4 weeks. In my case December-January or July-August may be better.
3. Knowing that I can do this means I'll have more confidence and can take a day off when needed. This November, I neglected other things...

I must say that doing NaNoWriMo was an interesting trip...

More NaNoWriMo winners: mrziggles tarafouts

Me and Mine:

I wrote 4 short pieces today totaling 901 words to bring my NaNo total to 60k. One was a "letter"; 3 were "nightmares". I still have some untold stories to write. In time...

I did get out in the sun Monday for a few minutes.

Tuesday, December 1st is my friend Kevin's birthday... I miss him.

This was recorded when Kev was 9:



Montana: 43º in Missoula at 10 p.m.

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