Photo of the Day: Fire!

Another 4th of July shot. I love this so hard. I shot a TON of shots that night, but I love how the focus and light of this one are both manic and clear depending on where you look. It's just so super freaking cool. And you know it.

Photo of the Day: Fireworks

It's like a week late, but here's a little hint from my fourth of July. Being a California girl, I hadn't played with street fireworks since I was a kid. All I remembered was sparklers. Needless to say, it was quite thrilling.

Also: Fireworks bokeh is now my favorite kind of bokeh.

Backseat

All I hear is the boom boom boom of the speakers in time with the pound pound pounding of my fifteen year old heart.

Heat. Heat outside and inside. So much heat.

Windows rolled up, both my head and the car foggy from smoke.

Eyes closed. The taste of Boone’s Fuzzy Navel and saliva. My back pressing into the seat belt. Legs falling asleep. Head wedged at an impossible angle. Jeans still zipped. Shirt being worked upward by callused hands I barely know, by a smile I saw at a party, a smile I was surprised noticed me at all.

Speakers pound as if both disconnected and dictatorial. Trunk subwoofers overwhelm every object pervasively. Everything pounds along obediently, including my head.

He moves against me. Jeans against jeans. Hands fumbling, squeezing in time. Tongues wrestle.

Exciting and scary. Stupid and irresistible.

This is not the fantasy of a young poet, yearning for romantic meter and the magical seduction she’d pictured.

Not this smoky backseat of an old Mustang deaf with noise, no room but for the booming. Not the sounds of breath or sighs or even a moment for a compliment.

Yet it was not without caprice and my body was certainly not saying no.

I was not entirely saying yes either, but for now somewhere in between felt good. I’d give over to the intoxication of the night, of the heavy pulse in the thick air.

I never have to say no and he wouldn’t have heard me anyway. Eventually climbing off me. I tug my top down. Suddenly shy.

No words spoken, he ruffles his disheveled head and we climb into the front seat. As he drives me home, the windows down, wind rushing through the car, the sound pouring out, performing for the stars, he shouts mysterious words at me.

Words swallowed into sheer sound.

I shout, “WHAT?” but can’t even hear my own voice.

Home, the silence is disorienting.

I still move with the boom boom booming.

 

This was a post for the RemebeRED prompt: Write about a time that rhythm, or a lack thereof, played a role in your life. And don’t use the word “rhythm.” Maybe it’s a time that you danced to a special song. Maybe it’s a period of your life during which the days were marked by a distinct pattern. Or maybe it’s a time that you couldn’t catch your breath because life just kept coming at your randomly. It’s up to you. Let’s see if you can convey that rhythm using your writing, and not the word itself. Word limit is 600. 

This Week at Sprocket Ink

I've got some serious and some funny for you this week at Sprocket Ink. I promise you won't be disappointed. And if you are, tough titties. Pretend you like it anyway.

This week, go read:

Remembering Betty Ford
Breast cancer survivor, recovered addict, champion of women's rights, and former first lady Betty Ford, a real spitfire, has passed away at age 93.

North Dakota Might Not Be a State. No, Really.
The Brontosaurus isn't a real dinosaur. Pluto isn't a planet. And now North Dakota might not really be a state. Excuse me while my whole world collapses ...

Thanks for being awesome readers and commenting on the SI site! Me love you long time!

Learning How to Read

I may have mentioned once or twice that I'm a bit of a bookworm. And by a bit, I mean raging. I am a raging, flaming bookworm. Yeah, that sounds about right.

I love to read. I've loved to read as long as I can remember. Loved stories, loved characters and their journeys, loved words, loved the ways words can enchant and delight, repulse and dismay. Words.

What's funny, though, is I guess I had a slow start at reading. I began reading well after my peers. I wasn't struggling with how to read. I just didn't want to, apparently. I loved hearing stories, but didn't it seem like so much work to read them myself? Luckily, I went to an awesome Montessori school and I remember Mrs. Shellcroft telling my parents not to worry, that I'd read when I was ready. And once I started? I couldn't stop. I began a lifelong love affair with books.

I was a very busy child, as most of you well know, but if you were to find me in my happiest place, it was curled up with a book somewhere, probably in the back of the car driving somewhere, getting an escape for an indeterminate amount of time. All that mattered was that in those moments, I was gone into the world of my book.

I loved to read, but I didn't really learn how until years later. I learned to read at Montessori school, but I didn't learn how to read until college.

And yes, when you study literature, you are going to learn to write. You'll be expected to write more than you ever think it's possible to extract words from your tired brain. You might even take creative writing and rhetoric courses and learn to take someone else's words and analyze one tiny nugget no one else noticed was there. But the most beautiful part of studying literature is the learning how to read. No one realizes what a valuable thing that is. They see two worlds: literate and illiterate. But when you discover a deeper level of reading, a club of the literati, it opens up too many worlds to count.

In my years of college and through the several different schools I've been in, I truly learned how to read a book. How to be in it and appreciate the nuance of each author, each style, each turn of phrase. How lucky I was to have those years. Those years where reading turned from pastime to art form. How delicious is that idea? Chew on it for a second. Reading as art form. Yum.

I learned to appreciate prose that you can get lost in, words that are delicious, constructed into decadent sentences, which, regardless of their message, I can lose myself. I learned to appreciate novels that don't give anything away, that make you sit through their vaguery (my word) and wait for any nugget of sense to be magnamimously delivered.

I learned to see the technique of an author. To sense the author's presence or lack of presence, for that matter, in between the lines of text.  I learned to identify just what was happening on those pages beyond plot and characterization. I've decided that the true beauty of an author's ability is not the fantastical worlds they construct or the insightful characters they create, but what they do to a reader. They fuck with us, they delight us, they control us with tiny, tiny moments and grandiose claims. They peer at us between words and make us feel.

I'm a writer, but I've never wished to be a novelist, to author a fiction that creates. It's just not for me. I can be a storyteller. I can tell truths, I can tell my stories, even often with embellishment. But I don't create fiction. It's an incredible talent to do so.

I know I've blogged before that writers who don't create fiction deserve attention too. That we have our own talents and challenges. I stand by that. However, today I want to celebrate those who write the novel, the novella, the short story. Without them, so many of us wouldn't be the reading artists we are.

It's funny, it's someone of a symbiotic relationship isn't it? Authors need readers and readers need authors. I think that arrangement works just fine, thanks.

Saying Goodbye to Jeté

Many of you already know that Jeté is gone. About 3 or so weeks now. Losing her was a big part of why I went on blogging hiatus. I felt like I couldn't really express my feelings about her condition without getting a slew of advice that I just didn't want. And I just couldn't talk about it. I needed to do some grieving alone first.

I knew, even though I didn't want to face that I'd lose her, that she'd let me know when it was time. I knew that. And everyone around me telling me that I couldn't let her suffer and I needed to do the right thing just wasn't helping. The truth was, I'd already promised myself that I wouldn't let her get to the point where she was miserable. And I couldn't have pushed it much longer had I so chosen. She could still eat, still walk, still purr, still lots of things. But the last week, I'd come home and she'd cry at me and look at me with those huge eyes and I knew I had to make it better.

This was the most difficult thing I've ever had to do. Holding a little life is your hands is a huge responsibility and I feel it's changed me.

But there's a great organization here in Portland called Compassionate Care that comes to your home so your pet's last moments don't have to be stressed out in a car or on a steel table.

I held her little body in my arms as she passed out and then passed away and it was the most beautiful and most horrible experience.

I missed her instantly.

I miss her terribly. Oh I go on about my day and life is fine and for the most part things are happy. But her absence is still distinct. Hobbes misses her. He's so lonely, poor guy. He's been attached to my hip like he never was before, cuddles with me now, falls asleep on my hand, sleeps on my bed. Like the whole world has changed. 

How does it ever stay the same? 


For Jeté from Andrea Anthony on Vimeo.

Halftime

As if our Chiquita Banana costumes weren’t bad enough, these black crushed velvet jumpsuit monstrosities complete with colored ruffle sleeves and a satin sash around our waists, we weren’t nearly practiced. The routines were shaky at best and the dance girls and the drill girls were not getting along. And no one was happy about throwing flags. 

Yet there we were. The first football game of the season and we didn’t have a choice but to perform together. We’d power through. Hopefully not humiliate ourselves. Or kill each other.

This was going to be painful.

Halftime show.

Ready?

The first number was a blur. Count count step step toss catch step. Don’t forget to smile. Don’t hit the trumpets with my flag. Watch the drum major. Stay on time. Don’t slip on the grass. Hope we’re all remembering the steps and don’t look like idiots.

Whew. First number finished. All I had to do next was kneel, set my flag down and pick up the swing flag in front of me. So simple. One would think.

Kneeling down, the slick grass under my front leg betrayed my jazz-shoed foot and the next thing I knew I was face down on the ground.

The only sound in my ears the cackles of the cheerleading squad sitting in front of me, my ex- boyfriend among them. A laughing pile of uniformed, beautiful people, rolling all over themselves, taking utter delight in my small humiliation.

Then the next song began. All too soon.

Mortified, picking my sorry ass up, grabbing my swing flag, not looking anyone in the face for fear the tears would come, limping slightly to favor a twisted ankle, smiling so large it hurt to favor a bruised ego, what choice did I have but to continue on?

Mortification churned into anger and suddenly I was dancing the hardest I’d ever danced. Tossed that flag high. Flicked my head and flashed my smile. Pointed my toes and swayed my hips. Every second of the next two songs was precise, palpable.

Oye Como Va. Shake those hips, ladies.

Sure we still kind of sucked and my ankle was aching, but I would be damned if I’d let those laughing assholes make it worse. They could kiss my clumsy, limping, skinny ass.

Besides, later I had a sweet boy to get me nachos with extra cheese and carry me to the car even though I insisted I could walk on my own.

 

This was a post for the RemembeRED prompt: Know what's NOT funny? People laughing at you. Did someone embarrass you, your parents perhaps? Or did you bring it upon yourself? Are you still embarrassed or can you laugh at it now? Take us back to an embarrassing moment in your life.