Back at the Blog Again: One of my Newer Stories and a Return to the Old

Yogini deep in practice

A blog is something you want to keep going at an established pace and keep up forever. But, as with all things, life tends to intervene. I've neglected my blog for a long time, and now it's time to start it up again, rekindle the fire, and begin my practice once more. "Practice" in the vocabulary of yoga means training, doing postures, maintaining your regimen of exercise, perfecting your mastery of the discipline. I have not done yoga very much the last few years, and my joints show it. They're stiff and inflexible as a result of neglect. In the same way, I haven't published my blog for a few months, and that seems to have affected my expressiveness.  I usually write about stories I have published, and my blog is subtitled, "My History as a Writer." This one, the kick-starter, will be a discussion of what I have published recently, and after this one, I will go back to a weekly post on what I've published in the past. 

The reasons I've neglected my blog:  mainly, my job teaching as an adjunct professor at a local university. I like teaching. I've done it all my working life and was once a full professor. A series of circumstances led me to resign from my professorship and begin teaching part-time. It was by choice and not by choice--a story I don't care to share. At any rate, preparation for two sections of African-American literature, a class I had not taught before, and one I was asked to fill in for, took up a lot of my time. I regularly teach a class called Literature of American Minorities, which always features a section of African-American Literature, and so, when the regular teacher of the class (who is African-American) could not teach it, I was the likely candidate to fill in.

And it was a wonderful class. Like most readers, I had encountered the African-American literature that gets anthologized a lot:  "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden, "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks, "The Gilded Six-Bits" by Zora Neale Hurston. But the Norton Anthologies of Early and Modern African-American Literature presented works I had never read and authors I had not encountered. I read the poetry of Melvin Tolson (whom I had never heard of) and Ethridge Knight (whom I had heard of but never read). Both were magnificent poets, but they were new to me. I had read Gwendolyn Brooks, but never her novella, Maud Martha. A lot of new literature kept me busy. For another class I taught, I picked out some new books:  H Is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr—excellent books but reading them was time-consuming. 

So the blog suffered. Now it’s summer and I can get back to blogging. I’m going to talk about a recent publication and then next week I’ll get back to my anatomy as a writer. 

My latest publication is a story called “Azalea,” and it appears in the April issue of Amarillo Bay. That journal is special to me because my first-ever story, “The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake,” appeared there, when I first began writing fiction back in 2006.

Erina

It is the story of a Japanese-American graphic designer who is attracted to the CEO of his company. The social gap between them, however, is insurmountable—until one of his friends, the CEO’s cousin, asks if he would like to meet her. Jeremy and Erina meet. He mentions his love for Japanese poetry and quotes a line by the great haiku master Basho:  Cold, white azalea / lone nun / under a thatched roof. Erina reacts to this, they talk, Jeremy invites her to an exhibit of his art, and is astonished she accepts. 

Their romance develops. He learns, too, that Erina’s mother wanted her to be a Buddhist nun. She would not consider it, they quarreled, she went to college in the US to get away from her mother, and her mother died, the two of them unreconciled. He is surprised to find out that Erina—despite her beauty, wealth, and the glamor of her role—hardly dates and is still a virgin.  

As their relationship develops, he asks if she will pose for him. He wants to use her as a model for a painting representing the poem by Basho. The painting enables her to put the disagreement with her mother behind her. Art can bring healing through revelation of the soul. 

Here is a link to the story "Azalea." And since I mentioned the first story I ever published, “The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake,” here is a link to that. They’re both good, stories, long ones, and reading them will enhance your lives. 

More to come. Next week I’ll talk about an old story, “The Gaia Proposition.”

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #56. "Iris."

Most every adult who has raised kids will smile at the spike in their knowledge of music that occurs when the kids are teenagers.  I grew up listening to sixties- and early seventies music—Doors, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Motown. Then my interest in what was popular fell off. But I know nineties music because that was when my children started listening to the top groups of the era. Their music played in the house, in the car, and I heard it all the time. So: Blues Traveler, The Goo-Goo Dolls, Smash Mouth—a whole range of artists from this era—are quite familiar to me.

One of the groups from that time that especially impressed me was the Goo-Goo Dolls. I think Dizzy Up the Girl is one of the best pop albums I've ever heard. And, as often happens, one of the songs that group did inspired a story—and a story about something I don't write a lot about. It is the tale of young woman who is struggling with cancer and has just finished chemotherapy. I know there are journals dedicated to this type of medical story, but I had not explored the genre much. But the song "Iris," which I especially liked, and, with millions of other people, loved the line "you bleed just to know you're alive," got me thinking of how that particular song might relate to someone's life. The story "Iris" rose from my musings

Robin Bennett has just finished a punishing round of chemotherapy. The results have been promising: the tumor is gone; she is cancer-free. But she has lost all her hair, lost weight, and is only now recovering her strength. Further, she has had to take a hiatus from her job. Her fiancé has dumped her after learning of her affliction. And the severity of her treatments forced he to move out of her apartment and in with her parents, who are vastly overprotective (she is their youngest child, their only daughter, and her brother is away working in the Middle East). Now that she has begun to feel better she chafes at their elaborate caution, though she knows it arises out of love for her as their child.

Sinead O'Conner

While looking for a CD with song "Iris" on it (she likes the song and relates to the line I quoted earlier), the scarf she wears to conceal her bald head, falls off. A young man, John, picks up for her. She is embarrassed and says, mostly to keep from bursting into tears, "Look pretty weird, don't I?" To her surprise, he says she looks cute and reminds him of Sinead O'Conner. They chat. He is friendly and tells her he and his friends—guys and girls—get together at a bar every Saturday night for drinks. Would she like to come? She says she might like it and he goes her way. Her father, who sees him depart, gruffly asks who that was and why she was speaking with him. Robin's frustration builds.

Despite her parents objections that she is too weak to go out, should not be drinking, and should not meet with a man she did not know, Robin goes anyway. The meeting is a success. She and John begin dating and enter an intimate relationship. She begins working at her old job as a loan agent in a bank. She feels stronger. She is optimistic for the first time in months. She moves back into her old apartment and sees a future—she had doubted she even had a future at times—beginning to take shape and holding some hope. Above all, she is no longer lonely.

But her father is suspicious. When very sick, she provided him with a key to her apartment, and he has refused to give this up. He goes there when she is away at work and find evidence (two sets of breakfast utensils in the drainer, a pair of condom wrappers and tissue-cloaked used condoms in the trash). He decides he will go after John and heads to his place of work. Robin happens to be there to meet John for lunch, sees her father, and follows him, her anxiety building. This triggers what her parents had feared:  a seizure brought on by stress. She collapses and ends up in the hospital.

The medical emergency is not a bad one. Her father is there and realizes his behavior brought on the seized. He has met John in the waiting room, apologized to him, and found him a likeable young man. Father and daughter are reconciled. Her father discerns the error in how he has treated her. John takes her home, where he will join the family for supper. As they drive, Robin asks him to put a CD in and play "Iris" for her.

"Iris" appeared in a journal called In Stereo Press. I can't find the story or an archive. It was interesting that I submitted it to a couple of journals that published medical stories. One rejected it. One accepted it and then reneged on the acceptance. But it found a home.

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