The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Losing Time

Friday, July 17, 2009

Losing Time

I haven't been around these past week or so due to dental surgery that I thought would be just annoying. I didn't realize it would be so extensive and that I would have to take pain pills that left me an insane person, living on the couch and jotting down outline notes like this:

birds, with the field, not within the scope, seven isotopes

At the time, I explained to anyone who stopped by my cushion how this was going to be an amazing novel, very similar to the writing of Bram Stoker.

Who?

He wrote Dracula which is the only horror book I ever read that I liked. I have absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

I had to spend more time on the couch than I liked (which is none; I am kind of the opposite of a couch potato), but the kids were great. They made tortellini dinners with Ragu and I am now not sure if I can ever eat a Lean Pocket again. Ever.

I alos made some great discoveries about American tv -- I now know -thanks to late night infomercials - that there is a new science termed YOUTHOLOGY. Seriously.

By now, I'm down to one pill a day and a sore lower jaw, and my writing notes make a bit more sense. We've had some fun, though. Baby Cat (aka Cara) the one who went to live in a basket after the arrival of the kittens -

They are so cute; here's just one more:

Anyway, Baby Cat decided she had had enough of not being the baby any more, and she decided to make a break for it when one of the kids' friends opened the door. We all ran after her, and ended up on the lawn of the Squids.

The Squids are our neighbors, the ones in the scary house that is always dark (hence, like a cave) and Emma claims the tree in their front yard is shaped exactly like a squid. We've never actually SEEN the Squids, but Baby Cat ran onto and then under their porch and we all followed. I stood right in their yard and yelled over to the kids, "The Baby is under the Squids' porch." This sentence must have sounded very strange to anyone who heard it, and I would not have hollered that right there in their yard had I not been a little assisted in my loss of inhibitions. Maybe it was thinking about Dracula, and standing there under the moonlight that made me howl that. That, plus the narcotics.

After hearing this, Emma backed away from me without bothering to turn around and Philip ran very, very fast away from all of us. But Christopher ventured under there, coming out with a dried spider attached to the shoulder of his t shirt (this discovery caused Emma to shriek when he came back inside the light), but he did have Baby Cat in his arms.

And I wonder why the neighbors think we are odd.

I can't imagine how folks who dabble in pharmaceuticals get anything done. That sense of losing time makes me feel so defeated; how do you write under the influence of anything? But I'm back. I had a lot of help in recovering:

Philip's about 175 now. Guess I'm going to have to develop stronger leg muscles.

12 comments:

Glynis Peters said...: LOL crazy? Oh well yes ok maybe a little LOL; Saturday, 18 July, 2009
Adrienne said...: Aw, no more goofy comments? ;)

I'm glad to hear you're feeling better. And how great of your kids to help out. I like the occasional Lean Pocket - it's way too easy...; Sunday, 19 July, 2009
Christy Raedeke said...: I really think you need to tap into whatever it was in your brain that outlined a book as "birds, with the field, not within the scope, seven isotopes" because I'd totally read it!

Also, your baby cats are almost as gorgeous as your new profile pic. Love that.; Sunday, 19 July, 2009
K.C. Shaw said...: At least if the Squids overheard you yelling about them, you have the perfect excuse for not making sense. "Sorry about that, I was on drugs." :)

I'm glad you're feeling better!; Monday, 20 July, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: You are so right, Glynis. It IS a little crazy that Squids moved right across the street from us. Who knew?

Adrienne, I can't even pass Lean Pockets in the store now without feeling the tiniest quell of nausea. And the kids did help out. Of course, they loved the fact that I couldn't be the clean-your-room-brush-your-teeth Mom for awhile, and after clearing the table they ran off for three hours of uninterrupted MySpace or SpongeBob marathons.

I think I would have to smoke some opium to retrieve that novel, Christy. I put Dracula on again (the one with Wynona) so there's some connection there. I've never written a horror story in my life and I generally avoid that genre along with Westerns and Nicholas Spark. (Is he married to Danielle Steele?)

And thanks for the profile pic comment. Philip did that (I think he fooled around with the exposure). It was so flattering when he yelled, "Mom, I found one where you can't see any wrinkles."
Love that kid.

If the Squids spoke to us, that would be amazing, K.C. Squids can't talk, except on SpongeBob, right? Seriously, we all ran to the window once when they put their garbage out, but we couldn't see them. I think everyone in the neighborhood ran to the window when they heard noise from that house.

Yeah, you're right, not a whole lot goes on around here...; Tuesday, 21 July, 2009
Mary Witzl said...: Oh, those kittens are SO CUTE! We've been catless now for almost two weeks and it's horrible. And we can't get another cat because we're going back to a place with a no-cats line in the lease...

Whenever I'm out of it, my husband makes 'Chinese' food. Which means we end up with half a dozen bottles of various sauces and several packages of bean sprouts in various stages of decrepitude. I too have been out of it lately: Lean Cuisine sounds pretty good.

175? You're doing better than I'd be doing under the circumstances! But even 175 lbs of kid on your lap are worth it.; Tuesday, 21 July, 2009
Nora MacFarlane said...: I love your blog. You always give me a laugh. BTW, the kittens are adorable!; Wednesday, 22 July, 2009
Carrie Harris said...: Hah! I used to keep a notebook by my bed, and a few times I woke up with the Best Idea Ever, jotted it down and fell back asleep dreaming of the awesomeness. Inevitably, it was just as wonky as your drug notes.; Thursday, 23 July, 2009
Anonymous said...: Hey Anne! I just saw a book, The Light of Ferns???? on the amazon uk site and i wondered is that yours? When did it come out?

(Remember you said I shouldn't be shy about commenting yr blog? :)))

-Meggers; Thursday, 23 July, 2009
Katie Anderson said...: LOVE the new profile pic as well as your freakish isotopal ideas! LOL

Hope you get off the couch soon :-); Thursday, 23 July, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: 175 pounds of what used to be kid, Mary, but he's like one of those giant dogs who doesn't get that he's not a Pekinese and hops on laps. Catless? That's terrible :(
Hopefully your next place will allow them.

Thanks, Nora! I have more pix of the kittens on my phone than of my kids.

I know those middle of the night epiphanies, Carrie. It makes such SENSE at the time and it sounds so brilliant. If only it made sense in the light of day.

Hey, Meggers. I didn't know there was an amazon.com uk -- duh. My second book is called "Light Beneath Ferns" and it's coming out in February, 2010. I didn't think the book was available yet, but I'll go check after I was doing this. (And great, your first blog comment is behind you now!)

Thanks, Katie. I'm back now and the couch is no longer my home.; Friday, 24 July, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: 175 pounds of what used to be kid, Mary, but he's like one of those giant dogs who doesn't get that he's not a Pekinese and hops on laps. Catless? That's terrible :(
Hopefully your next place will allow them.

Thanks, Nora! I have more pix of the kittens on my phone than of my kids.

I know those middle of the night epiphanies, Carrie. It makes such SENSE at the time and it sounds so brilliant. If only it made sense in the light of day.

Hey, Meggers. I didn't know there was an amazon.com uk -- duh. My second book is called "Light Beneath Ferns" and it's coming out in February, 2010. I didn't think the book was available yet, but I'll go check after I was doing this. (And great, your first blog comment is behind you now!)

Thanks, Katie. I'm back now and the couch is no longer my home.; Friday, 24 July, 2009

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***