Marble Mind: Synopsis Written for Agent

When I was seven, I wrote this synopsis under my pseudonym A.G. Moore as if I were going to send it out to an agent or something. Ha!


Marble Mind

"This story is about a young girl who has a mom and dad that die from a disease and she has to go to an orphanage and one night she has a dream of her mom and dad playing marbles on a bridge of dust with mist all over, she couldn't move her feet like she was stuck in a mudhole full of snakes pulling her down so hard she kept falling, it was driving her crazy because she kept seeing her mom and dad dancing together in slow motion and she was hearing train's whistles in her ears. She finally woke up and went to the front porch and she went walking. She hated the orphanage, she had to run away fast, so she ran in her long dress. She finally stopped in fear and confusion, she took a breath and rubbed her eyes. She felt something tugging on her dress behind her. She looked back and saw her dad crying, falling deep into the sand, grabbing and pulling him down. She stood in silence as she watched tears fall down his eyes. She didn't know if it was a dream but it was already too late. he was gone, FOREVER.

I recommend me for an author. Thank You
A.G. Moore"

Special Extra Women's article from "Home Life" Magazine

This is a rough-draft article I wrote, but didn't submit, for the "Home Life magazine" article assignment:

Women: What to do When Things Get Stale at Home

Let's face it, Ladies, seeing your husband do the same thing day in and day out would bore anyone stiff! So how does one bring a little of the unexpected, variety, back to one's threshold? I've come up with some helpful Home Life Exclusive tips:
Tip one: start organizing old drawers. In feng-shui terms, this gets the stagnant energy flowing, but I like this tip because it gets my hubby talking. You'll find all kinds of old movie ticket stubs, train tickets, fliers, calenders, general ephemera that reminds you that this man you're living with had a past, was independent, and interesting.
Tip two: Get a dog. With the passage of time, when a man's attention is somewhere else, and nowhere in your general direction, a dog is always there to fill the void. I'm sure we've all felt a little transparent to our mates. A dog is always excited to see us.
Tip three: Get much exercise in the fresh air, You'll feel invigorated and feel so good in your body that even the most irritating traits of your husband will diminish.
Tip four: Make lofty plans and outlandish dreams that you both can get excited about (if only for an afternoon) Try to generate a vibrant future together. Talk of tales of mystery and imagination, after all, anything is more stimulating than preparing meals, setting the table, and keeping house.
Tip five: Take up musical instruments that compliment each other. This could be great fun. Write some lyrics, do some duets, play free-style compositions, just dedicate some personal time to getting a grasp on an instrument. The rewards are untold and you'll be creating something together. Yes, Ladies, it's called beautiful music!
Tip six: Get a hard job. Get hired on working at something you really despise, something really demanding. Any time off you have, you'll cherish more, including your partner, who will suddenly have more charm than ever.
Tip seven: We love frightfully strong those things which we are subject to losing. Therefore, scaring your husband or threatening him with scenarios where you could be "lost" whether to other men, to an out of country job, or to a near-death accident could evoke some strong, loving emotions. What we're going for here, Ladies, is a jolt out of his heavy cloud of indifference. While playing these games seems tacky, they sometimes are the only way to feel anything at all.
Tip eight: Read in bed together. Before you turn out the lights, take turns reading pages from a book one of you picks out. You might learn something new about the world and each other.
Tip nine: Get all wrapped up together in a t.v. series. The characters, the stories, the emotions are all transporting. Entertaining diversions can help one to forget monotonous, lusterless daily life.
Tip ten: Remember, Ladies, to be adored, one must be adorable!

SNORTFACE TOUR

Something I wrote 35 years ago.
I never took drugs.


Snortface Tour

as told to awe strickened audiences.......

Old men trudged down the burnt cracked sidewalk. Piles of wounded sneezersnouts lay
beside a fresh crater and yelps of some pained creature fan out in the air. The hollow tubes
that plunge underground belch some acrid organic stench. We think that the gorillas have been dumping cadavers into them. Nearby we have an old crusty man sitting on a pile of rusting
engines who is licking stained sheets of paper that he has been dipping in slimy oil. I approach
him and he stops most suddenly to warn me of protruding snortfaces. He slobber some
black druil and accidently papercuts his sneezersnout. Then a horrible tantrum is set forth and
he bites some rotting rubber hose and begins to rub grits on his bristling sneezeersnout. Quickly
we leave and pass by a pack of hunchies, it was funny, they were all just bumping into each other
falling down and digging their lips out with tree trunks.

Finally we come the the village of Sneer, sneezersnouts are very wrinkled here. Sniffing us
through wheezy barrels of a snout with long hisses of breath, the village sneer seer inspected
our arrival. He thumped his sneezersnout with a hollow empty bonk, pulled up some long
hanging skin from his grey snout and showed us his beak-like teeth. Such an honor to please us
was his actions. Sneezersnout children were playing behind rocks pushing their sneezersnouts
through the dirt with sad eyes. Mother sneezersnout, anxious to call in the children, starts to
sandpaper her sneezersnout so she can call them in.

Some youngster comes running down the granite dusty road and he has a locust trapped
in his sneezersnout, which makes it look like a venturi opening. He just passes us staring at
the grass like he is starving to death. My gosh! Another bomb hit us and we can see that it
landed by a poor lazy snoozing man. We heard the blast adn looked over to see the poor guy
chucking his sneezersnout in the crater. It just went, -yelp-yelp-yelp, and hopped over
bleeding and blackened.

We headed for the mountains early in the morning not aware of what we might find. Miles
and days of travels we came on some strange nature. We were just passing over some bridge
by muddy banks and as soon as we looked over the railing we glimpsed some horrible snortface.
He just peeked at us for a moment with his bulging saucer eyes and hammered up
sneezersnout before he sank back into the mud. We shivered and recoiled as we saw him. We
crossed the bridge and stepped into the deep forest of skinny trees, then strange echoes began issuing around the forest. It had to be the nut-plungers far off in the distance. Sharp 'oohs' and
'aahs' could be heard as we progressed on. Then finally the sounds were very intense and as
we peered through the brush we could see furry baboon goons dipping their nuts into an ice
cold stream of water.

Out of the forest, we climbed a wall of crevices. Only something was a little wrong. The air
smelled funny and we sensed somebody else around. Then in a terrible manner, a prime
snortface peeked out from behind a crevice knawing on roots to scare us. More sniffing
snortfaces ducked from behind rocks banging their sneezersnouts with logs and stones. One
snortface began tearing the nostrils from his sneezersnout and threw chunks of whiskery meat
at our heads. Then a snortface came at us with astroturf sewed to his chin and bit us with his
cowiring breath. We ran away and watched a snortface fall out of a tree. He just came down
hitting limbs and parts of his blubbery snout were breaking off. He hit the ground making a slow
splosh sound landing on its snortface, then it got up like a pancake with a humpy expression
and hopped away from us with a coarse humming sound trapped in its mashed sneezersnout.

We agreed to chase down the snortface. Later we captured it and threw it into some
sticker bushes. It made a gaging sound and got caught right in the middle of a big patch of
stickers. It fluttered like a dieing fish while its eyes were fixed on staring at us with an
expression of an old man fluttering like a mashed toad. Well, it finally got all of it's sneezersnout
ripped off from struggling around so much in the stickers, then it just flopped over like loose skin
and hissed out groans. We picked up his sneezersnout by a loose lip and chucked it into the
weeds.

Twice Told

I found this while I was digging through a box full of stuff from my old room. It is from a journal that I had to write for English class in high school. Based on some of the other journal entries, I think it was my junior year. I don't remember writing this; I thought my post, Shift Into Dream, here on the Ditalini Press was the first time I wrote about this dream. I got a kick out of it when I found it and I thought I would share it with all of you. I hope you enjoy it, and I apologize that it is basically a repost of a story I have already told.

There is a dream that I had when I was about three or four that I think I will always remember. I was at some kind of amusement park with my parents and there were hot air balloons. I wanted to go on a balloon ride so bad, but my parents would not let me go. I was extremely upset because I could not go on a balloon ride. So I took it upon myself to get on a balloon all by myself. I thought if I got in, my parents would get in and they would like it so much that they would want to stay. So I got in the basket that was attached to the balloon, and the balloon started to go up. Remember that I was only about three in this dream and I could not have operated the balloon all by myself. I needed the help of an adult. So far my dream has been a little bit mild, and someone might think why in the world would you remember a dream like this? The next part of my dream will hopefully explain why this dream is etched into my memory.
I was going up in the hot air balloon and I started to cry, I wanted to stop going up, I wanted my parents to be with me. I was sure that they would somehow stop the balloon and bring me back down to safety. While I was crying I looked down to the ground to see if anyone was trying to stop the balloon. No one was trying to stop it. All I saw was my parents laughing and waving to me like they were glad that I was leaving. Even though they saw that I was crying they kept the smiles on their faces, and kept waving. They kept getting smaller and smaller, and when they were almost totally out of sight, I woke up.
I was sleeping on my back, and as my eyes opened it looked as if there were clouds on the ceiling. The clouds faded away, and my mom was in the room with me folding laundry. When she saw that I was awake she looked over at me and smiled.

My "Holey" Uncle

     My Uncle has always been interested in the earth.  His uncle Roger sent him a book for Christmas every year, and these books were usually about geology.  Leo doesn't know why they were about geology, but he always found the books extremely interesting.  His fascination in the earth was often manifested by his digging around, where he discovered neat things.  

     His first digging adventure occurred at the age of four or five when he was digging with a soppn in his front yard by the sidewalk.  He found something.  "I didn't know what it was, just a little nodule of some sort."  He brought it inside and set it on the radiator in the kitchen.  As it turns out, it was a grasshopper egg case.  When it warmed up on the radiator, all the grasshoppers hatched!  What made matters worse, the kitchen floor was an old linoleum with little specks on it.  "You could drop a piece of toast on the kitchen floor and lose it," he said.  All the practically invisible baby grasshoppers started hopping around the kitchen and into the rest of the house.

     He kept digging as he grew older.  He decided to dig a bomb shelter in the crawl-space of their house.  He had an electric light on an extension cord so he coulc see as he dug.  "The dirt was real hard, it's like clay when you get just down beneath the surface of the topsoil.  It's just solid clay, really hard to dig because there's no toom with the floor joists above your head.  But it was fun," he says.  Years later a mechanic came to fix the dryer vent and had to do a bit of work in the crawlspace.  He went down below, and after a couple minutes came up and said to my grandmother, "Lady, do you know there's a big hole underneath your house?"  It is still there to this day.

     My uncle soon started another hole in one corner of the backyard.  He says it was about six feet deep and roughly four feet across.  He found some near tocks and was amazed to find earthworms down there, six feet down in the solid clay.  He put a 2x6 board across "the hole," as it was named, to help prevent people from falling in.  It didn't work too well.  His younger sister tried to ride a tricycle across the board, and she fell into the hole.  He was forced to fill it in, "But, I put a cigar box down there, and I put in some trinkets.  I couldn't even tell you what I put in there, maybe a dime and who knows what else."  He was about ten or twelve.

     After these adventures, Leo moved on from the books given to him by his uncle, to those required by his professors.  He went on to get his Master's degree in Geology.  He now knows that the clay he had to dig through is termed "Glacial till," because it was deposited by the glaciers in the ice age.  He no longer has time for digging holes, but still enjoys finding rocks, identifying plants, and learning about the world around him.  

I Miss Arkansas

Thanks all of you for the opportunity to post along with you. There is so much talent here and Susan.....well....she's just awesome.

I Miss Arkansas
Sometimes I miss Arkansas. That tiny cabin built of logs and stone, and filled to the brim with the love and gentleness of my grandma and grandpa. I remember the smell of grandpas pipe, the warmth of a crackling fire, the twinkle in his eye as I sat on his lap and listened to his stories. I can almost hear the constant chirp of the crickets and the occasional sweet call of the whippoorwill. Almost see the flash of the fireflies; smell the pipe tobacco.

For two blessed weeks every year I found shelter from my fathers drunken rages and my mothers cold indifference. I received enough love those few days to carry me through the other 50 weeks of the year.

At dusk, grandpa would match his long strides to my short ones, and trust me to walk beside him as we gathered the cows from their day of grazing. He'd sit me on a wooden stool in the barn, and guide my little hands to the warm teats of a swollen udder....teaching me how to coax milk from a stubborn Guernsey. There were no harsh words, or scolding slaps. Only gentle hands and soft words guiding, teaching, lifting and encouraging me. I felt so loved and protected.

I have never since known such peace or felt such protection from life's harshness. We simply lived those two weeks enjoying the bounty of fresh meat and produce that farm work provides. Chores were done with laughter and pride. As long as one was kind and tried ones best, nothing more was asked. Perfection was not even considered , much less expected. Love was good enough. I was good enough. I never seemed to disappoint my Grandparents.

I want to be that same shelter for Boo as she goes through life. The log cabin in Arkansas is gone now, but perhaps someday Boo will look back and remember the warmth of my tiny apartment. The laughter on my balcony as we blew bubbles and did chalk drawings. The smell of popcorn in bed as we snuggled beneath the blankets watching a Disney movie.
Sometimes I miss Arkansas

New Assignment! Something Old? Something New!

Post one or more entries! Due October 30!

Having just posted something old with a synchronistic twist, would anyone like to do as well, something old and/or synchronistic? All of you probably have a treasure or two filed away! Further six-words on any topic are always welcome! Loving the connections!

Decide for Joy

I invited a self-proclaimed ‘Old Soul’ with gifted pen to take a peek at DP to see if she’d like to join. What she saw inspired her to re-start her own blog – ripple effect in motion! Visit Flutterby at www.flutterbysarefree.blogspot.com. Also, I’m posting a poem of long-ago in her honor, some of you may have seen it already. Within moments of composing the line “The ones who greet me now will help decide” Flutterby 'fluttered by' with words of comfort and encouragement. A kindred spirit revealed, synchronicity at its finest. As opposed to Homecoming which I wrote years after the events and had an 'assigned' measure of time to include a sprinkling of wordplay, this poem seemed to write itself at the time with immediacy, only needing the most minor of changes. You all are 'great ones’ . . .

Decide for Joy

And so I face the blackness once again
A result of words and deeds by mortal men
Seeking to destroy the light within
This time those words and deeds will not win
This time the light in me may not be dimmed

So let the dollars from the conversation drop
Soon see all verbal use come to a stop
Let start then all forms of ‘be’ instead of ‘do’
Flowing all possibilities for me of knowing you

And so I face me now but once removed
Burnished anew by those I hold in love
Sparks of faith add to the inner glow
Speak volumes for the words that may not show
Speak volumes for the me I’d have you know

So are the tears of sadness or of joy
Is the hope, new-found, ready to employ
The ones who greet me now will help decide
And great ones who have never left my side

Who is up for choosing the NEXT TOPIC?

If we're going chronologically, Somescallsmetims is up. Tim? Are you out there? (Maybe he has a heavy semester at Purdue.) If someone has a topic brewing inside, that needs to come out, this is the time to sing, shout it, tell the world about it....!

Caught in the moment between How and Why

I'm freaked out. I'm writing this one hour before deadline, and I don't know what has happened. I never expected to procrastinate to this point. I don't know if it's the full moon...or....

I'm still freaked out, even though I've finally begun to write. What I'm feeling is a medley of mixed emotions all linked to the assignment we were given. It shouldn't be this difficult, yet ever since father Marc posted it I have felt such apprehension...

As a youngin I had horrifying hallucinations, and I've up until recently, dealt with many ghoulish apparitions and messengers of Satan. Ha ha. You can laugh, really. It's quite hilarious. (I believe the "Satan" of which I speak, was something within me, and the apparitions? They have manifested physically i.e. breathed on me, sat on my bed, etc. To which I say, "WHA?"). I have and will always have the memories of these psychotic and spiritually grueling episodes but I'm confident when I say that there is no scar tissue! I felt like father Marc's post was confronting me...personally. Singling me out, pressuring me to reveal the demons that I've kept so quiet and unfed. I, replete with rumination, now have the courage in my fingers...but sense already within me, disquiet and regret at going outside the doors of the assignment only to turn and throw stones at it.

That's not my intention, and I admit to my weakness'. But you must know, this is a far a better choice than what I had considered writing two days ago...

The past few nights I've been browsing YouTube for claymation films and banned cartoons. I came across a handful of gems, some of which scared me to bits with their unapologetic dementia. I was impressed especially with those made in the 70's where the music was just as frightening, if not more than, the deranged masses of personified clay. I thought, "I could write my Ditalini Press assignment, based on the premise that one of these videos saw me through the most difficult time yet in my life: watching eight entire minutes of monstrosity in animated form! The REALM of claymation!" Then I realized adding a video post to our blog was a cop-out. It would prove I hadn't the capability to support my writing solely with words, that I needed another medium to fill out my story and bring life to it. I also considered that our blog is laid-back, that whatever goes, goes. But it still felt incomplete.

So now I'm here rereading father Marc's assignment details, left to answer how I dealt with my most difficult challenge. And to that I have no answer, I could be dealing with this for some time to come.

I look at the clock. 2 minutes til deadline...

I leave you with...

The woman at the Chicago painting workshop

She finally told the group what she did for a living. We were all chewing soaked-grain and yellow-split pea soup around a picnic table. She put on her straw hat (the sun was coming out.)
"I'm a nude model for the Art Institute of Chicago."
My husband asked me what she said. He's learning English. And I didn't want to tell him. I didn't want him to look at her, be captivated by her. But I did.
"elle est un modèle de nu." I said. He smiled.
The tan, concerned-faced mother from Madison asked her who she worked with.
"Floyd Berryman, Barry Hastings, Clive Constance-Wells, Anika Kravitz, all of them," she said, "I've been doing it for ten years and I'm really good at it."
"I'm sure the professors appreciate working with someone that knows what they're doing," the watercolor animal artist commented.
"They do. They tell all the younger models to come see me work and to take notes. They say I'm the best. I know how to move. I've got it."
She took a spoonful of soup to her lips and paused.

Her hair was starting to gray. When I stood behind her, I could see course, white hairs sweeping around her tumble-down bun. It wasn't her white, pore-less skin, her classical Grecian profile, or the lipstick applied to her little mouth that told me she was used to others' eyes on her. It was in her eyes. They reflected years of approving glances from men artists (after all the experts on beauty!) and a total self-confidence that came from seeing her exposed body manifested thousands of times in smudged charcoal sketches strewn on florescent lit floors. It was in her forced feminine posture that hinted, "I am my body." It was in her bawdy jokes.

"She's like a cat on a hot tin roof!" The instructor crowed as she perched one foot on the bedrail, the other on a windowsill to reach a spot on the wall that needed paint. She put her arms around him way too much.
"What color would you call this?" He asked the group, holding up a swatch of orange paint he blobbed on a board.
"Cantaloupe?" he suggested.
"What? she asked coyly, "we 'can't elope'?"
"Well, I still have three weeks left in the country," he shot back.
She let out a laugh of pure pleasure and touched his back.
When she was idle, she kept a large, unused, rectangular brush in her hands and caressed it like a cat.
The second day of the workshop, she came in very late. At five. The workshop ended at five. But the instructor was delighted to see her. The third day, she was on time and we took a tour of a Waldorf-Steiner school where she helped out with a mural.
"I added the mice," she said.
I looked closely in the salmon and pink grapefruit swirls and found little gray mice hiding in corners, under windowsills, stealing tiny pieces of cheese.
I watched her put on her straw hat again before we went out into the sunlight and she told me her favorite color was white. She said she looked good in white and that she couldn't stand to wear red because it reminded her of all the bleeding she'd done in her life. And I was wearing red.


p.s. How does this story relate to my greatest challenge? Freud could maybe find it somewhere in there, but I don't really know myself!

Greatest Challenge

Greatest challenge - mute affliction
On the bright side - learned to listen!

My Challenge

This assignment kept turning over in me.
Little voices spoke up and said, "pick me."

I guess I don't have any daunting challenges that stand out.
I can recall how I gave myself the resolution at the start of 2008 to
stop complaining and lying. This has turned to become a real challenge.

I intended to tell a wild bike racing story and my heroic efforts in this
physical trial. How I was handed a reversal of the glory I was seeking.
Challenges are as big as we want them to be.

Becoming unconditional love might be a challenge, but then again, this suggests
an opposition of some sort. I have been undergoing some tense and serious family
difficulties lately, but I have learned to realize that there are greater objectives
than what is visible out on the horizon. Being able to relax is a challenge, and a
worthy one. Trusting the divine plan without further apprehension remains
a stinger of a challenge. I occasionally find myself cursing the heavens
in mistrust. Self honesty is another huge challenge I find for myself.

I am facing the challenges I have before me and am not concerned about what
is coming next. Regardless of win or lose, wisdom and experience is gained.

Marc

The Unseen Gift

Jaguar 8, nobody with me
Sliding a pass under the bedroom door
Finding a home while climbing a tree
Finishing ditalini and asking for more

Swinging and sliding and digging a hole
Adding to Smallville day after day
Eating Special K from a Corelle bowl
Hoping 4:30 was still far away

Rolling down the hill while giggling with glee
Playing freeze tag and making mud pies
Building moss covered bridges in the magnolia tree
Thinking about next time as we said our good-byes

Yum yums, popsicles, and alphabet soup
Chasing rainbows as they flew across the wall
Throwing apples to watch them roll off the roof
Running and jumping for the attic chain in the hall

The Spy Club, A.B.L.E., Angel Heaven, too
GEEP / VEEP and the Scientific Scene
Gazing in awe when the club house was new
Flying our kite using Grampa's good string

Walking to Hills for Jurassic Park cards
Going to Kroger to cash in our change
Trying to keep our games out of the neighbor's yards
The smell of pasta sauce simmering on the range

Playing TI Invaders, Parsec and Munch Man
Alpiner, and Hunt the Wompus, too
Memorizing The Secret Garden and Peter Pan
Arriving in the morning in time for Family Feud

Two pats after every flip of a corn pancake
Cream cheese and bagels, toasted rye bread
Filming a commercial in only one take
Marching through the field, the corn well above our head

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a tiger by the toe
Inky pinky ponky, daddy had a donkey
Engine, engine, number nine, going down Chicago line
Bubblegum, bubblegum, in a dish, how many pieces do you wish?

Oh what I must have already forgotten, it is too early yet
Looking back at those days
I fear there are more things I am bound to forget
I seek to trigger my memory in so many ways

Such a special gift, these memories of childhood
A challenge to never forget or underestimate those days
My challenge to confront what I thought I understood
And pray my children's youth is as wonderful in their own ways

****()()()()()****()()()()****()()()()()****

Explanation for my post. I was working on the theory that 'everything happens for a reason', but we may not know why until later. I wrote my story because it came out of me suddenly...so, this is sort of a personal ongoing, interactive kind of take on the assignment. Thank you Luke, I liked your idea a lot. Great posts guys! They all made me....emotional. Love you all to bits and pieces, under the sun.