Red Shoes

Some people might say that only a woman could write poems about shoes. Actually, I find most shoes uncomfortable, and only wear them when I have to.
But I love the shoe page at Soul Food, and the red stilettoes suggested another character entirely:

When life bites
I have my red shoes.

My beautiful, sexy, expensive red shoes.
I got them in a sale, so cheap, my dear!
Fifty per cent off and if you saw the original price
You’d just die.

Mischa was so jealous of my sexy red shoes
She almost fell off her Blahniks.
She has a shoe-drobe bigger than Guatemala, darling,
Every box labeled with a picture
Of the shoes on the front.
She takes coordination very seriously.

She’s always directing you to her feet
Showing off the latest pair –
It makes me want to pop out her champagne colored eyes
And drop them in her Martini.

But she just stared at my sexy red shoes, my dear,
And her eyes popped out all by themselves.

So now when life bites
I put on my red shoes.

Only another woman would understand.

Romancing the Ruins: Subterranean Cities

Exercise: Romancing the Ruins
http://www.dailywriting.net/RomancingRuins.htm

It's Februrary for another day and a quarter. Let's "romance" some ruins. The other day Mom had the tv on the Travel Channel, and we were only half paying attention for a lil while as I think we had Mike, Jen and Cannon here for a bit. But after they left and I'd had my lunch a show called, Incredible Catacombs came on. And indeed, the catacombs featured in that documentary were fascinating! Some were quite macabre and gruesome, others were just plain, well, incredible. All carried echoes from the past, reverberating silent voices and footsteps of former generations against the empty rock walls and ceilings. Anita Marie, a new friend of mine from Soul Food, would have loved watching it, I know.

It is one of the featured catacombs that I've chosen to romance today. Travel with me in your mind, if you will, to an ancient exotic realm in the ancient country of Turkey. To the Central Anatolian Plateau, which boundaries (the Eastern and Western) are marked by two magnificent volcanoes, Mt. Erciyes (to the east) and Mt. Hasan (to the west). To Cappadocia.

Cappadocia is unique, both above and below ground. Here the climate is moderate and the soil is fertile, but the exotic landscape owes its unique beauty and mystical magic to the wonders and elemental powers of Mother Nature herself and to erosion over time. Thousands of years ago, eruptions from both volcanoes covered the land with ash and lava, which solidified. The ash became the softer rock, or tufa, while the lava became the harder, protective cap over portions of the tufa. Over the years, erosion has done its inevitable work, carving and cutting into and eating away at the exposed tufa and volcanic rock, forming valleys and gorges and the one-of-a-kind, strangely beautiful "fairy chimneys" that set this region apart from any other.

Didn't know the fairies had set up homes in Turkey, didja? Neither did I. Actually, the strange formations get their name from the sound the wind makes as it blows through the openings. The interviewee didn't describe the sound, unfortunately, so I can't either. =os

Let us go below ground now, to a surprising new world that many (myself included) never suspected existed. To the eerie subterranean cities of Cappadocia. (If you're claustrophic, I'd suggest you stay and enjoy the fairies. I'm sure they won't mind the human intrusion. Much.)

Ok, watch your step, folks, the terrain is rough and rocky--ha ha. We'll be visiting the excavated city of Derinkuyu. Descending 18 storeys into the Anatolian Plateau--don't worry, only eight floors of tunnels are open to the public--Derinkuyu was once the temporary home (in times of attacks from invaders) of aproximately 20,000 people. There were churches, schools, homes, bathrooms, food storage...anything a community needed to survive for periods of time underground.

The eight floors of tunnels open to the public are enough to give you an idea of the sensation of living in a labyrinth like this. The ventilation shafts, circular and descending from the surface to the lower levels, bring home the scale of such an enterprise while the massive circular doors (boulders)--which were rolled across the passages and sealed from the inside by another, smaller rock against the boulders--remind you of the motivation for moving underground in the first place.

Can you not hear the echoes of generations past resounding against the stone walls, floors and ceilings in the soft orange glow of the lamps placed here in modern times? The murmurings, bartering and different conversations of the people as they went about their daily lives in a subterranean world? Can you not imagine the teacher and his students going about their lessons in the cave designated as the school? The monks going about their duties, tending to Christ's flock? The sermons given to the early Christians in the temporary underground church? And all this, more than likely, by the flickering yellow light of candles and/or torches?

I can. Even though it has long been abandoned by its inhabitants and is no longer used as a temporary hideout from would-be conquerors, Derinkuyu and its people are not forgotten by all means, they're still alive and have many stories to tell.

Derinkuyu is not the only subterrean city you can visit. There are actually 40 or so subterranean settlements in the area, though only a few are open to the public. Kaymakli, 10 kilometers to the north of Derinkuyu, is smaller and less excavated, but there are five levels accessible and the experience is pretty much the same.

Boots

Prompt: http://www.dailywriting.net/SteppingOut.htm

I loved the boot. This is my response to the prompt.


I got my boots.
I got my big bad black boots.

I walk down the street in my big bad black boots
And you can hear me comin’ in the next town.

These big boots, they got att-it-ood.
They hit the pavement like sledgehammers,
They come down like big black pistons,
They got more horsepower than a big V8,
My big bad black boots.

My boots, they changed everything.
Folk used to push me aside,
I was always the end of every queue.
Even when I got there first.
I got stood up more times
Than a shop window dummy.
I was a nobody.

Then I saw my big bad black boots,
Hangin’ off a dead man’s feet.
Didn’t do him no good, but I put ‘em on
And I felt the power drivin’ up my legs.
I started walkin’ in my big bad black boots
And folks stood aside to let me pass.

I ain’t givin’ up my big bad black boots.
I ain’t even givin’ ‘em up for nobody.
Not for Momma, not for you,
Not for that dead man that keeps walkin’ behind me,
Looking for his big bad black boots.

No sir, they my big bad black boots.
I got my boots.

Wicked Words and Spotted Dogs

Spotted Dog Sundaes
Exercise: Composting
http://www.dailywriting.net/Composting.htm



Completed February 21, 2006

I love to collect words.

Specifically I love to collect morbid, macabre, maniacal words.

I love words that bring to my mind’s eye tombs and fog and phantoms and graves and shrouds and corpses, cats, werewolves, lunatics and ghouls.

I like to say words like embalm, witch, demon, and scalpel, malevolence, mystery, zombie, wicked and wail.

I collect words that make me feel sinister, shadowy and gruesome because I write tales of the strange and supernatural and of horror and mystery.

Once I began a story for the Faraway Activity based on words from my list. Here it goes:

There is a woman who is voiceless from wailing and wasted from weeping and Death visits her from Faraway at Midnight.

“How did this happen?” you might ask me.

Voiceless, wailing, wasted and weeping made me think of an abandoned insane asylum full of abandoned souls and the story of a woman shunned by death and time came to the Land of Faraway and it festers there still.

“Why would you write something like this Anita?”

Its part of my new philosophy on writing and I like to call it “ Operation Just Because”.
I don’t know, those four little words rattled around in my head for a day or two after I listed them and by the third day I sat down and there it was.

“What is this thing you call ‘Operation Just Because ‘? It sounds like you might have an attitude problem there Anita.

Oh, that’s simple; I got tired of trying to explain why I write the things I write. I don’t know why, I don’t care why, they’re stories and they want to be told. I want to write. So it’s you basic win-win situation.

Are attitude and philosophies related? There’s one for the old dictionary. I’ll have to look that up. Before I forget:

Dictionaries are a Writer’s Best Friend.

I don’t use an on-line dictionary for this. It’s not research; it’s a game I like to play when I don’t feel like working.

I get out my well used Webster’s Dictionary and pick a word from my list. Then I list the definition I’m the least familiar with.

Here’s the fun part, I turn the definition into the first line of a story.

Here’s my word and definition- I chose it because I was a Mortician and I never would have defined this word like this:

Embalm: To fill with sweet odors.

Here’s my line:

Alissa took the small plastic bottle of light blue embalming fluid from the shelf behind her and as she unscrewed the lid the light odor of tropical fruit juice filled the air.

It’s a throw away line, but it’s true. I thought embalming fluid smelled like fruit drinks.
So keep up here, that sentence brought to my mind a mortician with her hair tied back with blue yarn and you know, I might keep her and ditch the sentence. That’s okay, because now I have a rough sketch for a character.

See how this works?

Play with words, words are your friends and if they give you a hard time and won’t work for you don’t take them out and beat the snot out of them because they won’t cooperate. Go and have some fun, blow off some steam and then see what happens.

Dance Around In Your Bones

To start you off I've set up a couple of projects.

If you want to see how I've been working the excercises I chose for myself go to:
the link on the side and click " Salon du Moscoso ".

The idea here is to treat this blog like a Writer's Journal.

Just grab an excercise from the Cafe and see where it takes you. Like the song says " take off your skin and dance around in your bones "

That means go for it.
AMM



Excercise From:Spotted Dog Sudaes
http://www.dailywriting.net/Composting.htm
Compost Words
by Heather Blakey
What does composting and writing have in common? Anyone who really loves to write knows that you have to have a lot of writing miles under your belt if you want to write a novel. Bryce Courtney wrote that one should 'never attempt to write a book until you've written one hundred long letters to ten good friends.' Julia Cameron, who wrote 'The Artist's Way', talks about morning pages. If you have written one hundred letters to ten good friends and kept morning pages for one year this represents a powerful lot of writing compost.

In the world of gardening hot rotters include things like young weeds, grass cuttings, chicken manure, horse manure. In the world of writing there is no better hot rotter than letter writing. When I first began to keep journals I always addressed my entries to a close friend. This seemed to help the words to flow.

The dedicated gardener knows that they have to provide a balanced diet for their compost heap. Most compostors add things like fruit and vegetable scraps, tea bags, coffee grounds, old flowers, bedding plants, old straw & hay, vegetable plant remains, strawy manures, young hedge clippings, soft prunings, perennial weeds, gerbil, guinea pig & rabbit bedding.

For the writer morning pages represent just one of the ingredients that add to a balanced diet. In primary schools most students have a writing work book. This has the same effect if it is used often enough.

As a writer all you need to understand is that, to become an even better writer and to be rewarded with rich blooms, you need to take as much care with your compost bin as the gardeners at the Botanical Gardens.

I love to make special word compost bins with students. These are inexpensive notebooks covered with images of all the sorts of things that you need to feed your knowledge of words and your ability to write.

Grab some glossy magazines and have a think about what you will put on your notebook. Ask yourself what you will use to compost words. Perhaps you will just cut out lots of words and make it look like a magnetic poetry board. It really is up to you.

The main thing is that once you have the notebook you add something new to it every day. Trust me! If you feed your writing compost bin your compost will be ready in no time at all. You will find any writing task becomes so much easier to complete. Any dread of writing will be gone for ever.

Excercise #2



HERE'S A FUN ONE, I DIDN'T USE A CAMERA WHEN I DID THIS, I WENT ON-LINE INSTEAD.
ANYWAY IT'S A GREAT ONE...CHECK IT OUT
http://www.dailywriting.net/RomancingRuins.htm

ANITA