Tag: 10minwri

Read between the lines

March 8th, 2016

I remember in grade school we would sometimes get puzzles or logic problems to work on. My favorites were rebuses, the pictograms that represented a word or phrase. For some reason, this one always stuck with me:

I think it stuck with me because though I solved the puzzle — Read between the lines — I didn’t understand the expression. I knew what it meant at an academic level, but I had never experienced reading between the lines before. I didn’t know how to do it or when it was necessary.

It wasn’t until much later in life, when I started reading Hemingway, that I finally felt the Aha! moment of picking up on allusions, of filling in the blanks the author leaves empty, of understanding what the author is telling you without telling you.

Hemingway is a master of this. His words tell one story — a story that often seems simplistic and superficial when the lines are the only thing you’re reading. It’s the words he leaves out that tell a deeper, more complex, more human story, as in the frustrated love between Jake and Brett in The Sun Also Rises, or the unspoken story behind the dialogue in “Hills Like White Elephants.”

I remember the sensation of it all clicking for me when I picked up on the unwritten story in a book. I don’t recall the book — it may have been Life of Pi — but I remember thinking, “This is what it means to read between the lines.” It was one of those moments when your scalp prickles and you get a rush of heat in your chest. And when it all clicked, when I finally understood, I thought of that pictogram from grade school, as I still do whenever I think of reading between the lines.

The bigger mystery to me now is how does a writer achieve this phenomenon, of creating a story behind the words? It requires deliberate, precise choices: this act of omission, this art of leaving negative space. It is a rare and precious skill.
Oak Trees

March 5th, 2016

Our oak is naked right now. Twiggy, brown, and bare. A few dry leaves hang on from last year, and at any place in the oak’s crown, it looks like you could snap a branch in half. I know it’s alive in there, but it’s hard to remember that this time of year. The stripped branches look bleak.

When the kids were toddlers, our favorite thing to do as we waited for summer to turn to fall was to walk every day and look for acorns. We lived in Florida at the time, and by September we were desperate for the sweltering heat of summer to end. When acorns started appearing on the sidewalk — one or two nuts at first, then in such large numbers we couldn’t take a step without crushing acorns underfoot — we knew autumn was finally on its way.

Acorns mean pumpkins, mums, ruby and citrine leaves. More importantly, they mean crisp air and chilly autumn winds.

Now that we live in Virginia, it is the transition from winter to spring that we wait for. In March, the are no acorns on the ground. Squirrels have hidden them all away, or eaten them. In early March, there is no ruby or citrine. There are only grey-brown wood and papery brown leaves.

We had a bit of snow yesterday, but the forecast for next week is warm: a tease that spring is coming. The warm days of March are like the acorns of September.

Maybe by week’s end, those bare brittle branches the oak stretches towards our porch will start greening. Maybe, after a few days of sunshine and thawing temperatures, we will see plump, yellow-green leaf buds appear.

We can hope.
We might not play it safe

February 12th, 2016

We’re thinking of doing something bold. It’s been a long time since we’ve owned a house that we can do whatever we want with. A couple weeks ago, I painted the kids’ trim to finally check their rooms off the Finished list. Last weekend, my husband painted our living room ceiling.

Now, we get to paint the walls.

We originally thought we would go with a sand color, to evoke the feeling we get from the Gulf of Mexico and the ocean. We have seaglass colored lamps and are playing with textures and shapes in our furnishings: a rich cream shag rug, a curved white chair, a blocky sofa and chaise lounge with square edges and linen textured fabric. We wanted the walls to add another layer of depth, but when we painted patches of the sample, we thought, Blah. Boring.

The color blended with the furniture, and it did not show off the beautiful floors that are our favorite part of the house. Nothing popped.

So we pulled out the paint chips again, this time holding them against the warm oak floor; wondering which would best punch up the shapes and textures of furniture; thinking about the deep yellow, green, and blue of the painting we bought a couple years ago; and most importantly, asking what will be interesting?

My husband pointed to a dark grey paint chip. “I like that one,” he said.

This color is not a cloudy sky grey, or a silver grey. This is an almost-black grey.

“That’s really dark,” I said.

I looked at it again on the floor. “It would look amazing against this wood,” I said.

“I don’t know, maybe this one’s a little safer.” I pointed at a lighter grey — more of a pewter. I held it up to the walls, the furniture, the floors. It was definitely safe.

It was definitely boring.

Today I’m taking a flex day. I work tomorrow (Saturday), so I’m taking today off to write, read with a kitty on my lap, have lunch with my husband, and go to the paint store. I’m going to get a sample of the dark dark grey. It’s a bold move. Kind of scary. Definitely not safe.

It is the one option that I’m excited about. I can’t wait to see how it looks.
Dreaming of seeds, but — cats.

February 10th, 2016

The seed catalogs arrived! As soon as we brought them in from the mail box, I started poring over them. Our intention is to plant a flower garden out front, but the catalogs begin with tomatoes.

Bright red, juicy tomatoes whose slices drip with the warmth and sunshine of summer. I can’t imagine one of those fist-sized Burger Boys in the afternoon, when the fruit is warm, slicing it into slabs on the sunny porch, sprinkling it with salt, and eating it with a fork. My God.

We don’t have space for a vegetable garden. Well, I should say we don’t have usable space for a vegetable garden. Our yard is large, but consists pretty much of a giant steep hill that’s treacherous to even walk up, much less plant a garden on. Everything would wash away. So, no tomatoes this year. Sadly.

And then I got to the flower and herbs section of the catalog. Emerald sweet basil, spring green lemon balm, silvery lavendar. Happy yellow sunflowers, powder blue hydrangea, purple bee balm. They made me want to buy grow lights and start planting right away.

Which brings me to my dilemma. I’d love to start plants from seed indoors, but I’m not sure how to accomplish it without an extravagent setup: stringing grow lights from the ceiling, scrounging up a large table for flats, and most importantly, finding a place to put the seedlings where the cats won’t destroy them.

I can imagine spending $200-$300 on lights, pots, seeds, and soil, only to come downstairs one morning to a seedling massacre on the floor of the basement. I would spend weeks waiting for sprouts to emerge, then as soon as the green finally arrives, I’d go to bed one night and wake to find pots and dirt and mutliated baby plants scattered on the basement floor, while a cat looks at me with big, “What?” eyes and then licks her paw.

So my guess is that I won’t be planting seeds ahead of time. It would likely be more cost effective, and I’m antsy to get started on the garden, but I’m just not sure how to make it work.
I miss writing

February 9th, 2016

I’m a reader – reading is possibly my favorite past time. But I have to admit that with my focus on reading instead of writing this year, I miss my composition books. I miss my blog.

A friend asked, “What about your 10 minutes per day?” when I told him my blog was sad and lonely. Those minutes are going to consuming instead of producing these days.

But today I’m up early (as always). It’s another snow day and everyone else is sleeping. A cat purrs at my knee, snow clicks against the window, and I hear the tappity-tap of my keyboard and the quiet tick of the clock.

The funny thing is that part of the reason I’m not writing is because everyone else is. January and February are our biggest months in support at WordPress.com as folks follow through on New Year’s resolutions to start blogging. I love that, that we see such a huge spike as people dedicate themselves to publishing online. It’s an extraordinarily busy time, though, and one that I don’t squeeze time in for my own writing.

This morning though, I did. I opted to write instead of emptying the dishwasher.

Another busy day is about to begin, but for now my world is still and silent. I wrote my Andrea Reads America post, and I dusted off this blog as well. It feels good to be here, if just for a moment.
Pining for a seed catalog

December 25th, 2015

It is a warm, rainy Christmas day. We opened gifts, ate cinnamon rolls, and lounged all morning amidst shiny bows and piles of ripped wrapping paper. The cats are playing in cardboard boxes, our daughter is messaging me from across the room on her new iPod, our son has completed his fifth reading of the Catan instructions so we can figure out how to play, my husband is in the garage building a bed, and I am staring out the window at wet gray branches, listening to the soft patter of rain.

I wish I had a seed catalog.

The weather feels more like spring than winter — we have the sliding glass door open to welcome fresh air — and with an empty, lazy day indoors, I’d love to thumb through a catalog of leaves and flowers, day-dreaming about the garden we will plant in spring.

It has been years since I’ve planned, planted, or tended a real garden. I puttered in Minnesota, but never really dedicated myself. On my recent birthday, when our son gave me a book about butterfly gardening, I spent two days sketching: plotting groupings of host and nectar plants, visualizing colors, planning my kill of large swaths of grass to make room for flower and herb beds.

I may be be overambitious. As far as gardening goes, Virginia soil is foreign to me, as are seasons. In Florida we had a wet season and a dry. There were no freezes; there were no thaws. The main challenges were a scorching sun and the relentless growth: without a winter, there was no break from weeding.

Since I know nothing, it may be wise to start seeds indoors instead of buying hundreds of dollars worth of mature plants. We can buy a packet of seeds — enough for multiple groupings — for a fraction of the cost of a single potted plant.

Now, with Christmas rain coming down and a kitten in my lap, I want to turn the pages of a magazine-paper catalog. I want to circle the herbs and flowers we hope to grow, tabulate costs, and daydream about a garden in the front of our new house, green, and filled with sunshine and butterflies.

If you know of a good free seed catalog, or follow any Virginia gardening blogs that might help a newbie like me, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

Tag: 10minwri

Read between the lines

Oak Trees

We might not play it safe

Dreaming of seeds, but — cats.

I miss writing

Pining for a seed catalog