Fiction – Page 3 – barbara monier

Today I have been working on a section of the new novel that revolves around a baby’s birth, and it has reminded me of the miracle that every new start, every fresh possibility holds. In honor or this, and of the upcoming longest day of the year, I am posting this section from my book, “You, in Your Green Shirt.”

And, by the way, it turns out that manipulating photographs is an EXCELLENT way to procrastinate; good visuals make for more interesting blogs, after all.

“When I return home after I run, when I am drenched, soaked in sweat, dripping down the sides of my face and stinging my eyes, when I am barely able to peel off the shorts, the socks, the sports bra that are bonded with my skin, when I am fully naked, I tiptoe into Kate’s room and stand in front of the only full-length mirror in the house. I look at myself.

I’m not sure why I do this, what I’m looking for.

I suppose I look for changes. I try to know myself. I consider the fact that the next person, that all the next people, who kisses and fondles the breasts that I see in the mirror, this person will not be kissing the breasts that nursed his babies, that squirted him in the shower when the baby cried out from his crib. He will see the slight puckering of extra skin along the very tops of my inner thighs as just that, extra skin, and not as a remembrance of the births of his own two children.

Yesterday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. The first bird lets out a few tentative notes at around four a.m. now, and the dogs are up by 5:15. Our routine is the same every single morning, but they are bursting with desire to get out and see it again, to note and rejoice in every single infinitesimally minute change from the day before.

The world is beautiful at this hour. Staggeringly beautiful. Ever day it is brand new. It is millions and millions of years old, too, aeons old. But in its dew-drenched sparkling magnificence, it is full of promise, of all possible promises. Brand new. Again.”

“Before they moved the TV down here I was pretty much all alone by my lonesome a good deal of the time. People was in and out, but for the most part didn’t really pay me no never mind. Course I was in better shape back then, younger, chugging along pretty good even if I was getting up in years. And don’t think that I’m complaining cause I ain’t. I like my own company just fine; it gives you time to think.

But then they fixed up the room right next to my own so the whole family could have a place to assemble, and they made it real nice and cozy, too. And what with the TV down here, well suddenly I had me a whole lot of company, and these folks who had breezed in and out of my room for all that time before was living their lives right in front of my eyes, so to speak.

I had me a family, for the first time ever.”

Those two paragraphs + 1 sentence = the majority of the writing that I have done on my 3rd novel in the past several days. The good news is: I like those paragraphs. The bad news is: obvious. It’s two paragraphs.

I have to make some decisions about the structure of this work before I can go much further. In the meantime, I keep tinkering around with the beginning, the part that I know, the part of the creative picture that is clear, while I continue to grope around in the near-darkness pursuing other parts of the picture — the ones that have blurred, the ones that I am trying to stare at, the ones I am trying to sneak up on while they least expect it.

Agony. Ecstasy. Repeat.

In 2009, a groundswell of activity on Facebook led to the inimitable Betty White hosting Saturday Night Live. A radiant and bejeweled 88 year-old Betty came through that door that so many hosts have walked through since SNL’s inception, tackled those stairs in low heels, and faced a roaring audience. In her opening monologue, she acknowledged her fans, and the power of Facebook, admitting that before all of this, she had absolutely no idea what Facebook was. “And now that I do know what it is,” she said, I have to say it sounds like a HUGE waste of time.”

Well, I gotta say, that is precisely how I always thought about blogging.

I just didn’t get it.

To me, it seemed like the worst possible combination of live-out-loud, no-personal-boundaries-whatsoever, in-your-face social media and a rampant look-at-me narcissism that seems more celebrated with each passing day. But alas, after years of working with different literary agents and facing a thoroughly recalibrated publishing world, I, like so many others, made the decision to self-publish my two novels, and to do so electronically. I remain entirely confident that this was the best decision (lo these many weeks after their April 2013 publication date!), but that decision brought with it a whole new world of figuring out how to Get The Word Out. There is a VAST amount of information out there, thank god, and though much of it is contradictory, there is amazing consensus on one point: creating a blog stands as perhaps the single best vehicle for introducing people to your work.

Sigh.

Crap, I thought. Just…crap.

Well, guess what. Around about the time I posted my second blog entry, the most amazing and wonderful thing happened — I actually got responses. Immediately! From people who were touched, or moved, or had some idea they wanted to share, or a great story, or whatever!! Now for the long-format writer — who sits in front of blank screen day after week after year, living with characters in an attempt to crawl so far inside their fictional souls that they tell you their tales and you tell the world — this is nothing short of a miracle. A gift. An immediate connection that takes something abstract and in the future — “The Reader” — to someone real, and in the Now.

And you know what else? Turns out that “blogging” is an unbelievably fun way to PROCRASTINATE from that Other Thing you are (putatively) writing. It’s necessary! It’s fun! It’s writing practice!! Oh My God, who thought of this?!? It’s the best thing ever.

Which I have every intention of attacking with great seriousness of purpose, just as soon as I determine exactly what a blog IS. I have two published novels, which I strongly encourage you to READ, REVIEW, and be in touch with me about anything and everything you got in the way of commentary and feedback.

I am currently hard at work on my third novel; and unless blogging and life in general prove too distracting, watch for it before the end of 2013. It is tentatively titled PUSHING THE RIVER. Hey, why don’t I post the first page! Here goes….

I am the heart of this house. The soul, too.

I am one hundred years old, will be come this spring anyway. I am one hundred years old and I have reached the point where I ain’t no earthly use to nobody. I am used up, washed out, spent, good for goddamn nothing.

Last few years, I been tired as hell, too. Oh, every so often they bring somebody in who looks me up and down and says, “tsk, tsk, my oh my,” and sticks things at me and does a tinkering here and there before saying the same damn thing: “I’m so sorry, but there’s just nothing we can do.” Oh, course they lah-di-dah about how well I’m holding up, considering my years and all, but then they point to the same damn parts every time and say, “here’s where the problem is, right here,” and they scratch their dang chins and shake their dang heads and look all hangdog long-faced forlorn, talking about me like I ain’t even there.

Well let’s see just see how dang well YOUR parts hold up when you reach the age of one hundred years I think to myself, let’s just goddamn see.

Shit show. That’s what these last four months of my life have been. Never thought I’d live to hear myself to use such language, neither, but there just ain’t no other words for it. I learned that expression from the little one, too, except of course, she ain’t little any more, she is all grown up.