A murder of Crows
Makes a terrible noise.
A warm wind whips the curtain to life,
And grey clouds fill the summer sky.
Bees buzz and zip,
Certain of their destination,
While I, with wonder, happily stand by…
Colleen Sohn
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Tags: Poetry
Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe. Imagine if you like, Frankenstein’s monster on its slab. Here comes lightening, not from the sky but from a humble paragraph of English words. Maybe it’s the first really good paragraph you wrote, something so fragile and yet full of possibility that you are frightened. You feel as Victor Frankenstein must have when the dead conglomeration of sewn-together spare parts suddenly opened its watery yellow eyes. Oh my God, it’s breathing, you realize. Maybe it’s even thinking. What in hell’s name do I do next?
Stephen King
Here’s another quirky film, my friends, The Accidental Tourist. Boy, oh, boy do I love this one.
The story centers on Macon Leary, an often mystified and somewhat cold man who lost his son to murder and his wife to the ensuing, yet quiet, upheaval. It seems he will never exit the rather stodgy Leary groove of safety, sameness and unsociability, until…of course until. There’s always that. Otherwise, there would be no story. Until Macon’s dog, Edward (an adorable Corgi), still grieving the loss of his son, starts biting people.
Enter Muriel Pritchett, dog trainer extraordinaire and, quite possibly, his polar opposite. Her life is anything but “Leary Safe.” She lives in a rough neighborhood, has a son allergic to practically everything under the sun, wears quirky clothing combinations (like my sweet friend Bridget), and sports the longest fake nails known to man. Not to mention the fact she is utterly and completely forthright, giving him her telephone number to, “Call. Just talk. Don’t you get the urge to do that?” Rather bewildered, he tells her, “Not really.”
As Muriel enters his life, Macon slowly transforms, going from a physically and emotionally rigid man, speaking in staccato tones, to someone who smiles, laughs, and even dances. But will it last? For the Leary groove is a rather potent one.
Watch it and see, and when you do, you’ll also witness the the Learys and their awful sense of direction, alphabetizing the pantry, expressing concern for properly sized envelopes, the consumption of GORP (or glop, depending), and discussing their work: “I make bottlecaps. It isn’t half as exciting as it sounds.” The movie, however, is – full of laughs, crazy moments, and, of course, a few tears.
Tags: Movies
I’ve got something brewing that kept me from getting quality sleep last night. I woke up probably a half a dozen times, got a drink of water, listened to the soft sighs of my dear husband, and eventually gathered up enough fatigue to return to slumber myself.
When I woke up this morning, still a bit tired, my mind wandered, like it always does. It went upstairs and looked at this painting in our TV room (by Gabriel Fernandez – a little overexposed but kind of dreamy and, thus, on order). Then a poem came. I scribbled it down while still in bed, cats grumbling at each other, competing for cuddle time with mama, feeling sleepy themselves. Anyway, I liked it; maybe you will too.
Lusting, longing
For pillow-topped voyages,
Sheets caressing the legs.
Further into the cocoon, she desires to be.
Everything is at hand,
Suitcase packed for the conceits of slumber.
She waits in anticipation before realizing
The train has left the station,
Leaving a wake of morning thoughts behind.
In dread, she waits once more for its arrival,
Clock ticking back the seconds.
Colleen Sohn
Tags: Poetry
When I was in college, and had been studying French for about ten years, I needed a break. I was bored and tired and getting kind of cranky with it, so I took German for a year. Boy was that interesting! I learned a lot – like German is hard and well, uber-foreign after so many years of French. My mouth struggled to make umlauts and not caress words. I also learned that my brain, like a library, has a distinct foreign language section. When I couldn’t remember a vocabulary word or phrase in German, my electrical impulses went zooming to French, found what it was looking for and out it came from my mouth. It was both funny and strange. “Guten tag Herr Zimmer, je m’appelle Colleen.”
The greatest bit that I learned, however, is that a pause (German word for break) is a marvelous thing, for when I returned to French after my year of German, it was with renewed interest and vigor. I even decided to become a French teacher! Though I never found a job, but that is another story, isn’t it?
Like German, I started this blog as a pause from Polite Society. I had finished my rough draft and felt like I needed to keep up the momentum while I let it rest. Well, now that I have started my second novel, I feel like an old pick-up on a cold morning. I turn over, then wheeze and sputter before pumping that gas pedal to keep me from dying. I know that if I just let the engine warm up a little, I’ll be good as gold. But, in order to do so, I need to focus on this one task, rather than divide my time, which I must admit, I’ve been doing rather poorly. Neither the blog nor the book is up to snuff at the moment.
So, in this somewhat cryptic fashion, I am letting you know that I am taking a much needed pause from the blog. I need to focus on my novel, get her humming to life. Thanks so much for reading and commenting these past months, and check back from time to time. This won’t be the last you hear from me!
