She of next door

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I remember when she came to live here
She of next door
She introduced herself and asked for a cup of sugar
She was going to bake a cake and did I want some?

After the day she came to live here
She of next door
She brought me cake
And my cup, now chipped, with sticky leftover sugar

I remember the first week she lived here
Her smiles, every day, her hello’s, every day
The doorbell ringing, she wanted something
every day

After the first week she lived here
We smiled, every day, we said hello, every day
I unplugged the doorbell, I want my peace
every day

I remember the first month she lived here
She tried to bring me cake
With sticky leftover sugar, every day
even after I unplugged the doorbell

After the first month she lived here
She of next door
I brought her my cup, chipped
Filled with sticky leftovers of moulded cake

After that
She of next door
Moved
Her doorknob
Out of sync
With mine
Bloody spiteful woman

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My first time combining #ThursdayDoor with #NaPoWriMo. The prompt at napowrimo.net was to “write a poem about a specific place […] to incorporate concrete details […] can really help the reader imagine not only the place, but its mood.” I browsed trough the door photos my mum sent me, and chose one that has fascinated me since the first time I saw it. It became the starting point for this poem.

My life as a cube

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Get to know me
Right face – up
Left face – down
Up face – front
Down face – back
Front face – right
Back face – wrong

How will I know my pieces are in the right position?

Move my bottom face
rotate the centrepiece
continue these steps
in the correct position

Sequential moves must match the front
The face with the correct edge is the back face

Move clockwise
or counter-clockwise
Then determine
what to do

Conclusion
No matter how I twist
and turn
I can’t find my way
back to how I began

It’s National Poetry Writing Month again! Today’s suggested challenge was “to write a self-portrait poem in which you make a specific action a metaphor for your life – one that typically isn’t done all that often, or only in specific circumstances. For example, bowling, or shopping for socks, or shoveling snow, or teaching a child to tie its shoes.”

I thank the website rubiks.com for their helpful words. Visit napowrimo.net to check out the full prompt, extra resources and links to the participants works.

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Adjusting to closed doors

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“Should we continue with Thursday Doors through this current Covid-19 pandemic?” That’s what #ThursdayDoor creator Norm asked in his weekly (door) post yesterday. Most participants were eager to keep going, even if dooscursions are impossible for many of us now. It looks like we’ll keep up the door posting, in any way we can make it work. If we can’t visit outdoors, we can at least visit each other’s doors. And feel part of our loving door community. And help each other with some beauty and human contact.

For me, these are strange times. Life had just gotten back to almost normal after months of broken foot immobility. I was working again, and earning money. I could ride my bicycle again and go places. I could go for walks, not too far and not too fast. And now I’m back to being almost house bound.

I’m not complaining. In my household everyone is healthy. My partner works from home and is still able to provide income for us. My son is not really enthusiastic about having to follow a schedule for homeschooling, but once he likes to learn in general, so not all of it is a struggle.

I guess I’m still in the adjustment phase. Trying to get used again to staying at home so much. Finding my way through the worries I have for people around me. My sister’s family is in quarantine, and both she and her partner are ill. They won’t get tested, there are not enough tests in the country to test everyone with flu-like symptoms.

I find it hard to concentrate on my work. The normally quiet house is filled with people with their own schedule, their own needs, their own plan. My partner is calm, collected and focused. I hope something of that will rub off on me 🙂

For now, I’m listening to Mongolian heavy metal with my headphones on, enjoying the regularity of searching for doors and inspiration for a blog post. I may go out for a walk later, we’re still allowed to as long as we keep our distance to other walkers.

Stay safe everyone! Let’s get through this together.

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Measure once, cut twice (cut once version)

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He’d never been good at counting. Numbers didn’t mean much to him. One was enough. More than one? An abstraction.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand numbers, he did. He knew the eternal feeling of eight, the bridging qualities of two. He had mourned the loneliness of three for longer than he cared to remember. Secretly, he feared the sternness of seven. The number came too close to comfort. Why he couldn’t say. It just seemed hard-hearted. He longed for the safety of nine.

People thought him strange. He thought the same of them, so he never noticed. He had enough friends. There was the one who made sure that he ate enough. The one who helped him pay his bills. And the one who laughed with him until their belly hurt. They were one. They were all. They didn’t hurt him. They didn’t hurt themself.

He knew numbers had a life of their own. But as numerals, they were insufficiently factual to him. Until one day the number eight got to him. He could feel it in his bones. It hurt him. He asked a friend to come over and bring an axe.

As one, they said goodbye. He aimed, slowly, and then struck, sharply. But when he cut eight in two, he cut too much to the left. Instead of two perfect halves, he was left with a three, and more than one leftovers. His friend laughed until his belly hurt. He said goodbye, before the loneliness of three could hurt him. Once more, he moved on.

My batting practice for https://godoggocafe.com/2020/03/14/writers-workshop-i-week-2-batting-practice/ We were asked to remove 10% of words from our version. I went from 320 words to 264. My main character still thinks it’s too much. He would prefer just one.

The picture I’ve added to the story today comes from a book I’ve made with my mother. The Dutch e-book is live since today, the hard back edition and PDF have been out since the end of February. I’m happy to share with you that the English edition is almost finished. I can’t wait!

Raak

Here’s a chance to help a man who’s work I’ve admired for a long time, and help yourself to some wonderful poetry at an affordable price. If money is scarce you can follow his blog, social media, and support by being a lovely human being.

I’ve just started on “Then Play On,” a chapbook of poems about music, and I can feel the difference it makes in how I start my day.

These are interesting times, if I may quote the late Terry Pratchett… Let’s help each other get through them and make as many good and beautiful things happen as we can.

 

In the interest of some financial need, I am making 8 eBooks/PDFs of my work available for sale to those who might be interested. They’ll only be available here for the moment; all were previously offered as rewards to various tiers of my Patreon subscribers, a program I will be continuing there, btw. The titles include: […]

via eBooks for sale… — Dark Matter

Measure twice, cut once

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He’d never been good at counting. Numbers just didn’t mean much to him. One was enough. Always. More than one? An abstraction.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand numbers, he did. He knew the eternal feeling of eight, the bridging qualities of two. He had mourned the loneliness of three for longer than he cared to remember. Once was enough. Keep moving on. Nothing to see here.

Secretly, he feared the sternness of seven. The number came too close to comfort. Why he couldn’t say. It just seemed hard-hearted. He simply longed for the safety of nine.

People thought him strange. He thought the same of them, so he never noticed. He had enough friends. There was the one who made sure that he ate enough. The one who helped him pay his bills. And the one who laughed with him until their belly hurt. They were one. They were all. They didn’t hurt him. They didn’t hurt themself. They kept moving.

He knew numbers had a life of their own. But as numerals, they were insufficiently factual to him. Until one day. One was enough. The number eight got too much for him. He could feel it in his bones. It hurt him. Eight was not moving on. It was trying to see.

He asked a friend to come over and bring an axe. They would put an end to eight. As one, they said goodbye. He aimed, slowly, and then struck, sharply. But when he cut eight in two, he cut too much to the left. Instead of two perfect halves, he was left with a three, and more than one leftovers. He cut again, but it didn’t make nine. There were too many numbers.

His friend laughed, until his belly hurt. He said goodbye, before the loneliness of three could hurt him. Once more, he moved on. More than that would be abstract.

 

This is my entry for WRITER’S WORKSHOP I, Week 1, The Fastball at the Go Dog Go Café, where writers gather. It’s my first time participating in a writing workshop, and I’m curious what I’ll learn!

WRITER’S WORKSHOP I, Week 1, The Fastball

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I’ve never joined a writer’s workshop before, but why not?

The GoDogGoCafe is a friendly and supportive online space. The workshop is free to join, and it will be fun! It’s been a while since I wrote a story, so I’m eager to find out what the workshop will bring me.

The first assignment is 150-300 words, so that’s manageable!

Tanya Cliff's avatarGo Dog Go Café

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Something to think about:

My stepfather, a custom home builder, taught me the basics of carpentry: “measure twice, cut once.” Sounds simple enough, but it takes discipline and an investment in time to slow down and repeat the measurement, and the power saw can be unforgiving. Many are the boards wasted by a few mismarked millimeters. The lesson stuck with me, and I think about the concept often in other areas of my life, including my writing and editing.

For this prompt, I encourage you to slow down and measure twice. We are writers. We have stories to create. That creation requires an investment in ourselves, a belief in our ideas, a commitment to the hard work of writing so that we may communicate our creative babies effectively to others. In the words of Henry Miller, “open up…discover what is already there.”

Every man, when he gets quiet, when he…

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A door, and a book preview

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A door from Mechelen, Belgium provided by… yes, you guessed it, I’m still sharing my mum’s doors 🙂

De Dutch version of our book is ready. I’ve uploaded a test version (not for sale), so you can take a look what all the work has been about. If you click on the photo you can browse through the upload on the Blurb site.

 

I still can’t believe I managed to translate 20 of my poems from English to Dutch. But is was worth it, now my mother’s friends can buy the book and read it too. We’ll continue working on the English version in March.

For now, I need a break. After the intensive editing we did, all my brain can think of is book-book-book. I’m grateful that my sister showed me what a huuuuuge difference a professional editor makes when it comes to details. I was convinced my mother and I we’re doing a great job at being precise. My sister did The Best job at being precise.

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Nitpicking

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When I said to my mum
“Let’s make a book together”
I should have probably said

“Let’s make a book together
that’s unedited and still has mistakes
so we can leave out the part where we
stare at details endlessly and they seem to
change even though we just put them in their right place
and we look at them again and we sent the file to each other once more
and we find yet another detail and we remember we forgot something and I’ll
ask you to change some words because I don’t like the ones I read and where the files gets corrupted and we need to redo a lot of stuff and e-mail with customer service too many times and then redo some editing and oh well let’s not make a Dutch translation now that we’re on it and two digital editions too”.

It will be fun.

(This one is dedicated to my sister, who does editing for a living. I never knew how much patience that job takes. I’m in awe).

This poem deserved a door detail instead of a full door 🙂 My mum provided the picture.

The poem, and all characters and incidents portrayed in this post, are not fictitious.

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Door, recording and book update

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This beautiful door can be found in Mechelen, Belgium. My mother provided it, just as the last few weeks.

I’m again adding one of my reading experiments the poem for today. It’s called hell, and if your prefer to read instead of listen you can click on that word. It will be in the book with my mum for certain. We’ve been working hard on restoring everything since the Blurb file broke down. My sister who’s a professional editor has lent us her professional eye. She came up with great suggestions for lots of little details we didn’t notice. You can’t beat a professional!

So maybe, at the end of this month, we’ll get to hold our book – made by three family members. That’s really special to me. My mother also asked me to translate my poems into Dutch because not all of her friends read English well. I’ve given it a try, and to my own surprise I manage translations/adaptations I’m happy with. So now we’ll make both an English and a Dutch edition.

For more doors, hop over to #ThursdayDoor creator and host Norm. I’m a fan. New gems every week. Nice people too.