The Lovers

Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all.

“Such a beautiful rainbow,” Melanie said to Walt.

“I made it just for you,” Walt said to Mel.

“You didn’t,” she said. “You can’t make a rainbow.”

“Oh, you think not,” he said, squeezing her hand just a little to show his love. “I spent several years at the rainbow-making school. I was their star pupil.”

“Were not.” She laughed. She liked it when Walt made up stories just for her.

“I was.”

They two stared at the rainbow, thinking beautiful thoughts. Walt thought about a Mel who could walk, Mel thought about a Mel who could walk. And they were very very happy.

The Santa Claus Caper

My old man was a hoot. Everybody in the neighborhood said, “Tom Pickering does have one heck of an imagination.” The thing was that his inventions seldom worked. His imagination seemed to be larger than his abilities.

There was the bicycle he believed would fly. He believed it so much that he rode it off the roof of our two story house. All the neighborhood saw it and there were those who shouted, “It’s a bird. It’s a plane.” When my Dad and the bike crashed through our neighbor’s first floor window, they were sure it wasn’t Superman.  Dad landed on Mr. Adams as he was trying to get some shut eye after a long night’s work. Needless to say Mr. Adams was not pleased and neither was the bicycle.

But Dad was no quitter. He had just the right thing he thought would get him into the Inventor’s Hall of Fame. An underwater car. It was a Saturday afternoon when he drove the Chevy off the pier. Little did Dad know that the water was deep. Very deep. So deep in fact it could have made the Challenger Deep look like a sinkhole. Down, down, down the car went as its engine stalled, then stopped. It had putted its last putt.

It was then that Dad realized he had forgotten one essential piece of equipment if you want to travel underwater. He forgot oxygen tanks. Fortunately there were three scuba divers who followed Dad into the water. It took several minutes for them to make the jailbreak out of the car. It’s a good thing that Dad was a deep breather.

Then there was the time Dad went about saving Christmas. At least for my kid brother, Jimmy. It was the year I told him there was definitely no Santa Claus. The whole thing was made up.

At first, Jimmy didn’t take my word for it. Then several of the the kids in his school  confirmed my testimony. They too told him there was no Santa. Jimmy did the math. He added and subtracted, multiplied and divided. He was nowhere near having an answer how Santa and his reindeer made it to every house in every country in the world on Christmas Eve.

When Dad saw Jimmy with qualms of disappointment on his face, he knew he had to come up with a solution to the Santa Claus issue. He remembered way back when he was young. A similar thing had happened to him. Only it wasn’t a kid. It was Old Mr. Creepers next door. He wanted to make Halloween the biggest holiday of the year. There was only one way that was possible. He had to take down Santa Claus.

That year Santa missed Dad’s house. All because he doubted Santa. Now Dad was determined that was not to happen to his kid. His solution: he would appear on our roof as Santa, then slide down the chimney with a bag of goodies.

Now Dad had the heft of a Santa and he carried it with grace. Six weeks before Christmas Eve, he began the preparations for what he called “the Santa’s Caper.” He went down to the local Santa store and bought his fake beard and his fake hair and his suit, which was not fake. And he did not cut corners. Only the best for his little Jimmy.

When Mom got a clue to what Dad was up to, she asked, “You fool, how are you going to get down that chimney?”

“Oh, it will be a tight squeeze. But I have the perfect solution. Grease.”

Mom shook her head, knowing there was no changing his mind. “Just be careful and please don’t break the chimney.” But she gave him that worried look. With Dad, what would go wrong would go wrong. So much so that she had taken to calling him Murphy behind his back

Christmas Eve came. Jimmy and I were sent to bed early with a “Santa won’t come if you’re awake.”

Though we absolutely knew there was no Santa, still we were taking no chances. By ten p.m. we were in our beds, pretending we were zzz-ing off to Never Never Land. Despite our best efforts, we nodded off. Then we heard a noise on the roof.

It wasn’t a clatter we heard. It was more like a bomp. One thing was sure. Santa was making his rendezvous. It was a definite that he was on our roof. Clomp! Clomp! Clomp! went Santa’s boots.

We jumped out of bed and hurried to the window. No sleigh on the lawn. Rudolph must be on the roof. Along with Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. We just knew it.

But it was not Santa. It was Dad. And he had spotted his target. The chimney.

All dressed up in his Santa suit, he lugged his bag over to the chimney. He sat down on the chimney’s side. With the bag lifted over his head, he gave himself a push. As he shoved off, he heard a giant ripping sound. His red pants had caught on a nail. The nail tore not only his pants but his bright red Santa underpants with white Rudolphs on the bottom as well.

That night gravity did its mighty work. Down the chimney went Dad and his bag. Until he didn’t. Like a balloon blowing up, Dad filled up the chimney, then stopped half way down.

Mom took out her flashlight and pointed it up the chimney. What she saw made her throw herself onto the floor, laughing uncontrollably.

In all the history of Santas, this must have been the first time Santa found himself unable to reach the cookies and milk. The grease had not worked.

Jimmy and I rushed into the living room. “Where’s Santa,” we screamed in unison.

“Boys, go back to bed,” Mom said. “Otherwise Santa won’t come out of that chimney. And there’ll be no presents. Right, Santa?”

From the chimney came a muffled voice that was half Santa and half Dad.”Ho, ho, ho. Listen to your mother. Moms are always right.”

“Okay, Mom,” we said, disappointment in our voices.

We left the room and closed the door, but we were not about to go back to bed. We’d be kicked out of the All American Kid Society if we did. We took turns peeping through the door.

Somehow Dad squeezed himself almost to the floor of the chimney. His black boots were about three feet in the air. If you’ve never heard a man cry, you would have heard a man cry that night. “What was I thinking.”

“You weren’t, as usual,” Mom gave him one of her what-fers.

“Well, can you give me a hand?”

Mom grabbed onto Dad’s boots and gave them a tug. “Ouch,” the chimney said. The boots dropped onto Mom’s foot..

“Do you still have those rockets you bought for the Fourth of July?” Mom asked.

“What are you going to do with them?”

“I’m going to stick them up your rear end and send you into the Great Beyond. Otherwise it will be the waste of a perfectly decent chimney. Why do you ask?”

“No.” The chimney was emphatic. “Absolutely not.”

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

For years afterward, my family called this horns of a dilemma The Horns of a Dilemma.

Behind the slightly open door, my brother turned to me. “Where’s Dad? He could get Santa free. He’s smart like that.”

I just didn’t have the heart to tell Jimmy where Dad was.

Then a thud. And not just any thud. It was The Thud.

Mom’s eyes and Jimmy’s eyes and my eyes shot to the ceiling and the footsteps. Could it be?

Of course, it was.

From above, we heard a deep bass voice. “Fool, get out of my way.”

Dad dropped to the chimney floor and crawled out, his suit all in tatters. Behind him were a pair of boots. They stepped over Dad and into the center of the living room. There was a glow about The Man. He wore a suit of the brightest red I’d ever seen. I swear the white beard shined.

Mom rushed over and grabbed the glass of milk and the plate of Oreos. She timidly handed them to The Man.

He looked at Mom and smiled and took the refreshments. He gulped them down, then headed for the work of the night. The Christmas tree.

Frozen in our places, the four of us watched. He set his bag on the floor, reached up and adjusted the star and several of the ornaments. Then he opened his bag. He looked over at Jimmy and nodded. “This one is for you.” He placed the large gift under the tree. “For believing.” Next came my gift, then Mom’s.

Finally he looked over at Dad. Tears were in The Man’s eyes. “Thanks for the help.” Out of the bag came a very small package. He placed it under the tree, giving it a bit of extra care as he did.

In a flash, he was back at the chimney and up on the roof. But he wasn’t done. Back down the chimney he came. Standing before us in all his glory, he said in that deep deep voice of his, “I forgot.” Then he sent us a “Ho! Ho! Ho!”

From our toes to the tippy tip top of our heads, our bodies filled with joy and love and peace and hope.

“And one final thing. Merry Christmas and a very good night.”

On the roof, we heard, “Peace on  earth and goodwill toward men.” Then he disappeared into the night, heading onward to fulfill the mission he has been on for centuries.

And now, from Uncle Bardie, Merry Christmas to one and all. May you and your loved ones have a wonderful holiday this year. And one final thing. As Tiny Tim said, “God bless us everyone.”

The Green Days of Paradise

Rome wasn’t built in a day
And a soul takes a lifetime
Yesterday an empty glass
Tomorrow another sip of wine
Day by day sunrise and sunset
And moon and stars out for a stroll
Images painted on the heavens
Clouds sailing and geese sing their call
Shadows climbing the afternoon
A voice makes a beautiful noise
A face is a long ago memory
Of a garden of a red red rose
Where a squirrel and a cat drink tea
And a pony rushes off for a ride
Through canyons and arroyos
And into the green days of paradise.

Shakespeare and the Globe-al Affair

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. As You Like It, Act II Scene VII.

in two days, on April 15th, it is William Shakespeare’s birthday. So here’s wishing him a happy birthday.

It was a brand new world the Elizabethans were creating. It was only a hundred years or so since Gutenberg gave them the printing press and inexpensive books to read. It was a little less than one hundred years since the Tudor Henry defeated Richard on Bosworth Field and ended the Civil War the English knew as the Wars of the Roses. It was only three quarters of a century or so ago since Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses on a church door, virtually ending the dominance of Rome over Christianity. It was only in 1588 that England defeated a Spanish Armada and began its rise as an European sea power. And under Good Queen Bess the arts flourished. Especially music, dance, poetry and theater.

Sure there was plague every few years. Sure it was a hierarchical society. Sure there were still fears that the Pope’s agents would assassinate the queen. But there was such optimism in the air that anything was possible for the English. The sixteenth century was a good one for England. By its end, London was the largest city in Europe.

By the time Shakespeare’s first play appeared on stage in 1590, it had been less than a century since Columbus proved that the planet was round. Not flat as everybody believed. That was a big deal. As big as what Wilbur and Orville did at Kitty Hawk. Maybe bigger.

Ships would not fall off the earth when they went far out to sea. There were no sea monsters to gobble up ships and their sailors. First Magellan, then Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe. In 1580, Drake and his Golden Hind returned from his three years at sea with stories and riches. He brought back enough booty that the Queen’s share doubled her annual income for that year. Anything was possible.

The only thing to compare with the attitude of the English was the feeling Americans had after defeating Germany and Japan in 1945. Anything was possible. Even putting a man on the moon.

A reflection of this “anything was possible” attitude was the theater. The first playhouse in England was built in Shoreditch, London by James Burbage in 1576. It had a very original name. It was called The Theater. Until then, plays were performed by wandering troops of actors in guildhalls, in local nobles’ halls, in inns and at festivals and fairs. By the 1590s, there were a number of theaters in London like The Curtain and The Rose. And in 1599 Shakespeare and his fellow players of the Chamberlain’s Men opened The Globe.

There were an amazing group of dramatists to excite London audiences. William Shakespeare, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, Francis Beaumont and Thomas Middleton. Of all the rivalries, it was the one between William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe that excited audiences the most. It was like watching Picasso and Braque’s competition with cubism in the early twentieth century. It was like seeing Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams battle it out on Broadway in the late forties and the fifties.

Creativity was in the English air and London was the place to be. Only Marlowe’s premature death caused the Elizabethans to pause, then continue with some of the greatest drama in the history of Western Civilization. And it wasn’t just a drama for the court and the upper classes as it was in Moliere’s France. The theater was for every class in society from the blacksmith and the baker to the Queen of England.

The Globe was appropriately named to give the English a sense of the wide world Drake and others were beginning to reveal. For the price of a ticket, a Londoner could leave the plague, the violence and the crime of London behind and step into a different world. Walking into the large round building that held up to 3000 people for a performance was an adventure. All that was required of the ticket holder was a few hours time and an imagination.

During the performance, the stage had no scenery. It might have a large wooden chair that was a throne. It might have a table and chairs for an inn. It might have a log for a forest. This is why Shakespeare’s plays use dialogue and prologues. To help the audience imagine the scene with prologues such as the opening of “Romeo and Juliet”.

Just listen to the Chorus in the Prologue of “Henry V”.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

Or we get the weather in “Hamlet” with such dialogue:

Hamlet: The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
Horatio: It is a nipping and an eager air.

In “The Tempest”, we get a shipwreck in a storm:

Master: Boatswain!
Boatswain: Here, master: what cheer?
Master: Good, speak to the mariners: fall to’t, yarely, or we run ourselves aground: bestir, bestir.
Exit

Enter Mariners

Boatswain: Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master’s whistle. Blow, till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!

Just from the dialogue we get the sound and fury of the storm these men are dealing with. Then in Act 1, Scene 2, we get further evidence of how bad the storm was:

MIRANDA
If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin’s cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
Dash’d all to pieces. O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish’d.
Had I been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere
It should the good ship so have swallow’d and
The fraughting souls within her.

With only dialogue, the actions of the actors, the colorful costumes and a few sound effects, the Elizabethans created in their imaginations the courts of kings, the forests of fairies, the streets of ancient Rome and Greece, castaways on an island and the battle scenes of great conflicts.

For Shakespeare’s audience, the Globe was truly a whole new wonderful world. And they loved it.

Surviving Nanowrimo # 2

I am back with encouraging news. You can write a novel in the month of November. It not only is possible but it’s do-able. Just sit down in your chair and go to work on November 1st. Before you know it, 50,000 words have appeared on your computer screen. A few cups of coffee and a daily shot of persistence and easy peasy.

Oh, you don’t drink coffee. You’re English. Well, maybe a cup of tea is the ticket. Whatever gets your subby-conscious out of bed is the thing.

So, where to begin on that fine November 1st morning since you didn’t prepare during October? Or you’ve spent the whole month debating over which idea to choose from when you have a bucketful of ideas.

I have an exercise that has worked very well for me. It’s called What-if, and it goes like this. Mosey over to the Monochromia blog and check out the photographs for the day. Pick two.

For example: Maybe I see a photograph of a woman holding a surfboard. In a second photograph, twenty people at a party stand around in small groups of three or four.

WHAT IF the woman was at the party, standing alone in a corner holding a surfboard?
WHY is she standing alone in the corner and with a surfboard? Gotta find out.

I, the author, walk into the room. Several of the folks give me a “hi-ya doing, Uncle Bardie?”

I nod my greetings and walk over to the woman. “What’s a nice girl like you doing with a big surfboard like that in a place this?”

She turns to me. “Waiting  for the Second Coming. You have heard of the Second Coming, haven’t you?”

“I thought it had already occurred at Ulu Watu.” I’ve always wanted to use Ulu Watu in a sentence. Now I’ve had my chance.”

“Oh, that was just a prelude.”

I introduce myself. She says, “Just call me Chad.”

“Chad?”

“Stands for Carolyn Hermione Allyson Deboit.”

THEN WHAT HAPPENED?

Across the room, a man in his early twenties,  looks at me. After a moment, he walks over.

“You okay, Sis?”

“You know I’m not.”

He gives me a challenge, but his sister continues, “You know how I hate these parties.”

WHAT IF he gets angry.

See how the process works. Keep answering those three questions and pretty soon you have a scene. Before you know it your answers have accumulated into two thousand words on the page and you have a character you can follow to who knows where.

Initially you might want to be in the photograph. However soon you’re going to disappear unless you are a character. The important thing is to let your imagination run wild like the mustangs who used to roam free out West. If you trust your imagination, you’re going to be in for a wild ride.