indie author
(100 word challenge)
“I said I would go to hell for you. That’s how much I love you. I would go, I would find you, and I would bring you back with me.”
“What if I can’t love you like that?”
“Have you ever loved anyone like that? Has anyone else loved you like that? Because I’m here, we’re here. That’s what’s real.”
“What if it’s an illusion?”
“Then make it the best damn illusion there ever was.”
“But I don’t want to hurt you again.”
“Too late.”
“I can’t do this.”
“We can.”
THE MORE LOVING ONE
by W.H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
“The More Loving One” appears among Auden’s poems about history, but it deals with nature and the disorienting necessity of learning to love a universe insentient to our hopes and fears, unconcerned with our individual fates — perhaps the least requited love there is, as well as the largest. It is an elegy, in the classic dual sense of lamentation and celebration, for our ambivalent relationship with this elemental truth and an homage to the supreme triumph of the human heart — the willingness to love that which does not and cannot love us back. – Brain Pickings https://www.brainpickings.org
Somehow NANOWRIMO determined that I wrote 50,000 words, but in reality I only wrote 5,555 words. I managed to average 189 words per day if you factor in two weeks of not writing.
Otherwise, I discovered that I can write 100-300 words per day which is an improvement over what I am currently blogging. That’s great news! And it shows healing. I haven’t been able to write in ten years.
I’m very pleased with myself and have a lot of hope that I will eventually write another novel. I may or may not work on Hattie and George’s story, but I find them interesting characters and want to write more.
Hattie and Barnard have been married 35 years. Where do they go from here? Barnard’s new love interest is the catalyst for a closer look at who they are as a couple and what their marriage has become since they separated and reunited 24 years ago after their daughter’s death.
“Did you make this for me, Hattie?”
It was just days ago when she’d made the scrapbook, putting together mementos from their 35 year marriage. He was touched. She didn’t think he would be. She feared he’d shun it because it demonstrated her love for him and her belief in them. He’d long said she was foolish for hoping he’d feel real love for her. That was what had changed since he’d left her oh so many years ago. He was broken; he didn’t know what love was. He didn’t want to mislead her or break her heart. Again.
But he knew she loved him and he accepted it. He’d stayed after his return.. Until now. Now she was in a hospital and he was in a cab in another city to visit the soul mate he’d found at last. Sure Jeanine was twenty years his junior, but she was full of life, she made him feel young again, free. He felt an excitement he hadn’t felt with Hattie since they were young and dating. Hattie made him feel comfortable. She accepted him the way he was. She cherished him.
Still, love wasn’t enough. They hadn’t had sex in years. He told her she didn’t satisfy him. She took it calmly, though he saw the hurt in her eyes. It didn’t seem to matter to Hattie. Her love for him didn’t waver. She once said, when they were middle aged, that she expected they would have sex and laugh at their goofs as well as the breathless moments and cuddles. But for him, that all came after good sex, and poor Hattie had it the other way around. She was content with stability and familiarity. He yearned for passion and excitement, like when he’d been with Claire. He shouldn’t have left Claire. He’d understood things about her after he left that, had he known it at the time, he would not have left dear Claire-his angel. But time presented a locked door and he couldn’t go back. He could only bide time with Hattie until he’d found Jeanine.
He is a cat.
He keeps to himself
tending to his coat,
lounging in the sun,
pouncing on tufts of dust mice,
watching.
But he says nothing.
He’s not in a cuddling mood.
Sometimes he hisses.
Sometimes I see his cat-smile.
You can’t make a cat cuddle if he doesn’t want to.
You can’t make him sit on your lap.
But you can love him and share a room or a pillow.
You may hear him purr.
He is a cat.
He keeps to himself.
And I am a crazy cat lady.
I will always accept him as he is.
(November 4, 2018)
By Anton Chekhov:
- Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature
- Total objectivity
- Truthful descriptions of persons and objects
- Extreme brevity
- Audacity and originality: flee the stereotype
- Compassion
Are you gonna do it this year? Doesn’t matter how far you get or what you’ve got when you’re finished. What matters is that you love to write and have fun at it.
That’s my perspective this year. I’m trying my hand at a memoir. Don’t know where I’ll go with it, but I know where it starts. I think I can navigate from there as that is the kind of writer I am.
The one and only book I published was years ago, just after my daughter died. Life was hard then, and has its moments now, but writing these 100 word challenges for this blog has been refreshing. I think it’s time to write again no matter what becomes of it.
So, join me! I’d be happy to be your writing buddy. Just look for me under this easy to remember handle: LisaBarker
Come on, you can do it! We’re gonna have fun.
