Checking Out

 

The First Line literary journal issued a challenge to write a story starting with this sentence:  "The Simmons public library was a melting pot of the haves and have-nots, a mixture of homeless people and the wealthy older residents of the nearby neighborhood."

 

Mine was one of those chosen for publication, among a group of great stories.  "Checking Out" is a departure for me, darker and stranger than my usual writing, informed by the darkness and strangeness of our times.  Also by one of my favorite old Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by some lovely tarot cards from 1910 I found online, and by these lines from a Charles Simic poem:

   The library is a quiet place.

   Angels and gods huddled

   In dark unopened books.

 

I'm pleased to have had this story published.

 

 

 

Image:  Old Woman Reading (After Rembrandt Van Rijn), by John Graham Gilbert

Writing Spaces

 

"What a blessing it is to love books."    (Elizabeth von Arnim, The Solitary Summer)

"One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by."    (Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle)

image:  Richard Emil Miller

Water Music

 

I'm immensely grateful to have had another short story accepted by our magnificent local publisher, Catamaran—this one called "Water Music," and evoking, variously, royal musicians and barges on the Thames, the coronation of Anne Boleyn, the Cheshire Cat, a Great Pyrenees dog, Tristan and Isolde, and a daring ship tattoo.  And, always, words and wordplay.

At-Home and Far-Away

 

Birdland Journal has published my strange non-fiction piece encapsulating these strange times, in their Summer 2020 issue, Writing in the Time of the Global Pandemic.

My piece, "At-Home and Far-Away," was conceived with Zoom and its little windows in mind.  Those of us who watch Zoom strictly for the opera choruses with each member at home somewhere likely have a different vision of it than those who use it to talk to just a couple of others.  To me, it seems a mosaic of dozens of little tiles from around the world—and my nonfiction piece is more or less the same, little vignettes from various places and years, here and elsewhere, fitting together however loosely as a mosaic of the last few months, the stories triggered by household objects enticing my thoughts far and wide.  

My research tells me that in Zoom terms it's "gallery" rather than mosaic, and not windows or tiles but participants or thumbnails.  But that's the idea, and my text would ideally be in three columns to more closely carry out the concept (if that didn't just distract from the sense of the language).

image:  David Wakely, Prayer Flags, Birdland Journal

 

Writing Spaces

“The Moving Finger writes, 
and having writ, Moves on,” 

as Omar Khayyam tells us in his Rubaiyat.

I am thinking about erasures, about writing by weather and by time that can be read as a long cautionary tale, a poetry of loss.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Up Near Hadrian's Wall 

Stories I Thought I'd Written

Stories I thought I'd written

have instead 

written themselves in me,
into the sinew of my arms, my hands.

The way pine branches
writhe unmovingly
like Laocoön riddled by serpents,
within the lissome grace of needle-sprays.

The way oxbow rivers
reveal their agonizing course
through the bedrock
as if in motion fluid as water,

meeting resistence
as they find themselves 
again and then again returning 
where they started out.

March 17, 2018

(Writing towards Healing)

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Sepia Pine

What Scares Us

On his Facebook page, Nick Bantock, artist and author (best known for his Griffin and Sabine trilogy), posted this writing challenge:

"I understand that during these rough days, most folk just want to be cheered-up or distracted. But sometimes, in order to see any light, we first have to admit to (ourselves) what scares us. Not by wallowing in self-pity or destructively acting-out, but by ‘simply’ expressing our deeper fears in a creative form (much like Picasso, painting Guernica to let out his pain and rage). So, here’s a suggestion, a simple way of letting go:

Write a short poem (4 lines is an easy length) that sums up your undertow of anxiety. It can be literal, metaphysical, or two steps removed; whatever comes out, without judgement."

Here's my response:

Everything I love, behind a rigid pane—

unbreakable, spotted with last month's rain.  

All I can touch is this (all else watch pass),

the cold indifference of glass.

image:  https://hdwallpaperim.com/rain-water-drops-water-on-glass/

Writing Spaces

"The act of writing itself is like an act of love.  There is contact.  There is exchange too.  We no longer know whether the words come out of the ink onto the page, or whether they emerge from the page itself where they were sleeping, the ink merely giving them color."

—Georges Rodenbach (Belgian poet), The Bells of Bruges

image:  Emanuel Phillips Fox, The Letter

Komorebi

I am pleased to have one of my short stories, "Komorebi," in the Summer issue of The Fourth River:  A Journal of Nature and Place-Based Writing.  This piece might have been written just for them, on both counts.  The place is rural Virginia, in the autumn, with nature all around and in the end a kind of spiritual salvation.  

The narrator counts her blessings at "being free to follow rambling little roads that led through places like Goose Creek, Crums Church, Pidgeon Hill, past taverns with hand-chalked menus and an 18^th-century gristmill on a slow green river, past pastures with dry-stone running walls enclosing leggy thoroughbreds or in one case a small white plane sitting wing-deep in overgrown grasses.  To stop at Willa Cather's birthplace in the Shenandoah Valley—her favorite author's cherished 'sleepy pine woods, slatey ground'—and then, late in the day, at some haunted Civil War battlefield.  To photograph the inestimable light in the Blue Ridge Mountains, then stay the night or week at country inns like this."


image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Henry Cowell Redwoods

Writing Spaces

The writing of summer . . . 

(And here, as a taste, are some summer poems.)



image:  E. Phillips Fox

Writing Spaces

Thoughts on the wind . . . 

"Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw?  Well, what

tongue does the wind talk?  What nationality is a storm?  What country do rains come from?  What color is lightning?  Where does thunder go when it dies?"

—Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

image:  Schedelsche Weltchronik - Kosmologie

Milk

My long short-story "Milk," set mostly in and nearby the Cathedral close in Durham, England, has just been published in Minerva Rising Issue 18:  Reinvention, Resolution, Recreation.  

Despite her utter lack of resolution and self-confidence, after her archaeologist boyfriend leaves her for a Roman archaeobiologist, Virginia takes the path of least resistance to weather through, then by way of her love of cooking and her caring nature reinvents herself and recreates her life.  Here's an excerpt from near the beginning:

“It’s no use crying over spilled milk,” he had often quoted his no-nonsense Aunt Hattie, never married, who’d moved back to Santa Fe into his childhood house to take care of Joey and his two older sisters after their parents’ death.  Joey had readily embraced Hattie's dictum, not being one to regret, to look back.  Odd for someone studying the ancient past, some might argue, but he saw archaeology and art history as forwards progress, a necessary advancement of knowledge for the good of humankind.

         Though she was one to regret anything and everything, Virginia would much rather not be crying over it in public—and especially not in the spice aisle at the mega-Safeway on El Camino over a tin of bay leaves, exactly like the one she’d bought to make jambalaya with sausages and red peppers and chicken thighs for Joey’s 40^th birthday.

Contagious Magic

It makes me happy to announce the publication of my book of poems, Contagious Magic:  Collected Poems.

"Always light-gathering, these poems move back and forth among the places that have been essential to the poet's life—New Mexico and the southwest, old Roman vestiges in northern Italy, a longtime home next to a synagogue in northern California, the color-drenched French countryside of artist Pierre Bonnard.  The magic of the title is carried by spices and pigments, water and birds, bright strings of turquoise and branches of pine.  As traveler, word-peddler, and celebrant of joie de vivre, the poet's quest has been to gather luminous ingredients wherever they are found."

Written over a large span of my life, and every so often published in journals, some of them, the poems were gathered with others and ordered differently for a Continuing Studies class at Stanford several years ago, then put back in a drawer.  When the threat of the Coronavirus came upon us in early March, I decided I wanted most of all to spend my hours (final if they should be) getting my favorite poems of the collection out into the world, as a kind of memoir.

My preface explains the title (timely, but coincidental):

James Frazer, British anthropologist and author 
of The Golden Bough, said that contagious magic 
has to do with the associations between things.  "Things that have been either in physical contact
or in spatial or temporal association with other 
things retain a connection after they are separated."  (Phillips Stevens, Jr., Skeptical Inquirer, Nov/Dec 2001) 

         The Hawaiian religion calls it aka, these bonds or shadow cords connecting us elsewhere, animating our being from however far away. 

         My life has been rich with resonances of this sort.  Thunder rumbling in purple canyons holding the ruins of Anasazi dwellings; the evening air holding the memory of temple bells.  Words carry magic.  For me, each poem is an incantation, a small spell marrying sage maybe to red ochre and chile pods,
 contagious in the sense of
passing on chance findings of quixotic joy, incendiary light.

Happy launching, little book.  Sail true.  Like the lyrics of Giuseppe Verdi's heartbreaking chorus, that speaks of the lovely, lost homeland, of times gone by that are dear and irrecoverable, in these perilous times, "Fly, my thoughts, on wings of gold."

Contagious Magic can be ordered from Barnes and Noble, Amazon (on Kindle too), from Bookshop Santa Cruz, or from your favorite local bookstore.

Haiku Challenge, Week Four

My final week's responses to the #30DaysOfHaikuChallenge (see week one for details).  Thewildwords.com/haiku|NicoleGulotta

22  made you laugh

mountain goats roaming 

Welsh streets—past the tattoo shop,

the solicitors

23   seasonal shifts

just this afternoon

a splendid purple iris

took us by surprise

sparrows flown elsewhere,

and the coastal rocks empty

of pelicans still

24  pile of papers

bills — ticket refunds —

a Cezanne postcard never 

sent — last year's flax seeds

ticket refunds, last

year's birthday card to answer,

obituary

limone, pesca,

nocciola—gelatos

in an old story

25  tea or coffee

well-loved coffee mug—

its lip chipped years ago now, 

but still soothing mine 

26  lighting a candle

orange, palo santo:

a steady flame to cleanse my

writing space of ghosts

smoked birch and amber:

a small prayer, like burning sage

for clarity, health

sandalwood and myrrh:

fragrant as smudging sage to

clear a house of ghosts

Cedarwood, lighted

to clarify my thinking,

consecrate my words

27  on the road

dog ears fly in bliss

from the car window, heeding

asphalt whispers, wind

dog ears streaming from

the open window, hearing

what, that I can't hear? 

28  breath

Each breath outside brims

with birdsong, iris petals,

softly soughing pine.

Inspiration is 

literally "breathing in."

I breathe deep, deeper.

gauzy lengths of sky,

silver-shot scraps of ocean—

breathing it all in

the stooped old man feeds

ducklings—calls them, breath whistling,

like the Pied Piper

so hard to breathe, through

these protective layers:  no

clean, heartening air 

                                                                                                                                                                                                             

29  on your street

the sound of bagpipes

gone by now, where the piper

walked past to cheer us

our poppy patch draws

bees, small dogs, those needing cheer,

an artist's easel

30  through the window  

a rake on gravel

smoothing, soothing, evening

roughed pathways gently

corrugated roof

rusted, as in Hilo rains,

hibiscus haunted

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Waterlily

Haiku Challenge, Week Three

My third week's responses to the #30DaysOfHaikuChallenge (see week one for details).  Thewildwords.com/haiku|NicoleGulotta

15  thoughts while cooking

Old desert healing:

red chile pods, ground fine, pure,

like artists' pigments.

childhood smells linger:

simmering meat, chopped garlic,

taco spices, joy

16 pets

little turtles kept

once, terribly fragile in

their stony green shells

17 front yard view

Chartreuse living room:

the hundred-and-two-year-old

artist's, our neighbor.

Blissful ravishment

of poppies, liquid sunbeams 

pooled in every one.

  

18  back yard view

two ducks follow a

stooped old man with walking sticks:

jubilant parade

19  thoughts while cleaning

Dustcloth in hand, I'm

taking time for things I love.

Candlestick, shell, drum. 

20  trees

morning rain blesses

every thirsty needle of

the Monterey pine

21  morning breakfast

apricot preserves

evoke the old tree shading

my childhood bedroom

Moroccan fried eggs

behind the big museum

one year in New York

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Wet Pine

Haiku Challenge, Week Two

My second week's responses to the #30DaysOfHaikuChallenge (see my previous post for details).  Thewildwords.com/haiku|NicoleGulotta

8  hope

Trusting sparrows slip

onto the deck, not doubting

seed will reappear.

9  someone you love

Feeding me oranges . . . 

Paul McCartney with bagpipes . . .

my sunny soulmate.

10  plant friends

Sage, blooming purple

on my sheltered deck, evokes

far Cretan hillsides.

Philodendron leaves

pivot toward the light, just

as my spirit does.

11  a photograph (mine of Canterbury)

old stone and blue glass

in the cloister once welcomed

"those who journey here"

12  something you long for

Wandering favorite

cities—abbeys, gardens, shops,

books full of old words . . .

Saints beckoning us,

and music, and gold-hearted 

beads—Murano glass.

the chilly church with 

Murano glass chandeliers,

prayers for boatmen, all

Gilded saints, cellos,

and strands of gold and green glass 

beads, carrying light.

Strands of green and gold

glass beads in lighted shops, once,

holding off the dark.

Hands making music,

shucking oysters, pouring rum—

old New Orleans, gone.

(feeling hugely nostalgic for our European travels, after watching Andrea Bocelli's Easter concert from the Duomo in Milan, and views of all the empty cities; also for Italian composers and opera singers from days gone by)

13  birds

an oriole comes—

some kind of wayward magic,

drawn here by a fluke

yellow oriole

appears unlooked for here—far 

from his desert haunts

yellow oriole

appears out of nowhere—chance

avian blessing

(some days are more indecisive than others)

14  on a walk

keeping my distance

from the dogs I always love

frisking around me

watching for swallows

over the coastal meadows,

weeks late to arrive

the coastal meadows

locked away now, just beyond

this adamant gate

Planting snapdragons,

clay pot between her bare feet, 

grandmother of three.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Wild Iris

Haiku Challenge, Week One

I have accepted this invitation to write one haiku a day this month that celebrates poetry—

#30DaysOfHaikuChallenge

Thewildwords.com/haiku|NicoleGulotta

"This is an invitation to notice.  We're all moored in our homes and neighborhoods now—let's elevate the ordinary and find meaning in the mundane...."

I'm sharing my week, in haiku.  A kind of tiny journal, which has reminded me of my always wanting to add all of the detail, a wealth of reminiscences and trains of thought traversing whole countries.  And the 5-7-5 pattern doesn't come easily to me; it feels often clunky, arrhythmic.  But it it a meditative discipline, perhaps more so than any other, and I've always loved the haiku form when done right by others.

1.  through the window

iridescence steeps

from bathing pigeons—feathers

oozing purples, greens  

2.  around the house

Soft red flannel horse

sewed for a child with love, once,

pastured on a shelf.

3.  thoughts while driving

The ocean, dazzling,

impartially considers

dogs, dogwalkers, all.

4. nourishing meal

Potatoes simmer,

steaming the kitchen windows,

blurring what's outside.

5.  spring light

Rain-darkened morning.

What light there is, quicksilver,

pooled in the birdbath.

6. mediation on flowers

blue wisteria

throws itself wantonly off

the staid old gray deck

7. while folding laundry

spiteful fitted sheet

refuses to lie still, ends

as this runkled ball

 image:  Last Year's Blossoms, Christie B. Cochrell