I broke her heart, repeatedly
with my own shards
Tag: Love
On to the Pacific Northwest via the prairie and Ozarks
My second brace of fiction, ultimately three books in all, addressed the dozen years in the aftermath of the hippie outbreak, though I’ve tried to fudge the era precisely. I do think much of it is continuing.
Naturally, for me, they were semi-autobiographical, even though the protagonist is now a woman named Jaya who winds up with a much younger lover who becomes her husband.
The pivotal piece is Yoga Bootcamp, with her now as a central character, along with the guru they sometimes called Elvis or Big Pumpkin. My residency in the ashram was a transformative period in my life, even in the face of details I’ve since learned. We were a rogue outfit in the period when yoga took root in America. This down-to-earth story will probably scandalize your local yoga studio instructor, but the experience did reshape many of our lives, hopefully for the better. I’ve certainly carried many of its lessons far through some other faith traditions.
The central piece is now compressed into Nearly Canaan, originally an ambitious triptych that comprised the hefty novels Promise, Peel: As in Apple, and With St. Helens in the Mix. At the outset, a sense of place was central as Jaya relocated from a small town on the prairie in the American Midwest to the hardscrabble Ozarks to the apple orchard country in the desert of the Pacific Northwest, but the central theme now condenses as the question of how much influence one person can extend over others, hopefully for the better. I can ask now whether it would have been more compelling if she’d been conniving and manipulative.
The third book, The Secret Side of Jaya, is a set of three novellas, each one set in the places she lived after leaving the ashram. Each one, quite different, is premised on hearing and seeing figures in a locale that others don’t. Maybe you encounter them, too, where you are.
You can find these books in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. They’re also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.
Anyone ready for a dark valentine?
Love, if you haven’t noticed, can be very hard to define. Really define.
Here are some examples. Add “Be Mine” at your own risk.
- “Love isn’t soft, like those poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close.” – Stephen King
- “The pain of love is the pain of being alive. It is a perpetual wound. – Maureen Duffy
- “Love is a hole in the heart.” – Ben Hecht
- “Sex isn’t hard, but intimacy is terrifying.” – Tatiana Maslany
- “Love meant jumping off a cliff and trusting that a certain person would be there to catch you at the bottom.” – Jodi Picoult
- “But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.” – Khalil Gibran
- “You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.” – Franz Kafka
- “I will not have you without the darkness that hides within you. I will not let you have me without the madness that makes me. If our demons cannot dance, neither can we.” – Nikita Gill
- “Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.” – Bob Marley
- “Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.” – Oscar Wilde
As a postscript, let me add this: “If I love you, what business is it of yours?” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
So how do you define love?
There’s even a Summer of Love
The places I lived in the settings covered in my novel Pit-a-Pat High Jinks long ago fell to the wrecking ball, yet the memories live on. The fictionalized story covers friends and lovers, along with near-misses and poverty-line entry-level work life in an out-of-the-way town and surrounding countryside while venturing out on one’s own after college. It had its downs and ups, including a Summer of Love that included a remote mountain lake.
Believe me, you can’t make up details like these, though you can amplify or reshape others.
It’s one of five novels I’m making available for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends January First. The ebook comes in the digital platform of your choice. Do note that it includes adult content, so you may have to adjust your filters when ordering.
Think of this as part of my after-Christmas sale, except that these items are FREE! Remember, you risk nothing in acting now.
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
Back to the last big Turning Point
The four years covered in my novel Daffodil Uprising brought about tremendous change in the nation and around the globe. In the light of recent events, a fresh overview of the period may provide some essential perspective on current events. For some readers, it may even be a stroll down a Memory Lane of an activists’ protest march. Maybe you remember or maybe you’ve just heard of it as ancient history. In my story, the Revolution of Peace & Love unfolds at the crossroads of the America, where it never got the attention it deserves.
This week, you can still get the ebook for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends January First.
Act now, before the deal ends, and you’ll have Daffodil Uprising to read in the digital platform of your choice for as long as you like.
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
These were some fun times
Maybe you remember your first year or two after college and trying to get your feet on the ground.
My wild novel Pit-a-Pat High Jinks relates, more or less, how it went for me way back when. It wasn’t always high, either, despite the stereotypes. These days, I see the episodes extending into the forties for many younger adults and their friends. Do check it out and see how it relates to your own experiences.
It’s of five ebooks I’m making available to you for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale. You can pick yours out in the digital platform of your choice. Do note that it includes adult content, so you may have to adjust your filters when ordering.
Think of this as my Christmas present to you. In the meantime, be cool and stay warm.
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
Pick up your free copy now
Celebrity writer Tom Wolfe lamented that nobody had written the big hippie novel, something akin to the Great American Novel, but he was wrong. I’ve said so in some previous postings here.
For my part, let me invite you to Daffodil, Indiana, as its tranquil – some might even say dopy – campus goes radical. No outside agitators are needed in the face of the ongoing repression. The Revolution of Peace & Love is its own calling.
Daffodil Uprising is one of five novels I’m making available to you for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale. The ebook is available to you in the platform of your choice.
Think of this as my Christmas present to you. Or, as we used to say, If it feels good, do it!
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
When passion gets terribly tangled
Have you ever been in a committed relationship, only to be struggling against what you later learn was a triangle? The third party doesn’t even have to be another person, for that matter, but secrecy does tip the balance.
The desire was still there and burning, hoping for reconciliation and renewal. Just don’t call yourself a victim, OK? Not as long as you were actively engaged in the scene.
As for the evidence? In hearing your side, who knows what was factual or imagined, other than the reality of your feelings.
Move on, then, with the memories. Don’t say it wasn’t love, especially of an adolescent sort. Or maybe even your first time.
Having originally appeared in Thistle Finch editions, this collection is now available on your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com and its affiliated digital retailers. Those outlets include the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, and Sony’s Kobo. You may also request the ebook from your local public library.
The move makes the poems available to a wider range of readers worldwide.
Do take a look.
It’s as close as I’ve come to a romance novel
The model in the photo I selected for the original cover of the story that stands today as Nearly Canaan was nearly too perfect. I even had to tweak the description of Jaya on the pages inside to make for a better match. Much later, I came across other photos from the shooting and was appalled.
In yoga circles, it’s what we would call Maya.
Apparently, I had shifted Jaya’s spiritual identity from Sufi much earlier than I recalled. Now that I had a solid backstory for her in my novel Yoga Bootcamp, I could turn my attention to the messy trove that had sprawled into three big books. Thanks to Cassia from What’s Next, I was now intent on distilling them back into one. Trying to compress them into the maximum 120,000 upper limit of a big novel meant having to hone more than one hundred pages of manuscript. And that’s before I decided to add a fourth section for fuller closer.
~*~
At heart, I was trying to figure out just what had gone on in my first marriage. I’m still not sure. And note I had said “gone on,” not “gone wrong.”
But I also wanted to say something about the influence of the landscapes where I’ve lived. In fact, I came to think of them as major characters. If only I could have allowed them to speak? The first was pretty bleak and, for a small town, rather petty. The second had its beauty and its rough spots. The third, their intended Paradise, initially appeared desolate and unforgiving.
Place as a character? How about the Mississippi in Huckleberry Finn? The story wouldn’t have been the same if Twain had started on the Ohio River, even though it was larger than the Mississippi where he did.
Naturally, I had to abstract real people and events and in doing so, I settled on some big flips. Jaya emerged as the older partner in her marriage, for one, which gave a fresh twist on a December/May romance.
Along the way, the story became one of overlapping couples, a contrast of marriages that were close to Jaya’s home. It’s almost like the mirrors in an amusement park house of mirrors, to my way of thinking, not that the story started out that way.
Yeah, we’re supposed to avoid religion and politics. That leaves some pretty big gaps in the meaning of life and, as I’m seeing, in relationships, too.
If you haven’t noticed, changing the novel’s name from Promise to Nearly Canaan is a Biblical nod. Well, I had previously been calling it their Promised Land.
Developing Pastor Bob and his wife, Wendy, provided a big advance for the revised novel. They might have had serious reservations about her as a heathen, but they were still intrigued and at points even supportive. That marriage also had its problems.
I definitely wanted to avoid having southern Indiana in one more of my books, so I shifted the scene of the middle section to the Ozarks of Arkansas. There are a lot of similarities, from what I’m finding.
In addition, I wanted Jaya’s career to be as volatile for her as newsroom management had been for me. She needed to work weekends and nights, too. Beyond that, I did have an experience of being paid from “soft money,” as grants are sometimes called, and having a very good neighbor work as regional director of a social action agency provided me more inspiration.
By the way, the cover photo I settled on for the revised edition did require some tweaks on Jaya’s physical description on the inside pages.
What’s love got to do with it?
In research for my novel What’s Left, I wound up learning about the people we now call Roma. I won’t say how it applied, but it was an eyeful.
For instance.
- All Roma are expected to marry – and to another Roma, not an outsider.
- In many tribes, the parents arrange the marriage.
- Rejection of a formal proposal is considered a disgrace.
- Acceptance leads to the negotiation of a bride price to compensate her parents for their loss.
- A festive ceremony may follow a few days later, signifying the engagement.
- No formal ritual is required as a wedding itself, though some tribes turn the occasion into a multiday celebration.
- Wedding gifts almost always consist of money.
- After the wedding, the bride is never seen in public without wearing her headscarf.
- They settled into the groom’s parents’ home, and cannot move to a place of their own until after the birth of their first child.
- The couple cannot refer to each other as husband and wife until their first child is born. Up to that point, it’s only their first names when speaking to each other or about the other in public.
Gee, we haven’t even touched on the death customs and rituals.
Drawn from Gypsy at larp.com.
Jnana's Red Barn 