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Writer in the Garret

~ A writer living one word at a time

Writer in the Garret

Category Archives: Grief

31 Days of Spooky Stuff, October 16: The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe

16 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Gothic, Grief, Hallowe'en

≈ 3 Comments

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Edgar Allan Poe

eapoe

I’m a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe. The man wielded words with precision, knowing how to spread melancholy and dread. Among my favorites of his work is The Raven, which has become a part of my genetic makeup over the years. I’ve read it so many times, and listened to as many renditions as I’ve been able to find. Including the Simpsons version, of course. It provides a moment of pleasure, along with an uneasy recognition of our own inevitable mortality.

Below, a link to the entire poem.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/48860

But the way to truly appreciate “The Raven” is to listen to it. My favorite reading is by James Earl Jones.

Get yourself a nice cup of tea, or a glass of port, and listen. Happy Halloween.

To enter the October 31 drawing, make a comment (press the comment button on the top right of the page.) The prize will be a signed copy of each of the Wisdom Court books: Edge of the Shadow; A Signal Shown; All In Bad Time.

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31 Days of Spooky Stuff, October 13: A favorite episode of The X-Files

13 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Grief, Hope

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Character, horror

clydeb1

I don’t know how much influence The X-Files has had on me, but it’s been significant. I’m grateful it aired when I was an adult, both because I was able to clue into most of the cultural references of its best writers, and because, growing up, I had enough nightmares as it was.

I started to write this post about the five scariest episodes of The X-Files, but ran into a problem I’m not willing to resolve. All the lists point to “Home” as either one of or the most frightening episode of the series. After seeing the preview of that episode back in 1995, I refused to watch it. (I have a deep and ongoing problem with monsters under the bed.)

clydeb2So today I’ll remind you of one of the very best of the frightening standalone episodes the series had: “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose,” about a psychic whose gift is the ability to see how people will die. The late Peter Boyle played this character with grace and melancholy, and the writing and directon by Darin Morgan and David Nutter are both creepy and morbidly humorous. It remains one of the most human of the series episodes–what, after all, is more human than death?

When I recall watching this episode, I remember the joy I felt at the skill of the writing, at the brilliance of Boyle’s portrayal. It’s been a favorite “ahhh” moment in my long history of TV-watching.

 

 

Comment to enter the October 31 drawing to win a signed copy of the Wisdom Court Trilogy.

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31 Days of Spooky Stuff, October 10: The Sixth Sense

10 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Grief, Spooky movies

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horror

sixthsense3

What is the sixth sense? That brush of awareness across the back of your neck…the almost-sound of voices as you enter an empty room…the flash of motion from the corner of your eyes…

Some say they know when something bad will happen, that they receive a warning, either through a swift vision or an inner signal impossible to describe. Others recount detailed dreams in which people are touched by unanticipated events.

People with ESP, “the sight,” being fey, subject to visions…All of us have read about those who claim such abilities in real life, and we’ve heard stories, and seen movies of fictional characters trying to deal with such powers, trying to live with the sixth sense.

My favorite of those films is the 1999 movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The relationship between troubled eight-year-old boy Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) and child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a lovely and haunting human interest story that also happens to be the best horror film I’ve ever seen. The writing is beautiful, and the acting superb, particular Osment’s gifted performance.

The Sixth Sense is assuredly spooky. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and rent it. If you have, watch it again and revel in the craftsmanship of it.

sixthsense1

 

 

Comment and you’ll be entered in the drawing for a signed copy of The Wisdom Court Trilogy, to take place October 31.

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Taking a long walk off a short pier

02 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Grief, Hope

≈ 8 Comments

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Fear, love

jetty sunriseSometimes life presents situations you can’t get around. Sometimes you can only go through, dread growing along the way. It’s been that way around here for awhile.

Our daughter has been increasingly ill for years now, with ovarian cysts, worsening migraines, and now trigeminal neuralgia. She lives in a sea of pain with islands here and there to rest on. The islands are getting smaller and less frequent.

Soon she will leave for a headache/pain management hospital in Michigan where the staff will give her intravenous drugs to determine which mixture is most effective in treating the migraines. As you can imagine, we are hoping this experiment will enable her to reclaim her life.

Why am I writing about this now? To ask for your good vibes, prayers, and kind thoughts that Misty will get better. Sometimes just knowing people are hoping on your behalf can have a positive impact. I’m looking for all the positive I can find for my girl.

Peace, friends.

 

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Time is, time was, time is yet to be…

01 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Ghosts, Grief, Life, Random Thoughts

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Childhood, winter memories

2013.  I wake up this morning far too early, the thought of a new year dropping into place as I listen to the furnace and feel two dachshunds against my back.  I give thought to events in the last year, losses and gains, joys and sorrows.  I think of those who are no longer here, sad at the dwindling list of cast members in my personal drama.  My mind picks up speed, whirring into time machine mode.

1959.  A memory flashes of my thirteen-year-old self, crouched along with classmates on an open playing field at Casey Junior High School.  The air raid test sirens have caught us outside with no desks for shelter, and the gym teacher tells us to cover our heads with our arms.  I sharply recall the moment I realize odds are I’ll never make it to thirty.  Soviet nuclear attacks will take out Boulder early, and all the desks and cradling arms in the world won’t save me.  And why am I thinking this today?

2012.  Sunday night our granddaughter and grandson are here and we decide to make the gingerbread house we’ve talked about all through Christmas vacation.  We mix the batter, bravely soldiering on without molasses, pressing the smooth dough into the silicon mold I had the cunning to order on-line.  As the pieces bake, I remember the winter when our children pressed against me while I measured and sliced pieces of dough for walls and the roof, my eyes crossing as I tried to translate the recipe into supplies for 3-D construction.  They squabbled over who would use which piece for what, just as the grandkids now announce how they’ll build their house, voices rising in the oven-warmed air.  The crispy house rises on its foil-covered cardboard foundation, and the memory of that older cookie cottage recedes as the brave new structure is adorned with frosting and gumdrops and sprinkles.

1956.  I’m in the backseat of our Ford Crown Victoria with my brother Mike, and Dad and Mom are up front.  We’ve had New Year’s Day dinner, maybe roast beef with potatoes and carrots and parsnips cooked by Dad and a mincemeat pie baked by Mom.  We’re out for a drive, and when Mike says he’s still hungry Dad steers the car toward Twinburger, our favorite drive-in restaurant.  I can almost taste the tangy red sauce on the BBQ burger, my favorite.  The Flatirons have a dusting of snow and the delft blue sky stretches over Boulder.  We drive farther east, catching sight of a rabbit in the stand of trees beside the road.  I smile now, thinking Mike & I were probably giving each other the fish eye, just as my children used to battle over the line between their places in the backseat of our car.  I think I remember the satisfaction of believing we could go on forever in that car, together.

2013.  The morning is winter quiet, and even the birds are sleeping in.  It’s cold here in my garret and I reach for the wrap I keep nearby. Each January I feel such gratitude for what has gone before, such hope and possibility for what is to come. The present, the everlasting now, is sharpened by a sense of loss.  It is that combination, I suppose, that makes me who I am. I wish the world a happy new year, knowing it both will and will not be.

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Must I think in metaphors?

25 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Grief, Life, trees, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Apparently I must.

Yesterday came The Cutting of the Trees, an epic set into motion decades ago.  We moved into Victoria Turtleshell in 1973.  The old three-story house had stately elms  along the street, homes to birds and squirrels.  This was shortly before Dutch Elm Disease cut through Denver like a scythe.  We lost them all.

Sad but determined, we planted new trees: one each silver maple and Norway maple, a honey locust in front, a dwarf cherry in the west yard, and along the alley what we thought was a bing cherry tree.  Have I mentioned I was in my earth-mother stage, planning to can cherries, bake cherry pies, cherry Danish, cook cherry dumplings, crochet cherry antimacassars…well, you get the idea.

We bought the biggest trees we could afford and chipped in several more for the old lady next door.  Our block was forested once more, offering homes for the birds and squirrels.  After a few years the honey locust died (recalled fondly for the shelter it provided during a wild afternoon when a mother robin spread her wings over her eggs as she rode out the storm.)  We replaced it with a Russian Olive named Zoya.

Over the years we trimmed branches here and there and the trees grew bigger.  My vegetable garden gave way to shade-loving plants, and until recently (global warming!) we didn’t need any air conditioning downstairs because of that shade.  But the idiosyncratic  growth of the so-called bing cherry tree began to concern us. (Though it bloomed each year, it never bore fruit.)  By then we were calling it the Octopus Tree, though it had far more than eight branches spreading up to the roof and looming over the alley.  I often listened to birds gossiping outside my study window, and when I peeked between the slats of the blinds, I knew I worked in a tree house.

We trimmed some of the dead wood under the tree canopy several weeks ago, smug at how we’d been able to handle the problem.  While we were out to breakfast that Sunday, wind gusted through the neighborhood and half the tree fell beside the house.  No damage to anything else, no one hurt.  We’d unbalanced it enough to allow the big diseased branch–the tree house branch–to shift in that wind.  Then we could clearly see how other branches were draped over the cable and telephone wires.  We had to call the professionals.

And so they came and they cut.  They thinned out the two maples, enhancing the shapes of the trees.  They spruced up the cherry and the Russian Olive.  And they set about trimming the Octopus Tree.  The arborist gave us updates as he worked, lowering the cherry-picker to get our opinions as it became clear how much had to be cut.  It was a lot.  By the time he’d removed the branches from the cables, half the remaining tree was gone, but he left boughs to cup around the deck by the porch and a few more branches to reach toward the silver maple, meeting to form a smaller canopy over the sidewalk.  It’s rather like trees in Japanese prints, spare but beautiful–or spare and beautiful, take your pick.

By the way, when I asked the man who came to estimate the job if the Octopus Tree was actually a bing cherry, he examined it silently, then shook his head.  “I haven’t seen one in Denver for a long time, but I’m almost sure that’s an apricot tree.”  Our Bonsai Octopus.

The metaphor?  I’ve lived long enough to discern a pattern or two when I look back over the years.  For a long time we were accumulators, buying the house, filling it with children and pets and things.  We planted trees and flowers and bought computers and appliances and clothes and stuff.  Now the wind has shifted.  Our kids are grown and our grandchildren thunder through Victoria Turtleshell.  We’re clearing out stuff, giving away things other people can use.  We’re pruning the dead wood, letting sunshine in.

When I went outside this morning, I saw how much light shone on the corner rock garden, how different everything looks.  The birds were swooping around the newly open branches as they waited their turns at the feeder.

I think I’ll be able to grow more flowers come spring.

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I’ve been thinking about words…

24 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Aurora, Grief, Hauntings, Life, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

and how they sometimes back up in the brain, preventing the flow of ideas.  There’s  a fricking Hoover Dam inside my head, and not just in the usual word-block way.  This summer has been rough for a lot of people in my life, including me, and the continuing bad news has helped construct a large part of the stoppage.  Health issues, relationships problems, unexpected expenses (you ever have those pop up like weeds in what you thought was a neat little garden patch of a personal economy?  Yeah.)

And it’s been so damned hot for days on end, and the destroyed crops and dried up lakes and streams have given a sepia tone to what is usually the lushest time of the year.  Wildfires have consumed homes–not just of people but of forest creatures as well–and smoke has made the air hard to breathe.

I’ve been stumbling along, trying to achieve steady-as-she-goes again.  I’d like to report that my unwavering cheer has brightened the days of all around me, but though I try, I’m an Amy, not a Beth (I’ve might have squirreled away some of those breakfast goodies before I got to the Hummels’ hovel.)  One foot in front of the other, things will get better, we all go through rough patches–these have been my mumbled mantras.

And then July 20th, my late mother’s birthday, actually:  People who had looked forward to the new Batman movie went to a theater in Aurora to see it and some of them were killed and others were wounded for making that choice.  Because of sheer bad luck they crossed paths with a maniac who’d been collecting guns and ammo and decided to crawl out of his hole to make his presence known.  God only knows why.  Reams of news reports will try to nail down every detail so we can know why, and books will be written and the ongoing arguments about gun control will go on.  We’re already haunted here in Colorado, and we know how this will play out.

I’m left with a river of words backed up in my head, a river of sorrow and rage and frustration and soul-deep fatigue.  I’m so sorry for the blameless people who just wanted to enjoy a movie. I grieve for their friends and families who are going through hell.  I grieve for all of us who struggle to understand another of these obscene events.

I want this summer to be over and for rain to fall on parched land and for the air to be clean of smoke.  I want there to be peace in the land.  I want the dammed up words to flow again.

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