Waiting on the cusp–or maybe it’s cups…

16 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Metaphors, Random Thoughts

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Having survived the bomb cyclone, I’m peering out the windows of my house in search of spring. Or in search of something.

January went walkabout on the veldt, its hiding places unknown. We had to send adjustment officers to drag it back. Short February lasted at least three icy months, its breath evoking a heightened sense of something in the shadows, lending a gothic tinge to the seemingly endless span.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Now the sun shines, but not yet on everything. And we’ve been told to watch for an appearance by the Worm Super Moon on the twentieth. How appropriate. (No insult to worms intended. I am a founding member of the Worm Rescue Squad.)

Times lurches forward in fits and starts, with some certainties: newly minted tax forms, long may they fold. More investigation reports. More candidates. More waiting.

Leave it to a poet for a sum-up:

“But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,/As round and round we run;/And the truth shall ever come uppermost,/And justice shall be done.”

Eternal Justice, Stanza 4

Charles Mackay (1814–1889)

Hope he’s right.

Neither Here nor There…

28 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Life, Metaphors, Random Thoughts

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The days between Christmas and the New Year hold ghosts of past events and restless shadows of what’s to come. Fun’s to be had and still-on-vacation kids are quick to grab at it. Nostalgia gathers in corners, hovering in case memories and distance-pangs evoke tears.

Duty waits in hallways, tinging the air with a faint scent of reckoning: tucking away the excesses of the holidays; finding dreaded proof for life narratives…taxes. Holiday lights sparkle enough to weaken such seriousness, but cannot banish it.

Winter settles in, at least here in Colorado. Wind attacks leaves left like confetti, gathers cold behind clouds and aims it toward naked trees and hatless heads. New light arriving with the solstice hasn’t yet the strength to pull at time.

Soon…soon the short, sharp months of the early year will streak into lives grown lazy with celebration. Measures to be taken, notions to harden into resolutions. Scales to be polished, treadmills eyed.

And a slow missive will be dropped into the year-mail to make its way through days and weeks. A warm breath will hint of promises to come, a smile will be glimpsed as light lengthens.

We’ll wait for Spring.

Spring is coming…

28 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Metaphors, Writing

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editing, writing process

I saw some crocuses the other day. Since I’m an old hand at using the signs of nature to interpret my life, I immediately associated those gorgeous little flowers with purple messengers of hope, new beginnings appearing where before there was only dirt. And as a writer, the symbolism goes deeper. Words spring from the brain like blooms pushing through soil. Ideas, paragraphs, stories are seeds waiting for encouragement, nourishment, panic.

I haven’t found a flower to represent that most efficient motivator of all. Panic gets the heart thumping and the fingers tapping, and words turn up on the page. No matter they’ve been pried out of their dank hidey holes under rotten logs at the edge of a swamp. Maybe a bare, twisted branch would serve as an image for that icon, a stark instrument of torture to prod those creative ideas out into a light offering the editor on the shoulder a grandstand view of their shortcomings.

Can you tell I’ve been writing under the gun? All In Bad Time, Book 3 of the Wisdom Court Series, is long overdue. I’m crawling toward the end over shards of broken metaphors and fractured grammar, but I’ll clean it up before I’m through. The signs of spring broke through the haze of plot points only for a moment. I’m back at work again. I swear.

First spring flowers: violet crocuses growing after melting the snow

Watching from the shore…or is it from the river?

07 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Metaphors, Writing

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imagination, writing process

One of the images I have stuck above my computer screen comes from The X Files. (Which is returning to television in January, I believe.)

As I recall the plot, Scully (in the black coat), is tethered to shore where the woman in white waits for her to decide whether to survive. But the image reminds me of something else. I’ve always imagined writing as tapping into a river of words, ideas, and emotions. That river flows somewhere–in my mind, overhead, in the blue, blue sky. When I’m working, it’s as though I set out in that small boat to look for what I need to find the truth of my story and to tell it.

The woman in white? She stands in for a number of things, from a generous goddess of creativity to the unforgiving editor on my shoulder, depending on my mood. Though I can’t see her face, there are days I know a tear or two fall down her cheek at the unholy mess I’m making of what I’ve fished from the river. On the rare days when everything works? It’s golden, life is wonderful, aren’t I cool. And the river flows on.

Everything’s swirling…leaves, opinions, my head…

22 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Yvonne Montgomery in Metaphors, Random Thoughts, trees

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autumn, change, deep blue sky, land spring, promise of snow

…And the pace is picking up though we crunch through piles of gold toward the next part of the year. (Have you ever noticed how much I like ellipses? And parentheses! Where the hell would we be without them?)

My favorite color scheme is in effect now, yellow leaves bright against the deep blue sky, and black branches offering red and orange tributes to the sun. Light shines with force as the days shorten. Desperation as the season ends? A few last claims of “But I’m not tired!” before the fractious continent returns to real time?

We continue to batten down the hatches–wrapping the fountain, tucking in the plants, filling cracks against drafts–and the big project, the new roof, will begin before too long. Wonder what kind of posts I’ll produce with all that activity just above my garret.

I’m looking forward to the peace of snowfall. The quiet of decisions made. So many activities abate in the cold, and surely this year the lessening of frenzy will result in new lucidity, to say nothing of rich, lurid plots. One can hope.

For now I shake my head against the noisy, whirling air and let out a breath. All will be well. After winter scours the land spring will come again.