"WRITE! WRITE, YOU WHORE." ~ Surmised by Absolutely*Kate of Harbinger*33 ... #FridayFlash Fiction

"WRITE! WRITE, YOU WHORE!"

~ As surmised, by Absolutely*Kate 

"Write! Write, you whore!"

Echo slammed sentiment. Deeply set into the thick, dark-green arched pine door, the scratched brass lock clicked, clenched and shut in the spirit of the striking woman melding shadows at the window.  Cold metallic finality darkened visage. Grey lambasted hues sharded vision. A return hiss from the daughter of Adele Eugenie Sidonie Landoy went unanswered. Hollow bootsteps descending a melancholy staircase seldom respond. The irony of a free spirit imprisoned against her nature with passion for nature twining ivy tendrils outside a third-story sealed window embittered her battered psyche. It was the publication rights of her third story he coveted this month.

Her nom-de-plum was his name. This tainted ink. This blotted reason. Yet the pen beckoned. The pen always beckoned. Twas her freeing salvation that it should. To run free where thoughts tangled pungent as perennial gardens her beloved mother had urged verdant, layered her roots of redemptive grace. "Mon Dieu Maman, if you could see me now. C'est un honte! It is a disgrace."

If not for her predicament, Adele Eugenie would have admired her daughter's presumption to attire:  A hand-embroidered 1923 Vidalou frock of cotton voile. Delicate insets the tint of a hint of beguine to spring. Au printemps subtly warming to full bloom. Irony how it captured her spirit, enlivened inspiration of femininity on the prowl, passion on a time-release until -- too late, much too late -- conquest charged. Pinet satin lavendar evening shoes set off the French novelist's novel ensemble. A sensating mood could evoke. Exuding sexuality would provoke. Her writings tantalized fact where fiction lay wanting, opening, writhing for a prominent climax to kiss the winds of change . . . change which she knew must come. Vivid vehemence underscored sigh, "Changer de cote . . . to change ends". Aware, la femme; her time was on nigh.

Her stride to the well-worn oak desk was direct. Thoughts collided, already splurging expression, the better to warm wanton worlds. Supple burgundy brocade caressed her seated curves as tapered fingers fondled the woodgrain ripples of her preferred Confident Marque Deposee, aware of the irony in the naming of the power of the pen. Her eyedropper urged ink into the barrel for the 18K gold nib's first flamboyance to intercourse pristine paper . . .

She started simply, thus strongly, with a tendency that bliss-indulgence is a worthy practice . . . worth perfecting ~

"If I can't have too many truffles,
I'll do without truffles."

Her glance took in the spacious but closed-off writing salon, windows not open to all senses, door locked as simile of obstacle to the manner of loving she desired . . . and deserved ~

"My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved."

Mais oui. Her friends were wise. Her pen lamented a life of its own ~
 

"It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses."

There were books and short stories to carry her forth. There were dances to be danced far into nights to be remembered, and forgot. There was swooning to consume. Certainement there would be swooning! Henri Gauthier-Villars would claim fame through her as "Monsieur Willy" no more! His literary face was farce through pages poured behind a deadbolt door. This no longer, her talents would endure. The confidence of her wood-grained Confident nibbed forth her greater truths ~

"Look for a long time at what pleases you, 

and a longer time at what pains you." 

Sidonie-Cabrielle signed her given name . . . 
La femme went on to seek her innate fame.

~ Colette 

(c) 2011 ~ Author Absolutely*Kate

~ Another Premiere AT THE BIJOU

P L E A S E      S T A Y      S E A T E D     T O      E N J O Y

   O U R     F O L L O W I N G    S T U N N I N G     S H O W   

*AT THE BIJOU* kicks off 2011
  with BREAD*CRUMBS
  to finding your own ways for picking up
the trails of Authors you know a little
and those who resonate swell. "Do Enjoy!" 

After all, it's all about the Journey.

~ Absolutely*Kate 

and our fine staff of renown

*AT THE BIJOU*

LIKE NATURE, AMY'S BACK ~ AT THE BIJOU

Stunning photo ala MrWSierra

A M Y ' S    B A C K !

It's a natural thing.

You'll see.

No, you'll feel it.

Recharge within.

AUTHOR AMY HALE AUKER

is splashing under more than just warm spotlights.

It's the voice within that does it.

~ Absolutely*Kate,

resonating

*AT THE BIJOU*

A Double*Feature of Amy Hale Auker,

comin' right up folks ~
 

REAL LIFE DANCE ~ By Amy Hale Auker

REAL LIFE DANCE

~ By Amy Hale Auker

We sat on red rock at mesa's edge

as clouds came on, as storm rose up,

saying prayers for rain,

dancing in the dirt.

We felt it today on cooler concrete,

toned-down asphalt with no glare on our skin

under wet clouds.

We looked on the website

satellite

Doppler radar

Channel ten?

We smelled it out an open window.

Have you ever

sat still

on red rock,

on a mesa,

watching,

watching,

praying,

dancing?

Have you ever danced

for rain?

In the rain?

~~~~~~~~~

 We were here.

We knew granite, pipestone,

water coming up in the fall,

water going down into sand.

We had seasons,

totems,

animal guides,

mouths to feed,

sunrises,

old men smoking at sunset,

dances;

We knew

which leaf

to slap from our babies' mouths –

Yeh!

We built walls,

knapped flint,

hunted for food and hope,

ground grass seeds into flour,

dammed and dug the spring,

skirted the tracks in the dirt,

ground that doesn’t lie.

We are here.

We know Dillard’s, Arby’s,

what shoes to buy for fall,

driving directions to the stadium game

over at the buzzer,

no one wins.

We have schedules, plastics,

calendars, power,

strangers with fake smiles,

old men rolling in chairs,

movies.

We feed

our babies formulated wonders –

Yeh!

We build cities,

send text,

hunt for stuff,

call mom on her birthday,

sort packaging into bins,

look at bank statements,

numbers that never lie.

Come see the wind,

hold the sun,

hear the rock,

taste the flight of the swallowtail from bush to bush,

smell the clover dampness.

Come to the creek,

the million song mountain,

the real world,

where we left footprints,

yesterday.

(c) 2010 ~ Author Amy Hale Auker

Visualizations ala Laura Travels and James Neeley  

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Amy (or Cita as some of us around writers'worlds have known her) is in a rarified state of prolifics and prose. It's as if you're barefoot and wading your way along a creek and then, way up ahead you see a lithe spirit. Son-of-a-gun, it's lovely Amy and you know you just want to sit and talk, ponder and laugh on that rock there. You'll move on feeling deeper and more splendid with another angle of peering at your world.

I think *ease* happens when you accomplish, are attuned to your 'nature' and are confident at a plateau where waiting for what's next to simply (thus strongly) come around the bend is its own sense of reality. I sensed that about the now of Amy, but wanted to know a little more for sure.


ABSOLUTELY*KATE:  So Amy, if you had your druthers, what would your superb and natural vision see happening for you in your writing and life'ways?
 

 

AUTHOR AMY HALE AUKER: We live, right now, in a world where Wall Street bankers are rewarded even though they have created nothing of value in a nation where everyone knows what a McDonald's french fry tastes like. I want to write about the real world where things grow up out of the ground, where the miracle of life happens over and over again, where people can and do survive without malls and movie theatres.  I want to produce something of value from a place where the bats fly, the lizards do pushups on the rocks, the bears leave barefoot prints in the dirt, the hummingbirds do a rain dance in August, spiders weave for their food, and poetry is in the chrysalis and the cocoon.  I believe that what you put out there is what you get back, and that if we do the good work, stay true to the creative process, we will be rewarded.   

 

See? I told you.

Amy's creating splendour

from the natural grace within.

 

Soar Amy Soar!

Thanks so much for natural flair

you brought 'round again,

*AT THE BIJOU*

 

~ Absolutely*Kate

and our fine staff of renown

 

"WHY DO YOU WRITE?", I WAS ASKED . . . Ala Absolutely*Kate of Harbinger*33

"Why Do You Write?", I was asked.

  And so . . . I answered ~

ABSOLUTELY*NATURE

~ By Absolutely*Kate 

Water. Gushing, flowing, knowing, going from perennial meltings of highest wintry snows ~ all a’tumble, quick the rumble, down the mountain, gathering, gathering ~ at breakneck, splish’splash, morning, noon and night speed . . . ever smoothing rocks along the whoooosh of way. No rough edges; edit – feel it. Comes the springtime, green’s the warmth. Tumble takes root. Blossoms bloom, thoughts unfurl. Growth tenders tendrils ~ smiles plant pay-dirt. Flowering words and those which stand stem straight, all on their own, extend the lingo of lingua to root-words . . . and propagate. They grow, they know ~ it’s eternal, it’s ephemeral . . . primal is creation’s way.

Summertime and the living spins easy, breezy. Ol’ lady river confluences, meanders to the sea. Good tidings ensue, for you, for me. Ebb, flow, write, know, concept, consider, cross-current, ripple, ripple, let go, let go, LET GO! Barefoot that beach’walk as sun kisses all that is upturned. A conch’shell pickup hears the world and a new way to spin a tale, flash a fiction, emote a sense, pack a punch. All is a day in June, a Gershwin tune, a gesture to a phrase, a glint, a sparkle on the sea, for you, for me. Blue skies, nuttin’ but blue skies ~ raise high those paragraphs up your mains’l, Wordsmithy. Billow, snap, crackle, catch ~ all the open winds of research and interview til the tell/tale-wind picks up and pure inspiration illuminates the compass rose petals of the day. Sail on, sail on . . . with fair winds, favourable seas. Horizons? No limits baby ~ write, expound and inspire morphs splendid sunset of gut-belly fire-hues to true writer’s desire . . . show me, don’t tell me ~ let it free, let it free . . . the summerwind or Sinatra refrains, for you, for me.

You don’t drop the ball when season’s reasons come to fall a Writer’s way. I am Author ~ hear me soar. Autumnal brights are all the new credentials of a fresh box of Crayola 64. Ahhhh, smell it, scrawl it ~ you’ve been there before. Walk it, kick it and lateral your wild cat passion into gaining yardage in pass-play action – get words to paper, first and ten, do it again, do it again, SCORE to keyboard, to screen … this is essential in each coming scene. Comes the cold, the spirit speaks warmer. Come close, hear the muse ~ give it voice, point of views, flesh the plot line, for me, for you. Crunch leaves (but never spirits) ~ believe in believers, see the contrast, feel the changes . . . your words will e’er show you the trails around any bend my huckleberry friend. Just walk. Just know. Feel it fall. Watch it go.

There’s no biz like snow biz for tuckin’ in close, tossing another blog on the high fire . . . where words want steam and spark and spiral past mere smoked out conclusion. A season can’t hold a comforter down; nor a year, nor a decade, only gloom ~ but we don’t go there, not in this room for thought. Near the shadow we see gestalt, we speak the light. A blizzard blankets white ~ soft white untouched sparkle of surprise  ~ like the simile of a snow’day off – Writer takes delight. Words tumble, write, write, right! Crackle the paper, tie the bow, give your love and let it show. The card? A writer waste words? Suffer no fools nor that thought. What you say beats the hell outta what you bought. Holidays, like sensations, are expressions of what we truly say. *Clink*, shout, dazzle, glitter, ring*out, give innate cheer in only your inherent way. You and I write because we have to, we yearn to, we churn to . . . speak what inside must have its own come what may.

How could it be otherwise?

~ Absolutely*Kate, who writes because she’s a writer.

(c) 2010  

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Absolutely*Kate is creator, presenter

and enthuser *AT THE BIJOU*, 

the captain of HARBINGER*33, 

sailing depth into authorship seas,

heralding greatness to be ~

  A prolific writer, designer and promotion-publisher

of what's worthy of acclaim in this here world.

She believes in believers. 

That's the wind in her sails.

She's real darn glad you read her 

stream of conciousness riptide here,

Towels are available AT THE BIJOU doors.

I GO FOR THE GOING ~ By Amy Hale Auker

I Go For The Going

~ By Amy Hale Auker

 The dogs found a dead fox in the pool below the culvert on the trail leading into the forest.  All I could think about was how beautiful she was, even as she lay, half in and half out of the ice, frozen into the pool.  When I pried her out, I was shocked at how heavy she felt, and I almost expected her to still be warm, almost expected her to reach around and bite my arm when I freed her muzzle from beneath the surface, this dainly blue-coated creature.  Then I looked down and saw a huge piece of ice still clinging to her front legs.  The ice made her heavy when she should have been running away from me, like a shadow.

Her fur was hard to feel with my insensitive hands, the hands that carry wood, wash dishes, shovel dirt.  Surely there is another part of my body more suitable for feeling this fox's fine fur--and I think of rubbing her on my belly or along my inner thighs where the skin is protected and more able to feel.  Her face was patrician, sharp, pointed outwards at the world and I wondered how panicked her eyes, milky with death how, must have looked as she scrabbled on the slick traitorous ice before she died.  Because I have decided how she died--the deep pool cracked and broke under her weight at midnight just as the year flipped over the edge.  While all but a few hearty patches of snow beneath the perpetual shade of boulders have melted, the clear nights are cold in our mountains.  The little fox drowned quickly, her pads and claws slipping off the cruel edges over and over again while the water quietly regained the shape and state it had been in before its thinness betrayed her.  I wasn't there, but I know that the cold put the little fox to sleep and her dainty muzzle dropped into black water that clung and stiffened and held.

Its warmer today and I fled my office and its keyboard that links me to a million people and ten times that many words, that snares me in the clutches of "just one more email," one more glimpse at facebook, one more pass on chapter four, but oh what about searching ebay for a wool sweater, women's size small?  Dreams of a new year, promises made to self of a new way of being, breaking out of the ice of inertia at the end of the old year, drive me with a kind of restless desperation out into the wind and sun--out into a forest of surprises I'd rather have than any gift I unwrapped last week.

But I go without expectation--no agenda--the antithesis of hunting.  I go for the going.  I never know if the surprises or treasures will come from the forest or from within my own wilderness.  Both require vigilance--old fashioned paying attention.  And then, of course, sometimes the going, the walking, is its own reward.

Today the surprise required paying attention because the pool of water is off the trail, beneath the lip of the culvert, a long way down the steep slope.  But, as I said before, the dogs found her first.  I could explain away my actions with words like "natural exhuberance," but the fact is that I have a very low ick-factor and while I always feel a twinge of sadness when I see a dead animal, I am not scared of death, not put off by it, don't feel squeamish about how the wheel of life circles 'round and 'round again from flourish to entropy.  I have a dead hummingbird, several beetles, and a snake skeleton on my nature shelf in the living room.  I don't like to kill, but would if I had to, and didn't see the dead fox as anything but a treasure, even as I envisioned her slight figure as it really should have been, her cold nose buried in her warm tail deep in her burrow.  This is the closest I am ever going to get to a fox, really, other than catching a glimpse of startled eyes and a flash of a fluffed-out tail disappearing into the oak brush, so I carry her by her thin tail bone, the rich fur clinging to my hand, back over the trail, all the way home, her head swinging above the dirt, to lay her out in state and call my boyfriend out of his office, feeling a little bit self-conscious only then.  She's just a small wild creature, allowing us through her own tragedy to see, to know, to hold, to feel, to appreciate, to love something more of the mystery.  But she's still a dead animal and no, I didn't consider rabies or disease, or how silly it looked for me to carry home a dead animal.  I carried her back, put her back where I found her, and I went on with my walk.

We played cribbage in the late afternoon and outside the window a hummingbird buzzed by the seed feeders, on January 1, 2010, and the surprise was just a little more warmth on a day in which the ice had already been broken.

(c) 2010, Author Amy Hale Auker

So many of us know Amy as Cita but mostly, as Herself . . . above all things! What a tender tough femme. She writes while breathing with the seasons.  Twenty years on commercial cattle operations in Texas barely prepared her for living and loving and laughing on a forest service allotment in Arizona where the gaps are filled and freedom abounds, but Amy? Freedom? Yes, she found her new happy trails.

Currently, Amy has a book of essays, Rightful Place, in the pipes for publication at Texas Tech University Press.  Her first foray into fiction, The Story is the Thing, is complete and she's beginning the beguine of the good work of editing, polishing, and asking everyone to please pass the compliments. (Like you didn't see that coming - our Amy is no shy filly ~ rather one who will take her readers on a ride with such touching attention to nature's genuine fulfilling life, you just want to move in and call that wild  place home.)

Seems everyone is duct-taping notes in the upper balcony - we found this tattered piece of barn-parchment in Amy's characteristic scrawl~

"Really, fiction was an uncomfortable and scary new world, so now I am ready to get horseback and work cattle through the spring and forget about writing. My family of heart are all of those in the cowboy poetry and music world who were part of blowing the doors off of my cute little ranch wife existence and showing me that thinking people abound in the ranching industry.  I plan on earning enough with my writing to feed myself, though its hard not to dream of that big advance check someday.  My boyfriend is so happy that I wrote him a boat, I mean, a book."

THANKS Amy for your honesty, your scrawl, and best of all ~ the wonders of your piece of peace, seen for the first time here ~ AT THE BIJOU.

~ Absolutely*Kate and the fine staff of renown, 

AT THE BIJOU, where a little hummingbird just blew in (Honest!)