Today I am a Small Creature

This evening I was looking at the photo of Saturn hanging above my son's desk as he did his homework.  You can see our home if you look carefully.  Earth is a small blue dot, second ring in from the outside, in the upper left of the photo.

Today I am a small creature 

wandering in wonder

on the thin crust

a mere mote of dust

brushed by a wisp of air,

a creature teacher

wanting wonder to awake

waiting in the wake of time

to see if what I though was fine

will root and grow.

What arrows are there

that I can throw ahead

to say when I am dead

such a one was here?

None I fear

when I turn and see what was cast

I throw my present like water

on fires of long past,

only an echo 

of one mother, no other

two hundred thousand

years ago.

Her faint call

encodes the thread

the weft that powers the web

echoes off each cell wall.

Will her long line

throw forward in space

find out new place

be unbroken by time?

And Mars Just Sits There

I stay up late at night

worried about how 

I may have been judged

cataloguing my faults

worrying at the ones

I haven’t counted yet

but may well be counted by

others who can see them

so easily since they can 

so easily observe me 

from the outside

And roiling over 

in social disjointed 

image soaked media

till all hours

just to avoid 

the laundry

till I’m nauseous with tag lines

And then Mars just sits there

the little rover, far from home

just sits there on Mars

where all that was 

has passed away

where the rock

the sun

the wind

the dust

just there

uncaring

Parabolas in the Swimming Pool

I love the olympics.  I know there is a lot to be cynical about, but really, I just love it when groups of people from all over the world can get together and do something without becoming violent.  It has been such a rare thing in our history.  Each person involved is an inspiration to me.  Thus I’ve been swimming with my husband this summer. We go every weekday and do laps over the lunch hour.  We take a little dip in the hot tub mid session.  My husband has recent Swedish ancestors, which I blame for his love of jumping from hot to cold to hot to cold.  I’m a little less enthusiastic, but it is refreshing.

I was planning on training for a second triathlon at the end of this summer.  I was scared stiff of swimming in open water, (my first tri was in a pool) but energized by the thought of working my way through that fear.  Then I pushed running a little too hard and my right knee told me to back off.  I let that turn into an excuse for not facing the open water.  But the better part of me has not given up and says ‘next summer’.  This part of me remembers life is short.  I only have a few moments left to experience the thrill of racing through open water, the power of snapping my shoes into my bike and really committing to pushing myself full out - leaving behind the fear of falling.  Not the fears and thrills of an olympian, but this is what I can touch.

My husband jumps out of the hot tub and back into the icy pool.  I linger in the warmth and sink down, eye level with the surface.  Tiny drops of water jump up in the air as thousands of bubbles break, each drop describing a perfect parabolic arc.  I could calculate them all, if my brain was faster.  But the droplets don’t calculate, they just burst up into the air and fall back along the prefect curves of space.  Equations are just a way to write about what happens, like words.  The experience of a parabola though, that is the thing itself.  I sit in the  hot tub feeling ancient and slow.  But the better part of me moves my body out to dive into the cold water and swim. 

How to not write in the morning when I have the time.

So yesterday I snuck away to the Lighthouse writers house in Denver, set myself up with a table and wrote for four and a half hours. Girls went to see the Hunger Games. Boys went with Daddy to play in the Apple store at the mall. I was guilt free and focused.  I wrote and wrote on something that did not have quite the right shape. At hour three and a half I had a brilliant flash as I realized that two of the characters should actually be one character. By the end of the last hour I was walking on air - everything seemed to fall into place and I could see where this whole thing was going!

This morning I got up early, worked out vigorously for an hour, came home and set up to write while all were still asleep - Got my favorite background music going. It was still dark so I lit a candle. I wrote in my head about how nice it feels to have a bit of candle light or fire light in the grey pre-dawn. I checked my e-mail. I ate breakfast. I poked around on facebook. The sun peeked up over the horizon. I reread what I wrote yesterday. Didn’t look quite so brilliant this morning. I watched youtube videos of cuttlefish for a few minutes. I marveled at the technology - I can idly wonder about cuttlefish and boom! instant gratification. 

The sun is fully up. The kiddos are stirring. I kick myself for piddling away two hours of prime writing time. Sigh...

Metamorphosis

I’m writing screenplay number two in a trilogy of stories about an epic mythic world. I sketched out the major plot points in an outline and read it to my children for a bedtime story.

“So,” I said when I had finished, “what did you think?”

“Sea monsters can’t breath fire,” piped up the youngest, “What use would that be to them in the water?”

“Maybe when the sea monster hits land it can grow legs - then it could breath fire.” offered my middle daughter.

“Yeah!” said middle son, “and then when it is drowned in the flood at the end of the big battle, you could see it crawl out and become a chrysalis! Then it could show up later in the story...with WINGS!!”

“Oooo!” I replied, “a dragon with a metamorphic life cycle. I like it!”

“I think you need some more about the kid as he grows up,” added my eldest daughter, “He’s just kind of a baby and then the next thing you know he’s eleven and everything about him is surprising.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, looking around at my fast growing crew, “That is how it is all right.”

“So maybe at a couple scenes so we get to know him,” she finished helpfully.

There will have to be an authors note at the end that the story was co-written by all the Peterson children!

First Day Spring Break

First day and the week spreads out before us full of potential.  What a wonderful moment. The sun is warm, there is no rush. Everyone stays in pajamas. I don’t have to push anyone to do anything, anything at all. I go to a “spin class” - a class where we all ride stationary bikes to music and the encouragements of the trainer. Sounds a bit odd, but really quite challenging. I come home for breakfast and everyone is still happily lounging about in pjs. I go to the first session of the advanced screen writing class (ooo! advanced!) and come home for lunch. The girls have eaten, put on swimsuits. They ride off on their bikes to the pool. The boys are building master pieces of lego. The husband wants to browse around CostCo (he loves CostCo). Ahh... first day of spring break.  Everyone is happy.  I sit down to uninterrupted writing time...Lovely!

Youngest Son Guest Post: The Eight Diamond Lords

The evening began with my youngest son looking up at me, a sheaf of Colorado's ‘fill in the bubble’ practice writing tests spilling out of his backpack.

“Mom,” he said, tears streaming down his cheeks, “my writing doesn’t have any flow. I feel like tearing up everything!”

So he dictated a story while I typed and then we edited together for flow. Here is the result with the editing below:

            The Eight Diamond Lords


There were people falling from the clouds. The sons of the gods landed in the desert in a western town. The eight lords, each wearing their own color, were hungry so all decided to go to a bar, buy some drinks, and play cards. Then some cowboys came up to them and said “Get out of this bar. You’re not welcome here.” All the lords got in a huge argument and then got in a fight with the cowboys. The gold lord, punched the leader of the cowboys in the face and he went flying back and smashed through the wall. The lords decided to leave the town. While traveling they found awesome looking diamonds. Each of them picked one up. Oh, and did I mention that you can’t see their faces?  The diamonds started glowing the colors of the capes and hoods the lords were wearing. And then a beam from the clouds came down that matched the colors the eight masters were wearing. The beam took them back to their home.

Here is our editing: 


We made one word illegal: “they” (we decided we could keep only one “they”). He  crossed out some words and added new ones in blue. He read bits aloud as he made his decisions. Doing this on the computer seemed to add a bit of high tech fun.

There were people falling from the clouds.

They The sons of the gods landed in the desert in a western town.

They The eight lords, each wearing their own color, were hungry so they all decided to go to a bar, buy some drinks, and play cards. Then a some cowboys came up to them and said

“Get out of this bar. You’re not welcome here.”

And so they all the lords got in this a huge argument and then they got in a fight with the cowboys.

The gold one lord, he punched him the leader of the cowboys in the face and he went flying back and smashed through the wall. And then they the lords decided to leave the town. While And then they were traveling and they found these odd awesome looking diamonds. And each of them picked one up. Oh and did I mention that you can’t see their faces, the people, you can’t see their faces. And so each one picked one up. No - uh mom, I already said that. Mom! I don’t want that in my story.
“Is she writing down what I’m saying?” says big brother.

And the diamonds started glowing what the colors of the capes and hoods they the lords were wearing. And then this a beam from the clouds came down and the beam was that matched the colors what they the eight masters were wearing. and they got The beamed took them back to their home.