Category: My Life

My Life, Opinion

The Moonspinners

KarenPopeWrites

I heard someone say that a person should read a book 100 times and write a book 100 times. This article in the Guardian discusses this:

Author and columnist Stephen Marche, who has perused PG Wodehouse and Hamlet more than 100 times each, extols the virtues of literary repetition

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/09/centireading-force-reading-book-100-times-great-idea

I tend to read and re-read books. It is like visiting an old friend and reminiscing about the good times we had. Of course, my choices are not nearly as lofty as Stephen Marche’s PG Wodehouse or Hamlet. My favorite book is called The Moonspinners, written by Mary Stewart. I read it the first time when I was a young teenager–maybe 12 or 13–and over the years have read it at least 1 or 2 times a year.

I wish now, I had kept track of how many times I have read it. I am certain at least 100 times.

Photo by Maria Krasnova on Unsplash

I bought a paperback version when I was a teen and over years I read it to death. The spine was broken and many pages were yellowed from age and dog-eared. The pages started falling out until I had a stack of papers that were not attached together. That book is now in a keepsake box and held together with a ribbon. I have since purchased a Kindle Version of the book so I don’t have to worry about losing pages 136 and 203.

I started reading the book again two days ago. The story is the same Gothic Romance I remember. I have passages from the book memorized and can quote literally pages of the story. It is the story of an English girl who goes to Crete on her Easter vacation and gets embroiled in a drama of murder, kidnapping, jewel heists, and intrigue. She encounters bad guys everywhere and barely escapes with her life and limbs intact. As a bonus, she gets the guy in the end.

My love affair with this story hasn’t dimmed over the years. In fact, reading it with much more mature eyes adds something to the story that I missed when I was a teen. Mary Stewart fully developed her heroines. No vapid, silly, immature girls here. They embody strength, virtue, athleticism, and courage.

Mary Stewart wrote many mystery romance stories and I have read them all. This one stands at the pinnacle…the best of the best.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27693.The_Moonspinners
My Life

Summer Personal Art Festival

KarenPopeWrites

Summer is here. That doesn’t mean I will be running in a bikini-clad body toward an ocean because with an arthritic hip that has no cartilage left, I will not be running anywhere. Summer means I can open my windows and remind the neighbors that I know all the words to “Hello, Dolly,” and everything Karen Carpenter ever recorded. Yeah, I am that neighbor. I sing loud AND off-key. Who cares?

The fact that I am not a good singer doesn’t matter. I just sing. I don’t need permission to sing.

In an interview with Tom Snyder about 30 years ago, Jeff Goldblum gave his rendition of the theme song to “Jurassic Park” with words that he wrote: “In Jurassic Park, scary after dark. I’m so scared I’ll be eaten.” He was not a good singer, either. He pointed out something that is so very true and so very sad at the same time.

According to Jeff, you go to a group of 5-year-olds and ask them, “Can you sing?” They will all say, “Yes! What do you want us to sing?” You can ask them if they play an instrument and they all say, “Yes! What do you want us to play?” You can ask them if they can draw and they all say, “Yes! What picture do you want?” You ask them if they can dance and they reply, “Yes! We love to dance!”

Fast forward just 10 very short years and asked those same questions to the same group of kids, and you hear answers like, “No, I can’t sing,” or “I only sing a little.” You will hear, “I play piano a little bit,” and, “I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler” and, “No, I can’t dance at all.”

What happens in that short ten years? Someone says, “Don’t quit your day job because you can’t sing,” “You piano playing sucks,” “What is THAT a picture of?” “Your dancing looks like a fawn on a frozen lake.”

Those enthusiastic 5-year-olds turn into bashful teenagers who are more interested in what others think than what they can actually do. Something is lost as we age and realize there are other people on planet earth besides ourselves. Everyone we meet gets totally judgey. And, those same people feel really bad when people judge them.

Kinda seems like we should all pay more attention to the Golden Rule. You know it. “Treat others how you want to be treated.” Sing out! Dance like crazy! Draw a picture! Learn to play the flute! You don’t need permission to dance, sing, or draw.

Photo by Austin Nicomedez on Unsplash
My Life, Writing

Today, June 1st

KarenPopeWrites

Today is my birthday. I normally just acknowledge that I have ticked off another year. There is no fanfare, no parties, no birthday cake. I don’t celebrate the event because a birthday is just the beginning. It is just the day I was born. I didn’t accomplish anything that day other than crying when the doctor smacked my bottom. Like everyone else, it was not an auspicious beginning.

I was not my mother’s precious gift from heaven that was delivered personally by God and several jealous angels. I was just another person who screeched into a parking spot on June 1st and stayed there for the past 68 years.

Every June 1st, I wonder why I get a ton of emails offering me 20% off because I happened to open my eyes and take a breath 68 years ago. I would rather someone celebrate the fact that I bought a house, or the fact that I was baptized, or the fact that I completed writing another novel, or the fact I received a Master’s Degree. Those things matter. Never, crying from shock and pain in those first tender moments of life outside the womb.

My accomplishments have nothing to do with June 1, 1954. I refuse to celebrate that day.

Photo by Hu Chen on Unsplash
My Life, Uncategorized, Writing

This Week

KarenPopeWrites

This week sped by at high speed and I am not sure why. I didn’t do anything special or anticipate anything upcoming. I have been writing, and working on a story that may or may not ever be shown to the public.

When I start writing, the world slips by me reasonably quickly. I get a good thought going and all of sudden I realize that I have been typing for four hours straight and my arthritic knees and hips are screaming for movement.

The first thing to do is create a well-thought-out strategy for getting out of my chair. Once I am verticle, I wait a few seconds to make sure my knees and hips will actually hold me up. Then, cane in hand, I make a few tottering steps toward the bathroom, usually.

It never fails to amaze me that I can get so into what I am writing that I am able to ignore basic bodily needs, such as a bathroom break or getting something to drink. For a time, I can ignore sore hips and aching knees.

But, this week I wrote nearly 20,000 words. *Pats self on the back.*

Photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash
Blog Entries, My Life

Imagination Confession

KarenPopeWrites

Maybe Willy Wonka had the right idea: “Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination.” I hear of people who are lost in a world of loneliness and despair because of the Covid-19 restrictions. Just maybe Willy had the solution. Create your own paradise in your imagination. There are no limits inside your head. Just go there!

In my head, I can find true love, adventure, excitement, and maybe even a chocolate factory. In my life I have imagined myself in many places doing many things. I have traveled to the moon as an astronaut, been the wife of a South American dictator, a 1990’s rock star, a ballet dancer, best friends with Queen Elizabeth, on an African safari with Bear Grylls, on a boat that circumnavigated Antarctica, and at dinner with Neil deGrasse Tyson. You get the idea.

I have imagined situations, delicious meals, epic champagne, euphoric conversations, heroic deeds and heroic rescues. Maybe Walter Mitty is a better analogy.

This has been a pattern for my entire life. I remember imagining being a telephone operator when I was just five or six and talking to Captain Kangaroo on the phone. I remember being a Monkee’s fan when I was barely a teenager who was found absolutely fascinating by Peter Tork. I remember being Mr. Spock’s best girl… the one who finally broke through his stoic exterior when I was a little bit older teen ager. I imagined our local mall being the shopping area of a city-sized space station orbiting earth. When I am driving, I am in the car with the Top Gear guys, showing them the sights in my fair city.

As I have gotten older, I still live in these worlds created in my head. Many have become stories that I will never get published, but will likely surprise my children after I am gone if they take the time to read through my google drive. “Mom did THAT????”

Photo by Héctor J. Rivas on Unsplash

Because of my imagination, I have lived through some of the most traumatic events in my life: losing 3 babies in infancy, house being foreclosed on, divorced from a man who was worthless, divorce proceedings where I got the shit beat out of me in a courtroom, 3 evictions, getting fired from jobs twice, losing my best friend/younger brother to HIV, traumatic car wreck, tragic love affair with another worthless man, and now, confined to my home by the threat of a deadly virus. Home is my haven when I can create yet another world. A coping mechanism.

Don’t worry about me. I have a firm foot in reality. Life doesn’t slip by me because I can’t see what is really in front of me. I get things done that must be done and when I am finished with the necessary responsibilities of adulthood, I can slip into the latest world I have created, which is, I must say, far better than anything I see on TV.

Today, I have a backstage pass to a BTS concert.