March 22, 2003

From An American Tune

The foreboding she felt as war in Iraq grew closer, more inevitable, deepened her
confusion and despair. Massive peace demonstrations around the world, petitions against the war flooded the internet, claims of faulty intelligence made by imminently trustworthy people did nothing to stop the clock ticking toward the showdown that most believed, for better or worse, had been planned for in the days after September eleventh.

When it finally came, Nora and Tom watched, mesmerized: the president at the podium
in his dark business suit, behind him a long, empty, red-carpeted corridor. Clever planning, they agreed: the image of him framed by the doorway, strong, silent, completely alone. When he spoke, the arrogant, in-your-face tone of the past months was gone and in its place the voice of reason. No smart-ass comments about Freedom Fries, no bragging about shock and awe, no threats about evil empires.

“My fellow citizens,” he said. “Events in Iraq have now reached the final days of
decision.” Then, lying as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had done before him, made his case for war.

In the morning Nora turned on the “Today Show,” to find that, though the war had not officially started, a logo had been assigned to it—and, beneath that logo, flanked by a huge map of the Middle East, Katie Couric, in a black suit, interviewed two generals, who touted amazing, “intelligent” bombs and, with obvious difficulty, restrained their enthusiasm describing the M.O.A.B.: “Mother of All Bombs.”

“A last resort,” one said.

“Of course, we hope not to use it,” said the other

They made Nora think of watching “Apocalypse Now” with Tom a few nights before. Robert Duvall crowing, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!”

The whole broadcast mirrored the surreal quality of that movie as it proceeded. Duvall himself was on the show, teaching Katie how to tango—revealing spike heels and lacy black tights beneath the surprisingly short skirt of the black suit she’d worn in the presence of the generals. There was a feature on Saddam’s luxury bunker, another on arms brokering—dozens of men in a Baghdad gun store testing the heft of shoulder-held weapons, one of them cocking a pistol toward the camera “U.S.A,” he said, grinning. Another on a Chinook-flying grandmother with gray, coiffed hair, an American flag pin on her Army fatigues.

In Rockefeller Plaza, the usual screamers competed for a moment onscreen.

“Hey, Al! I’m twenty-one today!” a kid called.

His friend held up a cardboard Wisconsin Badger.

But Al headed for a woman holding up a baby in a pink snowsuit.

“This is an anti-war baby,” she said into the microphone, and he backed away.

Back in the studio, Elmo reassured the children. “Do you ever feel upset when you see or
hear something scary?” he asked in his sweet, scratchy little voice. “Elmo does, too! Talk to a grown-up! Draw a picture! Tell a story! Or—” He waved his fuzzy red arms wildly and hollered, “Wubawubawuba!”

“Stay calm,” a human citizen of Sesame Street advised parents. “Keep a routine.”

“Give them a big kiss, too!” Elmo said.

Perhaps strangest of all, there were regular updates on a “Today” employee undergoing a
colonoscopy. “She’s under conscious sedation,” the doctor said. “Relaxed, comfortable. But she thinks she’s awake, she wants to talk.” He smiled. “That’s what conscious sedation is.”


Click to Purchase

My Song

"My Song" Marilyn Yanke

I’ve always loved to look at paintings and to write about paintings and painters, but a while back I began to feel that I was missing some fundamental piece of understanding. What does painting feel like? Where do visual ideas come from and how do they evolve? In 2007, I applied for a Creative Renewal Grant through the Indianapolis Arts Council, proposing a project that would allow me to attend Art Workshop International’s workshop for beginning painters in Assisi.

Lucky me: they said yes.

And I’ve been back every year since.

Think of it: two whole weeks in which writers and painters come together, write and paint all day—with a little time off to stroll through the charming town, maybe take a pass through the Basilica with its magnificent Giottos—then gather for a fabulous meal and fabulous conversation on the terrace as the sun sinks behind the mountains beyond.

Art Workshop deserves a post of its own—and I’ll do it. Soon.

But today I want to write about Marilyn Yanke, an amazing painter I met there, who’s become a mentor and friend—and, who, recently, gave me a gift that took my breath away.

She lives on a ranch way out in the middle of the Texas Panhandle and has to schlep herself and her art supplies though numerous airports to make her way to Assisi, where she sets up at one of the dozen or so easels positioned around the spacious painting studio...

...where I could sit and watch her paint forever—especially when she is making a painting of something inspired by an experience we shared.

One year the filmmaker Charles Hobson taught at Art Workshop, and the group spent an evening watching his documentary, “Harlem in Monmartre.” It chronicles the small, but very talented community of African American musicians who settled in Paris after World War II and created a vibrant music scene that introduced jazz to the French and flourished until the Germans occupied the city in 1940.

Marilyn is a quiet, reflective person. I doubt she said much, if anything at all, in the lively discussion that followed the film.

But in the next days, I watched her paint what she had felt.

Here’s one example of the whole series of paintings honoring Hobson's work born of that evening.


"Lost in the Moment"

For others, visit the figures gallery of her website at www.marilynyankee.com

I love all of these paintings, but my very, very favorite is the one you saw when when you clicked to read the blog post: "My Song." I love how the boy is so utterly present, yet also goes beyond the frame. I love the crisp white-blue of his shirt, the blue blur of the world behind him and the shine of his trumpet set on it. I love jazz-like the energy in the visible brushstrokes that made them. The stillness of the moment filled with a song that touches me deeply, even though I can’t hear it.

For me, the painting captures the essence of what it feels like when you’re making art: that paradoxical combination of not being here, in the real world, but at the same time being in touch with every single thing that world has ever taught you in the process of creating a world of your own—a story, a painting, a song.

It’s the part I know (but all too often forget) is the best part of writing, the only part that really matters. Making the “song” is what sustains me, what I need to stay in any kind of balance in the real world.

This is knowledge that Marilyn and I share.

Not long after I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I came home to find a big, flat cardboard box on my porch with Marilyn’s return address on it. I opened it with excitement, unwound the bubble wrap, and found “My Song” inside.

I’m not a crier, but I looked and looked at it and sat down and cried. Because the painting was such an amazing gift, of course, but mainly because Marilyn had understood I needed it. She knew how important it would be for me to remember who I am as I set out on that path—a writer, who needs to write, no matter what. She knew that what I would be going through was just another kind of song—and I would need to sing it.

I hung the painting over my writing desk. I look at it every morning and then, fingers on the keyboard, I begin to play my own song.

Here's Melissa Fraterrigo's take on "The Next Best Thing."

I was tagged by the amazing and prolific Barbara Shoup, the centrifugal force behind the Writer’s Center of Indiana, the author of seven books, a teacher and mentor to many writers in Indiana and beyond.

Meanwhile, here goes with the questions:

What is your working title of your book (or story)?

Teensy’s Daughter

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I wrote a story, “Teensy’s Daughter,” which storySouth published in 2011, but I found that unlike other stories I had written, these characters were still trolling around in my brain. Gardner is an alcoholic under house arrest for causing the death of his girlfriend, Luann, and when the story opens, Gardner is certain Luann has been visiting him.

Gardner’s girlfriend also happens to be the daughter of his childhood enemy, Teensy. Once I started writing about these characters and their interconnected histories, I couldn’t stop, and my novel-in-stories was born.

What genre does your book fall under?

Literary fiction, unless some other genre would like to claim it.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

The book encompasses four decades, so I’d need a youthful and strung-out Jeff Bridges for Gardner, Gary Oldman could probably play both a young and older Teensy, and a rough-looking Michelle Williams would electrify Luann.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Teensy’s Daughter follows the inhabitants of Ingleside, Indiana, for four decades as their livelihood shifts from farming to tourism when an amusement park, Glory Days, is erected, amidst change and malice.

Do you have a publisher for your book yet?
No

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I am still working on the manuscript but I am close.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
The town of Ingleside is an agrarian community, but hard times come a knocking, and an amusement park is erected in the middle of town.

The Quickening by Michelle Hoover offered insight into the mindset of farmers, and if I can somehow strike even a close approximation to the carnival life depicted in Cathy Day’s A Circus in Winter, I will be beyond pleased.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I’m one of those folks who has great intentions of writing a novel. I love to read novels—shouldn’t I be able to write one? Alas, I’ve tried, and time and again I have discovered that stories are my thing. The novel-in-stories has provided a framework to explore character and immerse myself in small-town life.

If the book is read in the order that it is arranged, in reverse chronology, readers will have the opportunity to understand how each occurrence in a character’s life has ramifications for other characters so that all of the stories in Teensy’s Daughter ultimately build on each other and at the end, offer resolution similar to that of a novel.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Teensy’s Daughter follows a group of characters whose lives intersect, beginning in 2000, but then the book rewinds backward in subsequent stories to an earlier time to reveal a moment of crisis to explain why these same characters make the choices that they do.

Teensy’s Daughter explores what happens to a small community and its residents when its agrarian livelihood is replaced by the prosperous pageantry of an amusement park.

Check out Melissa's blog: www.melissafraterrigo.com

Tattoo You

Okay, not real tattoos—but they do use them for radiation therapy in some cases: tiny freckles are tattooed onto your skin with a long, thin needle to mark the area to be radiated and guide the technicians in placing you on the table so that the radiation beams goes where they’re supposed to go. My “tattoos” were made with a marking pen, each covered with a round, clear Band-Aid to keep them from getting rubbed or washed away. And they’re not tiny freckles but substantial X’s. That particular part of my body looks rather like it’s been attacked by a toddler let loose with a black Magic Marker.

Radiation is every weekday at 3 p.m. I enter the parking lot reserved for radiation patients, check in with the nice lady in the parking hut, park—and walk past the line of emergency vehicles outside the ER, some with rescue dogs, waiting for their next call. Past the hospital entrance, where there are often patients in wheelchairs sitting just inside the glass doors and I wonder if they are waiting for someone or if they desperately needed a hit of the world in which they weren’t sick and hope, in time, to reenter.

There are more sick people in the radiation waiting room, some with an entourage of family members. Some, like me, are wearing hats or scarves or baseball caps to cover up their bald heads. Others look perfectly fine, just…grim. They don’t talk much, though once I heard a man say to his wife, “Well, we need to get it taken care of by turkey season. It’s coming right up, you know.” Yesterday, there was a woman chomping and smacking her gum, talking loudly on her cellphone, oblivious to everyone around her. “I’m at the hospital. I said, I’ll pick it up on my way my home.”

Fortunately, there’s not usually much of a wait before one of a number of very friendly technicians comes to get me and we wind through the gleaming corridors toward the radiation room. Invariably, there’s an exchange about the weather on the way.

“What’s it doing out there?”
A. Still
a.Freezing
b.Raining
c.Gray
d.Winter
B. It’s actually nice out! It’s so great to see the sun!
C. Ugly big dark clouds coming in from the west.
D. No sign of that snow yet.
E. Do you think spring will ever come?
F. Man, weather forecasting has to be the greatest job ever: they pay you to get it wrong.

It’s cold in the radiation room. The walls are dingy gray-white; the floor, institutional green. Shelves along one wall are lined with the molded pillows and pallets of patients currently undergoing treatment. The gray radiation machine sits on the far end of the room; a bed-shaped table, covered with a white sheet, my own pillow placed at the top.

There’s a small curtained dressing area and, there, I remove the clothing from the top part of my body and drape it with a towel. Then I lie on the table, position my head correctly on the pillow, raise my arms above my head, elbows bent, hands touching. The technicians position my body, tugging at the sheet beneath me to line up my “tattoos” with the red laser beams that emerge from the walls on either side of where I lie. When I’m perfectly positioned, they raise the table, then leave, closing the thick, heavy door behind them.

The motor starts; the huge disc at the top of the machine lowers, twists, and settles with the flat part facing my left side. My head is turned to the left on my pillow, and what I see looks like a small television screen with the shape my right breast reflected hazily in the glass. A closer look reveals that the screen is filled with narrow gray bars placed very close together. There’s a buzzing sound and they split horizontally, some moving down, some up to create the black space through which the radiation beams will come. With a second buzzing sound, the top bars begin to move down at different speeds until they meet the row of bars at the bottom. Then the bars reposition themselves and the buzzing occurs again as the machine delivers the second shot. It doesn’t hurt; in fact, I feel nothing at all.

Now the disc rises, pivots above me, and repositions itself on my right side to blast the area from which the lymph nodes were taken. Same thing: buzzing, two hits. I can’t see the screen this time because of my head placement, but now I can see the video monitor with my chart on it: my name and rows of numbers. As the machine does its job, the rows are highlighted orange, one-by-one.
It’s over in fewer than five minutes. The technicians return, lower the table.

I dress, we say, “Have a great evening/weekend/whatever,” and I head back out into the world.

Before starting my treatment, I talked to numerous people who’d gone through radiation therapy themselves. Those who experienced it ten years ago or more said it was like having a horrible sunburn for weeks; plus, it absolutely exhausted them. “I felt like I was walking in deep water all the time,” one friend said. Those with more recent experiences said that radiation had had little effect on them at all. One person said it energized her. “My house was never as clean as it was when I was undergoing radiation,” she told me. Wow, I thought. That would be nice. But it seemed way too much to hope for.

I’m more than halfway through my course of radiation now. I was right: “energized” was too much to hope for. But I feel fine, maybe a little tired—though nothing that a good nap can’t remedy. I’ve had none of the unpleasant “sunburn” effects that some radiation patients experience. (Maybe because of the green tea that my doctor instructed me to spritz on the radiation area four times daily—interesting, I think in light of how herbs and other natural substances were used to treat cancer before we had “real” drugs. Though I also apply a steroid cream every day.)

Plan for the worst, hope for the best. That’s my motto in dicey situations of all types, and it’s always served me well. Sometimes, though, the worst turns out to be something you didn’t imagine—and how can you plan for that? What I hadn’t imagined, hadn’t prepared for was that going to the hospital for radiation treatments five days a week for four and half weeks would remind me that I have cancer for at least an hour every single day. Which, I’ve got to say, is a little depressing.

I know. If this is the worst thing that’s happened to me throughout this whole ordeal I can hardly complain. And I’m not complaining. Just saying: radiation has had an effect on me that chemo, which I knew enough to be able prepare myself for, didn’t have.

Just seven more sessions after the one today.

By then, please let it be spring.



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Tag, You're It: The Next Big Thing

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop is a chance for writers around the world to talk about what they’re working on. When you’re tagged, you answer ten questions about your next book or story, link to the person who tagged you, then tag 3-5 other writers.

I was tagged by Victoria Barrett, a woman whom I regard as a serious force of nature. Who else could write fabulous stories, teach full-time, and start up the small press, Engine Books, in her, uh, spare time?

I’m thrilled to be a part of the Engine Books family myself, having just signed a contract to publish my novel, Looking for Jack Kerouac, with Lacewing Books, its new Young Adult imprint that will be headed up by Andrew Scott. Watch for it in August, 2014.

Click to check out Victoria’s NBT post. And watch for posts from Nicole Louise Reed, Sarah Layden, Sherri Emmons and Melissa Fraterrigo coming up soon.

Meanwhile, here goes with the questions:

What is the working title of your book (or story)?

Looking for Jack Kerouac

Where did the idea come from for the book?

A friend who’s a screenplay writer had the idea, which I fell in love with: 1964, an 18 year-old kid goes in search of his hero, Jack Kerouac, but finds him a down and out drunk, living with his mother in a ticky-tacky house in St. Petersburg, Florida. I said, joking, really, “If you ever decide not to use this idea, can I have it?” “Sure,” he said—and a few years later, he bequeathed it to me.

What genre does your book fall under?

First, I have to say the whole idea of genre drives me a little crazy. Body or no body, isn’t every good novel a mystery, after all? How in the world could you categorize the Harry Potter books, which have devotees of all ages? Who gets to decree what’s literary and what’s not?

Ideas never come to me labeled by genre; nor do I think about audience. I write what is compelling to me, what seems possible. That said, Looking for Jack Kerouac is a YA novel.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I’m pretty clueless about the cool young actors of the moment, so I’ll show my age and pick (the young) Matt Damon as Paul, Jack Nicholson as Duke, and Sissy Spacek as Ginny. Jack Nicholson in his forties would make a great Kerouac, too—and since this is total fantasy, why not let him play both parts?

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When Paul’s mother is diagnosed and subsequently dies of brain cancer during his senior year in high school, he begins to question everything about his life, ultimately ditching his girlfriend and taking off on a road trip to Florida with a friend when they find out Jack Kerouac is living there.

Do you have a publisher for your book yet? Who? Was the book agented?

Yes! Lacewing Books! The book was agented for a while and several editors wrote glowing responses, but didn’t buy it—possibly because there were no vampires or zombies in it.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I have no idea. I write so many drafts of novels that I can’t keep track of them. But I can say that October 29, 2005 is the first date in notebook I kept as I worked on the novel. If you looked through the notebook, you’d see that there were huge gaps in time between that date and the last one in January 27, 2012. LJK wasn’t the only thing I was working on during that period. But I kept going back to it, determined to make it work.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I hate this question. So I’ll just say that, for me, The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) and A Separate Peace (John Knowles) set the standard for books that honestly portray life as an adolescent. If I could ever get anywhere close to the feel of these two books in my own novels about teenagers, I’d be really, really happy.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I think there are two parts to inspiration. The first is the idea itself, the sudden, thrilling intuition of a story—the “Aha” moment. The second is way more complicated. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if there’s not some piece of yourself in it, some question you need to answer, some issue you desperately need to resolve, the story you make of it will fall flat.

As I said, my friend gave me the idea that turned into Looking for Jack Kerouac. Sadly, though, it was my sister’s diagnosis of and eventual death from brain cancer and observing her teenage sons as we all cared and grieved for her that gave me the thread I needed to give the story substance and set it in motion.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

The Sixties. 1964 was a pivotal year—the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, the strife surrounding civil rights, the first stirrings of protest about Vietnam. Kerouac himself, who turns out to be nothing at all like the legendary character in On the Road. He’s a sad, wrecked man, who, nonetheless gives Paul exactly what he needs.

Click to buy the book: http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Jack-Kerouac-Barbara-Shoup/dp/1938126475/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402144229&sr=1-1&keywords=looking+for+jack+kerouac

Check out a few “Next Big Thing” posts by Indiana writers for more great stuff about the creative process.

Cathy Day
Bryan Furuness