08 December 2012

Alice in Wonder, ch 1 continued

My last post was the beginning of Chapter one, so here is the rest of the Chapter for those of you who said you would like to keep reading.   Remember that I am interested in what you want to know more about, and what ever else you want to say.  Because I expect this to be a novel someday, I ask you to respect the copyright and leave it here on my Blog.  
 
 Copyright © 2012 S.L.Chast: Copying/using any part of this text is prohibited.  
Alice in Wonder, Chapter One, Continued 
 
            "You see, she was a child of rape.  Yup!  Good old Zeus, master God, had come down and raped her mother Leda.  Yes.  The books say he visited Leda in the shape of a swan and that she then had  children.  So he did it in the shape of a Swan, but come on!  And then, her own Daddy-swan-Zeus, the God above, had not stuck around long enough to get to know her.  True, her Mom was married to a nice man, but Helen couldn't help but wonder about her real Dad because she was only one of  four children that Leda gave birth to that day.  Well, that isn't quite true.  Leda gave birth to only one thing--an egg!  Well, what do you expect from a mating between a human and a bird?  Zeus was Helen's father, and when he "visited" Leda, he looked like a swan!  And myths are always larger than life, so, of course, Leda layed an egg and there were four children inside rather than one.  Helen had a twin sister named Clytemnestra and two twin brothers named Castor and Pollux.  Well, the boys right away claimed kinship with papa Zeus and left, so the girls were alone with their earthly parents. And their earthly Dad worried about who they would marry because their husbands would inherit the land.  So the sisters grew up with no choice but to marry, and they had no choice but to marry the two strongest most competitive men available, the brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon.  And these two boys were not chosen for the length of their names but because of their power to make alliances.  They took an oath to protect each others' marriages.  They made all the rejected suitors take the same oath.  A group of men stood and said, 'We accept this marriage.  We will not try to take your new wives away from you.  We will defend to the death the rightful marriages of the two sisters Helen and Clytemnestra to the two brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon.'   They took this oath and then they drank some wine and broke some glasses and went back to their far away homes without a second thought."
            Alice went through the actions of shaking hands and drinking and throwing and putting thumbs up and all the time backing away and sneaking back until she heard enough laughter.  She came forward again, this time slinking into the character and voice of Helen. 
            "But Helen had not yet fallen in love with her husband.  She resented the deal which had gotten her born and the deal which had gotten her married.  So she thought about the letter she received from Paris.  Why not think about it?  'I am  yours and you are mine,' he said.  And why not go with him?  She didn't know him, but maybe he loved her!  Her own husband only talked about how, thank you very much, he now was pretty powerful because he had her land.  And Paris seemed to want to take her away from it all, to his home in Troy.  Helen had heard of Troy as one of the seven wonders of the world.  She would like to see it.  She was tempted, but she hesitated because of the pact between her hubby and his bro.  If she left with someone, they would probably go to war to get her back.  War!  With her as the cause.  Everything that was human inside of Helen screamed "NO." 
            "Helen told me that she was about to sit and write Paris a long and grateful letter that thanked him for the compliment and said NO, she wouldn't go; she wouldn't cause war.  She said that she was sitting there just like this when she felt several hands lifting her up--despite gravity and despite walls and ceilings--the hands lifted her way way up into the sky.  She said she kicked and screamed, "No, No, I won't go! Leave me alone; let me go!"
            And with this the Gong sounded again, and Alice jumped up to stand in the rocking chair.  There she teetered, saying the words of Helen as if she had become her, looking out over the audience as if it were the entire world:
            No,  let me down.  I don't want to go!  Where are you taking me!  Put me down.  Not here, back home.  Who the Hell are you, anyway?  Yeah, right.  My real Dad wants to meet me now?  Well he can forget it.  OOOOO.  Wait come back!  Don't leave me up here in the clouds!  Ohhhh.  OHHHH.  Ah. I can see a lot.  HEY! That's Menelaus!  He's in the harbor with the ships and there's Aggy too.  Looks like war preparations already.  With, no!  Yes!  They've used my likeness for the figure heads of the ships.  Ohh, noo.  No.  Just where is Paris anyway?  Why doesn't he tell everyone that he didn't take me to Troy?
              Oh, Oh, there he is, already in Troy.  He thinks that fashion model with him IS me.  He thinks that's me!  She sort of looks like me--she really looks like me!  Hey Paris!  I'm up here!   hey Menelaus,I'm up here!  Don't either of you recognize me?  Look up, damn you!  And, if I know my husband, this is war.  And, if I know my husband, this war will last ten years!  And if I know my husband, he'll blame it all on me!
At this point Alice/Helen groaned and sat down in her chair rocking it to a stand still.  She stroked her books.  She sighed. 
            She looked out at all of the little children who had just heard the story, and she said, "Don't you just love books?  Sometimes they are true, and sometimes not.  And, every once in a while, a character comes forward to tell her own story.  We just have to listen."
            "But is Helen right?" one child asked as the lights came up.
            "The war lasted for 10 years," Alice answered with a smile.  "Could you believe it was all for nothing?"
            "No, that's stupid."
            Yes, you're probably right."
            "Humph," said the child as he moved off.  Alice heard another ask her Mommy what rape was.
            "Uh oh," she thought.


  Chapter One ends here. 

 Copyright © 2012 S.L.Chast: Copying/using any part of this text is prohibited. 

03 December 2012

Alice in Wonder

Here is something I have never done before--provide a glimpse of the novel I am writing: just 2 pages of the rough draft, but (trembling) maybe sharing and getting your questions and feedback will help me to stay on track? 

     If you expected a poem today, accept my apologies.  I think the novel is a bit poetic, but it is prose.  You will not hurt my feelings if you do not read it or if you read it and do not comment.  
     This seems to be the beginning of Chapter One, but anyone who's written knows this is mere conjecture at this point.   
 Copyright © 2012 S.L.Chast: Copying/using any part of this text is prohibited.  



Alice in Wonder, Chapter One.

            The tall mask seemed to enter of its own accord along with a loud echoing gong that made spinal chords twitch throughout the audience.  The next sound came out of the stillness.  A small voice whispered, "Hi, my name is Alice," and the mask touched the floor to reveal a tall, stoop-backed middle-aged lady in a white sweater and pearls.  Her hair seemed permed and purplish, or rather, it was curly and white except for a streak of purple on one lock in the middle and left side.  She peered at us over the mask as the lights faded up from the sharp spot.
            "Hi," she repeated in a stronger voice, "I'm Alice, and this is my Grandmother." 
            She tripped forward, mask in one hand and the straps to a black leather tote clutched in the other.  She lifted the mask with difficulty to the top of a pole stage right, dropped the tote stage center and opened it to extract a beautiful round wood and tile box, which she held up for all to see. 
            "My grandmother made this box," she said, then took the tiled top off and rolled it across the floor, its design whirling into a wind sign.  As it wobbled flat, she took another mask--a tiny clay one--out of the box, held it up and announced, "And THIS is my Mother."  She carried her mother mask  to stage left and hung it on top of another pole that was waiting for it, then stood back and clapped her hands. 
            She almost trotted down to the edge of the stage to announce, arms wide, "As you can see, I come from a long line of image makers!  My own art is story telling, and I am here to tell you the story of Helen of Troy!"
            With that she pulled a wooden rocking chair from the shadows on the right, sat down and beamed at us.  "I read about her in books,"  she continued, as she got up to retrieve her black bag.  She sat and pulled book after book out of her bottomless bag, all the while talking delightedly.  "I love books, don't you? I could hold them and touch them all day long, rock them and sing to them, and then open them and let them sing to me!  Their pages are so smooth and inviting.  The print looks like ants dancing from a distance. See?"
            She held up two books, one in each hand, then stood and came down to the spectators, "Feel them, come on, feel them!  Can you imagine giving this touch up for a computer screen?  Not in my lifetime!
            "Does anyone write in a diary?"  Alice waited.    "You can tell me; I do too.  Ah, there you are!" she applauded when a few hands inched up.  She rushed back to her bag and brought another book forward to show. "Empty pages invite dreaming, and I love to fill them up with ink and words, don't you?"
            As she listened to the "Yesses" and "Nos" she retrieved the books she'd passed out to people in the front row, and then backed up wiggling into the rocking chair, piling the books beside her.  She heard some giggles in the crowd, and when she began telling her story, she seemed to be responding to them.
 *******
            "I read about Helen of Troy in books.  The  first one was by Homer, and then by Sophocles and by Euripides, and then later by several non-Greek writers. All agree that she was beautiful and that she was a prize for a young Trojan named Paris when he said Aphrodite was the most beautiful of three competitive Greek goddesses: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite.  But that's all they agree on."
            She paused while a newcomer found a seat on the edge of the audience, then continued. 
            "Some of these ancient Greek authors say she ran off to Troy with Paris, glad to be away from her own husband, Menelaus.  Some say she wanted to go to Troy with Paris but that Zeus, head god, hid her in Egypt where she spent 10 years.  Others say Paris had to kidnap her because she resisted.  And finally, others say that it was the gods who kidnapped her and hid her in the sky. 
            "Helen--yes, Helen herself--told me that the last story is closer to the truth!  I met her years and years ago.  Truly, she is good looking in a way, but of course she's older than I am now.
            "Well, Helen had resisted all of them--men and Gods and Paris and Troy!  She said that she didn't even have time to think about things before she was way up there in the sky watching the years unfold around her.  She told me she never even saw Paris, that he had only sent her a note saying she was his!  Imagine how that must have felt!  You get a note from someone you haven't even heard of saying:
Baby I'm yours and you are mine.  The great goddess Aphrodite said so.  Come away with me to another world named Troy and we will be happy forever.  PS.  I love you. You don't know me, but I've seen your picture, and Baby, Baby, I'm yours, you're mine, wedding bells are going to chime.
Now wouldn't you laugh and tear up that note?  But Helen didn't.  Oh she wanted to, she wanted to be that practical, but her life had not been a bed of roses.  

 To be continued . . .


Posted at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads for "Open Link Monday.
 Copyright © 2012 S.L.Chast: Copying/using any part of this text is prohibited.  


26 November 2012

Living Together: just a song or two


I'm posting a song today, inspired by my Thanksgiving and last week's prompt at Theme Thursday: "Theme Thursday for November 22, 2012 - TOGETHER."  Hokey?  Maybe.  I haven't thought about this song in YEARS. Here's another version, maybe better, but without as much instrumental as above:  



I love the sound better than the fashions of the time,  Who remembers the variety show?

Eight years later Sade took this sentiment in a slightly different direction:


Powerful, powerful, but Sade covered an even more powerful version: Timmy Thomas wrote the lyrics and the music and recorded in 1972 during the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights struggle in the USA:


On and on we go.  I hope the music of togetherness never stops.  Someday everyone will hear the music in the air and get it together, right now.

21 November 2012

Thanks Giving Eve


Minestrone scent curls to living room—family dinner for the day before Thanksgiving. 

Thus I greet my travelers whose accumulated miles this day are more than Pilgrims could travel in a life-time to eat more foods than grown locally and to enjoy more diversity beneath one roof than Pilgrims allowed on their shores.

We are bigger in our gathering: We reject Pilgrim occupation of land not their own.  We condemn betrayal of native generosity.  Tomorrow we join them only in eating free-range turkey, happy food, so we need not chew and swallow anger from our brutality.

We eat our history in the new world: Italian today and American tomorrow, friends before and enemies after, inviting in now and killing later. 

We plan our future is better than guns and germs and steel because we have dug in and we have seen the promised land and we forgive it and them as we wish to be forgiven by it and them still.

It is time: Cars pull into the driveway and line the street. Sugar-free apple pies and ice cream, banana bread, fruit salad, cucumbers, creamed onions and cranberry sauce climb the stairs to fill the table and contribute to the nosegay of this holiday.

In Plymouth, some Americans gather to mourn the past and in the Middle and Near East some United Nations' forces have a minute to share stories this evening here and in other places they have been.  I give them thanks.

In my family, those not in Pennsylvania are attending a birth in Ohio, the first baby girl to join our family in 61 years.  I know because I was the last one.  I smell the minestrone soup, grateful, indeed, to have home and family, cat and tablet—this big old desktop of a writing pad—my soup pot calling me into attendance and sunshine down the way.




Posted at Poets United where Ella asks us to write about gifts in "Wonder Wednesday #10 Gifts ."  This was already written, but it will do til I have the gift of time to give.


Copyright © 2012 S.L.Chast