Missing Summer (and Kristin Howard!)

   I never thought I'd write those words!  I've always hated summer before.  That was before last summer when I actually went swimming a lot and did a lot of interesting things instead of only shriveling up in all the heat and humidity.

   Maybe I don't miss the heat, but I do miss the warmth, let's say it like that.  The temperature has fluctuated recently...oddly enough giving us a few really mild days.  Saturday night I was driving in the late afternoon, and as I came up a big hill the sun was getting ready to set.  It was huge and golden, and I had to shield my eyes to make sure I was still driving in my lane.  I had my windows slightly down, and the air was mild and surprisingly warm.

   The sunset made me take in my breath.  A few huge dark clouds were close to the sun, and it made a dramatic contrast; the blinding golden light and then a straight line of a dark purple wall of cloud, towering up to a vast height before the light shone over it.  It was strange and beautiful. 

   I took in my breath sharply when I saw the sunset, but I quickly began to breathe deeply.  I promise I could smell a whiff of summer.  It was as if the gracious spirit of Summer herself were in the air that evening.  I smelled the sunshine, a taste of exuberance, and the tantalizing promise of eternal youth in the air.  Not in a rush of intoxicating desire, just a gentle reminder, a pleasant memory.  Or perhaps it was a memory of a memory.

   I suppose you could say it was spring I was smelling.  Oh, no.  It was summer, I'm certain of that.  Each has its own scent, its own yearnings, and its fantastic promises.  

   I mentioned before that they never actually deliver on those promises.  But they entice me every year, and each time I fall under their enchantment.  They make me sick with longing, "with a sickness that is better than health," as C.S. Lewis tells us in his autobiography, "Surprised By Joy." 

   Oh, dear.  I'm re-hashing an earlier post, aren't I?  Right.  Let's change the subject. 

   Uh-oh.  I don't believe I've told you, but I did make it to 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo!  It was quite a feeling of triumph when I finished the word count in the morning of November the 30th.  I didn't even have to stay up until midnight!  Of course, the story isn't finished yet.  When I first began NaNo, I kept the pace slow, fearing that I'd run out of plot before the word mark.  I'm really, really bad at plots, y'all.  That was what I was most worried about.  In school when I had to write a story in 7 days I'd done okay.  I'd been forced to make up a short plot and stick to it.  It wasn't always easy, but it fell together in the end. 

   Most of my writing is journaling.  If something's happened to me that I want to record, I can make a good story out of it.  But this novel was--well, pretty much me as the main character, but in a set of circumstances that I'd never been in.  Well, no, the circumstances weren't really what was difficult; it was the outcome of those events that needed to change.  The character was me, and she kept wanting to disappear in the crowd and stay away from all the action.  I had planned to give her two best friends, but I was dismayed how one of them faded into the background, while the other one took on the life that she's had in my imagination for years.  Oh, yes.  I know her well.  I invented her long ago, and she's a strong character.  I intended for the other friend to have her share of the limelight, but she stayed elusive, while the stronger girl was always around.  The stronger had to practically drag my main character into the plot, which was most exasperating.  The plot wouldn't move without her there!  She had to be there for anything to happen, and I was trying to keep this realistic.  She can't be around all the time!

   Thankfully the main characters do actually have personalities of their own.  I was glad of that, even though my heroine didn't.  I had to sort of cheat in order to keep her interesting.  I could dive into her mind and into her past to keep her three-dimensional.  I think it'll be okay in the end, though I still haven't worked out the rest of the plot. 

   Yeah, you read that right.  I haven't finished the rest of the plot.  I TOLD you I was bad with plotlines!  I'm always scared I'll come up with something cliché or unrealistic.  And I hate the idea of accidently "stealing," plot ideas from other stories.  In the light of all the trillions of stories and novels out there, it's virtually impossible to not "steal" something, don't you agree?  Of course, if I were more confident in what I wanted to say and was more enthusiastic about getting it across, I guess I wouldn't care what people thought and just plow ahead anyway. 

   I know I shouldn't be concerned about that and just say what I want to say, but---it's hard.  The main character is me in circumstances that are familiar to me, (hey, they say write about what you know, right?  At any rate once you're starting out!) but the outcome had to be different.  I'm not telling MY story, I'm telling Kristin Howard's story.  If it *coughcoughSTRONGLYcough* resembles my life, well, cut me some slack.  The whole of my silly story is sort of how I wish I could have been.  What I wish had happened to me when I was in high school--the friends I wish I'd made, the risks I wish I'd taken, and the things I wish I'd learned---which have NOTHING to do with school, mind you! 

   My clumsiness with dialogue and interactions between characters runs a close second to my deficiency for original plot ideas.  I love dialogue in stories.  It's so fun to read, and you get a glimpse into each character's personality if it's well-written.  Dialogue makes stories jump off the pages at you.  It's what makes a story come alive.  Learning their styles of speech and their catch-phrases and listening to their subjects makes you feel like you're meeting a new person.  I love reading aloud to people, and dialogue is one of the things I enjoy most in it.  I have a limited range of voices that I can do, but I work at it. 

   I understand dialogue to some degree and how it's supposed to work.  But it's extremely difficult to write original dialogue between my characters!  I try to make them speak in complete sentences, using real nouns and verbs and prepositional phrases.  But when I write it down and read over it, it looks stiff and stupid.  I keep thinking, "People don't talk like that!  I mean, I talk like that, but I'm kind of a freak that way." 

   OK, seriously, people.  All November, I made a point to eagerly listen to the dialogue going on around me daily, especially when I was out in public.  Conversation always flowed around me in glib rivers, but I couldn't always follow it.  When people talk about things that I know nothing about, I can't follow very well.  I don't understand the words and phrases they use, and those pile up to make long disjointed sentences. 

   People do talk to each other, seemingly.  They jabber on and on about who knows what, and there is never a pause.  They seem to be communicating, but I'm often just puzzled by it. 

   It's not just strangers, either.  Even if they're people I know, I have to have some measure of understanding of the subject, or I can't follow along at all.  Now, I know, people see each other at work or in different spheres of activities, and each has its own lingo.  If you're not there for those things, you won't know.  I understand that.  Maybe I just need to woman up and accept it; just settle for splitting hairs about their grammar (which is dreadfully neglected by people these days, by the way,) or something like that.  Live and let live.

   Yeah.  It was like that all in High School.  My mother always advised me to listen when other girls were speaking so that I could ask good questions about them.  I tried to.  Man, oh, man did I try!  I hovered on the outskirts of forming circles of chattering girls listening intently.  I heard constant jabbering and ceaseless laughter, but it was hard to figure out what the subject was.  It was all a rush of names and phrases and narratives that I knew nothing about.  There was no clear line where one girl's speech ended and another began; it all just bounced around from girl to girl, overlapping and confusing.  They all seemed to be agreeing, and it evidently was all frightfully funny; but to poor little bewildered me listening with all my might and main, they might as well have speaking another dialect of English.  When I was lucky enough to hear an actual noun I clung to it, and if I heard more, I tried to piece them together, but to no avail.  I couldn't tell what they were saying.  Eventually one of two things happened in such a situation.  Either my brain gave up and I moved away to try my luck with another circle, or the tall girls around me were joined by more tall girls, and they crowded together, literally shutting me out. 

   Is it just me, or do people seem to jabber a lot?  What are they talking about?  What is the point of what they're saying?  Is there any point?  And people talk so quickly, trying to cram in as many words as possible before the other person interrupts them.  Sentences rarely even are finished.  They just hang there while the other person starts plowing ahead with their own.  Not to mention all the filler words.  Good GRACIOUS!  How much of the so-called conversation around us is comprised of phrases like, "You know," "Yeah, yeah.." "Oh, I KNOW!" "I was like," etc.?  The finished result?  Something like this one side of a conversation:

   "Oh, I know!  I told her...I told her!  I was like, 'I don't have time to be messing around with stupid people on the phone, when I've got, like, sixty other things I can be doing,' do you know what I mean?  I was like, you know, I was like freaking out, and you know they can't do anything about it either, you know?" 

   Oh, my gosh.  Sometimes I just want to get in people's faces and say, "Stop!  Just stop talking for a second.  Now use words to say what you want to say.  Take some time to think about it if you need to, I'm listening." 

   Trying to make my characters talk in complete sentences looked bizarre when typed out.  It's hard enough trying to engage people around me in meaningful conversation.  Maybe if I was better at that it would come more naturally in my story. 

   Honestly, the main reason that I'm so weak in that area is because by the time I'm writing something down in my journal I can't remember the actual words of the real interaction.  I may remember pieces of it, but I can never remember all the filler and all the empty comments that were batted around that led to the good part.  Dialogue races by me in real life, and I'm lucky if I can just keep in the conversation.  It always has frustrated me that a good story may have led up to an important dialogue with someone, and I end up lamely patching the interaction up in my journal by telling the gist because I simply have no way to quote the real words. 

   I need to get back to working on my novel.  I miss my characters. 

   Hope you enjoyed this little ramble!  It's time for me to hit the sack. 

~Cadenza

Thoughts on Beauty

   One night a few weeks ago I stood in front of the bathroom sink and looked in the mirror.  I had put on makeup that day, and I thought that I looked nice.  It's a quirk of mine that if I take the trouble to put on makeup that day I'm always reluctant to take it off at night. 

   But it was late in the evening.  It was time to take it off.  With a sigh, I lathered up the soap on my fingertips and scrubbed at my eyes. 

   The other odd thing is that once I actually plunge the suds against my eyelids, I wonder why I put it off before.  Warm water, bubbles, scrubbing.  The stiffness and sparkly and smudges let go.  It feels good. 

   Once I felt that it was all off, I rinsed with more warm water.  First my hands, then my eyes.  I felt it all run off my face.

   Then I looked up into the mirror.

   A feeling of mild shock.  The girl in the mirror was the same I'd seen earlier, but she looked totally different.  The pleasure of the rinse had brought a little smile to the corners of my mouth and my eyes looked relieved and happy.  Some of the facial makeup had come up as well, so the girl in the mirror had her naturally rosy cheeks blooming unashamedly under the faint line of freckles on her cheekbones.

   It surprised me because I had thought that I had looked so nice in my makeup, but this look left it far behind.  The expression on my face was one that no camera has ever captured before.  That unaffected, unguarded little smile of unconcerned pleasure. 

   My heart lifted within me for one fleeting moment.  It was one of those rare moments that in a rush of surprise, I suddenly see myself when I didn't expect to.  One of those moments where I knew for sure that I actually am beautiful.  Knew---not arguing with myself, not even hoping---just knowing, objectively, honestly; feeling certain deep down inside that I actually do have a beauty all my own. 

   Of course the moment I became aware of it, it diminished.  The rush of surprise and delight faded, but it left behind the memory of certainty. 

   On a side note here, I've been reading an excellent book by John and Stasi Eldredge called "Captivating."  The tagline is, "Unveiling the mystery of a woman's soul."  I'm not going to give a review on it, but I will say that reading it is like a breath of fresh air.  I read John Eldredge's book, "Wild At Heart," a few months ago, and I was impressed, but still a little uncertain about some of the finer points.  But as I'm reading this revised and expanded edition of "Captivating," my suspicions have come to nothing.  They're right.  They're spot-on.  Every woman needs to know the things they are saying in this book.  It's full of truth that we as women both in our culture as well as in the church have left behind.  Check it out, you won't regret it. 

   My little revelation was not the first I've ever had.  But it made me think about makeup and the role it's played in my life.

   When I was a little girl, people always said I had such rosy cheeks, and they were right.  They're pretty hard to miss.  I have all of this natural pink all over them, not just up on the cheekbones where ladies apply blush.  I always liked that about my face; in an innocent way I was proud of them.  Most of the adults drew attention to them in a complimentary way, and of course I appreciated that. 

   But when I became a teen, they started to work against me.  People saw my rosy face and immediately made the assumption that I was younger than I was.  Their attitude toward me was this infuriating sweetness instead of actually weighing my words and thoughts seriously.  All the time I could tell they were thinking, "Aww, isn't she so cute??" and I could tell they thought my serious conversation was "cute," too, the way we listen to a small child's earnest words. 

   The rule in our house about makeup was you had to be sixteen.  I guess you could say I lucked out on that one.  Mother saw that I needed a bit of concealer and some foundation so that I could look more my age.  She told me that I always looked flushed, as if I'd just been running, and we all know running is entirely inappropriate for a fourteen year old.  I thought that was rather unfair.  I never ran in public by that time, but it still looked as though I had been.  Guilt by circumstantial evidence, apparently.  She further reasoned what I'd already noticed; that people perceived rosy cheeks as a little girl thing that I needed to grow out of.   

   In stories, the oldest girl is always the rebellious one who is pushing all the parental rules to the limit and straining at every leash, especially with wanting makeup before she's sixteen.  I am the oldest daughter, but that's not the way I was.  I was rather reluctant toward makeup.  I didn't like the idea of covering up something that I always thought was kind of a gift.  But over all I was fairly neutral to the idea, and once I started wearing concealer and foundation I began to like it.  It did make me look my age and it didn't take away the color.  It merely evened and smoothed it out.  It made me feel more grown up, and I liked that.   

   When I turned sixteen, I was given eye makeup, and so it began.  At first I didn't like it at all.  I thought it made me look like someone else.  It made me look stiff and formal and uncomfortable.  It made me look too dressed up, and Mother was encouraging me to wear it every time I stepped out the door.  Smudging color on my eyelid made me look bizarre.  I hated how mascara made my lashes look spidery.  I saw no reason to draw lines around my eyes.  It made me look like a painted doll.  With all my makeup on, I looked like I was wearing a mask. 

   It took time to get used to it, and now of course I enjoy it.  My idea of successful makeup application is having enough on to accentuate my features while looking like I'm not wearing any at all.  I look at pictures of Emma Watson online, and I love her image.  Classy, sweet, sophisticated.  Mysterious, alluring, natural, all of them at once. 

   I think of makeup as a persona.  I guess I've always felt that way about it in the back of my mind.  I look young for my age.  If I am not dolled up before I leave the house, people are going to see me as younger than I am.  They are not going to take me seriously unless I have an image of a woman.  I'm in my twenties now, so to be perceived as younger would be bad.  Right?  I guess so. 

   Like I said, I enjoy dressing up and looking like a woman.  It's like going onstage whenever I go out into the world.  I am a woman, so there's no shame in looking the part.  I enjoy it. 

   And yet a professional woman is only part of who I am.  At the end of the day, makeup is only a mask.  There are times, like the other night, when I look at myself without makeup, and I actually question why I even wear it.  This is who I am.  This is how God formed me.  Why do I have to cover up my pretty rosy cheeks?  Why do I have to accentuate my eyes and lips when they were handcrafted by God Himself?  My different smiles and expressions are much more important than any color I could put on them myself.

   I miss those days when rosy cheeks were a thing of beauty.  When I was a teenager, they stopped becoming a beautiful thing and became something to ashamed of---looking younger than I was.  Now as an adult, I'm sorry to say I've bought into that shame a little, seldom leaving the house without just a trace of foundation to smooth it out.  I see and hear about all these products to stop "rosacea," like it's this horrible defect, or something to get rid of, or at least to "control."

   When I was a teenager, I began blushing easily.  I was self-conscious and tried very hard to be proper and do the right thing.  A bit of teasing, and my face started heating up like a microwave, my cheeks first, then spreading all over my face.  People could see it immediately, and they laughed at me, making me blush even more.  Sure it was embarrassing, and yeah, I took myself a little too seriously back then, but actually I'm kind of glad that I blush easily.  In the Bible, and sometimes in other (older!) books, it's a sign of modesty or transparency.  Today it's nothing more than an indicator of who's-got-a-crush-on-who, but I think the old meaning still holds.  When I see a girl who blushes easily, I appreciate that in her.  If she's shy or transparent, then she probably is sweet and kind, not brash and flippant like many young girls. 

   I just miss those days when beauty was something that I knew I had and never had to feel ashamed of.  I like freckles and rosy cheeks.  It looks fresh, healthy, vibrant.  I liked it when people appreciated my natural beauty, and I didn't have to mask myself to be understood or listened to.  When I didn't have to look jaded and shrewd and guarded and---striving all the time. 

   I long to be a woman, yes.  But I want to be one of those women with dancing eyes who walks with a careless, breezy grace.  I want to be transparent as well as wise and discerning.  I want my hair to be loose as well as tastefully styled.  Windblown, unpretentious, with a mystery about her.  Deep, perceiving eyes as well as a ready smile and a playful sense of humor.  A sense of ethereal other-worldliness and freedom about her, like the wind. 

   A woman at peace.  A woman confident in God's love, unafraid to love deeply and to pour herself into others. 
  
   That's the kind of beauty I want to have.

~Cadenza