ENGAGING THE SENSES

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Creative Common-3

During a recent Monday afternoon writing class, we discussed how engaging the five senses -- sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch -- enriches a scene and helps ground the reader. One of the class members responded that she becomes offended when this technique is used as an all-too-obvious tactic.

Her remark caused me to review some of my favorite writers’ works to see how they approached this matter. After taking a very swift and superficial scan of their published books, I tended to find action stories went light on portraying the senses except to heighten tension in dramatic moments. However, one of my favorite authors isn’t the least bit shy about engaging the senses. James Lee Burke paints beautiful word pictures using the senses. A short passage from his CREOLE BELLE demonstrates what I’m talking about.

*****

“In the dream, the wind was balmy and smelled of salt spray and seaweed and shellfish that had been stranded on the beach by the receding waves. It also smelled of a Eurasian girl who spoke French and English and lived on a sampan in a cold on the edge of the South China Sea, her skin like alabaster traced with the shadows of palm fronds, her nipples as red and inviting as small roses. He could see her walking nude into the water, her hair floating off her shoulders, her teeth white while she smiled at him and extended her hand.”

*****

Nice and natural, right? Nothing forced, and it gives the reader a clear picture of this scene.

I also like the way a local author goes for it in another peaceful, pastoral scene. The following excerpt is from Mark Wildyr’s homoerotic, historical novel, RIVER OTTER.

*****

“I was tired. It had been a long, demanding day. The shooting of a human being took its toll on any caring, feeling man, and I considered myself to be of a sympathetic nature. I picketed the two horses on opposite sides of camp to double the chances of detecting unwelcome visitors. Patch was trained to give warning of predators. The Mare was a shadow jumper.

I settled on the coarse blankets of my bedroll and breathed a silent song to the Great Mystery. The spread of the heavens—shot through with glittering stars, both noble and mean—made a vast dome of the black sky. I studied the Seven Persons, which Billy had called the Big Dipper. A faint breeze cooled my face and carried the comforting rustle of swaying boughs gently to my ear. The heavy fragrance of pines on the hummock—so different from the scant perfume of cottonwoods along the crick bank—laid the sharp taste of resin on my tongue, or so it seemed. I stilled my doubts, calmed my breathing, and closed my eyes to slip away into sleep.”

*****

Also nice, but to be honest, not as suave and subtle as the master, Mr. Burke. But it was a good try.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading. Be happy to hear from you.

New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

ON AGING … Up Close and Personal

Courtesy Wikipedia.org CC-3

Although I have no idea why, people keep sending articles about aging as if that were something of interest to me. Some of the items are jokes, usually of the laugh to keep from crying type. Others are pieces about gruesome things that happen to body and mind as the years grind by. Still others are pointed questions about such things as stopping in the middle of the room and wondering which direction you had been headed.

So I decided to take stock of my own lengthening lifespan and examine how I am handling the process. This requires a few confessions. Please, do not try to take advantage of them.

I once stood 5 feet 10 inches tall. Over time, the medical profession altered their measuring devices in order to claim I had shrunk to 5 feet 9½ inches. They’re probably going to tell me I don’t even reach that majestic altitude today.

·       Solution: Measure straight up to my neck, make a mathematical allowance for my slumped shoulders, and then angle 22 degrees leeward for the remainder of the measurement. I suspect you’ll find the missing half-inch, which would mean that while I no longer stand as tall, in actual length, all of me might still be there.

A long, sure stride used to carry me wherever I wanted to go, relatively efficiently. Now I often veer either port or starboard. I’ve noticed that if I walk (or drive) looking to the left, I tend to go left. If I look to the right, I wander right. If I look straight ahead … Well, the principle no longer holds true.

·       Solution: Walk any damned way I want and let the other guy stay out of my way. I grew up with people who learned to dance in middle school and have continued to dance to this day. While I never mastered the art, now when I walk from the parking lot to the supermarket, I entrechat with a pas de cheval and do an occasional pirouette when I return to the car for my list or wallet or whatever the hell else I forgot. For the uninitiated, that means I weave my way to the store with a horse’s step, taking occasional spins.

Once upon a time, I exercised. Really, I did. Honestly. During that long-ago year when I lost 102 pounds (“lbs” sound easy; "pounds" infer stress and sweat and dedication), I walked over hill and dale and treadmill five times a week – rain, shine, or snowdrift. I maintained my new weight for years until I walked straight off of the end of the sidewalk without bothering to take the two steps required to connect with the pavement below. After my resulting operation, my back cramps up, my hip hurts, and my ingrown toenails bother me so much I can no longer walk often or far.

·       Solution: I don’t walk. I sit and contemplate my growing waistline. (I can no longer see my navel, so that classic solution is not available.)

My fingers do not obey instructions from my brain. Back in the day, I was a terrific typist. I could do upwards of 60 words per minute with few errors. Today? Well, let me just say I sent a group email earlier this week to my writing class. All I wanted to do was remind attendees there would be no meeting on that particular Monday because it was a holiday.

The effort was a fiasco. First, I sent it from the wrong email address using an old, outdated class roster. Instantly, I started getting “failure to deliver” notices. If you haven’t seen such a notice lately, they’ve spruced it up. It is now readable and tells you in straight English Joe Blow didn’t get the email you were trying to send. Second, despite carefully checking the calendar, I screwed up the date of the next meeting, trying to make Monday the 26^th into Monday the 29^th. Wednesday protested to Monday, so I had to send a correction. Third, because I used the wrong address to initiate the email, the message purported to come from someone other than me – one of my writing pseudonyms, actually.

Thank you, Angus, for alerting me to the wrong date, and you, Marsha, for letting me know I was actually someone else at the moment. Your help is greatly appreciated, and rest assured I’ll find a way to return the favor while critiquing one of your readings. By the way, I appreciate the offer of sake, Yoko.

·       Solution: The next time I have an urge to send an email to the class … I’ll have someone else do it and imbibe a glass of sake, instead.

I could go on and on … and on, but I’ll end this with the one totally unexpected thing I’ve encountered in the aging process. I never dreamed that my nether regions would become even more nether at the same time my arms were getting shorter.

·       Solution: I don’t have one.

Keep on reading, guys.

Don

New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

I’m at Home Hiding Under My Bed

Not exactly under the bed. I…uh, well, let’s be frank. I wouldn’t fit under there even if it were up on blocks. But that’s my mental state of mind. Hiding out. Let me explain.

Some of my recent posts have focused on my “foibles.” More bluntly, my goofs, mistakes, lapses, outrageous omissions, and…you get the idea. Last Friday, I committed one of my best.

I recently changed automobile insurance companies and was expecting a rebate from my old policy in order to help pay for the new one. It arrived Friday. Anxious to get it into my account, I drove to the bank fairly late that afternoon. Before I slipped the check, together with my bank card and driver’s license, into the shushing vacuum tube that mysteriously whisks them to a teller, I noticed the license had expired two days earlier.

Although I was sockless, in house slippers, and wearing my lounging pants (which some call pajama bottoms), I raced to a Motor Vehicle Department office not far from the bank. Once there, I had to get a number from a machine. Okay, nothing unusual about that…but it insisted I select the type of service I wanted—and none of them read “Renew a Driver’s License.” So I punched a likely button and received a number with a 700 digit on it (they were calling number 167 at the time).

After taking a seat and fretting over the fact there weren’t 500 people sitting in the waiting room, I concluded I’d asked for the wrong service. Several other clients had come in and taken a number before I decided to take action. I made a second guess at the check-in machine and got a more appropriate number. Like 197. Made more sense. There were about 30 people plus children and hangers-on in the room. Long and short of it…hours later, I got my temporary renewal license, a paper thing that’s to serve notice the real, genuine, plastic doodad is on its way. Instructions accompanying the phony license gave stern warning to keep the paper one with the expired license for ID purposes. Happy to get out of there, I returned to my car, clutching the paperwork.

Can you guess what happened next? You got it. When I got out of the car at home, I discovered my expired license was missing. Another trip to MVD. Nothing where my car had been parked. Not a scrap of paper (or plastic) between there and the office. The guard on the door said no one had turned in a lost license to her. Feeling I was about to be the victim of ID theft and all sorts of fraud, I returned home to fret some more. By the way, I'm a worrier.

The MVD was closed over the weekend, so early Monday morning, I started calling. I don’t know about your MVD, but in ours, you can hear the phones ringing and ringing and ringing. So I wasn’t surprised when no one answered. I tried several times. Unsuccessfully. On my way to the writing class I co-teach, I stopped by and found a sign on the door saying they were closed for Columbus Day, a state and federal holiday. Duh! (To be honest, I also checked on my mail twice…once after finding the note on MVD’s door.)

All of that was set-up for what follows. Tuesday morning, I had three calls to make. The first was to MVD. The phone was answered after the second ring, and “Yes sir, we have your license in Lost and Found. You can pick it up anytime.”

Relieved and elated, I made the second call to the North Domingo Baca Multigenerational Center to ask for permission to move our class from 2:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. and keep that as our permanent home (we were there as guests while Bear Canyon Senior Center was under repair). “Yes sir. We can accommodate both of those requests.”

The third call was to take advantage of a benefit offered by my health insurance company to have a nurse conduct a Health and Well-Being Assessment (even though I’d told them this was a “no call” number and hung up on them when they'd phoned a week ago to make the appointment). “Yes sir, the nurse can be there on the morning of the 29th.” No mention of my previous rudeness.

Wow! The day was going great. I got in the car and painlessly retrieved my lost license. Then I went to Smiths for some grocery shopping and found they had paper bags. They haven’t had paper bags for weeks!

That’s when I tumbled to what was going on. I was being set up for a fall. This day couldn’t go anywhere but down. I drove home using extra care. I obeyed the speed limit and didn’t even tailgate. Once parked successfully, I entered my apartment, locked the door, and figuratively hid under the bed.

 

Next week: I’ll think of something.

New posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.