I'd like to call this blog "Moose Drool," but it's already been taken.
I sit at my glass-top table, lap-top computer at hand, a basket of pink petunias in front of me cascade from their lofty perch dangling from a porch rafter. Other flowers fill pots on the tiled floor. This is a covered porch/patio—to call it a deck is erroneous, I suppose, isn’t a deck built on supports? This patio has tile sitting directly on the ground. The tree house is to my left about 500 feet away, but I don’t want to climb there today.
I like sitting here among the flowers with the ceiling fan stirring the air. I asked my family the other day why the wind around here is in a constant state of agitation. It blows from one direction, stops for a microsecond, changes direction, puffs, picks up speed, whams you from behind, stirs up your hair, then goes over to shake up the rose bushes. With the wind, though, we have virtually no flying bugs—ants, we have those, they can hold onto the ground. The agitating wind keeps it comfortable here, a blessing.
Oh another blessing. We ate about a dozen apricots from an apricot tree located here in the grapefruit orchard that tasted like the ones I remember from my childhood. My family grew apricots (and peaches and cherries) on a hill called Cherry Heights in The Dalles Oregon. None of the “store-bought” apricots have satisfied me since then. There are two apricot trees here on our California property, one had fruit that tasted authentic, the other, nada. One tree, about a dozen apricots, that was it. El Primo. I didn’t know old fashioned, real apricots still existed.
I look out over the patchy grass—moles love it, dogs love to dig for moles. There was a mole digging in broad daylight the other day, head in the soil, oblivious to anyone watching. The sprinklers in the lawn leave dry spots, I drench them by hand watering, and we fill the holes with soil. The lawn, however, is not in that lofty green pristine condition of estate gardens—or of other gardener’s yards who know what they are doing. Beyond the lawn ahead of me is a four car garage. Not the best of views, but it is still beautiful here. We do not have access to the garage, for the owner parks his tractor there, and the other half of it contains an enormous walk-in freezer. The owner of this property planned the freezer for his fruit, but does not use it. I think it is more of an albatross.
Those of you who know me know that I am the world’s worst namer of book titles. Somehow names just escape me. I have been writing of our experience over the last three years, about our sojourn from Oregon, to Hawaii, and then to California. This memoir/narrative has been re-named so many times it is a good thing I’m not writing with pencil and erasing my entries. If I did that there would be a man-hole where the title ought to be.
After listening to the native Hawaiian Iz sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” with his lilting voice and his ukulele accompaniment, I decided to call my Hawaii book, Somewhere. The book is primarily about Hawaii, I thought that fit. Now I’m re-thinking that title.
I was told by an editor that I couldn’t use song lyrics without permission, and without that song reference Somewhere doesn’t mean a damn thing. I went back to a previous, more provocative title choice, Escape from Paradise. Sounds like an oxymoron, but that’s the way it was. Oh, That’s the Way it Was. How about that as a title? If any of you guys want to jump in here with ideas, feel free. What book would you be more likely pick up if browsing a bookstore? (Do people still do that?) Somewhere, Escape from Paradise, That’s the Way it Was, Running Between the Raindrops, The Frog’s Song, Life Beyond the Horizon, let’s see what other title choices did I consider? Oh, my daughter wants me to call it Screw It! But I’m not that courageous.
I sent my manuscript to an editor, and that’s where it resides. She sent back the title page where she had written “A Novel.” That’s fortuitous. I considered calling it fiction as well after an agent said I had no platform. Essentially I don’t have a snowballs chance in hell of being published without one. (A “platform,” means you have a TV presence, a radio presence, ten million followers on the internet, you are a life coach, an expert in your field, someone who gives seminars, basically someone who can prove they can sell a ton of books.) Whoops, that’s not me.But a novel—with that I would need no platform. Consider the possibilities…
Wrote Paulo Coelho in his introduction to his novel The Alchemist:“If you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.”
