It's National Novel Writing Month-and I'm up for the challenge

I've joined writers from around the world in the challenge to write a 50 000 word novel this month. I woke up Sunday November 1 with the flu and Max and Charlie with the flu and no idea what I was going to write and no idea where I was going.

So it began...

Girl

Becks

Her voice enters me and it pisses me off. I’ve done it and I have no regrets, Really. No regrets. I look over to Tony as he lies on the crumpled sheets, the crepitated sun of morning spreading her spidery fingers over his back. I smile.

I am a woman. No longer a girl. It was very good giving myself to him like that and he took me gently, carefully like he promised. My mother was wrong. She said he wouldn’t be respectful, that men weren’t. They just wanted one thing and they didn’t care how they got it.

I rolled over on her thoughts, trying to squash her presence. She had no place in this bed with Tony and I. I wrapped my arms around his back and reach down low between his legs. He moved slowly at first and then before I knew it he was on top of me again and I was squealing, squealing with delight.

getdown@downtown.ca

Writing for a new blog in Calgary

Lisa Murphy Lamb

Mango Shiva « Downtown Calgary Blog

Source: getdown.ca

I am planning a weekend in San Francisco with a friend. Her job is to research where to eat and drink. I find the fun literary/art/outdoorsy events. We met up over lunch to share our research. Lunch was at Mango Shiva a contemporary Indian restaurant on Stephen Avenue mall. ...

Lisa Murphy Lamb

Doc Soup: Big River Man « Downtown Calgary Blog

Source: getdown.ca

I’m on a bit of a swimming streak lately so it seems. Three times a week I take my son to his swim meet work outs, then earlier this week I checked out Chrisophe Jivraj’s The Swimmers video art installation at The New Gallery. ...

Lisa Murphy Lamb

The Swimmers – The New Gallery « Downtown Calgary Blog

Source: getdown.ca

I needed a break from my day and so I took a walk down the river and ducked into Eau Claire Market to locate a piece of contemplative aquatic art I had heard about.

a poem for a lonely night (with a nod to Miller, Nin and Kerouac who kept her company)

a poem for a lonely night

(with a nod to Miller, Nin and Kerouac who kept her company)

let me take you to a jazz show please

to celebrate that

intricate relationship between

the music and the body

let us marvel at the many ways

that the spine can move

the back can distort that a

fantasy can be interpreted

then after I will confess as we gaze upon a canvas

surrendered under a bloody sheath

that everytime I stand before

it and certain others I fight

the urge to lick

the texture left by the artist’s brush

just above the left corner

do you see it?

in the cab, let me practice my insouciance

I’ll gaze out the window

as we

pull up outside a dark cafe

where we shall drink with heads

bent low and you can tell me a

story about a stranger in a

statue garden

and because you are a friend

I’ll let you

slam me up against

a brick wall

dry hump me

fill me with cognac

and then I’ll send you

on your way

content

at

last and ready

to call it a night.

But the longing for other places keeps her awake

words and image by Lisa Murphy-Lamb

But the longing for other places keeps her awake

Instead

of slipping serenely into the tenderness and refuge

family life offered

she was restless.

His thoughtful goodnight kiss, the

way he brushed

crumbs from each fingertip,

his socks left

each night balled carefully beside the bed-

lost

to the dogged, whispering murmur-

a ceaseless entreaty that robbed her

the pleasure

of bathing each pink toe on the left

foot of her youngest,

long walks each Sunday afternoon and receiving

a cup of tea while balancing what

he earns

and collectively what they spend.

She saw a different life

where crumbs fell freely and kisses

given

were unexpected, public, deep

and often.

Where tea grew native.

This image-this murmuring entreaty,

she worried,

would tire of calling her and

would

fade away

leaving her

only the call of the

tea kettle.

evanesce

evanesce

Rock stack

magnificent

strata of colour.

Fading into the horizon

not all hurtle by it

like I.

Recognizing the disquiet

in the hills,

from abandoned train cars

sculptures toil in the heat, erect

shapes

in harsh contrast to the natural

landscape-

beautiful

wonderous.

New material nestled

in centuries-old dust.

Unfamiliar angles upon

gentle slopes

tug at my senses.

I know each vein is worth lingering

over,

with close examination,

I’ll find

exultation

Yet, despite my

hunger

It seems I should continue on

and ignore

the call from

my loins to

slow down

to touch, taste

experience

the layers of this new land-

the deconstructed,hidden,internal,emotional,magnificance---

Yet

these hills scream out

they will not allow it-

Me

to fade

into the horizon

like a memory.

Words and image by Lisa Murphy-Lamb

Houston It's Worth IT: IKE The Book

HIWI: IKE is a photo collaboration and a collection of short essays of the days following Hurricane Ike. The pre-sales promotion for the book used one of my photos and accompanying writing. Click on the link above.

Book out September 11, 2009

www.HoustonItsWorthIt.com

You Don't Know

You Don’t Know

It’s having too many days filled with dark gaps of time that are both a gift and a curse for I often find myself stunned into silence staring out the window at the dancing light filtered through clustered bursts of green rebellion and feeling the snail-like pace that time sometimes offers me to create yet instead I sit and I wonder what it is that I am supposed to be contributing to this world. Twenty-five years have collapsed like a house made from cards and still I turn towards an embrace that is distant and yet warm. You don’t know that when I look into the mirror and try to recall the words that were said to me I doubt my memory and convince myself that they were not what were said but what I wanted said needed to be said but then I step back and remember the smile one dark morning while I sat with coffee in a t-shirt and panties the words I remember they were actually said and despite the image I see in the mirror and the criticisms that often crowd my head the words- your words are fresh and welcome and sincere and important. Waking from the eroticisms of my dreams I lie in the sleepy afterglow of yet another night of sexual betrayal recounting what happened I feel the reality of my mattress below me I know I could stay and I could go but I won’t do either I rise and drink coffee and wonder if the gaps of time will have colour for me that day or if it will be up to me to paint them and then I wonder next if I actually have the talent to do so

Lisa Murphy-Lamb