As part of the writing challenge with Candlewick Press hosted by Kate DiCamillo, we've been asked to keep a journal. I usually prefer a new journal for each new batch of thoughts or 'season of writing' but I pulled a barely used one out of the stack and determined to use it despite the few scrawled in pages. This is what I found in there, without dates but (obviously) before the final decree.
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Things You Interrupt Before I Can Say (and to keep me from saying) or
Things That I Think To Myself Sometimes:
You say (to our oldest daughter): Your mom wasn't dressing to attract. She was wearing baggy clothes when we met.
I feel the reason a piece of fruit is used in the story of the first sin is because it seems so inconsequential. One bite. One under-developed little Nemo fin, stuck out defiantly to 'touch the butt' when suddenly - all is lost. And there was blame enough for sandwiches all day after the forbidden bite - there always is. Each excuse held truth of a sort, but not a drop of pardon.
I wonder if Eve ever realized, in retrospect, that she could have pulled a Nancy and just said 'No', or if Adam ever wished he had just controlled himself. I bet becoming parents helped them -maybe they warned Cain about limits but had to watch as he pressed ahead, knocking their love out of his way.
*** It ends there, I guess I got distracted, because the thought is incomplete***
***Begin Transcription***
Things You Interrupt Before I Can Say (and to keep me from saying) or
Things That I Think To Myself Sometimes:
You say (to our oldest daughter): Your mom wasn't dressing to attract. She was wearing baggy clothes when we met.
I think: Tell her the rest..."she told me her plan to wait but I talked her out of that nonsense. But, you dear daughter, should do as I say and not as me and your mother.
Notes: My choices are and ever have been my own. I am not freed from them because you were involved. I am not who I started out as (for better or worse) and neither are you. These changes are not isolated events - more like chemical reactions or natural growth. How does the baggy-clothes-wearing girl become persuaded she had best get more attractive? It comes doewn to cause and effect.
Who is a bigger whore- the girl who drops her purity for a bread crust of compliment or the fox who runs off with it in his sly mouth?
How can a man with a monthly subscription to locks-on-the-door media be the same man undone by his wife's back tattoo? (So- you want sexy, but only on women you rent, not those who belong to you?)
You always change his identity for her. The guy she attracts will be some redneck wife-beater, you say. She is exactly like me, you say - but also not like me at all. I was wearing baggy clothes, not being a slut also everyone knows a tramp stamp makes you a whore. But whether she is like me or not (I believe it can be both) You are never in these scenarios accurately depicted. Her mom is a harlot, does she want to be like that... attract guys like that... like who? Not you. We all know you aren't attracted to me.
I feel the reason a piece of fruit is used in the story of the first sin is because it seems so inconsequential. One bite. One under-developed little Nemo fin, stuck out defiantly to 'touch the butt' when suddenly - all is lost. And there was blame enough for sandwiches all day after the forbidden bite - there always is. Each excuse held truth of a sort, but not a drop of pardon.
I wonder if Eve ever realized, in retrospect, that she could have pulled a Nancy and just said 'No', or if Adam ever wished he had just controlled himself. I bet becoming parents helped them -maybe they warned Cain about limits but had to watch as he pressed ahead, knocking their love out of his way.
*** It ends there, I guess I got distracted, because the thought is incomplete***