I said that I would do it and indeed I did!

(Pardon my breaking into My Fair Lady music. :) It has been far too long since I have given my mind to seriously writing Puddleby Lane. I got busy (though that's no excuse) and though I can write in spurts and snippets, I find it makes for choppy inspiration, so sometimes I'd rather not write at all. It's rather like trying to draw in pen-and-ink with a leaky pen.
ANYway, last night I thought I would beard the lion in its den, so to speak and try to make some progress of some sort on P.L.

Enter me, armed for battle with a cup of black currant tea and some Scottish shortbread, fortified with a pound of butter. My attempts did not begin under the most auspicious of occasions. I sloshed my tea by accident and it wet the shortbread through. Anyone who's anyone knows soggy shortbread is a calamity. I ate it anyway and flumped down onto the stool in the office and opened up the Puddleby Lane document. Oh joy. I had left Cora in a rather hum-drum conversation that did have a point but was not the most enlightening scene I'd written. Well, I had to get her out of there by hook or crook. It might be painful, but it had to be done. (Oh, and I think I ought to change the color of Ann Company's hair...the feisty red-head is WAY overused in literature.)
I took a deep breath, poised my fingers over the keys, and wrote. I didn't write much. I can't say it was brilliancy, but I think it was a start, and certainly a pardonable attempt for one who has Been Away from her story for several weeks. Would you like to read the very little bit I managed to scribbled last night? I will pretend you do:

She flipped the page and sighed, content.

The minutes tip-toed past on swift wings and it hardly seemed any time at all before Ann Company pushed Cora’s book out of her face and, laughing, announced she was finished.

“Then let’s hurry. It looks horridly cold out there.” Cora shivered, reluctant to leave the warmth of the pot-bellied stove. She warmed her hands one last time, placed her book back on the rack and followed Ann Company onto the establishment’s plank porch. Ann Company turned the key in the lock and dropped it into one of her cavernous pockets. Then, arm in arm, the two girls began their walk toward home.

A salt-scented Wandering Jew of a breeze whisked up the bluffs to meet them. Cora leapt down the twisting embankment behind Ann Company. She was becoming proficient in the art of leaping from hillock to hillock like a deer—she’d gotten her Puddleby legs, as Ann Company had called them.

They stepped through the Needle’s Eye into November dusk, beautiful as anything Cora had ever seen. The fading light hung suspended above the beach like an airy, amethyst wine. It purpled the red clay of the bluffs and bewitched the roar of the breakers to a hushed sigh like a weary child lulled to sleep. The sand stretched before them, an undulating tapestry—silver where the ripples crested and ebony in between. A sliver of white moon winked at the girls where it rose from the regions beyond the reach of the eye. Cora squeezed Ann Company’s hand and they stood in silence, the utter peace of the shore seeping into her very soul.

“For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies,” Cora began the song and Ann Company joined her rich alto to the melody. “For the love which from our birth over and around us lies, Lord of all, to Thee we raise this, our hymn of grateful praise.”

A lone sandpiper, the last of the birds to go to bed, scuttled across the tapestry and broke the reverie with a sleepy twitter. Ann Company drew Cora’s hand through her arm and they walked on.

Cora sighed. The perfection could not last, and she had known it. But oh, what a sweet glimpse of perfection it was!

There you have it. The fruits of a tardy mind attempting to drop from the tree of....It's Been A Long Time. But I think I'll keep it for now. What say you? :) ~Rachel

They go Together Like...Fire and Gunpowder

"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose." 

~David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Oh, oh, oh! Do words ever strike you as you read them, steal your breath away, and only return--demanding compound interest--once they've rattled through your mind again and again? Or perhaps a simpler description, more to the point, would be, do you ever read something and find it resounds with your very soul? So much so that you cannot forget it? 

These words from David Copperfield did just that to me. I can't tell why, exactly. Perhaps it was because I knew David shouldn't have married Dora, and it pains me to see him pained. Perhaps it is because that is a truth I have long suspected but had never heard put down quite so perfectly.

This is, perhaps, not quite a writing post, as much as it is a post about a thought literature provoked. But one can accept a change of subject, right? 

Unequal marriages have always bothered me. Think the painful marriages in literature that make you want to punch the husband or wife clear out of the pages. Mr. Gibson and Hyacinth Clare. Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet...I am even tempted to add poor David and Dora to the group. But what is it that makes a marriage unequal? What is it that adds such disparity to an otherwise average couple?

1. I profess an opinion that station has nothing to do with it. As Emma Woodhouse says, "There have been many happy and unequal marriages!" Station and social status have little to do with having a happy marriage. Think of any of the successful couples in literature, and one will find that many of them were of different classes...Mr. Darcy and Lizzy Bennet. Captain Ralph Percy and Lady Jocelyn Leigh. Even Sir Percy Blakeney and Marguerite St. Just came from different backgrounds.

2. Age has little to do with it. Think of Emma and Mr. Knightley. There were 17 years between them! In fact, many  if not most of the classic couples had a span of at least 10 or 20 years age difference.

3. Similarity of personality isn't a necessity. We've all heard that opposites attract, and I can think of many cases where this is evident. Think of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan in How Green Was my Valley.

If none of these things, what is it that makes an unequal, unhappy marriage?

"My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner life." So Mr. Bennet warns Lizzy when she admits her love for Mr. Darcy. The inability to respect your partner is a large component in an unhappy marriage. But Dickens hit the nail on the head when he spoke of the subject: unsuitability of mind and purpose. A couple who cannot share the same sympathies, who cannot relate one to another, are like oxen who are supposed to be a team but are pulling in opposite direction. It just doesn't work. 

My heart is sore for poor David Copperfield. He should have married Agnes Wickfield. He totally should have married Agnes Wickfield...like, I almost wanted to throw the book across the room when his wedding with Dora actually happened. What did my sweet David ever do to deserve this?

"It was impossible to say to that sweet little surprised face, otherwise than lightly and playfully, that we must work, to live.

"'Oh! How ridiculous!" cried Dora. 'Why should you?"

"'How shall we live without, Dora?' said I.

"'How? Any how!' said Dora."

And I shall keep a tidier house, thank you.

Anyone want to help me throw the book? ;) It just set me thinking on my own marriage, someday. I shall strive to be a good wife, suited to my husbands mind and purpose. I will strive to share his hopes and dreams and support him during the rough times so that he won't, unlike David, have to hide his burden within himself when he finds I am not strong enough to bear it alongside him. ~Rachel

Inkpen Poetry Day: "Land Sea"

"Land Sea"

          By Rachel Heffington

The storm--a sea on windy wings

Crashed o'er and o'er the dark'ning wood

And breakers of a pelting rain

Beat senseless on me as I stood.

Beat senseless, yet my heart-strings throbbed

When to my soul storm-voices spoke;

Swift passions, deep, their words provoke,

And loud my heart's cry sobbed.

The rain--a wave of sheening grey

Stroked o'er and o'er my quiv'ring heart

And wind-tides with a gentle touch

Soothed dreams the storm had pulled apart.

Soothed dreams, and when the clouds had passed

With murm'ring secrets whispered close

My soul was stilled, as Heaven knows

By shimm'ring peace: a pool amassed. 

On the Double! Only Six More Days!

I am pleased to announce that my pleading has paid off and the entries for the Merry Auld England contest are pouring in! ;) Or at least steadily trickling. Now, girls. It is the 16th of September today...(right?) and that means there are only 6 days left to enter the contest! If you have been procrastinating but really do mean to enter, now is your chance! If you've begun but have only been doodling with your pens and drawing funny faces on the men in the newspaper instead of scribbling in earnest, now is the time to mend it. If you have simply been thinking you aren't good enough, or you can't write in the style of these people, let me correct you. All writing, if the writer's heart is in it, has some merit. Don't let that stop you. And as for the style, I suppose I ought to correct myself. You don't have to write in the same style as the Greats, but simply in the same subject arena. Anything English.
Now that I have ranted somewhat, on the double, women, and let us show the writing world what we're made of! ;) Can't wait to read your entries! ~Rachel

Written in a Hurricane

Hello everyone! This is something I scribbled down a couple of weeks ago when we had a hurricane. :) I love taking the opportunity in these moments of writing some description.

"Untitled"

    By Rachel Heffington

The massive power of the hurricane awakens something inside me. Something that has long lain dormant, waiting for such an occasion before appearing. A captive passion, wild as the moors of the North, lonely as the crags.
I stare out my rain-spattered window entranced by the power of the wind--the reckless force that demands all to bow and pay homage to its passing. My heart yearns to be out in the gale, caught in the wild, erratic dance of the trees as they whirl and stoop beneath the winds, every leaf quivering and glinting quick-silver. I long to stand in the elements, letting the rain beat upon my face, neck, hands, and know He is God.
My secret Bronte has been roused and deep dreams, sweeping passions cavort in a stormy ring round my heart.
I need no companion. The storm is companion enough for my mood. I watch its passage across the field, the cruel way it tumbles over everything in its way and throws volleys of silver-fledged darts at the house. It is not a kind storm by any means, and I would not have it so.
I do not mind being a bit broody this morning--I sit alone in my room, not even turning on the light, but writing with a tar-black pen in the reluctant light that has survived the embrace of the hurricane.
I listen for a moment to the gale without and my heart throbs. Why does it ache so? Why do I feel that the same winds that bow the trees wreak havoc inside me, stroking the chords of my heart and eliciting music of a strange and wild nature? A quote from Jane Eyre springs to mind:
Rachel, Rachel, stop struggling so like a wild, frantic bird!"
And yet I am happy. Perfectly happy.
I have only once more experienced the bewitchment of a storm. Am I the only woman whose heart is shaken by the passion, the wild and haunting beauty, the untamed splendor of a gale in force? I do not know. But my heart cries for the unknown, for a glimpse of I can't tell what. I am drawn to the Lord, for eternity is in ever advance of the wind; Heaven in the benison of rain, hell in the voices that murmur and shriek through the veil of mist.
Oh, it is a queer, strange beauty, but it feeds my soul. God in His power holds the reins of the wind-stallions in his hand, guides the path of the rain with His eye, and fills my soul to tears with the flashing, wild love of His heart.

"What Say You, Miss Woodhouse?"

"What say you to the new blog look?" ;)

I was tired (already) of the generic raspberry, and I saw this background and knew it had me written all over it. :) I think it's rather pretty...what about you? Now I shall leave you with a Vagabond Song!

A Vagabond Song
Bliss Carman

THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Introducing A Butcher, a Baker, a Candlestick Maker

Hello, everyone! I don't have time to write up a long post today, as we are beginning our weekly Tuesday mash of work, projects, school, and choir. Not to mention baking a cheesecake this afternoon....

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I have begun a blog, A Butcher, a Baker, a Candlestick Maker, that is particularly geared toward writing about my life as a stay-at-home, graduated daughter, and anything encouraging or inspiring for other girls who are pursuing the same things, or anyone who wants to peep into such a life. So go visit the blog and tell me what you think. And have a fabulous morning!

        Write something amazing--it's such a beautiful day. :) 

                                           ~Rachel