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Breaca
Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 4:17 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 29 Dec 2004 Posts: 3
Cheers one and all for your kind 'welcomes'. I've been waiting for that opportune moment - when it looked safe to 'jump in'. But I'm sure I shall now be a regular - now that the ice has been broken.

But for now I shall bid you a farewell as the kettle beckons - and hence my afternoon cup of tea with biscuits.

Cheerio

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Rod
Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 6:02 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 2944 Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Last edited by Rod on Sun May 07, 2006 12:20 am; edited 3 times in total

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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space.
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daffy
Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2005 6:27 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1939 Location: Wall Street
Welcome Breaca!

Happy birhtday, Rod!

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Marj
Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 2:13 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 10497 Location: Manhattan
Despite having to walk home alone, it sounds like Rod Heath had a very special birthday, indeed.

I was hoping you'd choose “Quicksilver Soul”. Not that one poem is better than the other. Just that one reads aloud better. I do hope your listeners were duely appreciative?
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Rod
Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 8:09 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 2944 Location: Lithgow, Australia
...


Last edited by Rod on Sun May 07, 2006 12:19 am; edited 1 time in total

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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space.
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Rod
Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 8:17 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 2944 Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Last edited by Rod on Thu Jul 28, 2005 10:29 pm; edited 1 time in total

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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space.
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Rod
Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2005 8:22 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 2944 Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Last edited by Rod on Thu Jul 28, 2005 10:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space.
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jeremy
Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 2:41 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
Rod,

You seem to have scared everybody off. In case your wondering, I would, most definitely, not put it down to embarrassed silence. I really enjoyed reading the extracts and will undoubtedly buy the book should it see the light of day at my local Waterstones. Please don't be insulted if I say my main motivation is that I sorta know you by proxy - I am not a great reader.

It is very difficult to gauge a book from an extract. I usually find the first chapter of any book, no matter how well written, a struggle. But perserverence usually pays off, and within a shortwhile, if I get to care about the characters or what the author is telling me, I am eager for more.

I really envy your ability. For what it's worth, I was also amazed by your dad's ability to articulate his thoughts, firing off a thousand words or so in the time it took me to come up with an angle. He got off to a bit of a bad start when he rejopined us recently, but I, for one, would really welcome him contributing here. So, if you could get off the computer now and again and let the old man use it, perhaps bringing him a cold stubbie from time to time...myself, I quite like Toohey's or VB.

PS. I don't know if you've been watching the Six Nations, but from my perspective it's been painful. Ah well, we'll try make a game of it this summer. By the way, did I ever tell you that Michael Slater stayed in my house.

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Marj
Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:17 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 10497 Location: Manhattan
Jeremy,

I politely disagree. I haven't had a chance to read Rod's extracts. But as soon as I find a few moments, I certainly will and comment on them too.

Sometimes, there actually isn't anything to say. While this is not a locked forum, it doesn't mean that posting our writings necessitates a discussion. We have read Rod's poems and commented on them. Perhaps just having a place to post is all we really need?
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chillywilly
Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2005 4:17 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 8250 Location: Salt Lake City
I'm with Marj on this one.

When I read, I like to not have interruptions (same with writing, only even fewer interruptions) so that I can concentrate better on the subject matter.

I can read political articles and other daily press stuff with the iPod blaring in my ears. Novels and books are another story.

So far, I've read the first part to his story and it's very good... but it was at home during a slow time and someone decided to poke their damn nose into my cube... bastards! Don't they know the power of words and reading??

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"If you should die before me / Ask if you could bring a friend"
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Marilyn
Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2005 2:41 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 8210 Location: Skokie (not a bad movie, btw)
A short story--complete in one post

The New Yorker

“I’m here to answer your questions about the job.”

That’s how my third-round interview began—with a lie. I was stopped—confused and scrambling for my bearings. What was happening? Did I cover well? I looked down at my shoes. The floor seemed to be receding. I felt surrounded. A question, a question. My kingdom for a question!

“How soon are you looking to fill this position?”

“Immediately.”

What? That’s it? Now what was I going to ask?

“What happened to the woman who interviewed me last week? I thought she’d be here.”

“She took another job. It was a fabulous opportunity, of course, but confidentially, I think she was a little burned out. She was covering for her staff all the time.”

Ah, that sounds promising.

A colleague who had worked for the firm warned me that she had been called into the office at 2 a.m. to show the partners some graphics on her computer monitor. “The money’s great,” she said “but… .” I knew what she meant.

Nonetheless, I needed great money, and here was my chance to get it. I’d shelled out for a new interview suit, for luck, and visualized my success like the books tell you to. Maybe I needed reinforcement. I fixed my gaze on my prospective boss’s necklace—large costume pearls on a strand that looped in on itself, the very image of expense and chic. My gaze must have been penetrating. My non-interlocutor idly looped a finger through the necklace and pulled it taut against the side of her neck. It made her head look as though it had been sheared off her neck and replaced there slightly off-center. She stared impassively at me, saying not a word. My probative abilities, it seemed, were testing her patience. I tried to visualize flash cards covered with clever, insightful questions.

At last, when I asked about the expectations of the person in this job, it seemed to oil her jaw a bit. Did I say a bit? The charge crackling off her body seemed to irradiate the discreetly lit officelet in which we were seated.

“I’ve made a lot of changes in the three years I’ve worked for the firm. There were so many entrenched attitudes, people who were rewarded for creating proposals quickly from boilerplate copy.”

“How are you managing those people?”

“They decided that they were not happy and moved on.”

Hmmmmm.

“My methods have angered a great many people,” she said. “Some people think I’m a bitch. But my methods work! I have partners from across the country asking me to come to speak to them if they can’t afford to use our services. They want to win each bid so much they can taste it. So do I. My team does what ever it takes!” She pounded the desk for emphasis.

I felt a trickle of sweat slick the crease under my breasts. A vaguely fearful/guilty feeling swept over me that reminded me of how I had felt in church when I tried to avoid the penetrating gaze of Father Mahoney. I found myself hunching my shoulders and sliding my butt forward on my chair. I considered revising my plans for the full-length leather jacket I saw in Gruber’s front window. I was almost as taken with the quite fetching bomber jacket hanging next to it—and at half the price.

The question of travel arose. I’m still not sure who mentioned it first.

“Naturally,” said my passive aggressor, “we sometimes have to camp out with the partners.” She leaned forward, and her brows arched as though an apparition was plucking them into shape as we spoke. “I had a three-month campaign in New York City.” She let me imagine temporary exile for a few moments and the warlike hardships that entailed. Then, like Lawrence of Arabia, she charged to the rescue. “Fortunately, I live in Manhattan.” She smirked lightly at the cleverness of her choice of residence.

“Yes, I’m a New Yorker. I need the excitement. I go to the theatre eight times a week, the movies eight times a week, the ballet three times a week. You can’t do that anywhere else in the world!”

Maybe Scotland, I speculated, where cloning of mammals is legal.

“You’ve told me quite a lot about the position,” I said. “Isn’t there something you’d like to know about me?”

“It’s all right here,” she said, tapping my lightly scribbled resume with a fingernail. But as though she found the idea of the question game amusing, she invented one. “Why would a career journalist want to write for an enterprise such as ours?”

The money, I screamed inside. You and I both know that.

My answer was unimportant. My fate had been decided, perhaps before I even walked through the door. There I was in black and white, NOT from New York, NOT expensive and chic, and NOT corporate in any bone of my body, as my series of off-label jobs attested. Wanting somehow to make this experience worth the $25 parking fee I had dropped on it, even more, wanting some of my own back, I prepared to lay my artistic sensibilities on her.

Just then, her purse started playing the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovattore. Funny, I would have figured Wagner was more her speed.

“Yes?”

Pause.

“Dr. Stigman is a woman. It’s me.”

Pause.

“I just said Dr. Stigman is a woman. It’s me!”

Pause.

“Don’t you understand? It’s me!”

I thought to myself, why don’t you just say “I’m Dr. Stigman,” you cretin!

It was then I realized that I couldn’t possibly write be told how to write by someone who couldn’t communicate. I rose, extended my hand, and bid her a safe journey home.

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chillywilly
Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2005 2:58 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 8250 Location: Salt Lake City
Nice short story, Marilyn. Easily read at work while most of the cube coblers are off to lunch.

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Chilly
"If you should die before me / Ask if you could bring a friend"
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Rod
Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2005 9:13 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 2944 Location: Lithgow, Australia
...


Last edited by Rod on Sun May 07, 2006 12:19 am; edited 1 time in total

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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space.
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Kate
Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2005 1:40 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1397 Location: Pacific Northwest
Rod -

I copied, pasted, and printed your writings to read (I can't yet accept the computer screen for reading novels). At first glance, the style is very interesting - influenced by your poetry?
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Rod
Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2005 7:44 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 2944 Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Last edited by Rod on Thu Jul 28, 2005 10:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

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