More about the old couple July 3, 2006
Posted by jeanne in Backstory, Characters, construction news.add a comment
The magic seed. Seed in a little bottle of oil. Dug up in the back many years ago. Never been able to open it. Grows every year, old man thinks there’s a message or pattern like crop circles
Digging in the old coal box out back. finding stuff
Cold spots around the place. Casual ghosts and spirits. Fairies and relationships.
Seances and spirit of woman in kitchen, man and kid downstairs
Everything not feng shui but golden mean. Old lady does astrology, numbers, herbs
Old man does drumming. Douses, summonses, crop circles, shamanism, dreams
He’s got T’s enthusiasm while she has D’s sensitivity. They have an active sex life in their late 60s.
Lived in the house for almost 50 years, since ‘68 when the first kid was born. Moved in just in time for the birth, and was the house a mess. It had been a rooming house after the war, and before that it had been the Depression, and before that it had had some work done on it. Thank god it was a well-made house. They slowly renovated it when the kids were older, and except for some roof and porch work, and a coat of paint, it’s been no trouble since the ,mid ’90s. Maybe it needs another coat of paint. Maybe a landscape renovation. But the old lady has no use for curb appeal, and uses every square inch to grow medicinal plants.
Everything in the house is sturdy and unique, much stumbled upon by the side of the road, the rest made by the old man and his kids as they grew up. The house is all neat and arranged precisely, uncluttered except for the desk in her computer room. On the other hand, knicknacks lie everywhere, dreamcatchers, crystals, altars, candles, incense burners, gongs and bells,statues and pictures. There are books everywhere, in stacks on the floor and double stacks on the shelves. It looks like a medium’s booth set up in a bookstore coffee shop. The kitchen is from the ’60s, the cookie jar, the tea towels. But it turns into a lab and farm operation in a matter of minutes.
The old man stays downstairs during the day, tinkering and tending to his animals. The old woman works in the yard and sits in her computer room, watching what’s going on in the world and becoming outraged.
No, do we have to pay attention again? I don’t want to, it makes me angry. Who wants to read about things that just make you mad? Who wants to read an angry character?
Can I have a show of hands, please as to who wants to get inside someone’s mind who’s full of hate?
The old lady sits at her desk and looks at the star crossed lovers’ back porch, hears conversations, partying, shouting thru old walls. Hearing is not perfect because of air conditioner, overheard bits are fuzzy. She sits and thinks about what the college students are up to, and about the family next door, and keeps an eye on who’s going by on the street, and listens for accidents on the corner and birds and the return of that cat-killing dog, and stares out at her old trees, her shady green oasis in the middle of scorched back yards and barren earth.
So, back to the old lady’s problem. The girl does a header, the mom does a header, what’s the old lady’s header? Does the death of the mom make enough of an impression on the old lady to change her life? No. I think what does it for the old lady is when she realizes that her anger, her interference, her intolerance and fear and combativeness is at the bottom of all the bad things that have happened to them. And perhaps this will have to be driven home by a close call with the old man. I’m not sure. How hard do you have to torture your characters to get them to give their all, anybody know? Comments, please.
The old lady fails at something bigger. She’s been working on her Cosmic University masters dissertation, and yet she’s been using her magic for vindictive angry purposes. And that’s bad, and could result in her expulsion.
True, she turned her powers to good trying to heal the mom, but then when the mom dies, this precipitates her dark night. Stupid old lady mind your own business. So she barely avoids failing her cosmic finals, and will be set back for a remedial period. Is this enough to change her? Is this enough to flounder her so the guys have to come to everybody’s rescue?
She’s paralyzed with guilt when the real danger hits, which is danger to their house from the developer, which the old man deals with alone. And is wounded. Both he and Thing Two are burned and in the hospital. Or he follows suspicious characters in truck and gets shot or accident but has information.
She suffers his injury knowing it’s her fault, faces her flaws and sins, appologizes, all 12 steps. He’ll have a limp, and she’ll always feell it in her bones. Forced to ignore her guilt and take care of old man. And yet she’s strangely happy.
The star crossed girl and the hippie mom July 3, 2006
Posted by jeanne in Backstory, Characters, Plotting, construction news.add a comment
Or, Star and Maggie Hipje. See character names.
The mom’s house is dusty. Her two dogs and three cats shed like crazy in the summer. She rents, can’t afford more than a window air conditioner, makes do with fans.
The house is old and ricketty, in need of renovation. It’s furnished from thrift stores and flea markets. The kitchen is from the ’70s, avocado and harvest gold, with pots and pans everywhere and a thousand cookbooks, all different dishes, jam jars.
Homemade curtains, handwoven rugs, futon couches, milk crate and board and brick shelving. Her bedroom is a study in reds, looks like an indian palace with wall hangings and big pillows. The bed is on the floor and a forest of plants screens it.
She’s got plants in all the windows and covering her front porch, with a dozen windchimes and stained glass hangings. Macrame.
The paint is peeling, the roof leaks, there are termites around the foundations. She keeps telling the landlord but he does nothing, and will sell it once it gets worn down enough.
The landlord’s a man’s man and they once dated, but it didn’t work because he was an alcoholic and he couldn’t get hard and she was going thru a horny phase in her mid 40s and had no time for that.
She had a lot of three minute boyfriends after she broke up with her ex.boyfriend, a professional barney, but really a professional criminal, because after all he makes his money selling weed. Only weed, won’t touch coke or meth. He figures he’s actually doing public service, and he’s not really a criminal, just that the law really needs to be changed already. He’d love to have the chance to pay tax and grow his own. He still supplies hippie mom tho they have been broken up for some time.
He sells a half pound at a time to the star crossed boy. It’s not talked about and none of mom’s business, but he felt he had to tell her he was selling to the kids down the block because it’s her kid.
Mom feels guilty smoking dope. She feels she always neglected the people in her life because she was always aching to go off and get high, so that she would be more in touch with herself and her needs and feelings. A self-center drug, a grounding drug. Otherwise she was always at everyone’s beck and call as if she was a magic fairy harnessed to a bunch of humans. Running here and there, soothing, nurturing, caring. She’d do it anyway, but they didn’t appreciate her and put her down for having no essence, and that drained her will and energy. So she smoked more dope.
Her daughter moved out six months ago, but just down the street where she’d been spending all her time anyway for the past year. Star picked a fight while she was bitching at her for sagging grades, and just up and moved. So mom let her go. They come over nearly every evening for dinner anyway. Mom’s kept her bedroom, but uses it as an office with a bed full of stuffed toys. She moved the tv out of her bedroom and into Star’s room, too, and now likes to live in silence, not watching the tube every night in bed, not having the radio on or the stereo, noticing how peaceful and stressless life has become now that she no longer becomes outraged on a daily basis by things out there. She’d rather ruminate on her life. that’s stressful enough.
Head in the clouds is good. She smokes more dope. Every two hours, from waking until bedtime. She reaches for it absently, curling around it like an old junkie.
Inner conflicts over dope. When her daughter comes back after the trouble starts and has to pass piss tests, she vows to give it up herself, but can’t. All sorts of addict behavior. Not telling her ex boyfriend she was quitting. Trying to smoke it up as fast as possible while still maintaining a stash. Considering switching to joints to smoke it up faster, but can’t bring herself to waste pot. Sneaking, trying to hide it from her kid like she used to. Kid sleeps all day from depression, so it’s not hard.
Why did she let Star, a minor, move in with her boyfriend Gordon? Because she loved the guy and he was good for her and made her happy. Mom could see how happy and animated she got whenever they were together. And her girl had been fighting with her all the time and life ws so much more serene this way. The boy was good at heart, and smart as a whip, and he was going thru the last stages of childhood himself, so she could excuse his arrogance and certainty. The young always think they’re right. She felt she could keep a good eye on them from down the street, but she almost never went over there, and didn’t feel welcome.
The star crossed lovers live in a rental next door to the old couple, on the corner. The old lady can’t help but watch what goes on. Their landlord is a slovenly cheapskate who takes the illegal way every time, never getting permits, repairing with cheapest materials, skimping constantly while threatening tenants who pay late. House is a wreck. Door loose in frame, windows won’t shut or won’t open, gutters off and rain sheets down and runs into porch. Roof leaks so bad that back room is filled with mold and nobody can stay there. Many more people live there than pay rent. Crash pad for all his friends.
Godron and another couple rent it, claiming to be college students, but they always sleep late, sit around all day, and party until late in the night, with all sorts of friends dropping by to spend a while. Actually a dealer in weed, coke, pills, acid, whatever came thru town.
Living fast and large, confident that nobody knew about it and the cops would never bust them. Made plenty of money, and figured he could buy his way out of trouble because everyone can be bought. Cocky, arrogant, naively sure of himself. Young, only 21 and already the head of a big drug operation. Sold by the ounce, so not so big. Supplied by hippie mom’s ex boyfriend and a host of others. walk up and down the sidewalk on his cellphone late at night, visitors at 4 am.
They never cook. They order out or go out or go over to mom’s for dinner. There are clothes and possessions and trash everywhere; they never clean up. every now and then the star crossed girl attacks a bathroom or does a few loads of laundry and brags to her mom about how grown up and responsible she is.
Different kind of expectancy the summer she turned 18. Most kids are taking the summer off tbefore going to college, or have summer jobs. She’s waiting for her trial.
