CLOSE PROXIMITY©, a novel

Prologue

Rosemary Remarks

“What Leads You To It”

by Rosemary MacDowell 

            Today is my birthday and I want you for my guest.  Welcome. I have in my hand a cup of coffee, whatever kind you like, made from beans grown in a country where the growers and pickers work in harmony; it is dark and rich and it is for you. You may have cookies also. See the heat rising from them they are so fresh. From my own recipe I stirred the batter and they are healthy ones.  I have transformed two percent of my body fat into muscle eating these cookies. Also I get fewer colds. Some of the ingredients came from nearby wheat fields and chicken coops, others from lands of tropical effulgence.

            I don’t have all the answers. Just a few recipes for you to try.  See how I cut out each cookies in the shape of a heart and lay it to brown near another on the baking tin. Some keep their romantic outlines while others transshape in the baking. Here, here’s a double heart for you to nibble. Take some cream for your coffee. (This is from Abyssinians and does not raise cholesterol.) I’m here to help.

            You may be wishing for love. You may be thinking about marriage. You may be gay or wanting to be (how refreshing it sometimes seems to find your opposite in the same). And always, too often for your own sense of power (the kind that means nice, deep breaths without strain and sleeping all through the night no matter whether you share your bed), you yearn for happiness in your love life. And yet you wonder, is it possible for me? Can I have a lasting relationship without compromising my individuality?  Where can I find someone who will let me be myself and still love me? Who will be my twin heart on the cookie sheet of life?

            Please enjoy the cookie and sip your coffee. Do. There is plenty.

            In my recipe for love, there is no ingredient called Just the Right Somebody. The Who in these heart cookies is you.

            Go ahead.  Use the hassock in front of you. My cat, who is strong as well as hypoallergenic, has brought you her pillow for your back. Don’t worry about her furless little body. On cold nights I make her wear her sweater. It is lamb’s wool and she purrs like a kitten.

            Now that you’re comfortable, please consider this notion: The perfect partner for a long-term relationship may not exist.  You are more perfect than anyone you know.

            Believe me.

            Now, now. Your self-deprecating laughter endangers your lap with hot coffee. You say, “Ah, if this is perfection, then we are all in trouble.”

            Yes, you are so wise. Humble too. Perfection and imperfection are the two hearts of your being and they have baked into one. You are the love of the world and we are in trouble because love is trouble.  Love and trouble are baking now side by side as we speak.

            By Sharon Blakeley _©2010

Visual Art Meets the Written

Art by David Lundahl ©2010

See more at www.NewLightStudios.BlogSpot.com.

Bleu Blew Azul

Solid as fish shimmer

leaping from the sky

to regain its ground,

its Rock River,

its Seine.

This blue

this morning is mere garments

de mes mèmoires faibles.

It is glass cracking inward

indifferent to the downwashing yellow.

It doesn’t think

I am weaker,

I am being overtaken.

I am elemental.

I am the shard of New Mexico

sky above the chimney rock.

Es un casco del cielo de New Mexico sobre un butte.

The blue that Is.

Here is a plate of foreign sky

Caught, honored, and released.

The blue belongs. The blue must fly.

Bleu, blew, azul.

--Sherry Blakeley ©2010

How Do You Do, World?

Life used to be so hard - back when I was an innocent motherless child awash in the universe.  Well, I got education – a B.A. in English literature and composition from Beloit College – plus a whole bunch of writing courses like the Squaw Valley Community of Writers program in Lake Tahoe, CA and summer classes at the University of Iowa.  Found romance – my wildly creative husband David Lundahl. Got more love – my Burmese cat Pandora, Tippy Thomson the Maine Coon Cat I adopted when my elderly friend couldn’t care for her anymore, and Davey’s tuxedo boy Li’l Dink. We don’t have children. We have the three cats and, as David used to say, a great deal of art.

Yes, I am an artist’s wife.  Partner.  Mate.  Help-Meet as Chaucer would have put it.  Before I met David my interest in art went to the 19^th Century Impressionists and the Pre-Raphaelites. While living in London with the super fantastic Tate Gallery available for free visits, I would not even walk into the Modern Art exhibits. For shame. 

But what an avid student David met in me.  “Can you name 10 sculptors of the 20^th Century?” he would quiz.  Now I can!  He and I first set eyes on each other at a farm auction in the Midwestern countryside near the small city where we had each gone to college, unbeknownst to one another. 

At the auction, both of us had our eyes on the antique toys that were being offered in the estate of the man alternately known during his lifetime as Fats or Tiny. I won the bid on a tin pedal car from the 1920s. And Davey won my heart.

Later I became an Auctioneer myself.  Yes, I can still chant with the best of them.  I have auctioneered in front of thousands.  I even participated in the International Bid Calling Championship the year it took place in Madison, Wisconsin.  I didn’t win but the experience proved enchanting. 

I have penned many articles for the print media.  Stories on antiques and auctioneering predominate. There have also been a fair amount of features on visiting celebs and places of local interest.  One of my short stories won nominations for Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Prize. And my novel manuscript made it to the final round of the Hemingway First Novel Contest. I am a former copy editor and reporter for a daily newspaper.

Art, artists, antiques, astrology, auctions, cats, creative cooking, disabilities, inventions, living creatively, living well in this economy - these topics are all of special interest to me. 

Did I happen to mention that my twin sister who lives in Colorado with her husband Dave is a psychic medium?  Twins, ghost hunting and psychic mediumship are also right up my alley – figuratively speaking. No longer awash with misery, I am spilling over with creative energy.

#  #  #