Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 21 Comments

O Romeo: Discover Prompts Day 14 and 15

His bio reads like a great book. Born in 1949 into a wealthy Italian family, fashion designer Romeo Gigli lost his parents at 18 and set out on his own, traveling the world, before landing in New York in 1977. As the disco age raged, Gigli met Bianca Jagger and others at the famed Studio 54, where he was admired for his style.

A lover of history and art, Gigli eventually turned to design and started his first fashion label in 1981. His style was celebrated for its understated romanticism, even eschewing the big shoulder pad craze.

His signature fragrance, Romeo di Romeo Gigli, was launched in 1989. I was 14. Yes, I had other perfumes before Romeo, what I consider to be my signature scent. (I’m far from alone, this having been among the most popular fragrances on the market, at least back then.) There were stolen spritzes of my mom’s Charlie. And there was a momentary crush on the heady drug store favorite: Taboo. I still like a little Tocca Florence now and then. But Romeo has stuck, and I’ve been wearing it ever since.

What does a fragrance say about its wearer? What do you think yours says about you? Can my taste in perfume predict my taste in clothes, or makeup–or even books? Over at Twitter, I asked just that.

Heidi Czerwiec is an author, poet, and perfumista, who practices #perfumebookpairings. For one, she paired Randon Billings Noble’s collection of essays, Be With Me Always, which I talked about over here, with Maii by Bogue Profumo.

So, I asked her if she’d ever made a book recommendation based on someone’s signature scent, a reverse perfume book-pairing. And she did for me! I was thrilled:

“Based on your signature scent, Romeo di Romeo Gigli, which is a sweet, innocent floral with edgy marigold & asafoetida notes, over a resinous base, which fans have described as being in a fairy garden…I would recommend My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: 40 New Fairy Tales edited by Kate Bernheimer,” with stories and poems by some of my favorite authors and poets, “work that riffs on the old tales in unexpected ways.”

Brilliant, right?

So, spritz away if you’ve got it, even in quarantine. Anything to make you feel more human, more romantic, or even more like you’re sitting in a fairy garden (instead of your ratty old bathrobe–is that just me?) Read more about Heidi Czerwiec and her work. And tell me what are you wearing and reading today?

I’m chronicling our isolation with the help of WordPress Discover Prompts. This post was in response to Discover’s daily prompts: Book and Scent. Care to join in? Read others’ responses here. My other prompts responses:

Like what you read? Check out my categories above, with author and photographer interviews, essays, stories, book reviews, writing advice, and more.

Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 20 Comments

Shining through

One of my kids made this “stained glass” in art class. It’s all the stained glass I’ll see this Easter, with churches shuttered. I’d like to say it’s enough, but I miss the rituals, symbols, and ceremony so in evidence in the Catholic Church. I miss singing with the choir.

But it’s going to have to be enough, this simple holiday. Our few voices in prayer. A meal together in lieu of Communion. Our health and home, when so many are suffering with much less.

I wish them, and you–all of us–peace and light, today. Happy Easter!

~Rebecca

I’m chronicling our isolation with the help of WordPress Discover Prompts. This post was in response to Discover’s daily prompt: Light. Care to join in? Read others’ responses here. My other Prompts responses:

Like what you read? Check out my categories above, with author and photographer interviews, essays, stories, book reviews, writing advice, and more.

Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 19 Comments

Reality, layoffs, and all the rest, bite: Discover Prompts, Day 11

Photo credit: Erik Drost / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

What doesn’t bite? A surprise gift. One of my favorite surprise gifts I received this past Christmas was a book (shocker, right?): Cleveland Then and Now by Laura DeMarco, with Now photography by Karl Mondon.

The large-format book celebrates the storied history and vibrant present of my home city of Cleveland. (Granted, I grew up in Cleveland’s hinterlands, but Cleveland–and especially its Playhouse Square, where I danced with the School of the Cleveland Ballet–has my whole heart.) Having left home at 19, I now have lived longer away from Ohio (and below the Mason Dixon, God forbid) than in Ohio. Still, I consider it home.

Much of my Christmas afternoon was spent poring over the landmarks in this book. There’s Cleveland’s most beautiful building, the historic Cleveland Arcade (pictured below), where my dad worked for a time; hippie haven Hessler Road, where my mom lived when in college; Little Italy, where my parents married at Holy Rosary Church; the Cleveland Museum of Art; Playhouse Square, the largest center of performing arts between New York and Chicago; the Streamline Moderne Greyhound station, which I rolled in and out of on trips home from college in Virginia; and much more.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

The book’s author: arts and culture reporter and editor for the Plain Dealer–Cleveland’s newspaper of record–a reporter who specialized in local history and lost landmarks in the city. As many newspapers have, my hometown paper has seen its share of layoffs in recent times. Then, just last month, the news about more layoffs started coming fast and furious into my Twitter feed. Or more aptly put in this article with all the ins and outs: it was a “gutting” of a newsroom and a sure blow to journalism and journalists the Northeast Ohio community relies on. When remaining journalists were faced with losing their beats and told they would no longer be able to cover the city, a round of resignations yesterday included that of DeMarco.

Since the coronavirus reared its ugly, spiked head, journalists, writers, and bloggers have found ways of making sense of pandemic-havoc by telling the stories of our communities. While my platform is small, my community, my “beat,” during this isolation, is my family. And so I’ve been using these daily prompts to tell our stories: there’s Isolation Lent; Reviled Remote School; Close-Proximity Parenting (if my kids say to me, “OK, Boomer,” one more time, I might lose it); Extended Family Worries, and all the rest.

I’m keeping it together as best as this (ahem) Generation X-er can, which, according to DeMarco, might be pretty OK. In a piece she wrote last month, she notes that our Reality Bites generation is getting this isolation thing right: “While millennials and Gen Z kept partying and going to the beach, and boomers who didn’t want to recognize they are not so young anymore kept brunching, Gen X stood up and took action — and stayed in.” In this fun piece, she highlights the voices of several local Gen X-ers. The story brought to mind my own time in Cleveland with my best Gen-X girlfriends…dressed like we’d shopped at a Depeche Mode garage sale…drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes…watching the skaters outside Arabica on Coventry…acting all moody, sorta like isolating even when not alone.

Yeah, today’s reality–and it’s far-reaching impacts on our society–bites, and my heart goes out to all who are suffering from job loss and worse. What can we do? It is a very small thing, but today I’ll tell it like it is and hope for a better tomorrow. I hope you’ll join me.

I’m chronicling our isolation with the help of WordPress Discover Prompts. This post was in response to Discover’s daily prompt: Bite. Care to join in? Read others’ responses here. My other Prompts responses:

Like what you read? Check out my categories above, with author and photographer interviews, essays, stories, book reviews, writing advice, and more.

Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 24 Comments

A pair of hands: Discover Prompts, Day 9

Photo by Vova Krasilnikov on Pexels.com

When did I stop thinking about my hands? I used to gaze over my hands with petal-fingers at the end of a port de bras, dancing. I wrote about how my hands are my mother’s hands, long-fingered and veiny, when my grief for her was fresh. A mother, myself, I watched my hands hold infant sons–one arm a sling, one hand cupping the back of a downy-soft head. Then I made a church and steeple of my hands for the toddler boys who needed entertainment in the pew. “And here’s all the people,” I would whisper, wiggling my fingers.

Mostly now, my hands are tools to get my thoughts on the page, tools to turn a page, to scroll and swipe. But I don’t think of them much. I think of my knee that grinds, my ankles that pop. I think of my hips, which sometimes hurt, and which I baby. I am pillow-between-my-knees-as-I-sleep years old.

Maybe I’m thinking more about my hands now because I’m washing them so much. This morning, my dad called to tell me that a bit of dish-washing liquid and water works in the foaming hand-soap dispensers. Just in case. We are all worrying over hand hygiene now. Do we glove-up or not? Wash, dry, repeat. Palmolive, he said. And I thought of those old commercials. “Soft on hands.” Palmolive was my mother’s dish-washing liquid.

Remember the George-as-a-hand-model episode of Seinfeld?

What’s the sound of one hand clapping? That’s from a Zen koan or philosophical riddle and is also a line from one of Van Morrison’s songs I like to sing. I neither chop wood nor carry water with my hands, but maybe I should.

This morning, over English muffins, my boys and I prayed a special one for Holy Thursday. I took little notice over how my pair of hands fits so neatly together in prayer, fingers interlocked. It took a pandemic for me to stop biting my fingernails–I’ve noticed that.

Then, beginning my writing day, I flipped through poet Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which I highly recommend whether you think you like poetry or not. I came to his “ode to drinking water from my hands,” which you can read in its entirety here at poems.com. (Or just buy the book to hold in your hands.)

As Gay’s poem begins in a garden, you won’t be surprised that, today, the first day of the Triduum, I had in mind another garden, the Garden of Gesthemene. Maybe Gay did, too. And maybe this small snippet will quench your poetic thirst and make you consider your own pair of hands, as I am now.

and I drink / to the bottom of my fountain / and join him / in his work.

From “an ode to drinking water from my hands” by Ross Gay

I’m chronicling our isolation with the help of WordPress Discover Prompts. This post was in response to Discover’s daily prompt: Pairs. Care to join in? Read others’ responses here. My other Prompts responses:

Like what you read? Check out my categories above, with author and photographer interviews, essays, stories, book reviews, writing advice, and more.

Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 14 Comments

Not that curve: Discover Prompts, Day 8

Interior: figurative artist Rick Casali’s studio.* See more at rickcasali.com

When a sculptor lives across the street, you get these kinds of curves. You get to see them form. And, yes, when your little kids visit the artist’s studio, the boys get to enjoy a different kind of anatomy lesson than the kind they get in school.

This afternoon of isolation, some of my boys’ science schooling is happening in the yard, where they are helping my husband plant a hydrangea bush. After some exercise and vitamin D, they’ll complete their science projects on the skeletal and muscular systems of the human body. As they were introduced to these systems, I marveled at their inter-dependency–both the systems’ and the boys’.

You would think they’d get sick of each other, my little guys, weeks into our isolation at home; yet, they don’t seem to. They have known each other–curving into one another, entangling their limbs–since the womb. And they still do this. The horseplay and wrestling–those are embraces. They’re not fooling me.

I’m grateful they have each other, and that I have them. And I’m hopeful that before too long our world will open back up again–to experience art and everything else.

For now, please check out Rick Casali’s art at his website, on FB, or on his YouTube channel. And thanks, Rick! *Image credited to the artist and used with his permission.

I’m chronicling our isolation with the help of WordPress Discover Prompts. This post was in response to Discover’s daily prompt: Curve. Care to join in? Looking for more to read? Check out my categories above, with author and photographer interviews, essays, stories, book reviews, writing advice, and more.

Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 25 Comments

Smaller than a child’s hand: Discover Prompts Day 6

A long-overdue lawn trimming revealed a rabbit’s nest in the yard. There are two babies that we can see. Twins, each no bigger than a child’s hand. A quick internet search revealed some interesting facts: that baby rabbits need only to nurse a couple times a day, and do so very quickly (unlike the seemingly endless nursing sessions I experienced with my own twins). But then, it’s “quick as a bunny,” not “quick as a baby.”

It was a joy to see the excitement on my more tender-hearted boy’s face at his discovery. While the boys left them alone–wild rabbits are not pets–they did name them: Peter and Bugs. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t worry that these rabbits might not make it. Death’s natural, and all that. Only, now I do worry–about that and everything else. I also worry I might not make it through this year without securing a real pet for my boys, something to hold and care for. I’ve suggested a domesticated rabbit; the boys are talking about a dog, again.

I’m chronicling my days of COVID-19-induced isolation here at the blog with the help of WordPress Discover . This post was in response to Discover Prompt Day 6: Hands. Won’t you join in?

Of course, I’m still reading and writing the Rust Belt and beyond. Looking for an author interview, writing advice, or story? See my categories above.

Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 8 Comments

Again. Still.

“There is still a plan,” I hope…I pray. On this Palm Sunday I share with you this post I found to be such a comfort, this week. Our stories–whatever they might be–are, as Allison K. Williams writes, “our valuable labor.” Stories, yours and mine, are also a comfort. This morning, my kids and I shared in the story of Christ’s Passion through virtual Mass over Facebook. It was weird, but the familiar words, along with the priest’s vestments of red, his blessing of spring green palms, were a rote and ritualistic balm. That’s the Church’s labor–its chopping of wood, its carrying of water. Whatever your story or labor, I hope you share it with someone today. I thank Allison K. Williams, Brevity’s Social Media Editor and a wonderful memoirist, essayist, editor, and coach for sharing hers. I encourage you to check out Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, and Allison’s other work at idowords.net. Be well! ~Rebecca

Allison K Williams's avatarThe Brevity Blog

We woke up and everything had been different for some time now. Maybe we finally slept through the night. Or embraced waking up early, wired without caffeine. Maybe the bleak haze had become familiar, waiting for something to feel like feeling again. Maybe a call came—your friend is dying. Or, I think we should take a break. Or a text, WE WOULD LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT PUBLIC MOVEMENT RESTRICTION HAS BEEN IMPOSED.

Maybe we woke to the memory of weeks ago, some faraway country tracking their citizens, an alarmist friend stockpiling taco mix, our partner still warm-eyed and cuddly. All we want is to go back to sleep, back in time, to the moment before the pandemic, the break-up, that moment of sweet unknowing, when everything was still OK.

How can we write? How can we read?

How can we possibly address the page with our life, or…

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Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 29 Comments

Sing First, Feel Second: Discover Prompts Day 3

“I’m so happy, I could sing.” I’m saying that never these days. Sure, there have been moments during this isolation when I’ve put my fear aside long enough to engage in a little car-trip sing-a-long. It was Day 14, when I had to go out to retrieve books from my kids’ school and rescue my dry cleaning from its hold-up situation. In the car by myself, all alone, I belted out notes along with Patti LuPone in Evita (read more about how she’s entertaining her fans from her basement right now). Then I mixed it up and got a little angsty–no surprise there–with Amy Winehouse. Finally, on my way home I swung from the vocal chandelier with Sia. It was a wonderful release.

Still, I can’t bring myself to practice the choral pieces I would have sung over Holy Week and Easter. I want to. In “Open Wide” I talked about my re-upped hobby (now that my boys are old enough not to need this enforcer in the pew). I talked about joining my middling soprano voice with others’ in praise of something bigger than all of us. Now, it won’t happen–at least it won’t happen the way I thought it would.

Maybe I need to do it, first, and feel it second? Perhaps one of the biggest takeaways from my creative writing program was that there is no writing muse. Not really. There is inspiration, sure. But, it’s closely followed by work, more work, a dash of intuition at times–which sometimes feels like a muse–and then more work.

Now, I’m thinking maybe I need to treat singing like I do writing. Do the work. Do the vocal exercises like I respond to writing prompts like this; blog, little by little, and don’t wait for inspiration. Make the inspiration. Make the song. I was just going to write: “be the song.” But, really, I’m not there yet.

This was was in response to Discover Prompts, Day 3: Song.

Be well–and maybe sing today! I’ll be listening out. ~Rebecca

Looking for a good weekend read? Check out my categories above for author interviews, some of my own fiction, and more. Are we socially connected? Find me on FB and @MoonRuark on Twitter

Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 29 Comments

Open…water, heart, art: Discover Prompts Day 2

My boys and me on open water, cruising on the Rebecca T. Ruark (no relation but regional) one of the oldest working skipjacks on the Chesapeake Bay

I’m trying to remain open, these days of isolation, to what might pass for connection now. I try not to rail against the world for small annoyances–and thereby close my heart to possibilities. I try not to cry at the faulty internet connection that makes me drop my first-ever Zoom call. I should be happy for technology, for the virtual happy hour with my friends in town, happy to have friends, a town, a house, a basement I can sit in–which is dry despite all the rain–where the Wi-Fi works best.

Another friend dropped toilet paper at my kitchen door today–the best kind of pandemic calling card. Yet another friend, far away, is teaching her four-year-old his letters and decided to bring pen pals back. My own boys are practicing their cursive on loose-leaf (I’m glad we don’t have to re-purpose for the bathroom) and have discovered the joys of snail mail. My freelance work has me writing for hospitals, which makes fiction feel not just false but useless. My creative writing is changed, not closed, but working through different channels now.

A novelist friend, when addressing how to write at such a time as this, suggested acting like a different kind of artist. Writers, try on your dancing shoes. Performers, take to the page. That kind of thing. I desperately miss singing in my choir, raising my voice in song. I’ve written about it here and here and mused on singing for Ruminate, here. But I don’t seem to be able to open my mouth in song today.

I recent days, I have written a short essay and a flash fiction piece, departures from my WIPs–historical novels that don’t let me address this present moment. It’s a moment I don’t want to close myself off from–or forget–for the lessons it might teach me. Meanwhile, I should be teaching my kids; we should be writing a middle grade book together. Maybe we will, and set the story in a wooden boat.

The day before my state’s governor issued the latest isolation mandates, my husband and sons took to the water. My younger twin named the dinghy, “Aqua Dove”–big name for a small boat. With oars, a centerboard, and a little sail, I hope it will give my boys a sense of freedom on open water, when this is over.

WordPress is doing daily Discover Prompts. This was my response to Discover Prompts, Day 2: Open. I hope you might join in!

Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 6 Comments

In Need of Inspiration? Discover Writing Prompts Are Coming in April

The wonderful editors at WordPress Discover are instituting a new thing, starting in April. I’m not typically one for writing prompts, but then there’s been absolutely nothing typical about these pandemic days–or my literary (or non) responses to them. Maybe you’ll join me in responding to one or more prompts. Maybe we’ll discover something new, hopeful, or even joyous together. I hope so… ~Rebecca