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Brenda’s Here!

Cover design and illustration: Ana Eastep, Studio 25

Available at Amazon.com 

or Ask Your Local Bookstore

Graphic designer Ana Eastep and I created many projects together when I was a McGraw-Hill editor and in my editorial services business. So it was natural to reach out to her when I needed a unique, beautiful cover for my book. I mentioned cubism and yellow roses as possible motifs. Ana read my manuscript, absorbed its essence and my comments, and this exquisite illustration is the result of her creative genius. I am eternally grateful.

Little White Lies

Why are little white lies white?
Why aren’t they green or yellow?
What color are big lies?
Black?
I can’t imagine a black lie.
How would you see it, judge its contours, its depth?

Are we to surmise that a black lie is evil?
Unfathomable?
An opaque hunk of obsidian obstructing your view, in your face, blocking your progress?
Finite?
While a white lie prances along a rainbow, following the arc to infinity?

Is a white lie lyrical?
Does it hum a tune, have meter and rhyme?
Are characters in a white lie chaste, their motives pure?
Do they love their parents, feed the homeless, help old people cross the street?

Black lies probably are not gregarious.
They doubtless do not mix well at parties, network, participate in football pools.
Curmudgeons they!
You would not take them home to meet your mother or invite them to your beach house or ski chalet.

White lies, on the other hand, wear well, wear clothes well and sport the best haircuts, layered and sleek with just a few strands popping up in a pert cowlick.

White lies are transparent.
You can step right through them, as if they were not there.
They are never obstinate, opinionated or obvious.
You barely notice them.

At table, black lies hog the watermelon, spitting seeds out of the side of their mouth in a well-practiced maneuver that dirties your rug.
White lies prefer dainty tidbits, tartlets of crème fraîche and caviar (the real thing), thin strips of marinated carrots, Chantilly for dessert.
White lies are fastidious. At meal’s end they lift their napkin from their lap and tap the corners of their mouth, as if a trace of food lingered.

Black lies are bullies.
They push white lies against the wall and punch and threaten, torment them.
Their sharp elbows and loud guffaws startle white lies.
In the face of black lies, white lies become ever more reticent, shy.
They are quick to seek cover, change their tune, lose conviction.

Brick upon brick of black lies reach skyscraper proportions.
White lies may aspire to create tall edifices but succumb to gravity.
Their tiny legs cannot climb so many steps, their wee breath gives in.
They cannot stomach whooshing elevators that reach the clouds before you can say Jack Robinson.
Leaving black lies to rule heaven and earth.

Happy Birthday Brenda Corrigan

February 3, 2013

Brenda Corrigan is four years old today.
She was born on Super Bowl Sunday 2009.
To celebrate, I stopped obsessing about every vowel, consonant and comma
and nitpicking every noun, verb and adjective
and uploaded my manuscript to Amazon CreateSpace
and before long, I will have a book!
That I hope to share with you, dear potential reader.

So stay tuned for more about Brenda Corrigan Went Downtown.

What a glorious journey this has been.

Homage to Bradford Pears

I am a blazing Bradford Pear on the apron of Route 24, escorted by a clone, we two alone resplendent among a cascade of evergreens and dull deciduous species that transit the seasons in silence like supernumeraries upon a crowded stage.

I am more at home in Philadelphia or Washington than here in always splendid California, where my own magnificence might be overlooked amid your mountain and ocean vistas. But I adapt. My crimson leaves dapple in your long warm days, glisten under the spectacular canopy of stars that is your night sky.

As we tire of our brilliance, grow weary with exhibitionism, my clone and I will take a final bow, shed our gold lamé, red taffeta, orange brocade, and sleep, burrow like bears in Winter.

The geese fly in like Chicagoans to Boca Raton, as we go out, our candle snuffed. The squirrels have stashed their acorns, the bees have made their honey. We make our brief offering—beauty that delights the eye, warms the soul as  darkness descends—then rest, regroup, until our next act—March, when we will adorn your freeways again, our alabaster blossoms a chaste harbinger of Spring.