Tad Williams

28 May 2010

From Holt Uncensored Blog, http://www.holtuncensored.com/hu/

A Moment, a Look That Cuts Through

The other day I happened to watch Oprah Winfrey interview three convicted pedophiles who talked to her — it seemed honestly — about how they “groomed” their victims into getting used to adult touch. It was sickening and scary but they talked rather casually about combing the kids’ hair or putting the child on their laps to read a book, or wrestling with one or more children on the living room floor — all with seeming innocence but an eye for targeting the next mark.

Oprah was very firm with these men, She is a survivor of sexual abuse herself and seemed to have no compassion for them, but she wasn’t judgmental, either. Somehow they had made a bargain with her to admit to a hidden pattern of behaviors that adults might miss but that children are subjected to every day, especially from “close relatives” and “friends of the family.”

Of course, I wasn’t thinking of Shields throughout all this — heavens, his stuff is beyond irrelevant, as we’ll get to in a moment.

What did hit me was that every once in a while, Oprah would look turn from these men, look directly into the camera and say, “Now if this ever happens to you …” or “See how this works?” or “You’ll know if you feel uncomfortable when he ….. ” and so forth.

It was a look that cut through all the problems of modern society and zeroed in on anybody out there as powerless and victimized as she once was. No one knows more than Oprah that millions of kids feeling exactly like that watch her show, right alongside “close relatives” and “friends of the family.” everyday.

(One had the feeling that this is the reason Oprah does shows featuring “hairdos and handbags” and “how to decorate your uterine wall.” If there’s going to be a blizzard of information blinding us all the time, she has become a master at opening our eyes inside the media storm.)

I admit to getting a bit teary watching this, because when the camera caught that look, and I thought of how much viewers have come to trust Oprah for giving them exactly this kind of power, all the easy indictments by [ David Shields/Reality Hunger ] and others of “Oprahcam” and her show as “a higher denomination of multimedia saturation” became just so much more of the everyday baloney he writes about.

Of course we’re all caught in a blizzard of half-truths and outright lies, and maybe we do hunger for the phony hero story and shocking scandal. But every once in a while a true moment, a look, a thought or idea can cut through it all and really mean something.

19 May 2010

I walked to our room to wake Tad and feed the dogs. Tad was awake and lying on his back, working, deep in the Think Process for our “Secrets of OF.” I had a new early-morning thought that came from listening at the wedding last weekend to Tad talking about our Tragic Romance, as was, and our Stately Couplehood, as is. (Tending towards (Dis)Graceful Couplehood.) I told him we got to the other side of the rainbow, and honey, we aren’t in Kansas anymore. & he looks @ the dogs and says, Naah, it’s Oklahoma now. (Birth-home of Poodle.)

Back to work. Editing Tad’s draft of my draft, etc. He got worried yesterday about excising a large chunk of action and with it, a characterization of one of the Carrillo kids that he really liked. But if it isn’t nailed down to the story as it is now, then that’s that, innit. Flens it right out of there! What I am enjoying, and find a curiosity, is seeing my draft inside his. That’s in both a literal and an abstract sense: the chapters, room for room, follow the geography of the house at Ordinary Farm; plus most of the larger beats of plot (and some specific decisions about characters’ fates/paths.) Tad puts this sizzling development over it all.

One thing I’ve edited/rewritten for this week is Tad’s beginning, stripping and compressing and jumping to the heart of things. (It isn’t there yet, I don’t think.) Plus some polishing to characterizations.

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I want to start making a stream of pictures. I’ve actionated my Twitpic account: it’s just a question of where the feck did the download cable go for my camera. Tho’ also – I note for my own purposes – if I intend to start roving the life camera in hand, I need something better than my Olympus Stylus, which is disappointing & limited with its close-ups, and my 1st-gen (!!!) iPhone, which is only OK sometimes. Am thinking a Nikon of some kind.

7 May 2010

I stood still in a corner of my garden, in a patch of sun-n-shade, for 30 mins. I saw two big American robins with rusty red breasts land on the lawn and chase a junco into the bushes. They poke around a bit for worms and bugs and then both, one after the other, came closer to stare at me before swooping away in a C-curve. The junco came back from out of the bushes then walked across the path in front of me and went singing & hopping around the big stems of the buddleia. I listened closely. The song was extraordinary. It was full of melodic changes and I remember little drilling sounds, complex and silvery. It really surprised me. I’m going to go out there again, specially to listen for juncos.

3 May 2010

Some recent pics. The first is the field of wild flowers where me, Tad and the kids walk the dogs.

Wildflowers with Poodle:

Our lovely town center half a block from all this: