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By Christin Lore Weber, 152 contributed posts
View all Christin Lore Weber's posts.
About the author: Christin has eleven published books. Her novel, Altar Music (Scribner, 2000) was selected for LA Times Best Books of the Year 2000, for Publisher's Weekly "First Fiction," and for the Independent Bookseller's "Booksense 76 Award". Her most recent book is The Edge of Tenderness, a memoir of her convent years. See Christin's listing at www.soartists.com for a complete listing of web links and contact information!
John Weber has been a presence in my life since 1954, our high school years. Even in his absences he has been present. This new book contains my memories of presence with him. The writing took me all that time. Even while I was veiled, a Catholic…
Continue reading A Dance in the Sky
By Christin Lore Weber, 152 contributed posts
View all Christin Lore Weber's posts.
About the author: Christin has eleven published books. Her novel, Altar Music (Scribner, 2000) was selected for LA Times Best Books of the Year 2000, for Publisher's Weekly "First Fiction," and for the Independent Bookseller's "Booksense 76 Award". Her most recent book is The Edge of Tenderness, a memoir of her convent years. See Christin's listing at www.soartists.com for a complete listing of web links and contact information!
Just before Christmas 2019 a box filled with copies of my newest book arrived at my door. Here it is! A book of stories from my early childhood when I was Mary Jane Lore and my world consisted in the boundary waters of Minnesota and Ontario, Lake…
Continue reading A Memoir of Early Childhood
By Christin Lore Weber, 152 contributed posts
View all Christin Lore Weber's posts.
About the author: Christin has eleven published books. Her novel, Altar Music (Scribner, 2000) was selected for LA Times Best Books of the Year 2000, for Publisher's Weekly "First Fiction," and for the Independent Bookseller's "Booksense 76 Award". Her most recent book is The Edge of Tenderness, a memoir of her convent years. See Christin's listing at www.soartists.com for a complete listing of web links and contact information!
Here is one of my favorite pictures of Alla. She’s in her yard at Wisdom House where flowers grow in abundance. She and I go way back. Let’s see: 46 years? I do believe that’s the correct number. We first met in my apartment in St. Paul, not long after…
Continue reading Inspiration from Alla Renée Bozarth
By Christin Lore Weber, 152 contributed posts
View all Christin Lore Weber's posts.
About the author: Christin has eleven published books. Her novel, Altar Music (Scribner, 2000) was selected for LA Times Best Books of the Year 2000, for Publisher's Weekly "First Fiction," and for the Independent Bookseller's "Booksense 76 Award". Her most recent book is The Edge of Tenderness, a memoir of her convent years. See Christin's listing at www.soartists.com for a complete listing of web links and contact information!
John and I spent a few stormy days on the Oregon Coast last week. My hope was to work on my new novel which I started almost a year ago after publishing CHIARA REFLECTIONS, poetry from the heart of Clare of Assisi. Still in the grip of poetry and also …
Continue reading Writing on the Oregon Coast
By Christin Lore Weber, 152 contributed posts
View all Christin Lore Weber's posts.
About the author: Christin has eleven published books. Her novel, Altar Music (Scribner, 2000) was selected for LA Times Best Books of the Year 2000, for Publisher's Weekly "First Fiction," and for the Independent Bookseller's "Booksense 76 Award". Her most recent book is The Edge of Tenderness, a memoir of her convent years. See Christin's listing at www.soartists.com for a complete listing of web links and contact information!
In this life I’ve not travelled much outside North America. Go deep, an inner voice instructed, and so I let that happen first on the boundary waters of Minnesota and Ontario, and then in a convent beside the Red River of the North. In the middle of li…
Continue reading My First Book of Poetry
By Christin Lore Weber, 152 contributed posts
View all Christin Lore Weber's posts.
About the author: Christin has eleven published books. Her novel, Altar Music (Scribner, 2000) was selected for LA Times Best Books of the Year 2000, for Publisher's Weekly "First Fiction," and for the Independent Bookseller's "Booksense 76 Award". Her most recent book is The Edge of Tenderness, a memoir of her convent years. See Christin's listing at www.soartists.com for a complete listing of web links and contact information!
Work begins in the intersection of night and day; in darkness. Material life tumbles out onto me. Heavy life. How can I carry it? How bear it, aching? “I am overwhelmed,” I complain to John as he plans his garden, soon to be added to our care. I imagin…
Continue reading EVIDENCE
By Christin Lore Weber, 152 contributed posts
View all Christin Lore Weber's posts.
About the author: Christin has eleven published books. Her novel, Altar Music (Scribner, 2000) was selected for LA Times Best Books of the Year 2000, for Publisher's Weekly "First Fiction," and for the Independent Bookseller's "Booksense 76 Award". Her most recent book is The Edge of Tenderness, a memoir of her convent years. See Christin's listing at www.soartists.com for a complete listing of web links and contact information!
If I could bring to you through wordsEverything that can be seen,Felt, held, imagined, envisioned, danced, sung, And all the other ways we know the world The Mystery that holds that world and worlds infinite,I would. If I could find a word,But tha…
Continue reading The Word is Life
By Christin Lore Weber, 152 contributed posts
View all Christin Lore Weber's posts.
About the author: Christin has eleven published books. Her novel, Altar Music (Scribner, 2000) was selected for LA Times Best Books of the Year 2000, for Publisher's Weekly "First Fiction," and for the Independent Bookseller's "Booksense 76 Award". Her most recent book is The Edge of Tenderness, a memoir of her convent years. See Christin's listing at www.soartists.com for a complete listing of web links and contact information!
Dawn at Sunshine HillIt is January of a new year I hope to keep from breaking my heart. What choices can I make in this ambiguous world? Early in the month the nightmares came, the quaking in the deep reaches of the soul, the cries of something caught—…
Continue reading Leave A Message
By Christin Lore Weber, 152 contributed posts
View all Christin Lore Weber's posts.
About the author: Christin has eleven published books. Her novel, Altar Music (Scribner, 2000) was selected for LA Times Best Books of the Year 2000, for Publisher's Weekly "First Fiction," and for the Independent Bookseller's "Booksense 76 Award". Her most recent book is The Edge of Tenderness, a memoir of her convent years. See Christin's listing at www.soartists.com for a complete listing of web links and contact information!
Today I spent a bit of time trimming the lavender way down. Tomorrow I’ll get to the grasses. The pink lost its color with the snows of January, and new shoots already are appearing at the base. It felt like springtime down below the porch.
When I came in I began rummaging around in my Word files which are about as messy as files can get with partially done manuscripts, titled first one thing, then another. I opened one called “A Delicate Balance,” which I thought would be the unfinished novel once called “Small Hands,” but it was just a snippet. I found it intriguing. Maybe I need to go back and work on this, I thought, as I changed a word here and there and eliminated a sentence that made the entire paragraph sentimental. Just another kind of trimming. Spring cleaning. (I don’t do that so well either 😉
Here’s the snippet. Are you at all intrigued?
—
Eva called Lewis late while the rates were low. His voice saying hello made a warm spot for burrowing. Where are you right now? She wanted to know, to be there with him, to sit on his old bean bag chair, to hold a glass of wine, to talk by candlelight. There was no phone in the attic at Mama’s, so she had to talk low. No one should hear the things she wanted to say to Lewis. He was her confessor. She sat in her mother’s kitchen where the phone hung on the wall.
Are you sitting on the sofa? She asked Lewis. Do you have candles lit?
Lewis’s light would flicker, casting first this plane then that one into shadow. She sought the plane of kindness.
“What can I do?” She asked him, not knowing if she meant her mother’s one lie or the extension of that lie through all the years. One adjustment in the tone-poem of being and the whole composition could be lost—or could become a masterpiece.
“I’ll send you some new reeds for your oboe d’amore,” he said. “You can practice while your mother is painting. It will do you good.”
“Lewis,” the words choked her. “When she dies…” She stopped. She had said it, but didn’t know if she could go on or if her voice simply would fade into the kind of silence she’d experienced as a child.
“Imagine the music, the progression of tones in your mind, Eva.” Lewis said in a steady voice.
She did as he said and imagined the music, the interval of yearning that had found its home.
“When she dies,” she asked again, “how will I survive it if all my life we’ve both been someone other than what I thought?
What if we both disappear, she was thinking but didn’t say aloud, and the world goes on as though we’d never been?
“You’ll always be Eva.” Lewis said in that low, calm voice. “And if you forget, I’ll be here to help you remember what that means.”
Continue reading Trimming
By Christin Lore Weber, 152 contributed posts
View all Christin Lore Weber's posts.
About the author: Christin has eleven published books. Her novel, Altar Music (Scribner, 2000) was selected for LA Times Best Books of the Year 2000, for Publisher's Weekly "First Fiction," and for the Independent Bookseller's "Booksense 76 Award". Her most recent book is The Edge of Tenderness, a memoir of her convent years. See Christin's listing at www.soartists.com for a complete listing of web links and contact information!
Today I spent a bit of time trimming the lavender way down. Tomorrow I’ll get to the grasses. The pink lost its color with the snows of January, and new shoots already are appearing at the base. It felt like springtime down below the porch.
When I came in I began rummaging around in my Word files which are about as messy as files can get with partially done manuscripts, titled first one thing, then another. I opened one called “A Delicate Balance,” which I thought would be the unfinished novel once called “Small Hands,” but it was just a snippet. I found it intriguing. Maybe I need to go back and work on this, I thought, as I changed a word here and there and eliminated a sentence that made the entire paragraph sentimental. Just another kind of trimming. Spring cleaning. (I don’t do that so well either 😉
Here’s the snippet. Are you at all intrigued?
—
Eva called Lewis late while the rates were low. His voice saying hello made a warm spot for burrowing. Where are you right now? She wanted to know, to be there with him, to sit on his old bean bag chair, to hold a glass of wine, to talk by candlelight. There was no phone in the attic at Mama’s, so she had to talk low. No one should hear the things she wanted to say to Lewis. He was her confessor. She sat in her mother’s kitchen where the phone hung on the wall.
Are you sitting on the sofa? She asked Lewis. Do you have candles lit?
Lewis’s light would flicker, casting first this plane then that one into shadow. She sought the plane of kindness.
“What can I do?” She asked him, not knowing if she meant her mother’s one lie or the extension of that lie through all the years. One adjustment in the tone-poem of being and the whole composition could be lost—or could become a masterpiece.
“I’ll send you some new reeds for your oboe d’amore,” he said. “You can practice while your mother is painting. It will do you good.”
“Lewis,” the words choked her. “When she dies…” She stopped. She had said it, but didn’t know if she could go on or if her voice simply would fade into the kind of silence she’d experienced as a child.
“Imagine the music, the progression of tones in your mind, Eva.” Lewis said in a steady voice.
She did as he said and imagined the music, the interval of yearning that had found its home.
“When she dies,” she asked again, “how will I survive it if all my life we’ve both been someone other than what I thought?
What if we both disappear, she was thinking but didn’t say aloud, and the world goes on as though we’d never been?
“You’ll always be Eva.” Lewis said in that low, calm voice. “And if you forget, I’ll be here to help you remember what that means.”
Continue reading Trimming
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