S3: Questioning Sycophant

I'm not even sure how to approach this one. Do I referenc Grima Wormtongue and Theoden from Rohan? Some other obsequious right-hand-man? In my life, I can't name a sycophant, thankfully. Not even at work, which I suppose is a very good thing.

R3: Questioning Resonate

What things resonate?

Memories? Smells? Passion? Music, certainly, but is it any music that resonates - the simpleness of there being a chime of some kind?

What makes a moment or story resonate with someone? What are you tapping into when you write something that echoes in someone's mind?

Q3: Questioning Quicklime

Isn't quicklime something you throw on a wound?

Or is quicklime something you thrown on a snail? As fertilizer for your garden? A weed-killer?

Turns out, quicklime does have a (somewhat antiquated) agricultural use, but is also an element of many construction materials.

So - what is my quicklime? The slightly noxious building block of my life?

P3: Questioning Poor

I won't even begin to question the roots or meanings of poverty, although I do wonder about both.

What I do wonder about it poverty of the spirit.

Matt's parents would say (I imagine) that without Jesus, a person is spiritually poor. Others might say the same of those who don't recognize great art. Am I poorer in my daily actions because I feel I've glimpsed true beauty and the divine, but don't live in such a way that always honors that?

Or are the truly impoverished those without the opportunity to even question such things?

O3: Questioning Obliterate

Each time I read a passage from Poets & Writers or a great novel, all my fears are obliterated, and I can see this shimmering path/place where my words and ideas are lit with golden fire. I don't know how to stay in that place, though.
How do you obliterate doubt and fear?

N3: Questioning Navigate

How do we navigate the hard situations in life? The happy times require no exertion. They ripple and ease and lift any burdens upstream.

Hard times take navigation. Tension on the rudder. A rigorous gaze.

I worry that I'm not so good at navigating - that, to date, I've been able to ride the flow.

M3: Questioning Mate

Do we mate for life?

God, I hope so. Not only because "Matt" has an aural echo to "mate," but because I just appreciate him so much. Maybe I'll deliver him that new nickname - "Mate."

Or "matey"? To give it an ironic, playful veneer?

L3: Questioning Limit

I think we all question our limits. If not, we're inevitably accepting them too easily.

I wouldn't know how to define my limits - and I'm not sure whether I owe thanks to my Mom for that, or blame.... Believing you can do anything gets harder as the years go by.

Still, I don't believe in personal limits, per se, so I suppose it's time to push through some of the imagined limits I've let take over as I get older: too tired, out of ideas, too busy.

Is it time to blast open the idea of "limits" once and for all?

K3: Questioning Kryptonite

Is laziness my kryptonite? Or the insidious belief that once I've done something a single time, I no longer have to prove my ability to do it again?

J3: Questioning Jonquil

It's a good thing I'm questioning "jonquil," since I don't actually know what it means.

...a flower, a narcissus. Elegant and refined. Who knew?

I don't feel very much like a jonquil these days. More of a potato spud. All this heat.

I3: Questioning Indigent

We were talking with a friend of a friend yesterday, who it turns out had attended the same lesbian-Quaker-Unitarian wedding we had two summers ago. As we discussed it, we laughed at the memory of the one of the bride's "hobo uncle" - and his shaggy, mid-ceremony arrival.

He was a funny, smart, troubled man, who chose an indigent lifestyle rather than play by society's rules.

As Matt and I continue to question his career and our location, I sometimes wonder if my indigent days are behind me because I've grown up, or because I've become calcified.

Who stays indigent? How long can you make it last?

H3: Questioning Hit

Was my first novel a hit?
Has my confidence taken a hit?
Why do my dreams often hit me with fears about Matt?
Why does the word "hit" make me think of do-wop and bobby socks?
And.
Worst of all,
Will I ever write again?

G3: Questioning "Gosh"

The reason I've been MIA for a few days actually has a great deal to do with the word "gosh."

I've been in Chicago writing, reviewing, and revising a speech for our Chairman and CEO - a speech in which the word "gosh" was inserted, deleted, re-inserted, and questioned multiple times.

You don't often hear people saying "gosh" anymore, do you? I mean, aren't we all a bit too arch for that these days? Too cynical? Too mature?

Yet "gosh" our CEO did, and it was a folksy rhetorical flourish that really worked.

So.

Gosh, what we could accomplish if we let ourselves fail to be cool once in a while.

F3: Questioning Flexing

I have not been flexing my fiction muscles, have I?

I have been writing, a ton, all day every day it seems, when I'm not editing writing or planning writing or considering writing that's already been done.

But I don't write fiction. Where are the ladies of "Gare du Nord"? (Recently rejected, lovingly and regretfully, once again.) What happened to Zues? Does Muriel have a baby she miscarried or aborted?

Flexing muscles is important because without them, you don't have the strength for heavy lifting. Can I write a speech for the CEO? Sure, give me a few hours. But can I spin anything personally meaningful out of thin air. To be determined. To be "worked out."

E3: Questioning EBay

This just goes to show you how valuable it is to put in the hard work the first time around.

EBay? I have no questions about Ebay. Despite this little blog, I quite actively resist all things electronical. :)

I do wonder, however, if I am missing something by not engaging more fully in the online world. Would all those comics I so carefully bagged and boxed in the 1980s fetch me a pretty penny if I accepted EBay in my life?

D3: Questioning Destiny

What does it even mean to have a destiny?

There have been times I've believed wholeheartedly that certain things were meant to be: my time in Provincetown, writing my novel, finding Matt.

More often than not, however, destiny - the sense of utter and complete proper fit - is elusive and exasperating. If there are all these things I'm supposed to be, then why am I here, working like a madman in support of someone else's dream?

I admit that I am one of the lucky ones. I actually DO care about the work that I do. But if my destiny is to be an oft-vacationing novelist, I'm clearly mighty far from hitting the mark.

C3: Crap

Does life ever feel like a pile of steaming crap?

Why yes, young grasshopper, it does. In fact, both Matt and I have felt buried in unpleasantness of late, despite this final bloom of perfect sunny spring.

Anyone else out there torn between singing birds and loads of unease?