Sister Mysteries

NOW COMES AN EXPLOSION WRITE HERE HEAR HEAR HEAR

2012-01-13T04:56:00.000-08:00

By Claudia Ricci

Why do writers write novels? Because they love to write, because they have a story that's begging to be told, because they hold words to their hearts like glittering diamonds, because they have an itch that can only be scratched out in long silver sentences, because they want to celebrate life and love, because they have a question that nags and begs and pleads and refuses to go away, because they are immersed in a mystery that demands to be solved, because they need writing as much as they need breathing, because laying down words is like a powerful dream and an amazing drug, one that occasionally delivers aha AHA AHAHAHAHAHA moments that make you laugh and sing and chant and dance and jump up and down and hug yourself. Sometimes the discoveries are so absolutely jubilant and joy-filled that they go over the top and won't stop, like

today for example, when you finally finally finally finally after 17 long and torturous writing years finally finally see how the last chapters of the novel you have hated and loved and thrown away and dug out of the garbage and cursed and adored, when you finally see how the last part of the novel plays out.

At that moment, you feel like writing is a truly mystical and sacred thing, one that gives you a peek into the transcendent, one that explains how the word, how the very vibration of the words, are sacred things, and you understand why every religion has its BIBLE or KORAN, words spoken into sacred truth, how the Torah for example, is the very Tree of Life, and how writing is really and truly a great blessing and a privilege that we should never ever take for granted or deplore even on those horrible days when you can't write a flipping thing.

My own mystery is this thing I call

SISTER MYSTERIES

a book which you cannot pick up or put down, a 17 long year, gargantuan undertaking that felt so often like it would put me under, a marathon like no other I've ever had, an epic journey that I am still taking, a coming-to-consciousness about the very nature of reality, a binary back-and-forth which has finally become some kind of Unity of VOICE, a deep deep mystery that keeps unfolding, a story that gave birth to a nun in front of a mirror, a nun who in the words of her cousin slipped effortlessly into flaming flamenco garb, a nun who like me spent years in prison being punished, and then, just last month, she slipped out the door just LIKE

THAT, in one chapter, in plain old words, she went free taking me with her.

Today at my meditation table the mystery of it all and the last few chapters just exploded into my head like wild fireworks an explosion of light, light that is still burning in the candle that won't stop this morning, wax pouring out, light pouring too, just like that other morning in November 2010, when a candle burned mysteriously for hours and hours while I sat here and there in wonder and deep gratitude that this mystery -- of writing, of discovery, of love -- has been bestowed on me.

If I sound like I'm starting to come unglued, let me say that this is how it feels to be a writer at the end of a long long writing project, one that holds you in its clutches until you are released. The first time I wrote a novel this happened, one day I produced about a dozen journal pages when I figured out the ending, the ending came to me in wild frenzy of brain activity, what feels like a boundless discovery of ideas, your brain sizzles and pops and the words, like the wax of this candle burning, just won't stop.

One curious thing about this ending, it's all tied up with my ear ringing.

Very peculiar how it happened: a few weeks ago, just about the time that Sister Renata went out the door freeeeeeeeeeee, I woke up with my left ear ringing.

I kept hoping it would go away but it only kept getting worse. I opened Louise Hay's book, You Can Heal Your Life, and it said that ear ringing

(otherwise known as tinnitus) is in effect caused by a person's unwillingness to listen to an inner voice.

When I read that, I went, oh come on, please, I am constantly listening to my inner voice, I meditate every day, I do yoga, and I write and write and I am constantly listening to my inner voice.

But no.

I had to listen more closely. MUCH more closely.

Two weeks ago, my dear friend Peg and I sat down in my den to write, it was a Thursday, December 29th, we decided to write nothing but questions and at first it felt like I was picking at the hard icy surface of the pond outside the window.

I wrote a few questions down, and so did she, and then we read them aloud. Peg is my all-time best writing buddy who's read virtually every word of this million-word novel SISTER MYSTERIES (which she at one point renamed SISTER MISERIES). She has lived through the misery with me, always telling me to write the "true" story, always encouraging, never doubting.

That day in the den two weeks ago, Peg saw straight to the core of it what I was writing and said two things, "Claud I finally get it, this book has been a penance for you," and I realized that she was absolutely right, the book has been a kind of punishment for all these long years, one that so many times I wished would go away. The other thing she said was, "Claud, why is it that when you start writing about core connections between this story of the nun and the true story of your own life, and your illness, and the connection between your mom's illness and your own, why do you always always just stop?"

I had nothing to say in reply. I sat in the den and felt like I wanted to cry because I felt so frozen up inside and my ear was ringing and it was miserable.

The next day, I sat down, was not planning to write, I just opened the file of questions that I had written with Peg, and the next thing I knew I had written this Celebration of Freedom, I wrote for three hours, poured out 3,000 words, my head started exploding with connections between the book and my life, I wrote about my memories of being in a tiny prison -- a hospital crib -- and my mother coming to visit me and her catching cold and getting very sick and developing asthma and me feeling responsible, me feeling this huge guilt just like the nun, just like Sister Renata,

I have for all these years of writing, felt like I was being punished for a crime I didn't commit, like the story had to come out of my ribcage, like it was imprisoned there, and I didn't know this until the other day, but Denise, my energy person in Vermont, says that "our childhood memories are stored in our ribs."

Why do writers write novels? To do deep psychic work through words, to solve binaries, to resolve conflicts.

A writer writes to transcend the daily humdrum lives we lead. To peer deep into the pools of mystery that underlie the illusion that we share, called reality.

Writers write stories so that they can discover their deepest truths, truths that help propel them into a new consciousness, one that transcends. Readers read so that they too can peer into a higher spiritual realm, if only for a few minutes, a few hours.

For both reader and writer, our stories are a gift and such a blessing.

Hear the Ringing and What the Inner Voice is Trying to Say

2012-01-10T09:44:00.000-08:00

I went to the Museum of Modern Art yesterday in NYC and saw this stunning Diego Rivera painting and it spoke so loudly to me that I photographed it on my cell phone and emailed it to my sister Holly and she wrote back and said

"To me, it looks like a nun, praying."

And so, maybe that is why it spoke to me. So loudly.

Lately my left ear has been ringing. Some days it's been hissing. Not every day. But it's annoying. Some days it's really annoying. And scary.

I have seen the ear doctor. My hearing in both ears is "aging," he explained, and that may be the reason. "But it's just on the left side that I hear the ringing," I said. And he replied, "oh, well, you'll probably hear it in the right ear eventually too."

Oh thank you doctor. That's really encouraging news.

This is what I hate about doctors. They are so locked into physical decay. They really don't think in terms of health. They think in terms of disease. It's the way they are trained to think.

He had not the least interest in how I might possibly improve the left ear. His only thought was that the left ear was a loss and the right ear was probably going to follow and get worse too.

I've had way way too much of this kind of doctoring in my life. Certainly when I was sick with the cancer in 2002 and 2003. But also, with my mom's illness growing up. Maybe that's why this ear ringing thing has me in such a tinnitus tizzy.

I sat beside my mother's bed as a small child feeling entirely frightened and helpless. Watching her struggle to breathe and not knowing what to do was a hellish emotional burden for a four-year old child. I heard the thin whistling of her labored breathing and memorized it deep in my consciousness. To this day, when I hear someone who breathes like, I say, "do you have asthma?" Inevitably they do.

I grew up with doctors saying that my mother was locked into her asthma, and my mother believing it completely. She was a victim of this debilitating illness all her life. She never had a moment when she thought, "I wonder if there is something I can do, something in my life I can change, something I can fix, some food, some exercise, some positive change in attitude" that might possibly help reduce or eliminate the asthma.

She never dealt with her anxiety or depression either, and they were factors in her illness.

I don't blame my mom. Not completely. But then sometimes I do blame her and I'm trying to change that. That's what the medical intuitive, in an amazing reading after my illness, told me to do in 2003 (the intuitive was in Vermont, I was in California, we had never met, she knew nothing about me, we spoke by phone and she only knew my first name!) Anyway, she told me that I had to lose the resentment I had toward my mother and her lung illness. I had to forgive my mother for living the fearful way she did with her disease, always living as a victim.

Last month this whole victim/illness scenario reared its terrifying head once again when my mom fell and broke her arm and it swelled up like an elephant's trunk. Her arm and all her sausage-like fingers turned a terrifying blue and her mood turned an even scarier blue. Christmas Day mom was in an awful funk and it was really really hard. And scary. I was immersed once again in all those fears I have about physical illness: fears of the illness and debilitation, fear of the depression, fear of being imprisoned by that same scenario that trapped me growing up.

While I can't be sure, it feels like my ear really started ringing just about the time my mother fell and broke her arm.

Is that a coincidence? Perhaps.

Louise Hay in her book, You Can Heal Your Life, says that ear ringing is associated with not listening to an inner voice.

OK, so maybe this is the inner voice speaking now: THE VOICE IS SAYING THIS: YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE MISERABLE LIKE YOUR MOTHER. YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE DEPRESSED BY PHYSICAL DISABILITY. YOU WANT TO FIND A NEW WAY OF BEING. YOU WANT TO LET GO OF THE STORY YOU HEARD AS A CHILD.

This morning I went to see my physical therapist Cindy who practices energy medicine.

She is fabulous. Her hands are magic. She told me that my ear ringing and my eye twitching and my tooth pain (other symptoms I've had) are part of the blocked energy in my sixth chakra. There are memories and fears and anger and resentment and stories locked up there in the tissues and teeth.

Cindy reminded me that I don't have to see life the way my mother does. I know that logically and rationally but it scares me too because on some level I am terrified, in the same way my poor mother was probably terrified when she was gasping for breath.

When I think about the situation this way, I feel deep compassion for my mom. I can feel the fear she must have felt. She had a serious lung ailment and small children to care for. She was overwhelmed and she couldn't breathe and she panicked. She did what anyone would do: go to the doctor and try to get medicine to fix it. The medicines for asthma weren't great in those days. And there certainly wasn't much consciousness about self-healing.

Writing this makes me feel better. It makes me feel like I am trying to do what the intuitive told me to do: forgive my mother her way of being. Forgive her everything that happened, and just try to BE DIFFERENT. Is this what the inner voice is trying to say through the ringing?

And so now, I am the nun praying to the divine feminine. In this case, Mary.

Please Mary may I be free of the ringing. Please Mary may I find peace. Please Mary may my mother and all my loved ones find peace.

One more thing: Louise Hay also says ear infections have to do with children not wanting to hear parents arguing.

I am told that I had my first ear infection, one that was quite serious, when I was only five months old. Is it crazy to think that I had an ear infection when I was five months old because my parents were arguing?

That's really a bizarre idea -- that somehow the turmoil in the household caused me to develop an ear infection. What the heck?

At this point, the only question that really matters is how to heal. How can I turn the ear ringing down down down down to a slight whisper? How can I

write

hear

NEW WORDS

HEAR

to replace fear

with power?

I am ready for more instruction. I am ready and willing to hear what the inner voice has to say.

"It is a Celebration of Freedom and Joy"

2011-12-30T05:50:00.001-08:00

How should we begin to celebrate? And why? What is there to celebrate? And what is freedom, and what is joy? And why am I asking all these questions?

Why is it that tomorrow, on New Year's Eve, many of us will celebrate by drinking too much and laughing and acting kind of crazy and raising cheer and putting on pointy hats and swinging noisemakers and rattlers and kissing the person next to us at midnight?

Why is it that I think that kind of celebration is rather odd?

Why did Peg and I decide to write this way? What possessed us to sit in my den in front of the woodstove, just asking and asking questions? What does it mean to ask? What does it mean to write? Why when given the chance to select any page of the book about Jewish traditions, why did Peg select page 82? Why did I select the phrase, IT IS A CELEBRATION OF FREEDOM AND JOY? Why do I have trouble celebrating? Why does writing this way feel like a celebration? Why does writing this way feel like a prayer? Why does writing this way feel like a way to find God? Why does celebrating this way feel so important?

Why is it so important to celebrate? Why do we celebrate the start of a new year? Why don't we celebrate every single day? Why don't we look up in the sky every morning and celebrate the sky? Why do we wait until New Year's to celebrate? Why do we think that the new year is going to be so much different and better than the old year? Why am I convinced that this year is going to be the start of a new and better kind of writing?

Why haven't I celebrated Renata's escape from prison? And how exactly should I celebrate that event? Why have I spent 17 years writing about the big day when the nun would go free from prison? Why, when she went free -- Chapter 52, posted very recently -- have I not celebrated? Why am I waiting? What am I waiting for? Is it perhaps because I don't know how to celebrate?

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT AT LONG LAST I AM FINALLY CELEBRATING RIGHT HERE WRITE NOW?

Now that she is free, where exactly is Renata going? Will she find a disguise? Will she elude the authorities searching for her? Will she find a place to live? Will she make a new life? Will she get married and become some farmer's wife? Will she miss the convent and Sister Teresa? Will she end up getting caught and going free again?

Why do I think I need to worry about all that?

Why do I worry so much? Why don't I tell you why? Why don't I finally tell you the true story of my own prison, the one I grew up in? Why is it that my own story is so tied up with Sister Renata's? Why was I unable to see that connection between Renata and me for so, so long? Why have I been trying to escape the story of my own life the whole time that I've been writing about Sister Renata in prison? Why is it that I have always wanted to write the nun's story instead of my own? Why is it so very dark and scary to think about telling the true story of my mother's illness and me sitting there beside her bed when I was only four years old?

Why after five decades can I still see my poor mother hunched over, squeezing her pillow as she was gasping for breath? Why is it any wonder that at four years old I was absolutely terrified? Why is it any wonder that at any moment I was petrified that my mother would die and that I would be responsible? Why is that my mother and I are entangled so tightly? Why I am thinking that I actually WAS responsible for my mother getting ill?

Why is this now the true story that must be told? Why was I imprisoned in a tiny hospital crib in a big dark hospital in Bristol, Connecticut so many years ago? Why is it that 56 years later I can still feel those square metal bars of the small crib in my tiny hands? Why can I still remember having such a high fever lying there that my mind started boiling and I began having "machine dreams," visions of gigantic gears and cogs of all sizes turning and turning while I lay there sweating and getting as hot as this woodstove blazing now at my feet?

Is it possible that I have some of the details mixed up and that I was sweating in fever later, when I was sick at home in bed? Is it possible that I really did have pneumonia three times before the age of seven? Is it possible that my mother really did think at one point -- I think I was five -- that she was going to lose me because I was so ill with measles and an ear infection and pneumonia all at once?

Is it possible that the nurses kept phoning my mother from Bristol Hospital, begging her to come to see me because I was only three years old, screaming and crying for my mother and I wouldn't stop? Is it possible that my poor mother came to see me as much as she could and stayed with me and fed me mashed peas through the bars? Is it possible that I hated mashed peas but adored my mother and held her fingers through the bars? Is it possible my poor mother stayed way longer at the hospital than she should have, because I was so sick with pneumonia, so sick I was hospitalized for weeks? Is it possible that my mother got so overtired visiting me that she herself came down with a bad chest cold that ended up in asthma?

Is it possible that my mother wheezed and wheezed her whole life and so often her breath sounded like a dry whistle and so often she coughed and coughed and so so often scoured up gobs of green phlegm and that phlegm was the same color as the mashed peas she fed to me in the hospital?

Is all this just a crazy old story of a mother and a daughter and like all those stories it can never be told completely? Is it possible that this story is more important than any other I've ever written?

Is it possible that my own chest infection ended up giving my mother a chest disease? Is it possible as Peg pointed out that SISTER MYSTERIES FEELS LIKE MY PENANCE? IS THIS BOOK MY PUNISHMENT FOR MAKING MY MOTHER SICK?

Is it possible that I am finally understanding why I have loved being in prison for so long, being punished, AS IF I WERE A NUN? Is this now when I understand that so many of my earliest memories are tied up with nuns? Is this when I understand that many punishments were bestowed on me by nuns at SAINT ANTHONY'S elementary school in Bristol, Connecticut? Is this now when I realize why I named my oppressor ANTONIE?

is this why my head is swirling in all this mystery?

Is this also why I got sick almost ten years ago with lymphoma?

Is this also why I developed a tumor in MY CHEST, a tumor the SIZE OF A CANTALOUPE?

IS THIS NOW WHAT I COULD CALL FREEDOM, ME REALIZING THE TRUTHS UNDERLYING THE NOVEL THAT I HAVE BEEN WRITING SINCE JANUARY 1995? IS THIS WHY I FEEL LIKE MY CHEST IS A WOODSTOVE A BUNDLE OF BARS AND RIBS EXPLODING IN FLAMES?

Is this why all my life I have been living in a prison trying? Is this why I have been trying all my life to fix my mother and her life? Is this why I can close my eyes and reach through the bars of my own rib cage right into the rib cage of my mother? Is this why I cannot do that? Is this why we are connected RIGHT at the heart? Is this why I have always wanted so desperately to make my mother happy? Is this why I have never been able to? Is this why I wanted TO FIX MY MOTHER'S HEART AND FILL IT WITH LIGHT? Is this why I still so desperately want my mother not to be depressed? Is this why I want my mother to smile deeply and keep breathing and find joy? Is this why last month when my mother fell and her arm turned blue I thought maybe her blue arm was connected to her blue heart?

Is this why my left ear started ringing last month? Why does Louise Hay say that ringing ears are connected to not listening to a divine voice? Is writing this way connected to my divine voice?

Is this voice telling me that I must accept the fact that my mother, at age 85, cannot be changed or fixed? Is this why I am still always fighting that truth, and resenting my mother, and still and always desperately trying to fix her? Is this a cosmic story that can only be fixed in a cosmic way? Is that what why my friend Denise was trying to tell me? Is this why Denise says that I have to let my mother be as unhappy and blue as she is going to be and get my ego out of it? Is this why Denise says to pray to the divine feminine, i.e., the Virgin Mary, and let divine wisdom prevail? Is this why the medical intuitive, in an amazing reading after my illness, told me on that fateful day, August 6, 2003, that in order to heal I had to stop resenting my mother?

Is this writing all an elaborate attempt to forgive my mother, and to forgive me?

Is this why my mother is not a nun but in some ways she feels like one? Is this why I grew up feeling like a nun without being able to experience any joy or fun? Is this why I feel like I'm celebrating right write right write now the unraveling of some core mystery by writing this book?

Is this why I am scared to finish this book? Is this why I think if I finish this book I will have nothing else to write my whole life? Is this why I feel like I have to whisper the true story about my whole life because it is so painful? Is this why I wonder if I should explain anything because I wonder if I even know the true story?

Is this when I creep up to the big door behind which I see my father?

Is this when I peek through the keyhole and see a whole other story that is so so big it goes back generations to his mother's grandmother who had a baby out of wedlock? Is this why my great great grandmother has no name? Is this why I can't even face the door let alone open it yet?

Are these stories about my father and my mother connected? Are these stories about my father and my mother connected to my sisters and me? Is this why my sisters and I are all kind of crazy and depressed?

Is this why I always picture my mother standing at that old white stove cooking blood red spaghetti sauce? Does that blood red sauce have any connection to Antonie and his murder? Am I just plain crazy writing this?

Why was it my mother used to ladle that blood red sauce on everything we ate? Is this how my mother made art? Is this why I am starting to understand that my mother's cooking was a total expression of her heart? Is this a way I might forgive my mother going forward? is this why I might still have to go backward? Is this why I hate to write about spaghetti sauce? Is this why I hate to eat it? Is this why as a young girl I wanted to run away to California and leave my pasta behind?

Is this why I did run away to live in California? Is this why I never left the pasta behind? Is this why in my mind I'd rather be Spanish like Renata? Is this why I prefer Mexican food instead of Italian? Is this why my mother's cooking makes me so anxious? IS THIS WHY I WOULD RATHER NOT BE ANXIOUS? Is this why I prefer not to resent my mother? Is this why I still don't like to eat pasta and eggplant and lasagna and meatballs and polenta? Is this why sometimes I think we sat every night at the table and ate FOOD THAT WAS TAINTED IN SAUCE?

Is this how my mother painted, in blood red tomato sauce? Is why I want to go backward and forward and make my mother a painter? Is this why my mother is such a wonderful cook, but I still can't stomach the thought of spaghetti sauce on pasta and eggplant and lasagna and meatballs and polenta? Is this how I am coming to lose the resentment against my mother? Is this what the medical intuitive wanted me to do? Is this how she wanted me to do it?

Is this a new way of writing? Is this the way I might write the rest of this bizarre novel?

Is this how I will write about my father and his anger? Is this why he always seems so angry? Is this why in my memory we are always sitting at the table with the sauce and the pasta and the lasagna and the polenta and arguing all the time? Is this why my friends were always scared of my father? Is this why sometimes it feels like my father never smiles? Is this weird knowing that I have photos that clearly show him smiling?

Why was it that I was and still am scared of my father? Why was it that as we sat at that table eating all that sauce on all that pasta and all that eggplant and all that lasagna and all those meatballs and all that polenta, my father always spoke like this:

Why is it that I cannot hear my father's voice?

Why is it that I feel like my father helped to turn me into a nun growing up? Why is it that he was so terrified of me having a sexual identity? Why is it that he wouldn't let me wear nylon stockings when all the other girls could? Wouldn't let me wear lipstick for the third grade Christmas pageant? Wouldn't let me shave my legs? Wouldn't let me go on dates?

Why is it that in my mind, nobody in my family ever smiled or laughed or enjoyed anything?

Why is it that we were never allowed to have a dog or a cat or anything that breathed?

Why is breathing my mother's core life issue? Why is it that Louise Hay, author of YOU CAN HEALTH YOUR LIFE, says that asthma is at heart, "an inability to breathe for oneself?" Who gave my mother her asthma? Why couldn't she breathe for herself?

Why do I finally feel like I'm finally getting to a well of dark water? Why do I finally begin to see that I am not responsible for my mother's illness or her depression? Why is it time to come clean with these painful truths? Why is it that I see that like Renata, I am not guilty of any crime? Why is it that Peg and I wrote yesterday and I woke up this morning and started writing more and more and more and why does it feel like I cannot stop?

Why is it that is has taken me so long to see the real reason that I am writing about a nun who is imprisoned for a crime she didn't commit?

Who was it that smothered my mother? What is it that was stifled in my poor mom? Why is it that I now recall a bumble bee? Why is it that I recall my mom telling me that in summer school once, when she was very young, she painted a mayonaise jar a pretty yellow and the rim black and some damn nun scolded her, saying "what did you do that for? That's not very pretty!" Why did that nun say that? Why did she tell my mom that her bumble bee colors were ugly? Why is it that I feel so badly for my mother now? Why do I think my mother would have loved to paint? Why do I want to buy my mom an easel?

Why is it that my poor mother was smothered in spaghetti sauce? Why is it that my mother was never encouraged to flower? Why is it that her asthma might have been a disease that developed in reaction to her old-fashioned Italian upbringing? Why was it that my mother had a bicycle but it was taken away? Why do I think she had skates but outgrew them and never got another pair?

Why was my mother's life so unfair? Why at age 16 was she taking care of her uncle, washing and ironing clothes and yes, cooking spaghetti sauce? Why was my mother never allowed to have joy and fun?

Why do I want to reach back through the bars of time and fix my mother's life? Why do I want to go back and and forward, retell my mother's story? Why do I feel so sad and sorry?

Why do I want to reach back and fix my father's anger? Why is that another whole story that I can't possibly take on or think about right now?

Why is it that by writing this, I can see why my father and my mother never celebrated freedom or joy or did anything fun?

Why do I want to ask God to forgive me for anything I've done wrong. Why do I want to feel free to stand up and celebrate and scream for joy? Why does that feel so difficult when I know that other members of my family are not free?

Why do I want to tell a story that will fix everyone, not just me? Why do I want to write a novel of freedom and joy and happiness and love and forgiveness? Why do I want to write a manual about how to live a happier life by forgiving one's parents EVERYTHING? Why do I want to forgive my mother and father and everyone?

How do I start? What trail of words can I write? What trail is Renata following through the golden hills of California? Why do I love California? Why is it I want to stay there forever? Why is the light so pretty right outside the window? Why is the light so pretty on the golden hillsides?

Why is the light so pretty as Renata is traipsing up the hills? What will happen to Renata if I abandon her? How can I possibly abandon a character I created in good faith so many years ago? Why can't I just celebrate her freedom and not worry how I am going to go forward?

Why can't I just celebrate now and not worry?

CHAPTER 52: Out the Door, I am ... FREE

2011-12-17T03:45:00.000-08:00

DIARY ENTRY

stopping now out of breath...

I walked out the door.

I walked out that door.

hand...fingers...trembling...hard writing...

write...

left ankle so sore...where the chain cut in before never healed...

sun lowering...a couple of hours to go before it sets...

what happens after dark...

look up, madrone, deep red... trying to take in what happened? What happened?

I will be sleeping under some tree, stars tonight. Air warm sweet, dry grass, golden hillsides. Sky bright bright blue

frightened... thrilled excited. Trembling now, feeling tears...because I am finally finally...

free.

Nothing it was nothing. Escape? All I had to do was lift up off of Kitty's sofa and take the cloth satchel I packed -- canteen journal biscuits cheese apples.

Heart slamming, walked up to the door turned lock and then, opened... the door. Morning air cool misty so fragrant and there I was top of the stairs with the world waiting.

Tears now. Tears...

so careful down stairs one by one see inside Kitty's cafe. Nobody. No sound. Bean a liquored heap at the bottom. Just lying there snoring. Arm with the bottle and then...I saw his jacket thrown to the side. I took it. I stole Bean's jacket. And kept walking. Fast.

With my heart practically dancing in my throat, sweat sprouting, I just kept walking forward. Thinking for sure, someone bound to come running behind me. Someone sure to come running up guns blazing yelling STOP!!!! STOP!!!!

But no.

I was free.

I am free.

Who knows for how long. But for now, I am free.

A nun, running. My face will be plastered on posters everywhere before the day is out. Must disguise. Bean's jacket falls below my knees.

Must keep walking now, heading through golden hills, trees. Redwood and madrone. Oak.

Thinking of Teresa now, I never said a word never spoke once to her of the plan, now she can be honest saying she had no idea what I was thinking. What I am doing.

What I am doing?

No idea. Where I am going?

Beyond here. Beyond the old life.

To whatever awaits me. Must not think now. Must go forward, now. Now.

Move now. Go!

Why I am Writing Sister Mysteries in Public

2011-11-08T13:21:00.000-08:00

I wouldn’t dream of stripping my clothes off in public. So why in God’s name would I let my new and as-yet-unfinished novel, Sister Mysteries, dance naked in public? Why would I write my newest book (my third novel) in full view of readers, publishing as I go in installments, right here, on-line?

Why not stick to the tried-and-true routine of writing in private, a routine most serious writers I know follow, a routine I myself adhered to for nearly two decades as I produced my first two novels?

I could say that the traditional writing and publishing model just isn’t working anymore, that with fewer and fewer publishing outlets available, I’m just responding to changes in the industry. I could also say that I’m experimenting with electronic writing and publishing models for the future.

But the truth of the matter is that I am writing this new novel this way, on-line and in public, publishing it by installment on my blogs, because it’s just so much fun. I did indeed start it writing it this way as an experiment a year ago, but now, there is no way (at least with this book) that I’d go back to the “old-fashioned” model, spilling the novel onto paper in private, and then polishing up the prose until it sings with perfection, endlessly revising before sharing it with the world.

Ironically, writing a novel in this way, publishing it chapter by chapter, is itself kind of old-fashioned. Nineteenth century giants like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Wilkie Collins, and later, Joseph Conrad published novels in magazines by installment. It happens to be one of the most exhilarating things I’ve ever done as a writer.

It feels sometimes like I’m walking a tightrope in front of a waiting audience strung over a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon. There’s no net underneath and a mistake, well, it’s a little nutty. But it’s great great fun.

It’s a little like setting off for California on back roads, on an old motorcycle, without a map. You just…do it. It’s a little crazy, but it’s got a questy-kind of feeling that gets me up in the morning. It makes my blood run fast. And since the book I’m writing takes place in California it makes that much more sense.

The real miracle of it all is that I am, at last, writing this sucker.

It’s been almost 17 years since I started writing the book. The writer’s block I’ve been fighting with this book has at times felt bigger than the Rock of Gibralter. But now I have 50 odd chapters and I can finally say, with some confidence, that I am getting close to finishing a first draft.

I have written at length about the difficulties I’ve faced getting this novel out.

Over the years, I have written more versions of this particular book than any human being should ever write. I have filled mountains and mountains of paper. I have thrown out thousands and thousands of pages. I have an entire crate of early drafts in my closet. I have burned several versions of this book in bonfire rituals in my backyard, and in my front yard too.

At one point, I consulted a hypnotist to try to stir up the right voice for the narrator. I toiled at two month-long writers’ colonies out in California trying to write this novel. I talked through the book with a variety of therapists over the years, including one at Harvard who, when she heard from me that I felt I was “living inside the character, a 19th century nun from California,” suggested in all seriousness that I consult a past-life regression therapist.

Writing this book, I survived a life-threatening bout of cancer. I raised three children writing this book. I have, at one point or another, entertained the possibility that I was I was going totally and utterly mad writing this book.

But two things I never lost sight of over the years: 1) I truly and completely loved this book, and 2) I knew that one way or another, I had to finish it.

The good news is, all of the mishagas seems now to be behind me. I am on home stretch. And what is so fascinating to me is that I honestly don’t think I would ever have been able to write this book if I had done it the “old-fashioned way.” No, as I tell my friend and fellow fiction writer Peg Woods, co-director of the Writing Program at UMass Amherst, this novel was “just waiting” for electronic publishing. I needed a blog, or a set of blogs, in order to get this time-travel murder mystery out of me.

Despite the fact the book takes place in the 1880s, it had to have an electronic conveyance to come to life.

This book needs to be, and will be at some point, an ibook, an electronic book with embedded hot links. The reason? It jumps all over the place, in time and space and in various voices. It will be beautiful and perfect on the Ipad, and that’s exactly where it is headed once it’s done.

In the end, it is just plain fun to write this way. I’ve never felt so free and easy when I sit down to follow my character. (Her latest, she’s escaped just before she’s headed to the gallows to hang for the crime she didn’t commit.)

I have several friends to thank for keeping me going over the years. First and foremost, Peg. For all the millions of words you’ve read and heard since 1995, for all the crazy phone calls, frantic emails and teary writing sessions in which my frustration boiled over, how can I ever say THANKS?

To my poet friend Suzanne Wise, who came to spend a month writing at the Millay Colony retreat up here in Austerlitz, N.Y. While she was here, we reconnected, and she asked me a simple question that helped to get me writing again. Oh Suzanne, you are indeed so WISE.

And thanks too to my dear friend and colleague Lori Cullen, who invited me exactly one year ago this month to be one of seven writers participating in a Writing in Motion challenge, sponsored by her blog at the Albany Times Union. The challenge was for each of us to finish a novel by the end of the year.

Well, so, I missed that particular December 31st, 2010 deadline, but considering how long it's taken me to write this book, and considering that poor Sister Renata has been waiting for me to "free" her from prison since 1883, it's not such a big deal.

Last but not least I want to thank my extraordinarily gifted artist friend Kellie Meisl, of Pittsfield, MA, for once again inspiring me with her extraordinarily beautiful collaged art. One of Kellie's images -- "Shattered Cups," appeared on the cover of my second novel, Seeing Red. And just a few weeks ago, when I saw her newest goddess collage, one she calls "Flow," I decided that her art once again spoke directly to my characters! Kellie's magical artwork, which is inspired by waking and night dreams, can be seen on her website.

For those of you who are inclined to take a look at the novel, you should know that it is actually two books in one. There is the book called Sister Mysteries and there is the inner book called Castenata. Why this novel has two names and two formats in one is a post for another day.

The story in a nutshell is this: it's is a time-travel murder mystery about a nun, Sister Renata, who is convicted of killing her cousin, Antonie, by slicing his throat. The nun’s diary –- she swears her innocence -- alternates with highly-erotic tales in which Renata magically transforms from a respectable and God-fearing Dominican novitiate into a seductive flamenco dancer who wears a flaming red dress.

Yeah, ok, it sounds a bit crazy, I agree. Please don’t ask me why I am writing this particularly nutty story. I could say it has something to do with growing up Catholic. But in the end, I cannot possibly explain where the inspiration came from. As I tell my students, writers don’t choose their stories. The stories come to us, the best tales and characters, do in a very real way, choose us. Sometimes I think of myself like a human antenna, picking up narratives that happen to be free-floating through the universe.

Maybe in the next post I’ll try to explain that!

CHAPTER 51: And Now, Finally, for My Escape!!

2011-11-05T15:46:00.000-07:00

Now the sun comes to the lip of the window. Now I see a straight way out. An hour ago I kneeled down in prayer, in total darkness. I asked Mary for a miracle -- a way out. I said the rosary with my eyes closed. I felt those smooth beads between my fingertips, and whispered to Her, PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME!!

Some time passed -- who knows how long. I'm not altogether sure that I didn't fall asleep. The next thing I knew I was rocking there on my knees. I was saying PLEASE PLEASE. I felt a slight puff of air, as if someone was there, right next to me, breathing against my face. I felt a wind -- ever so slight -- brushing right past my cheek like a feather.

I opened my eyes, clutching the rosary. At first I wasn't sure whether I was awake. To my wonder and surprise there She was, beside me in her powder blue veil! Her face was porcelain and her cheeks, blushed pink. She glowed with a kind of light I've never seen. The light was alive. It vibrated and made me tremble.

She smiled and nodded and pointed out the window.

"Go my child. While there is still time, go."

My eyes widened. Her voice was so very kind and so deep and intimate. It was as if she was speaking right inside my head.

And her smile. It filled me, and now the window, with that bright, bright light. A light splashing every which way. A light alive. I've got to find more words for how light can be so full of energy that it feels alive.

She was pointing still, gesturing to the sky gathering the same powder blue color as her veil. My eyes sailed into the distance, toward the navy blue rim of the low Santa Cruz mountains.

I blinked. For a moment it occurred to me, I must be losing my mind.

But no. No. Mary herself was there, I swear it. Glowing, nodding, pointing, offering me my freedom -- it was that clear and simple.

The road -- dusted pink in salmon light -- calls now. No one need know. No one at all is awake. The jailer, old Bean, drank a small tub of tequila at dinner. He's slumped under the staircase there in front of Kitty's cafe. The others -- Kitty, Teresa, Señora -- I hear one of them snoring.

I turn to the door. Do I dare? There is the way out. There now is a way to spare my neck from the loop of rope swinging at the gallows in the town square. If I don't go now, I will be heading tomorrow for the gallow stairs.

Do I go? My heart is slamming but I am moving -- quietly, silently -- toward the door.

CHAPTER 50: And Now Comes the Governor's Decision

2011-10-29T13:55:00.001-07:00

The dark sky is navy blue, and split by the thin golden crescent that is the moon. I stare at the crisp curve, shining eye to eye with me.

Soon it will be sunrise, and I will have been sitting here, awake, staring out the window, all night. I am dressed head to toe in white, as Sister Teresa brought me a brand new habit, pristine.

It occurred to me that maybe she was thinking, I need to be clean when I go to my death next week.

There is no more hope now. The reply from Stoneman has come. In one sentence, the Governor of the State of California dropped me, sent me tumbling into oblivion. This man, known to have pardoned so many, gave not a word of explanation in rejecting my plea. In just one stiff and official sentence, he has done me in, turned me into Stonewoman and sent me rolling. I have no possible escape from the gallows now.

If I were in a normal state, I suppose I would have cried yesterday when Kitty carried the thin white envelope into the house. It was shortly after noon. The mail always arrives by stage by 1 p.m.

As soon as I laid eyes on Kitty, I knew instantly that the news contained inside the envelope she held was not good. Her pasty white face. Her wide eyes, locked onto my own.

She blinked, and without untying her black bonnet, or taking off her cotton gloves, she dropped onto the straight back chair. She sat there, all in black, holding the envelope, and the letter. She kept blinking, and I was thinking the worst. After all, she looked as though she might just dissolve in tears. Finally she got one short breathless sentence out.

"My dear Renata," she said in a hush, "Governor's decision has come and I..."

She stopped again. I was sitting there on the sofa, the guitar in my lap. I had been, oddly enough, strumming an alegría, a happy melody to which Señora had once sung some wonderfully silly lyrics about a goat who kept appearing, day after day, in a young woman's garden. The goat turned out to be a suitor.

But watching Kitty's face, it was impossible to continue strumming.

She raised one gloved hand to her face. "I have some very bad news," she whispered.

I felt a kind of numb veil descend over me. I could say that I wasn't surprised, but I wasn't. But I also couldn't quite believe that what was happening was real. Everyone else -- or should I say Kitty and Teresa -- were feeling so hopeful when they sent the petition, and the supporting letters to Stoneman's office last week.

I had, in spite of myself, allowed my hopes to rest in the arms and faith of my two friends.

Now, that hope was gone. My life was as much as ended.

"Read it to me Kitty," I said. My voice was steady and strong, but it had a shredded quality, as if it had been scraped with a knife.

She sat there, staring.

"Please," I said. "You must read it to me."

She read: "The petition for clemency in the sentence against Sister Maria Rosa Renata, convicted for the murder of Señor Quiero de Lopez, has hereby been..."

Her voice trembled. It took a full minute before she finally spoke the word. "... denied." Her chin dropped to her jacket, and I could see the tears falling.

I turned away. I saw a large yellow cloud passing by the window. I allowed my mind to be carried up there, to rest in the cloud.

I had not been allowed outdoors for weeks. I thought to myself, at least, I will be hanged in the sun. At least when I take my last breaths, I will be inhaling fresh air. There is, at least, that. I tried to think something beyond that thought.

Kitty was crying and trying to take a seat next to me on the sofa. She was trying to take me into her arms. I ought to have let her, but I wanted my space. I pushed her away.

"Please, leave me be," I whispered. "I wish to be alone, so that I might pray."

Finally, she rose. Sniffling, wiping her nose with her hanky, she asked me if I wanted tea. I shook my head slowly. no. "I only ask that you to leave me in peace. Please. You owe me that."

And so she did.

After when she was gone, I didn't pray. I just lay on the sofa and stared at the clouds passing by the window. I could have done that all day.

Of All the Thousands of Pages Tossed Out of Sister Mysteries, Why Save This Chapter? Because I Happen to Like It

2011-08-25T18:37:00.001-07:00

OK, I admit it up front, I'm stalling here. I'm not writing the ending. I can't seem to do it. But I will. I know I will get to it. Meanwhile, when I can't write, like tonight, sometimes what I do is go back through discarded pages. In writing this book, I probably have discarded at least five thousand pages. Maybe twice that. I've thrown out thousands of pages, and I STILL have a large crate overflowing with all kinds of rejected pages from the novel. What happens to these rejected pages? Well, some of them are gone forever, and some of them sit in the turquoise blue crate, and some of them are stored electronically in a file on my computer, a file I call "Short Fiction." Now and then I go into that file and reread the rejected pages. Today when I went into that file I discovered this section from the novel and I decided that even though it doesn't belong in the book anymore, I really like this chapter, a chapter called "The Coffin I Am About to Open." I hope you enjoy it. I want to find a way to turn it into a free-standing story.

By Claudia Ricci

The coffin arrived on Monday, a very cold rainy day. It came by UPS. It came sometime in the afternoon. It came packed within a larger cardboard box.

When I first saw the coffin, when I could finally take in what I was staring at, I felt like I would choke. My hands flew up to my face and I had to sit down.

You see, it looked to me to be child-sized. But actually, I am staring at it right now, right here next to my desk, and now I realize that it is barely big enough for a child. It would be barely big enough for a….newborn baby.

Maybe I should start over.

OK, so what happened Monday afternoon is this: I came home from a long afternoon of teaching. I was exhausted. It was dark. The October afternoon had a jagged edge. As I walked up the back path, carrying a heavy bookbag full of my student’s composition journals, a raw wind cut into my face and infiltrated the crevice around my neck. The same wind whipped the dry maple leaves off the lawn. Scooped them up and scooted them into the house ahead of me when I opened the back door.

There, right inside the door, was that gigantic box. Thankfully, the UPS man had dragged the box in through the back door. He knows me, the UPS man, he knows me quite well, so he knows that I keep my doors unlocked. I always tell him to leave packages just inside the mudroom door. So he brought the box in and I saw it sitting there, and instantly, I smiled. I’ll never forget thinking oh my God; my mother-in-law finally sent me those dishes from Italy. You know the kind: those thick, hand made ceramic dishes painted in wild Italian colors. Full of flowers. I have been wild about those dishes for two decades or more. Ever since my husband and I got married I have wanted them. And haven’t been able to afford them.

Just a few weeks back, I mentioned them to Alice, Rick’s mother. My mother-in-law. It was September, the night before she and Ben, my father-in-law, were leaving on a cruise headed for Positano on the Amalfi Coast, near Naples.

“What can I send you honey?” My mother-in-law asked when she called to say good bye. I wanted to say, just send me and Rick two tickets to join you for a week. But I knew that was out of the question, and that she wouldn’t appreciate that request. So I decided to ask for the next best thing.

“Well, Al, if you see those dishes, you know the kind I want, send a few of those to me. Would you?”

After two decades of marriage, I felt comfortable asking. I figured, why not? And so naturally, when I saw the box, I thought, oh my God, here they are. “Dishes from Italy,” I whispered aloud.

As soon as I got into the house I dropped the bookbag and hurried into the kitchen for a steak knife. I came back to the giant box and slit the clear plastic mailing tape. I split the box top open. I clawed at the wood excelsior, my heart beating. A little smile was forming on my lips. I could see myself cooking up some Alfredo for dinner and serving it to my husband and kids on the new plates. I could see myself scooping the Alfredo --mushrooms and onions coated with cream and Parmesan-- into the bowls.

What I saw instead was a plain wooden surface. Perhaps the dishes were inside a wooden box. I kept digging. Soon I had exposed the cover of a plain wooden box. A box within the bigger box. Oh, but I was still so very certain that my wish had come true. That my dishes from Italy had finally arrived. I tore more wood excelsior away. I exposed more of the surface of the wooden box within.

At first, I couldn’t take in the next thing I saw. What was this crucifix? Why would dishes from Italy come in a box decorated in a crucifix?

I sat for a moment on the bench in the mudroom. The wind was so strong it was whipping under the door.

I decided that maybe Alice had bought the dishes at some religious company. Maybe she and Ben had wandered into the mountains. Maybe they had visited a mountain monastery in the rugged hills on the west coast of Italy. Or maybe they’d taken a side trip to Assisi. That must be it. Or…maybe the dish company was operated by a religious order. Maybe the dishes were painted by monks or by priests or perhaps, even by nuns.

I kept tearing the excelsior away. I kept pulling and clawing handfuls of the shredded wood out of the bigger box.

And then, I saw the shape. The slightly wider top end. The box. The wooden box. The coffin.

There was only one person who could send this box.

My sister. My crazy sister Lucy. Lucy who is insane. Lucy who thinks she is a nun. Not just any nun. But a nun named Renata who lived back in 1883. A nun who is in prison for murdering her cousin.

I covered my mouth with both hands. Then I opened my mouth and no sound came out.

Then I saw the note, taped to the narrow end of the coffin. I took a big breath before I read it.

“Dear Christina, You are hereby entrusted with. All of this. Bless you. Your loving sister, Lucy.”

That’s when I screeched. That’s when I shouted out her name as loud as my voice permitted.

“Luceeeeeeeeeeee.” I sat there and the tears started up and soon I was crying so hard I felt like I might choke.

I wiped my eyes. I closed the larger box back up and dragged it into a corner of the mudroom. I tried to ignore it. When my husband arrived home, he asked what had arrived and I said it was just a large order of flower bulbs. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about the coffin. About Lucy’s crazy note.

A few days went by and then one morning when the family wasn’t around, I dragged the box into my study. That night, I took my husband into the study, after the children were asleep.

“Will you help me lift this goddamn thing out of the box please, honey?”

“What goddamn thing Chris?”

“This…thing." I sighed. "Lucy sent me. This…coffin.” He studied me. He knows Lucy. He knows how disturbed she is. He knows how unpredictable she is. What a wild imagination she has.

He started to ask a follow-up question but I held up one hand. I told him that I didn’t want to go into it.

Together we lifted the coffin out of the wood excelsior and laid it next to my desk. Right beside my swiveling office chair. And there it has sat, covered in a blanket for many many weeks.

I tried emailing my sister. Nothing. I tried calling her. Nothing. All I get is a ringing phone and no one answering and no voice mail. All I know is that I have this goddamn coffin. And I haven’t opened it all these weeks.

I am incapable of opening this thing.

But I know I have to.

Two weeks ago, I read my husband the note Lucy enclosed, and he just shook his head.

“She is a worry.” That was all he said. “But then," he continued after a few moments, "you’ve known that for as long as I’ve known you.”

That night, I sat down and wrote Lucy a long letter. I mailed it right away the next morning. It came back to me about a week later. Someone had crossed out the address and written NO FORWARDING ADDRESS.

Now I sit here staring at the coffin. It is Saturday morning. It is Shabbat. I would normally go to services at my temple, but today, all of them – my three kids, my husband, all of them have disappeared to various soccer games and football practices. So I have decided to take this opportunity to look inside. I’m scared, of course. What if there are bones or…something rotting or…worse.

I inhale. I count to ten. And then I get up from my seat, and go look for a hammer.

Once Upon a Time, I Thought It Was Writing That Made Me Most Happy

2011-08-18T04:19:00.000-07:00

I sit staring at the candle, watching the puddle of wax that swims around the flame. I stare into the flame. The longer I stare, the more amazing the flame appears. The more I find myself asking. What is fire?What IS fire?

Like so many things we contemplate, the reality of the substance -- air, sunlight, clouds, flowers, recedes as we stare.

The flame is transparent at the wick. There is a slight blue glow. The flame rises to a point and sways ever so gently back and forth. I let the thoughts go. I let the thoughts go.

My eyes rise along one side of the flame as I inhale. My eyes drop along the other side of the flame as I breathe out. I trace the flame, over and over again. I inhale, I exhale. I let the thoughts go.

At some point, this thought arises: when I started writing this book in 1995, I was a different person in so many ways. I had not completed my first novel. I wasn't sure I could. I was totally convinced that the only thing that made me really happy was writing, even though it often tortured me.

I had three children who were 11, 9 and 6. I was so busy working and being a mom that I had to squeeze writing between things: between making beds, washing tons of clothes, fixing breakfast, lunch and dinner.

In 1995, I had not started meditating. I had no idea how profoundly meditation would change my life. My way of seeing the world. I had no idea that it was through meditation, and not fiction-writing, that I would find happiness.

Most of all, I had no idea how writing this book, Sister Mysteries, would help to change the way I looked at the world.

I started the book as a giant "binary." A "he said/she said" story. A diary by Sister Renata. A set of stories by her crazy cousin, Antonie. A back and forth between them. (Castenata is the actual story of Renata and Antonie, the story that captures the back and forth!)

A diary in which Renata proclaimed over and over, her innocent ways. And the stories in which Antonie portrayed Renata as a seductress. A nun who shed her black habit for a red flamenco dress.

Was it all his wild imagination?

Whatever.

But what I came to see as I wrote this book is that all of us, all the time, look at the world in "binaries" -- big binaries. Love and hate. Life and death. Black and white. In fact, the very way we think. The on/off blink of consciousness. And in our very language, we create binaries: the minute we say, "this is a chair," that statement implies that everything else is NOT a chair.

What happens in meditation, as I sit here staring at the flame, is that for a few minutes, the incessant binary, the back and forth, collapses. Stops. I sit here in the presence of the flame feeling the infinity of the Universe fill me up every time I breathe in. I feel calm. I feel complete.

This book has been a mystery. This book has been a miracle. It has brought me here, to understanding. And so much peace.

CHAPTER 49: I'm Afraid All of This (Letter) Writing is a Waste of Time!!

2011-08-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

We sit side by side on the sofa, Kitty and me, and she has the bundle of letters piled neatly in her lap. Kitty's face is a study in happiness and her eyes shine with excitement.

Tomorrow morning she is scheduled to package up the letters and deliver them to my lawyer's office. DeLuria will carry the letters directly to Governor Stoneman's office in Sacramento and in a few short days we will know whether he will pardon me. He has built a reputation for pardons, he has pardoned so many others because of persuasive letters given to him, at least that's what Kitty says. But I remind her. I say, in the kindest voice I can muster, that doesn't mean he will pardon me.

Kitty is patiently waiting for me to answer her question.

She has just asked if she can read a few of the letters to me before she places them in a box and ties the box with twine. Teresa is sitting across from us in the rocking chair. Dear Teresa, she is so plump it looks like she spills over the chair. And when she rocks, the chair squawks.

She and Kitty are just sitting there, trying not to stare.

Meanwhile, I am gazing into the cup of chamomile tea that Kitty has fixed for me.

I inhale.

"So," I say. "I do know how much this means to you. I know how excited you both are, but..." I take a sip of tea and then shake my head slowly. "No, I would prefer not to know what the letters say."

Kitty shoots a quick glance at Teresa and back at me. She sets one hand very gently on top of the letters. Her hand stays there. After a moment, she leans forward a bit on the sofa and speaks very quietly. "I completely understand that you're very nervous about all of this," she says. "There is so much at stake. But if you knew how much passion is contained here, Renata, if you could just read some of the letters. If you just knew how much concern, even love, if you would just let me share a bit of it wi..."

"Please Kitty, no!" I set my teacup down in the saucer with a rattle. I am frightened suddenly that she is pressuring me. I feel blood rushing into my face. I shudder just glancing at the stack of pages sitting there on Kitty's knees.

It is indeed a rather sizable batch of letters she has assembled. After an extraordinary effort on Kitty's part, she managed to convince 145 people to put pen to page on my behalf! It is a particularly impressive outpouring of support, especially as the local newspaper had tried so hard to deride my case with their damnable article.

And now here I am, not wanting to read a single one of them. Indeed, I want to forget that they even exist. I want to forget that it is these thin pieces of paper -- some covered with impeccable handwriting -- that might help to decide whether I live or die.

"I know that I should be pleased about the letter campaign. I should be feeling encouraged, and hopeful." I nod and turn to face Kitty. "I am terribly grateful to you Kitty, I really am, but...I cannot bear it." The last few words are hard to hear.

I clasp my hands together and hold them tight.

Kitty stares into her lap.

The last few weeks have been such a blizzard of activity for her and for Teresa. The two of them have been tireless, knocking on doors day and night, gathering letters, convincing patrons of the cafe to sit down and write to the Governor demanding my freedom. In some cases, they fixed free meals for letter writers. In some cases, they had Señora baking bread or pie or cookies, which were passed them out freely to those who picked up pens to write.

After all of that exhausting effort, it is hard now for them to hear me say I don't want to know what the letters say.

"I do understand that all this makes you nervous, Renata," Kitty says. "But I don't think you can possibly understand how many people have stepped forward." She pats the bundle of letters. "You cannot imagine how many fine, fine letters have been written on your behalf."

I sniffle. "I am sure you're right Kitty. And perhaps if...if we are successful, then, perhaps afterward, after it's all over, but now, now I feel that I cannot possibly listen." I am starting to feel lightheaded, and a sense of dread. Lately that feeling of dread has started to come over me more and more, often in clouds that billow around me like a grey fog.

Teresa bends forward. Her voice is reassuring. "I wonder Renata." She pauses. Bites into her lip. "I've got to ask you this one thing my dear. Is this decision not to hear the letters, it is perhaps...because you feel superstitious? Are you thinking that if you read the letters out loud, then perhaps it might jinx your chances of succeeding with the Governor?"

I study Teresa's sky blue eyes. What she is saying had not occurred to me. But maybe I am feeling superstitious. I shrug. Clasp my hands together more tightly. I remain silent. Teresa clears her throat and continues.

"I have been told that the Governor is deeply compassionate toward prisoners, Renata, as the General himself was a Union soldier taken prisoner during the war. It is said that every time he signs a death warrant he is sick for a day or two!"

I glanced at Teresa and her blue eyes felt like they were boring into me.

"Perhaps I am superstitious," I say, shaking my head. "But most of all, I am just so so exhausted by...by everything. Much too tired to listen. This whole business, the trial, the letter writing, the newspaper story, while I certainly do appreciate everything you've done, Kitty, I...I'm sorry, but I am just too tired."

I sit there staring into the letters. I have other thoughts I could share: In the end I am afraid that all of this letter writing is a waste of time and paper and ink. I think it's hopeless to send letters to Governor Stoneman. My case is closed. Over and done with. I am going to die and I might as well let them get on with it.

My heart is pounding. I am holding my sweaty hands together so tightly that the joints of my fingers ache.

I don't dare say any of it. I look up. My hand trembles as I reach for the teacup again and take a small sip. I haven't had any appetite, and no matter what Señora makes for me, I don't eat. That might be one reason I feel so weak. So light-headed. So full of dread and despair.

I hear the wind whistle outside Kitty's house. There at the door is old Bean the jailer, probably slumped against the wall, asleep on his watch.

The three of us sit there a little longer and finally, I announce to them how tired I am. I ask if they mind if I go to bed. Neither of them say a word.

Kitty gets up from the sofa and sets the letters neatly on the table. And then she and Teresa wrap themselves in their wool shawls and leave the house.

I am left all alone, lying here on the sofa.

I watch a single candle burning. The white wax melts and dribbles in bits and globs as it slides down the side of the candle toward the table.

The stack of letters sits on the opposite side of the table. As I sink into dreams, it occurs to me how easy it would be for all of those letters to go up in flames.

MAKING WRITING A SACRED ACT

2011-08-15T04:59:00.000-07:00

This piece is cross posted with the Huffington Post and also appeared on MyStoryLives.

I sit cross legged on the floor, my hands resting lightly on my knees.

I breathe in.

I breathe out. The candles are lit. I watch the glowing little bud that is the flame. As I breathe in, my eyes rise slowly along one side of the flame, tracing the bright edge. As I breathe out, my eyes drop down the flame's other side.

The cars go by on the wet road outside.

I breathe in. I breathe out.

I say the Thich Nhat Hanh lines I so often say, over and over again: "Breathing in I calm body and mind, breathing out I smile. This is a wonderful moment, this is the only moment."

Thoughts arise.

The story. The fact that I am so afraid to write IT. Afraid to finish it.

I breathe in. I breathe out. I say the Thich Nhat Hanh lines, over and over again.

I set my eyes on the candle. I remember waking up that summer in 2002 when I was so so sick. I remember having to face long and torturous trips down to NYC to Sloan Kettering. I remember having to face tests -- CT scans, Pet Scans -- to see if the cancer was still there. I remember sitting here being scared of the procedures. Of the outcomes of those procedures. I remember, week after week, having to endure the absolute horror that was chemo. My body was a swill of chemicals. My hair was gone. My stomach was impossible. I remember not being sure if I could endure another day. Another hour.

In those dark dark days, sitting here at the meditation table gave me absolute strength. Total resolve and solace. I remember being full of terror when I sat down. But then, by the time my meditation was over, I remember smiling. Feeling full of hope. I remember feeling completely calm and peaceful. I remember knowing that I was in the hands of a Bigger Power. That I was carried by some magnificent Divine Strength and that Strength would help me through no matter what.

It may sound silly or difficult to understand to someone who hasn't gone through a life-threatening illness, but I made my way through my healing, and through my cancer treatment, by treating it as if it were a sacred act. I asked for divine help. I prayed to the Virgin Mary. I read the Torah. I wrote dozens of poems. I found my power in words. In meditation.

I breathe in. I breathe out. I let my eyes follow the candle flame.

And suddenly now. Sitting with my legs crossed again on the floor. I see it. I understand it. I know what it is I have to do.

I never understood, when I first started writing this book, but Sister Mysteries has always been a sacred thing to me. Even as I wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages in the voices of silly characters who scoffed at religious belief, who made fun of religion and nuns and the Virgin Mary, I was writing about being faithful. About believing in sacred things. I was writing about my struggle to bridge a conflict. About my attempt to resolve my skepticism with a belief in the sacred.

Maybe that's why it's taken me so many years to write this book. Maybe that's why I have been fighting with the book all this time.

Maybe that's why I'm having such a difficult time finishing it. As Peg wrote in an email to me this morning, "Could it be because you won't have it any more? You won't have anything to replace it??"

As always, Peg has helped me to figure it out. If I finish Sister Mysteries, I am not sure what I will have to fill that space. That place inside me that has been wrestling with the divine.

I have more to think about. But I know that I have to go forward. Slowly. And I have to take very seriously the fact that writing this book has been a deep engagement with the sacredness, and the power, of writing.

It's not like I didn't know that before. It's just that...I keep forgetting. Now, though, I have been reminded, one more time.

I sit here now at the computer. I am not sure exactly how to go forward. But I will go forward. And I will make it, the finishing, a sacred act.

So Deep In Shadow

2011-08-13T06:37:00.000-07:00

August 13, 2011

Dear Diary,

I am feeling a bit desperate. And more than a little depressed. I think it has something to do with writing this book. Or not writing it.

I woke up this morning with my ears ringing and my neck hurting. I felt like I was in a deep black hole. I had been dreaming about holes. Holes in somebody's back yard. Holes filled with leaves and dirt. I was dreaming about some old friends finding black shoes with holes in them.

As soon as my eyes opened, I realized that I was feeling kind of desperate, like my mind was glued in thick tar. I got up and made coffee and sat down to meditate and when I got up from the meditation table, I was still feeling that dark sticky tar gluing me down.

A few minutes ago I decided that I had write. But even the thought of writing frightened me. I haven't wanted to admit it, but I am kind of terrified that I cannot finish this book. Maybe my writer friend Peg is right when she suggested a few weeks ago, when we got together to write, that I just don't want to finish the book.

If you look at the date on the last chapter, July7th, it's been over a month since I last wrote anything. That is so unusual for me. Normally, I can't keep myself from the computer. For so many many months, I was writing like a demon. The words and images just poured out of me. I could hardly keep up. It seemed like I had an unending supply of energy and inspiration to write.

I would wake up long before dawn with my head on fire with ideas. It was exhilarating to write. It was thrilling. It was, as I tell people, like a drug. But now I find myself on the other side of that exhilaration. Mired in tar and sludge. Inspiration feels very very far away.

No. The truth is that I cannot drag myself to the computer. I dread waking up to mornings like this one.

Why should I be so frightened? What is stopping me from writing? I have dozens of chapters, and a solid story line, and I even know the key to the story. I know how and why Antonie died. I know how the story is supposed to unfold. I've told so much of it already and I have the ending vaguely in my head, so what's wrong?

Peg said it best: if you finish the book, you're afraid you'll never write another thing. You're afraid you won't be a writer anymore.

That's certainly true. But that isn't the only thing.

I am afraid that seeing the ending I will say "big deal." I will feel like after all these years, after all the thousands of pages I've written, in the end, it won't have been worth the trouble. I will feel embarrassed that I wasted my time. And that I wasted the time of so many readers. And even, that I wasted my friend Peg's time, as she's devoted so much energy to reading this book.

When I look at it that way, it's no wonder I can't write. It's no wonder that I am scared.

But I need to write. I am desperate to write.

And so Mary, I always return to you when I am desperate. You have never failed me before. All those months I was in the throes of chemotherapy back in the summer of 2002, when I was bald and so weak that I could barely lift myself off the lawn chair, I would pray to you, and it never failed. You always came through. Something, some tiny thing, shifted, and my pain and despair lifted. I saw a light again. When I prayed to you, I felt like I was protected. I always saw myself tucked beneath your flowing blue veil. I remember so clearly, those hot days, when I would pray and amazingly, I felt better.

I am praying again. For inspiration. To finish something I committed myself to finishing. For better or worse, I have a job to do here. To clear Renata's name. Please help me see the way through.

CHAPTER 48: Kitty Pole Cooks Up a Pardon for the Nun, But will GOVERNOR STONEMAN SWALLOW IT?

2011-07-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

Local Woman Needs Anyone With a Pen and A Bleeding Heart!!

By John Dimson

Crime Reporter

We all know Kitty Pole. She's our one and only cafe lady. At one time or another, Kitty's made her famous chestnut-flavored coffee for each and every one of us here in town.

And yes, she fixes a mighty tasty breakfast at that tiny cafe tucked beneath her sky blue house. Her sweet potato homefries are famous. Her ham and pepper omelettes are divine.

Oh, and she whips up a fierce plum cobbler too. (Ask anybody who's tried it!)

But what's got into Kitty now? She's trying to cook up a stew that is altogether new for her. She's meddling in the court system, and it's not clear what she's up to or what she expects to get out of doing it.

For the last few weeks, Kitty's been going door to door -- even promising free cafe meals -- to anybody who pens a letter to our good Governor Stoneman. Kitty's turned organizer, asking that all of her neighbors team up to request a pardon for our notorious Sister Renata, the nun convicted of slicing her cousin Antonie's throat!

Dear Kitty, with all due respect, what goes on here? Maybe the cafe business is too slow?

According to the Examiner story, published right after the murder last fall, Señor Quiero de Lopez' jugular vein was sliced with a straight razor. And in a particularly gory detail, the poor man's Adam's apple was cored out of his neck!

The very same day that Sister Renata was arrested, a sheriff's deputy found the nun's discarded black habit, coated in blood, buried in the vegetable garden behind the convent!

During the trial, a dozen of Sister Renata's fellow nuns traveled to Gallejo to testify on her behalf. Each of the Dominican nuns went into great detail about Renata's character. Not a blemish, they claimed.

I wish I could believe them!

After all was said and done, Renata was convicted last month of first-degree murder. She is scheduled to die by hanging on January 6th, a mere three weeks from now.

But now, along comes our own Kitty Pole -- who by the way is housing the convicted nun right there in her blue house (by arrangement of the court, I should point out!) Something's come over Kitty, because now the good cafe lady is trying to stop the whole criminal justice system in its tracks!

What qualifies Kitty -- a splendid cook to be sure -- to think she can stir up sympathy for a convicted killer? And how does she expect to gather enough letters here in our small village? So far she's collected a total of only 17 letters, so it looks like she has her work cut out for her!

When she came by my office recently to chat, this is what she said: "We will be making a bad mistake if we send that poor nun to the gallows. I've read the nun's journal, and if you would do the same thing Mr. Dimson then you'd see she can't possibly be guilty of her cousin's murder!"

Just for the record, I read the court transcripts, and I've seen the nun's diary. But what makes Kitty so convinced that it exonerates the nun?

Kitty claims that the nun was framed by her clever cousin. Perhaps.

But what about that bloody corpse that the authorities found? And the nun's habit, coated in blood, buried in the garden? That's the kind of evidence that's hard to ignore.

Kitty flushes to her roots, and her cheeks turn cherry pink, when she discusses the trial. She turns even more passionate when she asks folks to write letters.

"Well of course I am passionate," she said. "It is a human life at stake here. Think about that! The point, Mr. Dimson, sir, is that we have to convince him, the Governor. We must! The whole town must take her side, writing letters, calling for her pardon. If we show him that we are sympathetic, perhaps then he will be convinced!"

Perhaps, Miss Kitty.

But perhaps not. The question is, will Governor Stoneman listen?

And by the way, Kitty Pole, you might take a few moments to think about that other human life -- the one that was cut short by his own straight razor! Poor man, that Antonie!

Miss Kitty, you've got some serious cooking ahead of you! And the whole town's watching too, to see if you really do succeed in setting a convicted killer free!

Why should our good Governor swallow this story?

CHAPTER 47: Heaven Help Me Another Newspaper Tries to Do Me In!!

2011-06-30T05:09:00.000-07:00

One week exactly after visiting the newspaper, we woke up to old Bean the jailer knocking on Kitty's door. He can't read, the poor man, but he'd learned that the Gazette had printed our story and he'd been promised a quarter by Kitty if he bought the newspaper and brought it to the house for us to see.

As she closed the door, my head was spinning in memories. I've seen what newspapers can do when they want to skewer you. It happened to me when the San Francisco paper wrote about me just after I was arrested for Antonie's murder. That article convicted me way ahead of the trial!

But here now was still another newspaper, the local Gazette, and judging by the look on Kitty's face as she placed the paper on the table, it wasn't good.

Kitty muttered something and I asked her to read the headline out loud. She inhaled. And read each word at a painfully slow tempo.

Local Woman Needs Anyone With a Pen and A Bleeding Heart!!

I winced and sank deeper into the sofa.

Kitty cleared her throat and carefully unfolded the paper and spread it on the oak table. She and Teresa pulled up their chairs. I just stayed put there on the couch staring at Kitty's remarkable tin ceiling, my eyes tracing the curlicue patterns.

"Aren't you going to look with us?" Kitty asked quietly.

I shook my head back and forth, very slowly, feeling the tears gathering. A tight panic began squeezing at my insides. "No, you two can read it first, and if it's as bad as I think it will be, I'm...I'll just pass. I am not sure I have the stomach for it."

And so Teresa and Kitty read John Dimson's article in silence. I put my hands over my face and only once glanced up when I thought I heard Kitty sucking on her teeth. At that moment I noticed Teresa shake her head ever so slightly. They finished. They sat there.

My heart hammered. I wasn't able to speak. I wanted desperately to know. I wanted desperately not to know. I wanted most of all to go to sleep and forget the whole matter. But how could I possibly forget the fact that I was going to the gallows in a matter of days?

Finally Kitty spoke.

"Well that young man deserves a good sharp boot right smack in his back side."

"I'd agree completely," Teresa said. She sounded rather weary, even though it was still early in the morning.

"But then," Kitty went on," I could tell right away. The moment I laid eyes on him last week. His whole demeanor. That reporter is well-named. Dimson. DIM-witted Son of a..."

"Oh KITTY!" Teresa covered her ears and shook her head vigorously as if to rid herself of the vulgar outburst.

"Well, sorry for that, Sister, I do apologize, but that man wrote the least sympathetic piece of dirty laundry I've ever read, and hung it out for all to see. And not only does it hurt our cause, but the story isn't even accurate. I am sure that I told him we'd collected 27 letters, not 17. I know for a fact because I had the stack in my hand for Pete's sake."

Teresa inhaled. "It makes no difference really. If he'd written 27, or 207, in that awful story, it would matter not one bit!"

By now, I felt that I might wet my pants. My mouth was so parched and dry that my tongue felt withered. I couldn't speak but I started to cry. Teresa and Kitty rushed from the table to the sofa, where I lay.

"Heavens, don't take it so hard," Kitty said, sitting beside me and squeezing me in a tight embrace. "It doesn't matter what the silly paper writes. I will go door to door, starting this afternoon!"

"And I will go with you," Teresa said, placing a hand on my arm.

I sat there sniffling. I wanted to say, "I'd just as soon you don't. I would just as soon you accepted the inevitable and gave up. I would just as soon you had never tried." But none of that came out of my mouth. I had so little energy to speak. What did it matter, what I said? What did anything matter now?

I knew that I had to read the article for myself. But how to find the courage? The strength?

"Teresa, dear, if you wouldn't mind, would you be kind enough to bring the paper here to me? I don't know that I have in me to sit there at the table with it."

"Of course I will," Teresa said.

Kitty stood. "But wait. Before you read a word of that foul stuff, you need a good strong cup of tea," she declared. She stopped. "Or would you rather my famous chestnut coffee?"

I considered saying that I wanted a shot of old Bean's whiskey.

"A cup of tea would be delightful," I said and forced a smile. And so Kitty made me tea, and brought it to me in one of her grandmother's fine china cups, a pretty green. And she also buttered me a fresh biscuit with raspberry jam.

And only when I'd finished both of these did Teresa bring me the dreaded newspaper article by Mr. John Dimson. Once more I had in front of me the writing of a man who, like Antonie, was using his clever words to turn my life inside out.

CHAPTER 46: Flies Flies Flies

2011-06-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

When I have those moments of despair, when all else fails to cheer me, well, then there are the flies and I tend to them religiously. I laugh thinking about myself doing that. Tending to flies. I laugh. I realize someone might think that I enjoy killing flies.

Absurd. That is never my intention. Well. Perhaps occasionally it is…

The cafe downstairs -- Kitty's place, is a breeding ground. Kitty and Señora are always frying. Endlessly. Bread dough. Donuts. Chicken. Home fries. Or if they’re not frying, they are baking rolls or stirring tortilla soup or grilling steaks in flat pans, and the odors bring the godawful flies up to the windows and I know I shouldn't kill them but I do, I am determined to keep the windows clean, I mean I see that as part of my job.

So I try to catch them in the dishtowels. I try not to squash them, as it bothers Sister Teresa so, she values all life, every morsel, so I try not to let Teresa see me do it, if she happens to enter the room and I am about to swat the fly, I just scoop it into the towel or…

Sometimes if I’ve just killed a fly, I will sit on the towel.

But that's not what I want to tell you. What I want to tell you about is the visit to the newspaper office two days ago with Kitty and toothless Bean, the old jailer who put me in cuffs behind my back. I was allowed to go only because of Kitty's letter campaign, she is determined to convince Governor Stoneman to free me, she is a saint that woman.

What can I say about Kitty is she is becoming a dear friend to me. It doesn’t matter, but I do care deeply about what motivates her. I believe that she lost a daughter. I know now the name of the child in the portrait, the child with the mass of strawberry ringlets, her name was Lynda with a why. I do not mean why, I mean Y.

Why and how she died, I do not know. I have tried to ask Kitty but she will say nothing. I have begged Teresa to tell me the story but she simply shakes her head.

Oh. There now. There is another one, excuse me, I am determined to keep the damn windows clean and fly-free, I mean, I am sorry for swearing, there is more of that these days, Teresa heard me take the Lord's name in vain, she complained to me, but that's what has happened, I am changing, I am...something is coming loose inside me, my tongue feels unhinged, my mind, pressed, I think perhaps it is the flies buzzing, and me waiting for the worst possible end, the buzzing, the waiting, they will drive a person crazy.

I've got the dishtowel but now the fly is gone.

That being said, what I am meaning to tell you about is our visit to the newspaper, the reporter sitting there when we arrived, tapping on an elegant old machine, I've never seen one th…

It’s back. Excuse me. I will get the fly and that will be the end of it.

I’m back.

Frankly, when Kitty told me that we would "drop by" the newspaper, I was horrified. The idea that they were going to do a story, I was at first so very concerned. Not surprising, considering what the San Francisco newspaper wrote about me, hanging me before I had even been tried!

I told Kitty that I was quite upset. I told her that I wouldn't go to the paper I call it The Gaze-Ette -- because they were sure to write a piece that, my God, there, there is another fly.

I got that fly. I …

And another, landing here beside my journal.

And another. UGH. A bloody mass here, a cloud of a dozen or more swirling around me.

Later.

I apologize for the interruption but I had to get them all. I must get them. They buzz and circle, surround my head and they land in the windows and bounce against the glass. Rather disturbing to me.

I know all this about the flies might not seem important but I dreamed about flies last night. I am not certain why. Perhaps because they are trapped. Perhaps because they are trying so desperately to flee. Because the flies remind me a bit of myself.

Trapped as I am. Both of us. Black and going in circles. The flies and I stand at Kitty’s window and we desperately want to be free, and so I let them go if I can but when there are a cloud of them I fumble with the dishtowel.

Too much. Too many. So many that I must kill them, I kill them and the truth be told there is some kind of unhealthy satisfaction in that.

Back to the visit.

We arrived at the newspaper office – a single room with a kind of closet attached where they keep and operate a telegraph – we got there just after noon. The room was intensely warm.

A gaunt young man sat at the typewriter. I was introduced but as my hands were cuffed behind me, I could only drop my head.

He gazed at me over his spectacles. Which by the way were dirty. Streaked!

His name: John Dimson. Dark and wavy blonde hair, rather oily. And a wiry blonde mustache. Black topcoat. So formal. So funereal. And in that heat. What possesses him? In my case, I have no choice but to dress in black. Sister Teresa brought me a brand new habit, after my last disintegrated in the prison.

After we sat down, he removed the topcoat. White shirt, yellowed collar and beneath his armpits, great wet stains. He pressed the nose of his round spectacles to his face. He has a most unpleasant laugh. And he refused to look at me. He has a way of swaying slightly right and left as he speaks.

He banged on the typewriter, snapping the keys into submission while Kitty explained to him her letter-writing campaign. He stopped when she removed from her purse and presented to him the letter from Governor Stoneman. He sat back and read it and then pulled at his mustache. He laid the letter down on the oak desk.

“I don’t see the Governor here making anything that begins to sound like a promise, Ms. Kitty,” he announced rather somberly.

“Well of course not,” Kitty snapped back. She took the letter and folded it carefully and tucked it back into its onion skin envelope.

“The point, Mr. Dimson, sir, is that we have to convince him, the whole town must be on her side writing letters, all on her behalf, all sympathetic, and then we send them to him, and then perhaps he can be convinced.”

Another. Another fly. Three. Easily caught however in one dishtowel swipe. Oh, sorry, just two. One injured. Not sure. Ah. Here, now, a fleck of a wing right here. IN my hand.

Then I wipe the window clean.

“So, Ms. Kitty, this letter-campaign. How many have you collected? And how is it that you are approaching individuals, to ask folks to write them?”

Kitty pulled herself upright. Nodded and smiled. Explained her pitch. Told Dimson how she gives one free café meal to each letter writer.

Announced our up to date total: 27 letters.

Dimson took a handkerchief from his hip pocket. Wiped his forehead. I sat, thinking about my own face. I had to be, pink flushed damp. But with my hands at my back, there was nothing to be done.

It was at that moment, I saw the fly.

Land on Dimson’s typewriter. There.

It sat. Dimson was asking Kitty how many letters she thought she would be able to collect.

I watched the fly. I stared as it dropped into the pit where the keys pound the paper.

I didn’t see it.

Kitty was saying there was – obviously -- a “time constraint.” I am scheduled to walk those five steps to the gallows on the 6th.

“I am hoping for 200 letters,” she said. She lifted her chin in defiance.

“Miss Kitty, for heaven’s sake, that would be remarkable. We have only 642 citizens. You are saying that approximately one in three people will be willing to wr...”

“It is entirely possible,” she interrupted. “And there is no loss in trying, now is there Mr. Dimson?”

He gazed at her with a narrow-eyed look, and gave a quick shove to his spectacles, pressing them to the bridge of his nose. Wrinkling his mouth, and looking a little bored, he turned to the typewriter. He placed his fingers on the keys. I thought about the fly there in the pit. I gasped.

Dimson and Kitty looked over at me. My eyes widened. I kept staring. I felt like

A fly.

“I…” I nodded. “A fly. There. Just now landed in your typewriter.” I nodded again. Kept pointing. Dimson frowned. Looked rather annoyed by this whole business. Our visit.

Just then the fly lifted out of the typewriter and circled once, then headed for the window.

Dimson continued typing.

We left. No sign of fly as we left.

The article, Dimson says, will be in the newspaper by week’s end.

Why Write This Crazy Book? Looking Deeper Into the Mystery that is Narrative...

2011-06-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

From time to time I stop and marvel at the fact that I keep writing this book. And that there are people out there who keep reading it.

As my good friend and fellow writer P.M. "Peg" Woods has pointed out any number of times (and always laughing that raucous laugh of hers when she does), the biggest mystery about Sister Mysteries is why I've spent 16 and a half long, long years writing it -- first pouring it out on reams of paper, and then, pouring it out here on this and the Castenata blog.

Why writers write what they write is an endlessly interesting topic, at least it is to most writers I know.

Eugene Garber, an award-winning fiction writer, author of a marvelous new novel called O Amazonas Escuro and one of my best teachers ever in grad school at SUNY Albany, explained it to me one day in one word: "displacement."

He probably won't even remember this conversation, but we once were chatting about a novel that he had recently completed. I recall him saying that he gazed at the great stack of paper that was his finished manuscript, and began to realize that within that stack of pages was a whole world of wild and crazy ideas and images that had poured forth from his brain (I'm sure he said this with much more grace and style.)

Anyway, what he was saying is that all of the sometimes dark and disturbing ideas and energy contained in his novel might have driven him mad, had he not chosen instead to displace it all onto paper in the form of a novel.

After Gene said this to me, he probably laughed his wonderfully raucous laugh, a laugh I really love, a laugh which is right up there with Peg Woods' laugh as one the world's most infectious guffaws.

I guess I'm now ready to face up to the fact that, as Gene Garber suggests, my writing, like his, is displaced craziness (my word, not his.)

Sister Mysteries is the story of a nun, Sister Renata, who from time to time does an about face. She trades her starched white wimple for a wild red ruffled dress. Renata is both a devout Dominican novitiate and an erotically-charged young woman dancing flamenco and seducing her nutty cousin, Antonie.

Why would someone invent such a character?

There is a relatively simple answer, or at least one that makes a lot of sense to me. It involves a rather famous French anthropologist named Claude Lévi-Strauss, who was once described in the New York Times as "a towering intellectual" who "transformed the West's understanding of what was once called 'primitive man.'"

One thing Lévi-Strauss did, and it was no small achievement, was undertake a study of the myths of indigenous (or so-called "primitive") peoples all over the world. What he discovered was what he called an "astounding similarity between myths collected in widely different regions" of the world. Indeed, Lévi-Strass found that myths had underlying them a kind of universal "binary" structure, that is, in plain language, the myths all were fundamentally stories about pairs of opposites: love and hate, life and death, good and evil, black and white, female and male, large and small.

What's more, he discovered through his wide-ranging and exhaustive study of myths (including stories like the Oedipus tale), that "mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution," which in plain language means simply

a story or myth seeks to, in one way or another, make peace between the binaries it presents.

This was one brilliant insight. And I have, through my own experience as a writer, and my experience as a reader, I have come to believe that Lévi-Strauss was right. There is no question in my mind that stories do exactly what Lévi-Strauss suggests. Stories, which often emerge out of deep archetypal images in the subconscious, tend to present binaries, opposite forces, forces that the author is trying to resolve in his or her psyche.

It isn't such a surprise then that myths should all resemble each other, because, after all, each and every one of them was produced by a human mind facing the same kind of challenges in surviving.

It is fair to say that the job of a story is to find a resolution, though language and imagery, for whatever binary forces the author is juggling. We writers are at the steering wheel, but most of us feel that we aren't really in control of that vehicle that happens to be our story. The language and images and especially, the characters, have a life of their own, and at some point, they really do just take over.

In my first novel, Dreaming Maples, the binary forces that fueled the work were two competing roles for women: women as artists and women as mothers. In simple terms, a woman as an artist should be supremely selfish. As a mother, a woman should be supremely self-less. It is no wonder that most of the women in my novel abandoned their children. (This you might say was me safely displacing my urge to do the same thing.)

By the time I had finished writing and editing that book, I had figured out a kind of compromise in my competing roles as mother and writer/artist.

Now, in this curent story, Sister Mysteries, the binary is also clear, and it too presents competing images of women, the so-called virgin/whore dichotomy. Feminist writers frequently chastise patriarchal society for relegating women to this sort of demeaning representation. Like all women, I have been "acted upon" by societal narratives that construct women in these either-or roles. But for me personally, specific life experiences have fed into this binary, and these are mine to negotiate as well.

I have a set of photos that will help tell the story underneath the story.

As a picture is worth at a thousand words, two pictures are surely worth at least twice that. These images are both from my childhood.

The first one is of me, at perhaps age six or seven. It was taken at Saint Anthony's Catholic School, in Bristol, Connecticut, a school that was ruled by nuns, and a priest.

I now see that there may be a reason that I named Renata's oppressive cousin...Antonie.

In this photo, I am standing in a devout and innocent pose, hands clasped in prayer. There to the left of me is my first cousin Lorry and we are standing next to the statue of the Virgin Mary. It is the month of May, when we always celebrated Mary. You probably cannot smell those lilacs on the table, but I can. All I have to do is close my eyes and I am back there in the classroom, with those scuffed wooden floors and those dusty chalkboards, and those very, very strict nuns.

The second photo is of me as a flamenco dancer. I am about ten or eleven, judging by the ironing-board shape of my chest.

It was probably May, judging by the flowers in my father's rock garden behind me. It was definitely my ballet recital day, orchestrated by my teacher, Mildred Ruenes, who forced us, or tried, to memorize each and every ballet pose in French.

On a very basic level, you might say that Sister Mysteries emerged out of these two images.

Well, so, lately I've begun to actively deconstruct the binary forces underlying this book. I've begun to consider the various "narrative selves" that gave rise to this story. In some sense I've become more interested in the underlying narratives than the one I've toiled so long to tell. (Well, so I have written 44 chapters, and we're running close to the end.) I wonder if perhaps I fear that the book will end before I'm finished with it.

Does that make sense?

If you think about it, a book might be considered a kind of collage of interconnected stories, one superimposed on another.

In this complex collage, the author is representing in words a character or characters. But the author is also representing his or her "self" or selves.

There is the story or stories being presented. But just like this painting, the book has embedded in it layers of other stories. You could say that each story contains within in it, hidden if you will, a set of stories of the narrative "selves" underlying the book. You could say that these narrative selves are responsible for giving rise to the book. You could argue that an author imprints or displaces her narrative selves, in layer upon layer, into her story.

More on this as we go forward. But for now, these thoughts:

It is quite a miracle, storytelling. It is quite a miracle, the act of writing.

CHAPTER 45: A Flurry of Letters, But Will They Help?

2011-06-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

Kitty is busy writing letters and what's more, she is getting friends and neighbors, and fellow nuns back at the convent to write letters too. What began as Kitty's pet project -- convincing Governor Stoneman to spare my life -- has now taken on a life of its own.

I cannot say that I understand how this has happened. Why exactly she is so determined to save my life, I'm not sure, but Teresa insists that Kitty's motives are pure and simple.

"We have had a number of long talks about Antonie, and his illness and his bizarre storytelling, and how those stories compromised you, and she was enraged. She wants to rectify the tragedy of what he did to you." Teresa explained this to me a few days ago while standing at Kitty's sink, rinsing the evening dishes. Kitty was downstairs in the cafe, serving dinner with Señora. "I tell you, Renata, that woman is an inspiration to me. Kitty has a great heart, and a magical spirit that carries her. She is full of life."

But when I pressed Teresa to explain what precisely motivates Kitty to be such a tireless advocate for me, Teresa clammed up. "I am not really at liberty to say," she mumbled.

"Oh Teresa, come now. If you know something, for heaven's sake, you ought to tell me."

Teresa looked up toward the ceiling and said nothing at first. Then she turned to me. "Kitty has had a very hard and challenging life, but she has transformed her challenges into opportunities."

"Yes, well, you've said that. But I wondered about the basics. Like, was she ever married? Was she a mother? Is that portrait in the bedroom her child?"

Teresa wiped the last cup and set it on the shelf. She shook her head briskly. "No reason to get into all of that," she said. "After all, what difference does it make to your situation? If you feel it is necessary and you want to ask Kitty, well then go ahead and ask her yourself." She shrugged and untied her apron and at that moment I thought to myself, Teresa has been putting on weight. She looks wider than I remember her at the convent.

"Now I have to run downstairs to the cafe to help out."

I believe that Kitty's a good soul, I don't doubt that. But this intensely-focused letter-writing campaign of hers must stem from something. As I've said before, I suspect that Kitty lost a child -- all I know is that she touches that portrait of the girl with the strawberry curls, the one hanging in her bedroom, at least two or three times a day. Only some deep emotional pain -- a deep, deep well of it -- could fuel her efforts and keep her so focused, working so fervently on my behalf.

I suppose it doesn't matter a bit. And I should be grateful. All I know is that she has a sign up in the cafe offering a free meal to anyone who will write a letter! And the newspaper is set to run a story on the letter campaign.

As soon as I heard the word "newspaper" I cringed, thinking back to that first horrifying story after I was arrested -- I felt crucified in words. And all subsequent reports about my trial were in the same vein. But Kitty assures me that this is going to be a different story, one that explains why an ordinary citizen has come forward to advocate for a woman in need.

Apparently, there are others she has convinced. All I know is that I woke from a nap four afternoons ago, lying there in the parlor on her sofa, with sunlight bathing the quilt that covered me. As soon as I woke up, I realized that Kitty had visitors.

I had been dreaming that I was, of all things, a centaur, half horse, half woman, and that I was galluping off to war! I woke up with tears in my eyes, because I realized that I was almost certainly going to be killed in battle!

That thought had me sniffling and teary when I came to, but there across the parlor, sitting at Kitty's oak table, were three strangers, two rather portly ladies, and one very tall thin woman. All of them are neighbors of Kitty's. Two were sipping lemonade Teresa had fixed, and the third had a glass of port. A plate of cookies sat on the table, and from what I was able to see, the two heavyset ladies were doing justice to the sweets.

It occurred to me that perhaps Kitty was soliciting letter writers by promising the writers free food and drink.

In any case, I lay there, wrapped in the quilt, remaining quiet, just observing, listening to Kitty explain her mission. "Sister Renata is no more guilty of a crime than you or me!" Kitty began. "I can tell you that she has a journal and I've read parts of it, and the way she cared for her cousin, Antonie, she is worthy of a medal. And this is the same man she is accused of killing."

The ladies remained quiet. The two cookie eaters continued to nibble.

"Her cousin, I'm afraid, was very ill, and..." Kitty paused. "Lord help me, but he wasn't right in the head. He wrote some bizarre tales about her. Plain and simply, he lied, but because of his position around here, everyone believe him, and Renata paid the price." Kitty sat forward. "And so I see it as our moral duty to help set her free!"

She brought her fist down hard on the oak table, hard enough so that the plate with the cookies rattled. The three neighbors shifted in their seats. The two heavy women stopped eating.

"Sister Renata's lawyer believes that there is a good chance that the Governor would spare the nun's life if a significant portion of the community is sympathetic to her situation," Kitty continued, now folding her hands and looking from one woman to the next. "And so I'm asking you, can you write a little letter asking Governor Stoneman for mercy?"

This particular meeting with the neighbors was just one of many that Kitty has held, either here in the parlor, or downstairs in the cafe. She has called a public meeting for next week to lay out her case. She asked Deluria if I would be permitted to attend but as I am technically in jail, and this is not a courtroom proceeding, he said I would not be allowed to go.

Just as well, as I know it would be painful to confront a crowd.

After Kitty delivered her pitch the other afternoon, the tall woman asked a question. "I guess I am wondering this, Miss Kitty. Why didn't you try to keep her from gettin' convicted in the first place?"

"Well that would have been ideal, I agree, Alice. But you know the court works the way the court works. And her lawyer, the truth be told, was barely able to hold his own." Kitty took a sip of lemonade herself. "What else you should know is that it took me some time to grow firm in my conviction that Renata is innocent. I went to every day of the trial, and as you know, I've had her in my house here." She gestured in my direction and the next thing I knew I had all four of them staring at me, still snuggled quietly under the quilt on the sofa.

"Oh, Renata, you are awake, I would make you a cup of tea and I will as soon as I am finished here."

"Thank you Kitty, I think you're doing plenty as it is. Not to worry about my tea!"

The three neighbors gazed at me as though I was a panther or a mountain lion in captivity. I suspect that never had any of them seen a convicted murderer up close, I pulled the quilt up over my chin.

And in a matter of minutes, the three of them were on their way, with the tall woman saying she would "give some thought" to a letter. The other two cookie-eaters refused to commit to doing anything on my behalf.

After they had left, Kitty reassured me that she had met with several other neighbors in the cafe earlier in the day and "had at least seven promised letters." Of course promises are cheap, I keep reminding myself of that fact.

But now, today, Kitty has shown me a small stack of actual letters -- eight to be exact. Some are just a few paragraphs long, scrawled in the sloppiest penmanship I've ever seen. But there is one letter that I must admit, I've already read it a dozen times, it too is short, but it presents my case in such a highly favorable light. And what's more, the handwriting is some of the prettiest I've ever seen!

CHAPTER 44: Stoneman, Can You Save Me?

2011-05-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

I am dreaming about my cousin Antonie -- blood spurts from the ragged gash in his throat, and both my hands are coated, warm and slick, the way they were that abominable day he died.

Antonie is grabbing at my neck and his eyes are two fierce black coals burning into me. I'm gagging because he's choking me and my arms are thrashing back and forth as I desperately try to free myself, when suddenly, a glass explodes and shatters. I scream and shoot straight upright.

When I open my eyes I realize that it is Kitty sitting beside me, her fingers circling my throat! It is barely sunrise, the windows glow pink in early light. With all my thrashing, I've accidentally sent the glass of water sitting by my bed flying and it's shattered on the floor.

"Why...whatever are you doing?" I say to her, my heart slamming. Tears spring to my eyes as I feel the dream and the image of Antonie's eyes, and my bloody hands, pressing in on me.

"I am so sorry," she says. "But...your breathing was so...so shallow Renata...I wanted to make sure that you were still...here."

"Of course I'm still here," I say, irritated, feeling a single warm tear leaking out of each eye. I pull the covers, drenched in water, up to my neck while she collects the broken pieces of glass off the floor, piling them into her white apron.

There are moments lately when I wish the three of them -- Kitty, Teresa, even Señora -- would just go away. I'd just as soon they let me be, let them lead me to the gallows and be done with it.

But they refuse. The three of them have teamed up, making me their project, the central object of their daily activity.

My lungs degenerated terribly while living all those weeks in the moldy jail, and after I was sentenced, my wheezing became continual and I developed a deep raspy cough. One morning Teresa found me unconscious on the floor of the cell. Full of rage, she lit into DeLuria, and convinced him to petition the judge.

Somehow, Teresa prevailed. So now, now that I am scheduled to die by hanging in a matter of weeks -- just by chance, the date is set for January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany -- now that I have only days to live, the court has seen the wisdom of transferring me to an "external facility, that is, Kitty's place. The blue house,

which has as its first floor, the tiny café, and upstairs, Kitty's residence.

The jailer, Jimmy Bean, ostensibly stands guard outside the front door. But more often than not, he's got that bottle of whisky in his hands. And he falls asleep. And we hear him collapse off his chair onto the porch. Once he tumbled down Kitty's staircase.

What irony, that the court would want to make certain that I stay healthy long enough so that they can hang me.

Teresa insists that Kitty has a plan, a promise of "new hope." Teresa delivered this bit of news to me a few days ago, after bringing me a cup of dandelion tea. I refused to drink it, but she lifted a teaspoon of the steaming brown liquid right up to my lips.

"My dear, I intend to remain here in this position until you give in and drink this damn tea, so please be quick about it."

I blinked. In all the years I'd known her, Teresa had never once let profanity slip from her lips. "Ah so now you swear, do you?"

"Oh yes indeed, I do when I need to make my point. Now just drink the tea would you please?" So I did, I took the rose petal tea cup -- part of Kitty's best set of dishes -- from Teresa's hands, at which point she settled back into her chair. "Kitty says it helps cleanse the liver."

"And why exactly does my liver need cleansing?" At which moment Kitty emerged from the kitchen.

"The liver stores anger, and in your case, there is plenty of reason for it." Kitty has a ready store of healing herbs, and tinctures she brews in her café kitchen.

Perhaps that is why there is something about this house. A certain nurturing way it feels. I'm not sure, but Teresa calls it a "blessed spirit that circulates between the walls," and she claims that even the convent "never felt this way." She may be right. All I know is that by treating me with gingko and feverfew, Kitty has managed to make my cough virtually disappear, and my wheezing is improved.

It helps too that I now sleep like a lamb (despite this morning's episode) and that I eat like a queen, thanks to the fact that Señora has taken over cooking all the evening meals at Kitty's café. (In this way, Señora is earning her board here, while Teresa does laundry and keeps house for her share.)

So there are four of us living here in the tiny three-bedroom blue house. Why exactly Kitty has decided to open her home and heart to us, why she is so attentive to me, I cannot say. Teresa has alluded to the fact that Kitty has a long sad story, one she will not share. "There is enough you have to carry in your heart right now, no need for more sorrow."

I suspect that Kitty lost a child. At least I know this much: there is a portrait, a sketch in pastels, of a young girl, fawn-colored eyes, and soft strawberry curls gracing her delicate shoulders. The portrait sits in Kitty's room above her bed, and once, I happened to pass by Kitty's open door and there she was, touching the portrait as if she meant to graze the child's face.

There is no evidence of a man having lived in this place, and again, I questioned Teresa, and again, Teresa set her lips together and wouldn't say.

Whatever it is that motivates her, Kitty regards me as her pet project. Her own cause celebre. As she put it to me one evening, when she'd set a fire going in the fireplace, wrapped me in a red and yellow quilt, and fixed me still another cup of strong dandelion tea. "You have suffered more than anyone ever should, Renata, and I'm not going to rest until we set you free."

So now, today, it seems as though there is news. After collecting the shards of glass from the floor, I fell back to sleep, and when I awoke, the sun was pouring into the front windows. Teresa had fixed me what has come to be my favorite morning meal: buttery biscuits and raspberry jam. She left three of them, and a cup of tea, now cool, on a tray.

Soon I heard murmuring, and then, a squeal of excitement.

Kitty came flying up the outside stairs and opened the front door. Teresa followed.

"No, it's not a promise, but it's reason for hope," Kitty said, waving the official-looking letter.

Over the next few minutes I was able to get the full story. Working single-handedly, Kitty has written a letter on my behalf to the Governor of California. George Stoneman. And so now I can understand why a few weeks ago, I woke up to Teresa and Kitty murmuring to each other. I had heard the words. Stone. Man. And then, "Maybe he can help." But I had no idea what they were discussing.

It turns out that this Governor of ours, a war hero, believes strongly in prison reform. He has granted dozens and dozens of pardons -- 247 to be exact -- and commuted almost as many sentences.

Kitty went to the trouble of writing a long and passionate letter to the Governor, explaining my situation, and asking for help.

The letter in her hands was not a pardon by any means, but a request for more official information. "In other words," said Teresa, "It is up to DeLuria to present the request."

"Yes, indeed, we will need his help," Kitty said, "but isn't it wonderful, he answered!"

She handed me the letter and I must say it was a thrill to see the Governor's scrawl across the page. To think that he would consider looking into my case.

I felt my face get warm, and tears spring to my eyes. "Thank you Kitty," I said, and it was difficult to speak.

She kneeled in front of me. I realized in that moment that she had the same fawn-colored eyes as the little girl in the bedroom portrait. And while her hair was graying, there were strands of the strawberry color. "I promise you Renata," she said, taking my hand, "that we won't stand by and watch you die. You have my word, we will have your case heard by the Governor himself!"

Teresa squeezed my shoulders. And I must say, for the first time in months, I felt a surge of hope. At the same time, I recalled all those horrible hours in what amounted to a cage.

Perhaps that's why I started to cry.

Teresa and Kitty wouldn't tolerate my tears for long, however. They made me get up and take a bath, and we spent the day planning a celebration. Señora made my favorite evening meal, tortilla soup, and Teresa baked me a spice cake.

What Happened? Where'd IT go?

2011-05-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

So, after a hiatus of 37 days, today was the day that I was determined to get back to work on this book. Finally.

Maybe you thought I'd given up. NO. After 16 years of working on Sister Mysteries and the companion novel, Castenata, I've just GOT to finish. I've got to save Sister Renata from hanging. As I've said time and again in this book, saving her will save me.

Still, it took all of my writerly energy to bring myself to the laptop. To sit down to try to craft the next chapter.

If you aren't a writer, then you probably don't know what happens when you step away from writing a book.

This is what happens: very quickly the book morphs into a mind-boggling monster, one that is so ferocious you don't dare go near it. The longer you stay away from said monster, the scarier and more impossible it gets to approach it.

The book stares at you with the fangs of a saber-toothed tiger.

It weighs on you like an elephant. You say to yourself, I just can't possibly write another word of this...incredibly terrifying thing. I don't know what I'm doing writing this book. I don't know where I'm going with book. I have no idea how I'm going to finish it. I have no plan. I have no talent. I have no brain.

But then, you wake up one day, and say, hey, it's just a damn book. And nobody really cares what the _____ you write anyway.

You kick off the covers, and put all those ferocious animal images out of your head. You make yourself a strong cup of tea or coffee and get to work.

In my case, I lay down on top of my neatly-made bed, where I am very relaxed. And then I sit back and...write.

Sometimes I might open another book, and take out a line for inspiration.

Today I opened Mariette in Ecstasy, a wonderful novel by Ron Hanson (it's another nun novel.) This is one of the lines I happened on today: "The skies are gray as habits and all the greens are darkening with a faint and chilling mist." Ah, what a lovely line of prose.

Anyway, sometimes a line like that will jumpstart my own writing.

Today, though, I just plowed ahead and before I knew it, I was deep into my chapter. I was actually almost near the finish line with CHAPTER FORTY FOUR. Indeed, if you happened to visit this blog between about 3 and 4 p.m. today, maybe you read part of it.

But then, shortly after four, something wild and terrible and awful happened. I was doing some sort of edit, deleting or moving a photo, or a paragraph, or making some other minor change. I don't even remember what it was I was doing. All I know is that something went kazooey and I inadvertently deleted the whole damn chapter.

I was....stunned.

In five years of blogging, I don't think this has ever happened to me before. I am usually a lot more careful. (It even occurred to me, in one paranoid moment, that maybe someone had hacked into my blog, because I believe that actually HAS happened before.)

Whatever, it happened. I lost hours worth of work.

And no, I had no back up because I write these chapters right here on this blog. It's kind of crazy, yes, but it's also kind of cool, because you feel like you're writing on a tightrope, dancing and balancing on a high wire right in full view of the reading public (whatever reading public there is.)

But dancing on a high wire, you need a net. In case you fall.

I should have had a net, in case the blog failed, and I was stupid and I didn't.

So now I have to write the whole damn thing over again.

Which leads me to wondering about something. When I wrote the chapter today, I thought I knew where I was going, or at least, I thought I knew where I wanted to end up.

With Governor Stoneman. A real governor.

In 1883, when Sister Renata was convicted of murdering her cousin Antonie, George Stoneman was Governor of California. (He doesn't compare very well to Arnold, no.) Stoneman was a Civil War hero. In 1882, he was elected Governor of California and served a single four-year term.

Curiously, for the purposes of this book, Stoneman supported prison reform and staunchly believed in rehabilitating prisoners through parole - so much so that in the last few weeks of his term, he granted 260 pardons and commuted 146 prison sentences.

The question is: will Governor Stoneman intervene on behalf of Sister Renata? Will he review the evidence (or lack thereof) from the case and put aside her guilty verdict?

In other words, WILL HE SET THE NUN FREE?

Well, so, that's where I'm headed in this next chapter.

But after hours of writing, I'm exhausted. I need another cup of tea.

CHAPTER 43: See Me, Now, Convicted of Murder

2011-04-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

How quiet the jail tonight.

How bright the moon is outside the window. A perfect white button glowing in the dark cloak that is the sky.

Will she come back again?

Will she bring the other?

I stare between the bars into the courtyard and close my eyes and I realize that I must have been dreaming.

Of course I was dreaming.

Or was I? THAT WAS SEÑORA! She was here. She was here in her flowered shawl. I see her wide face the color of coffee with milk. I see her...and all the bright flowers on the satin shawl.

And I see the other too! She brought the Mother. She brought Her to me.

Or did she? Do I see what I think I see? Am I thinking clearly? I have eaten nothing. I have slept fitfully. I blink and my eyes play endless tricks on me.

What takes the place of Señora's face is horrifying:

The rope. Those five wooden steps.

And if it weren't for her coming, appearing here in the cell. If it weren't for that, for the Mother Herself saying, "Bless you my child, keep steady, have faith!"

If it weren't for that, for the explosion of light that surrounded me, that flooded me, I would say there is no hope.

With my eyes open, with my pen writing words precise and clear here in black ink on this white paper, there is only this to say:

Yesterday, November 22, is the day that the trial finally ended. Yesterday is the day that the last days of my life were numbered. All that remains for me is the five steps up to the gallows.

No matter that Teresa brought a dozen of the nuns from the convent to testify on my behalf at the trial. No matter that they sat behind me, a phalanx of faith and devotion. No matter that DeLuria (prodded by Teresa) brought each nun in turn to the witness stand to testify on behalf of my "outstanding moral character."

No matter that it took most of the afternoon in that stifling courtroom to hear from each of the 13 nuns (Teresa included.)

No matter that one after the other they sat for the ordeal, listening to the insults of the prosecutor.

To all of you who came on my behalf -- to Sister Baptiste, Sister Philomena, Sister Hermione, Sister Marietta, Sister Felicity, Sister Annabelle, Sister Celina, Sister Genevieve, Sister Pauline, Sister Rafaela, Sister Margot and Sister Lucia -- I am forever indebted to you. I am forever grateful. I salute your courage, and your endurance. Traveling by carriage all those 87 miles from the convent on those red dusty roads surely exhausted you. And then sitting on backless benches in that stifling courtroom all those many long hours. Enduring all the questions, the snide remarks, the stern looks from the jurors, all of it.

No matter. At the end of the day, the jury took exactly one hour and 34 minutes to return to the courtroom. I was in the cell only a few minutes when the jailer returned to "fetch me" for the verdict.

I sat at the defense table, hands folded, holding the well-worn family Bible that Teresa had brought me. I watched the 12 men shuffle back into the room, carefully avoiding my eyes.

The judge spoke. "Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?"

The foreman, a portly man with a bright red nose and wearing a leather vest stood. "Yes, your honor, we have."

The judge nodded. Turned to glare at me. "Please stand and face the jury."

I stood, and DeLuria stood beside me. And behind me, I heard all of the nuns who had come to support my case. I felt them all rise with me!

Suddenly there wasn't nearly enough air in the courtroom to breathe. So I held my breath. My hands trembled so I held them to my chest as if in prayer.

"How do you find the defendant?" I heard the judge's question, but it sounded so far away to me, as if I had been wholly delivered up to another world.

"We find the defendant guilty, your honor."

Without knowing why, I smiled. I will never understand that beatific smile. Perhaps it was a release. Finally, I was hearing the words that I had dreaded to hear for so many many weeks.

A tender hush rose up behind me. I felt a hand at my back, one on my elbow, I know not whether it was DeLuria or Teresa or one of the many other nuns. My legs turned so soft that I felt they would no longer support me.

I collapsed into the chair. There were words being said, I suppose the judge was pronouncing the date that I would be sentenced, but now I felt again that I was not present in the room. Or I was immersed deep under water. Or he was speaking Russian or French. DeLuria tried to pull me by the arm, hoping I would stand again, but it was too late. I had turned into dead weight.

I sat there hands folded staring into the oak table. I studied the grain of the wood, and I felt that I could continue sitting there staring at that beautiful grain -- the whorls so intricate -- for as long as they would permit me.

But it wasn't to be permitted. It wasn't long before I was lifted at both elbows and my wrists were shackled again. DeLuria was telling me he would file an appeal and I was about to say,

"Mr. DeLuria I feel that is a mistake, and not necessary, you see you have done enough already."

But my lips were forming words I couldn't say. I was already being shepherded out of the room. And as I headed out, I glanced once at the bank of eyes and tears and black veils. Sister Pauline was making the sign of the cross and Teresa was holding Señora in her arms and rocking her.

I was all too soon back here, locked in, where I sat in silence until Teresa and Señora came and the three of us held hands through the bars and cried together and said nothing.

What could we possibly say when all is lost?

Finally, the jailer came and told them visiting hours were over. Teresa protested, but I begged her to go. And so they did, but not before Señora left a basket covered in a gingham cloth -- jars of canned vegetables and one of apricots. Ah, but nothing appealed to me, not even the cup of chamomile tea that Kitty later brought me (I took it, however, because as long as I was sipping the tea, Mr. Bean allowed her to sit with me.)

The sun dropped behind the courtyard and that moon I am still staring at rose in the clear dark sky. I must have fallen asleep. When I awoke, I saw that Mr. Bean had left me a bowl of soup which had grown cold, and a crust of bread. I dumped both into the foul pail.

I have a stone dead feeling in my stomach, as if someone had come in and stolen the core of me away and left a gaping cold trench. An open grave.

I have no idea when it happened.

When she came.

I know only that at some point she came.

Or did she?

During the night, when the moon was close to the roof of Kitty's cafe, I stood looking out the barred window. I stared into the courtyard where the gallows will stand and I finally said it out loud:

I am convicted of premeditated murder. I have been found guilty of killing my cousin Antonie in cold blood.

And I would have written that there is no more to say.

That all is lost. That there is no more hope for me. That nothing more remains but the sentence and the sentence we know already is me hanging by a rope.

But then she came. She has come before to me, Señora. She came clear as a ringing bell, she came shortly after I was arrested, she arrived here in this very cell, singing in the key of eternity. She came another time, after I collapsed in the courtroom, and then she brought me the rainbow rosary.

And perhaps because I was saying that very rosary tonight, praying with all my might for a miracle again, she came again, Señora, she came just as the moon settled like a bright bubble on the horizon, just before the bubble burst, and flooded the sky with white light,

She sat here with me, my dear old Señora, playing her guitar, and singing her lovely carcelero.

I am quite convinced of it now but how to explain this PRESENCE?

And how to explain the other, the glimpse I had of the Mother?

She is real. She too was here tonight, as clear as I see these bars she stood above me, as bright as the moon glowed, she showed herself to me in a fabulous light.

She the Mother filled me with love, I glowed too I glowed too. And I am afraid to write it down here, perhaps I fear that the miracle will disappear.

And I've grown nervous that the jailer when I sleep takes the journal, for what purpose I am not sure, he doesn't read a word. But just in case, I will slip the journal inside the powder blue shirtwaist dress.

And I sit here, and with me is the guitar that Señora played and now I sing and play and I sing and I pray.

And she is back, and

Now she sees my tears and changes gear. Now she is singing a gay and witty sort of palo which has a never ending number of poetic verses.

She sings:

Just imagine. What I. Did. Just imagine. Where I fled to.

Only the stars can tell you. Only the sky can guess.

So now sit down and I will try to tell you.

You will see it all come clear.

When the water goes still as a mirror,

And we peer inside.

Do you see now, why I appeared here?

Do you see now, why you must

Tell the world my story? Yes, tell the world

Just sing it, shout it out,

how we turned the past.

Together

We will move her story, Renata's

and Antonie's,

and his false history,

and hers,

around.

CHAPTER 42: Deprived of a Habit, I am Nun No More

2011-04-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

Had I known that Teresa was going to deprive me of my black habit after the bath -- burning it in Kitty's barrel behind the blue house -- I would have refused the bath. No matter that I hadn't bathed in weeks.

And no matter that it was a delicious and refreshing bath. Yes -- the warm water was perfect and the suds so gentle and soothing. Kitty brought one after another fresh teakettle of steaming water, until Mr. Bean knocked on the steamed up glass window of the outside door where he was standing guard.

He was getting impatient, as my bath was taking a rather long time, and it was up to him to make sure that I got back to the jail.

The curtain kept him from peering inside where I lay in the tub.

"You ladies had better be gettin' done in there pretty quick."

"Ten minutes more," Teresa yelled.

"Five not a second extra!" he shouted back.

"Mercy, Mr. Bean, I've got to wash her hair!"

"Make it fast!"

She chuckled. And under her breath, "OK, then. rub a dub dub, Renata." She kneeled, groaning as she rearranged her plump self beside the tub. With Kitty pouring lukewarm water over her hands and my head, Teresa shampooed my shorn scalp. I smelled the lavender soap. I felt the brisk work of her strong fingertips massaging my scalp. Oddly, the clean odor of the shampoo filled me with some kind of hopefulness.

My head rinsed, I was helped by the two of them out of the bathtub and into a set of towels. A wonderful sensation. I smiled and pulled the towel tight around my shoulders.

I looked around the room. "What happened to Señora? And what did you do with my habit?"

"Ah not a chance you will ever be seeing that item of clothing again my dear," Teresa said, scowling. She stepped behind me and used the second towel to shuffle dry my hair.

"But...what...I must have it back, you know I must," I said. "Otherwise, I go back to the courtroom in two days and...and what...what exactly do I wear?"

Teresa stopped toweling, and turned me around. She took my face in her two thick hands and stared hard into my eyes. Her cheeks were pink in steam from the bath.

"Renata, my dear, there is not a thing we can do, not today anyway. I gave it to Señora while you were soaking and she tried to wash it out back there where Kitty does laundry. My dear, the both of your sleeves were so rotten in dirt that they came apart in her hands -- and there was a giant tear at the bodice. I'm going to bring you another habit on my next trip." Her voice, lilted in Irish brogue, was usually music to me. But not now.

"Where is Señora, please?" I asked.

"She's taken over the cafe for Kitty, she is fixing us a good evening meal, a tortilla soup, with one of Kitty's chickens, even, and we will be bringing a bowl to you as soon as it's cooked!"

Meanwhile, Kitty emerged from the bedroom at that moment with a neat stack of clean white underclothing. "Here you go," she said, lifting it toward me like an offering. "And I have a powder blue muslin dress in the closet, I think it will fit you. It's a bit snug on me."

I felt warm tears rising out of my eyes, covering my face like the bathwater had a few minutes before. I began to shake my head. The smell of lavender now was overpowering, and it almost made me dizzy. It occurred to me now that I was still weak with the illness that had practically killed me only days before.

"If...I had known, I would have refused the bath," I whispered.

"Renata this is just silly, you will be perfectly presentable in court wearing the blue muslin. And in a week or so I will have another habit here for you." Teresa tried to lift my chin but I wasn't having any of it.

Bean was banging on the door. "I give you two more minutes or I'm coming in," he announced.

My teeth came together. "Let him in then," I seethed, feeling a deep exhaustion set in. I needed sleep. Desperately. It had been a long few days. "Let him see me naked for all I care. What does it matter, as I have nothing proper to wear!"

I was sobbing now, into the towel that Teresa had used on my hair. Kitty put her arm around my shoulders, and squeezed, Teresa had my hands. I cried harder.

"Oh Renata, I am so terribly sorry. I know this isn't easy for you," Teresa said. "And you are still so weak. Come sit down, we don't want you to get chilled."

I let her lead me to a chair. Kitty brought an afghan and covered my head as it is was a veil.

"Can you for a moment imagine how it feels?" I shuddered. "I've been caged there in that ... animal pen they call a jail for so many many weeks. And yet the whole while, I had my...I kept myself going knowing who I was. Feeling that I am, that I was, the same nun who had been dragged from the convent September 13th."

"But now my habit is gone. Gone! My veil, long since lost to me. Without them, I am... what am I Teresa? Who am I?"

She hesitated a moment. Her eyes widened, her face grew a darker pink. "It is not your habit or your veil that made you a nun," she said, her tone solemn. "It was never those who made you what you are! You are the same Renata you were before you left the convent."

I shook my head sadly. "No, no I am not," I said, quietly. "I have no idea who I am but I am definitely not the novitiate I was eight weeks ago. I have fallen too low for that."

Mr. Bean was trying the doorhandle. It was locked. He shook the handle and it rattled loudly. "I tell ya I'm going to bust down this door if you're not out here forthwith," he yelled, "and I don't care if I see her nekked."

Something in the way he said that word "nekked" -- the foolish old man -- ignited me. I stood up from the chair, letting the afghan slip off my hair, and I marched to the door, wearing just the towel. I pushed the curtain aside. I stuck my tongue out at him. "Go away," I frowned.

He must have seen that I was just in the towel because he took a quick step back. "Git yourself dressed immediately," he demanded.

I closed the curtain. I scooped up the stack of underclothes Kitty had given me. "Please if you would, show me the dress," I said, marching into Kitty's bedroom.

Teresa wanted to help but I refused. I closed the door to the bedroom and dressed myself. And when I emerged, with the pale blue belted muslin in place of my scratchy wool habit, Teresa smiled and nodded.

"God made you a beautiful woman, my dear," Teresa said. "And it is no matter what you wear. You look lovely." She handed me my old shoes, newly polished. "You are standing in nun's shoes."

I ignored her and walked toward the door. As I reached for the lock, I turned. "Kitty, I want to thank you for everything," I said.

"Of course," she smiled. "I am happy to be able to help you. I believe in you Renata and I believe in my heart that somehow, it is in God's plan that you will be set free. I have been saying extra prayers for weeks now, every time I attend mass."

I smiled. "Thank you."

I let Bean handcuff me and lead me back to the cell. The smell of the foul pail as I stepped inside the cell was so much worse than I had remembered it.

"Get this out of here," I demanded, and perhaps because of my tone, he did it right away.

CHAPTER 41: Teresa and Señora to My Rescue

2011-03-31T13:08:00.001-07:00

What finally woke me: the smell of eucalyptus. And peppermint. And Señora humming something deeply familiar as she pressed a warm wet compress against my bare chest.

I thought I heard Teresa's voice. I thought I heard her telling the jailer, Jimmy Bean, "just stand aside, Mister Bean, just stand aside. We have a mighty sick woman to attend to here, my dear sir." Her familiar brogue was a sweet boost to my spirits. I lay there in such a sweat and a fever that I wasn't sure. I was deliriously happy to hear Teresa's voice, but was Teresa really here?

"I suggest that you just stand aside Mr. Bean," she said again. "We must let Señora Ramos prepare the poultices. Because this is a sick woman here."

In the end, Bean was assigned a job: he was to keep the fire boiling under Señora's copper kettle outside the jail, while Kitty, from the cafe nearby, volunteered to stir hot towels into Señora's mixture of herbs: eucalyptus and mint, thyme and hyssop and cardamon.

Teresa, meanwhile, forked one towel after another up and out of the boiling kettle and let them hang briefly over the jail's porch railing until they could be wrung out and carried inside. Then she would slip the hot towel between the bars and take away the one that Señora had removed from my chest.

Hour after hour Señora sat with me, humming, humming, that familiar something, the old flower song, placing one after another warm towel on my chest. And finally when it grew dark, she lifted my head to her generous lap, and circled us both with a blanket, and I slept that way, parked on her soft lap, into a second day, while Kitty took Teresa home and gave her a place to sleep.

On the second day, Señora applied the mustard poultice, which is not such a pleasant affair, not like the other herbs. Teresa gave Kitty the bag of black mustard seeds, and had her grind them in a coffee grinder, then she mixed the mustard powder with enough flour and hot water to form a yellow paste.

Kitty carried the paste in a bowl back to the jail. Señora spread the paste with a wooden spoon on a large square of soft muslin soaked in hot water. She lay that on my chest -- the skin between my breasts was by now pink and raw from all the wet plasters. She covered me with the mustard paste on the muslin and then covered that with a second piece of dry cloth.

At some point, I began coughing. The congestion was loosening a little, and Señora helped me sit upright and rubbed and patted my back and made circles and now I coughed and wheezed but I was awake. Teresa made me a parade of different teas and forced me to drink. Mint tea, then thyme tea, and even, Señora produced a lemon from her basket. Kitty supplied a teapot and Teresa filled the pot with hot water and lemon slices. Soon Señora was supervising me drinking cup after cup, each rich and fragrant in lemon and each with a dollop of honey and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper.

The second night, Señora went home with Kitty to sleep, and Teresa sat with me, holding my head in her lap. I sank deep and was dreaming of wagon wheels all night. Wheels turning and turning, wheels larger and larger. I was wheezing when I woke.

But I knew right away the fever had eased. My mind had cleared. I yawned. And coughed. And couldn't stop coughing and kept spitting up phlegm into the foul pail. When I sank back to the bench in exhaustion, Teresa mopped my brow.

"My dear Renata, how you have suffered. But my dear, I believe that you've got a wee bit of color in your cheeks this morning."

Soon Kitty appeared with Señora. They had fresh rolls and hard boiled eggs and a pot of steaming chamomile tea. After we ate and drank, Teresa said she had something "quite urgent" she needed to attend to. Little did I know she was about to work a small miracle.

She disappeared from the jail, and was gone for not more than half an hour.

And yes, I am accustomed to miracles with Teresa, like the shower she hammered together at the convent, but this miracle was truly a wonder considering that I am here, a prisoner in this godforsaken cell.

Teresa returned with Jimmy Bean and he unlocked the cell, and cuffed my wrists. Teresa helped me to my feet and held me by the shoulders. "Come along now, Renata," she said, as if it was perfectly normal that I would leave the cell in her company.

"But where...what...where are we going?"

Teresa said nothing to me. Without a word, Bean led us out of the jail into the sunlight. I was weak and tired, but Teresa and Señora were on either side, supporting me.

And if I tell you what happened, I wonder if you will believe it! We crossed the dusty courtyard and went around the corner to the tiny blue house, the color of which is full of hope to me. It has such a pretty door, and surrounding it is a white picket fence. On the first floor in front is Kitty's cafe. But our destination was the back staircase. We climbed the creaking wooden stairs, and at the top, was Kitty's place.

We entered, the three of us, and there was Kitty, and behind her, I faced, for the first time in almost exactly two months, a clawfoot tub filled with warm bathwater. Kitty smiled, and stood in an apron, holding up a large towel. Bean stood outside the door, as Teresa promised she would be "guard" inside.

Teresa helped me remove my habit. I had worn it for so long, that it had taken on a stiff and crusted look. I was so dirty and yet, I had stopped smelling my own odor.

But now, I was sinking into the most delicious bathwater. I was shoulder deep. I was up to my chin. I was in heaven. I smiled. Teresa smiled back and Señora clapped her fat hands together.

My body has never felt such complete and utter warmth. I kept thinking, I cannot ever leave this bathtub.

Kitty had some fresh lavender she dropped into the bath, and I lay there, and I said a prayer of thanks, and let the water and the smell of it restore my spirit.

CHAPTER 40: What More is There to Say?

2011-03-24T11:43:00.001-07:00

My Dear Teresa,

I am chilled and feverish and I have a thick congestion burning in my chest.

I write with the hope and prayer that you will come at once. And that you will bring with you the herbs that Señora Ramos uses so effectively for lung congestion. A doctor came to see me and he mumbled something about pleurisy.

All I know is that I am shivering and sweating and when I start to cough I cannot stop and when I breathe I wheeze and I cannot catch my breath.

When you come I will tell you about the trial -- Teresa, let me just say that DeLuria has made such a profound mess of things -- worse than I ever thought possible -- and I have almost begun to pity him.

Almost.

DeLuria has turned out to be more of a fool than even I dreamed he could be. So astonishing is his incompetence that if I had the funds to hire a real attorney, I would probably have little difficulty getting this charade of a trial overturned on appeal.

His defense?

Teresa, he strode in front of the jury and delivered one of the most implausible opening statements imaginable. He made a statement that was so outrageous that I could see the jurors smirking and shifting uncomfortably in their chairs.

I could feel them staring at me. I saw one or two shaking their heads.

He began by standing and approaching the jury and with great flourish, directing the jury's attention my way. He was wearing what I have come to call his silly shirt, a powder blue affair with satin-edged ruffles at the chest. When he walked his boots made a loud clatter on the wooden floor. His hair was pomaded and his mustache freshly waxed and twirled and all of that made him look even sillier.

He started with a question.

"When you gaze at the nun sitting over there in the sunlight, what do you see?"

Immediately he answered: "You see a young woman with a face that is the picture of innocence. You see a slight woman with wispy hair, and a sweet, quiet expression. You see her hands folded so delicately and resting on the table."

He pivoted on the heel of one black boot and with his hands behind his back, he passed slowly in front of the men waiting to pass judgement on me.

Then he stopped and faced the judge. "But there is something you do not see!"

He paused and then directed their attention back to me by pointing a finger in my direction.

His voice dropped into practically a whisper. His eyes grew large and then, Teresa, I swear, he went...crazy.

"My friends, I want you to look again at this innocent young woman. Because what you see is not really what you see. The woman sitting before you is afflicted by a devilish disorder of the mind. You may never have heard of this disorder before, because it is only in recent years that it has been observed."

My heart started slamming against my chest. I was so frightened to hear the rest of what this imbecile was about to say that I couldn't look at him. I closed my eyes and held my breath and that's when I felt the first burning sensation in my chest!

"Members of the jury, it is my job to explain to you, to prove to you, that this young woman who sits before you may answer to the name Sister Renata, and she may indeed be a devoted nun of the Dominican order. But my friends, there is more to this woman than meets the eye."

Pause. Silence. Shock.

Me still holding my breath. All I could hear was the clock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

He went on.

"Even though it appears that you are seeing just one person sitting here, one innocent-looking nun, that is not the case. The nun sitting here suffers from a frightening disorder, a most troubling disorder."

He swirled around and pointed one hand -- finger extended -- at me, and the other hand -- finger extended -- across the room at the jury. For a moment it looked as if he was going to twirl across the courtroom floor, or worse, perform some kind of bizarre dance in front of the judge.

"It may be difficult to imagine," he said in his most theatrical voice, "but what we have here is a woman who has two separate identities, two separate selves, and these selves are pulling her apart." He looked up toward the ceiling and started shouting. "You must understand that through no fault of her own, and because of a deep malady from which she suffers, this poor nun is not just one person. Friends of the jury, Sister Renata has a double personality!"

He walked over now and stood before me. I shrunk back, away from him. He raised his hands heavenward and brought them together and slowly down in front of him, as if symbolically, he was slicing me in two! Then he turned to the jury, his tone pleading, as if he was in desperate need for them to believe what he was saying.

"My dear friends, I hope I will be able to convince you that this poor woman has two individual selves living inside her body! And one of them is trying to destroy the God-fearing self you see here today."

Yes, Teresa, DeLuria's defense was that I suffer from some kind of malady that gives me a multiple personality -- this notion of two people as one is something he apparently read about in a magazine! I have only seen the magazine from a distance -- it's called Harper's New Monthly and it carries an article about a woman from Pennsylvania named Mary Reynolds who had two alternating personalities rolled into one!

DeLuria actually pulled said magazine out of his bag and waved it at the jury -- as if, Dear God, that could possibly help me!

At the sight of his doing that, I covered my face in utter horror. I wanted to stand up and scream, "PLEASE STOP. Please, no more, you're only making matters worse!"

Fortunately, the prosecutor, Phillip Jackson, did it for me. A portly man with a head of silver hair, Jackson practically knocked over his chair standing up.

"Objection, your Honor!" He crowed. "Mr. DeLuria has not presented us with a doctor or any expert list of any kind, he has nothing on record, no one qualified who would attest to this ... this preposterous idea of a personality disorder. I move that this opening statement be stricken from the record!"

The Judge agreed and instructed the jury to disregard DeLuria's statement.

At which point, DeLuria was, literally, speechless. The judge adjourned the trial and there was no immediate word as to when it might resume.

I must tell you Teresa, but at the moment DeLuria gathered up his magazine and papers and left the courtroom wearing those foolish ruffles, and that hair of his all slicked and pomaded, I felt sorry for him. Oh, yes, I felt fury to my depths as well. But he was such a miserable sight I actually found myself feeling a bit of pity for the man!

How could DeLuria deceive me like this? Never once telling me that this is what he planned? How could he fail me so miserably?

I am so weary. I sit here with a cup of tea. That woman from the cafe has started bringing me food. She is a good woman. How she convinced the jailer to let her in, I'm not sure. When I asked, she just nodded and smiled and said, "I'll take care of it."

I am here Teresa. Waiting for you. And praying you will come soon.

CHAPTER 39: Trying to DEFINE THE SELF WHO IS SISTER RENATA!!

2011-03-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

OK, I am about to suggest a rather unorthodox idea -- that I have multiple selves operating inside my head, and these selves are often at odds with each other.

I will understand if you want to stop reading right now, please feel free.

Meanwhile, for those of you who will see this through, I can tell you that I have a Yale psychologist involved in the debate.

And if you are sitting there going, wait, she is supposed to be writing Sister Renata's trial scene, you are absolutely right! I am diverging from attending to the Sister Mysteries blogga saga. Clearly I'm stalling for time writing the trial scene, and I know that and I do apologize.

But since I'm not making a dime on any of this writing, at least not right now, I figure I get to do exactly what I want to.

So here is a question for you, just to get us started: what exactly is the SELF?

No small question. But one that's clearly important to each and every one of us.

The issue of self has come up in the Happiness class that I am teaching this spring at the University at Albany, SUNY. We are reading a variety of fascinating texts that inquire into the nature of the self, particularly as it relates to human happiness.

One of the books -- called Flow -- is a classic text by one of the world's most famous psychologists, Hungarian Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (please don't even think about asking me to pronounce his name). He raises the issue of self in his discussion of what activities really make people happy.

Csikszentmihalyi contends that happiness lies in so-called "optimal" experiences, that is, in activities -- from rock climbing to singing to cooking to playing guitar to poetry-writing -- that immerse us body and mind into what we are doing. Flow experiences are those in which human beings lose themselves.

You sit down to play piano, and hours disappear. Or you begin painting a landscape, and the next thing you know it's sunset and you're still trying to get the horizon the right color.

These activities absorb us heart and soul. They involve a tremendous focus of attention, and in our absorption, we lose our "selves" as we enjoy them.

For those of us fortunate enough to have "flow" activities in our lives, we know the bliss of forgetting our "selves" and all our woes for long stretches of time. Csikszentmihalyi contends it is in these activities that people find true happiness. Of course he also acknowledges that the practice of yoga and meditation -- which also absorb our body, mind and attention -- can also lead to a kind of timelessness and the sensation that the self is immersed, or "lost" in an awareness of something larger, a divine universe, perhaps.

Other readings we've done in the happiness class also raise questions about the notion of self. In Sharon Begley's excellent book, Train the Mind, Change the Brain, she discusses an array of new research by neuroscientists and psychologists working in collaboration with Buddhist monks who are long-time practitioners of meditation.

The research emerging from this novel collaboration is rather startling: it shows that the brain is infinitely plastic or mutable and that focused mental activity like meditation or mindfulness can physically change the meat of the brain, making a person more focused, more compassionate, and perhaps, more happy.

It is a fascinating book, describing a fascinating line of research, and it raises an important question -- if the brain is in flux, changing in response to new input and activity, and if behavior is also changing, then what about the self? Where in the network of brain connections does the self -- or the soul -- reside? And when the neurons of the brain change, does the self also change?

Because much of the research that Begley discusses involves studies of Buddhist monks, that question is addressed within the context of the Buddhist tradition. And thus, not surprisingly, the answer is kind of... Buddhist!

Contrary to popular notions of a fixed "self" at the helm steering our personal "THIS IS WHO I AM" ships, the Buddhist notion of the self is one that is never really fixed. Like everything else in the universe, the Buddhist "self" is always in flux, an ever-changing concept.

Perhaps the reading that has really tossed the class up in the air the most over the nature of the self is a provocative article by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, who suggests in The Atlantic magazine that the study of happiness is complicated not so much by what we know or don't know about being happy but by what we don't know about the nature of the "I."

It is Bloom who suggests that we are more than one self, and that each of our selves has its own agenda, and is devoted to finding its own route toward happiness.

So for example if you are a lover of chocolate cupcakes thick in icing, BUT you also love the idea of wearing a size 2 polka dot bikini to the beach, you are facing the classic problem that Bloom presents. The cupcake-loving self and the would-be bikini-wearing self are going to compete for your attention!

"...Within each brain," Bloom writes, "different selves are continually popping in and out of existence. They have different desires, and they fight for control -- bargaining with, deceiving, and plotting against one another."

Bloom's article has got all of us in class thinking and asking the obvious. Is it really fair to ascribe a "self" to each and every desire that pops into our head? If I'm suddenly dying to wear studded leather jackets, and to put piercings and tatoos all over my body, does that add another self (or set of selves) to my existing myriad of selves?

It hardly makes sense. And yet, what his article gets us to ask is that question I started out with: what exactly is the SELF?

Is it simply the many impulses that pull us to act? Is each self an outgrowth of each of our ever-changing desires? Something tells me that this notion of the self is rather absurdly limited. There has to be more to the "self" than whatever it is we happen to find pleasurable at any given moment.

And even if we were to equate selves with individual desires, should we really consider all desires as being equal? Aren't some aspirations or impulses more worthy than others?

We can't possibly give equal weight to a "self" who aspires to be a brain surgeon and a "self" who gets drunk and drives his BMW into the side of a bridge?

Bloom himself suggests that certain "selves" must be, from time to time, "binded," that is, held back from expression. (Thank God!)

He explores the idea that people often engage in "self-binding" -- so that, for example, a dominant self -- the one, say, who gave up smoking and wants to remain healthy -- prevents a rascally other self from running out and buying a pack of cigarettes.

Bloom points out something else about multiple selves that at first surprised me. But then I thought about it. He wrote:

"The population of a single head is not fixed; we can add more selves. In fact, the capacity to spawn multiple selves is central to pleasure. After all, the most common leisure activity is not sex, eating, drinking, drug use, socializing, sports or being with the ones we love. It is by a long shot, participating in experiences we know are not real -- reading novels, watching movies and TV, daydreaming and so forth."

The sentence that follows implicates all readers in this idea of multiple selves. Bloom says: "Enjoying fiction requires a shift in selfhood. You give up your own identity and try on the identities of other people..." other fictional characters.

All of this resonates deeply with me (and my multiple selves.) Particularly my "self" who loves to read, and my other "self" who would if she could watch a new movie each night of the week. I am big into LOSING MY SELVES in film and books!

I am also big into writing fiction, and creating fictional selves.

Which brings me quite conveniently back to Sister Mysteries, and the reason I am writing this blog book.

As I said when I started this post, I have multiple selves in my head. In particular, I have Sister Renata occupying my brain. And I suppose, I also have Antonie, her lecherous cousin, inside me too (though I know I'm not as attached to him.)

I also have the old housekeeper, Señora Ramos, cooking and dusting and sweeping around in my brain somewhere. And I've got Renata's best friend at the convent, Sister Teresa, praying and laughing and thinning carrots in the garden. At times, Mother Yolla and Father Ruby are in the mix of madness in my head.

Ah, the many selves of a fiction writer.

Paul Bloom at Yale would probably have something to say about me. (But not necessarily something good.)

But I would be curious to know what he would say about writers who have in themselves a number of fictional selves, selves that are represented as images. As action. But primarily, I think, as voices. When I write Sister Renata, I am writing Sister Renata's voice.

Similarly, I write her lecherous cousin Antonie, in his voice. And on and on.

To me, a fictional self or character, is, simply, a voice. That character manifests herself as a voice that speaks to and through me. It tells me her story. Her "self" is a narrative."

Perhaps, in the end, all of us, all of our real selves, are similar. Maybe a "self" is just a narrating consciousness. It's the voice inside, the one that keeps reporting, relentlessly, from the inside, narrating what is happening, what is being observed and lived. That voice (or voices) tell the continuing story of our lives. That voice accumulates all of the details of that narration, an accumulation which adds up to a life story. A life story that is passed into short and long-term memory.

We are the stories we tell ourselves. My self is the voice (or voices) I hear in my head (some of which I'd like to send packing.)

It is the voices of characters speaking to and through me. it is the desires and observations making themselves apparent to me sometimes moment by moment.

When writers write, Sister Mysteries, they narrate the voices of their characters. They narrate their fictional selves.

Since Sister Renata is one of my selves, I've got her voice, her narrative in my head. The question about this fictional character has always been, is she my PAST SELF? Did I actually live in her body?

That is a question I cannot answer. I can say this much: I can feel the way Renata feels when she touches her rosary beads. I can feel the way she feels when the straw in her mattress scratches her back. I can feel the way she feels smelling the foul pail spilling over in her prison cell. I can feel the way she feels when she is lying beside Sister Teresa on the blanket looking up through the live oak trees into the blue sky.

All this has been true for a long time. Sister Renata has been a self in me, or me in her, for 16 years now. It's been such a long and close relationships that I don't want to let go of her.

And so, I know that the reason I'm having a little trouble writing the ending to her story (and why I've been stalling the last few weeks writing the trial scene) is that I feel like I'm getting closer to the denouement of her tale. And if that's true, and the book is going to end soon, then I have to deal with a rather disturbing question:

What will I do when I don't have Sister Renata to write anymore? How will I let go of this very important self?

I wish I could answer that question, but the honest answer is, I'm not sure.

CHAPTER 38: Sometimes I Hate Writing What I Have To Write!!

2011-03-07T10:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I get impatient with my own story. Sometimes I want to hurry it along. Sometimes I am tempted to cut corners and skip writing chapters so I can get more quickly to the end.

READERS OF THE NUN STORY KNOW THAT In the last chapter, the nun fainted in the courtroom. And so the murder trial -- she's accused of killing her cousin Antonie -- had to stop. I liked writing that chapter a lot.

But now it's time to resume the court proceedings and I find myself resisting.

Not because I can't imagine how the trial goes forward, because after all, I was there, or at least, I feel like I was there, back in 1883, in California, when Sister Renata is on trial.

It's just that I don't want to write what I've got to write.

But it needs to be done. The nun must be convicted. Otherwise how will she -- we -- go free?

How will the reader see the dramatic episodes that free her? How will I show them the miracle that Señora brings?

For some reason I find myself thinking about the Old Testament story of Exodus.

There are the Jews, mired down as slaves in Egypt. The Pharoah won't let them go -- not until Moses brings ten plagues upon Egypt. (This is the story Jews celebrate at Passover, the passage of the Jews from Egypt.)

The Passover story wouldn't be nearly so dramatic if you didn't have the ten plagues.

According to one source, "The 10 plagues were a divine demonstration of power and displeasure designed to persuade Pharaoh" to free the Jews.

There was a lot of drama in those ten plagues. After all, how often does it come to pass that water turns to blood? How frequently do frogs "come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading troughs."

How often are we faced with epidemic proportions of lice and flies, locusts and boils and diseased cattle?

When I consider the story of Exodus, I think, OK, I understand. A good story needs drama and plenty of build-up.

And then I see my own story in a new light. I see that the nun's trial is part of the dramatic build-up.

So there is no way around it. I have to write the courtroom proceedings.

So, now, I might as well stop whining and wasting time and just handcuff myself to my Mac here and...

write it. RIGHT HERE:

RENATA'S DIARY
Old Vallejo Jail
November 13, 1883

The jailer slams his keys against the bars of the cell to wake me up the next morning. The sky is black outside the window and I can see only a crisp white curve of moon.

I sit up. "What..what time is it?" I ask, thinking it must be the middle of the night.

"It's time for you to get up," he says. "You got ten minutes before we go." He hobbles away before I can ask him where we are going.

Soon enough, I find out. He leads me in handcuffs out of the jail to the tiny blue house I've stared at for so many weeks. It sits low and tidy across the dusty courtyard and it has an inviting front porch.

When we get closer, I read a sign over the door: "Kitty's Corner Cafe." The door has a large window covered in a lace curtain and a brass bell beside it, and now the jailer rings the bell.

Even standing out here on the porch, I can smell breakfast cooking inside. Bacon. Toast.

The sky above my head is lightening up. Overhead it is turning a sugary blue.

A young woman -- her hair pulled tightly away from her face -- moves aside the lace curtain and peers out the window. She unlocks the door and without a word, the jailer, whose name is Jimmy Bean, leads me inside. The smell of food is so powerful that it makes me a little dizzy.

"Mornin' Kitty Pole," the jailer says.

"Mornin' Jimmy Bean." She points to a table in the corner by the window.

"No, now we don't mean to be bothering up your morning. And we sure do not want to be attractin' no public attention," he says.

"No problem t'all," the woman he calls Kitty says. She leads and he follows and of course I tag behind as we cross to the back corner and we sit down at a table with a crisp white tablecloth.

He smells of tobacco and whiskey. I smell of so many things I wish I didn't know.

The young woman has large dark eyes and she wears a starched white apron. "What will it be Jimmy?"

"Bring the coffee right away and then fix up some eggs and bacon, toast if you will. Court's payin. Just please be quick about it."

She nods and shoots a quick dark glance at me and then leaves the room through a curtained door. She returns in a moment with two mugs of coffee. She sets one down in front of me. I stare into the cup. Suddenly I feel tears gathering behind my eyes. I realize that this is the first cup of coffee I've had -- or even smelled -- since September 13th, the day they whisked me out of the convent and into that hellish cell.

"Why are you doing this?" I whisper. Tears are falling onto the tablecloth but I am unable to wipe my eyes.

The jailer is putting a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee. "Warn't my idea ma'am. The judge's instructions. Told me to get you a decent breakfast before the trial this mornin'. No more of your fancy fainting tricks." He snorts in derision.

I sniffle.

"Well, unless you plan to feed me with a spoon, Jimmy, I cannot do a thing with these on," I say, nodding to the handcuffs on my wrists in my lap.

He fumbles for the key and unlocks the handcuffs. I sit with my hands limp on the table. I feel like I am unable to move. But then the coffee reaches up to me.

The woman is back with two plates, heaped with food. She sets the plate before me. Scrambled eggs. Crisp bacon. Potatoes. Toast.

"Anything else you need Jimmy?" she asks.

"Yep," He scratches his stubbly jaw. "I want some a that green chile sauce if ya don't mind. That kind you serve at lunch."

"Sure."

I stare at the plate. The food looks so good it doesn't seem real.

"Get eatin while the gettin's good," he says. "We gotta be outta here before the breakfast crowd appears."

I lift my fork and take a small bite of the eggs. They are fluffy and light. I pick up the bacon. In the old days I would never have eaten with my fingers, especially being so dirty.

But now I am indifferent to the filth. I place a bit of the bacon on my tongue, and leave it there. I swear I'm dreaming.

The young woman brings the chili sauce back. It's green as pea soup. "You OK?" she asks me.

I look up. She's frowning down at me but in a kind concerned way. I am about to say that I can't suddenly eat a full breakfast after weeks of what I've been used to. Grey gruel. Slop. Greasy stew.

"You are a wonderful cook," I whisper. "It...it tastes...just heavenly."

She looks at me with those dark eyes. Nods. Smiles. "Glad for that," she says. And then she disappears through the curtain.

I eat most of the scrambled eggs and all of the bacon. But there isn't time for me to finish the toast. The young woman wraps it in a napkin for me. The potatoes stay behind.

She hands me the toast folded neatly into the napkin. "Thank you," I say. The jailer reaches over and snatches the toast away.

"I'll be takin that if ya don't mind," he says.

Kitty turns to me. "I am...mighty happy you came," she says. And then she nods and stares at me with those large dark eyes. "And I hope that your day... goes... your way."

As the jailer replaces the handcuffs and leads me outside into the courtyard, a shaft of sunlight shines straight into the window of the restaurant. I glance back. Kitty is standing beside the window staring at me.

Jimmy leads me back to my cell and I am greeted by the smell of the foul pail. After the delightful breakfast odors at Kitty's, the pail's stench is almost unbearable. The pail is full and like always I have to yell at Jimmy to take it away.

A few minutes before nine a.m., the Sheriff is there, and the two of them lead me to the courtroom. Deluria greets me and we take our seats. At nine sharp the judge appears. We stand and the first thing he asks is if I'm "fit to stand trial today."

For a moment I think it's me he wants to hear from. But then Deluria answers. "She is indeed, your honor," he replies.

"Well, good thing, because we need to get on with it," he says.

The jury traipses in and I stare at a motley group of twelve men -- one of them exceedingly plump, and one exceedingly short -- who file slowly into the courtroom. They do not look at me, at least not at first.

But I look at them, and then the worst fear comes over me. How can I possibly get a fair trial from this group? And how is it that these men constitute a jury of my peers? How is it that a jury of my peers has not a single woman?

After some preliminaries, the attorneys approach the bench and ask the judge some questions.

The judge keeps removing his spectacles and wiping them.

Finally, the attorneys leave the bench and the judge asks the prosecutor and Deluria to make their opening statements.

I hate the fact that Deluria represents me. I tried my best to fire him because he is such a fool and a coward. But that first day in court, the judge infuriated me when he told me I wouldn't be allowed to represent myself.

As the prosecutor launches into his statement, his voice booms.

He lays out the crime I am accused of committing. He apologizes that he has to shock the courtroom with the gory details of cousin Antonie's murder.

I've heard it all before. Or should I say, I've read it all before. The story of the murder that my cousin wrote. Practically verbatim, it comes spewing from the prosecutor's mouth.

And then he dabbles in my misdeeds and alleged scandals. My Spanish dancing. The visits to my cousin's hacienda, and the seductive way in which I would I supposedly shave my cousin's face.

He dramatizes his silly speeches by lifting one arm and jabbing his long finger in my direction. I keep looking away.

I sit there, trying not to think about coffee and scrambled eggs and bacon. And praying that Deluria will surprise me and find a way to present the truth of my case to the jury.

I'm not sure why but when I close my eyes, it's those dark eyes of Kitty Pole's that fill my whole vision.

CHAPTER 37: In California, Torn Between Two Time Periods

2011-02-24T11:59:00.000-08:00

It started at lunch, on a hike through the astonishing Joshua Tree National Park.

Those starkly beautiful trees, the spiky limbs reaching skyward toward the pure blue desert sky. Everywhere you turn, there are gigantic piles of coffee-brown boulders scattered on the desert floor. Some of the rocks look like monstrous loaves of unbaked bread. Some look like God's idea of modern art.

I am eating a tuna wrap, sitting with my husband beside one such monster sculpture when it starts.

It's not the Joshua tree that does it. It's the prickly leaves of the live oaks -- growing in abundance around the picnnic table where we sit. Suddenly I am "streaming." Shifting back and forth, sitting side by side there with my husband eating lunch, and then sitting side by side with Sister Teresa, beneath the live oaks on the hillside behind the convent.

She is telling me to write. She is telling me to write the early history of my life with Antonie. She is saying it might help me.

Writing does help. And maybe the reason I am feeling so incredibly torn in two today is that I haven't written in several days. Writers who don't write start to go a little nuts.

And here, today, in Joshua Tree, it is happening to me.

I finish the sandwich. I sit there, just staring out into the extrarordinary desert. I try to calm myself. I try to tell myself that I am here in California for a week's vacation. I want to enjoy this visit. I want to enjoy this present moment.

I don't want to go buzzing back to 1883.

I start to worry: I am trapped in this time travel story. I will never escape. Even when I finish the story, even when I finally free the nun, which I am going to do, I will still be torn between two time periods, just like I am today.

I feel the anxiety grow. I don't know what to do to calm myself.

I keep trying to tell myself to enjoy the day, to focus on being HERE, NOW, here at this astonishingly beautiful, one of a kind, landscape.

But nothing helps. No matter what I tell myself, that awful feeling persists.

Staring up through the twisted limbs of the prickly live oaks, I realize why it is so bad today: it is precisely because I am in California that I am having this torn-in-two feeling. This stark landscape is throwing me bodily into the kind of landscape that Renata inhabited. The live oak trees. The azure blue skies. The warm dry air. The reddish brown, powdery sand.

ALL OF IT CALLS ME, BODILY, BACK THERE.

I wander back to the picnic table. I tell my husband that I am feeling squirmy, that I am rolling around in time, feeling like I am trying to be in two places at once.

Thankfully, he is the kind of guy who understands the artist's mind. Yes, it can feel like a form of insanity sometimes, being a writer, inhabiting other worlds, but most of the time, it can be fun. And not dangerous to anyone.

He doesn't flip out. He doesn't overreact. His attitude is, just relax. Just accept the feeling, whatever it is, in a mindful kind of way and it will pass.

A little later, we take a hike through a marvelous canyon called Hidden Valley. At one point in history, cattle rustlers would "hide" droves of angus in this rock-strewn paradise and nobody knew where the cattle had been squirreled away.

We walk for a while, and then we climb onto two gigantic rocks. My husband and I have the same idea: we will sit there in the desert sun for a while and just meditate.

It helps. I sink cross-legged into the rock, let my eyes settle on one spot in the distance.

I stop fighting it. I feel the immediacy of the sun, the rock, the air, the slight breeze. The quiet settles around me. And finally, the torn-in-two feeling passes.

Twenty minutes later, we are walking again, and photographing the golden teddy bear cholla and the spiky prickly pear cactus.

Ah, thank you. The torn-in-two feelings are gone.

We spend the rest of the afternoon at Joshua Tree, and it is a lovely afternoon.

CHAPTER 36: "Castenata": I Collapse in the Courtroom, but Señora Comes with a Miracle!

2011-02-18T05:39:00.001-08:00

NOTE TO READERS: This chapter of SISTER MYSTERIES is cross-posted with CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR of the nun tale, CASTENATA!!

Old Vallejo Jail
October 29, 1883

Dear Teresa,

Maybe it was the ghastly heat. Or the unrelenting sunlight. The courtroom baked me like an oven. The last thing I remember, I was standing before the bench and the judge was reciting my crime. And then I'm lying face down, my eyes closed. My tongue tasting the filth of dust and dirt on the wooden floor.

I could not move. I felt rough hands reaching beneath my shoulders and scooping me upright. I hung there like a bag of feed.

I remember being held. I remember seeing the lawyer, DeLuria, his ruffled blue shirt swirling before my eyes in a dizzying circle. I remember my stomach making circles too and then it leaped up and I was heaving. Out came the slop of gruel that I had eaten in the cell.

And then I hear someone yell, "Catch her," because I was falling forward once more.

And then when I next surface I am being swiftly carried arms and feet out of the courtroom, and I lay somewhere in the dark.

They had brought me to the courtroom, shackled, at 9 a.m. I know this was the time because there was a round clock on one wall. All I could think was, my life will be decided beneath the thin black hands of this big white clock.

My head was dizzy right from the start. My heart felt like it was pumping twice as fast as it normally does. I had placed my veil and wimple on my head. But my face was dirty, and I know -- I could smell myself -- that my habit was a disgrace.

I sat beside DeLuria and we didn't speak. I had already told him what to say. I was already playing lawyer, I'd told him weeks before the strategy that he should use in my defense. But would he?

We sat for ten or fifteen minutes before the judge arrived. In a dark robe. A head of white waves. As soon as the judge entered, my dizziness increased. I felt coated in sweat. I stood and could feel myself sway. DeLuria glanced my way. Frowned. I felt the blood drain from my face.

We sat. The two lawyers went to the bench. I set my face into my fingers. I saw you in my mind Teresa. And I saw Señora. I saw her face.

DeLuria returned to where I was seated and then it was time for me to stand and approach the bench. I looked to DeLuria, waiting for him to take my arm. He didn't. He simply looked at me as if I was a filthy dog. Too dirty to touch. I glared at him and my head grew even more loose.

I stood and with your face and Señora's in my mind, I walked forward.

And stood.

With my collapse, of course, the proceedings halted for the day. I was so weak that there was no way I could walk on my own power back to the jail.

I lay in the dark for who knows how long.

I dreamed. I went back to the stone grotto behind the hacienda. The one Antonie's father built for his mother. The one where my cousin and I used to go so long ago.

The grotto is low. It is tiny. It is surrounded in roses. There is a statue of the Virgin there.

I kneel before the statue. I look up. The stones are so close I could kiss them. I touch the smooth surface of the stone.

I close my eyes I hear. Señora praying. I hear her saying the Hail Mary in Spanish.

The whispering. The whispering grows louder. You are praying too. The two of you are kneeling with me in the grotto. We are beginning another Hail Mary.

We are saying the rosary.

Señora speaks. I know Teresa I know this isn't possible. I know. But I heard her so clearly, lying there in the dark.

"Mi'ja, mi'ja," she whispered. She stroked my brow.

This isn’t possible, I know.

The stones are smooth in the grotto. In places the stones are coated in dark scum and patches of bright green slime. Sometimes there is water dripping from the center stone. It passes right behind the Virgin’s head. It falls into the dirt and forms a muddy spot on the ground.

Antonie and me, we made up this old story about the water. We used to say that in the very old days the water used to fall into a little pool where babies were baptized. Sick people and crippled kids would come to the pool too. They would take silver cups and fill them with the holy water. They would drink the water and be healed. They would kneel in the pools and walk again.

I am talking out loud in the dark. And then the door opens.

I blink. Señora is there. I swear she was there. The old woman wore a shawl all covered in roses. She walked toward me and reached for my hand and placed something there. Something in beads.

And much later, when they finally moved me back to the cell, when I was well enough to walk very very slowly back to the jail, I knew I had not dreamed this.

Because you see, here, the rainbow rosary. Señora's own personal rosary beads were in my hand.

CHAPTER 35: DOES THIS BOY'S STORY PROVE REINCARNATION? DOES MINE?

2011-02-10T11:46:00.000-08:00

Readers of this blog book know that I have often pondered the question of reincarnation.

Do people have past lives?

DID I have a past life?

DID I LIVE BEFORE -- specifically back in 1883 -- as the wrongly-accused and falsely-imprisoned nun, Sister Renata?

I feel so deeply connected to Renata that there are times when I think, yes, well, maybe I have lived before.

Maybe I did inhabit another "self" or "consciousness."

After all, Renata's life back in 1883 feels completely real to me. So real that sometimes it feels more real to me than my "REAL" life.

I can slip into the nun's life -- and into her prison cell with her -- so easily.

I can tell you anything -- absolutely anything -- you want to know about her. I can tell you exactly how the scratchy wool habit feels at the skin of my waist. I can tell you how hard it is to follow Sister Teresa up the golden California hillside behind the convent. I can tell you what the sky looks like peeking through the tiny pointed leaves of the spreading live oaks.

I can lie on that straw-filled mattress in the tiny room at the convent staring up at that crucifix overhead.

I can see the dining room at Antonie's hacienda, the oak wood of the thick trestle table.

I can SMELL the bowl of gardenias that Señora Ramos -- the old Mexican housekeeper -- placed on the table.

I can see the door, the hammered door knob. I can feel it in my hand.

I can see -- and smell -- Antonie's sickbed. Even worse, I can smell the horrific odor from the dreadful foul pail sitting in Renata's cell.

All of it. I've lived all of it, every minute detail of it, or so it feels sometimes. I've lived it for the past 16 years, and I am living it still.

My writer friend Peg, who has seen me through all 16 years of the writing and the misery when I wasn't writing, agrees that everything I've written in Castenata feels absolutely real. So real that she says there is no reason to change a word of the Castenata story. It is as if I am writing the truth, describing a set of circumstances that really happened.

But at the same time, i often step back from the story and GO, no. You never lived a past life. You simply have a wildly-overactive imagination. You have a channel into a set of fictive experiences that are very strong. You are a fiction writer, not a time traveler. You don't believe in past-life regression therapy even if one of your own shrinks told you to consult such a therapist.

OK. So now comes this amazing, no, astonishing, TV news report out of Cleveland about a boy who appears to have had a past life. My sister, Holly Ricci, who often brings to my attention what I will call "spiritually alternative" facts and stories, Facebooked about it.

I noted her Facebook entry this morning, but decided to let it sit, thinking, "How good can this story be?"

And then my niece, Sarah Donohue, who happens to be a Hollywood producer on assignment filming a new movie in Louisiana, weighed in with ""What an amazing story!!!!" and I knew I had to watch it.

Sit back folks, because this is one news feature story that you just CANNOT MISS. This is a story you cannot ignore. This is the story (also reported by the BBC) of 11-year old boy, James Leininger, who at age two was drawing horrifically graphic images of war planes crashing into the ocean. This is the story of a boy who had violent nightmares about having been shot down in a plane by the Japanese.

Somehow, this child seems to have come into this world with the consciousness of a WW II fighter pilot whose plane ended up in a fiery crash, falling into the ocean off the coast of Japan!

How did this young boy know the NAMES of the older men that he eventually met, the names of the other soldiers in his platoon?

How did he know the nickname of the soldier's sister, the nickname that she had as a little girl? How did he know that the soldier's mother had painted an image of the sister WHEN NOBODY BUT THE SISTER HERSELF KNEW this fact?

Oh well, so, watch for yourself. See what you think.

I am inclined to believe what I see here, because the report is awfully convincing. But if you don't believe it, that's fine too.

I have said numerous times, writing Sister Mysteries and Castenata, that I just don't know what to think about past lives and medical intuitives and a lot of other phenomena that cannot be "rationally" explained.

I am not sure what to think.

But I was thinking earlier today that maybe consciousness is like a download file. Maybe each of us has our own particular download file, and when we die, that file occasionally gets swept up into into somebody else.

"I dunno," was my husband's response, when I presented to him my DOWNLOAD THEORY OF REINCARNATION.

We were eating lunch. He just finished writing his huge book about health care.

A very rational, intelligent book.

And I am writing this BOOK. Actually it's not a book in the traditional sense. I have taken to calling Sister Mysteries, and the related nun story, Castenata, a BLOGGA SAGA.

I told my husband that he really HAD to watch the TV news report about young James Leininger.

He smiled, and agreed that he would watch it.

But then, as he was munching on his salad, he looked up at me and he smiled and said. "You know honey, I don't want to come back again."

And then he laughed. "Once is enough. Life's a lot of work. I mean I'm a happy guy and all but still, it's a lot of work."

I had to laugh. As always, my husband really does have his head screwed on right. He makes a lot of sense, and I might just agree, that once is enough.

Except of course if you are forced to live as a nun, back in 1883, and you are sitting there, rotting in prison.

NOTE: The photos above show at left, James Huston, the fighter pilot who crashed off the coast of Japan in WW II. At right is the 11-year old, James Leininger, whose parents are now convinced he is the reincarnated soldier.

CHAPTER 34: So WHY do We Write What We Write? And What Are The TRUEST Stories We Tell?

2011-02-08T13:06:00.001-08:00

Not long ago, I found this photo of myself in some old album.

Me dressed up as a ...

flamenco dancer.

I had forgotten all about this photo. I had forgotten that I ever wore this silly little costume.

I'm posed in the backyard of my childhood home, standing in front of Dad's rock garden. (He had the prettiest mounds of purple and pink flox every spring! And lovely purple irises grew everywhere.)

It is the day of my ballet recital. I'm perhaps 11 (or 12?) years old, still as flat-chested as Mom's ironing board. I am posing in the moments before we drove to the IBM country club in Poughkeepsie, where my elegant ballet teacher, Mildred Ruenes, a lovely red-headed lady who insisted we learn the proper French names for each ballet step, staged our recitals in the auditorium.

It's hard for me to see this part of the photo very clearly, but I think that I am wearing eye make-up and a bit of rouge and lipstick. And if that's in fact true, then my mother probably had to do a bit of "negotiating" with Dad, to get him to allow me to be made up.

I think I may still have the skirt in the attic, stuffed inside a black garbage bag along with my kids' old Halloween costumes.

I had forgotten about this flamenco costume. The turquoise and black satin ruffles. The band of turquoise sequence that edged the vest.

I had forgotten that I carried a fan, and a couple of roses. I'd forgotten, until after I saw the photo, that at one point in the dancing, I wedged a rose between my teeth. (Wait, am I imagining that part?)

I had forgotten that I performed on stage as a flamenco dancer. I had forgotten all about the fact that for one ballet recital at least, I was a flamenco dancer. I also had forgotten that once a very long time ago, my Dad went on a business trip and came home bringing me a set of castanets as a souvenir. Long ago I lost those castanets.

Why is all of this rushing back to me now? And how does it all fit in here?

If someone had asked me, before rediscovering this photo, why it is I've spent 16 YEARS writing a story about a nun who turns into a flamenco dancer, I would never have mentioned any of these facts. For as I say, I'd forgotten all of that.

And who knows how they played into my psyche as I became drawn into writing "Castenata," the BIZARRE TALE OF THE NUN WHO TURNS INTO A FLAMENCO DANCER.

Lately, though, I've been thinking about all of this "personal flamenco history," in part because, in my classroom lately, I have been talking to my students about the "narrative selves" that produce stories. An author can have any number of narrators, or "narrative selves."

In my short story class at SUNY Albany -- which I teach in part as a creative writing class, encouraging the students to respond to stories with their own original stories -- we have been immersed in an examination of narrative point of view: why do writers pick the first-person in which to write? Why do they settle on the "omniscient" or all-knowing narrator?

I bring up these issues in order to make the students think about the relationship between author and narrator. I tell them that writers are often working through deeply-embedded psychological conflicts when they write. Conflicts that they can hardly pinpoint. Conflicts that emerge out of their own life stories. Often writers are not always aware of the deep motivations that prompt them to write what they write.

But lately, as I have been writing Castenata and Sister Mysteries, I have begun to understand what has been fueling the "narrative drive" of these stories. I've got a handle on the "binary" impulses that are at work beneath the story of the nun who is also a seductive flamenco dancer.

The question I have is this: what do I do with this understanding. Do I explain to the reader that the father I grew up with, a loving man, was also impossibly strict? Do I tell the reader that this father wouldn't let me wear nylon stockings when all the other girls were wearing them? Do I say that he wouldn't even let me wear red lipstick in the Christmas pageant when I was in third grade because he thought I was too young for makeup?

Do I write a scene in which my mother is standing between my dad and me, trying to negotiate on my behalf so that I could wear that lipstick -- so that I wouldn't be a laughing stock in front of the other kids?

Do I write another scene in which my dad is lecturing me at the dinner table, or perhaps in the living room, telling me that he is afraid of me becoming "embroiled" in a relationship with my high school boyfriend? Do I show how deeply resentful I was of his lectures? Do I show how much I hated his use of that word, embroiled?

Do I say that when Dad used that word (frequently!) I would see myself lying on a platter like one of Mom's roast chickens?

Do I say that Dad pressed such fierce restrictions on my sense of myself as a sexual being that, even as I tried to rebel as a teenager and a young adult, that I was caught in a deeply repressed sense of myself as a woman?

I'll forgo any more details on that. And no, there won't be any scenes.

Instead, I will tell the reader this: that as an even younger child -- much younger than the one who appeared in the flamenco photo -- I was a little girl who wanted desperately to be...

a nun.

I was only about four or five years old. I wanted so badly to be a nun that my Grandfather Claude, for whom I am named, and whose English was thickly accented by Italian, used to trail me around his house calling me “Seester.”

God knows why I wanted to be a nun. Perhaps it's because I went to Catholic school. There is another photo of me standing next to the Virgin Mary statue in a classroom.

It was taken on that special day in May when the school celebrated the Virgin Mary.

I am standing with my cousin Lorry

and I am wearing what I believe is the red plaid skirt and white blouse that we wore as a uniform (but then why wasn't my cousin wearing the same thing?)

I remember so clearly taking this photo, standing in the corner beside a table heaped with flowers, flowers that surrounded the statue of the Virgin Mary.

I remember the sweet smell of the flowers -- lilacs, roses.

But wait. Do I really remember all of this? Do I really remember standing there, or do I just THINK I remember it because I've had the photo so long, and the photo shows me there, standing in the corner, and staring into the camera?

I am not sure what I remember anymore. But I am sure that this photo captured an important moment, one that settled deep into the brew of subconscious images that have now driven me to do a bunch of rather bizarre writing about a nun, and the Virgin Mary.

Maybe my desire to be a nun -- and my desire to tell the story about Sister Renata -- sprang up in part from this moment.

Also feeding that rich brew of images, no doubt, was the fact that Pop (my grandfather Claude) "named" me SEESTER. Maybe I think that I am the nun, Sister Renata, because way back in my childhood, Pop christened me and his name was Claude, and I was named for him.

Grandpa Claude and my Grandma Mish (short for Michelina) -- with whom I lived for a while as a child -- used to refer to all nuns, except for me, that is, as “crows.”

The nuns I knew in Catholic school certainly fit that description to a -- they were as mean as blackbeady-eyed crows. The nuns made us kneel on hot asphalt in the schoolyard on blistering hot days in June. WHY? So that we could say the stations of the cross.

I remember the hot burning bits of tar and the grit embedded in my tender young knees.

And now this fact hits me: the name of the church and the school that I attended as a little girl, where I suffered the brutality of the nuns in classrooms from kindergarten through third grade, was

called

SAINT ANTHONY'S!

Perhaps that explains why Sister Renata's persecutor (her cousin) in the Castenata tale is named...

Antonie?

To me, it is so curious, this business of story-telling. It is so curious and so complicated, how all these deeply-buried childhood memories come together in the psyche to create a story. I am fascinated by how the mind works to produce the complex thing that we call a story, out of the rich brew of mental material that we refer to as memory.

The first sentence I ever wrote in the original version of Sister Mysteries is this:

"She is a mystery to me, my sister." This line is famous for my husband and me. We both love saying this opening sentence out loud, even though the line has long since been discarded from the book that I am writing.

But NOW I believe that the line fits, if only in a revised form.

"It is a mystery to me, my story."

Like all writers, of both fiction and non-fiction, I have so many stories inside me that I could tell.

I could tell all the stories about my father's "repressing" my sexuality.

I could tell all the stories about my rebellion against my father's strict ways.

I could tell all the stories about the way the nuns treated me, and how they treated my brother, Rick.

I could even tell stories about how the nuns of her day treated my mother (one nun accused my mother of stealing money when she was a little girl!)

One nun accused me of throwing away my orange in the lunchroom garbage can. I remember that day. I remember the way the nun came through the lunchroom casually asking, "Who brought an orange for lunch today?"

I remember raising my hand like the very good girl I was.

And then I remember the nuns forcing us to line us up in the basement lunchroom of St. Anthony's, as if we were prisoners, and standing there, terrified. One mean-looking nun paraded in front of us with the discarded remains of the orange in a soggy piece of wax paper, asking, "OK WHICH ONE OF YOU THREW THIS ORANGE AWAY?

I don't remember what happened after that.

Nun stories are very scary stories. And I could tell a few.

But the only nun story I really want to tell is the murder mystery that pairs Sister Renata and Antonie, and how I believe I lived back in 1883, and how I was falsely accused of murder by my lecherous cousin Antonie.

It's going to sound totally bizarre but I love being in prison with Renata, and watching/being her as she slows goes out of her mind.

Why?

Perhaps because it is freeing to become this nun. To speak in her 19th voice, but to push the limits of what she is saying and doing (get ready because I think she is preparing to unleash a wild tale soon. I feel it coming. I know some of the details -- the most important one anyway.)

One more story before we finish.

It's the real story of me behind bars.

I am three years old. I am desperately ill with pneumonia. I am hospitalized in a crib with metal bars that feel square between my small fingers.

I am screaming for my mother. I am desperate to have her come and take me home.

My mother is not there. My mother is home taking care of my little sister Karen, who is a baby, and my older brother, who is about 4.

When she finally comes to visit me, she feeds me from a plate of mashed peas. She puts the spoon between the bars.

I hate mashed peas. But I eat them, because my mom is feeding me.

My mother holds my hand as I fall asleep. But as soon as she tries to extricate her hand from mine, because it's time to go home, I wake up. I scream because i don't want her to leave me.

This may be the most important story in the rich brew of memories that produced the nun story.

This is the one story that I think mind find its way into a scene.

Because there is more to this story. Much more.

CHAPTER 33: I MAKE NUNSENSE OF MY LAWYER'S NONSENSE!!

2011-02-02T17:17:00.000-08:00

NOTE TO READERS: SISTER RENATA, IS LANGUISHING IN PRISON, accused of killing her cousin Antonie. In this new chapter -- "I MAKE NUNSENSE OF MY LAWYER'S NONSENSE!" (which converges with Chapter Twenty-Three of Castenata) a distraught and disgusted Renata meets with her lawyer, DeLuria about her defense!

Old Gallejo Jail
October 20, 1883
RENATA'S DIARY

Will you be surprised Teresa when I tell you that I am now my own lawyer? How you laugh, I can see so clearly that jolly face of yours so pink and flushed! Your head tips back, your eyes begin watering the way they do when you cannot hold yourself in.

But it's true Teresa,

I am a lawyer, Teresa, in all but name.

The lawyer DeLuria came two days ago, in his crisp starched shirt. Ah the ruffles, these were tipped in black satin thread. He dresses impeccably.

He thinks not at all. We sat in the cell here, and he began to tell me once again that when he examines the evidence against me -- the stacks of white pages with all the "sordid" stories, the "careful" details of the murder -- the evidence against me, he says, "stares him down."

I blinked. I laughed out loud and slapped one hand on my knee and when I looked up I saw him looking at me as though I might be crazy.

I suppose I was being a bit rude, so I covered my mouth (but oh I've become someone altogether quite new here in this cell, Teresa, a woman with no restraints I tell no restraints whatsoever!)

I cleared my throat and sat up straight and said, "My dear sir, have you with you perhaps in that fine leather satchel you are carrying, a report from the scene of the crime? There must be an official report of the crime, yes?"

He lifted his gaze, a bit disdainfully curious I suppose that I was asking HIM a question. "Well, naturally I do. Somewhere here, there is a report by the Sheriff. Naturally I have reviewed all the necessary documents."

I left him to sift through the many papers he carries in his handsome leather briefcase (same color as this my chiseled diary Teresa!) I found myself humming something while he searched, and, quite unexpectedly, the next thing I knew I was WHISTLING! This is not the Renata who left the convent a few months ago now Teresa, this is Renata ANEW!

I looked up and found him glaring at me. "Must you whistle?" he said in a very steady voice.

"Oh, quite wrong of me, so sorry," I said. He resumed his search and I resumed my humming, something that Señora and I have played and sung together.

He found what he was looking for. A single page with half a paragraph of the slanted handwriting of the Sheriff, describing the way they -- the authorities -- found Antonie on the day he died. DeLuria was about to start reading when I held a hand, actually, I laid just two of my fingertips on his coat jacket, and granted they are filthy -- his would be too if he was forced into this hellish cell!

Well, so he instinctively pulled his arm away, out of my grasp, as if I might give him some disease!

"There is no need to read it to me," I said. "I know exactly how my cousin died."

"Well so what is the point here?" he demanded.

"The point here Mr. DeLuria is this: my cousin died a bloody bloody death. But the only question to ask is how did he die? By whose hand? And I know full well it was not MY hand that took his life away."

"Ah but the authorities have the story that describes his murder and the story is clear it is a damnable piece of ev...."

I stood up and stamped my foot and yelled. "It is a damnable batch of lies!" My eyes flamed and he shrank back against that moldy cell wall. All I could think was, his perfect wool waistcoat will be moldy green when he leaves here!

"I have seen that story, Mr. DeLuria, and I know what it says. And I know that as absurd as it sounds, my cousin Antonie wrote it! I know very well that it suggests that I killed him, that I cored the Adam's apple right out from my cousin's throat! But for God's sake, DeLuria, use your head! Make the comparison between that bizarre story and the Sheriff's report! Does the good Sheriff say that my cousin's Adam's apple was cored? Does it Mr. DeLuria?"

He turned his head as if it was a swivel at the top of a barber pole. He examined the Sheriff's slanted handwriting. A whole minute went by before he spoke.

And then of all things, he lit up one of his slim cigars. It occurred to me to say to him, that there was insufficient air for him, me and a cigar as it is still quite beastly in the cell. I thought better of telling him this; instead I began a coughing fit as he inhaled and then blew out rings of blue smoke. I coughed and coughed until he put the blasted cigar out beneath his boot.

"Thank you, very kind of you," I croaked. He picked up the tin cup of water to his right and holding it as if it were a dead crow, he handed the water over to me. I smiled and took a sip.

"So I suppose that there is some discrepancy between the story in question and the Sheriff's report," he said at last.

I smiled and nodded. "Yes, I would think so." I waited a respectable moment. "And thus, it would seem to me a reasonable defense, yes? To lay before the judge and jury the fact that the crime scene and the supposed description of the crime I'm accused of, do not match. They do not match at all!"

I let that sink in, dying to know what he was thinking but reluctant to ask. He twisted his neck this way and that and sat up straighter.

"I cannot promise that this approach will impress the judge adequately," he said finally, in what I can only call a "small" voice. "I must report to you, unhappily, that there is a good deal of bad sentiment against you. The momentum of this sentiment is decidedly strong and it is moving against you."

Folding my lips in on themselves, I quietly laid my hands one on top of the other in my lap. I said nothing. And then I spoke.

"Mother of God, are you indeed the best lawyer available to me?"

"I beg your pardon, that is... insulting."

"Yes, well, my dear DeLuria, you are incompetent." I stood up once more and would have paced the jail cell had there been room. "I keep waiting for you to say something that convinces me that you have my best interests at heart. Or even my interests at all. But I am starting to think I might be better off on my own in the courtroom." I stood with my hands behind my back, imagining myself pacing the courtroom representing myself.

"The prosecution assumes that those foolish pages, those stories, tell some kind of truth. Their case against me rests entirely on stories composed by my cousin and that..."

He interrupted. "No one has established that those pages are indeed the work of your cousin. This needs to be established in court. For all we know they may be anyone's writing. They may even be your own writing." He gave me a leering gaze which only served to make my mouth drop open.

I laughed. "I hope you are joking," I said.

I bent closer to DeLuria and I whispered. "Is this possible that you are as foolish and stupid a man as I think you are? Did you in fact just say what I think you said, that I may be the author of those pages? My dear dear DeLuria what would possess me to write a set of stories that incriminate me? Stories that portray me as a murderer?" I laughed louder, and sat back.

He ignored me, and began filling the satchel with all of his papers. I took a step closer, bent even closer to him.

"Have you thought that there cannot possibly be anyone else who wrote those stories but my cousin? Have you thought it through DeLuria?"

My voice was hoarse, my face flushed, and I'm sure, my breath was a foul cloud.

He pulled away and finally squirmed out of range.

"Good day Sister," he said, and then he called to the jailer. "I am through here!"

The jailer appeared and opened the cell and DeLuria disappeared.

So you see here, now, Teresa, how I've come to be my own counsel. Once DeLuria left, I sank onto the bench here, and the full impact of what I face in the courtroom next week hit me.

It is all but certain that I will be convicted. There is a pile of evidence that should by rights be dismissed without consideration. And yet this idea did not occur even to my lawyer.

Pray for me Teresa. Pray!

This chapter is part of a murder mystery called Castenata, the story of a nun, Sister Renata, who in 1883 is falsely accused of killing her cousin, Antonie. Castenata and Sister Mysteries are on-line "blog" books and they are linked; several chapters, like this one, converge. The easiest way to read them is to start with Chapter One of Sister Mysteries and follow the links!

Chapter Thirty-Two: Letter to Peg, BLOG BOOKS and other Writing Issues!!

2011-01-25T04:25:00.000-08:00

Peg I'm glad you don't think I've totally lost my mind. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate your calling me the other day. I know the semester is just starting and you are incredibly busy running the Writing Program. It was so kind, and I am so grateful, that you took time out of your day last Friday to talk books with me and to try to help me decide which novel I should serialize on The Huffington Post.

As you said, it's an incredible opportunity and it's the very first time that the Huff Po has EVER done anything like this, so I want to be sure I approach it the right way, with the right book.

Peg, I am so blessed to have you as a friend. Do you remember the last lines of Charlotte's Web? I just pulled Jocelyn's yellowed copy off her shelf: "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."

Well, Peg, YOU are both. You are an amazing writer, and an amazing friend and support. You were there for me all through this long and grueling project.

Today is an anniversary. It was SIXTEEN YEARS AGO this week that I started writing the nun story, Castenata. It poured out of me. AND NOW, finally, I see what drove me. I will explain.

Meanwhile, though, thank you PEG. THANK YOU! Thank you for all those years you stuck by me as I tried desperately to package the nun story within silly outer frame stories that flopped miserably.

You humored me through all those long years of writing. All those failed attempts to write Sister Mysteries, or as you lovingly renamed it, Sister Miseries. Ah, yes, what a misery it was!

And then when I was diagnosed with the cancer in 2002 -- and now we're talking real misery!! -- I told you that I thought it was the book that had made me sick (because I had started writing it as a gift to another friend who was sick with cancer.) But you kept insisting that I was all wrong: it wasn't the book that had made me sick. You kept saying that the book was a healing thing; that the book was going to make me better.

Well, so, you were right. But wow. I don't want to think about how long it took, or what it took to stick with this project. All the different versions of the story that I asked you to read! Ayayayayayay.

Not once did you refuse, or even complain. You would say that you just loved the nun story -- and didn't want to see a word of it changed -- but then you'd very gently and very carefully say to me that you weren't sure why I was framing it with the outer story.

My God, Peg, you lived through Malvina and Heather, and Lucy and Chris -- those ridiculous characters that I hung onto for way too long. Over and over again, you kept saying:

"Hey, Claud, maybe you should just write the TRUE story. YOUR story. Just tell the story of how you came to write Castenata, the nun's tale."

Well, so, it only took me a decade and a half to finally heed your advice, Peg. (I can hear you laughing even harder.)

OK, so now. I have a chance to take Sister Renata "national" on The Huffington Post. (I can see you LOL even harder.) While it's tempting, I think I might be making a mistake serializing the nun story. Even though, as you point out, it's a mystery. And even though, it is for all intents and purposes "finished."

I'm beginning to think that my husband and Lori are right. The world isn't ready. The nun story, and this Sister Mysteries, thing -- I suppose that you and I would call it metafiction, writing about the fiction -- are rather non-traditional narratives. All that you were saying the other day about traditional stories, and non-traditional or experimental stories, all that makes sense to me. We grow up reading a certain kind of stories and we don't even realize that we've been conditioned to read that traditional sort of "once upon a time" tale.

But this is the thing: readers of The Huffington Post are not likely to be readers who want an experimental or "disrupted" narrative.

Peg, I hope you won't be disappointed, but I think I am going to save Castenata and Sister Mysteries for the blogs, at least for the time being. I think instead that I'm going to serialize Seeing Red on The Huffington Post.

Seeing Red is a kind of an old-fashioned love story, and it takes the reader on a lovely journey across the warm and sunny and very romantic region of southern Spain known as Andalucía (wonderful time of year to go to Spain :) It is a story of discovery. It's a woman's journey to find herself as an artist, and a woman's slow and often painful realization that even though she adores her guitarist lover Jesús, and even though she has chased him half-way across the globe (ah but he has those eyes liked melted chocolate!) in the end, she doesn't need him to be happy.

As I say in the promo for the book on the Seeing Red website, Ronda Cari spends half a lifetime searching for true love, and then she discovers it, in the magic of her own (flamenco) dancing!

It's an easy read. And the point with serialization is, you need a good read to keep your readers reading. You want to deliver up a powerful story that grabs their attention and holds on to them until the end.

As you yourself pointed out the other day, maybe the readers aren't quite ready for what I'm doing with the nun story, Castenata, and this sister "thing" I am writing, this companion tale that winds here and there and everywhere, this metafiction that I am calling Sister Mysteries.

What you said the other day has really stuck with me. I think it's really true that, as you said, "sometimes we have to teach our readers how to read our work!" And so that is precisely what I will be trying to do as I go forward, writing this book and the posts I will do on the Huff Po.

Maybe in the end, that's my task, to teach readers about writing. To explain, and to SHOW readers, that writing is an incredibly fluid process, and that it is difficult to identify what it means to "finish" a piece of writing.

You know exactly what I mean.

Being the Assistant Director of the Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts, where that very famous writing teacher Peter Elbow used to dwell, you certainly know what I mean. You certainly know what you are talking about when you talk about writing! (And I invite your comments, as always!)

Getting back to The Huffington Post, though, I am going to have to decide very shortly which book to serialize. I have to let that book editor know my decision soon. (As in, tomorrow! :)

Whatever I decide, I don't want to put aside the many interesting issues that you and I discussed on Friday, including the many questions that are raised by the ideas of serializing a novel on-line. Because this I truly believe is the future of writing and publishing Peg!

I think it makes sense, if you are willing, to continue talking about these writing -- and reading -- issues, right here, write on Sister Mysteries. All that you said the other day about traditional narratives, and "disrupted" or what you and I consider "feminist" narratives, there is so much to talk about there, especially because Castenata -- for all its being an antiquated murder mystery, a 19th century whodunnit asking over and over again, "is Sister Renata guilty? did the nun kill her cousin?" -- it is a feminist narrative!

It works against traditional PATRIARCHAL stories!

And so, now I finally see Peg. I finally know why I am writing this book.

For years you have been asking me, "Claud what is the point? Why are you writing this Sister Mysteries thing?" And now, 16 long years later, on the anniversary of starting the tome, I FINALLY HAVE THE ANSWER PEG (some questions take longer to answer than others! :)

I finally understand what I am doing writing Castenata/Sister Mysteries,(or what I have otherwise begun to call my "Blogga Saga") --

I am trying to re-invent storytelling Peg. (HA! no small task there!) I'm trying in these books Peg to DISRUPT what you and I would call traditional or PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES!

I'm also trying to bring attention ( and work against!) the "binary" nature of stories: in journalism we call it the "he said/she said" quality of story-telling.

In Castenata we've got a very strong and readily apparent binary at work -- the "he said" portion of the story composed by a man, Antonie, who is writing wildly erotic tales about his cousin, Renata, tales that turn her repeatedly into a seductive flamenco dancer :) !!

And then we've got Sister Renata's version of the same events, the so-called "she said" part of the story, in Sister Renata's diaries, in which she claims to be the devout nun.

Antonie's cleverly constructed and tantalizing stories "frame" Renata, very literally -- she ends up in prison, accused of his murder. This of course conforms precisely to the feminist notion that men "frame" or "entrap" women all the time with their "patriarchal" gazes; according to all that feminist theory you and I read in grad school, men (and patriarchal society) objectify women in all kinds of ways, but most specifically, they regard women either as "virgins" or "whores," -- and that is playing here too.

Renata is desperate to get free, to free herself from Antonie's "stories," and the accusation that lands her in jail. And as I've said so many times, I am determined to "free myself" from the traditional storytelling mode!

So Renata and I have got a lot in common: we are trying to tell "true" stories to free ourselves! I've always said about Sister Mysteries that it's up to me to tell Renata's true story, one that frees her -- and me too!

As I've said to you over and over again in the last couple of months, the emergence of blogs is really key to my being able to write the nun story -- one that bounces back and forth in time, and between links, the way Castenata and Sister Mysteries do. Until this new technology emerged just a few years ago, I could not possibly write like this, saying, for example,

"hey Peg, remember what I wrote the other day about serializing a novel on-line," and voila, have you be linked right there!

Peg it is getting ever more clear to me as I write in this "new" way that writing on blogs is truly a revolutionary thing! It is so incredibly freeing. I just love it. I discover so much about writing as I do these posts. And as you so often have said in the past, the writer MUST be engaged in discovery as she writes, at the same time that the reader is discovering as she reads. In your words, "No discovery for the writer, no discovery for the reader."

The writer needs to be excited about what she is writing because otherwise the narrative feels dead! That's true no matter whether the writer is writing fiction or non-fiction, poetry or prose!

Hey, so no wonder then so many people are blogging. They are discovering their voices. They are finding out what they feel and think! They are finding out that they love to write!

It's really incredibly exciting when you think what the internet and blogs have done: a ton of people are now writing, every single day, all day long. You'll love this: my niece, Megan Kirsch, is a student at Wisconsin. She started a blog for her sorority, Alpha Chi Omega. She called it "Living Outside the Lyre." She told me in an email the other day that she started it "as a joke" for the sorority.

But then, all of a sudden, her sorority friends all started reading it because it turns out SHE IS AN AMAZING WRITER PEG! Isn't that cool? I got a link to it and now I am going to repost one of her pieces very soon in MyStoryLives. Peg, she has that natural gift -- she has a great voice, a sense for telling detail. And a terrific sense of humor.

So who knows, Peg. My niece Megan, like so many many young (and older!) people, may just keep writing. Because of a blog that she started "as a joke," she just may turn out to be a writer!

How incredible is that? I am thrilled by this. I am delighted to think that people, via blogs, keep discovering that they love to write, that they CAN write.

I think this is the future Peg. And yes, I think it would be incredibly fun and wonderful for you and I to put together a textbook to use with students like Megan, students who are the "next" generation (or THIS generation) of student writers, students who grew up with the internet.

Let's talk about it right away, or as soon as you have time!

"Peg" is otherwise known as P.M. Woods, Ph.D., Assistant Director of the Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of a fabulous novel, "Spinning Will."

Chapter Thirty-One: The Huffington Post is going to SERIALIZE my fiction!

2011-01-20T04:54:00.000-08:00

Very VERY exciting news -- The Huffington Post (for which I am a regular contributor) is going to run my fiction, a novel in serial format, on their national mega-blog! It's the first time they will have done that EVER!

I wrote Huff Po National Editor Nico Pitney two weeks ago to propose the idea:

"Hi Nico, hope all is well, I am back from Georgetown, teaching literature and journalism at SUNY again. A couple months ago, the Albany Times Union launched a very cool blog experiment called Writing in Motion -- a small group of fiction writers (including me) were invited to write our new books on a TU blog, chapter by chapter. My novel Sister Mysteries, (a time travel murder mystery :) has taken off.

I'm wondering if the Huff Po would consider making space on the book site for serialized fiction -- chapter by chapter, a la Charles Dickens?

With ebooks mushrooming, it seems like a natural to me.

Here are the latest two chapters of my book on my blog, which links to Writing in Motion --

Chapter 23, Sister Renata is Going to Hang: http://mystorylives.blogspot.com/2011/01/sister-renata-is-going-to-hang.html

and

Chapter 24: Whisky for a Guitar? How the Nun Goes Free: http://renata1883.blogspot.com/2011/01/chapter-24-these-bars-are-chords-that.html

As you can see they have lots of links and images.

Curious to know what you think!

thanks,

Claudia Ricci"

Exactly THREE minutes later, Nico (who lectured in my journalism class at Georgetown last year) replied, saying that he would pass the idea on to his book people. They agreed and later, Nico wrote: "look forward to running the serial novels! really neat idea."

So the next question, of course, is which novel do I run?

My brand new novel Seeing Red (it came out a week ago!) would be the logical choice. It's all there. All the writing is finished and polished and by all accounts it's a good read and a very traditional, straightforward narrative.

Seeing Red is a love story but also, it tells the tale of a woman who takes a journey through Spain and ends up discovering herself as an artist.

What's more, the novel has an arresting and lovely cover (thank to an image by gifted collage artist Kellie Meisl) and it also has flamenco music (by brilliant guitarist Maria Zemantauski) to go with it -- the book was named after Maria's CD, "Seeing Red," music that inspired me to write it! Should anyone want to hear the kind of flamenco I listened to when I wrote each chapter, they can!

Both my husband and my writer friend Lori Cullen (who got me back to writing Sister Mysteries last November when she invited me to be part of the Albany Times Union's Writing in Motion project) vote for Seeing Red.

I emailed Lori this morning asking her writerly opinion and she wrote back:

"I vote for Seeing Red. Then, after you have finished Sister Mysteries and it's edited and structured, THEN run that one. I'd be afraid to run something that was both experimental and in progress. It could be confusing."

As always, Lori makes a lot of sense. No point in needlessly confusing readers. My husband, a rational sort of guy (and very supportive of my writing) feels the same way.

Still, I am reluctant to serialize Seeing Red and it's NOT because I think it will cut into book sales. Indeed, just the opposite is true.

My husband knows the woman who FOUNDED Moveon.org and she discovered that by serializing a book she had written, it actually helped in a huge way to boost sales of print copies!

No, for me, the reason not to run Seeing Red on The Huffington Post in serial format is more complicated. To me, it feels like it would be ... too easy. Too safe. Too BORING!

Part of me wants to display the writing process at the same time that I serialize the fiction.

Part of me finds it exciting and provocative to give the readers an inside look at fiction writing. I think it might be very cool, and a lot of fun, to walk right out onto a textual tightrope where I would continue writing this crazy Sister Mysteries book and let the fiction-writing process be transparent, i.e., let readers have a look at how a book is actually written.

Crazy, perhaps. But it's the teacher in me who wants to display Sister Mysteries.

I guess I think that by serializing Sister Mysteries (and its companion, the nun story Castenata)

I can help to de-MYSTIFY fiction writing, and engage readers in more lively debate/discussion about writing.

That seems especially important at this momentous time in publishing. With paper books disappearing and electronic books flourishing, it seems timely to try this kind of experiment. It seems timely to get readers involved in actively reacting to the books they read.

This is a rather post-modern notion, I realize. I shared the idea with my students yesterday, in the first day of my Short Story class. I told them that stories exist in webs, that every story begets another story, and that they as readers this semester will be writing stories in reaction to the stories that they read.

To those who would say that I need to finish Sister Mysteries before I can run it in serial form, I say, well, perhaps. But I've been running this book in serial format for 30 chapters already! It is starting to look to me like the Sister Mysteries portion of this writing project could just go on and on. Then what? And what happens to the blog posts that I've already written? Do they get erased? All of these questions suggest the following to me:

TECHNOLOGY IS REVOLUTIONIZING THE WAY WE WRITE AND THE WAY WE READ AND THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT READING AND WRITING AND THE WAY WE RELATE TO THE WRITTEN WORD (and of course the way we relate to other people via "print" in email and text etc.) THE INTERNET AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS HAVE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN THE WAY WE WRITE AND THE WAY WE PUBLISH AND HOW WE THINK ABOUT BOOKS.

ALL OF PUBLISHING -- just like all of journalism -- IS IN AN UPROAR. BLOGS ARE EVERYWHERE.

So isn't it time we recognize that, and discuss it. And think about it? And think about the implications.

Books in paper form, like print newspapers, may disappear, and are disappearing, but stories are not going to disappear, not unless the human race disappears!

We've had stories at least as long as we've had language and symbols, and we are not going to lose stories because stories help us to make sense of the world. Stories make us human. Stories ARE key to how we make meaning out of the chaos of existence.

Somebody who shares these ideas very strongly with me is my other writer friend Peg, who got her doctorate at the same time, and in the same program, as I did. We both studied narrative theory which is really the study of storytelling.

Peg -- who has a wonderful novel out -- Spinning Will, (buy a copy, it's a truly FABULOUS book!) -- has been reading Sister Mysteries for years and YEARS (during the worst years she jokingly renamed it SISTER MISERIES :). Like me, she is both a fiction writer AND a teacher of writing (and literature) at the University level -- she is P.M. Woods, Ph.D., Assistant Director at the Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts, where that very famous writing teacher Peter Elbow used to dwell!

Peg, with whom I've had endless conversations about writing and storytelling, wrote me this morning to tell me what she thinks I should do:

"I was thinking Sister Mysteries would be the better one to serialize since it is a mystery and it isn't published. I see Lori's point and it does make sense. But what if you serialized only Castenata, Sister Renata's part of the story? That is more of a mystery. You have that story done!"

My friend Andy LaCoppola, a drummer and high school music teacher and an avid reader (he and his wife, Kellie, had finished Seeing Red within a day or two after it was out!) Andy is also reading this blog book, and like Peg, he votes for Sister Mysteries. He writes:

"The thing that really grabs me about Sister Mysteries is not only the writing/story, but the PROCESS when you write. It's absolutely fascinating to watch the "creature" unfold and how it ties in to so many other things. I can see Seeing Red as a serial, since the anticipation is something you can build as the reader waits for each new section/chapter....I guess it would be the same anticipation when I await your next chapterl! I say go for it!"

Even before Peg suggested running Castenata, the nun's story, that same thought had occurred to me too.

It DOES have an ending or at least, I know how it will end. After all, most of the book has been in place, in stacks of paper in a crate in my closet beside the vacuum cleaner, for years -- next week the nun story celebrates a birthday of sorts, it will officially be 16 years that I started writing the book!

I just reread the first chapter -- Renata's first diary entry -- and I thought to myself, hmmmm, this would be a wonderful opening for a serialized book.

Maybe you will take a look at Chapter One -- "My Crazy Cousin is Making up Stories About Me!" Sister Mysteries; the two on-line books are thoroughly linked and several chapters, like this one, converge. The easiest way to read this "blogga saga" is to start with and let me know what you think. While you're at it, maybe you will also have a look/SEE at Seeing Red. I am thinking of flipping the first two chapters, and starting with Chapter Two, called "Sex and Cinnamon."

If you are inclined, let me know what you think.

Meanwhile, I will enjoy the fact that I will soon be able to conduct a very exciting writing experiment, serializing fiction on-line.

Serializing novels is at least as old as Charles Dickens.

But now, with internet technology taking over and crowding out traditional publishing, we will likely see more and more serialized fiction on-line -- recently a couple of science fiction writers attracted attention with a historical novel -- a 13th-century martial arts story -- called mongoliad.com. In describing the venture, the authors call their book "a serial novel, the kind of thing that Charles Dickens wrote. It is also an experiment in fiction and technology."

And down the line? Maybe we'll follow the lead of the Japanese -- over there cell phone novels are huge bestsellers!

I'm just thrilled that the Huff Po -- one of the most prominent of the nation's internet sites -- is willing to serve as a stage for this experiment of mine.

If you'd like to receive regular email posts, letting you know when each new chapter is released, just email My_Story_Lives@yahoo.com and your name will be added to the "subscription" list!

Chapter Thirty: Facing the Gallows, the Nun Shouts Her Diary Out Loud!

2011-01-14T04:21:00.001-08:00

NOTE: The Sister Renata tale is called Castenata, and my healing story is Sister Mysteries; the two on-line books are thoroughly linked and several chapters, like this one, converge. The easiest way to read this "blogga saga" is to start with Chapter One of Sister Mysteries and follow the links!

Old Vallejo Jail

DEAR GOD What Day is It?

Teresa I'm losing track of time. Maybe it's because I cannot eat a bite of food, or because of this heat wave,

driving up from hell itself. All I know is that the dust blows endlessly through the bars of the window and I'm coated and crusted in fine yellow powder!

I don't know what day it is anymore. I wake up in such confusion wondering if I am even alive. I run my hands around my face and up and down my arms to remind myself that I have skin and that I am in it!

I keep the diary in my hands when I sleep and in the morning in my confusion I begin reading.

I keep going back to the opening page, and over and over, I read my own words -- "And now, how to begin. And why, why am I about to pour myself onto paper? Pure and simply, I wrote now because I don't trust my cousin anymore. I need a record of events..."

My eyes pass over these words and I know I wrote them and I know I wrote them when I still had hope, I still thought life made sense, I went to chapel each day, I cooked Friday lunch in the convent, standing at the sink, I washed Father Ruby's sheets, I still thought life made sense.

I still thought. I still felt I still was in the world. That's it. I still was in the world and not in this cage with nothing but the gallows outside my window.

I have thoughts now but how can I write them they are so frightening sometimes when I cannot stay focused, when I cannot pray, when God and Mary have slipped away then...;

When that happens Teresa I pick up the journal, that treasure you gave me, surely you knew somehow what was in store for me? Surely you spent half your little life savings on me, on this chiseled beauty.

What I do? I scream my own words right out out loud, yes I do that Teresa, I have begun screaming for hours at a time, I read the diary entries, back from the beginning, over and over again, like a chant. Because I can't keep track of time without them. Because I can't keep track of me, Sister Renata, because without the words I wrote without these words I hear I am not me, anymore.

The jailer threatens me he even took off his belt and held it up to the bars, but I laughed, I laughed I said to myself, let him beat me if he must but I am going to read, to shout until I have no voice anymore!

I know full well that I am shouting to a world that for certain isn't listening. I am this thing that is Sister Renata, reduced to a puddle of crud and crusted yellow sweat and hair that is chopped straw.

But that doesn't matter. I won't let anyone take my dignity away. My dignity, like my words, are here in my mind, mine.

And like you say, Teresa, I am determined to clear my name and tell the world I am innocent of any crime. I did not murder Antonie, and some day the world will see it!

I am reading now Teresa, and my hands are trembling, my hands are trembling I cannot write anymore, SO I AM SHOUTING now here here is a passage I AM SHOWERING IN THAT BLESSEDLY SILLY SHOWER YOU HAMMERED TOGETHER out of a pail, a washtub and a pail, I am reading from my diary, August 7, 1883, CAN YOU HEAR ME TERESA?

"I hold my face in this fine mist of water falling from the holes in the bottom of the pail, and let the water run over my lips and onto my tongue. The water and the sunlight cleanse me and silently I mouth a prayer of thanks to Sister Teresa for this purifying gift and silently too I thank the Lord for sending this good woman to us, but particularly, to me. Holding the washrag in my clasped hands, I bow my head, allow the water to thoroughly soak my short ruff of hair while I stand there giving thanks and prayer, thinking He knew, yes, He knew, how does He do that? How does the Good Lord always know exactly what we need?

Lifting my face, I gently pass the washrag across my brow. How good this feels. No, how heavenly. That’s the word Teresa used. How good it is to be back from San Francisco, too, every cell in my body is grateful. How hateful that was, how long and miserable the stay, and maybe because of that, I feel like I could stand here, water raining down, drowning out a host of thoughts that I would rather go away. Again I pray, I say a Hail Mary, two, most of all I ask Him how He knew to send Teresa here? How He knew that she would come and that she would be my only ally, she would give me some bit of advice to begin and end each day, and our friendship would grow and grow, and more than that, she would give me now the clearest water to cleanse the heat and dust and dirt and sins away.

She brings this gift to me at the very moment I am most in need of cleansing – my body and no less my spirit. I arrived back here from San Francisco -- where I had to go with Antonie because he forced me -- in such a dreadful condition, I hate to think what I looked like, my clothes crusted, my soul in the worst state it’s ever been. I hid in my room that first morning after Señora pulled up to the convent with the wagon, Antonie lying in the back beneath a heap of blankets. The mercury treatment for the syphilis, it sank him into a horrifying condition!

Señora kissed me once on the forehead and I climbed off the wagon without even a word of goodbye.

Weary is not the word for what I was. Too tired to eat. To sleep.

And that very next day, dearest Teresa completed the project that shower that has now come to my rescue...."

To continue reading about the shower that Teresa built out of a pail and a washtub, go to RENATA'S August 7th 1883 diary, part of "Castenata."

Chapter Twenty-nine: The "BLOGGA SAGA" otherwise known as SISTER MYSTERIES Is Still in Pause Mode...BECAUSE>>>>>>>>>

2011-01-12T12:34:00.000-08:00

SEEING RED HAS ARRIVED! PLEASE PLEASE BUY A COPY TODAY!

Read Seeing Red, and you will be transported to the warm and sunny South of Spain! Flamenco music and sunshine and vast beaches and Moorish castles and spectacular churches and dazzling palaces and so much wine and all those incredible flowers --

Yesterday, I said I was taking a break in this blogga-saga that I am writing, otherwise known as Sister Mysteries/Castenata, in order to clarify -- for my SISTER HOLLY -- what was going on.

Today, please forgive me, but this break must continue because...

SEEING RED --

THE NEW NOVEL -- IT'S OUT!

Box after box of gorgeous new books have arrived, stacks of books, all so shiny and RED, they are finally here!

And so even though snow has been falling steadily outside the window all day long --

and the backyard has all but disappeared --

I am not

SEEING WHITE, I am

Seeing Red.

This is where I get to sell books the old-fashioned way, between paper covers. This is where you the reader can take a break not only from Sister Mysteries, but also, from the dead white of winter here in the Northeast.

Treat yourself to a copy of Seeing Red, and you'll take a journey into the wildly beautiful region of southern Spain known as Andalucía, where Ronda Cari goes searching for her flamenco guitarist-lover Jésus Becerra -- whose eyes are the color of "melted chocolate." Jésus has gone missing somewhere in southern Spain and Ronda is convinced something terrible has happened to him.

What happens to HER on this journey is quite wonderful!

What happens to YOU reading this book is quite wonderful too!

You feel like you are traveling across Spain with Ronda (she actually has a driver, and that's another story!)

If you haven't been to Andalucía -- I went to research the book -- it is quite spectacularly beautiful and it is warm and so so romantic -- with flamenco music and sunshine and Moorish castles and spectacular churches and cathedrals and dazzling tiled palaces -- remember the Alhambra? -- and vast numbers of white sandy beaches and gargantuan caves and oh what food!

Paella and tapas and gazpacho and garlic soup (amazing!) and THE most incredible wines, very cheap wines -- we got one amazing bottle of red when we went, for 75 cents! And the flowers -- flowers galore, bright purple bougainvillea and blood red geraniums and hibiscus of every color, and all kinds of other flowers, too,

flowers growing everywhere you turn!

Do keep in mind the fact that buying Seeing Red, is a whole lot cheaper than taking a trip to Spain would be!

I hope you will take a peek at the book and consider buying a copy today! It's a sexy Spanish adventure, it's a love story but so much more!

How does a woman discover the artist buried inside her? How does she come to realize, finally, that she has the power to make herself happy? In "Seeing Red," Ronda Cari spends half a lifetime searching for true love, and then she discovers it, in the magic of her own dancing!

Please join us at a flamenco-book-art party at The Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza, on Western Avenue in Albany, New York, on Sunday, February 6th, at 3 p.m., when Seeing Red author Claudia Ricci joins flamenco guitarist Maria Zemantauski (whose CD "Seeing Red" inspired the book!) and visual artist Kellie Meisl (whose astonishing image "Shattered Cups" graces the cover of the book). Come have a glass of sangría and toast this unique "collaborARTive" event -- a celebration of three women working hard to support each other's art!

Chapter Twenty-eight: Sister Holly Makes Me See What a CRAZY Book I am Writing!

2011-01-10T07:59:00.000-08:00

So it is time to pause in the Sister Renata tale -- the poor nun, accused of murdering her cousin Antonie by slashing his throat, is wallowing in prison staring out at the gallows.

While all that is happening, I have to take a short break in the story for a couple of reasons, the main and most important one being that my sister-in-real life, Holly Ricci, an amazing and wonderful woman and a terrific writer who works for a direct-mail ad firm in Manhattan, called me up Friday night.

"Uh, Claud," she said after we had been chit-chatting for a few minutes, "I have a confession to make."

Confession? My heart picked up speed. My sister? A confession? What was it that she needed to say? I couldn't imagine, but her tone was so ... ominous!

"Sure what's going on?" I said.

"Well, uh, I hate to admit this, but I have to tell you..."

She stopped.

"Yeah? What?" My heart hammered, my mind raced, I couldn't imagine what was coming? Something...awful?

"Well, it's just that...I just don't get the book you are writing on-line," she said at last. "I mean I want to read it, but I don't know where to start, and I am having a hard time following what it is you are doing."

I laughed out loud, so relieved that my book was the only issue. "OH my God Holl, I thought something was really wrong," I said. I was so happy, so delighted, that I could have sung a song -- ah, maybe that wonderful nun song from "The Sound of Music" with Julie Andrews twirling like a crazy person on the top of an Alpine mountain!

Well anyway, I took pains to reassure my sister. "Holl, I bet half the world is confused by Sister Mysteries. The other half isn't reading it!"

My sister, ever supportive of my writing, began asking questions: "OK, so I know all about Sister Renata, and her cousin, and the grisley murder, but what I don't understand is which story you want to tell, I mean which story do you want me to read first and where do I start? It's so confusing -- there's Castenata, and there is Sister Mysteries and then there is your blog, MyStoryLives, and oh, then there is Switch too. Which one is the one to read?"

And the whole time she is talking, I'm laughing thinking, it is crazy what I am doing, all these blogs, all this writing. My own sister can't even figure out what to read. So after I stopped laughing, I said, "OK, you're the advertising writer, I need your help! Maybe you can help me write a new banner for Sister Mysteries that clears everything up."

"Yeah, but first you have to explain it to me."

So I did, very very slowly and very very carefully. And after I had finished, she agreed to help me write a new banner for this blog, explaining exactly what I am writing. I took a crack at it and emailed the new explanation -- one paragraph -- to her, and then she emailed me back a NEW AND IMPROVED EXPLANATION.

And here it is, courtesy of my Sister Holly Elizabeth Ricci, whose photo appears up top here. (Wasn't she a cutie? She still is!)

As they say in Italian,

Un milione di grazie, Holly!

A million thanks!

"In 1995, I began writing a book for a friend who had cancer. In the story it was 1883. A nun, Sister Renata, had a cousin who was writing crazy stories about her being a flamenco dancer. My friend got better but then I got cancer and put the book away. Sister Renata would not be ignored. She reached out across time and beyond sanity, begging me to tell her story. Now, she’s been framed for her cousin's murder. Here's Renata's tale and my healing story too -- they're linked through and through!"

By the way, this is the Same Sister Holly who about four years ago bought me a beautiful NUN costume. I assume she bought it for me because she thought I would wear it while I wrote the Sister Renata tale. I have since bequeathed said nun costume to someone else!

P.S. The Renata tale is called Castenata, and my healing story is Sister Mysteries; however the two on-line books are thoroughly linked and several chapters converge (for example, Chapters 20 - 27 in Sister Mysteries are part of Castenata as well!)

The easiest way to read? Just start with Chapter One of Sister Mysteries and follow the links! All the chapters are listed right here on the side of the blog. And if you get confused, please just email me with your questions, at claudiaricci054@gmail.com.

Chapter Twenty-seven: The Jailer Makes Me See Myself -- "A Nun Swingin' By a Rope"!

2011-01-08T03:55:00.001-08:00

September 29, 1883
Old Vallejo Jail
My Dearest Teresa,

I sit in this cell -- an animal in a cage. One thing saves me: my mind making these pictures. I see you and me walking through the fields near the convent. Do you see the sky? Such a glorious purple and blue.
Remember that sunset, that night we walked together so many miles?

Your letters are my only comfort. In the moments when I am so frightened I cannot even whisper a prayer, I clutch my rosary beads and reread your words. Sometimes I repeat them over and over like a soothing chant. Tears pour out when I hear your voice echo. My greatest terror is that there may come a day when I cannot hear you!

Oh Teresa. I could always count on you to make me laugh. Each morning before prayers there you would be, solemn, straight-faced, imitating our pie-eyed Mother Yolla. Her scowl. Her waddle, how like a cow she walks. And then I would dissolve into tears, all the while praying, “God, please forgive me for laughing.”

Believe me, I am laughing no more. For I am certain now that I will die, as that hopeless lawyer Deluria appeared with me in court a week ago and he was abominably bad. You could barely hear what he said. The judge asked him three or four times to speak up!

And when he did say something, he made a few dreadfully weak statements and that was that. I sat with my wrists handcuffed and my head bowed, ashamed that I even agreed to let the foolish lawyer -- his impeccable ruffled shirt -- speak for me!

After they led me back to the cell, I sat for hours staring through the bars out the window into the courtyard. As the afternoon wore on, the sun got hotter and hotter and brighter and I grew more and more weak and dizzy. Fearing that I might faint, I finally did the unthinkable, Teresa, I tore off my wimple and veil. My hair lies now like dry matted straw.

Is this then the end of me, then, Renata the nun? I have begun to think so! Even as I am playing my guitar, my heart is as heavy as a lead stove lid! Forgive me, Teresa, but I have more and more moments lately when I've begun to doubt that there is any Divine order at all, or any loving presence above.

Occasionally as I sat staring out the window, a wagon would come into view, the wheels throwing up thick clouds of yellow dust. Finally, the jailer brought dinner – a cold, grey mass of greasy potatoes he called stew – and I couldn’t think to eat it. In a perverse mood, both he and I were, and maybe because it was so hot, he wasn't cackling for a change and I was desperate to talk, so I asked him if he thought the hanging would be good theater.

"Er, watcha say there sister?" he asked, as I suppose he didn't know the meaning of the word "theater."

"What I mean, Mr. Pie, is when I hang outside there in the courtyard, will it attract a large crowd?"

His eyes lit up. "Oh course it will, Lordy, to see a nun swingin' by a rope, hell, it'll be a real good un," he said, nodding his head. “Criminy sakes how often do ya hang a sister?"

His eyes widened and took on a gleam. He stood there jangling his ring of keys, smoothing his hand over that impossible stubble on his chin. Then, when I said nothing, he silently pushed back his soiled hat. I saw that stitched flap of skin where his eye is missing. This is the first time I ever really looked at it.

I ought not to have asked the next question. "Have you seen...a lot of hangings?" I whispered, my throat knotting up over my words.

"Oh in my day I'd say I seen a dozen or so," he said, smiling. He has only three crooked teeth where there should be a top row. "But ma'am, not to say I'm gonna look or nothin' but hell, this one beats all the rest. I mean, I never seen anybody hang who was wearin' a dress." He slapped his thigh and shook his head. And then he clanged the keys against the bars and turned and left.

What a beast. What a dreadful dreadful man. How could he possibly be so cold-hearted, telling me this? Making me see myself spinning by the neck at the end of a rope, my gown open at the bottom for all to see?

I sat staring at the cold stew. In the last few days, my stomach has taken on new waves of nausea -- I dry heave even at the sight of food and would rather he just didn't leave it at all.

I called out to the jailer and told him to take the bowl away.

The day seemed to last forever. The sun sank lower and lower, and with it went my spirits. In the perverse spirit that I was, I kept riveted on that spot
out in the courtyard where my body will dangle from a rope. I tried to pray, Teresa, but honestly, I have begun to wonder, why bother? Is there anyone listening? Would a merciful Being permit all this to happen?

Oh I shouldn't even write this down here, I shouldn't think this. But I do.

At some point during the night, I must have fallen asleep. I dreamed I was swinging from a rope that hung from a crucifix. I had been hanged, but somehow because I was on the cross, I didn’t die. I woke up with a start, collapsed into the slimy wall of my cell. Oh Teresa, this is hell on earth.

And did I tell you, they now have wrapped a chain around my ankle, as if it were needed? As if there would be any way I could move from this pen!

My skin at the ankle grows raw, and it has begun bleeding and the blood mixes with the rust of the chain.

In your last letter you said the newspaper intends to publish all those stories that Antonie wrote, starting with his first one, "Renata Dancing." Dear God is there no justice? All that rubbish, the filth and lies Antonie wrote about me.

If they do, if they do, dear Teresa, is there a way to bring my diary forward? Will my words carry any weight at all?

I am desperate to show the world that I am innocent. I committed no crime.

At least I can die knowing you will try to clear my name.

The jailer comes now with a cup of tea. He leaves it. But dear God Teresa, it is lukewarm and has an oily film and there is, a hair from that mangy dog floating on top.

I cannot bring myself to eat a bite, or drink either. The jailer says I might die of starvation. And I say, that might be the best way.

Whatever God wills.

Your loving sister,

Renata

Chapter Twenty-six: Señora Comes, Singing in the Key of Eternity

2011-01-07T07:23:00.000-08:00

September 21 Old Vallejo Jail

Oh Teresa

Teresa

how can I explain what happened here, this miracle last night?

I felt myself waking during the night, the light was murky in the cell, and there she was --

I am writing this in my journal, I am writing this all down to ensure that it really did happen,

I swear it did, I swear that my eyes came open, and the light in the cell was greenish white, but there above me, I swear it was Señora right there, standing above me. I gasped and was overwhelmed by the smell of the fresh roses. "Mi'ja," she whispered, and there in her arms was a giant bouquet of the most magnificent yellow roses I have ever seen. Each of them is tipped in red, as if they have lips!

“Si, si, mi’ja, for you," she whispered. I sat up and she laid them in my lap.

I don't think I ever felt happy the way I did sitting there with the roses in my lap.

"But how did you...how did you get in?"

She shrugged and looked up at me with the most beautiful mystery in her brown face.

Without another word, she opened the basket she was carrying and brought out a fresh loaf of bread, and a hunk of cheese, and two fresh apples.

"Espero que tu tengas hambre," she said, and I laughed, happily. Me, hungry? Of course, and especially now, here in the cell.

I felt happier even than before.

She sliced the apple -- "but how did you get a knife by the jailer I cried?" -- but she eyed me and continued in silence. I watched her, recalling all the meals she fixed for Antonie and me when we were children.

When she and I finished our snack, she picked up the guitar and sat here beside me on the bench and took me so many years back to the music she used to play for me, including those sad old tientos when I first arrived at Antonie's hacienda as a child.

Her lips part. Her cheeks wobble ever so slightly as she begins humming and then I am singing the words I heard at her knee as a child:

"What kind of bird is that

Singing in the olive tree?

Go tell it to be still,

Its song makes me so sad!"

And then she switches to one that is so much sadder, a siguiriya:

"A la luna le pio

la del alto cielo

come le pio que saque a mi pare

de onde está preso."

I implore the moon

up there in the sky,

Implore it to help my father

Escape from his prison cell.

I am crying now. I don't know how she got here, but I know how much I want her to stay.

Now she sees my tears and changes gear. Now he is singing a gay and witty sort of palo which has a never ending number of poetic verses.

She sings:

Just imagine. What I. Did. Just imagine. Where I fled to.

Only the stars can tell you. Only the sky can guess.

So now sit down and I will try to tell you.

You will see it all come clear.

When the water goes still as a mirror,

And we peer inside.

Do you see now, why I appeared here?

Do you see now, why you must

Tell the world my story? Yes, tell the world

Just sing it, shout it out,

how we turned the past. Together,

We moved her story, Renata’s,

and his false history, Antonie’s,

Around.

She is just about to start into a second verse when there is commotion in the hallway. The jailer is screaming it seems and all of a sudden the outside door to the prison swings open.

It is Antonie. And he looks just terrible. His normally long black wavy hair has been chopped off. In spikes. Wet and matted. His eyes are dark and empty. And he has lost a lot of weight. Her black pants are baggy.

But now, now how DID I MISS THIS HE HE IS HE IS BLEEDING AT THE NECK, his throat is gashed, Dear God, his head, his head is hanging, his head is

swinginggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg back and forth

And then, blink, he is gone and Señora is holding the guitar and singing softly to me here again, she sings the carcelera, again, and again, she sings:

"Ya van tres días que no como

má que lágrimas y pan:

estos son los alimentos

que mis carceleras me dan."

I lay my head in her lap. Señora tells me to sleep and she gently rubs my back. She keeps singing and singing, and as I fall asleep, I think, she will sing into eternity.

I wake up and my cheek is resting on the sleek curve of the guitar's body. Suddenly, I smell roses.

When I open my eyes, Teresa, as God is my witness, there was a single rose -- yellow with bloody red tips -- on the floor beside the door to the cell.

Chapter Twenty-five: Deluria the Lawyer Delivers More Bad News

2011-01-06T08:02:00.000-08:00

September 19, 1883
Old Vallejo Jail

Dear Teresa,

Why is it that newspapers can deliver up lies in print, and people are so willing to believe them, no matter how wild they may sound?

Why is that no one, Teresa, not even my own lawyer, Steven DeLuria, can allow for the possibility that I was framed by my delusional cousin Antonie, whose great gift was to tell a believable story?

DeLuria came to see me today, and honestly, he seems as twisted as the pencil-thin mustache that curls in elaborate waxed spirals on either side of his gaunt face!

I welcomed his visit, at least to start I did, as this was the first time I had seen him since they threw me into this hellish cell well over two weeks ago! But it took only moments for me to see that he was miserably uninterested in my case.

He sat on the bench, close enough for me to smell his pomade, and he kept shuffling through papers in his satchel. What in God's name was he looking for?

Ah, then his hand landed on that damnable newspaper, the Examiner, and he shook it at me, and then shook his head and said, "I am afraid that this isn't going to help you one bit."

As if I didn't know it! What a laugh. I was holding onto my guitar, thankfully, and I squeezed the body of that beauty then, otherwise, Mother of God, I would have had a hard time holding myself back!

I wanted to knock my fist right into his bony face.

My heart started racing and I felt a sweat start up over my lips.

"Of course it isn't going to help, sir," I said, trembling. "Do you think for a minute that any of this was my choice?" I blinked back tears, which felt hot on the rims of my eyes. "Maybe you hadn't guessed this, Mr. DeLuria, but I would just as soon not be here." By then I was sniffling out loud.

He cleared his throat and straightening up, he handed me his embroidered hanky -- purple lace on a man's hanky? Then he stood -- he is so tall that his head grazes the slimy yellow ceiling of the cell. And he dresses well, at least he has more ruffles on the front of his shirt than do our convent chickens, Teresa, have feathers on their rumps!

"I am wondering how you plan to defend me?" I said, leveling a hard steady look at him despite my tears.

Somehow my crying seemed to have unnerved him.

He took hold of his narrow chin in his thumb and forefinger and slowly stroked his beard -- in addition to that mustache twirled and waxed at both ends, he has one of those excessively pointy goatees. And he's got a head that is elongated. What a strange-looking man!

"I think before I can possibly develop a defense for your case, that I will have to spend more time learning about your situation."

"My situation? You mean how it is that I am sitting in this foul place accused of murder?"

"Well, I will want to know how it is that you have come to believe that you are a victim of what you call...this conspiracy?"

"Believe?" I wrapped my arms around the guitar and squeezed her tight around the middle. "My dear Mr. DeLuria, let me be clear about one thing before we start." I felt my heart slamming against my chest and the sleek wood of the guitar. "I am innocent of all wrongdoing here. My cousin framed me with his ludicrous tales, he was mad as a hatter at the end!"

He kept rubbing his chin. "I see," he said. But of course he didn't!

I stood up. I held onto the guitar by its neck. "No, I"m not sure you do see!" I picked up my diary and thrust it at him.

"But if you do want to know the true story, it is all here, right inside my diary. I have kept a meticulous of everything that happened over these last months with Antonie. You can see all of it here, day by day, exactly the way things really happened."

He held up one hand, but wouldn't touch the journal.

"My day is very full," he said, "and I'm afraid that I won't have a chance to get to this for at least a couple more days."

My eyes widened, my mouth dropped open.

"A couple more days? But I had hoped that you were here today to speak with me. My first court appearance is at the end of this week, on Friday morning, or at least that's what they said. How can you possibly be prepared?" I whispered. I was horrified by this bad excuse for an attorney.

"I know full well what the court schedule is, my dear," he said. "But there are two other cases besides yours that I must attend to. So now, if you will excuse me," he took a magnificent gold watch out of his pocket and snapped open the engraved cover. "I am scheduled for an important lunch engagement shortly."

The word lunch set me into a rage. I dropped back on the bench. "Oh, please, please don't let me stop you from your lunch," I said, angry enough to spit. "And tell me about it if you will, what exactly is your menu? Hmmm? What is it that they are serving today, may I ask? Leg of lamb with mint jelly perhaps? Consommé? Fricasee of chicken?" My eyes gleamed, my voice rose. "And what for dessert sir? Apple pie? Berry cobbler? Will there be a large scoop of ice cream on the cobbler?"

He studied me curiously, as if I were slightly mad. "I will be back," he mumbled, "and when I return, I will consider your journal." He nodded that elongated head of his -- ah, I know now, it's resembles that of a small pony! -- and he gestured in the direction of my diary.

"Oh never fear, dear Mr. DeLuria, I will be right here in this cell waiting for you," I said. "I too have my pressing engagements but somehow they must wait."

And then I started strumming the carcelero that I have come to love so much.

"And as you are dining today, Mr. DeLuria, please be sure to think of me here," I said, glaring at him. I sang, blaring out the refrain that I have come to love so much:

“In three days I’ve eaten
Only bread and tears:
That is the food
That my jailers give.”

He hurried out of the cell and I tell you if it weren't for the guitar...

I sat for a long long time playing and singing until that wretched old jailer banged on the bars and demanded that I "give it a rest."

Then I sat writing in my diary. As evening came on, I had to stop (sadly, no candles are permitted me!) I sat in the dim light of the cell and ran my fingers over the finely chiseled leather of the diary -- a gift you spent too much money importing for me all the way from Spain.

Ah but Teresa, who will read the diary ? How will I bring the true story of Antonie's malicious lies to light?

I fear now how this will go -- nobody but you and Señora will ever know the truth about Antonie and how he died. Nobody will believe what I've written in the diary.

Why should they?

As you have said so many times, "the power of his world is the power of his word."

With all my cousin's money, his vast landholdings, his his donations to Father Ruby and the church, and all the money Antonie has donated to so many politicians...

How do I stand a chance?

The only thing I have on my side is the truth: I know that Antonie was ill with the syphilis, and as he was descending into madness and delusion, he was writing. As he went, down, down, down, he cast that net of horrifying words around me, he created another Renata on piles of thin white paper, he turned me into a Spanish dancer, one fashioned entirely out of words, words that he heard in the depth of his fevered hallucination, words that poured out of his mind as pure fantasy.

And now? His net of fantasies have collapsed upon me and I am facing...

Teresa I am standing staring out there into the courtyard and there is just moonlight, and I see it there, there in the shadows is the gallows where they will hang me!