since we're in a sharing mood

[Elainemmbell at aol.com]

THE MOBIUS TRIP
 (from Chapter One, Island Apologia)
"And I will have asked myself the same question
I have always been asking myself: who am I to answer?"
>From Leidecker Transcripts, Randolph Maconis

I have strong prejudices about the forms of things.  I dislike a too 
deliberate order: if a woman's physical arrangement of her costume is too precise, 
every element coordinated, every bead and bauble in place, she becomes an easy 
cipher.  I don't like her.  I want to mess up her hair.  

As for houses, I prefer my natural clutter to any elegant degree of décor.  
Books should be open, candles lit (their wicks black with use, wax melted 
around their bases), food visible in baskets and pails, not hidden in plastic boxes 
or packaged by nameless faceless others somewhere across the world.  Rooms 
should be marked with the lives they have contained.  Walls should and do talk. 

In writing, my prejudice takes on another character entirely: I must have 
order.  There must be a form, cantos, verses, chapter headings, footnotes if 
necessary, epigrams, indices, references, unity of place/time/character.  

I won't allow myself to be mauled by Random Rules Of Capitalization, quirks 
of questionable, dead, dying or nonexistent languages, insider tricks of 
suggestion (here, reader, YOU figure out what it is I'm saying if you're worthy of 
reading my stories!) and Cambridge club mentality.  It's difficult enough to 
comprehend what's going on at any given moment without haughty authors implying 
they've got it covered and you don't.  

This said, I confess I may commit any number of the disorderly sins above 
mentioned before I can find my way to the end of the tale.  But you should know I 
feel very sorry in advance for my limitations.




Elaine M.M. Bell, Writer
(860) 523-9225
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