Create Your Own World

Tiny Bird

 


Tiny Bird, a short story by Margaret C. Murray

Susanna was daydreaming at her kitchen sink, stacking dirty dishes while gazing out a small window to her backyard when she noticed the trees blowing in the wind. She could hear the wind she thought. Or was it wind? Such gentle, strange slapping sounds.

She remembered then she’d left the refrigerator open and hurried to closed it before returning to the sink. There it was again­, the light slap-slap, slap-slap she’d never heard before in the house. Of course now she was alone. Not that it mattered. Dick gone for good, their divorce almost final. Alone was not so bad most of the time.

The light slap-slaps continued. She turned from the sink toward her wide-open living room. Oh, my god! Both her front door and the screen door was wide open. Bang, bang went the aluminum-siding against the metal door frame. Not surprising since it had been missing its lock for she didn’t know how long. If Dick were here. . . Stop it, she scolded herself.

She had stepped outside after noticing the mailman had come earlier than usual this morning. Nowadays it had become a habit of hers to check the mail. She had glanced through bills, the usual circulars, promotions, requests for money from non-profits, an insurance flyer, and something from the IRS addressed to Dick that she kept to forward to him. The rest she threw into the metal bucket outside the door splattered with bird droppings and the remains of insects. She had rushed back inside, in a hurry she didn’t know why. She seemed to remember the screen door slamming behind her as usual.

Now Susanna rushed toward the door, then stopped, aghast. Right in front of her in the living room a baby bird was desperately flapping its tiny grey wings on her window ledge. Susanna watched in shock as the tiny bird fell off the window ledge and flopped crazily on the wood floor. Struggling, it caught itself in her floor length drapes.

The bird valiantly attempted to fly, yet kept falling instead again and again, and finally disappeared into the hem of the curtain. Tiptoeing closer, she leaned over to shake loose the folds at the bottom. Underneath the curtain it kept on struggling. What could she do now?

Suzanna stared out the window at the small white spring buds on her miniature cherry tree blowing with the wind. Behind loomed the thick green juniper hedge that went across the front of her yard filled with bright orange poppies, leaves like green lace on reed-thin stems. The poppies blew this way and that in the wind. She saw herself outside, the tiny bird twitching in her hands as she lifted it up to the sky and watched it fly off to the oak tree across the street.

She must free it, bring it back outside. She just needed something to hold it–plastic, not metal or glass that might injure that frail body. Did she even have any plastic bowls? Glass bowls and ceramic yes, but they easily broke. Suzanne rushed through the living room and down the narrow hallway to the bathroom where she kept a plastic pail beside the toilet. The pail was too big and unwieldy, dirty even. But how else to capture it?

What if she could carry the little bird in a soft towel outside? She grabbed a towel. Not soft enough but there was no time to waste. There they were again, the sounds, more recurring wing flutters. Suzanna ran back through her living room. The bird was no longer in the curtains at the picture window! No, she realized, it had flown through the living room while she was in the bathroom and now frantically flapped its wings against the kitchen window, attracted by the light.

She looked around, holding her breath, stuffing her fist in her mouth to keep from crying out. Suddenly the bird flew away from the kitchen area where it been frantically flapping its wings against the sill seconds ago and back across the room. She rushed after it just in time to see it slam against the picture window. The bird now lay on the floor, unmoving.

“God, give me back this tiny bird,” she thought. “I will close the screen door when I come in, I promise. I will close and bolt the oak door. Oh, please let it live.”

She stood over it hoping, hoping, but the bird did not move. No flicker of its eyes? No more  flutter of wings, no rising and falling feathers?  One tiny grey life, a clump of feathers and little yellow bill with closed eyes she could have easily held in one hand. Oh, God she prayed, let it live.

For perhaps a second or two she believed it might happen. Still the bird didn’t move. It was her fault. She was alone. She looked away, off. The cherry tree outside mocked her. The poppies and juniper too. Everything was wrong. It was over.

 She had to bury it. At least she could do that. Long ago she and the children buried their rabbit at the bottom of the juniper. There was that little  cat too, tiny, all black that her youngest son found at the edge of the driveway, Run over, flattened. The cat they buried here in the front yard too. Dick didn’t help or did he? And now this tiny bird. Across the street in the trees fluttered flocks of birds just like this one.

Why had she left the doors open? It was an accident. She had been so unthinking, so stupid. She imagined the bird, young, inquisitive, curious, flying into investigate. Seeing an opening, it wanted to discover what was inside. She fell onto the sofa and cried piteously. So what? No one would hear. She was alone.

She cried desperate tears for the spirit of this tiny bird that Suzanne could hear flapping still. A spirit bird? As a little girl, she had learned about spirits. She’d grown up Catholic after all, praying to Holy Spirit as she knelt at the foot of her bed.

After a while she wiped her face with a dish towel and went into her bedroom. She put on her sweater. Changed her shoes. Where were those garden gloves? On top of the refrigerator, yes. Now out to the garage for the shovel. In the far corner, yes. What else? Nothing else? There has to be something else.

She dug a hole in front of the hedge. She’d only need a little hole. Maybe six inches? Nine or ten? She could look up how to bury a bird on the internet, but no, she had to finished digging. Crouching, bending over the dirt. She tore up poppies at the height of their brief beautiful lives, picked off cherry blossom twigs with petals small as fingernails blowing in the wind.

It had been so active, so frantic to live. Moments before nothing had happened. Just another morning, poppies blowing in the wind, unwanted mail. And now everything announced ruin. It was like her divorce all over again. Susanna lay the bird down in its small, dark hole and covered it with dirt. She could not forgive herself.

Create Your Own World

A President I Wish I Knew

“The Greatest Hero,” —Walt Whitman

When my son lends me his voluminous biography of our 18th President, Ulysses S. Grant, written by Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Hamilton and Washington, I get no further than the very first page when I realize I’m hooked, eager to learn what’s in the 1073 pages remaining.

It’s a bygone era, true, a vastly different life, yet familiar too. Reading about this American president I vaguely recognize from my high school history class, I’m surprised, excited even, to see that here’s someone, strangely enough, I can identify with. Someone I wish I knew.

Historical textbooks have portrayed  Ulysses S. Grant’s terms in office as marked by rampant corruption presided over by a president who spoke only on occasion, had  an alcohol problem, little charisma, and was simple-mindedly loyal to duplicitous “friends” in politics.  Reading GRANT however, I discover a singular, sensitive man born in the Midwest of pioneer stock, the “son of an incorruptible small-town braggart” and a silent, beloved mother, an expert horseman, a failure at business while brilliant at military maneuvers, who resigned from the army in disgrace. A foe of slavery.

The very first sentence introduces me to Grant who has just left the office of the Presidency.  It seems Ex-President Grant is unlike so many other presidents who rushed to publish their memoirs as soon as they departed the White House.  No, two-time President Ulysses S. Grant, High Military Commander of the Union Army, who defeated the renown Confederate General Robert E Lee to win the Civil War for Abraham Lincoln, “refused to trumpet his accomplishments in print” and was, in fact, too modest and unpretentious.  As Chernow describes it, Grant was a hero in spite of himself. He hated boasting about himself and his wartime accomplishments.

By the middle paragraph, Chernow fast-forwards to 1883 in post-Civil War New York City, where Grant, no longer president, has a crippling accident getting out of a taxi on a snowy night and ends up being a lifelong invalid with “excruciating pain” and the “agonizing onset of pleurisy coupled with severe rheumatism.”

And still on Page 1, Chernow hints at the financial success Grant longed for finally being realized at the end of his life. Ex-president Grant has partnered with a young brash swindler, Ferdinand Ward, and imagines himself a millionaire who will be able to at last provide support for his wife Julia after he’s gone.  But then . . .and then . . .while. . .after.

Deep into it now, I experience a small, unassuming man who never wanted to go to West Point, who could fall asleep in the middle of a battle and wake up refreshed, and who had the love and loyalty of the huge Union Army of Lincoln. Who Frederick Douglass called, “the protector of my race.” Grant who sought freedom and justice for newly emancipated slaves both as Commander in Chief and later as President, fighting carpetbaggers and the newly formed Ku Klux Klan.

There’s been recent controversy around Julia who grew up in a slave state, in a family with slaves, and Grant keeping one slave, William, for a year, which led to Grant’s statue being toppled in San Francisco. But as I discover on p. 106, “when it came within his power, Grant . . . filed papers, to “hereby manumit, emancipate and set free said William from slavery forever.”

How revelatory and comforting to me to learn intimate details of this far-sighted, faithful, loving husband and father whose lifelong love affair was with his four children and his wife, Julia, a fascinating, vivacious woman in her own right, who flourished even at the very end of what became his torturous life.

You too may likely want to read GRANT by Ron Chernow, a president of the United States in these turbulent times too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop, Press Release

From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop Live!

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”
Vincent Van Gogh

You’re invited!

Winter 2024 From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop Live!

 

Classes:       10 Saturday Mornings
Location:    West Contra Costa Adult Education
                     Alvarado School
                     5625 Sutter Ave
                     Richmond, CA 94804
Dates:         January 20, 2024 —March 30, 2024
Time:          10:00AM to 12:00PM Pacific Time
Fee:             $143   

Register online or in person. See :

  WWW.WCCADULTEDUCATION.COM

  

Margaret C. Murray has been leading From Heart to Paper Writing Workshops for over a decade.  A professional author and teacher, Margaret is presently preparing her most recent novel, Deer Xing, for publication.  She is also the publisher of Writewords Press.

To read what her students say about the workshop, see Testamonials.  

Read more about Margaret C. Murray’s From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop below.

Create Your Own World

Butterfly Song

Mysterious Butterfly Girl by Charr Crail

 

Butterfly by Charr Crail

Have you ever stopped to watch a butterfly’s soft flight of light and color leaving you with a feeling like falling in love?

Imagine that you can not only watch and feel the butterfly, but hear it as it flits from flower to flower.

 

 

Ithomiine butterfly photographed in Yasuni National Park, Ecuador.

Music artist Chris Goslow has written a song, Butterfly, that takes you to that place.

Every year Chris writes and records a new song on the birthday of his wife Charr Crail,artist and photographer.

 

 

 

 

Mysterious Butterfly Girl by Charr Crail

 

Listen to Charr’s birthday song. Butterfly, words and music by Chris Goslow. Performed by Chris Goslow.

Chris Goslow, who is also my son, has accompanied me at my book readings, playing ’60s and ’70s popular music mentioned in Dreamers and Pillow Prayers as well as tracks from his albums Waterfall and The Cherry Rainbow Piano Experience.

Chris also recorded the soundtrack for the videos Stones of Chaco Canyon and My Trip to the War Gods for Sundagger.net and Spiral.  For more about Chris and me, see Music, Writing, and Working Together.

Who doesn’t love a good book? Give the gift of WriteWords Press books. It’s easy.  Buy here!

Book to Read, Books for 2022, Books for Sale, General

Friends, let me tell you a story!

Margaret C. Murray reading from Pillow Prayers, Fourth Street Fine Arts, Berkeley, CA

 Give the gift of story this holiday season. Stories are powerful and can change lives. As a writer, I know because I work with them all the time. What a delight for me to find the story  in the process of writing it.

In the photo above I’m standing in front of my audience at the book launch of Pillow Prayers in Berkeley, CA about to read from my new book. I’m feeling great and I love my story.

That all happened a few years ago. Maybe you were there!

Pillow Prayers: Love Ruined, Love Reborn after the Summer of Love

Around ten years before I published Pillow Prayers, here I am in a friend’s backyard with my first novel, Sundagger.net.

Sundagger.net: One Family, Two Worlds, Many Lifetimes

My next book became Dreamers, a Coming of Age novel I began when I was just the age of my characters. Back then it had a different title and feel. It took several decades before Dreamers became the book I wanted.

Dreamers, set in the turbulent 1960s.  Street-savvy actor Thomas, desperate for stardom, meets music student,  Annie, desperate for love. 

A few years after publishing Dreamers, here I am feeling elated as I hold out the first printed copy of Spiral, a prequel to the “old story” in Sundagger.net. It’s a strange kind of delight to find the deeper story when you go back in time.

Spiralan epic adventure set in the ancient American Southwest

It took me much less time (and angst!) to complete my companion novels Sundagger.net and Spiral. Maybe the Southwest desert landscape allow my imagination to run wild? Or perhaps it was the amazement I felt visiting the Four Corners area multiple times.

From the start I knew what my titles would be.The “.net” in Sundagger.net speaks to the magic of electronics  in our internet/cybernetic culture today. I had a sun dagger in my mind after seeing videos and reading the history of the actual spiral carved at the top of Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon National Park.  Yes, a spiral! And now the title of my second Anasazi adventure. It wasn’t until 1973 that a perceived “dagger” of sunlight through the spiral was discovered during the summer solstice, leading to the realization of the advanced knowledge these prehistoric Native Americans had of the heavens.

Order now and save.

 For New Year 2023, give the gift of story.

 

 

Order today.

Any single title $17.00*

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Book Titles



May you enjoy a good story always!
-Margaret

 

Book to Read, Create Your Own World, From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop, General

“Keep Writing, Stay Healthy.” –advice from famed mystery writer

Tony Hillerman, famed mystery writer of the Southwest, wrote the above advice to me the last year before his death in 2008. We had been corresponding since before I published my novel of the ancient Anasazi of the Southwest, Sundagger.net. In a note to him, I  had been complaining, whining really, about my writing life.

“Keep writing, stay heathy,” he wrote back. This is my mantra when I feel confused, at loose ends, or discouraged with my work.

I wonder if renown writer J. D. Salinger had taken this advice, he would have experienced life differently. When he died at 91 in 2010, Salinger was possibly the world’s most renown and most successful literary recluse. “Hermit Crab,” Time magazine dubbed him. Here was somebody who was up there with the Grammy winners in star power and prestige, yet seemed cursed with the dismal personality of old Scrooge.

Back in the ’60s when I read Catcher in the Rye, my teenage heart beat along with Holden Caulfield’s. I was the catcher, those sheep; I was the rye too. J.D. Salinger was my writing hero along with Dylan Thomas, Oscar Wilde and Dostoevsky (No females in that short list, alas, but that is another story.)

Unlike Tony Hillerman who wrote 29 mysteries set in Navajo country, Salinger wrote one novel, a phenomenal success that he disdained, and three small volumes of short stories–then nothing else for 45 years.

By all accounts, J.D. Salinger was a phenomenal writer who refused his success. Was he was sick with self-loathing of his own genius, his own work? He must have felt he had no choice. He must have done his best from inside the worm of his illness.

But he did take one piece of Tony Hillerman’s advice. His wives and daughters say he wrote all that time. What did he leave us? I am dying to read it. Maybe that’s all he wanted–fans dying to read him. Maybe that’s why he shunned his fame and adulation. To keep us hungry. Life is strange. What do you think?

Keep writing, stay healthy.
Thank you, Tony Hillerman.

Create Your Own World

The Writer’s Job

Shadows below a Tree, San Miguel Allende, Mexico

“The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.
 Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist

 

 

Fall 2022 From Heart to Paper Zoom Workshop

Seven Tuesday evenings
September 27 — November 8, 2022
7:00PM to 8:30PM Pacific Time
$185.00*

To REGISTER for the upcoming From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop,

  • Choose ‘New writer‘ or ‘Returning writer’ below.
  • Then click on the Pay Now icon and complete the fields.

New & Returning Writers



The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power. – Toni Morrison

“My writing was a stalled train sitting at the station. Then From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop came along and showed me how to fuel the process forward. Now the train has left the station and I’m writing every day.”– Caroline

Margaret C. Murray presenting Spiral, an epic adventure of the ancient Southwest

 A professional writer and teacher, Margaret C. Murray has been leading From Heart to Paper Writing Workshops for over ten years.  Margaret is completing her fifth novel Deer Xing. She is the author of Dreamers, Sundagger.net, Spiral and Pillow Prayers. She is also the publisher of Writewords Press.

For more about Margaret C. Murray’s From Heart to Paper Writing Workshop, click here.

To read what her students say about the workshop, click on Testamonials.

Create Your Own World

Friends, Let Me Tell You a Story.

Now in this time of the epidemic, racism, mass shootings and threats of war, the first line of an Emily Dickinson poem speaks to me.

“A wounded deer leaps highest.”

The story I imagine from the above line fits with my upcoming novel I’ve been rewriting, Deer Xing, which I began in the early ’90s. A time that seems like forever and also yesterday.

My title evokes the image of a deer crossing a road at a deer warning sign. Its message is clear;  drive carefully to save a deer.

Elm Creek Doe photo by Rick Cavalieri

The sign gives us humans driving our cars, RVs, trailers and trucks the chance to be present to what is possible and how carefully we can choose to live our lives.  And how possible it is to change, to save the life of a deer, such a beautiful, gentle, quiet, vulnerable creature.

Hungry Doe photo by Rick Cavalieri

Both deer and sign inspire and uplift me to continue reworking my draft. As I edit the final section of my story, I experience deep silence, the same feeling I imagine in the eyes of a deer. And gratitude too.

 

 

Pillow Prayers book launch at Fourth Street Fine Arts, Berkeley, Ca

 “Every book is a world.” –Gabrielle Zevin.

 Margaret

 

Give yourself the gift of a book.
Buy here!

Books for 2022, Books for Sale, Events, General, Press Release

Meet me at the East Bay Book Festival!

Writeword Press titles by Margaret C. Murray

Enchanted by stories? Looking for poetry, drama, biographies, and non-fiction?  Yearning to read your next good book? Addicted to the magic and artistry possible with words? Fascinated by small press possibilities?  Excited to talk with others who feel the same?

If your  answer is “Yes” to any of the above, consider coming to the outstanding Bay Area Book Festival that takes place on Saturday, May 7th, and Sunday, 8th from 11AM to 5PM at Martin Luther King park in downtown Berkeley, CA.

At the festival, there’s so much for you to explore, including book readings by incredible authors from around the world, state-of-the art discussions and fascinating panels. Click Bay Book Festival for all the details.

BAY AREA BOOK FESTIVAL
Saturday, May 7th & Sunday,May 8th
11AM – 5PM
Martin Luther King Civic Center Park
2151 Martin Luther King Jr Way
Berkeley, CA  94704

 At the Festival you will find me, Margaret C. Murray, under the canopy of Booth #36, Thoth Writers Collective, by the Main Stage in the Park.

What is the Thoth Writers Collective? We are a group of six writers across two continents, from Spain to California, who collaborate via Zoom, email, etc., to encourage one another and improve our writing which spans interpersonal and gender dilemmas, global conflicts and myth. We take our name from Thoth, the ibis-headed god who introduced writing to the ancient Egyptians. Below is a short bio of each of us.

Jan Alexander, based in New York, writes both fiction and non-fiction that reflects how globalism and technology are changing everything, in good ways and bad. Her books include Ms. Ming’s Guide to Civilization (novel, Regal Publishers 2020); Getting to Lamma (novel); Bad Girls of the Silver Screen (with Lottie Da; nonfiction). See more at https://www.janalexander.com/portfolio-category/books/

Peter de Lissovoy is a writer and free-lance editor living in New Hampshire; besides his nonfiction memoirs of his days as a civil rights activist with SNCC in Georgia (The Great Pool Jump), his works include the novels Invisible Car Dealer; Wisconsin; Rita; Melusina; The Angels of Zimbabwe; and Feelgood: A trip in time and out: See https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Peter-de-Lissovoy/e/B06XPRQ21X?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1649153619&sr=8-1

Geoffrey Fox, based in Spain and New York, is the author of the novels Rabble! A Story of the Paris Commune (2021) and A Gift for the Sultan (2008), translated into Turkish as BirCihan, Iki Sultan (Nokta Istanbul, 2012) and the short-story collection Welcome to My Contri (1988; augmented e-book 2017). His best-selling sociological work is Hispanic Nation: Culture, Politics and the Constructing of Identity (University of Arizona Press, 1997). See https://geoffreyfox.com/

Karla Huebner is a novelist and professor of art history at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, and author of Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic (art history, University of Pittsburgh Press), In Search of the Magic Theater (novel, Regal House 2022) and other works. See https://www.karlahuebner.com/

Dirk van Nouhuys writes novels, short stories, experimental forms, and occasionally verse. He has a BA from the Stanford creative writing program and was a minor pioneer of what later became the internet. He has published a book on Macintosh applications, and a translation of two Flemish novels, The Danger and The Enemy. He publishes fiction regularly in literary and other magazines. See http://www.wandd.com/Site/Publications.html

As for myself, I am the author of novels Sundagger.net, Dreamers, Spiral and Pillow Prayers. I’m also the publisher of Writewords Press, and teacher of From Heart to Paper Writing Workshops. Presently I am fine-tuning my upcoming novel, Deer Xing. You can read more about me here.

Writeword Press titles by Margaret C. Murray

See you at the Festival!
–Margaret

Books for Sale, Events, Readings

Hidden Treasure in Desert Daylight

Valley of the Gods, Cedar Mesa, Bears Ears National Park

Pictographs, Petroglyphs and Potsherds are the clues to hidden treasure in pure daylight at two National Parks in the American Southwest.

Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Parks are located in the Four Corners area of the Southwest: Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Bears Ears, the largest park in the United States at 1.9 million acres, was designated a National Monument (Park) by President Obama in 2017 after thirty Native American tribes, including the Navajo, Hopi, Ute, Zuni, Paiute, and Apache, advocated for its protection as a sacred site.

Potchards at Chimney Rock, CO, site of Spiral 

The pre-puebloan people known as the Anasazi disappeared from this land by the 13th century, leaving behind their petroglyphs, pictographs and potsherds, a mysterious gift to explore.

“This place is a part of the history of all the Native peoples in this region. It’s like a book for us, and when many tribes have a chapter in this book, it tells us a lot about why we are the way we are. But it’s also part of the history of the peoples of the United States and the world.” Jim Enote, Pueblo of Zuni

Petroglyphs by Anasazi at at Bears Ears National Park

Bears Ears (1.9 million acres, designated by Obama, 2017) and Grand Staircase Escalante (designated by Clinton, 1996) contains 4,000 years of Native American culture.

In Grand Staircase Escalante National Park are buried the richest deposit of dinosaur bones in the world, with fossils 75 million years old. So far twenty-five new species of dinosaurs have been discovered.

Dinosaur’s tail embedded in sandstone, Grand Staircase Escalante National Park

There was danger that these precious parks would be destroyed to make National Park land ripe for “development”, i.e., private mining, fracking, conglomerate agriculture, and industrial off-road recreation. An extremely rare dig of dinosaur fossils was looted before development could be stopped.

I wrote my novels of the ancient Southwest after traveling to the Four Corners, amazed to realize that here in the American desert was over 100,000 sites of Native American archeology.  Click on the YouTube video “Stones of Chaco Canyon” and feel the magic that led me to write Sundagger.net and Spiral.

Click the Paypal button below to order Sundagger.net and Spiral.

Ancient Southwest Novels
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