Musings & Thoughts for Thursday, February 15, 2024, or: M-Day Plus 63 Days…and Chapter 13 of Reunion: Coda Gets its Fifth Scene

Late Morning, Thursday, February 15, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hello, everyone. It’s a cold but sunny day here in Eidelweiss, the section of Madison where I have lived now for two months. Currently, the temperature is 27°F (-3°C) under sunny conditions. With humidity at 48% and the wind blowing from the northwest at 4 MPH (6 Km/h), the feels-like temperature is 39°F (4°C). Today’s forecast calls for mostly sunny skies and a high of 34°F (1°C). Tonight, we can expect light snow showers to pass through the area. The low will be 22°F (-5°C).

Well, today – as I mentioned earlier – marks the two-month anniversary of my arrival here after a three-day drive with my friend Patti from the Tampa Bay area in west-central Florida. I’m still in the “getting settled” stage of my new life in New Hampshire, but I think I am, given the circumstances, adjusting a bit better than I thought. I do my best to go outside every day – except when it’s raining or snowing heavily – to get sunshine, fresh air, and exercise…and to get used to the New England climate, which is colder than what I, a native Floridian who lived in the Sunshine State for more than half a century, was used to.

I also now have a provisional non-driver state ID issued by New Hampshire, which I suppose means that I’m now legally a resident of the Live Free or Die state. I will be getting my permanent ID card in the mail soon – which means that it’ll arrive at the Madison Post Office and tucked into my P.O. Box since the U.S. Postal Service does not do door-to-door delivery here. (Apparently, Madison is too rural, too tiny for that, and there aren’t too many folks who want to take the job of delivering mail. That means that the other guy who rents a room on the other side of the house, Stuart, must go on his motorbike to retrieve the mail. I have a key to the P.O. box, too, but I need a ride to the post office, and I hate asking for favors too often, so….)

There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done (IKEA shelves to finish assembling, boxes to be unpacked, artwork that either needs to be hung on walls or stored somewhere out of the way, and things of that nature) before I can say I’m completely settled in, but I’m adjusting to my new home.

On Writing & Storytelling: Calliope Was Very, Very Good to Me….

For those of you who are following my writer’s journey as I write my first novel, I have good news. Yesterday, after several days of being limited to editing and revising existing material in Reunion: Coda’s manuscript, I wrote all-new material and produced a decent first draft version of Scene Five for Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios, the novel’s 13^th chapter (and the last set in Jim Garraty’s high school years).

Because I had a late start and had some trouble deciding how to begin the scene, I did not believe that I would write a complete – and readable – first draft version in one abbreviated work session. I sat down at my desk at a decent enough hour after my midday break – 1:30 PM – but I didn’t start writing until 2:30 PM and was convinced, truly convinced, that I’d only write until 5 PM and end up with, at best, 50 to 75% of the scene in question, which is set during the South Miami Senior High School Class of 1983’s graduation ceremony on Friday, June 17, 1983.

Well, either I was incredibly lucky or Calliope, the Muse of Epic Poetry (and thus the legendary source of inspiration to novelists everywhere) was especially generous to me yesterday. For not only did I not feel like stopping at 5 or even 6 PM (I believe it was 6:30 PM or so when I ended yesterday’s work session), but I also ended up with a complete fifth scene for Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios.

In my vague mental outline, I originally thought Scene Five would end the chapter, but the way I ended it shows that, without a doubt, a sixth scene is needed to give Jim Garraty’s high school-era narrative a definitive ending.  After that, I think there are only two more “Jim and Maddie” chapters left to write – and then…Reunion: Coda’s tale will end.

If you want to get a sneak preview of Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios’ penultimate section, read on!

The line of graduating seniors moved slowly toward the dais where Dr. Burke, Mrs. Benitez, one of the assistant principals, and School Board member Janet McAliley stood. As each student’s name was called, they walked up to Dr. Burke, stopped in front of him, and took the empty red-brown leather diploma case with “Diploma; South Miami Senior High School” in gold leaf on the front – we’d get the real thing outside the Gibson Center after the ceremony had ended and we’d given back our caps and gowns – and shook his hand with a smile for the mandatory photo op. Then that kid would walk back to his or her seat while the next one did the same thing, and so on.

Alex Diaz-Granados, Reunion: Coda

5

2:00 PM, Miami-Dade Community College, South Campus, Theodore R. Gibson Center

Is the band playing “The Graduation March” better now, or am I imagining things? I wondered as I got up from the hard, uncomfortable metal folding chair that had been torturing my ass for the last hour and slowly made my way to where the seniors in the F and G sections were lining up for their march to the dais. I guess Mr. Braxton must have given some of the kids in the band a good talking-to; I can actually recognize Elgar’s “Land of Hope and Glory” now.

As the South Miami High School Band played the familiar refrain from “Pomp and Circumstance No. 1” over and over again, I straightened my white graduate’s robe and walked behind Cindy Garcia, whose shapely bottom was thankfully hidden by the loose, billowy gown she wore over her midnight blue dress. I followed the drill I had practiced a week earlier at the rehearsal in the South Miami High gym/basketball court, squaring my shoulders and walking with as much dignity as I could muster. Eyes front. Back stiff. Left-right, left-right. Keep your distance from the person in front of you, Garraty. And for God’s sake, stop thinking about Marty! Or Cindy’s ass, for that matter.

At least I wasn’t the salutatorian – that honor had gone to Joe Bloomberg, a notorious prankster who somehow had the second-highest GPA (4.90) in our class and had gotten into Princeton University – or the valedictorian. The top rank belonged to Milagros Buendia, who, despite having been in the United States for only three years after coming from Cuba during the Mariel Boatlift, had worked her way to the top of the Class of ’83 with a GPA of 5.1 and a full ride to Loyola University, where she wanted to major in psychology. My adjusted grade point average was good enough for Harvard at 4.65, but it could have been higher if I had quit the Singing Cobras in my junior year and taken more AP classes in the “collegebound” track instead.

But I wouldn’t have done that, I thought. I liked studying, most of the time; except for math, I enjoyed going to class every day and learning something new or seeing things from a different angle. Still, high school was a drag, and getting that orange-brown tassel was a pain. Why make things harder and scarier by having to give a speech in front of everyone? If I was going to be a history professor – whether at an Ivy League school or (more likely, I thought bitterly) at a community college somewhere in the sticks or back in Florida – I would be talking to students every day as part of my job. Being a valedictorian would have been a nice bonus, but I already had my ticket to Harvard – no need to sweat over a speech that most of my classmates (including Mark and Marty) would have snoozed through.

Being in the top 75 students of the 450-plus strong class – the 12th in South Miami High School’s brief history – was enough for me. It was enough for Mom, too, who – along with Mark’s mom Dale and his sister Leslie – was somewhere in the crowd of 3,000 people sitting in the Gibson Center’s hard bleachers.

The line of graduating seniors moved slowly toward the dais where Dr. Burke, Mrs. Benitez, one of the assistant principals, and School Board member Janet McAliley stood. As each student’s name was called, they walked up to Dr. Burke, stopped in front of him, and took the empty red-brown leather diploma case with “Diploma; South Miami Senior High School” in gold leaf on the front – we’d get the real thing outside the Gibson Center after the ceremony had ended and we’d given back our caps and gowns – and shook his hand with a smile for the mandatory photo op. Then that kid would walk back to his or her seat while the next one did the same thing, and so on.

As I waited – half-thrilled, half-terrified – for my name to come out of the PA, my mind did what it always did when I was nervous or down: it played a movie in my head, a black-and-white flick like the ones you’d see in old war documentaries: me and the other Cobras, wearing the loose jumpsuits of World War II American paratroopers and checking our chutes and gear. 16 okay….15 okay…14 okay….

Yes, Calliope was very, very good to me yesterday.

On Writing & Storytelling: Action This Day

I don’t yet know what exactly I will do when I resume working on the manuscript after my midday break. I usually have two options:

• Read, evaluate, and revise existing material (including yesterday’s “fresh copy”)
• Write new material (which means plowing ahead to Scene Six of Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios)

What I do know, my friends, is that today is a writer’s working day and that after I have rested a bit and had a bite (or two) to eat at lunchtime, I must put in at least two to three hours of work into the novel. Given a choice, I’d rather write new material to at least get Scene Six started, but sometimes the editor in me takes the wheel, so to speak, and focuses on looking for errors – large and small – and fixing them as soon as humanly possible.

That’s all the news I have for you, folks, so this is where you and I must part company. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.