What is the Truth?

To All Those Who Don't Lie,

When I first passed Leiatra’s Rhapsody around for review, one of the first comments I got to hear was, “man… she (Leiatra) lies so much!” To which I got to thinking… “Well, what is the truth?”

One of the main issues I had growing up was learning how to lie. That’s right. You’ve read that right. I don’t know how many times I got nudged, or pinched, or punched because I didn’t lie. For a great part of my life I have been studiously learning how to lie. Now, I know right here I'm doing it again. Surely there's a better way to aristocratically phrase this without saying what I really mean.   

Eventually however, I caught on to what my mother… and sister… and just about everyone else who toiled at great lengths to get me to understand. Sugarcoat Rhonda! Or ignore ‘it’! I'm still a little rough around the edges. But here’s the good thing. 

I've actually come to understand how sugarcoating and keeping silent during pivotal dialogue has both its benefits and rewards. ←And no, benefits and rewards aren’t the same in this usage. The person or thing you’re sugarcoating reaps the benefit. The sugar-coater reaps the reward. This is what I’ve come to call decorum, and I don’t announce this derisively. Decorum is a beautiful thing. Everyone wins. Although too, I sometimes find myself still scratching my head and asking, “What is the truth?”

Creating Dynamic Characters.

One of the first things that intrigued me about people… that being once I re-accessed what intrigued me about indifference amongst people… and that was perception. How could some NOT see what I was seeing? Typical example.

I’d look up and see a building, what looked like to me, leaning over. Turning towards a person standing nearby I would say, “wow, that building sure look like it’s about to fall over.” To which the nearby person would look at me sideways and chide, “What? Are you crazy? When have you ever known a building to fall over!?!”

Wham! The building falls over. It might take one day, two days, or topple over a few years out, but the building does fall, to which the nearby person would come back over to me and ask, incredulously, “how did you see that?” To which I’d wonder, “No, the real question is… how did you NOT see it?”

This has nothing to do with being clairvoyant, which I most certainly am NOT, but has everything to do with what people perceive. In fact, this example could also be looked at transposed. There have been times when the building did not fall over. Now, it could have been that someone overheard me and rushed right inside and told the spokesperson who told the building draftsman’ who, at first glance, rushed right outside and got busy uprighting the building so that it didn’t fall over. Or it could have been my own eyes leaning, meaning it wasn't the building leaning after all.

Whatever the case, this is how I got into this people analysis spectrum. For me it wasn’t so easy, or perhaps it was too easy to cast off perception to, “oh, she or he is crazy, dumb, prejudiced, ‘a hypocandriac’, weird, narcissistic, bipolar,” and the endless list of terms ‘we’ give others who don’t see as we do.

Now, I’m sure someone, somewhere either has been, or is, studying the phenomenon. I haven’t looked this person up; primarily because I believe in God (who needs no help from me keeping buildings upright), but I do find it helpful analyzing this thing called perception when scribing characters to paper. It’s awesome for creating great big dimensions for my characters.

Finally, Pretty Inside Out! (PIO)...

Available on Amazon has it's own blogspot!

So, I’m reading the other day about peeves readers find in books. The list-Oh My-was long. One of the peeves that humored me however, was the peeve about using ‘wrong’ words. HaHa! → This is one of my favorite writing techniques. Though I try not to make a bad habit of over-using the technique, I do love toying with words. Love it! I call it sarcasm. Got it from, ugh… my man Shakespeare… Wink. Wink. Loved it in Sedaris’ books, and rolled all over the floor laughing at Ving Rhames doing it in the movie ‘Don King: Only in America’! Hence, it also is what the phrase (from my website) “Words of Choice One Poignant Voice,” means.

I mean really? Look around a bookstore. What is that? A million books, trillions of words? They can’t all be saying it the same way, can they? I guess, so long as the story is moving, I like the idea of doing the double-take, second-glance back to reread a catch phrase ‘WATCH OUT!’ it’s not a snap-foo, in a book.

What? What was that? And so now I’m thinking. Love it!

Please Do Click Here for a lil' more insight into PIO.

One Creepy Crawly Story

Dug in my cache of stories and found a tale not shared before… and just in time for Jack-O-Lantern’s Creepy Crawly Day. The only problem with this one, it wasn’t Halloween.

It was the day after Christmas. My father had just left for an out-of-town meeting, which made it the perfect opportunity for my sister and I to go out clubbing. Our mother wasn’t as much of a stickler about our curfew. She was nothing like our father. Not only did he want us home before 2am, but he would often camp out at the window until we got home, and then punish us the following day by taking away our allowance if we missed our curfew. Once he even showed up at the club, oh how embarrassing, shouting out for my sister who darted through the crowd to avoid him seeing her. Luckily it was dark inside, and crowded, and the music was as loud as it was... coupled by the fact no one but her girlfriend knew her name.

But this night he was away. This was the year we got our double-breast maxi coats… DBs we used to call them. My sister’s was black, mine gray, and we couldn’t wait to dress up and jump in them.

So we go clubbing, leave the club… my guess is it was about our normal return home time… 3-4am… when as we were walking home this woman stopped her car and spat in this real eerie tone, “Girls, what are you doing out here this late!?! Get home and get home now.”

Right away both my sister and I start thinking about how we disobeyed our father. Feeling guilty, sharing how sorry we were, we picked up our pace. We were nearing a corner of the street that once we turned, would put us a few more blocks away from our front door, when all of a sudden this ‘thing’ appeared before us.

Okay now wait. Let me back up and better describe this thing. After the woman left us with the eerie message, in the far off distance it looked as if a white man was approaching. Given the neighborhood we lived in… and the time, it was odd, but not so odd that we gave it much thought. The eerie message was soaking up too much of our attention to question what we thought we were seeing. But as the man neared, we suddenly realized we don’t know what is approaching us.

The face obviously was painted, and it looked like fangs coming out of its mouth. Plus, it was wearing a black cape, with the widowed-peak black hair. Did I not mention it was the day after Christmas? We thought for sure we were seeing our first live vampire.

Without looking at each other, and surely without taking our eyes off the ‘thing’, my sister and I on cue began slowly counting to three. One… two… and we bolted around the corner on the count of three, just as simultaneously to us taking off, the thing spread its wings, making this hissing sound, taking off after us. We ran like Wilma Rudolph that night!

This story is not fiction. This actually happened. The thing didn’t catch us. We outran Count Dracula, or maybe Leroy the Vampire, praying every step of our run that our father was sitting by that window!

Plugging a Spot for Soul Food Restaurants!

Normally I prefer not to eat out. Between trying to get my body and taste buds acclimated to foods minus the saturated sugars, starches, and salt… and the money issue, I dine on home cooked meals. But when I had been eating out, besides cuisining down at places like Jim’s (cheesesteaks & hoagies), my other favorite spots were the Cheesecake Factory, Luther’s (primarily in Texas), and Famous Daves (Northern Virginia)!

But here recently I have some SOUL FOOD spots to add to this list!

When in DC, Georgia Brown’s is the place to be.

**Favorites**

The Charleston She Crab Soup
The Louisiana “Devil” Shrimp
The Southern Fried Chicken
The music & ambiance
& the Customer Service!

In NYC (Harlem), Sylvia’s (Queen of Soul Food) is one spot to see.

**Favorites**

The Mac & Cheese
The ambiance (a must do-see for the first time tourist)
& the customer service was a great big treat!

And in Philly, Big Daddy’s is so good to me!

**Favorites**

The Flounder
The Yams
The LARGE portions
Very clean
There are now “3” locations in Philly!
& the service is wonderful!!!