Sally Gerard

When my youngest was in kindergarten, his class made time capsules which they were to open upon high school graduation. I often helped in his classroom and I remember the struggle he had choosing what to put in it. High school graduation came and went and the time capsule was buried somewhere in a kitchen cabinet in our house. Off to college he went and we’d all forgotten about the painted and sealed can.

When he graduated from college, he asked about it but I didn’t know what had happened

Google Image: Beetle Borgs

to it, until my sister and brother-in-law found it among the things I’d stored at their house when I sold our house in Mead. So it sits on my desk waiting for Alex to come and claim it and open it. He doesn’t really remember what’s in it either, but he told me that in kindergarten he remembered being very concerned about how he’d get the hot glue off to get it open when the time came. His teacher responded, “When you’re in college, you’ll know.” Wise teacher.

Google Image: Hit Clips

Alex thinks there may be beetle borgs in it and some hit clips, possibly something spiderman and I wondered about a little Lego man. The can is much smaller than I remember, but the memories it contains will be so much bigger than any can could hold. I have no idea what I would have put in a similar vessel when I was in kindergarten, do you?

What do you like more than chocolate? 

My first response would be coffee, but that wouldn’t really give you the whole picture. I’m a dark chocolate fanatic who cannot go without coffee. Chocolate has always been a part of my life, but I came to coffee late in life, sometime in my 30s. I always loved the smell of brewing coffee, but didn’t develop a taste for it until I gave up Mountain Dew.

Of course, perhaps the best of both worlds here would be a mocha made with dark chocolate. And skim milk.

But seriously, there are many things that I like: grilled zucchini, salmon, sweet grapes, juicy ripe peaches, ice-cream, RC Cola, spinach, balsamic vinaigrette, Zots (but who doesn’t!), squash, bison burgers, popcorn, roasted carrots, caramelized onions, sourdough pancakes, Trevor’s smoked anything, and I could go on and on. I mean, I don’t think there is any dessert I don’t like, well, except pecan pie-gross.

And then I come back to the simple pleasure found in little piece of dark chocolate melting in my mouth, next to a steaming mug of coffee.

I’m supposed to be thinking about where I might fit on the spectrum between romanticism and realism as a fiction writer.

Romanticists tend toward: “rendering reality poetically, intertwining character and plot so that plot reveals character, characters are simple and driven by one desire, settings express mood and inner nature of characters, events can be dramatic and implausible, tone is usually serious, and presentation is subjective in first or close third person point of view.”

Realists tend toward: “rendering reality closely and in detail no matter the plot, character is more important and involves complex ethical choices, characters appear in real complexity and who they are and where they come from matters, class is important, settings are local and specific, events are plausible, tone can be matter-of-fact, and

Pixabay.com

objectivity in presentation is important so heads toward an omniscient or distant third point of view”(Hutchison, J.)

As with so many things, I see myself in both, but I think I bend more to the romanticist side of literature. If you’ve read my work, leave a comment and let me know what you think. If you haven’t read my work, tell me where you’d rather live in your fiction reading.

Examples of each include:

Romanticism: Poe, Hawthorn, Shelley, Blake, Austen, Carroll, LeGuin and Gaiman

Realists: Twain, Harding Davis, James, Joyce, and Chekov