incest – Feminism and Religion

Novel Excerpt III: That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier

I have posted selections from my novel in progress before here and here and here…I am again. My last post here at FAR was about women and silence. Silencing women—from the powerful (Hillary Clinton) to the obscure (this girl that in this novel excerpt is now a teenager) women are silenced.

In this novel, as you can read from the previous excerpts a journal is found by a brother who is twin to his sister. The journals he finds are addressed to him after his parents’ house sells. Upon reading them he begins to discover that they are written by his sister when she was younger and in all likelihood she does not now as an adult remember having written them. She does not remember what it looks like happened to her. Incest. What must he do? This grown up person that he now is finding this information out? She has been silenced and he is holding the key to the only voice she had at the time. I have been working on this novel for over ten years and am currently immersed in trying to pull together all of the pieces I have written over the years. What I have posted so far is excerpts from the journals he, Chris, finds. This excerpt continues that story line. Continue reading “Novel Excerpt III: That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier”

Another Excerpt from That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier

Author’s Note: This post continues to serialize excerpts from my novel, That Christmas Morning Feeling. Please see last month’s post for the initial entry.

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Book Number Seventeen

Look, I’m not the one. I don’t have an investment here. This is not about me. But, I think that when you think you can actually do some good in the world you should do it. I mean what if you have this whole body of knowledge. And you say nothing. Is that morally acceptable? I think not. I’m sure everyone has thought it. You are going along in your life, and you stop suddenly. The color of the trees, sparkle on the water, but maybe not so wow world, you are cool stuff. Maybe just the mundane world, maybe even the curve of the paint on the wall, even paint drying as the saying goes, could be enough to catch you up and you realize – life. Life’s here. Right now. And it needs me. Do I love it, or do I not? And if you do, if you love, love it – just life. Then you have to do something about it, to make it better. Like if it was your kid, you couldn’t just sit by – right? Well, you could. People do, God knows.

Or he doesn’t. You’d think he would do something, or she. Guess it doesn’t work that way. Maybe it’s true what they said in the church last Sunday. I’ve been thinking about it… even though I was only half listening. Personally I usually hate being there, big waste of time. But it is a waste of time, and in some ways that’s a good thing…just a predictable waste of time, nothing dramatic happening –that’s a new way to look at Church. I guess. Have to remember that.

Maybe God is in “the least of us.” That would be me. And it is up to us to decide what God does, how God acts, or rather to act like God. Then we can get God to change things. Otherwise God is just an idea…without a body. Not much you can do on planet Earth in that state. We have to figure out we are not really in Oz, like Dorothy, no mystical wizard to help us…just some fabulous dream shoes and a great idea about home, and no place like it, whatever she’s rattling at the end… and then going there to do something about it. She can’t do it from Oz. Too bad, but true. She has to wake up there in the middle of the black and white world and get out of bed, presumably without the fabulous shoes. So she just has to get out of bed and get on with it. At least I hope she gets out of bed; we never really saw that part.

We are really here, so we can do something about the here and now.

So no one is talking Incest. No one I personally know of course, since I talk it. That is not because Incest is not happening as an event. It’s just not a newsworthy concept, really. Because it isn’t a concept is it…? It’s an event, as in, “This happened to me.” But it is not a language that is spoken on planet Earth. No language here, except Incest, could transform that event that happens into a concept that’s newsworthy… not that I know of. And no one is taking language labs in Incest. So no one can write about it in the newspapers, etc., etc. It’s obviously a vicious cycle.

Continue reading “Another Excerpt from That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier”

That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier

What follows is an excerpt from my current project—a novel I have been working on for over ten years. It is finished—sort of— in various journals and I am currently trying to pull them all together. These are the opening pages. Thank you so much for your support of my work. The novel is called- That Christmas Morning Feeling.

Book Number Sixteen

This is how I feel about incest, I mean learning to talk about it…speak Incest, as in capital “I” – Incest, like French, German, – Incest…right? Because you don’t talk about it, you talk it…you, as in you alone, you talk it; you use it in a sentence. “This is what happened to me…” And no one talks back.

And, why compare it to French or German? There are whole countries who will talk back to you if you speak French or German. Learning Incest is like learning Martian – you think to yourself, maybe there’s a planet somewhere where learning Martian would be useful…but it is certainly not here… no one can speak Martian here, correct your grammar, help you write a poem, check your iambic pentameter…whatever. My point is, learning Martian, well, if you learned it…how would you ever know if you were speaking it right? If someone on Mars could actually understand you? Of course, you wouldn’t know. You would just have to really love Martian enough to learn to speak it – even though…And then, of course, assume that you might meet and if you ever did meet a Martian and you had invested all this time in learning Martian just in case you would ever run into a Martian, you’d hope that he would understand you. Or she. Whatever. Continue reading “That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier”