By Barbara Rick
Whirly Pops from Harrods in London, photo © 2007 by Barbara Rick. All rights reserved.
In my freckle-faced, firmer-thighed youth I had a thing for Butterfingers. And Clark Bars. Sugar Babies, Sugar Daddies, Tootsie Pops and Pez.
It was a long way for a little girl to Lyons, the candy store on the corner. I remember walking down North Pleasant Avenue–under a leafy roof of elm and oak–nickel tight against my palm.
It was dark inside the cigarette smoke-stained soda fountain and grill, but the candy wrappers were neon.
Row upon row of Good ‘N Plenty, Twizzlers, Mounds and Almond Joy. Jujyfruit, Jujubes, SweeTarts. A jungle of flavors. The velvety, creamy, chunky, the chocolately: I loved it all. I never met a peanut butter cup I didn’t thoroughly enjoy.
Every Valentine’s Day, my dad would bring hearts filled with caramels and creams to my mom and my sisters and me…later on, sweet silver earrings shaped just like those heart boxes.
A local clothing store in town had an old-fashioned penny candy counter. Inside the antique wood cabinets and beveled glass gleamed Mary Janes, Jawbreakers, candy corn and those white strips of paper with pastel buttons you’d pick off with your teeth. They had red licorice shoelaces and Bazooka bubble gum.
At the movie theater nearby, Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were all sweetened by Starburst, Goobers and Raisinets.
A great thing about summer sleep away camp in the fourth grade were the bonbons that came in a long box. You could buy them after the sun went down. They warded off homesickness–sometimes.
Mrs. Farrell, our wrinkled piano teacher, dispensed cellophane-wrapped cinnamon and butterscotch drops to polite students after each weekly lesson. The candy beat Bach.
My classmates and I would take the bus to the Plaza for Saturday shopping expeditions. Clothes were the alleged highlight. But for me, the malted balls and caramel turtles at the JC Penney candy counter were my raison d’etre at the mall.
Me and candy. Candy and me.
In the summertime, I’d slip miniature Milky Way and Snickers bars out of their bags in our freezer, one by one, and then play dumb when my mother wondered, hands on hips, where have all the candy bars gone?
Have a piece of fruit, she’d say, when I was prowling the kitchen for sugar.
Right.
Over the years, I wasn’t really having candy anymore; it was having me.
Going through a painful divorce, I arrived at a point in my life when I was willing to let go of whatever wasn’t working anymore. Sometimes surrender beats endless wrestling. I’ve found it easier for me not to have any–none–than struggle just to have one.
I’ve essentially given up candy for almost fourteen years now.
People say, no candy?
Moderation! they cry.
Why not just have one?
There is nothing remotely moderate about me and candy, and besides, I’ve had way more than my share.
It IS possible to live in a world without KitKats.
Life is infinitely sweeter for me without them.
On Candy is a compilation of writing practices on confection.
About writing, Barbara says: I deeply love language; the images and feelings it captures and communicates. I’ve been writing since I was eight…creating stories at a neighbor’s picnic table in a wisteria-scented backyard. Perfectionism was a plague early on–I obsessed about getting the quotation marks exactly right!
Whether writing copy for network news anchors, movie scripts, magazine articles, or short stories, I aim for brevity, clarity, accuracy, and truth.
Barbara is finishing up a new documentary on an inspiring journey deep inside South Africa.
More about other projects at Out of The Blue Films.
-related to Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – CANDY FREAK
Barbara
Beat this for brevity: candy is dandy.
Love you a whole bunch anyway.
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What a great photo! It feels like I’m peering into a store window.
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Hello, E. I.
Thanks for taking time from your poetry in the wilds of New Jersey to respond. Good to hear from you, Empress!
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Thanks, ybonesy. I took that photo at Harrod’s in London. I was there for a film festival with my documentary, IN GOOD CONSCIENCE. It was cool to roam the city with my camera..
Got some amazing shots of flowers in Melbourne, Australia. The light is really different there.
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It’s good to notice the light, isn’t it? It is something I love about photography and film – I pay deep attention to light. I love your photograph, too, and how it plays off the writing (and the colors in the masthead!).
I like this line. I can picture it in a memory:
“It was dark inside the cigarette smoke-stained soda fountain and grill, but the candy wrappers were neon.”
And these:
“I arrived at a point in my life when I was willing to let go of whatever wasn’t working anymore. Sometimes surrender beats endless wrestling.”
I’m curious about two things – you say you’ve been writing since you were 8. I’ve noticed that writers often know the exact moment when they knew they were writers. What was the story you were writing at 8? How did you know?
And the other thing – about surrender. I like hearing the ways people know surrender. How do you use surrender in your creative processes?
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QuoinMonkey, many thanks!
It’s such a gift when writers I admire ask about my writing and process.
You know, I have no idea what I was writing that day. I DO remember worrying that I would never learn to get the punctuation to the point where it looked the same as in the books I loved to read.
In high school, I had glimmers of the idea that I was really a writer. I loved it AND would run away from it.
As for surrender in the creative process, I always have to stop and breathe. I find amazing things happen when I quit forcing my hand on my work and make room for a happy surprise. I have to show up: put pen to paper, meet the keys, face the footage. But the results are never mine alone.
By the way, great blog!
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Your comments are right on. About loving writing AND running from it. I knew in junior high and it took me years to start to believe in myself. It’s all a process.
Stop and breathe – yes. And in art school we called those surprises, happy accidents. They make for the best art. And they come from somewhere so much bigger than us.
Thank you for writing with us. It’s so good to have other writers and artists on the page.
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I remember one of my high school friends being able to make the comma mark with a little ball at the beginning and then the tail (like sperm??). I was so impressed by how she actually included the extra portion that was the ball, and I spent hours if not days and weeks trying to perfect my comma so I could make one just like hers! Yes, perfectionism in punctuation. I wonder if there is a clinical name for it.
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ybonesy — funny how we learned things from fellow classmates. I remember friends in grammar school teaching me how to spell miss-iss-i-ppi (like some kind of cheerleader chant). And it stuck. Also my friend Terry across the street got me to learn how to spell ‘people’ by saying pee-oh-pull to myself when trying to write it, instead of pee-pull.
And I remember one time reading aloud to my dad on the couch.. stumbling on a big word… which I had pronounced an-ox-ee-us. I was reading for a long time (I think he had been asleep) but when he heard an-ox-ee-us he said, ‘Whoa, what was that one?’ He peered closely at the word, and kindly straightened me out. I never forgot how to spell or pronounce ‘anxious’ after that day.
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Yes, I learned the Miss-iss-ipp-I chant, too. And a couple just for New Mexico, which my fifth-grade Math teacher, Mr. Simpson, taught us (of all people!): A-L-B-U—Q-U-E-R—Q-U-E-HEY! And he taught us a story about a little girl named Lil who got burned but didn’t know how to spell burn, spelled it bern, and so it became something about BERN-A-LIL-LO, which is the county we lived in. Geez!
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ybonesy & QM:
Your writings and other art are so inspiring to me; so alive and at home on this thing you’ve created. Thanks very much for inviting me to experience it, too.
All this kind of reminds me of the new garden my dad and I planted over this most beautiful New York spring weekend. Hot pink azaelas meeting marine blue lobelia, next to rhododendron fat with purple buds. Growing wild and healthy, with faith and work. Cool.
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Barbara, thanks for the kudos. I hope you’ll keep visiting. So much of our work here is turning out to be about practice: art, writing, reading, sketching, walking, doodling, photography, time in the darkroom. Practice takes many different forms.
Oh, I’m so glad you mentioned gardens. We were just walking the gardens in our front yard yesterday and realizing the spring rains have completely transformed them! Everything is blooming and we’ve got some weeding to do.
In the journey I was on Saturday, one thing the shaman told me was to get my feet out into the dirt. Even if I have to bring a box of dirt inside and plant my bare feet there.
Gardening is so grounding. And we need ground to create. I wonder what other ways people use to ground?
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Great photo. I feel like diving into that candy.
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I had that same thought – you could dive right in. 8)
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Hey, Jim Anderson, thank you. You are extra sweet, and not just because you are mine. 😉
QM, this week Jim and I have been planting scarlet and snow white impatiens in our flower boxes… thyme and spearmint and basil, too. I was thinking about what you had written about being ‘grounded’ in soil.
Planting and watering and pinching back the petunias grounds me. I prefer digging and dragging huge bags of topsoil to treadmill time at my stinky gym.
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Oh, me, too! I couldn’t agree with you more. I prefer to be outside doing lawn work than in a gym any day. Hands down!
Liz and I worked in the yard all day yesterday; I mean hours. In fact, I learned to use a chainsaw which I think is going to make a great blog piece! We got rid of the buckthorn on the side of the house. It’s an invasive species. In its place, we’re going to plant some red dogwood. Handsome bushes.
We also planted a Mesabi cherry tree (Cherry Pie) out in front of the garden by the road. It’s beautiful. I smile every time I look at it. 8) Thanks for sharing your grounding.
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Miss Rick, What a way you have with words! Bravo.
Dolphin noises,
T
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An honor coming from one of my favorite writers in the world. A hero of the blank page and Final Draft, you are! xxbarbara
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[…] Barbara Rick – May 2007 […]
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