Aaron Polson's Blog, page 7

Going There

I recently started my new job as guidance counselor at McLouth Middle/High School. No, it has nothing to do with the latest Triangulation anthology, but I'll get to that. Trust me.

Enrollment took place last Thursday night and Friday morning. I saw what felt like hundreds of parents and students in a small amount of time (it was probably only a few dozen, but the feeling was there). I changed schedules, enrolled new kiddos, and was just there for a few to vent.

I don't remember if I've ever blogged about "the well" before, but as I'm nearing 1,000 posts, I don't remember a lot I've blogged about. The well, the deep place inside a person in which they can feel emotion, has been my greatest ally in the last eight months.

When I coached forensics, I talked to my team about the emotional battery inside all of us--the well--and how they could draw from that to make their performances work. I guess I was teaching method acting; it's just the language which spoke to me. This year, one senior placed 5th at state in serious solo acting, the highest placement in years. His piece, "Griefstruck" by J.J. Jonas, involved a tragic car accident which wiped out a young man's entire family. The morning of the performance, I looked at my student and asked, "Do you need any motivation?"

We went there. He knew. I knew. State forensics came only a month after Aimee's death.

My biggest ally in healing--and not only healing from Aimee's suicide, but her illness and struggles over the past eight years--has been the well. Mine's pretty deep, and I don't mind drawing from it. It helps me hear other people in hurt. It helps me work with teenagers. In helps me be there for my own kids, even when I'm exhausted and stretched too thin. It helps me enjoy life, too. It helps me love.

Yes. The well is deep.

Triangulation: Morning After is now available. It's the fourth Triangulation book in which I've managed to land a story, and I thank Stephen Ramey and the whole crew. "Scar Tissue Wings" is as much about Max's stint in Children's Mercy last December as it is about a man who cannot die in a world which already has. The well helps me go there. Triangulation has always been about telling the truth even with a strange spin. Some of my favorite stories have been graced to find themselves in its pages: "Dancing Lessons," "The Good Daughter," "The World in Rubber, Soft and Malleable," and now "Scar Tissue Wings." This may be the last year for the anthology because the price of producing it has stretched limited resources too far. Please buy a copy so future writers can find a venue for their truths.

Notes from the Field

I try to practice "being in the moment" especially when the moments are good. It's all too easy to keep thinking about the next moment, and the next, and next week, and going back to work, etc. instead of really attending to Now. Focusing on the present helps enhance special moments and builds intense memories. Focusing on the present helps make life good.

And it's been a good week--wonderful moments of cheek-aching smiles, laughter, lazy river rides, and getting lost only blocks from a destination.

Aimee was the first to bring "being in the moment" or "being in the now" to my attention--from Eckhart Tolle's seminal book, The Power of Now. She talked about "the moment" but struggled with it. Life pulls us in so many directions, little stressors yank and tug until our minds are splintered.

In fifteen minutes, I'll be riding the lazy river again... floating on an inner tube with the boys... laughing. While I'm there, I'll be there, truly there. Yes, I have to go back to work this week. Yes, there will be laundry to do at home. Yes, little things will pull away my attention as time passes. But there are moments of precious peace and presence. I'm going to enjoy every one of them and build memories.

I hope you find some of your own.

The 3 AM Face Slap

Monday shook me awake before three this morning, slapped me hard, and asked, "What now?"

Yes, what now?

The funny thing about 3 AM wake ups... sometimes that's when the ideas happen. I haven't sought a story idea in over four months, and last night, a plot unwound in front of me as I searched for sleep. Look for one thing, receive another, I suppose.

But ideas don't just happen, do they?

I watched American Movie with a buddy of mine last week. I'd never heard of the film--a documentary about a low budget filmmaker in Wisconsin with all sorts of personal issues. But the movie isn't really about making a movie--it's about following dreams and making something happen, even if you lack the ability or resources to fully realize your dream, to fully make it come to life as it should. I've been there all too often with writing: the idea is there, but the words won't cooperate. Lately--at least until last night--the ideas weren't even cooperating.

I didn't look for inspiration in the dysfunction, economic turmoil, and alcoholism rampant in American Movie. I found inspiration in one man's (perhaps misguided) quest to make a movie, to realize a dream. As with many things in life, the final product did not do the journey justice. Is is the journey which matters, always. 

The inspiration came when I realized it's time to keep moving, keep writing, keep living. There are miles to go, and the forest is dark ahead, but I imagine mountain vistas, too, and the special dignity of blisters on my quite metaphoric road-weary feet.

Let's go.

Work in Progress

Being a recovering high school English teacher, I tend to frame my world in metaphor. Being a writer, the metaphors often take that route.

I mentioned going through some life revisions to a friend earlier this week. But yesterday, as I found myself asking "what the hell am I doing" several times, I realize I'm not revising anything.

I'm a work in progress.

We all are, really, little works in progress. Yes, conventional psychological wisdom indicates an individual's personality is fairly crystallized by thirty or so. Yes, I'm past that age. But really, our lives--what happens to us and what we do about it--continue to develop. And that's what I'm doing, developing. Adventuring in undiscovered countries.

For the first time in a long time, I don't know what the future holds. I never really did, but when life was routine, I found myself living some sort of delusion: it has always been this way, it will always be this way--neither statement is true. Neither statement has ever been true.

In "Guided by Wire," Neko Case sings

Life is not a constant thing
It's only made of short stories

Yes, true. To a point. I'd like to think life is like a series of short stories with overlapping characters, something like Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried but without the landmines and snipers. But to think of life as one single work constantly needing revision... No. It is more like a story collection.

So "what the hell am I doing"? Living. Hollering big, barbaric yawps when I have the chance. Seeing where this manuscript heads next. I have many stories yet to write--and yes, some of them are fictional.

Food is Love

I'm making köttbullar for some friends today--or meatballs as we'd say in English. The funny thing about these is that they are meat-less because the target audience lives a mostly meat-free life. How does one make meatless meatballs? With potatoes (from our family garden), ground almonds, and love.

I've used food as an "I love you" for a long time. I suppose I learned this from my mother--what with her always available chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter brownies, and various pies. During college, I never came home to an empty pan or cookie jar.

My first gift to Aimee, was a peach pie. We'd only been dating for about a month, so I didn't want to get weird or anything. She'd mentioned liking peach pie once. I made one and "sealed the deal." (her words, not mine) I baked scores of pies over the years--peach, strawberry rhubarb, chocolate peanut butter... Aimee's birthday became an occasion for pizza, a different kind of pie. When she turned thirty, I kneaded dough and baked for hours. By her fortieth, I'd learned a few tricks, but every pizza was still a work of my two hands.

When prepping food for friends, I always like to make it from scratch, just like my potato meat(less)balls. Food is special that way--something with effort and care put in that you can actually taste and feel.


Aimee helped plant this year's potato crop, and I'm happy to share this little miracle tubers with friends.

Creative Juice

I haven't written a word of fiction in more than three months. Not. One. Word.

Do I have your attention? Good.

I've used writing as therapy over the past six years. I started a year after Max was born, one of the hardest years of my life. Aimee spent two stints in the hospital that year and we struggled with balancing medication and therapy and workload and home life... When I started writing, I wasn't sure what direction it might take.

Monsters started appearing in my stories. Monsters and strange situations and Twilight Zone-esque plots. I embraced the weirdness, wrote stories about hotels with shifting rooms, doors to "other places" in the basements of a small Kansas town, a wife who morphed into a new person every morning...

Therapy.

I never called it therapy--it just became therapy. I wrote through my demons, my fears and anxieties about what had happened/was happening with my wife and family. With fiction, I controlled a little sliver of reality--the sliver I invented. I never called it therapy and I never really thought about it, either. It just was.

I haven't written a word of fiction in more than three months. I haven't wanted to--

On Sunday night, a good friend said, "You might not want to revisit those demons."

That sounds true. I hadn't thought about writing just like that--demons I hadn't wanted to revisit. My stories gave words to so many doubts and fears, and now I'm living in a different world, a world with different demons. I'm using "demon" as a metaphor--and we all have them. Doubts. Fears. I've learned different demons need a different kind of exorcism. I've always used creative pursuits to wrestle with mine. My summer screen printing and book binding classes have been very therapeutic. Once upon a time, I wanted to be an art therapist. I know why. I know why...

As for writing, I hope it's not gone, but I'm not going to seek out trouble just to stir those creative juices. Let it come as it comes.

Yes, I found this in a fortune cookie last week. Best. Fortune. Ever.

How to Slay Monsters

Since I’m a horror writer, at least a member of the association, you might think I have something to say about monsters. But these monsters, the ones I want to talk about, are metaphoric. 
Plenty of monsters have walked through my life. The cancer which took my father, the self-doubt which played havoc with my twenty-something brain when my first fiancée left me stranded in Lawrence with only a handful of acquaintances and an apartment with no water… Aimee’s illness and death. 
I’ve always thought it took bravery and courage to slay monsters. I’ve heard those words a lot since the article was published. Brave and courageous are not adjectives I’d ever use for myself—I’m just slaying the monsters the only way I know how. 
Here’s the first trick: you have to look at the monster. You can’t turn away, or run, or hide. It may seem like I’m speaking of courage, but really—really—the monster weakens with your gaze on it. The courage only needs to come one time, the first time, and each subsequent time a monster rears its shaggy head, it’s not as big as the first. It’s not as scary. Just look at it. Acknowledge it. Accept it for what it is: cancer… mental illness... death.
I’m not a grief counselor or an expert, but I’m an expert on me. What I know, what I know as well as my own name, is Aimee’s illness—all of the ups and downs over the last eight years—was a monster. It was a monster full of teeth with black eyes full of malice. Opening up in the article, sharing our story, helped drive a big ol’ metaphoric sword into that monster’s gullet. 
I cut my monster-slaying teeth as a boy, watching my father slowly deteriorate while cancer and radiation treatment nibbled away. It was a hard lesson for an elementary school kid, but I’ve become the man I am because I stared it down and learned how weak it really was. The monster didn’t own me.
Here’s the other trick, the one which makes looking at the monster the first time easier: you have to have hope. Understand this special kind of hope, a kind of hope born of love and patience. I knew my father wasn’t going to “get better.” But hope—hope for my life, and the lesson I learned about mortality—shaped me as a boy. 
Life is short. Live it. Realize that the monsters don’t own us.
The day I asked Aimee to marry me, I thought I heard my father’s voice. “Just do it, boy.” I’ve never shared that with anyone. “Just do it, boy.” I don’t know why it came out as a Nike ad, but…
That’s how you slay the monsters. Just do it.
Life is short. Live it.
Every heroic tale takes a trip through the underworld (at least metaphorically). There, the hero gains what he/she needs to slay the monsters/accomplish his/her task. My weapon of choice? Hope.
Life is short. Live it with hope and love and patience. Just do it.

Our Neighborhood has a Plentiful Lack of Front Porches

The new front porch/deck is "done." Done as in: you can walk on it, sit on the new furniture, jump up and down, and even lean on the railing. I still need to add railing near the front door (on the opposite side of the deck) and do a little landscape work, but right now it's too damn hot.

I wanted to build a porch/deck for two reasons:

1. Aimee always wanted a front porch.

2. This is my house now, and by God, I'll build a damn porch if I want.

Our neighborhood is relatively "porch" free. This saddens me. It's an older neighborhood (most houses built in the early '60s), but not old enough to be part of the grand American porch tradition. The lack of front porches is a sorry development in residential architecture. I'm thrilled to have one.

I remember moving into the neighborhood--how Aimee lamented not knowing the neighbors like those she did when she was a girl. Eleven years later, I know the neighbors (most of them), well. They were there when Aimee died, swooping in to clean up the house and take care of things.They've been there through many ups and downs for over a decade.

The porch/deck isn't much--but it's enough. I can listen to the rustle of leaves from my pin oak and fire maple. I can wave to the neighbors as they drive by. I can sit and remember good times with my wife and dream of good times to come.

 

What I Mean When I Say "Homesick"

There comes a time during every vacation when I decide I'm ready to go home. Vacation is great--new adventures are great--but home... It's just home. Home brings comfort and routine; I spend less energy at home and can focus on other things. Damn I love those mountains, but until I buy my cabin, home is in Lawrence.

On Sunday night in Estes Park, while packing for home, I sank into a recliner in our rented cabin. A heavy weight pressed against me--it wasn't exactly the "grief landmine" feeling, but something close. I suddenly understood the easy comparison between losing my spouse and homesickness.

The only problem--when your partner dies, you can't go "home" again. Not to the same home.

Aimee has been gone for nearly three months now; an eternity in some ways (half of Elliot's life), but a blink in others. The first few weeks of April were muddy and slow and painful. Part of May vanished beneath "endings" (school, soccer, etc., etc., etc.). June has clipped along with my deck building project, Colorado, camps, art classes, and trips to the swimming pool. Day by day, the new normal takes root. It digs deeper. But this isn't quite home. It's a new place. A move without moving.

Baby steps...


Yes, this is why you learned the Pythagorean Theorem in high school: so you could build a deck. It's also handy for laying tile. I'm well beyond this point (attached the joists today), but I thought my students need to know that math is real. Look--I'm doing math.  Math is helping me guarantee a square corner. Yay, math!

(Somebody tell me to bend at the knees next time. My lower back is killing me.)

Our National Park Tradition

I feel another "significant" post brewing, but it will wait for another day. Today, I bring pictures from our recent trip to Rocky Mountain National Park and one of my favorite stories about Aimee.

National Parks were/are an obsession of ours--I still have our map of all National Parks hanging in the basement (with color-coded pins indicated which family member has been where). In 2000, Aimee and I took a road trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. We camped for five nights--four of them in Yellowstone--and enjoyed all the sights. The view of the Tetons from Jackson Lake... spectacular. We rented a boat, a small craft with an outboard motor, and headed onto the lake. The boat's owner gave us a bit of advice which caused contention:

Stay within a mile of shore.

Of course, Aimee (being the adventurous type she was), aimed the boat for the mountains and gave it the gun. My knuckles whitened as I clutched the gunnels.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Staying a mile away from shore like he said," she said.

"No. No. No." I glanced over my shoulder at the swelling waves. The tiny boat would easily capsize in the middle of Jackson Lake. "He said within a mile of shore."

She didn't agree, of course, but the look of sheer-animal-panic on my face convinced her to turn our ship around. Aimee and I weren't able to share enough National Park adventures before her death (could there ever be enough National Park adventures?), but the boys and I will keep going...


I hiked to Fern Lake early on Saturday morning, the date which would have been our 11th wedding anniversary. Aimee and I made the same hike on our 6th wedding anniversary (June 16, 2007), just over a year after Max was born. I was early enough to miss the crowd (it's a tough hike, but a popular one) and have some alone time with the lake, the trees, the mountains, and my thoughts.



Elliot was not impressed by the lack of oxygen above tree line.



Max, Owen, and I on top of the world. Okay, at least on top of a granite formation on Trail Ridge Road. 


Max and Owen showed me how to scramble on the rocks near a waterfall. Going down was easier than up.


Owen, Elliot (in the stroller), and Max on the lookout for yellow bellied marmots. We always find marmots at the "alpine communities" stop on Trail Ridge Road.

Take care, and happy adventuring.