Christina Lay's Blog: Nutshells & Mosquito Wings, page 4

The Antithesis of Effervescent

Darkness is in the air.  Maybe it’s the undeniable chill of autumn creeping into summer’s shadow. Perhaps it’s due to election season, with its attendant pestilence of emails and posts everyday alerting me to the imminent collapse of the world as I prefer it.  Or maybe it’s because I’ve been watching episodes of Grimm every night this week, the first season finally being released on Netflix.

But I can’t really blame monsters, real or imaginary, for this thing called depression. I’ve lived in close quarters with it most of my life.

The Epitome of Still, with Dog Snout for visual interest

After spending last winter getting down with my sad self, I seem to have reached a sort of equilibrium and only occasionally find myself circling the Drain of Despair.  However, I do edge near the whirlpool every once in awhile, and recently, while staring in sagging disbelief at my current self-imposed project, a 600 page rewrite of a manuscript from hell, I thought about something a writer friend and I recently discussed; if we didn’t suffer from this affliction, if we had an abundance of energy, or even a normal amount, how much more work could we get done?  Would I be cranking out 600 pagers every six months?

The obvious answer, the noggin tap from God, is no.  Because I wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t be writing that book, or this blog.  I’d be out there in the sunshine . . . doing stuff with the other normals.

These thoughts lead me back through the mists of time to a job interview I had years ago, with a manufacturer of yurts.  Yes, yurts. When I went back for a second interview, the prospective employer peered intently at me, and said that although he was impressed with my resume, he was really looking for someone more . . . effervescent.

I love fancy words. Effing-escent isn’t one of them.

Never, not once in my life, has anyone referred to me as “bubbly”, because that’s what effervescent means, as well as gaseous.  Or did he mean the other type of effervescent? Giddy, sparkly, chirpy, perky, bouncy? I say, if he wanted to hire a flatulent Barbie doll, he should have advertised for one, not a bookkeeper.

But what about the definitions I’m ignoring? Like vivacious.  Ah, sorry, nope. I once edged close to vibrant when I was in France.  Enthusiastic? Oh, yes. Now there’s a word I can get my teeth into. To be possessed by a god.  I have been possessed by a god of creativity, dreams, playfulness. By a god of oceans, forests, streams. Never by a god of yurt-selling or a god of counting other people’s money.

The antonyms of effervescent are flat, still, depressed.  I already copped to depressed.  I can groove on still.  I am a still, quiet person, a person who speaks to the page.  A person who keeps the company of books, both numerical and literary.  If you meet someone who walks in and “lights up a room”, it’s not me.

It has taken me a long time to accept this about myself. I will never be fizzy, no matter how much I try or how much the world out there seems to demand it.  And when I stop trying, and settle into my flat, still self, then, amazingly, I am enthused. Funny how that works.

The Accidental Fairy Tale

I rarely get nervous about living alone because I have a dog. True, he’s middle-aged and fat, but he’s a fearsome barker.  He has startled many a newspaper boy and fundraising cookie-pusher. He is knee high (my knees) and he is very grumpy.  So really, it’s like living with a small hairy troll.  The screen door is the bridge over which none shall pass without his permission.  He is however, remarkably lax with children. One sniff and he’s all, like, whatever.  He doesn’t realize that children are the most devious home invaders of all.

The devil blows yet another get-rich-quick scheme. Illustration by Karel Franta.

Take this weekend.  I was toiling at the computer when yonder sounds the doorbell and the furious barking of the dog. I often ignore the bell. I’m busy novelling, after all.  This time I open it thinking it might be my neighbor who knows darn well I’m home.

Lo and behold, three sprigs of people-like creatures stand babbling before me.  Kids are born capitalists, so I almost instinctively decline.

“Sorry, no CASH”, I shout as if they do not speak Old Person.  This time I see, however, that they’re peddling Books- my weakness.  And Lazlo (the dog) has thundered out and sniffed them and is now peeing on the Camellia bush and no longer protecting me or the house.  So I look in the bag and of course it’s full of used, crappy, snot smeared kid books like Hanna Montana Learns to Knit and The ABCs of Something Hideous like Barney.  Meanwhile they are clamoring in kid gibberish that the books are a quarter each. Probably I’m the first person to open the door that day.

They are raising money to buy candy. I can tell by the lackluster glint in their eyes and the jerky hyperactivity that crams them all into the tight space in front of my door.

I’m about to get the hose to spray them off the porch, but then I see that there’s this one book, a big book of fairy tales. The kids get very excited as I look at it, assuring me it will tell me ‘my birthday story’.  I see that there is a short fairy tale for everyday of the year. Cute. The tallest girl shows me her story- The Little Glass Fairy.  Then the shortest boy shows me that his story is How Prince Bajaja Fought the Nine-Headed Dragon. Where the heck are these stories from, I wonder?  So I give the little mobsters .50 because it’s such a big book and I am indeed generous.

Once safely ensconced behind the screen door, I look up my own birthday story and discover that it’s about a shoemaker who hooks up with the devil and cons kings by possessing their daughters so the shoemaker can pretend to cure them.  The devil needs cash? Not exactly multi-headed dragons or glass fairies, but it’s weird enough I do not feel cheated.  This is no pre-chewed, fretful parent approved kid pabulum. Curious about the origin of these odd tales, I check the details. It’s actually called The Book of Goodnight Stories and was written by Vratislav Stovicek and illustrated by Karel Franta. It was printed in Czechoslovakia in 1982.

The novel I am working on just happens to involve Prague and fairy tales. Once again I am humbled to admit that the dog knows magical creatures when he smells them much better than I do.

How to Burn Down Love

How to Burn Down Love I

Keep silent,

carve with your fingernail into the table,

at the end say, So what?

with brute, bitter sadness,

no trace of a wing

of an easy, tender, downpouring lie.

And it’ll burn

and smoke and go completely black.

~Jiri Sotola*

Every morning before I start writing, or even journaling, I read one poem out of a bilingual anthology of Czech poetry, in the hopes that some of that difficult language will seep into my databanks.  I tried the listening-to-tapes method, but that’s too damn hard.  I write down the fun words, words like dream (vysri), poisonous (jedovatou), are you awake? (Jste vzhuru?).  If I ever get back to the Czech Republic I’ll be able to describe the moonlight on the Vltava, but ordering a cup of coffee or finding the train station remains beyond my grasp.

In a similarly oblique fashion, I am trying to let poetry (see above) do the heavy lifting when it comes to writing about my partner’s suicide.

Morning light on painting in St Vitus Cathedral

From a writer’s perspective, it has been an interesting journey to see my brain twist and turn, all to avoid the topic.  Just writing that phrase, ‘my partner’s suicide’, makes my muse leap up, pack her bags, and hop a plane to Prague.  My writing becomes stilted, strident, stoic.  Honesty is as hard to come by as ice in hell.  Humor? Forget it.  Some other, some uninvited bureaucrat steps into my empty, echoing cranium and starts dictating about anger. Murder.  The death of memory and the loss of life.  It’s as if we two people never existed. Never laughed. Never loved. We were burnt to ashes when Michael pulled the trigger.  Bang and 22 years fall into an irredeemable pit.  I stare into the abyss.  The ultimate writers’ block.  I search for poetry.  Today I found it. The beginning.  Admitting I am powerless over this anger.  I take courage in knowing there is at least one dead Czech who gets me.

Today is Michael’s birthday and once again I must apologize to him for not being able to summon up a gentle word. That’s what suicide does, mainly.  Throws acid on the memories.  It is brutal, and it is bitter. So I use other people’s poetry as a gateway to the subconscious, a sort of sideways dabbling in the ashes.  There is an obsidian shard coursing through my veins, waiting to pierce my heart and either kill me or release the toxins trapped inside, so it is no wonder the cold dictator will not step aside and let the words out.  What terrible words they might be.

I never wanted to, but I am learning the language of suicide.

*from Up the Devil’s Back, a Bilingual Anthology of 20th Century Czech Poetry, translated and Edited by Bronislava Volkova and Clarice Cloutier

Frog In My Kitchen: Plague Toad or Magical Messenger?

I’m always on the look out for omens. Indicators.  Signs from the universe that I’m on The Right Track.  Unfortunately, I’ve found that the more I dedicate myself to my art and the more disciplined I am about sticking to the keyboard and pounding out the word count, the more grim reality tries to force itself into my peripheral vision.  In other words, everything around here goes to hell.  I get late notices from my, ahem, plentiful credit cards.  The wisteria out front pulls the drain pipe from the side of the house.  My dog develops a rash and the kitchen is commandeered by fruit flies.

Wisteria that is eating my house

I could certainly blame myself for this collapse of my personal infrastructure, but I’m more inclined to suspect the conniving of a malevolent entity bent on hampering my efforts to self-actualize.  True, I’m a fantasy writer and that’s how I think, but how else to explain this sudden transformation of my home into a dystopian nightmare?

Take for example- Fleas.  Is there anything more irritating then having two cats and a dog scratching in an arrhythmic orchestration-  slurping, gnawing, and chewing the hair off their backsides until the neighbors think about arranging a pet owner’s intervention? I’ve done everything; toxic flea meds, borax in the carpet, endless brushing, stuffing the resentful dog into the shower (he never thanks me for this).  What does the universe want of me? My attention? Screw it.  For I MUST FINISH THIS DRAFT in, let’s see, three days. Perfectly reasonable expectation there, writer self.

So what is the universe trying to tell me? Fleas represent doubts, I decide. Once you allow them a foothold in your conscious brain, they are everywhere, and they breed like, well, like fleas. All I have to do is say ‘flea’ and you start to itch. (See? Yes, you’re very welcome). I think I see them hopping out of the carpet ninja-like as I cross from coffee pot to computer and back again.  But they’re not there. They’re not anywhere. Like doubts, the flea invasion is mostly in my head.  My dog is allergic to flea bites. He goes ballistic and chews his butt fuzz off, much like I go ballistic when I get another rejection and go from zero to talentless hack in about ten seconds.

And the fruit flies?  Fruit flies are like fears, for they constantly swarm right in front of my face, threatening to go spelunking up a nostril or land wriggling in my ice cream.  Like most fears, their source is unknown.  I track down the rotten bananas in my mind, to no avail.  There they are, swarming.  ‘If I do not finish this draft and craft the perfect synopsis I will be a failure forever, destitute, unloved and unpublished.’ For This novel, is The novel, the one that will save my life and deliver me unto a lucrative livelihood.

I’m burning the midnight oils, pausing to scrape fruit fly corpses from the ice cream, when the frog shows up, stunned beneath the fluorescent lights of my kitchen.  Is this the beginning of my very own end times, or is he merely after the fruit flies? I pause to ask myself what this frog might represent.  Unlike fleas and fruit flies, I like frogs.  Frogs are nature’s indicators that everything is okey dokey.  That things are in balance. That my world isn’t collapsing, it’s just messy.  This sign arrives like eco-friendly Raid to my fear and doubt infested soul.

Balance, says the frog, as I release him into the wilds of the wisteria.  Yeah, hey, maybe sitting at the computer for twenty hours a day while the world as I know it crumbles around me isn’t the best plan.  Maybe I should cut myself some slack, take a break, live this life that I’m seeking to earn a place in, forgetting that I don’t have to. I’ve got a front row seat if I’d just take it once in a while.

If you think this means I wash a dish or sniff a daisy, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Just because I write this stuff doesn’t mean I know how to apply it.

I’ve got three days before the Willamette Writers Conference and my appointments with Editors & Agents –Gatekeepers of Abundance and Joy, so no, I’ll plunge right ahead for awhile longer.  Next week, I’ll pause to recharge.  Take a hike, build a frog pond, seek out the normals.  Right after I finish this draft.

*

Addendum: Just returned from Willamette Writers.  I conned, er, impressed three editors and an agent into looking at my manuscript.  Guess the frog sniffing has to wait until September.

Addendum 2:  Hello, welcome and thank you to all who joined this strange adventure during my turn on Freshly Pressed! Looking forward to getting to know you.

The Agony of Empathy

I’m reading The Count de Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and, although the heft of it makes my wrists tremble, I read anxiously and stay up late and resent any and all intrusions.

Palace of the Popes in Avignon, which has nothing to do with The Count de Monte Cristo but looks neat.

Why is this torture device disguised as a book such a time-honored classic?  I quake with sympathy for the original readers who had to read this in serial form, waiting in suspense for each new installment, unaware of the conclusion. Personally, I would have headed the torch-bearing mob that stormed Dumas’ loft and demanded the immediate release of Edmond Dantes.

Do you know that innocent young Edmond Dantes gets thrown into a dudgeon and spends years and years and years locked up in darkness?  Well, of course you do. Everyone does. But reading the story is so much different then watching the anime version!

I didn’t think I’d be upset by the novel since I know what happens, since the entire world knows what happens.  I’m reading it because it’s one of the great enduring adventure stories of all time and I happen to be writing what I hope is an adventure and looking (always) for inspiration.  The Count DMC is 1200 pages.  I haven’t even read 200 yet and I am feverishly concerned with Edmond Dantes’ misfortune, waking in the night and worrying about his young life wasting away.  I could never do something so horrible to one of my characters; not one I like anyway.  So why, when I know perfectly well he’s unjustly imprisoned for many years, do I feel so anguished when I read it? Is Alexander Dumas that good?

I have to conclude that yes, he is.  I feel Edmond’s pain. I feel the stupendous agony of youth, love and life’s promise lost.  But because I know he gets out someday I can bear it.  I don’t think I could read this book if I didn’t know in advance he escapes and wreaks vengeance on those who wronged him.  Yikes! I’m sure there are people who could write and read a book in which Edmond never gets out, but not I.  I’m too soft-hearted toward the fictional characters we bring to life with our rapt attentions.  As a writer, I constantly question the why’s and wherefores of such misguided empathy.  I lie awake at night, telling myself, it’s only a story! This is not real!  So how is it that I, a writer, and occasionally a dastardly one who puts her characters through all sorts of torments, how is it that another writer can trick me into forgetting this?

As a reader I certainly meet a good writer half-way.  Give me a character I can care for and some extreme peril, and I’m hooked.  Tease me with hope and despair intricately woven, and I’ll follow you anywhere, even through how many years of horrible imprisonment? (God, don’t tell me now or I’ll have to quit reading.)

All the while I long for the payoff that makes it all worthwhile. All the while I curse the author and threaten them with psychic harm if they let me down.  I think I’m safe with Dumas, which is why I dare to tread in such dangerous waters.  The author who torments me in this way and then releases me to the blissful light of day, through love requited, dreams redeemed, dog saved from drowning, dork turned prom king, quest fulfilled, young lives saved, old lives blessed or vengeance wreaked, earns my eternal gratitude.  Even as I curse Dumas I wonder, how can I do this?