Saxon Henry's Blog, page 27
January 13, 2011
Ineffectual Torture
Something had begun to niggle at me about Jim. "I feel your churning beside me; your ineffectual torture," I wrote. Was I projecting? I wondered. It was possible, but I wasn't completely off base because I had come to realize that he was lost without his work, which he had largely turned over to his sons, and the mission field, which I had been so happy to leave behind, all the while realizing it was incredibly selfish of me to feel this way.
He was ever on the lookout for ways to assuage his loss from letting go of the lion's share of his power in the business he had worked his entire adult life to build and I cringed when he announced that he wanted to be behind the controls of the plane more often as we traveled the southeast U.S. He renewed his pilot's license and decided the perfect time to get back in the cockpit was a trip to the beach. I dared not say aloud that the prospect made me want to faint, because he would have seen it as weakness on my part. He banked the plane hard to steer us on course as we left Chattanooga's airspace and we found ourselves butting heads with a cold front that had screamed through town during the early morning hours. I trusted him in most things, of course, but my veins were coursing with fear as he flipped buttons and pulled knobs, the dropping and rising motion that happened almost simultaneously making me feel oddly giddy and absolutely terrified.
We skirted the weather system until we'd cleared south Alabama, and it looked as though God had been doing some deep spring-cleaning, using foamy carpet cleaner on the sky as far as the eye could see. I was running metaphors through my mind to take the focus off my queasy stomach, which Jim—seeing the panic on my face—assured me was unwarranted nerves. I calmed myself by deciding then and there that I had nothing to lose but my life, and if it came to that it was likely to happen fairly quickly so prolonging the torture by imagining what would come to pass if we were pitched onto the land, broken and burning, was an exercise in stupidity.
We made it to Panama City just fine, and the ocean, as it always had, lulled me into peace. I agreed wholeheartedly with the notion that the sound and the motion was womblike. A gull careened overhead as I lounged on the deck, looking as if it had absolutely no control from its internal cockpit. Trust is a funny thing for a bird in brisk winds! I thought as I sat there wondering how many of them actually crashed—to think that none of them ever did was silly, wasn't it?
A massive fire was burning miles away down the beach and the winds were turning it into a Hades-sized blowtorch. The smoke was being carried away by the upper-level winds, creating a shelf atop the billowing plume that intercepted the sun during the early afternoon, masking its power. By early evening, the smoke stretched far out to sea as we sat at the water's edge, our chairs sinking into the sand with each wave that lapped beneath us. I admired the metallic sheen of the ocean, which was mirror-like until a rolling crest foamed and tumbled ashore, washing its own image out to sea.
During my morning journaling sessions, I was working on descriptions of experiences I'd had in Costa Rica. I was trying to describe a scene I saw in Limon in which a harelip and an elderly man sat on a dark porch talking. There were no chairs under their behinds—just bare concrete, the hardness of which did little to dampen their merriment. It was as if they had no clue their accommodations were spare; the old man must have been particularly witty because he continually drew laughter from the gaping mouth of the other man. I wanted to study his deformity but I didn't dare stare at him because it would have been beyond rude. I made do with a few furtive glances, marveling at the fact that he could so unselfconsciously express glee. I wanted to capture the animated beauty of his face, which completely negated the imperfection of his crimped lip. There was something about his dignity that felt almost holy to me.
Early on in our Limon days, I'd met the sweetest man named Mr. Green at St. Mark's. I thought about how there were so many people I'd come to know only by their last names, as decorum didn't permit being on a first-name basis for quite some time. He had tutored me on my diet as we sat in the parish hall in Limon at a dinner held by the local Episcopal Church Women during our last trip to Limon. "It is best to eat only hard foods," he said, just about the time I took the first bite of my sandwich, "they cause less wind in the belly." I thanked him and told him I would definitely remember that as he pushed his chair back, already canvassing the long row of tables to see who was nearby.
I watched as he visited with most of the other people in the room, flirting ever-so-slightly with the women who would giggle like they were teenagers when he'd tell a joke or inquire after their well being. The sun was filtering through the window as he leaned over the table to chat with another man I'd seen at church functions, though we'd never been introduced. The light striking his dark skin created a silvery gray glow on the backs of his hands, which looked as tough as tanned leather.
On our way back to San Jose the next day, I had studied the landscape to see if I could push myself to better descriptions than I had been recording. It was the time of year when certain giant trees were blooming orange, their lost petals creating a smattering of confetti on the ground. Some fields that would normally have been a lush grassy green were speckled with resplendent orange light, the sun infusing the fallen blossoms with effervescing color as they lived their last decaying hours so exuberantly. What a paradox of life and death irrevocably intertwined! I thought.fields as And how lucky were the cattle grazing in those fields as they nibbled beauty! Many of the stocky animals had guardian angels on their backs—regal white birds holding vigil to nab the errant insects attempting to light on their burly mobile kitchens.
As we drew closer to the mountains, I noticed a number of trees carrying dense vines on their beefy outstretched arms, which made them appear as if they were draped in cloaks of velvety green. They towered over the other trees as if holding court—telling their charges how to behave with their grand, sweeping gestures that were dripping with finery. One particularly statuesque tree wore vines across its very top in an umbrella shape. It was almost as if it had been crowned the king of the copse it found itself gazing down upon. It brought to mind how the strongest, tallest specimen in any given situation could quickly turn into the most vulnerable when mighty winds blew through.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
January 5, 2011
Falling Through Space
My grandmother, Anne, far right.
I drove past the place I'd lived before I met Jim and the door was open. For a second, it seemed as if it were open in exactly the same way I would have left it, an eerie sensation that made me wonder if it had remained ajar during the several years I'd been gone—gaping foolishly as if awaiting my return. I had the rare weekend to work on poetry but I was frustrated and completely stuck. "Can I hold the steering wheel, Daddy?" I wrote just above an entry that noted a group of farmers had gone to St. Louis for a singles convention! The idea of a dating service for farmers seemed such an oddity to me but they were lonely people when they were single, too, right?
Getting nowhere in my feeble attempts to hit upon something interesting to work creatively, I decided to crawl into bed with Ellen Gilchrist's journal Falling Through Space. I noted the next morning how her descriptions of the people in her life and her reactions to them were so rich. As I flipped through my writer's notebook, it occurred to me that I avoided writing about people beyond their physical characteristics. I realized then that going further—into the emotional realm—frightened me.
I'd published a Lent/Easter poem in "The Messenger," our church newsletter, which I'd been writing and editing for a while. I had lunch with my mom the week after it was out and she told me how much she liked it. When she called it scripture, I realized she was holding me in much higher regard than I deserved. She was struggling with her relationship with my sister and she asked if she could talk about it that day. Mama, her mother, who had joined us, chimed in, "It's like shit, Joyce; the more you stir it, the more it stinks." I had just told Mama that she looked like an Easter egg in her pale pink and peppermint green blazer and matching earrings. So much for ladylike decorum! I thought, deciding then and there that she would be the perfect character for me to muck around with because she was about as complex a spiteful personality as they come.
I dug into this task as I was flying to Los Angeles to meet with NBC, the only account I had been maintaining from my business days because it was so lucrative. I spent the first several hours of the flight making notes about Anne, as she had been named—though I'd never called her anything but Mama. "How did this young person with her flapper charms turn into such a bitter, crass woman?" I wrote, a question I left open-ended as I ran out of steam about the time we flew over the Grand Canyon. I'd never noticed how the gigantic impression had scooped itself out of the flat plateaus surrounding it, its edges seemingly filled with myriad fingering nerve endings. The adjacent farmland reminded me of a quirky linoleum floor: perfectly cut squares in parts and frayed edges in others. The lakes winked at me like scattered moons, and I wondered if the wayward orb had ever been tempted to unleash itself from its heavenly tether and lie down in one of those verdant squares of what appeared from such a great height to be the softest green. It would have had the sense, of course, to avoid the stubby beards of those rectangles that had gone fallow from lack of nourishment—tan and drab, they had their part in the scheme of things but who'd want to rest within such prickliness?
When I touched down in L.A., I was reminded that it was and ever will be a concrete monster, though the thrill of pulling into Century Plaza in a chauffeured car was something I didn't take for granted. The first round of meetings went well and with the initial negotiations behind me, I retreated to a plush chair on the balcony of my hotel room in the early evening, the railing so high I had to sit on the arm of the chair to sneak a view of the sprawling city. The next morning, preparing for round two, I lounged on the terrace with breakfast, feeling as if I could languish there all day had I been allowed. It was the first time I'd write that happiness had nothing to do with my surroundings. Instead, contentment had everything to do with having quiet, plenty of paper, a pen and something in mind to explore.
In that moment, I realized what a change this was for me as I had been blaming my misery during my Costa Rican experiences on the place itself. Was I really to come to terms with this in one of the most crowded cities on earth? I wondered. It was not surprising that I had hit upon the fact that I was craving solitude perched above a concrete jungle filled with smog, traffic and a tumult of people. What did surprise me was that such a place inspired me to see so clearly that it wasn't the lush jungle of Costa Rica that threw me; it was the chaos inherent in how Jim expected me to live while we were there. "I work much better when my mind can stroll into a setting of peaceful non-resistance," I wrote. "I enjoy aloneness. Does this mean I'm really becoming a writer? Does it mean I'll have to leave this life I've been trying so desperately to accept in order to be myself in the most authentic meaning of the word?"
I felt pensive as I flew back east, the landscape blurring and coming into focus as I struggled with these questions. Far below, the rivulets of water running from the dusty hills through a great gorge had bleached the barren land to a ghostly shade of bisque in a fanned pattern like a bird's tail when it unfolds. From the higher reaches, the water had cascaded in narrower streams, making markings similar to that of worn, cracked leather that had been scorched by intense heat. I counted nine different shades of earth framed by my airplane window, and one mountain looked as though it had developed a bad case of varicose veins.
I rifled through my writer's notebook as if I could find clues as to where the trajectory of my desire to write at all costs would lead me. I'd been thinking about the children of Costa Rica a great deal since we'd finished the last project, how they were in the happiest times of their lives as kids and wondering where their adulthood would leave them. Would they look back on the sun-dappled days of running naked across the scrubby lawns with nostalgia when they were left languishing in unquenchable heat as adults who were trying to scrape by on almost nothing? What story could I tell that would shine a light on those who never had an opportunity to actualize the kind of dreams I valued? Wasn't this arrogant? I asked yet again. Who's to say my marker of what was valuable would have been of any interest or merit to them?
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December 29, 2010
And with thy spirit...
Having been close enough to Nicaragua to be invested in a measure of peace in Central America, the uprising of the Sandinista rebels deeply disturbed me. I'd been watching the news before we attended mass in Atlanta in a small chapel with exposed wooden beams, its crucifix draped in a haze of purple voile. We were celebrating the Stations of the Cross and the language took on spooky meaning given my concerns for the friends I'd made in that unstable part of the world. Each word mouthed by the priest seemed to take on an eerie undertone given the day's events. In between each invocation, the news reports that I'd heard reverberated in my head and in my heart.
"Holy god, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us."
The U.S. has just sent light infantry troops into Honduras.
"Holy god, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us."
It seems the Sandinistas crossed the border and fighting broke out between these rebels and the Contras, whose camps are scattered along the border inside Honduras.
"Pray for peace. Pray for the safety of the young service men traveling to Honduras."
[Jesus takes up his cross.]
"Holy god, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us."
Noreaga has yet to resign and there's no chance for peace in Panama as long as he's in control. More unrest today as doctors and nurses at the major hospital in Panama City threw rocks at soldiers because they will not be paid this week.
"Holy god, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us."
It appears that the President of Honduras has asked President Reagan for a show of muscle. Troops will be based 125 miles from the fighting. No democratic government in the world will be refused military aid against communist aggression.
[Jesus is striped of his garments.]
"Holy god, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us."
The skirmishes increased on the border between Honduras and Nicaragua. Men on Nightline argued; called each other liars. Who's right, Ted?
[Jesus is nailed to the cross.]
Government policy. Amen.
"Holy god, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us."
Father says, "I'm a chaplain in the armed forces; we'll definitely be in Panama soon. They're killing our country with drugs. I bet we'll also have to get to Mexico before the drug traffic stops."
[Jesus dies on the cross.]
"Holy god, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us."
Father says, "I don't usually have a homily before the service but I'd like to introduce our program for later. Fifteen years ago, I took my first mission trip abroad…a child died in my arms. He had worms and if you know nothing about worms, they take over the body to the point that they crowd into the esophagus and the child chokes to death."
[The body of Jesus is placed in the arms of his mother.]
"Holy god, holy and mighty, holy immortal one, have mercy upon us."
Manuel Noreaga squints from the television and asks, "You want a revolution?"
"Save us and keep us, we humbly beseech you, O Lord."
"The peace of the Lord be always with you."
"And with thy spirit."
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
[The image at the top of this post is one of the Stations of the Cross created by the incredibly talented artist and architect Alberto Alfonso, who is one of four architects featured in my book Four Florida Moderns, which W.W. Norton & Company published last year.]
December 22, 2010
If Language Were Liquid
We headed to Steamboat for a week of frivolity with our friends and I was enamored as always with the snowbound landscape. One day the flakes would fall fat and fluffy, landing on the skin with a tickle, while the next they were tiny and hard, what the locals called cornstarch snow. These little balls of ice prickled when they hit, burning the lips like little nips of fire. My favorite flakes resembled powdered sugar—so fine as to give the appearance of fog shrouding the valley in delicate crystals.
I stood at the window of the house, which was nestled into a copse of fir trees, admiring the statuesque conifers that framed the bowl of the valley like a spiky matte. Their heads shot skyward like shuttlecocks that had blasted off and were then frozen in motion. I'd seen the valley during the summer when it was covered with wild grasses and flowers. Now, it was a vessel filled with sugary powder. The incredible thing about the composition framed by the picture window was that it couldn't have been plotted better if a master painter had composed the scene: the trees directed the eye beyond the valley to the massive peaks that towered in the distance. The stubble of trees and fingering slopes filled in the composition when the clouds moved away, leaving behind them a downy comforter of shaved ice.
One evening we didn't leave the slopes until the sun was sinking low in the sky. The light dallied with the clouds and dappled the mountain in patches of ripe rosiness interspersed with matte-finished smudges of shadow in palest gray. At certain points along the lift-lines, the aspen trees—their gnarled and writhing fingers gathering ice—gave the appearance they were fiddling with Victorian lace. The conifers on the highest slopes seemed to gather powder to their chests, forming great paws that seemed to want to bat the frosty air. I was always happy when storms left their backwash on the slopes so I was teased for being the group's powder hound. As I swished through the fluffy granules, I felt as though I were shooting through a crystalline forest. It wouldn't have surprised me if I'd seen Snow White guiding a prancing unicorn along one of the trails, the puffs of air escaping its delicate muzzle forming plumes of steam that drifted above its conical horn.
After several runs in deep powder, I was feeling the strain in my legs and my lungs, which weren't accustomed to the high altitude, so I took a break from the exertion of skiing, popping Suzanne Vega's cassette Solitude Standing into my Walkman. As I listened to "In the Eye," an idea for a short story started to form, inspired by her lyrics:
"If you were to kill me now
Right here I would still
Look you in the eye
And I would burn myself
Into your memory
As long as you were still alive
I would not run
I would not turn
I would not hi-i-ide…
I would live inside of you
I'd make you wear me
Like a scar
And I would burn myself
into your memory
And run through everything you are…"
The story had as its protagonist a woman named Karrman, who opened her tale with the declaration, "My mother's maiden name was Karr and she couldn't bear to give it up but she wasn't strong enough to keep it herself. I guess that means I'll be her identity until I die."
Her newfound love interest, named Martin, asks, "You mean until she dies?"
"No," Karrman corrects him; "that kind of brainwashing doesn't die with her, it can only die with me—that is unless I have kids and then it's a guaranteed right of succession."
She let out a brash cackle and he knew then and there that if she laughed that way too many times, he'd have to kill her. She did, of course; it was simply who she was, and he snapped one evening—her crassness sending him over the edge. Lost in a blood-pulsing fog, he bludgeoned Karrman to death as Vega's "Night Vision" wafted into the room from the speakers flanking the record player in her apartment:
When the darkness takes you
With her hand across your face
Don't give in too quickly
Find the thing she's erased…
He taped her legs at the ankles as he salivated over the idea of burying her in a snowy field. He decided he couldn't let her go without a souvenir so he cut a piece of the tape that he'd plastered over her mouth—a symbolic gesture that he had shut her up for all eternity—and placed the scrap in his pocket. He looked out the window of her apartment toward the high-rise next door, the lights from which were casting strong shadows into the dim interiors. No one was watching so he took his time savoring his deed, turning up the volume as "Solitude Standing" pulsed out into the room, while sipping slowly on the glass of wine Karrman had poured him. He rocked back and forth to Vega's soulful guitar chords and tentatively beautiful voice:
Solitude stands in the doorway
And I'm struck once again by her black silhouette
By her long cool stare and her silence
I suddenly remember each time we've met
And she says "I've come to set a twisted thing straight."
And she says "I've come to lighten this dark heart."
And she takes my wrist; I feel her imprint of fear
And I say, "I've never thought of finding you here…"
As the word trailed off, he raised the glass, toasting himself, and unleashed a creepy laugh. THWACK! I was startled from my narrative by the sound of skis meeting the ground as a guy dropped his on the snow next to me and sat down to eat an apple. I hadn't realized I'd been sitting on the bench long enough that my ski suit had nearly frozen to the slats of the wood bench. I took off a mitten to check my watch and it hit me that Jim was likely having a heart attack; I just hoped he hadn't already called the ski patrol. What a mess that would be! As I pried myself from the frosty bench and jammed my boots into my skis to head down the mountain, I had a picture of him pacing in front of the dressing rooms down below. I flipped the volume higher on my Walkman and let Vega's "Language" carry me along the power-laden trails:
If language were liquid
It would be rushing in
Instead here we are
In a silence more eloquent
Than any word could ever be…
I'd like to meet you
In a timeless, placeless place
Somewhere out of context
And beyond all consequences…
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
December 15, 2010
God as a pussycat...
I breathed a sigh of relief that we were finally in between projects in Costa Rica after having finished the church in Zent. The diocese was already talking with Jim about the possibility of a new project but the money had yet to be raised for the building materials so the scheduling was uncertain. I was a week away from my 30th birthday and I was ecstatic because I felt my 20's had been quite the disappointment, especially year number 29. I reasoned that my 30's would be the perfect place to start again—ring in the new, do things differently. In fact, I was beginning to see that beginning again was a strong suit of mine.
On the big day, seven friends gathered around me to celebrate, and the following weekend, Jim decided to take me and a few of our friends to New Orleans for the weekend to celebrate the fact that, at 50, he could finally say his wife was in her thirties, something I'd never realized was eating at him. It was nearly impossible not to have a good time in the hospitable town that held more eccentricities than I'd ever seen in any one place.
My first unconventional sighting was a guy in Jackson Square straddling a metal TV tray painted in a sad rendition of wood-grain. He was intensely involved in his project, which consisted of teasing music from a collection of varying sizes of drinking glasses, numbering about fifteen, which he'd filled with fluctuating amounts of water. With a ceremonial raising of his elbows, which he'd lifted up and out like an eagle spreading its vast wings, he paused, eyes closed. After a dramatic hesitation, he began—quickly folding his elbows into his body as he circled the rims of the glasses with fingers he'd wet with his saliva. He had an old oil jug he'd filled with water into which he'd stuck a baster. When one glass would be the slightest bit off key, he'd grab the bulbous tube and squirt a bit of water into it, testing it with his middle finger and thumb.
The earnest man's hair was dark and curly—too black for the color to have been natural—and he wore a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves and black pants. One of the things that stood out for me was the fact that he wore very cheap shoes. My first reaction was why in the world would that have mattered; then I realized it was an open window into how his life might have been. My imagination conjured up a dreary apartment with smoke-stained walls in the kitchen—the curtains reeking of the rancid smell of bacon grease—or, better yet, a doublewide trailer with Naugahyde cushions on the built-in sofa and frayed indoor/outdoor carpeting in the hallway, too narrow to allow two people to pass each other.
As we were walking back to the hotel the first night after dinner, someone in our group gasped. I turned and looked down the street to the church at the end of the plaza. There was a statue of Jesus with his arms outstretched as if he were preaching to everyone gathered around him, wanting to encompass all of mankind. The incredible thing was that the lighting at the base of the statue threw a dark shadow in relief on the white building behind it, covering a good portion of the front of the façade with the darkened visage of the statue's form.
I was reminded of a sermon I'd heard in Costa Rica in which the priest talked about how everyone had begun to see God as a pussycat—that we believed we could play with him as it suited us and we'd forgotten that to "fear" him is to take him seriously. I'd passed the statue several times during the day, noticing the sweet expression of Jesus' face carved in white stone, his outstretched arms opened lovingly. That the same statue appeared so sinister at night was the perfect example of the dichotomy of religiosity: pussycat in times of piousness, vengeful master in times of blameworthy behavior. It struck me that I believed in neither. Why did religion always have to usurp our own natural instincts toward what is right and wrong in life? I wondered. If we were, as church leaders read from their holy book, made in the likeness of God, we certainly should have the skills to know how to live our lives authentically and with grace!
I spent the next morning on the banks of the Mississippi River because my view from the hotel room had made me curious about the scale of things. I'd been happily watching ships pass while I journaled in a comfy chair by the window, thinking they were impressively massive but wondered if they would loom even larger at eye level. I took a seat on a stone bench close to the water's edge and was awed as a tugboat sidled up to a gigantic ship and escorted it into port. The hulking steel microcosms of life going into port sat relatively low in the water, while those exiting with their goods unloaded revealed bellies that normally skimmed along below the surface. I wondered what stories the residents of these floating cities would tell and what languages they would speak when they told them. Each one flew a different flag, its hull emblazoned with a place-name representing some exotic port of call. It was as if the world passed through this swath of water daily, a world I could scarcely imagine.
When I'd had my fill of the mighty Mississippi, I wandered around until I happened upon a remarkable bookstore with shelf upon shelf of out-of-print books. As I was pulling titles I'd only read about from the poetry section, a couple entered the shop. They were both in their late 50's, I guessed, and the husband followed the wife around as she cocked her head to look high and low at the different sections she saw. The minute she would reach for a book, he would say, "You already have that one." She would shoot back, "No, I don't." I had to bust myself suddenly because I'd caught myself smack in the middle of a double standard. You see, it shocked me that this man had an inkling as to what books his wife owned, though it would not have surprised me if it had been the other way around. Possibly because I knew which books Jim had bought since we'd been together but was certain he didn't have a clue as to the titles that were on my shelves.
On our way home, we bumped into a couple we knew in the Atlanta airport. The woman owned her own specialty shop and her husband supported her efforts wholeheartedly. She was always much more interested in conversing with Jim than she was with me, and the husband seemed to be at a complete loss as to how to relate to me, patting me on the hand whenever I answered the questions he lobbed my way. We'd had an easier time of it when I had identified myself as an entrepreneur in the outdoor billboard paper industry. Since I'd been associating myself with my writing, he seemed to wonder whatever in the world to say to me.
As I watched the bags drifting around the turnstile, seeing the different luggage tags with the variety of business cards tucked into them, I thought about how my new business didn't yet have a card, or one I'd know what to put on it at any rate. What would be the reason to have a card printed that said, simply, writer; or, even more exotically, poet? I wondered. Would anyone have respected it? Would I have? I realized in that moment that I'd stopped caring what anyone thought. That was a first very big step for me. Maybe, I thought, I'd be a wholehearted rebel and not have a card at all. Wouldn't that leave the man who liked to pat me like a puppy dog at a loss for words!
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
December 8, 2010
The Dead Space
I'd decided to call a truce with Jim, promising to be more available to him, which meant I was on the road a great deal, all the while thinking about how to wedge more reading and writing into my monotonous days as a supply line for the nearly completed church. Since there was little time for anything creative, I ticked through all the things I'd heard about that were happening at home—exciting plans being made by some friends and struggles being faced by others. I had been trimming my business down to the bone, sending my accounts—one by one—to a printer in Lexington because being on the road so much made it impossible for me to service them well enough to do them justice.
There was only the occasional moment when I'd miss the machinations of the business world, and one of them was touring a friend's new offices. I drove away wondering if I'd sold out. I let my mind wander back through the successes I'd had—being named Chattanooga's Young Careerist of the Year at 26 years old after having started my own company the year before, then managing to land the First Runner-up position in the state Young Career Woman of the Year competition a few months later. Truth be known, running a business didn't interest me all that much because I preferred staying steeped in creativity but the stroking my ego received from the attention I had garnered for my accomplishments brought about a poignant nostalgia. Might I have kept at it? I questioned, feeling as if half of my identity had been slowly vanishing while I wasn't paying attention.
The thoughts of missed opportunities were too painful to hold so I let my mind drift over the social whirlwind our week at home had been. We had gathered with our Steamboat ski buddies for dinner at the home of one of the couples to plan our annual weeklong trip of frivolity and indulgences. Their life came with a wholesome surprise: they were truly the most Rockwellean family I'd ever met. I was left asking, Are these the same people we party with when we are in ski country? The two children—boy oldest and girl youngest, of course—did their homework while Mom and Dad cooked dinner, then Mom graded the homework, had them make corrections and sent them off to do their piano lessons while we adults ate.
The boy was slightly chubby and had pale eyes the color of the icy-blue Jordon Almonds I loved to find amongst the pastel pinks and greens in the boxes filled with the oblong candies at movie theaters. He had a jolly, open demeanor and declared just before going off to bed that he was going to own an aircraft company some day. When he left the room after hugging Mom and Dad goodnight, proud father, an engineer, said they didn't discourage him because it wasn't good to give children the message that they couldn't achieve whatever they set out to do in life. He was the first and only child I'd ever known to tell political jokes in grammar school!
Something that Eudora Welty wrote came to mind as I was journaling about this wholesome family the next morning: "I was well advanced in adolescence before I realized that in plenty of the homes where I played with schoolmates and went to their parties, children lied to their parents and parents lied to their children and to each other." I marveled that this family seemed the antithesis of those I'd known, which resembled the lying variety that Welty had so cunningly identified. I wondered if the innocence would hold or whether the fact that the children, 11 and 13 years old, were still young enough to be unspoiled created the feeling of innocence. Would they change when the world had had its way with them? I wondered.
The night after we'd been shunted into Americana's nostalgic version of family, we had dinner with a friend, a single man, who'd decided he wanted to go into the priesthood in his 40's. I had to admit he was well suited for it. I already thought of him as priestly, as he was a chalice bearer in church on Sundays and I was accustomed to seeing him in vestments, his white cassock tied around his ample belly with the tasseled rope that was part of the "uniform." He was worried about being accepted because of his age and the fact that there were seven candidates vying for only two positions. I'd never known much about him and when we talked that night he revealed that he loved to spend time in cemeteries. I thought it odd until he explained that it was a great way to study history.
His favorite was the Forrest Park Cemetery in St. Elmo because it held one of the most fascinating stories he'd ever come across. He said it contained a large section of children's graves from the late 1800s. He'd been curious as to why and his research found that a bubonic plague had swept through Chattanooga during that time. He had spent hours in the library trying to learn more about the outbreak that had killed so many babies and I respected him greatly for the depth of his curiousity. I'd always liked to tease him because he had a tendency to embarrass easily. Every time I said anything to amuse him, his fair skin would instantly flush bright pink.
He blamed his Scottish ancestry, which had also given him his red hair and mustache. He had a self-conscious habit of constantly pushing his round tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses to the bridge of his nose because they would slide down whenever he bashfully looked at his lap during conversations, which he did frequently. After a meal with him, I always felt a little jumpy because he used his hands so emphatically to make particular points that I found myself reflexively thinking I should reach out to keep him from knocking his drink over. I had kept my body in check as not to embarrass him that night, so my keyed-up muscles were still twitching as we drove home that evening, Jim quiet as he guided us through the inky air.
The next morning, my inane muscle-crimping exercises continued when a man working on our condominium pranced up and down a ladder at such a madcap clip I was sure he was going to land in the middle of the burled wood coffee table, flattening it and himself as he blathered on about an ex-girlfriend, whom he said was "Brenda Somebody." What, I thought, she's now Brenda Nobody? I had been trying unsuccessfully to read, finally giving up to turn my full attention toward the gabby guy. He was a walking cliché with his tee shirt that sported the phrase "No pain, no gain" and his automobile tag proclaiming he was "Mr. Pump!"
I quickly realized there wasn't a chance in hell that he was going to let me have any quiet to finish the chapter, the first paragraph of which I'd started four times already, so I decided to get an early start on driving to Atlanta to have my car serviced. I was dreading the two-hour trip south and berated myself for my selfishness as I pulled out of the driveway. How could I be so ungrateful about having so much wealth? I scolded myself. It wasn't that I didn't feel thankful for having things; it was just all the dead space in life that maintaining material wealth brought. And it wasn't as if there weren't interesting things that could have filled in the void. There was simply no time to engage them.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
December 3, 2010
You Don't Mean It!
I was parked near the Ferreteria, as the hardware store in Spanish-speaking countries is known, waiting for it to open one morning when a scruffy bird flew to a nearby electrical wire to give me several pieces of its mind. I ignored it at first but as it grew increasingly irritated, I feared that the delicate power lines clasped firmly in its claws would give way, shutting down the electricity throughout the town. It berated me as if I had just axed its entire family, turning its head every possible angle as it kept one beady eye fixed on me at all times. His wind-beaten wings fluttered and flapped so heartily as he bounced up and down that I held my breath feeling sure the line would shake loose from the bent nail that fastened it to its skinny wooden post. I finally cranked the truck and inched it forward until the nervous creature flew away. I certainly didn't want to be responsible for a power outage that would likely last a week or more given the lackadaisical attitude of the utility companies in this part of the world.
Gus had decided to show me how to make the Costa Rican version of rice and beans that afternoon. "Give me some of dem rice and beans," he sang as he danced around the kitchen. Gertrude came in and burst out laughing at the fact that he was going to teach me anything about cooking, then marched out, shaking her head as she put on her hat to go to the market. He showed me how much dried flaked coconut to put into a bowl before pouring boiling water over it. We let it steep while he was measuring out the beans, then he poked at the thin strips of coconut meat to see if they had softened enough to mash. When they were ready, he took a fork and squished the coconut to milk it, then poured the pale white liquid into the water that was heating up in the pot, tossing in the beans as the milky liquid clouded the clear water in a swirling pattern. "You add some onion," he said, throwing in a handful of the tiny white cubes he'd just chopped. "Now we wait for the beans to cook and we will add the rice when it's time."
I was quite enamored with the dish because it was sweet without being cloying. I wrote down his "recipe" while seated next to him at the dining table—his fidgety finger following my pen across the page to make sure I didn't miss anything. When I had it down to his satisfaction, I closed my writer's notebook and a shiver coursed through me. "Are you cold?" he asked. "Oddly, yes," I answered, a first for me in Puerto Limon—I couldn't seem to get warm. The misty air wouldn't allow it as it invaded the world with dampness, the rain whispering on the zinc roofs of the nearby houses bringing an unusual softness to the weather. This was the counter opposite to what I had experienced to this point in the seaside town, which I could only describe in hindsight as a barrage. It was as if the precipitation gods had decided to make peace with the mortals languishing there and stop incessantly hammering them with their weapons. Though chilled to the bone, I was happy they'd replaced their staccato volleys with the peaceful soughing sound of liquid caressing the metal that capped most of the buildings in town.
I tried to keep home close to my heart by writing about the week I'd had during our surprise break from the mission field. I'd gone to the 75th birthday celebration of Mom's mother, Mama, who had a quilt rack set up in her living room as she always did during the winter months. She was telling me about the pattern she'd created as she ripped open the birthday gift I'd brought her like an excited child. She was thrilled when she saw that I'd given her a package of colorful gift-wrap stamped with American quilting patterns, painstakingly looking at every design to tell me which ones she had made and which ones she hadn't. "See this?" she demanded happily; "it's the double wedding ring, and this is the basket. Ah, here's the tulip. I once made the chain for Kim, and the flower garden has always been one of my favorites."
By the time she'd rifled through the paper, she'd named every pattern, commenting to me that her "glowcoma," as she called her glaucoma, had not slowed her down a bit even though she couldn't see out of her right eye after four painful operations, one of which was a transplant. As we talked, I sat close to her, enjoying the warmth of the strong midday sun pouring through the window behind us. She had on a lilac ruffled blouse and sweater, and her skin seemed alarmingly thin, so translucent in the harsh light that the vein running from her left temple to her eyebrow seemed startlingly blue. She'd been a seamstress most of her working years and a perpetual gripping of fabric as she ran it through the various sewing machines she used had made her hands when they were at rest appear as if they gingerly clasped plump strawberries in their fingertips.
I couldn't remember a time when they'd been smooth due to her perpetual gardening, which she seemed to do less of since she was widowed for a second time and taking care of the property on her own. Her nose was bulbous on the end but not in an unattractive way, even given the thinness of her face. Her eyes behind her thick glasses seemed defiant and birdlike—not fierce enough to be hawkish; more on par with those of a obstinate blue jay. When she was recounting something that had made her angry, she would look straight at me, puckering her eyebrows and narrowing her eyes to mere slits. When she laughed, she would throw her head back and half-cackle, the sound cracking from deep in her throat. After lingering only slightly with her eyes turned toward the ceiling, she would bring her head down and cover her mouth with her crooked hand so that the mischievous glint in her one sharp eye and the dullness of the cloudy one that no longer served a purpose save to make her feel whole held sway.
If she was shocked, she'd say, "You don't mean it!" and lean her upper body toward me—her neck extended, her brow furrowed and her gaze intent as her lips parted and teeth stood on edge waiting for my reply. She had always been thin and rangy since I could remember, and had caused her four daughters fits of embarrassment when she admitted she'd bought padded panties to mask her flat butt when she'd go square dancing with her girlfriends. I remember her being loving only on the rarest occasions, and she was a fierce enemy if anyone got on her bad side. She was, quite simply, a woman who was not afraid to fight. In fact, it became obvious to me in my junior year in high school that she rather enjoyed a good skirmish.
The episode that convinced me of this was one of the most embarrassing stories of my teen years. She made all of the cheerleader uniforms for my squad in high school and she was stubborn about her work. When one of the mothers of a fellow team member came to pick up her daughter's outfit, she complained about the quality. Mama proceeded to call her a host of unsavory names and ran her off the porch with a broom! I'd never known her to apologize because it simply had never occurred to her that she could have been wrong in any way, shape or form. I had to work extra hard that year to make up for the scandal she'd caused with my fellow cheerleaders and I vowed that I'd never allow myself to be such a bitter woman. I couldn't have known at the time—at 29 years old and incredibly naïve as to how it felt to be beat down by life—that time has its own way of molding us into who we become in spite of our resolve.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
November 24, 2010
A Place That Felt Familiar
We made the trip to Costa Rica but stayed only three days because Jim's best friend's mother had died. Though the emotions we would be facing as we tried to comfort his friend would be painful, the entry in my writer's notebook the morning before we returned to the states illustrated that anything at that moment would have been better than more time in Puerto Limon:
The rain is steady; steady is the rain. The pain is ready; ready is the pain.
It was the time of year in Chattanooga when fog would often mute the morning light and I felt like a jewel ensconced in a pretty box filled with cottony cushioning. Like snow, the fogbanks made everything so beautifully quiet and I forced myself to grow as still as humanly possible, to cease the rattling that would normally occur as I tried to dash my self against the sides of the box of my life that was emotionally small enough to keep me safe, which meant it was no where near large enough to allow me to grow. The "stolen" time, as I saw it, that I'd enjoyed with our return from Costa Rica to attend the funeral had brought me some satisfying movement in my writing, but a question was nagging at me: How could I speak more softly in my work and let the words do all the talking? I wasn't even close to having an answer, but I was taking notes as fast as I could!
This delicious time for writing ended abruptly with our return to Central America one week after we'd winger our way home. We drove to Atlanta to fly south, leaving the house at 4:30 a.m. one cold, damp morning, the cruel early hours the point in time I realized that a subculture exists among Homo sapiens—one which stays under the radar during daylight hours, making night's lusty minutes its own. This dawned on me when we stopped at a Waffle Shop on the outskirts of town to have breakfast. The waitresses were putting on a show and you could tell that many of the people lounging around the counter were regulars. There was an unusual mix of clientele: many of them looked to be blue-collar workers who ate breakfast there more mornings than not, while others seemed of the drifter variety.
One guy could have passed for an extra in "Easy Rider," while another would have been the perfect fit as a cover model for Jethro Tull's Aqualung album. He wore a long denim coat that flared from the waist, a pair of dirty jeans and dilapidated cowboy boots. His hair was a tawdry shade of blonde that seemed laminated to his scalp by a wax-like layer of grease that caught the dull light, subdued as it was by the grime-covered globes on the light fixtures. His gold hoop earring in his left ear was about the size of a nickel and he walked like he'd been born astride a hog—not of the pig family but of the Harley variety.
It was about 30 degrees outside so the most surprising guy wore a pair of white cotton pants, a thin khaki cotton jacket over a pink cotton shirt and a white linen beret. I fully expected to see sandals on the feet of this sales-manager-trying-too-hard-to-look-like-he's-on-vacation type, and was relieved to find that he'd at least put on sneakers. I thought about this odd mix of humanity all the way to the Atlanta airport and enjoyed getting their descriptions down on paper during the plane ride to Miami.
The Miami airport was always chaotic and we barely made our connecting flight. Once on the plane, I tried to settle in with James Michener's Alaska but I couldn't concentrate. As I stared out the airplane window, I saw how the shadow of our plane sprawled on Biscayne Bay like the tin man were he to decide he'd like to spread his arms and fly. There were five colors of metal riveted to the spot we momentarily held on the water, then our shadowy imprint sifted from the choppy bay to a series of well-dressed tennis courts, each of which quickly vaporized with our passing as our downburst of energy fueled our glide toward Costa Rica. What would I do with all of the anxiety I was accumulating for this, one of our last trips to finish the church in Zent? I wondered, realizing the answer would only come when it was ready to present itself.
A church service was held in our honor during our first Sunday back at work. It was a sweet but modest affair by our standards in the Episcopal Church in Tennessee. The collection plate was a plastic washtub, and the parishioners fanned out in what would be the sanctuary of the church, which would likely be furnished with beat-up folding chairs, their hands clasped in front of them as they stood. Father Wilson spoke of the excitement the village would know with the completion of the church, sentiments that were echoed by the villagers who had prepared lunch for us after the service. We arrived in Limon that day just in time to see the parishioners of St. Marks leaving a luncheon of their own. I sat on the top step of the center next door and played a game à la Dorothea Brande as I watched people I knew exit the building. Brande advocated contrasting different people faced by the same dilemma as a way to build characterization skills:
Gus would laugh at most anything; Gertrude would say, "Oh my!" or "Aye, yae, yae!" then ask Gus what to do; Mr. Green would have a whisper of a smile on his lips, then say "Yes?" and play the victim; Mr. Plummer would say, "Yes, man; it's a cruel world," then take to his drink; Mr. Douglas would scratch his head and look confused; I would mull and mull and mull before daring to breathe; Jim would grab the bull by the horns, then assume my mulling was weakness while I continued to mull, terrified that if I acted too spontaneously I'd make a mistake.
I'd been feeling particularly homesick since we'd arrived so I made myself feel more connected to home by recording the beauty I'd seen when the sun illuminated the water of the lake the afternoon before we'd left Chattanooga. The effusive light was sparkling as if someone took chips of glass and tossed them onto the choppy surface. Only an intense enough sun could have enticed them to stay afloat, bidding them to dance on the peaks of the ripples as they twinkled, setting the entire lake aglow. As they winked, I imagined their glee would have resulted in high-pitched squeals, their merriment-making with the wind all the rush they needed to breathe the steamy puffs of anima billowing forth in the crisp air. I shivered as I closed my writer's notebook and headed into the center, the chill not a circumstance of the ever-present dampness of the tropical air through which I moved but of my longing to be shunted into the briskness of winter in a place that felt familiar.
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November 17, 2010
The Color of a Winter Storm
With each Tuesday that came and went, I scratched through the word "write" on my calendar more often than I marked it with a check. The deadline for the Byline short story contest passed as I did mental calisthenics to keep up with the holiday hoopla. Once the insanity finally wound down just after we'd rung in the New Year, I received a gift while Jim was off hunting. It was delivered by Mother Nature in the form of a foot of snow. Ah…the quiet was sublime.
The snow-pack drove the gulls, which were normally perched on the lawn, into our little cove on the lake. The neighbors came out one by one, throwing bits of crackers into the air, and the birds circled, nabbing whatever crumbs they could from the dank sky the same color as their wings. In between feedings, they'd bob contentedly on the surface of the water, looking as if they'd had a royal supper. I'd never noticed how these birds, which have always seemed to me to represent summer, are actually the color of a winter storm.
I wandered around the neighborhood with my camera, snapping photos of lush red berries caked in snow and bald rocks dripping with icicles. I'd barely run my fingers through my hair, and had thrown on Jim's mustard-colored down jacket, which pretty much swallowed me, before heading out into the frosty landscape. My sweats were tucked into beat-up gray running boots that barely cleared the deep mounds of snow. I picked through vegetation, looking for any image I felt conveyed the creativity I wanted to express for my first photography workshop.
Being exacting with some of the shots put me in some pretty precarious poses while Sam limped along beside me in the plowed parking lot, lifting his snow-packed paws for me to clean every so often as he made his way from bush to bush and snow-bank to snow-bank. It was blissful—the hush that had come over the snow-plunged world brought such peace with it! I stayed out as long as my numb, reddened fingers would allow before herding Sam back into the house, my heart set on a warm cup of cappuccino.
I spent the rest of the afternoon with writing exercises from Brande's book, describing the mechanic at the local service station who couldn't figure out how to service the Jag after he'd professed to be an "import expert." Striding up to the sitting area where I was waiting, he asked me how much oil the car should take—like I would know! I looked at him as if he'd sprouted an extra head and he got the message, loping off to figure it out, his grimy fingers digging into his greasy scalp as he scratched his head.
In another exercise I set out to "tell myself how I comb my hair without using gestures." The entry trailed off in my writer's notebook, the ringing phone signaling it was time for me to begin the machinations that would pave our way back to Costa Rica. I sat thumping my pencil against the page wondering when life would slow down enough to allow me to have more time to be creative. I prayed it would be soon while knowing it wasn't likely to happen at all.
I'd received another rejection for a poem and realized that in my headlong rush to submit, I was forgetting to pay more attention to the quality of my work. The words came rolling out and in my excitement I let them be rather than taking them to task by forming the sentences into something finer than their raw, undigested states. No verse is free, I thought as I looked at the poem I'd sent out into the world, which had come back to me unappreciated. Each line of it had taken a piece of me with it and would now leach more from me as I struggled to hone and perfect the poem's structure and meaning.
I actually wondered if I was being beat into submission by blaring magazine ads noting contests. Was I forgetting that the importance of writing was in the creating rather than the submitting? I wondered. It also occurred to me that I was far from the well-rounded, fully developed writer I wanted to become. How could I expect my short stories or poems to be sophisticated if I had not reached full ripeness as a writer? I questioned. I wanted to really "get" this so that I could have more patience with myself and with the writing process.
These realizations were bringing a rawness to my life that made me feel exposed—like a peeled cucumber, its cool flesh dangerously delicate. As we dined at one of Chattanooga's finest restaurants far above the city lights one night, I enjoyed how the valley stretching out before us looked like a finely decorated holiday village. It occurred to me as I was admiring the view that the woman seated next to me, whom I'd come to know socially, was always so happy that I was doing whatever I was doing, even when what I was doing felt like nothing!
She had the sweet drawl of a woman raised in the deep south and I wouldn't say she was especially pretty but her warmth brought an openness to her expression that always drew me in. She was only mildly feminine, I guess; maybe the word handsome was a better descriptor given her dark brown hair, olive skin and somewhat masculine face. We sat at the elegantly set table exchanging pleasantries while I tried to gage her life and she tried to gage mine—a social give-and-take with which I had become achingly familiar.
At that moment the lights of a ball field in the distance flashed on and I was shunted into the memory of myself as a little girl—face smudged with dirt and sneakers caked with mud as I furiously argued with the boys on the tiny diamond in elementary school because they'd needed me to play in the outfield but wouldn't let me bat. I'd punched one of them and had landed in trouble with my third-grade teacher, whom I adored. I hadn't cared about getting in trouble, per se, because Donny had deserved the bloody nose. But I did care that I'd disappointed Mrs. Oliver—one of the rare teachers I'd had who seemed to see my potential as a brainy girl.
The woman at my table nudged me from my reverie, realizing, I guess, that my attention had wandered. I nodded and smiled as she droned on, thinking of George Gabb's statement, "Let your heart hold hands with your beliefs," for some odd reason. I realized then that I couldn't imagine anything this woman might fiercely believe in and that made me sad for her. But wasn't that arrogant of me? I vehemently believed in plenty and yet I was far from having it all figured out where devoting my life to my passions was concerned.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. I'm still so far from actualizing myself in my writing at this point in my story, but my writing life does finally gel. To see a recent poem, visit this post on Roaming By Design. Thanks for stopping in!
November 10, 2010
Creative Constipation
It took only a week at home before the itch to head to Panama City Beach to steal some time alone on the ocean was stronger than my sense of duty. As I drove south I thought about all the jokes that had been spawned during our time in Costa Rica with our friends—the "less than tepid" water that dribbled from the showerhead at the center amused them rather than insulted them. I envied their great attitudes and I wished I could see "jungle life" as an adventure as they did. In defense of myself, I wondered if they wouldn't be thrown, too, if they dealt with the monotonous repetition of the back-and-forth.
About halfway through the drive to the beach, I fractured my finger, slamming it in the driver's side door as I reached to keep Sam from jumping out of the car—a reflex reaction I regretted the rest of the trek south because it throbbed like crazy. There was nothing to do but drive, as I had a schedule to keep because I was pulling new sliding glass doors for the condo on a trailer and I didn't want to be driving after dark.
I stopped in Troy, Alabama, to use the restroom and noticed the weather had grown incredibly breezy. As I drew closer to the beach, the wind seemed to increase with each mile, blowing wildly and buffeting the boxy Wagoneer each time it surged toward me. I peered through the broad windshield—my slide viewer that day and an outlet to the life taking place within the sparkling blue of the crisp winter sky. Relishing the fact that there was an advantage to sitting up high, I watched as birds were tossed about and hurled into clumsy formations. Awkwardly they flailed, coming close to collisions, their dramatic aerial ballet not unlike how my life had felt during the week since I'd returned from Central America. I'd barely had time to catch my breath—my days filled with a wedding shower, therapy, lunch with George Gabb and a stained glass class—an idea I'd hit upon so that I'd have a skill to contribute to the work in the mission field. It had occurred to me that I could build stained glass windows for the churches to keep myself occupied, and fortunately my skill for cutting and fusing glass was proving to be adequate.
I'd brought an envelope filled with mail to the beach, which I'd not had time to open. I hadn't even realized that a letter from Byline had been scattered amongst the missives I'd received. I held it to my chest for a while before I had the courage to open it—my heart beating wildly. Would they accept or decline my poem? I wondered, fear pulsing through my temples. I finally had the courage to rip the envelope open and the word "accepted" was all I could see. I stood on the deck watching two dolphins frolic—the sun sparking on their slick bodies as they surfaced—while I tried to take in the incredible news. I suddenly began to cry as I watched them plunge beneath the surface of the ocean and reemerge—rolling, sounding and surfacing as the sun turned their barreled bodies into smoky mirrors.
I practically floated back to Chattanooga after my two days of freedom, heartened by the fact that I could soon say I would be a published poet at last. As I walked Sam the next morning, I felt a renewed energy. Everything excited and enthralled me, even things I would normally have ignored, like the flock of black birds bathing in a puddle in our parking lot. They splashed and skittered, the water droplets dressing them for evening like ropes of brilliant diamonds flowing from their long black gowns. As Sam ambled along, sniffing this and that, I noticed how his hair was the color of winter grass and celebrated that he was such a precious companion in my life. As always, he resisted when I tried to drag him back inside so I could work on the draft of a poem. I let him sit with the breeze ruffling his long hair for a few minutes. Then, in our normal shorthand, he knew when my patience had run out. He lifted his behind rather haughtily and sashayed down the pea-gravel walkway into the courtyard in front of me. What a little pill he was when he grew snooty!
The nod by Byline had motivated me to hold my feet to the fire. I celebrated my achievement in my writer's notebook, declaring an end to my "creative constipation." That proclamation, like so many others, would turn out to be an empty one as the fuel I'd gained from my victory was short lived. I'd set myself a schedule to write every Tuesday morning. I thought that if I could stop torturing myself because I couldn't write every day, I'd have the energy I needed to write at least one morning each week. This routine held for a few weeks but life took over and all I managed most weeks were snippets of contemplation, many of them gleaned while I was ensconced at the beach—the only place I had enough downtime to write.
The waves are rough and frothy, and the spray lifts from each white crescent. I sit on the bed cross-legged, pillows propped behind me, as I record this dialogue with the wind.
The ocean rolls under a dull sky this day. Where clouds hang thicker, there seems to be puffy lines of deeper gray—a scowl maybe—to interrupt the endless dull monotony of cloud upon cloud upon cloud.
As the holidays rolled ever closer and I went through the motions of preparing for all of the festivities, a remarkable Christmas gift arrived. The Byline Magazine with my poem in it shone brightly as I tossed the mail on the kitchen counter one afternoon, the red cover glowing so strongly that I couldn't ignore it. My heart pounded as I reached for it and flipped though the pages. When the poem, with my name beneath the title, came into view, my vision dissolved as the tears filled my eyes. What a blessing I'd received! I thought as I hugged the thin publication to my chest.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
