Words, time and words

Paintings by Kristin Vestguard.

There is a shipwreck aspect to writing. Surrendering to the call means other pieces of life are abandoned. The tighter its grip, the farther I drift from ordinary. I hadn't thought of writing and me in these terms until today, until a ship I hadn't known I was waiting for sailed into view.

I am so thankful for the writers I have met recently through our blogs, yet it is still a solitary, lonely business. At times the connections make it feel more remote for I see where others have found the thread they need and I, in my own eyes, am stumbling around, getting my foot caught in a bucket, stepping on a rake, having misplaced the last known pencil. I find it impossible to explain the writing desire - or is it a compulsion? It is not like anything else that I can name...a day's work can produce pages of words, but if they are not the right words...

So much about life I find to be acts of faith and writing is surely one of them. So is getting out of bed in the morning. A writer has a place she wants the writing to take her - and those who read the words - but, at least as I practice it, the act is much closer to interpretive dance, I don't know which way I will bend until I do it, than to, say, something for which I have created an outline and have a...plan. I haven't done an outline for anything since junior college and what I remember is writing the outline after the paper. You can guess what that did to my grade.

The left side of my brain gets a lot rest. It is never invited over to play when I write; the times when it has popped in to see what we were up to, its suggestions made me feel like I was trying to swim while zipped into a sleeping bag. While taking part in a fiction writing workshop, someone asked (not the classic "where do you get your ideas?"), "How do you know what happens next?" The only, the honest answer was, "When the car pulls up, I wait to see who gets out and then tell about it."

My rescue vessel arrived in the form of a writer friend who has taken some time away from writing to do the work for which we rely on that other side of the brain. Life, rude and intrusive or the opposite, sometimes needs us to talk to attorneys, reduce soaring piles of magazines and mail, make arrangements, show up. But in talking to her, feeling our mutual urgency about whatever it is that we're doing - for neither of us is sure, we just know we have to do it - I wept for knowing that this is not madness and that fact could be confirmed.

Drama in my everyday world is, in my opinion, something loathsome and to be avoided. When I use a word like madness my self-regulator tries to give me the stink eye. I look away, knowing this isn't the exaggeration it might seem. Pushing forward with a body of work that is not a novel, not a collection of poems or short stories, more a gathering of thoughts from heart, mind and spirit, is not a wholly rational act and, because of its solitary nature, becomes a questionable investment of all the resources, down to those dollar coins the post office machines give as change.

It may be a measure of commitment, the single mindedness that makes it possible to float so far from known landmarks without having a clue that I am no longer tethered. The work may be epic, the work may be one paragraph that builds upon another, or one word, followed by three more, but the force it exerts once the call is answered could pull a bulldozer out of quicksand.

One of my core beliefs is that each of us is called to something and as long as it does no harm, the possibilities are infinite. I wobbled and waffled for years, trying to understand the call, trying to meet its expectations, halfway trying to dodge it and substitute an activity like writing. It now has me for however long it takes or however long I last. There are far more meanings to the word surrender than waving the white flag.

Weather report

If I haven't tackled it over the weekend, my first task on Monday mornings is writing my weekly retail paragraph. This morning I got to welcome Halloween. In the paper crafting world, as with retail in general, holidays begin early, though card makers have a reason for the head start. Creating one-of-a-kind greetings takes time.

Southern California's weather, following days hot enough to leave our brightest citizens panting and witless, did a sharp U-turn with its usual false promise of autumn. It is a tease we know well, yet those of us who long to put the fans back on closet shelves think, just maybe, this could be it. As my sister, a Virginia resident, describes it, "The morning when you feel the snap in the air." Northern Virginia will be snapping while Los Angeles is still wriggling out of its sandy bathing suits.

The notion of back-to-school clothes was usually absurd. We picked styles we saw in the stores or Sears catalog, outfits that would bring on heat rash in a Pasadena September, yet there were years we wore them anyway. They were NEW clothes. Too many times the hottest days of the year coincided with the start of school. That spilled over into October when the Santa Ana winds kick up, often bringing fires. But by Halloween there were leaves to rake nearly every afternoon and the need of a costume-spoiling sweater - or the unthinkable coat - for trick or treating.

It is ungrateful to complain about our weather; this may have been the mildest summer on record and I certainly became spoiled by so many sweatless days and nights. After living in Washington, D.C. for one summer and visiting Raleigh, North Carolina, one July, I know I do not have the right stuff for that kind of heat and humidity. I used to reread Southern writers during the summer: Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote. Acclimating was the only possible way for a mind to wander along creative paths rather than spend hot days and nights in a stupor of writers' block. I admired and envied their flexibility.

Today the Los Angeles temperature was 57 degrees at 6 a.m., expected to reach a high of 74. Five days ago 74 was the overnight low in Pasadena. Our fluctuations seem more than meteorological; many of us, I among them, judging by our postings and conversations, seem to be commuting between other highs and lows, between quavering doubt and sturdy optimism. If climate changes have such an impact on something the size of our home planet, why would they not exert some power over lesser bodies? I can't swear that my glaciers have begun to shrink, but I intend to keep them under surveillance. They've become too unpredictable for my comfort.

A sleeping/waking puzzle

The on-line dictionary says haunt means to visit often. I am, therefore, haunted by the frequent dream appearances of a late friend. Two separate dreams very early this morning, leaving me with the same disorientation and let-down that resulted from previous - and recent - encounters. We were friends; in the months before his death we didn't see each other but talked for hours on the phone. In life, I would not have guessed that he would turn up so often or leave me in grief every time, with each awakening feeling as thought he continues to die again and again.

There must be comfort I can't know in a faith that says death reunites us with all whom we have lost. What makes this a mystery within a mystery - for what are dreams, if not fragments of the unknown, tossed up by our own unknowable sleeping minds - is the intensity of the loss, repeated. Why him, why now, why?

In junior high school I had - and carried with my binder and textbooks - a copy of Freud's volume on the interpretation of dreams. I forget whether I bought it or found it in our home library. I just know as I hurried along the halls it perched on my right hip, top of the pile. What imagined version of myself I was trying to project is something I can guess at but not truly know; I think I was trying for smartypants soothsayer. Perhaps Freud makes sense to some 14-year-olds but his was a code I couldn't crack. If there was something accessible, I probably disagreed with it.

I used to receive catalogs from new-age-slanted book clubs. There were always the manuals, with symbol-heavy illustrated covers, on interpreting our own dreams. In keeping with my there-is-very-little-that-is-one-size-fits-all philosophy, I found it difficult to accept that what a fish meant in your dream meant the same in mine.

So I am prepared to take all that I don't know about dreams and put it in a shoebox under the bed, while I take whatever I do know about Jack, about myself, and see if I can find more overlappings and parallel lines. In fiction, there is always a reason for the haunting; visited and visitor are not random and unconnected. I admit to noticing what might be considered signs, but only of good, never ill. If I find a coin on the sidewalk, it reminds me there is abundance, that a gift may come from anywhere. Sooner or later, I imagine I'll know the reasons for Jack's house calls. It is far too late to try and make sense of Freud.

Dispatches

Lock up your shrill, your punishing monkey minds. If you are without basement, shed or soundproof closet, give them bus fare to get as far as the coast, encourage them to wade into the deep waters and hope the rip current takes them as far south as Cabo. They may like the climate, though a slower pace could give them the heebie-jeebies. Trouble stirred with a big stick, that's their element.

Doll-maker Jane Cather writes her characters' stories on the turned hems of their skirts or aprons. I would be wise to leave myself such a memo for those times when shrieks of malice drown all knowledge of the person I believe myself to be in my most compassionate moments.

We have done nothing to bring on the frenzy of abuse our thoughts heap upon us, nothing but dwell here, beings of spirit, laboring - in theory - to find an easy home in human form. Some low-toned yet wise voice suggests that we are many; I have taken to inscribing on my garment, along with my known truth in block letters, the names of those with matching symptoms. If found wandering, please contact...

Too many miles of my journey have been spent with doubt kicking up the dust beside me. I avoid post offices in new towns, not willing to be recognized should my photo appear on poster there: Wanted for unspecified crimes. I know every unloving act I have ever committed but have grown nearly feeble trying to clear my name, to reach the cool grove of respite.

Today I would prefer to be fueled by peaceful contemplation rather than angst. In a state of acute disrepair, I am not able to cozy up to words in workable order. I can think of only one piece I wrote under the influence of sleeplessness and grief that wasn't awful; it was the letter to my cousin's husband, composed the night she died. It might have been wise to make a copy. I know he saved it, as I saved his voice mail that told me so.

We don't forget where we've been; we don't need to stay there, we are not filing dispatches from the front. Distance and a measure of stability - we can debate the illusion of that state - give us time to collect images and to soften into something not so brittle that it cracks when we attempt to mold it.

DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH

Even though a friend had told me of its existence nearly a year ago, information soon dissolved in the everyday soup,  it was in the past few days  that I chanced upon the documentary, Dreams with Sharp Teeth, whose subject is Harlan Ellison, speculative fiction writer for every medium, tale-spinner possibly without peer. I risk being taken for a dowager fanboy, I am that enamored of his work and his essential self. The movie and the G-force energy of Ellison speaking his mind made the two people in this household who write feel that, no matter how deeply in his shadow we may walk, if we keep working, refining, learning and propping our minds open with whatever sticks we can find, we have chosen a path which may lead...anywhere.

This is an excerpt from the short story, "Bright Eyes", collected in the volume Paingod and Other Delusions. Much of Ellison's nearly 50 years of work seems either out of print or not easy to find. It is worth the hunt.

"Feet without toes.  Softly-padded feet, furred.  Footsteps sounded gently, padding furry, down ink-chill corridors of the place.  A place Bright Eyes had inhabited since before time had substance.  Since before places had names.  A dark place, a shadowed place, only a blot against the eternally nightened skies.  No stars chip-ice twittered insanely against that night; for in truth the night was mad enough.

Night was a condition Bright Eyes understood.  And he knew about day...

He knew about almost everything.

The worms.  The moles.  The trunks of dead trees.  The whites of eggs.  Music.  And random sounds.  The sound fish make in the deep.  The flares of the sun...Clocks and what they do.  Ice cream.  Wax seals on parchment dedications.  Grass and leaves.  Metal and wood.  Up and down.  Here and most of there. Bright Eyes knew it all."

Following is a clip from the documentary.  If he is not known to you, meet Harlan Ellison.

FULL MOON IN PISCES

Stamped art from Rubbermoon by Stephanie Mullaney, stamp images by M. Kelly. (Yes, I know this moon is less than full. We do the best we can.)

Before sunup this morning, the Piscean full moon hung above the barely-lit Los Angeles skyline, preparing to emphasize our dreams, illusions and spiritual connections to the Divine within. It signifies - in rudimentary terms - a lunar shift to the dreamy flow of the inner world. Pisces opens the door to worlds that lie within the soul and the psyche. Make of this what you will. Oh, and Mercury is retrograde.

Here's something you can do

Photo from The Collective Mind, posted by Bob Bragman. Many thanks.

Among my friends are retailers, present and past. These are not rosy times for them. During the years I appeared at rubber stamp stores, especially for free demonstrations, I overheard - not that they were whispering - too many customers urging others in the audience either to buy the item being shown at a huge chain store with its unmatchable discounts or, more recently, to shop on line. Valid businesses, not witless advice, just not appropriate to be spouting when you are collecting free handouts, taking notes on how to use new materials and, as a friend once described it, sucking up the air conditioning. Bad manners.

I'll step out in front on this one and volunteer to buy something from an independent retailer or other local business this week...yes, I know we want and need the good chain stores...no one is watching, it's okay to go to Kinko's. But a magazine from a local newsstand, latte from a one-up coffee merchant, a yard of ribbon from the craft store, a stack of mysteries from the charitable thrift shop or second-hand bookseller...any and all would help keep the ship afloat.

And a note to customers of the shops that do things like offer how-to demonstrations at no charge: I know your mother raised you better than that. It is simply polite to (a) thank the owner or manager for their generosity and (b) BUY SOMETHING. One pen, a sheet of scrapbook paper, you'll still scoot out the door for less than a dollar in most cases and go from being thought of - by ALL the staff - as a cheapskate and become someone they will greet more warmly next time. Believe me, they don't forget these things.

I was one who got really cranky when, post 9/11, we were told that if we didn't shop, the terrorists would win. Expletives are not part of my blog writing, but just imagine what I'm thinking. This is different; this is us, all together, with our Social Security, a dollar left over from lunch, 25 cents from the bottom of an old purse, bringing a modicum of good will into the community and doing what we can to see that our towns and neighborhoods will not only prevail but prosper. If you possibly can...thank you and please come again.