Worth Writing

I fear I am a one trick pony where writing is concerned.  It seems I only find new words to cover the same few topics, convey the same beliefs, over and over again.  I chide myself, “You’re always talking about the past.  You wrote the book already.  They read it.  Talk about something new.”  What’s new?  (you have no idea how long the cursor blinked away after that question)  Nothing is new since my last post about signing up for some college courses and buying a couple of books to bone up on office and resume writing skills.  I shouldn’t really say “bone up on” in regard to resume writing skills since I have none.  I’ve never written nor needed a resume.  These days you can’t get a job slinging coffee without one. 

I’m jumping the gun by about a year with the resume reference book but I like to know well in advance what I need to do before it’s time to get down to it.  Oh yes, I’m one of those.  I want to know every turn on every path before I set out on the adventure.  Just hate surprises.  And no, for your information, it does not take the adventure out of the adventure to know about things in advance; being forewarned is what allows me to enjoy the journey. 

Yes, I hear you laughing.  And yes, I am, according to what I’ve just admitted, ill-suited to Life in general.  Now you know why I’m so worn out all the time.  I take very little in stride, tripping over nearly every damn thing Life puts in front of me on a daily basis.  If I haven’t skinned my knees in a while it’s because Life hasn’t seen fit to put much of anything in my path for a long time.  There’s some argument as to whether I’ve actually moved a step forward on the path or not since…whenever. 

Well that’s new.  My darling has just come upstairs to inform me he has emptied a goodly portion of the pool into the basement.  So clever.  He was siphoning off the dirty water through the filter and pump then through pipes into the laundry sink when he walked away and forgot altogether he’d turned on the flow of water.  When he finally returned the tide was rising in the laundry room and basement.  I shall stay up here.  The cursing is muffled by the distance. 

Things are going really well for him here at his house.  Just the other day I had to call him at work to tell him the ceiling in the sun room was leaking like a sieve in the harsh downpour.  He needs to re-shingle the entire back roof.  I moved here to his place temporarily, supposedly, so he could freely work on the renovations of my place.  It’s been over a month now and he’s been so busy rescuing his own house with one pressing job or another that he hasn’t been back to mine.  Oh well. 

The novelty of returning to my old home has quite worn off.  You really can’t go home again.  Oddly enough I ground my teeth painfully because from the time I bought my house I never had any privacy.  First I had a young couple, acquaintances of mine from the art world, move in to the spare room to save them from the miserable conditions they were currently living in.  That was an outright disaster and I had to tell them to leave, and quickly at that. 

 Then another friend was looking to sell off his positions because he couldn’t take them with him into the men’s homeless shelter.  Shocked by his dire circumstances I told him to come live in my spare room.  I didn’t expect him to spend all of his waking hours installed in the kitchen or living room with me, but that he did, and I didn’t know how to tell him to bugger off after I’d invited him in. 

While I was wondering how to ask him to give me some more breathing room my long-time partner rented out his house and told me he was coming to live with me also.  He was sleeping there every night anyway, but now he came for all his time and with most of his things.  Aha.  I didn’t want to be all alone after all those years, and even wept on his shoulder over the horrid thought of it when I first left our home together, but…gawd!  Suddenly I had the one guy spending every waking moment sitting in the same damn chair in the living room playing an electronic Soduku game ceaselessly (no maddening neurosis there, nuh) and my partner installed upstairs nightly in front of the computer foolin’ around on the internet.  Night after night I stood hovering on the stairs wanting to scream “And just where the hell would you like me to go?????” 

 Now the extra housemate has moved elsewhere and my partner is back in his own home and I with him.  So yes, there sits the house where I craved privacy for so long completely empty.  Why then am I here you ask?  *big sigh* That’s why I’m a one trick writing pony.  That’s why I keep studying the past.  I’m looking for the answer to questions like that.  Questions about what makes me tick.  The biggest question being, “Why can’t you leave, Steph, even when you know it would be good for you to do it? Even just to leave for a while and come back.  What are you afraid will happen?” 

 That’s why I ended up getting so badly burnt by my second ‘familyhood’ stint.  Because I wouldn’t leave when I needed to.  Not even for a little while. 

 You see…my mother might be right.  So I don’t want to give anyone I love the chance to discover that life is better without me.  So I stayed, then.  Even when it was killing me.

It’s proving very difficult to get used to writing on the computer rather than by hand.  For one thing, the cursor keeps blinking at me like it’s impatient or something, demanding that I get on with things.  I don’t know if I’m mature enough to sit up in a proper chair and write like a big girl because I’ve already cursed the cursor, told it to just shut the hell up.  Blink, blink, blink.  Yeah, blink you, buddy.  

In some ways this room I’m in is less of a distraction than the old computer room with the view of the pool and yard through patio doors, and the new computer room that is – was – my deceased beloved’s bedroom.  I’m in the upstairs ‘family room’ in the house that is sans family now and the room is being used as a large storage space.  I’m working on the kids’ old computer on their old desk that is pushed up against a wall without windows.  Not much to distract me as I write, or contemplate writing.  

I can’t help, however, being ever aware on some level of the storage goods behind me, the debris of years past.  The well-used couch where we spent years cuddled up with the children in front of the tv is turned facing the wall, its cushions supporting a large black garbage bag full of one child’s stuffed animals and some other things she left behind sit gathering dust beside the bag.  

Stuck in front of the couch is a bookcase I found, stripped, and painted for the owner of the discarded stuffed toys.  The bookcase has a white interior and is bright yellow on the outside.  The top is painted like a crossword puzzle, the intersecting words being ultimate, understand, engage, courage, great, knowledge, adventure, esteem, treasure, top, and dream. Through all the years I raised her I tried to make her understand the spiritual connection between all the words, that I had chosen them for a reason and not just because they fit into the painted puzzle.  

On the front of the case on the edges of the shelves I painted a quite from Nietzsche: Even a thought, even a possibility, can shatter us and transform us.  I wanted her to stock the shelves with books to read that would fill her mind with possibilities and transform her throughout her life.  She told me instead that the bookcase would be much nicer without the words all mucking it up.  She asked to paint over them now and then over the years.  I refused to let her and just kept banging my head against a wall that didn’t know why I kept banging my head against it.  

Off to the side under a window is the cedar trunk I bought one year to strip down ( a laborious process, it was in terrible shape) and repaint to give to her for Christmas one year.  The background is bright apple red and painted with colourful rainbows.  In the bands of one rainbow on the side I painted the words be yourself, be kind, believe.  And within a rainbow on the top I painted the words dance, dream, dare.  She took dance lessons yearly from a young age.  This time she didn’t mind the words.  She especially like that I painted her initials on the trunk in large script.  

Besides those two gifts are all of the others I ever made for her or gave to her – me being the bearer of all the teddy bears in that bag – that she left behind when she ran away to live with her mother and escape her so-called “wicked stepmother”.  Behind me is sort of a room stuffed tight with rejection.  

Even the little stool I have my feet up on right now is one I bought and painted up pretty for her.  She loved it and refused offers of more comfortable chairs for many years.  She’s never coming back for any of these things, it being nearly three years passed now since she turned her back forever, but in my heart, if not in hers, these things all belong to her.  They were gifts from the heart.  They’re not store bought toys that one expects children to grow out of and forget.  They were intended to be memories as well as gifts, memories of time and care and attention given freely.  

I staked my whole life on the power of words, to heal, to nourish love and loyalty, to birth understanding, and to guide people toward the light of compassion.  And I lost the bet.  When and where it mattered most, with the child I was raising, I failed to prove true my belief in the power of words.  She left without any love or understanding, without loyalty, and without compassion for me.  Damn.  I mean, damn, you know?  When push came to shove the power of words was naught and now it’s like trying to move on with your life after finding out that God’s a bigot and a pervert who amuses Himself by pulling the wings off fairies. Makes ya feel like Life’s just a fixed game and we’re all worm food anyway.

 But wait a minute now.  Bear with me.  ‘Cause I’m a hopeless case.  Really.  As though helpless to do otherwise I return to the world of words, again and again.  I’m a Word Missionary still looking for my flock.  The job don’t pay well and the Natives fling antelope shit at me now and then, but I keep poking my head out of my wretched hut now and then hauling along a good book, an inspired passage, saying “You guys gotta hear this one.”  

On my mind these days are the lyrics to a song that has given me goosebumps over the years when it is played oh so infrequently on the radio.  You guys gotta hear this one. 

(by Don Henley)

You were dreamin’

 On a park bench

 ’bout a broad highway somewhere

 When the music from the carillon

 Seemed to hurl your heart out there

 Past the scientific darkness

 Past the fireflies that float

 To an angel bending down

 To wrap you in his warmest coat

 And you ask

 What am i not doing

 He says

 Your voice cannot command

 In time you will move mountains

 And it will come through your hands

 Still you argue for an option

 Still you angle for your case

 Like you wouldn’t know a burning bush

 If it blew up in your face

 Yeah, we scheme about the future

 And we dream about the past

 When just a simple reaching out

 Might build a bridge that lasts

 And you ask

 What am i not doing

 He says

 Your voice cannot command

 In time you will move mountains

 And it will come through your hands

 Through your hands

 So whatever your hands find to do

 You must do with all your heart

 There are thoughts enough

 To blow men’s minds

 And tear great worlds apart

 There’s a healing touch to find you

 On that broad highway somewhere

 To lift you high

 As music flyin’

 Through the angel’s hair

 Don’t ask what you are not doing

 Because your voice cannot command

 In time we will move mountains

 And it will come through your hands

Finally my man caved and put in the air conditioners.  Yup, we had ‘em.  Just weren’t using them.  I can’t put them in without having the things fall crashing to the ground below so I have to wait until he decides he’s hot enough.   His “hot enough” is way, waaaaaaaaaaay beyond my “hot enough”.   But this is what I get for hanging out at my man’s house instead of my own home.  My own place has central air conditioning.  (not that I can bloody well afford to turn it on, mind you)

I did go home today for a while.  I was missing my home very much.  Go figure.  Once there I found out that it is official: the house across the street from my home is now a crack house.  Yay!  There are now eleven people living in the semi detached brick crack house and one of them is a prostitute.  I know because I asked her.  She said “Yep, I’m a prostitute.”  Great.  She is often overheard offering blow jobs to teenage boys on the nearest corner.  Wow.  *sigh*

So…um…back at my man’s house in the nice clean quiet valley for tonight.  I’m going back home tomorrow to stand my ground.  I feel the need.  My neighbour informed me the people in the crack house have been going door to door offering to sell prescription drugs and cheap wine.  Charming.  Remember the days when the knock on your door revealed little girls selling cookies for good causes?  Lord now.  Well, it’s all grist for the literary mill.

Steph

Skinny dipping late at night.  Sometimes it’s the only way to gather and soothe oneself at the end of a long dog day.  The last time I went for a midnight dip in the nip was just after burying Seanna.  I needed to do it then to bathe myself in the memories of night dips with Seanna, just me and her.  I brought her into the pool at night when she was so hot I worried and needed a way to cool her down.  We sang songs quietly, watched fireflies and the reflection of the lights from the surface of the pool onto the trees and bushes around us. 

Tonight I needed to float around in my little oasis reviewing memories of someone else I loved and buried.  Sandra is – was – the kind of woman who championed freeing experiences like skinny dipping and last minute getaways and pyjama parties for women over 40.  If I had any money at all I’d leave immediately on a train trip recreating the route we folled, Sandra and I, on that life-changing journey we took on the fly a few years back.  She was ill with breast cancer even then and it was her way of seeing and doing as much as she could while she could.  She didn’t wanna leave behind a life unlived.  And she didn’t.

So I was musing on Sandra’s lessons and her spoken wishes for me while dippin’ on this cool summer eve.  She was my fellow writer, the one who encouraged me and laughed with me about our shared fears and shortcomings in the literary world.  Regarding the idea of publishing (for pay) she said to me time and again, “One of us HAS to do it.”  I guess that would be me now.  I bought the Writer’s Market guide after her funeral and have been sorting out submissions.

I’m already dead.  I have been for years now.  But I don’t have to stay dead.  I can sit in the dark for an hour, like I did last night, and watch the fireflies in the backyard.  I can strip off all my clothes and bathe myself in cool waters after hot days.  I can start fantasizing again, about art, about travel, about success.

Forevermore I can ask myself, “What would Sandra tell me to do?”  She’s a worthy guide.  She spent the last 20 years living like she was dying.  Because she was.  She was diagnosed with breast cancer first at 28, had a lumpectomy, then again at 30 another lump found on her honeymoon prompted a mastectomy.  She stayed in remission for eight years, and then spent the next – the last – ten years fighting the cancer that had matastised to her liver.  She fought well, and smart, and long.  My hero.  My friend.  My inspiration.  My conscience.

Rest in peace Sandra Wheeler-Dunlevy, July 20, 2009.