Worth Writing

Last night I had a dream that I was in a very large class.  A music class.  It was the day of the final exam which was to be an essay in response to a single question the teacher would reveal after we rearranged our desks in a circle around the spacious room and took a short break.  My job was to count the students present.  It was a difficult task because they kept straggling in late and I’d lose my place and have to start again just as someone or other would switch places and I was altogether lost again.  I didn’t finish the final count before they all stood up and started moving the desks around.  I was terribly frustrated by this, and even more so when I realised most of them went outside to smoke during the break before the beginning of the writing.

Soon, the desks were in place and the writing was about to begin.  Aghast, I turned helplessly to the teacher to explain I couldn’t count the students because they hadn’t all returned.  In fact, of the very large class, hardly any of them came back after the break.  I told the teacher I was almost positive that I’d counted eighty students.  He smiled, then he laughed softly as if he knew the joke was on them.  Then he said, “Let me see…eighty students showed up and about…how many do we see here?  Maybe fifteen people stayed.”  He shook his head a little sadly and said, “It goes that way.  It’s too bad, really.”  Then he sighed and turned back to the conversation I’d interrupted.  He was talking to some woman I assumed was another teacher who had already finished examining her students and I heard snippets of plans for their summer holidays. 

I sat with the group of remaining students and they all turned over their papers to reveal the secret essay question.  I sat staring in shock at the back of mine.  What was I doing in a music class?!  I don’t play an instrument!  I don’t know anything about music!  I didn’t belong there.   How did I end up in the class?  I looked desperately at the other students and a short laugh just jumped right out of my throat.  They were all looking just as desperately at each other.  I didn’t expect that.  I turned over the paper to see what the fuss was about and instead of a question about music, I read this:

What two elements have you seen come together in so perfect and precisely magical a manner that it made a light shine so sharp and bright and high and hot that it brought the entire world to a halt, that it caused Time to cease its eternal, infernal race to waste itself and let you taste it instead and made you Live?

The music students were in tears.  They were lost.  Their grades!  Oh god!  But one student, a violinist, stood hesitantly, eyes lowered and searching inward, obviously moving on the barest hint of a hunch, a began to play her violin.  She played softly and sweetly, a slow and rich melody, something moving even to myself, a dedicated non-musical-minded person.  I have a thing for lyrics, not melodies or instrumentals.  They have rarely moved me to anything but a fidget.  But there was something different about her music, and soon I saw what it was.  It was drawing all Life to it, not just mine.  The teachers, the other students, all unconsciously edged nearer.  And then came the light.  That was the other element. 

The light edged over the window sill and slid down the wall, then threw itself across the floor and jumped onto her hands and violin.  It shone on her hands and her instrument so sharp and bright and high and hot that I don’t think any of us were consciously aware of who or where or why we were.  It was all about the Life in that moment, and we were satiated.  I can say that is true without asking the others. I know it. 

Eventually we returned to the our desks and the Question…for it was now a capital “Q”, it was, we understood, The Spiritual Question, and I understood why the teacher was a little sad for the others who had left too soon in their ignorance.  And I thought about my answer.  Did I have an answer to so high and important a question?  I doubted that.  I had no fine skills like the violinist.  I made no beautiful music.  What flashed in my mind was a memory of my Seanna.  A very brief memory of her walking down the driveway one day. 

Seanna came home from a morning visit to her Grandma’s and as she walked down the driveway that sloped toward the house the sun burst out from behind a cloud suddenly and lit up her shirt that was decorated with glitter.  She had been looking up at me where I waited for her at the garage door when her whole shirtfront leaped to life and shined so sharp and bright and high and hot it stunned her even just out of her peripheral vision and I heard her gasp from ten feet away.  She stopped on a dime and lowered her head slowly, as though in reverence, slowly raised her hands to touch her shirt, and carefully traced the suddenly luminous lines for two long minutes, entirely transfixed, intensely alive, as I, just as intensely aware of the Life in her, felt hot with gratitude. 

Blink.  Sun gone.  Another cloud.  Blink.  Seanna’s head snapped up to look at me and she ran the rest of the way down the drive and threw her arms around me.  Blink.  Memory over.  Blink.  Eyes open.  Dream over.  I’m awake.  I passed the test.

Steph

In a child’s dreams, a child such as I was, who dreamt such dreams as I dreamt, the trees were tall, the gardens lush, and every lovely comforting thing was old and established and had been waiting just for me forever.  All gardens were Eden to a child such as I, and Eden had existed since the beginning of Our Time. 

It is hard for children such as I was to become adults such as I am and have to plant the seedlings and the bulbs and buds and wait for them to grow.  A delight to some, it can be kind of sad to some, such as I of the Seuss-like was-and-am sort.  We’re never entirely a ‘was’ or an ‘am’.  We’re always was-and-am as one.   And so some such as I plant our gardens and take our photos and wax poetic about the lushness of the tomorrows and the to-becomings. 

Can you see what I see to-beoming in the view from my porch?  From my back door?  Go to www.worthworks.com and click on the link in my “How does your garden grow?” article on the left.

Steph (Who is enjoying the non-taxing non-physical labour of computer work for a change on this raining Friday)

Last night I had a dream that I had to cross a dark water guarded by a crocodile.  All I had to do to cross safely was make up a story, even a long sturdy sentence would do to see me across the dark water at the narrowest stretch.  The words, you see, were magic.  Each word fell down and became a strong safe step to carry me forward on my way, every paragraph a whole portage, every story an entire day’s passage. 

But I couldn’t do it.  Swinging above the water with the croc below snapping at me I would get out a few words of a sentence and then the solid steps would fall into the water and the croc would leap up at me as I swung back to the starting shore.  Again and again and again I tried, though I knew from the beginning if it was words that were what I needed to fuel my passage I was done for before I started, for words have always been the missing treasure in my trove. 

Years past I had so many stories to tell, by jeez!!!  They was comin’ outta ev’rywhere!!!  Alright now.  Put yer hand up if ya heard the East Coast Canadian in me thar, b’y.  I’ve no idea where the gators and crocodiles in my dreams come from, but they’ve always been around to tell me something important.  They tell me when I’m afraid, deep down afraid of losing someone or something, or even some way of living. 

Last night’s dream was about my distress over losing my stories.  I was about 40,000 words into a book when the well of ‘wordage’ dried up completely.  That is a VERY distressful occurrance.  I finally had to put the whole project away for the time being since nothing whatever would get the flow of words going again.  Writers need to put things aside sometimes, but this time it was something I can’t afford to leave unfinished.  It’s a tale too important not to tell. 

Gail Kavanaugh at www.gailkav.wordpress.com is doing a beautiful job of what I’m doing a terrible job - no - what I’m actually not doing any job of doing.  She’s respecting the fact that the butcher, the baker, and the candlestickmaker all likely had lives filled with stories of the sort of humanness that would keep more than a few of us entranced for quite some time. 

I am a stubborn-minded writer who can’t get it into her head that her stories aren’t supposed to begin with “once upon a time”; they all naturally begin with “Last night I had a dream…”

Steph

That seems to be the way of Me.  I am here for a while, and then I retreat.  It is not an insult to you, to the world around me.  It is a survival thing.  I cannot explain it fully, not even to myself, and feel no compulsion to try today, so I will simply follow the instructions in the title and Continue.

Continuing on from December (now April…Spring has sprung) I am attempting to re-engage myself with the world around me.  Little by little.  Bear with me patiently, friends, as I don’t think I went into hibernation properly.  It was a blur.  I don’t recall what I brought with me.  Whether I gathered nuts or went nuts, for instance, or whether I stocked up on the right kind of sustenance for my peculiar species, though I assure you I managed to put on the winter fat a-plenty.  I did not shiver for want of an insulating layer, oh no.  *rueful grin* 

Now that it is Spring, I have been poking about the corners of my lair wanting to take full advantage of what I have been graced with as “home”.  I have raked and dug and pushed and pulled and scraped and scratched a few things into some order, holding some future promise of prettiness.  If nothing dies.  And if the grass seed takes.  We’ll see.

I am an agony of knotted muscles and pinched nerves for my efforts today, but the last week in the sun, in the garden, in the good earth, (well…the Hamilton earth shot through with broken concrete and bits of broken glass) have turned my skin brown and freckled, my brownish hair turning lighter and lighter, revealing my Scandinavian ancestry.  The essence of everything is being uncovered, no?

The essence of survival, then, is to return.  Simply return.  Re-turn.  Turn, and turn again.  Keep turning.  One of the best lines from one of the best songs: “We have travelled for years now, baby, just to get back to a place we had already found…” by Vonda Sheppard off the Ally McBeal soundtrack.  Surviving.

Like Steph.

Last night I talked with my next artist about interviewing him for an article to be made online and at the opening exhibit.  He was a little reticent, offering instead the information he’d already written down about himself or cut from previous interviews.  The artist currently showing in my gallery tried the same thing.  I chuckle.  No faith!  No faith in me at all!  Their fears are unfounded.

I love my artists.  I love what they stand for.  And I stand for them.  I wouldn’t dare say an unflattering word.  It so happens that I find articles that are little more than lists of shows and accomplishments to be highly unflattering unless the accomplishments are qualified by personal experience.  Why was the task so tough?  What makes the accomplishment special for that artist?

The current showing artist, Kimberly Pimm, qualified the accomplishment of her exhibition by revealing the circumstances of the time the paintings were begun many years ago.  It has been my experience, and Kim’s work exemplifies my opinion, that whatever is created from a mixture of passion and adversity shines with an unmistakable beauty. 

 I encourage the artists to reveal and expound upon their various disabilities and how they altar, enhance, or simple don’t even reflect at all upon their work.  It’s always a mixture of those three.  Note that I said “altar” instead of “detract”.  There are no mistakes, remember…only new paths!  The next artist was reticent about revealing all of his disabilities.  One, in particular.  I encouraged him to consider that his resistance is what points to the revelation of that disability as being the most valuable offering he can make to a public who needs to hear about it. 

 Which reminds me…as one of the exhibiting artists, I guess I have some writing to do on my own behalf.

 Steph

More what?  I don’t know.  Maybe what I’m suffering is from too much, not too little.  I have been assuming that my desire to hole up in my bed for a couple of weeks, venturing out only to eat and bathe, was because I don’t have enough willingness or desire or…reason to do so (how sad).  But now I wonder if the don’t-wanna-get-out-of-bed is a symptom of Too Much. 

Not Too Much to do so much as Too Much to think about…Too Much to care about too much.  I joke about the hilarious dreams I’ve had lately - including everyone from Mary Kay to Meatloaf to God-or-someone-like-him - but I’ve also been dreaming every night for two months about people who are accusing me of doing something horrible, something I did not do.  That old idea that artists are sensitive people is more than a silly old idea. 

In the interests of being able to advance from my wounded hidey-hole with new art to offer up on the altar of public opinion, the new art will consist of altars and shields, my Creative Armoury.  The altars are to remind myself of what I have to offer, what I am willing to sacrifice, and what I need to hope for in order to survive this hell I’m in (for now).  The shields are to remind myself that I am not defenseless, that I need not feel so powerless and vulnerable as I do.  Not all weapons must leave wounds. 

For instance, a friend told me recently that I should carry a knife with me at all times for the purpose of “cutting through the bullshit”.  She said nothing of needing to kill the bullshitter with it.

More later…

Stephanie K. Hansen

Worth Works

241 james north

worthworks.com

I’ll explain it some other time, but I no longer have to worry about commuting to the gallery from my beloved former 2,500 square foot home in mild-mannered, small-town Dundas.  I needed to tell you that so that everything I write from here on in makes any sense at all.  Beautiful big home…gone.  Steph-children and husband…gone.  Left…boundless opportunities to redefine relationship, life, career, and self.  Translation…nothing left of former life but am working on willingness to see that as somehow positive.  Further translation…”working on willingness” means that contrary to my wishes my eyes opened this morning and I was still alive and still not in my (former) beautiful big home and therefore had very little choice but to get up, put on the kettle, and start cleaning up my life. 

 Little something relevant for you:

Before enlightenment, I carried water and chopped wood; after enlightenment, I carried water and chopped wood. 

 If even something as powerful as enlightenment doesn’t make the chores of living go away, then I have to assume that the impermanent feelings of sadness and loss aren’t going to spare me from having to find ways to pay my bills and rediscover the simple pleasures of life.