Character Sketch (Rob Browning)

It wasn’t good for him to be alone, but he didn’t want to be with people. He had declined to go with the boys on the bar cruise; they were only out to get laid, and he wasn’t interested in sex these days. Hadn’t been for a while, come to think of it.

He had used the car as his excuse. The rally was on Sunday and he had to get it ready—or so he had said. He actually tinkered under the hood for twenty minutes, trying to get the timing right before the irony overwhelmed him. Getting the timing right had been a lifelong problem. Oh, God—he was slipping into one of his moods, the ones that had once sent him to meetings. He hadn’t been to one for a while, and he couldn’t go now. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to be there.

He didn’t want to be here, either.

Oh, no.

He went indoors and did another line, hoping the rush would knock him out of neutral.

It didn’t. He was left revved up with nowhere to go and faced with the ominous task of trying to sleep later on.

Maybe a hot bath would help.

It didn’t. The water was too hot and started his heart tripping. He got out in a hurry, lost his footing on the tile floor, and almost whacked his head on the sink when he went to his knees.

He wondered if he should call someone.

He got his pulse under control before he got up from the floor. He had to brace himself on the side of the tub for a second, but he got vertical with an effort. He grabbed a towel from the rail and mopped at his chest. Sweat, not bathwater. Shit.

It hadn’t been a problem at the start. It wasn’t really a problem now. His job wasn’t affected, his associates hadn’t a clue, he was still sharp behind the wheel. He didn’t do it every day; he didn’t need it. He just had moments when he wanted it. He didn’t think they were coming more frequently. The moodiness was the problem. If he could get a grip on the depression or the angst or whatever the hell it was, he could get a grip on the drugs.

There was no point in dwelling on it at this hour. No point in dwelling on it at all. Nothing could be done. It wasn’t his life so much as the ghosts that populated it. Dead parents crying for vengeance from a son enslaved by the thing that had killed them.

He called no one. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to sleep, but he’d messed up his chances with that one line. Most of all, he wanted to stop hurting. He had lived with pain and remorse for so long that they were constant companions: pain on one hand, remorse on the other, and him dead in the middle. Only he wasn’t dead. He only wished he was. Sometimes.

He walked into the living room, pausing at the glassed-in hutch where his knives were kept under lock and key. Quite the collection; everything from a vintage Swiss Army knife to a Turkish scimitar. Every one was honed and polished until you could cut yourself by looking at the blade. He spent hours treating them, almost as many hours as he spent pampering the car.

He pulled out the pearl-handled switchblade and popped the release. The knife shot out like the tongue on a cobra, lethally silent. This one was his favourite. It was easy to carry, easy to conceal, and too quick to allow the other guy a second thought. Not that he used it much. He just liked knowing it was there if he got into trouble.

He carried it to the fireplace. Yet another line of coke called to him from the bedroom but he ignored it, knowing it would not help. He sat down on the rug laid out before the hearth and tucked his legs beneath him. Candles had been lit earlier that evening, emulating a fire in the grate. He rarely burned wood and the candles soothed him, so he had arranged a dozen or so in the mouth of the fireplace. Pillar candles of varying shapes and sizes: tall and stately, short and fat, some with one wick and others with more. They were all beeswax. Sometimes the smell made him nauseous and sometimes he liked it. Tonight was not a good night.

The switchblade glimmered seductively. A bead of light trickled along the razor edge, running like liquid gold to the hilt. Once it hit the pearl, it slipped inside and gave the handle an iridescent glow. Pretty. He lifted it to his lips and pressed the blade flat against them. Its cold against his heat was shocking and delicious—the way Cassie had felt during that one elastic moment before nothing had happened last fall.

He killed the memory before it bloomed. The coke cried at him from the other room. He shouted, “Shut up!”, gripping the knife in a sweating palm. Jesus, this was not good. The tumult swelled like a cancer in his core, hard and relentless. Inoperable. He would never be free of it.

But he could relieve the pressure.

He hadn’t done it for a while. Like the drugs, it wasn’t a driving need. He had believed himself cured of the habit, but, again as with the drugs, one never truly recovered. If he ever got free of the sickness, he might be recovered—but he’d also be dead, and death was not an option.

Training with knives was a great cover for the scars on the inside of his left arm. Not all of them had been self-inflicted. The majority of them, in fact. He tried to reopen old wounds when his resolve wavered; being left-handed, he had learned to handle weapons in his right, not specifically to keep secrets, though it certainly helped. He took the knife in his right hand now, taking the weight of it in his palm. It felt good. Comforting. Dear God, please let it work this time.

He didn’t blink when the blade bit the skin. He watched with clinical interest as his arm opened to release the flow. He would lick it up later, when the cut was breached and blood began running to his elbow. He would taste smoke and salt and the infernal ache of hellish mortality. He wouldn’t feel better; not much, anyway.

But he’d be able to sleep.

Fried Egg Friday

My all-time favourite sandwich has to be fried egg. From the time I was a kid, I’ve loved them: semi-runny yolks, whites crispy-fried in bacon fat, and thick mayo on good white bread. Bond Bond’s bakery here in Victoria makes the perfect white bread, the best I ever tasted, which elevated the relatively simple fried egg sangie to something celestial. In my glutenous glory days, my bi-weekly Friday off regularly featured a killer fried egg sandwich, sometimes with potato chips to poke in the yolk. Culinary heaven.

Alas, those days are gone. I tried it with GF bread and promptly abandoned the notion of creating a reasonable facsimile. Honestly, there are times when substitutes are just not acceptable. Gluten free bread is smaller, far more dense, a lot more fragile, and quite frankly not that great unless it’s toasted first. Toasted, it assumes a similarly crispy-crusty texture and stability that emulates “real” toast well enough to make it an occasional treat. What I can’t figure out, however, is why peanut butter just sits on the surface like a sticky puddle of goo rather than sinking into what tiny pores exist. If my complexion was as smooth as a slice of GF toast, I wouldn’t need makeup.

It took me more than a year to find a solution to the fried egg dilemma, a solution that existed long before I went gluten free though I didn’t see it at the time:

The next best thing to the perfect fried egg sandwich is a tiger’s eye – white bread with a hole cut in the center, fried in bacon fat with an egg cracked into the middle. Since GF bread toasts up so well, logic suggests that it will fry up equally so, yes?

Yes! Eureka, it’s not the monarch of all sandwiches, but it’ll do.

Today is my last day of solo vacation. I have a week remaining, but Ter is also on vacation starting tomorrow, and while we won’t be living in each other’s pockets the whole time, my run of the house will require, well, clothing. I got the first scene of the new story done yesterday, plan to write more today, plus catch two more episodes of Orphan Black … which may or may not have inspired the theme for said new story. It’s not about clones, but there is a theory out there that everyone has a double. If that’s so, says I, why not more than one, and do they all exist in this dimension?

Enquiring minds want to know … but can certainly wait until after lunch.

Guns and the F-Bomb

That was Rob Thurman’s answer when she was asked why she chose the urban fantasy genre for her novels. “Guns and the f-bomb,” she said. She loves guns, and UF allows for flagrant cursing which, if your hero is consistently targeted by the same monsters he’s been hired to kill, is a justifiable offense.

I don’t know much about guns—my nephew is my go-to guy when I need weapons advice—but I learned how to cuss in earnest while working the night shift at a local radio station twentysome years ago. That said, my desire to write within the genre has more to do with bending the rules than unleashing my inner foul-mouthed schnook. It’s a place where I can explore alternate realities and meet wondrous characters who aren’t human, yet who face similarly human dilemmas.

My plan today was to walk straight home from the village after Ter dropped me off, getting my flânerie in early and snapping a few pictures on the way. No Asian Mist, no journaling; just a walk in the sun while I sorted the next scene in Calista’s story.

Problem is and as usual, another story is surfacing. It’s one that I’ve glimpsed in hints like shadows in a dark corner but haven’t been able to see full-on. Some details have begun to present themselves, so I grabbed my scribbly journal and a fiver, then sat at Moka House to purge my head of the voices. (The drink in the pic is an apple pie carmello and, no, I won’t be doing one again. Too sweet.)

I got a bunch of stuff on paper, including the lyrics to a Durannie B-side called Secret Oktober because the song has long intrigued me and I think may have inspired some structure for this tale. I’ve got two characters, a premise, and a beginning—what comes afterward is still in the dark. As with most of my stories, it will develop as it’s written and that’s okay. I watched an interview with the creators of Orphan Black—you’d think a story about clones would have started as a story about clones, but it didn’t. One guy said to the other, “What if you saw your identical twin just before he stepped in front of a train?” Now they’re two seasons in and a third has been ordered … but I digress.

The opening scene of this latest is so vivid in my mind that it has to be written before I can do anything more with anyone else, so that’s my plan for the morning. Two more episodes of OB and some domestic stuff is on tap for the afternoon, and it’s already 9:30 so I’d better get it in gear.

Who has time for a day job???

Food Porn VI

“Oh, Muffin!”

Wow. That was close. If not for my lovely assistant, these applesauce-spice muffins would have been a complete disaster.

For the latest in my GF treat basket, I decided to make this easy-peasy recipe and, as usual, prepped the ingredients before I started mixing. The cup measure won’t fit in the flour jar, so I did the math and determined that 10 x .25 scoops would give me the requisite 2.5 cups, but, boy, did that look like a lot of flour. In fact, I ran out of the GF mix and had to top up with plain brown rice. Must have been an optical illusion, i.e., if I’d used a bigger bowl, it would have looked right. So, in went the baking powder, soda, salt and spices.

On to the wet ingredients.

Butter and sugar beaten to “light and fluffy”, it was time to add the eggs. However, as the stand mixer in our kitchen is me standing with the hand mixer, I called on Ter for help. She knows the drill; she’s done this often enough: Eggs first, one at a time, then dry/milk/dry/milk/dry.

“Boy,” she said once the eggs were in, “that’s a lot of flour.”

“One cup at a time,” I suggested, dismissing her observation as I had dismissed my own.

She dispensed the first cup in three increments (the better to incorporate flour into batter without dusting up the kitchen), then poured in half the almond milk. The second cup of flour went in, also in three increments.

“Wait a sec,” I said. “Are you using the third cup measure?”

She checked. “Yup.”

We both eyed the remaining flour.

“That’s way more than half a cup,” she said.

I was doing rapid calc in my head and suddenly realized, “Crap! I measured out the flour in half cups, not quarters!”

Ter blanched. “What?”

I gave her the half-cup measure. “One of these and we’re done. I wondered why it looked like too much flour!”

“Well, yeah,” Ter agreed, all but rolling her eyes, “because it is!”

I wore that one, emerging from near-catastrophe with gratitude for my trusty kitchen elf attachment. She helped with the cleanup, too, but ahead of putting the flour back in the jar, she glanced a little nervously at me and asked, “Did you put cinnamon in the flour?”

Oh, $***. So the muffins are only half-spiced and our flour supply has cinnamon, salt and baking powder already added. No breaded chicken until further notice.

I’m renaming this recipe “Right Brain Muffins” because that’s obviously where I was when I baked ’em.

Big Bad Wolfe

My best bad guy is a vampire named Darius Wolfe. Few of my devoted followers have met him, but I have seen him through the eyes of too many of his victims to think him anything less than the most villainous villain I have ever written.

And he’s totally good with it.

The stories about him are always told through the eyes of someone else. That will never change. Unlike Julian Scott-Tyler or Ariel Black, it’s a waste of his time for Darius to tell his side of anything. He expects unquestioning acceptance that he does everything for a reason and woe befall anyone who opposes him. I’m uncertain if he’s a psycho or a sociopath; I’d have to consult an expert on whether he fits into a category or is in a league of his own, and I’m not going there because my go-to defence of “I’m just the scribe” might not survive the scrutiny.

Besides, he’s too much fun to write. I’d stopped for a while, three and a half volumes into a series about the woman bound to serve him that may yet see the light of day, albeit in a different way than originally penned. He popped up in last year’s story of a hit man who discovers a girl washed up on the beach, and a couple of weeks ago, I heard from the woman he married when he was still a mortal (I can’t say he was ever truly human). I’ve been working with her since then, telling her side of the tale, and wouldn’t you know, he was a rat bastard in mortality as well. Maybe even worse, given what he did to become immortal.

No, he did not sacrifice his wife. That was Marcel de Chauvigny, who squared off against Julian in the 1890s. Oh, and let’s not forget Raymond de Haven, the bane of Black’s eternal existence. I have a pantheon of vampire baddies to choose from, and of them all, Darius thrills/alarms me the most.

What makes him so scary? Maybe the fact that immortality hasn’t changed him. He wasn’t a mortal so much as he was a dry vampire, waiting patiently for the opportunity to pounce on the potential for limitless power.

I’m writing that story this week. I know how it ends for him (and so does anyone who’s reading this post), but how it ends for Calista, I can’t predict. I hope it ends well for her, but when you’re married to the devil incarnate, being a witch is no guarantee that you’ll survive in one piece.

As with all of my stories, I’ll have to write and see.

Know Your Mind

“If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth.” – Eckhart Tolle

Further to the tiny poem I posted on Saturday …

What do you want to write today, Ru?

Oh, boy! An urban fantasy!

You haven’t finished the novel yet.

The novel’s too big. I want to have fun.

“Black in Back” is half-done. You should finish it.

I will, but I’m stuck right now.

You’ll stay stuck if you don’t try to get un-stuck.

Did you not hear me? I said I want to have fun!

You’ll have fun once you get it rolling again.

I’m not having fun now, that’s for sure. I’m going to do something else …

What about the blog? You’re behind on your posts …

… something not writing!

*contemplative pause as Ru stomps off in a frustrated snit*

Well, no wonder you’ll never be successful.

During the course of this inner dialogue, my enthusiasm for my art was badgered from the joy of widespread potential to a poisonous knot of despair jammed under my ribs. By the time I was done, I was done. I didn’t even want to consider what I truly wanted to write because I felt like I’d be a failure if I didn’t finish something else. It wasn’t enough for my mind that I write for play. It wanted me to work. And even my bliss can be a turnoff when it becomes work.

I observed this odd conversation with the awareness that my compostable container houses two distinct entities: my mind and my spirit. And the two are the most contentious partners since George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Boy, is my mind bossy. It’s such a control freak that, even when it’s so tired that it’s banging into the boards like a hockey player in third period OT, it still strives to beat down my spirit. And my spirit, the little wimp, lets it.

That’s what intellect thinks of spirit.

Actually, spirit is smarter than that. It doesn’t give up; it just concedes the moment. Eventually it comes back. It’s as relentless as intellect, if not as prone to pumping up the volume. I kind of wish it was, but I’ve also learned that spirit burns at a higher intensity and will not lower itself to the level favoured by the mind. Let’s face it: the mind is pushy, aggressive, derogatory, critical, judgemental, self-righteous, argumentative – all the things we look for in the perfect mate.

Spirit, on the other hand, can afford to wait. Spirit doesn’t adhere to the concept of time as interpreted by the mind, so if I storm off in a fit of pique and refuse to write on Sunday, it neither judges nor ridicules. It simply lets me be. My mind is the thing that will hunt me down and kill my will. Why it fears my writing so much is a mystery. You’d think it would appreciate a break, especially when it’s as tired as it was when I started my vacation, but no, if it lets up for a second, it will be overcome. Worse, it may be cast completely aside, forgotten, reviled, ignored. Oh, that’s the worst fate it can imagine, that it might be ignored. 

It thinks it’s the less favoured child when in fact there is no competition. I appreciate my intellect. When I need it, it’s there. I just wish it would shut up when I don’t. No, not shut up. Relax. Yeah, relax, old mind o’ mine. Take five and let spirit drive for a while. You’ll kill us all if you don’t loosen up, and if that’s not counter-productive to your purpose of keeping us alive, then who’s the big picture failure?

The third party in this dilemma – and this brings me back to Professor Ekkles’ point – is the compostable container. Emotion is reflected in our physical condition. When I’m angry, my stomach knots. When I’m sad, I cry. When I’m hurt, my chest aches. When I’m happy, I smile. When I’m in love, I am weightless. When I ask myself a question, as I did at the start of this diatribe, my immediate answer is the truth. Any hesitation and my will mind slip in there with its niggly naggy nonsense, effectively confusing me with coulda/shoulda/woulda. If I doubt my response, however quickly it comes, all I need do is note how my body feels. How I feel is always true. What I think, not so much. When the two collide, what feels better is the way to go.

So go there.

"The Difference Between"

Your head will urge you to vengeance

Your head will prompt you to rail

Your head will take pleasure in spitefulness

Your head will tell you you’ve failed.

Your heart is the speaker of the soul

Your heart knows what is true

Your heart is always led by love

Your heart is the real you.

Out of Office

“I am out of the office until Monday, September 8, 2014. Neither email nor voice mail is being monitored, so if you want me, you’re SOL …”

As of yesterday at 4:30, I am on vacation, semi-regularly monitoring my home email, and still running phone calls through the machine to avoid those pesky (why do we pay for an unlisted number?) telemarketers. My grand plan is to get very well acquainted with my recently acquired keyboard – the one with a working “B”. I started yet another story last weekend, this one about … well, let’s just say that all the work I did a decade ago seems to be relevant to stories I’m inspired to write now. “Black in Back” is likely to get some attention into the bargain; it certainly hasn’t fallen off the radar, but this new one is, as are most new things, shinier and therefore of more interest at present.

Speaking of which, I’ve got season two of Orphan Black scheduled into lunchtimes next week and the latest in the Leandros bromance to finish – I’m almost halfway through Downfall and it’s painful to tear myself away for things like work, food, and sleep. I was telling Ter this morning how volume nine has introduced some very cool points that tie in with our ongoing Philosophy Quest, things at which a lot of urban fantasy fans may roll their eyes, but with which I am completely on board. Multiple lives figure prominently, of course, and a character who has run the gamut with Cal and Niko throughout the series is sharing the narrative with our hero. I was initially lukewarm at the prospect of the world’s biggest braggart taking the wheel, but he’s turned out to be more sympathetic than I thought. And Cal … what can I say about Cal? I’m scared to death for him, more scared than he is – or claims to be; I’m fairly sure he’s more afraid than he dares let on, but his rage is absolutely on target.

If I haven’t said it a hundred times before, I—love—this—guy.

As for Orphan Black, wow, who knew? Apparently I did; I recall my ears pricking at trailers when the first season ran on Showcase, but I couldn’t find it on the schedule so let it fall by the wayside. I caught the first season on DVD last month; it’s gratifying when my instinct for unique and brilliantly-done TV/movies/books proves to be bang-on. I am now as deeply hooked by Sara Manning’s ongoing adventures as I am by Cal and Niko’s. Lemme tell you, with competition this fierce, the “real world” has got a lot of catching up to do.

Maybe without me in it for a couple of weeks, it’ll try harder to keep me engaged when I’m forced back into it.

Timely Advice

It never fails. Chuck Wendig’s blog is hardly a daily stop on my net-surfing routine, but when I am prompted to drop by www.terribleminds.com, I invariably happen upon advice that pertains to something I’ve been pondering.

Case in point: my ongoing struggle with finding/making time to write. It’s not that I am short of ideas – to the contrary, I’m marinating a couple of beauties as I type, along with trying to complete “Black in Back” and redirecting the novel that’s fallen so far off course I’ll need a Hummer and a hydraulic winch to get it back on the road. I like to blame my day job for much of my frustration. “If I had more time …” “If I didn’t have to work …” “If I could get some momentum …” yaddayaddayadda … Yup, that bi-weekly paycheque and promise of a pension has sure jammed a stick in my creative spokes, but what is a writer to do when writing doesn’t pay the bills?

Not that I was openly musing on the matter yesterday. I had a few minutes and no one else is blogging right now – George Martin is travelling the globe, Erin Morgenstern has taken August off, and Nic has been so quiet that I fear she’s succumbed to the same demon that dogs me: a day job that sucks up your will to do anything more than crash with a bag of chips in front of the TV every night. So, with a few minutes between crises yesterday, I dropped over to Chuck’s place and discovered this post by guest blogger Tom Pollock, entitled “Writing Around a Day Job”.

Are you kidding me????? Well, of course not; lots of people are stuck doing what they must instead of what they’d rather, but I found hope in these four simple points:

Plan your time. He writes Monday and Wednesday nights, and during the day on Sunday. I’m supposed to write on Sunday, but have given up getting momentum on one day a week. That means I’ve almost given up, period.

Stick to your plan. I repeat, he writes Monday and Wednesday nights and during the day on Sunday. Invitations to socialize are politely declined or alternative dates suggested. He writes for eight hours a week; so could I, if I follow his example with two weeknights and my regular Sunday.

Don’t let writing turn you into an asshole. I fear Ter could address this item more objectively than I can. While a scheduled routine will protect your writing from your life, it can also protect your life from your writing. Pollard wisely says, “You won’t actually get any more done if you’re worrying about how you’ve fucked up all the human connections in your life. The fact that writing is not the a1 priority in your life does not mean you won’t get it done.” He goes on to say, “Prioritize the people. They’re more important.” So are Flyer games and Sleepy Hollow.

And finally … Enjoy it. Lately, I haven’t. Lately, it’s been work. Lately, I’ve been so frustrated that I want nothing to do with it, and that’s a bad, bad sign.

So, how do I get it back? Can I build and sustain momentum with a few extra hours on a couple of strategically-spaced weeknights? Can I shed the shackles and rediscover the joy in blasting out as much as I can, ignoring both time and my inner editor? And can I do it without alienating the people who mean more to me than writing ever will?

My two-week vacation starts on the 25th. It’s easy to write full time on vacation, especially when I’m on to something new and shiny, so the test will come after I go back to … the Day Job.

Full Moon Pie

My baby polar bear wanted to take a selfie with the moon for which he was named, but his arms are too short, so Ter tucked him into her hoodie and we walked him across the street for a photo shoot. I handled the camera and she was the animal wrangler. Moonie just played his criminally cute self and voila! Full Moon Pie!

The plan had been to do it last month, but we missed the opportunity due to cloudy skies. I thought the August moon would be better anyway, but little did I know …

We were hanging out in the Ocean Room, waiting for just the right light and discussing how much better our view is since the tree across the street sent a branch as thick as a small sapling into the new neighbour’s yard on Friday (the city crew was out chipping wood past 11:00 that night; yeah, they made themselves popular with the rest of the ’hood) – apparently the view isn’t that much better, however, because we noticed that cars were pulling over waterside and people were stopping to look at something in the bay. There were no helicopters, so it couldn’t have been a marine rescue, and no events are usually scheduled for sundown on a Sunday, so by the time my curiosity peaked, Ter ran down to the stoop and came back calling, “Ruthie, you’ve got to see this!”

The Super Moon was rising. I have never seen the like of it – bigger than the sun, as bright as a new loonie, and attracting spectators like they were flies and it was dipped in honey. One of the neighbours said he’d read it was 14% bigger than the normal moon and it sure looked like it to me. But a 14% bigger dilemma rose with it:

How were we going to manage Moonie’s photo shoot with half of Victoria watching???

Well, damn the torpedoes, I was not going to let the plan slide, especially when the moon itself was as extra-special as my little puffball. We smuggled him out the door and across the street, cruised for the best location, somewhere between street level and the beach, I knelt down to get the best angle, then said, “Okay, Ter, let’s do this thing.”

Poor little Moon Pie. He’s so good natured that he didn’t balk despite being openly bewildered and slightly freaked at being outside without his buddies. You’d never guess by the picture, though, would you? Twenty minutes later, he was back in the bedroom telling the other bears all about his adventure. And you can bet in his version, he was the bravest bear in the world.

Actually, he’s the bravest bear in my version, too.

Food Porn V

“PB Cookies”

caution - attack bear on duty!

Another GF experiment that worked pretty well if you like crispy cookies—which I do. I split the batter to include chocolate chips in half of the batch, because I really like crispy cookies with chocolate. The only mistake I made here was to let the tiny panda pose for the picture with them.

Now he thinks they’re his.

Contrary to our policy of No More Bears, this little guy snuck under the wire because he’s so little that I doubted he could possibly create any more havoc than the rest of the gang causes on a daily basis. He’s a Telus panda—the holiday promo the company used to encourage contributions to the World Wildlife Fund last Christmas. Ter is a panda nut, the cause was a good one, and I needed a final stuffer for her sock. So I went to the Telus shop on a lunch break, waited in line while everyone in front of me finished buying the latest communications technology, got to the counter, looked the service rep in the eye and said, “I’ve come for a panda.”

“You’re in luck,” he said. “There’s one left.”

“Sold,” I said.

No need for a bag. This little guy cuddled in the crook of my arm along the street, across the intersection, through the courtyard, past the security desk (where he was offered a chocolate by one of the commissionaires) and up the elevator to my office. He spent the next three days there, playing with my office critters and charming the heck out of everyone who came to visit, and on Christmas morning, he and Ter bonded immediately.

He has since resided in the kitchen, where he makes a point of claiming everything we set on the table as his own. Well, almost everything. Being a vegetarian, he turns his nose up at meat. He likes to play with veggies (especially green veggies), plastic clamshells full of berries, butter tarts or salsa … and plates of fresh-baked cookies. I know, I know. He’s so little that surely I could overpower him with my size, but anyone who’s been attacked by a purse dog knows that ankle biters are the fiercest of tiny creatures, so it’s easier to let him think he’s won until he falls asleep. Ter puts him to bed, I bag up the cookies, and in the morning he’s forgotten all about them.

Still, in honour of our miniscule despot, the PB in the title stands not for “Peanut Butter” but for “Panda Bear” Cookies.

“The Wise One”

“I don’t know what to do.”

I say nothing.

I wait.

Here it comes …

“Tell me what to do.”

Those who come to me are at a crossroads. No one is troubled by small decisions. No one asks what to wear today or which route to drive on the way home. No, they come with the big ones, the life-altering ones; choices between seeking a new job or waiting for the boss to retire, whether to accept or reject a suitor’s proposal, to stay in an unhappy relationship or take a chance and find happiness elsewhere.

I am—used to be—amazed at how eager they are to relinquish control of their fate to a stranger. In truth, that is not so. They only believe they want to be told what to do. When you tell them, they more often do the opposite, sometimes to their benefit, sometimes to their detriment. At one time, I tried reverse psychology and dispensed advice contrary to what was best, but that caused trouble for the ones who took it blithely and I always bore the blame.

Long ago, I stopped saying anything at all. Now I simply sit and listen while they pour out their hearts in hope of receiving guidance they would inevitably ignore. The fact is, they don’t need me to tell them anything.

They already know.

They need only sit and be still. The answer will come because it’s already there. It may be uncomfortable or frightening, but it will be right and they will know it, but ultimately …

What they do is up to them.

Star Quality

Why do the brightest spirits lead the most desperately troubled lives? Is their light so bright that, by law of contrast, their darkness must be opaque? And why do they often perish before their time?

The list of luminaries is a long one, but the most enduring legend may be that of Marilyn Monroe. Even I am fascinated by her story, perhaps because it was so tragic, but more likely because I want to understand the paradox of a spirit so pure trying to survive in a world so impure that it broke her.

Imagine, burning so fiercely in life that your memory lives longer than you did. Not to suggest that she was pure in the “virgin-snow” way of being pure; to the contrary, I think she was far savvier and more practical than society at the time allowed her to be. So why did she choose a traumatic childhood and 1950s Hollywood?

Only she knows for sure. It doesn’t stop the speculation, the judgments or the opinions, but no one who embarks on a quest to discover the real Marilyn will unearth the diamond that was her true essence. She was most definitely a light being in a human experience. She had a purpose for being here, she chose her time for a reason, and we will never know what she took with her when she left.

The same can be said of so many others, a few who were global icons compared to the many bright stars who were special to none but their own. This life is a struggle. Even if you achieve your dream, it won’t be easy to get or maintain. But really, wasn’t Marilyn’s dream the same as Princess Diana’s or Michael Jackson’s, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s or JFK’s, my own dear niece’s or everyone else’s, for that matter? The dream of all dreams, the quietest to admit, the easiest to want, and the hardest to make real:

To be loved, to be valued, to be accepted as we are … and, for some, to die trying.

August 5 is the nth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death. Hers is the eternal mystery, a life celebrated in public, suffered in private, and ended abruptly. I think of her and wonder how she might have fared in my time? Not much better, I decide. Her tragedy is everyone’s tragedy, for we are all born stars. Some will shine, some will twinkle, some will burn out, and some will implode.

The things we do for love.

Chin Up

I sat at the beach this morning and wondered why I felt so down. I watched the waves roll in, one after the other, noting how they hit the shore in increments, how they vary in strength. I thought about how far they come before they reach the shore, if they begin in Japan and cross the whole Pacific Ocean to land at my feet, or if they’ve just tripped up from Washington state. Either way, it shows marked perseverance on nature’s part, just as a crow pecking at the pebbles for its breakfast exemplified a focus I’ve lately been lacking.

On my way to the beach, a cyclist passed me coming the other way; as we came abreast of each other, he called, “Good morning!” I answered automatically and don’t remember if I smiled. I appreciated the greeting, though. He didn’t have to say anything, but he kindly acknowledged my existence and in so doing, reminded me that the world—that life—is wonderful. So I consciously called to mind my favourite Louis Armstrong song and made myself loop it until all the words fell into place:

I see trees of green, red roses too,

I see them bloom for me and you

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world …

It was a start. Hard work to keep it going, but a start nonetheless. Sitting quietly in the glow of the morning sun, I set aside the song for a minute and pondered the weight of my spirit during the past few days.

It’s been heavier than usual, no doubt about it.

I see skies of blue, clouds of white,

Bright blessed day and dark sacred night

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world …

Gratitude, I thought. To which I crossly replied, I’m always grateful. Every day, I am grateful. I say it, think it, believe it.

Yeah, Ru, but are you grateful enough?

Oh, s***, I am so not going there. I am not buying into the brownie point system I was taught in church. Grateful is grateful; there is no pro-rating. If I’m wrong, then the Zen Buddhist/metaphysical spirit stuff I’ve been absorbing these past years is as much a lie as the Christian orthodox crap I abandoned when I set myself free.

The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky,

Smiles on the faces of people passing by …

It’s not a matter of how. It’s a matter of what. Agreed, you are grateful. Now, what are you grateful for? and be specific.

Coming up with a list was harder in my bleakened frame of mind, but once I started, it got easier. Then I realized that the past few weeks have been so distracting that I’ve let my practice slide. As summer months go, July sucked. I had more dental work done and spent a lot of time in pain or on painkillers. The suite downstairs came off the market and went up as a rental. People at work were going through their own stuff, which subliminally affected the whole team. The novel continued to frustrate me. By the end of the month, I had even lost interest in writing. That really depressed me.

I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do

And really saying,

I love you …

It’s okay, Ru. Yup, life sucked and you lost your focus. You can get it back. Your teeth are fine, you’re off the drugs. You’ve met the folk who will be your downstairs neighbours. Work is work, but that won’t change. The novel will come back online. And you’re inspired to more than write again. You’re simply inspired.

I hear babies cry, watch them grow

They know much more than I’ll ever know

And I think to myself …

I flâneried around the point on my way back home. There’s a monument on the green that’s been in place for years but I’ve never paid it any attention. Today, I was prompted to look at it. It’s called “Millenium Peace” and was a gift to the city from a couple who wanted to honour Earth Day in 2000. The plaque quite plainly states that the piece is—and this is what really leaped out at me—“a touchstone of gratitude”.

There’s that word again. It’s not a matter of being grateful enough. It’s about gratitude for specifics. For the little things as well as the big things. For sun and sea; for love and hope; for my family and friends; especially for Ter; for my little bears and my favourite teacup and an extra day off this weekend. It’s even about the pain I endured during prep and installation of my dental bridge, when I was able to find moments of joy within moments of not. I am grateful for it all.

As I reached the corner of the street where I live, I met another random stroller who acknowledged my existence with a friendly “Good morning.”

“Hello,” I said back—and this time, I smiled.

What a wonderful world.

Desktop

I ask you, how can I be stuck with the novel when my hero looks like this? He’s been on my desktop (I wish) for years; as with all things taken for granted, eventually I stopped “seeing” him. I considered replacing him last week, then I took a moment to look at him with intent.

I couldn’t do it. Aside from having nothing and no one worthy to replace him, I realized that I don’t want to replace him, probably because doing so would also be admitting defeat. He is the sun around which my novel orbits. Taking him down would be like going dark.

My computer desktops have rarely featured cute animals or pretty flowers. My pics of natural beauty generally pack an alpha Y-chromosome—even the androgynous shot of Jonathan Rhys Meyers was savagely alluring—and almost always provide me with the blueprint for a hero, a villain, a lover, a poet, or sometimes all four. I like to have inspiration close by, especially at the office, where it’s easy to forget how to be creative except when interpreting financial policy. Sometimes I’ll shut down the myriad of windows and take a sec to renew acquaintance with my man o’ the month just to remember what I do for fun … or would do, given half a chance. Or will do, once he’s woven into the fabric of whatever tale one has to tell. Some writers veer away from likening a character to a living person, but come on. Everybody looks like somebody else, and if a man like Joe Elliott can spark a fictional hero like my Lucius, how is that an insult?

By the way, it’s Joe’s birthday today. Happy birthday, Leppard King!