Within My Means

I quit writing last weekend. Mentally, I quit a week before then, but only last Sunday did I admit to myself that I had no interest in booting the computer. The new story I’d been so fired up about felt stale and stupid, Cristal’s angel story was too hard to sort out, and something’s gone wrong with the novel again. And blog posts? I had a head full of nothing. No inspiration, no inkling, no nuttin. I can’t even call it a block. It was a vacuum; a black hole where my passion used to be. It was—and is—the worst feeling a writer can ever have.

From desperation, I managed to eke out a card tag for Nicole and even that, I fear, ended up a bit whiny(er) compared to my usual “literary snapshot”. At least the card itself was amusing—it featured a quote from dear Oscar Wilde declaring that anyone who lives within their means is suffering from a serious lack of imagination. While writing the tag, it occurred to me that, though Oscar likely meant it literally, the quote applied to my present mental condition.

I have lately been living within my mental means and by so doing, I have suffered from a serious lack of imagination.

My job, and Ter’s, for that matter, sucks up a humungous amount of energy from January 1 to March 31. From the time I return to work from Christmas holidays to sometime around Easter, I lose my personality, my sense of humour, and my ability to create. I am so distracted, so consumed, by day to day reality that everything associated with writing—imagination, passion, joy and desire—deserts me. This past quarter has been particularly rough, and though I generally write to escape, this time around I couldn’t raise the will to think about it, let alone do it. When my mind is in control, it strangles my imagination. Life is colourless, tasteless, flat, and pointless. I go through the motions, trusting that something will change, that this too shall pass, and that I will regain my passion for wordplay.

I can’t name the moment when inspiration stirred once more. It might have been during the first episode of The White Queen—watching a woman step into a world that doesn’t want her suggested a fix for my dilemma with the novel. Then a few things happened to inspire blog posts. The pressure let up at work. The energy calmed down at home. I’m emerging from the fog of fiscal year end, fiscal year start, and too much sugar over Easter. Part of me wants to jump up and down and scream about it, but most of me is so relieved that I just want to lie in the sun and let the images form behind my eyes. I feel like my systems are coming back on line, my fluid levels are rising, and shape and colour are seeping back into a barren landscape.

I am ready once more to live beyond my means.

Paper Chase

Nicole and I play card tag. One of us writes a greeting card and sends it to the other, who promptly (most of the time) replies with another card. It’s one of my greatest pleasures to spend a lunch break sipping ridiculously expensive tea and composing a literary snapshot to my propinquitous (?) poet. Equally joyful is finding an envelope bearing my address in her flashy handwriting when I get home from work. Neither of us has any trouble finding blank cards with cool motifs, but in the event when a “real” letter is warranted, I, at least, am pretty well hooped.

I spent two days last week on the hunt for writing paper. Nothing special; just a pad of six-by-nine in a pretty colour with matching envelopes. I hit office supply stores, art supply shops, paper shops (yes, paper shops), and the downtown Hallmark store, and the closest thing I could find to what I wanted was a heavier-weight 8.5 by 11 in soft gold that was probably meant for laser printing or scrapbooking or drywalling because, short of special-ordering personalized stationery from a highfalutin print shop, ordinary paper for the purpose of handwritten correspondence is extinct in Victoria. An online search rendered similarly dismal results. Nobody stocks quality writing paper anymore. What is a correspondence artist to do?

Well, this one settled for the gold leaf. It turned out to be appropriate, given that I was writing a rave review for Nic’s latest short story—a riveting epic rivaling any of mine for number of pages. The author deserved a “real” letter, written in my illegible scrawl as evidence of my enthusiastic response to her effort. Ink from a pen is more personal and heartfelt than ink blurped from a printer cartridge, even if the font on the latter is easier on the eyes than my cramped and crooked handwriting. The organic nature of putting pen to paper makes it a more meaningful act; love and praise and admiration flow from my heart to my hand through my pen and thus into the very fibres of the paper itself. I become part of the correspondence so when Nic receives it, she can feel my energy as it was when I expressed it. The same applies when I hear from her—before my brain even interprets them, I can tell whether she was bubbly as champagne or flat as old ginger ale by the slant and size of her handwritten characters. Knowing that she handled the paper before sending it on its way brings her a little bit closer, too. Though she is undeniably Nicole when presented in Arial font, I just don’t get the same warmth from an email.

Whining aside, I did find a pad of strawberry-ice-cream-pink notepaper that would have suited perfectly, had strawberry-ice-cream-pink envelopes been available. They weren’t, so I perused the loose paper section in hope of a match among the errant envelopes. Colour, yes; size, no. &$%#.

I bought the paper anyway. It might be worth something someday.

Aqua Aura

This is how conversations go in our house: 

Ter:     Where do you want to go on our drive tomorrow?

Me:     I thought we were going to hit the farm stands on Old West Saanich.

Ter:     You still want to do that?

Me:     I know you’re out there every day, but it’ll be a novelty for me.

Ter:     Okay. Which ones do you want to see?

Me:     I dunno. Whichever. I thought we could just drive out, have lunch and take a few unexpected turns on the way back.

Ter:     Okay, we’ll do that. 

Next morning: 

Me:     I’ve been thinking about our day trip. Let’s go to Sidney, look at the shops, have lunch, and hit the stands on the way back.

Ter:     That’s what I thought last night! Go to Sidney.

Me:     Why didn’t you say so?

Ter (shrugging):      You seemed to have your mind set.

Me:     Well, now that we’re agreed, let’s do Sidney. 

To the uninitiated, this probably seems fairly predictable – one so concerned with pleasing the other that she doesn’t speak her mind freely until the other expresses the same thought. That happens a lot with Ter and me. One of us inevitably has the same thought as the other within everything from a few hours to a nanosecond. An almost daily comment is, “I was just thinking that!” But my birthday trip to Sidney last week had a purpose unbeknown to either of us at the time we decided to make the town our destination. 

There used to be a great card shop out there. I play card tag with Nicole, so any time I can hit a good card shop is a bonus, ergo I got all excited at the prospect of picking up some dandies in Sidney. Alas, the only thing constant is change. The card shop no longer exists. It’s been split into three shops, one for kids’ clothes, one for ladies’ wear, and one called “Pitt and Hobbs” that appeared from the sidewalk to house cards of some sort. So in we went. 

I did get some neat-o cards for tag, but I also spied … in truth it spied me and sparkled up a storm to get my attention … a piece of aqua-coloured quartz that shimmered like iridescent gold in the light. It sat among less glorious minerals in a curio cabinet and I immediately thought, Ter has to see this. If she liked it, I’d buy it. Well, she liked it, we bought it, and now it’s sitting on a table in the Ocean Room, radiating beams and shooting stars from every angle. It’s beautiful, gorgeous, and apparently we were meant to have it else we wouldn’t each have been prompted to go to Sidney—a town where we shared our first apartment, but where we visit maybe once every two years. 

A shiny piece of stone may seem a trivial thing. I have no idea of its greater purpose, but the way it came to us is significant to me. A lot of my life with Ter—and with others—has been lived by mutual consent. What fascinates me is how we arrive at that consent. More often than not, it’s with silent prompting on either side. We’ll each have a thought yet not speak of it until the other one blurts it out some time later. We communicate like ordinary people every day, but on a deeper level, we’re this close to telepathic with a brief satellite delay. In truth, I’m less mystified by it these days, but when Ter looked up “aqua aura” online, she discovered that our new treasure’s primary property is to open and strengthen lines of communication. 

I can feel that satellite delay getting shorter. I wonder when we’ll start getting radio signals from Mars.