The Sum of Our Parts

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one).

All for one and one for all.

It’s not the name on the back of the jersey that matters, it’s the crest on the front.

Call me a socialist and you likely won’t be wrong. I am all for sharing the wealth in support of the whole. Everyone has resources. Everyone has a talent. Everyone can—and should—contribute. I’d not presume to dictate comfort zones, but the best thing about humanity is the way we rally to support a person, a family, a community, or a country in need.

There is something to the attitude of putting the good of the group ahead of stardom for one. Take the International Ice Hockey Federation’s 2019 World Cup Junior Champion Team Finland, for instance. Consistently outmanned, outgunned and short-handed in the final against team USA, they stuck together and ground it out to win the gold medal. There were no superstars and no obvious egos in their game. They were just a bunch of young guys doing their best to help each other.

And win a trophy, of course.

Hm. Competitive sports might not be the best example—though sport is supposed to teach kids the value of teamwork. Too often I see pro players either trying to draw a penalty or whining when they get caught themselves. Participant ribbons for all was maybe not a good idea.

I laughed out loud at a commentator remarking on Canuck wonder-rookie Elias Petterson’s understated celebration when he scores a goal. The kid is Swedish. Modesty becomes them. In fact, it’s taught to children in many cultures around the globe. The “modesty lie” is encouraged in some countries—commit a random act of kindness, but don’t take credit for it. I agree with that in part; when asked point blank if I put cookies on the office snack station, I confess because I’m busted. There’s no point in lying when I’ve been naughty, either. (And some would suggest that’s the case when I put cookies on the office snack station.)

But in this magical world of contrast and the human experience, superstars are inevitable. Everyone wants to be special, even in societies where they’re taught to be ordinary—or at least not to be extraordinary. That’s hard for an ego to endure. I get that. I also know that everyone is born special. The best thing anyone can do is be themselves. That’s why we’re all here. Be yourself and be the best at it. As Martin Luther King once said, even if you’re a shrub, be the best darned shrub you can be.

The whole garden will look better.

With love,

Lemons

When someone’s life goes sour, I’m the first one to spout a platitude. When it’s my life, I’m the first one to want to clock the first one to spout a platitude.

Like this oldie but goodie: “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”

If all had gone to plan, this weekend my wee sister and I would have been halfway through visiting our older older brother on Prince Edward Island, and today I’d have been on an in-person artist date with Nicole. Alas, life had another plan that, by ripple effect, changed the original plan, plus a couple of others.

I spent the summer mourning my “sister trip” as well as my mother, and even though the flights were fully refunded, having to do it still hurt. It also gave me a different song to sing when I tired of lamenting Mum. There were a few tracks on the “2018 Summer Sucks” EP, and I played that baby thin. I may even have incurred an eyeroll or two by writing this post, but stick with me – it gets brighter at the end.

It may be human to cry for what might have been, but it’s also terribly unproductive. “What might have been” is as unreal as what once was; all we truly have is Right Now. And while in the Now, even what seems real is merely transient. Sadness is as fleeting as happiness if you choose to make it so. Denying what we feel in a given moment doesn’t make it go away – in fact, it’s more likely to come out sideways when we’re not looking – so by all means, take that moment and relish it. We’re here to experience contrast; however, it’s equally important to remember that we can change how we feel, good or bad, according to how we want to feel.

I didn’t know it before, but I know it now: I don’t like grief. While it’s necessary to the human condition, it’s no fun at all and eventually I got tired of it. I slowly started thinking about other things. Happier things. Creative things. I love and miss Mum no less, yet now that I’m facing the sun again, she’s even more present in my awareness. (How can she be gone and still be present? Only the Universe knows for sure!)

You rarely nail the recipe on the first go; you gotta keep tasting the lemons to get the sweetness right – and while some folks just plain like their lemonade on the sour side, others have no idea that adding the sugar is up to them. Henry David Thoreau said, and I’m paraphrasing as usual, it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

I hated that wee sis and I had to postpone our trip. I hated the reason more, of course, but we certainly haven’t cancelled it. We’ve simply changed the dates.

So Thoreau was right. It’s about perspective. And when you get right down to it, you can’t make lemonade without those darned lemons.

The Lighthouse

“It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next person or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment—the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims toward it, it backs away.” – Louise Glück

***

This is why I cannot be married: I am always more in love with my next project than I am with the one to which I am committed. I may have longed to write what I’m writing now, and while I love it love it love it (mostly), the romance fades pretty quickly once the work begins.

Nothing beats the airbrushed imagining of a story in the mist. An incandescent dream takes shape on the horizon: distant voices whisper of intrigue, shadowy figures become new characters—lovers, rivals, blood brothers and blood relatives. I get glimpses of a time or a place: a cobbled street, a four-poster bed, a fragrant forest redolent of sap in a sharp wintry frost. Every glimmer is enticing because it lacks context. Who is it? What is it? Where, when, why? Sometimes an errant detail will derail me, like a sunbeam blazing in the rearview mirror. I make notes in desperate moments, and return to the work at hand.

Eventually, I complete my ponderous project, the very same project that I longed to begin while in the throes of birthing its predecessor. I spend a few days recovering in the trough between the waves. It feels so good to finish.

It feels better to start something new.

I start toward the lighthouse, drawn by the beacon and full of good intention. Halfway there, I am struggling. It seems no closer despite my best effort.

I look behind … and there is the lighthouse that came before it. I was so relieved to be done with that story that I forgot how passionately I had wanted to write it. Now that it’s over—and almost exactly the same distance away as the one ahead of me—it looks different. Perhaps it did not end up the way I had anticipated in the initial dreaming, but it exists for all to see where it once resided only in my imagination. It’s a different colour and a different design, but it still bears the mark of its creator:

Me.

I go forward.

Auto Biography VII

"Judging a Character by His Wheels"

humble pie 2000

A horrifying development in my current short story. One of the sexiest characters I have ever written is driving a plastic Mustang. How can that be? Where did I go wrong? No one is perfect, but a plastic Mustang??? Kill me now.

I was barreling happily along, watching the story unfold as I typed. Feeling pretty good about it, too, as I attempt to apply some advice that Nicole posted over at The Paper Teapot a couple of weeks ago: “Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.—John Steinbeck.” She followed up with a bunch of his quotes which I will address anon, given that I loved every one of them, but at this point I was merely forging ahead with no end in sight.

I get through the first scene: the morning after with Cristal and her mystery lover. Then the second scene, still that morning. Then the third, where they must part and she realizes that he drove her home in her car the previous night. It made sense to me, so I went with it. Then the fourth and fifth scenes poured out and in the sixth scene, she spies him in the rearview mirror driving a … something. I couldn’t see what it was. I know it’s not the black Jeep; that belongs in another story. I was getting hung up on the details, though, and that directly countered Steinbeck’s advice, so I typed in “(his car)” and kept going.

Then I walked into the village, paying particular attention to the vehicles around me in hope that one would strike a chord. And, much to my chagrin, one did.

Since I am such a car fiend, I try to populate my stories with vehicles I myself would like to drive. I am also a Mustang snob. My wee sister, who drives a 2006, is constantly subjected to my scorn on the purity of the breed and how Ford totally missed when they tried to recreate the classic body style using modern technology—kind of like George Lucas continually reworking (and re-releasing) Star Wars because CDI is so much better now than what he had to work with in the 1970s. Because you can doesn’t always mean you should. (Good advice, Ru; maybe you should take it when you think of revamping some of your old writing!) So imagine my surprise when a shiny black convertible cruised along my sightline and it was no stretch to picture Cristal’s lover behind the wheel. Then I recognized the make and model, and my hair buzzed out like I’d been Tasered. Augh! A black plastic Mustang! Oh, noooooooo! Say it isn’t so! What does that say about the character? He’s supposed to be a hero, a real Joe Cool, a worthy recipient of my protagonist’s heart. Well, I’ll tell you … in truth I fear he’s a bit of a bad boy and Cristal might be in for some trouble with him, in which case the fake Pony is probably a righteous choice for him.

I want to warn Cristal that he may be bad news, but I’m just the scribe. She is trying to convince herself that she should feel something for him, given how intimate she has already been with him, so I have no idea how this is going to end. Well, I hope. I’ll have to keep writing and see …

My Same

the birthday girl before I knew her

“We are drawn together and pulled apart in all the right ways to make it last.”

– Timothy Findlay

Ter found this quote and immediately saw how it applied to our relationship. We have been friends for thirty years. We have been sisters from the dawn of time. In fact, she falls perfectly into the birth order between my older sister and me. Had she been born to my parents … well, she wouldn’t have been who she is and I probably wouldn’t have appreciated her as much.

I don’t always appreciate her now – at least, not outwardly. She tops my daily gratitude list and when she drives away after dropping me at work, my whole life goes with her. I could live on my own. I just don’t want to.

When we first met, I was in awe. She was cool, composed and seemed to have it all together in ways that I couldn’t begin to emulate. She was blonde and beautiful (still is, in fact), articulate and surely closer to perfection than I would ever get. See, we were more religious in those days, so the aim to perfection was our primary purpose. Sister K seemed to have it all going on. I was asking too many questions … and disliking most of the answers.

Anyway, she needed a ride to a church function one night, so I agreed to pick her up at her parents’ apartment. She got into the car, we started talking … and we’ve been talking ever since. She’s my hero, one of the bravest souls I know despite what she calls her “Piglety moments” when she is a small and timid animal relying on my Tigger tendencies to get her through them. Most of the time, she is smart, strong-willed, organized, intelligent, fearless, and so in control of the world that I’m happy to ride alongside and enjoy the scenery. At other times, she is deeply spiritual, openly connected to the universe, dreamy, creative, spontaneous, funny, and always my better half. I’m dark, she’s light. I’m cynical, she’s hopeful. I’m optimistic, she’s pessimistic—that sounds backward but really isn’t. We have spent three decades learning to balance each other. We have enough differences to pull us apart and enough similarities to draw us together, as Timothy Findlay says, to make it last.

Adele Akins wrote a song about her best friend, entitled “My Same.” Polar opposites, yet perfectly matched to make a healthy whole. I love the song. It could be about Ter and me.

Today is her birthday. Today is my Thanksgiving.

Here’s to another thirty years together, buddee. I love you.

Live From the Ocean Room ...

… it’s Friday morning! And a gorgeous one it is, too, given that I spent most of Wednesday night and yesterday laid flat with the worst migraine I’ve endured since May the 8^th. There is nothing like 24 hours of pounding, nauseous darkness to make you grateful for a new day. Ironically, the headache struck just as “Glutenous Maximus” went up and the day after I’d been happily telling the gang at work how they’ve pretty well ceased since I went gluten-free. Less is truly more, however; rare as they’ve become, the severity has been shocking in its intensity. Ter had to type my email to the office yesterday because I couldn’t even sit up without wanting to barf – I lay curled on the sofa with my eyes closed while she wrote on my behalf. She’s the best friend in the world.

But enough of that. The headache is pretty much gone, I’m on a legitimate day off and I have plans to write. I intended to tackle the angels once more because I’ve been struggling with them; the story is coming so slowly that I have fallen into the trap of second-guessing every scene and have therefore rewritten the most recent one at least three times. I don’t know what the problem is. Could be that it’s a new world and I have no idea what I’m doing with it, but I suspect it’s more (or less) than that. I’ve simply been unable to immerse myself in the story. Starting something new takes real commitment and I’ve just not been there. I watched a cool documentary about Agatha Christie a few weeks back. She`s a great source for writerly quotes and this one stayed with me:

“All a writer needs is chair, a table, a typewriter and some peace.”

Without complaining, the peace part is missing. I live in a world full of distractions that prove particularly tempting when I’m embarking on a brand new project. So, when contemplating what I would attack today, Ter suggested that I let go of the struggle and write whatever the heck I want. I thought I wanted to write the angels, but what I really want is a cup of Persian apple tea and that was my first hint. The hopeless knot in the novel has managed to unravel itself and the story has regained traction, so back to Castasia go I. And today I’m happy to be there.

And here.

Finis?

Done!

At last, Jake’s story is finished – with a teaspoon of Whiskey White to spare! I polished him up last Friday and am ready to set him aside in favour of whatever comes next. However …

A fellow named Julian Green said, “I write my books because I want to know what is in them.” I like that quote so much that it runs as my screen saver, as a reminder that I write for myself first and anyone else second. This is particularly true because few others actually read what I write, but I think Mr. Green’s point was as much about surprising the author as surprising the audience. Letting the characters tell the story can be eye-opening for me, too. Case in point: “Between the Storms.”

I had the opening, as inspired by Alex Colville’s painting. I knew one or two things about Jake when I started, and suspected that I knew something about the girl he pulled from the sea. What I didn’t expect was the solution to another creative conundrum I’d been pondering offstage.

A million years ago, I wrote 4 (okay, 4.5) volumes of an untitled series about mortals in the employ of a group of urban vampires. I had mapped the storyline to a climax, but the actual ending eluded me. It was still a good story. I revisit it now and then, fully intent on revising, reworking, updating and finishing it one day. I’m just unsure how to make it current without rewriting whole darned thing (one of the issues with present day fiction is that outdated references can create hiccups in the reader’s flow). Now, thanks to Jake, I may have my answer and my ending. It’ll be a lot of work, but it will be fun (and a lot of work). It will take time (and be a lot of work), but I want to do it (though it will be a lot of work) because it deserves to be finished and maybe, just maybe, it will be the thing that makes me famous.