Day Four

The air is thick. Burnt honey, this sunshine. I have an irrational fear that should I walk outside it would stick to my skin and sear through my flesh. It appears July is arriving in flames, her tresses scorched, her touch an inferno. I suppose I should be grateful as this will assure I stay indoors, all thoughts of yardwork and chores charred away.

This evening my husband and I went to an ax-throwing birthday party. Yes, you read that right. It was awesome. A wildly creative and talented group of people got together and learned how to throw axes at a target. There were scores and a bracket and a tournament winner...axes! Just when you think you have a general idea about the boundaries - the edges that define daily reality with its 'that's to be expected' footnotes - and then someone invites you to a warehouse in Millvale to masquerade as a lumberjack for a night. (of course, I could not actually participate as my person is compromised, but we will go back. Indeed!)

I collect characters in my mind. Even just the tiniest habit or personality quirk I stash away in a vault to be incorporated into someone's neighbor/aunt/professor/murderer. I sometimes wonder if I'm ever collected...my own oddness, ticks...then again, I spent three hours with a hundred people flinging sharp objects for fun - what is normal?

My goodness, isn't life grand?

Day Three

The heat is rolling in. I can almost see the humidity building in the summer air, molecule by molecule. By Sunday we will be at 94* and the world will melt. Thank God for ice and gin.

I've started working on a novel I began two years ago based in Folly Beach, South Carolina. It's October and there's a weathered diner overlooking the ocean with a juke box that plays jazz. There are storms and the sudden appearance of strangers and human nature and sorrow. Joy piled on top of grief alongside wild hope and unforeseen possibility. I find it a bizarre thing sometimes, to write characters, infuse them with life - this corporeality that to be believable must contain tragedy as well as beauty. Frustration and euphoria in equal measure - this is life. It is a vulnerable thing to channel what I've felt, what I've dreamt, what I've mourned into words and place them within a being on a page and let go. A bit like  children; you invest and plant seeds and guide...

But luckily, if they go too astray, in a novel...I can just kill them.

Day Two

Last night ended later than anticipated - but such a good night. This book club was hosted by a woman who made several recipes from my book; had a centerpiece composed of spray paint, whisky & Splenda, and paintbrushes; and had placed quotes from the book throughout the house. She was so lovely and her group of friends wonderfully gracious and welcoming. There was one particular moment, however, when my heart leapt into my throat. It was during a conversation when one of the women said that when she was reading my words, she felt her own emotions and feelings validated. There was a pause and another woman said, "I actually feel like many of my feelings and emotions didn't have words - I didn't have the words to express them...you gave me the words I needed."

There have been many times I have questioned why I write. Why I have this well of passion - both light and dark - that lives vehemently within me and spills over no matter how hard I try to impede the tide. I lay awake long into the early hours of this morning, replaying those words over and over in my mind. Have you ever had that flash of realization, recognition, as if your soul suddenly took a breath and relaxed, whispering, "This is why...."

Day One

Did I mention I have to sleep in this thing?? Sleep and I are not pals. We're like that quasi-hostile co-worker that you exchange a nod across the hallway with when you happen to see them every other Tuesday - unsure of their motives or why you never seem to get along. Sleep just doesn't like me.

So let's add something else to wrestle with at night. Marvelous.

I lay awake for several hours before dawn, eventually deciding coffee was a better option than the mental swimming I was doing. I nearly put an eye out attempting to brush my teeth. There are a vast number of things I've discovered that I am just horrible at left-handed. It's been less than 24 hours and I've sprayed hairspray in my eye and directly inside my ear. I've spilled half a dozen things in the kitchen, scared that crap out of Sawyer when I tried to vacuum left-handed and knocked the entire machine down a flight of stairs. (he arrived breathlessly from the basement convinced I'd fallen to my death) I basically massacred a hard boiled egg attempting to peel it and wore most of my lunch, requiring a full change of clothes before 1pm. It's going to be an interesting three weeks...

I'd realized last night that I had a book club/book signing to do tonight. Like a moth of an idea, it would flit panicked into my brain and then I'd brush it away, attempting to ignore it. The thought of driving in the rain, after dark, in an unfamiliar neighborhood, with one left arm was more than a little unnerving. 9am and a message from a friend volunteering to drive me - and they say angels don't live on earth. Extremely relieved and a little teary, I went upstairs to attempt to do something with my hair.

Left handed usage of hot hair apparatus = burn cream.

On to writing. I pulled out what amounted to 6 separate legal pads full of scribbled ideas for stories or books I've been jotting down ideas for years now. The first person dream when I slowly realized I'd had things harvested from my body to pay my debts. The red willow tree on the plantation linked to a bloody past and things erode when the arborist up north inherits the land. The laundromat where lives overlap and intersect amidst soap and human nature. I will spend a few days sorting and expanding plots until hopefully one grabs me....one will grab me, right?

I'm asked regularly if I'm going to write another book. I find myself wanting to say yes, but the demons of doubt pull at my hair. They slither beneath my thoughts to question the merit of such an endeavor. It's not like I can pull off another like the first - that was a memoir collected over a decade of living. (timeline wise, perhaps I could write another when I'm sixty?) I know we all have our monsters of skepticism. Life is full of people that value money over dreams and experience over possibility. I've been given 21 days to be quiet. Can quiet overcome monsters?

Challenge Accepted....Reluctantly

I've had pain in my wrist for over six months. Sometimes just an ache that lingered long into the night, sometimes a knife that sliced through the day and left me gasping. I had a show to paint for, it was spring and there was planting, activities and the boys and...how many reasons could I come up with to avoid a doctor?  

X-rays revealed that I have a "positive ulnar variance" which means that my ulna (the thinner bone on the pinkie side of your wrist) is unfortunately longer than my radius. This abnormality leaves a tiny gap where there is supposed to be a cushion and things have gone awry. With an ultrasound guide, they slipped a needle into that tiny gap, filled it with magic goo, and then wrapped my arm in hot plastic to mold me a prison. 

I fought tears the entire way home, driving with my left hand, furious and grateful - a remarkable combination of emotions to cram into one skull at the same time. It's only three weeks, however, I am quite honestly almost incapable of the art of rest. Immobility is impossible. I hardly ever watch tv and crank out my days full of yardwork and boys and cooking and painting....and now I cannot chop an onion or lift a paintbrush. 

I've lain awake long into the night, alone as Jase is in New York for the week, and considered my options. (I had quite the sulk the entire afternoon, I assure you) And I've decided that while typing is challenging and I have to hold my hand weird and half of my time is spent correcting typos that even spellcheck doesn't know what the hell are...but this I can do. 

I will write. I will not go crazy. I will write.