Gloria, who knows nothing yet of The Day the Books Got Bossy

Because of these

The Reading Man had no intention of ending up wearing these with a hockey jersey rather than his  more flattering, possibly retro flannels, challis shirt of a tiny and masculine subdued print and his deep-pocketed but fitting appropriately at the shoulders all-weather coat.

On days when it stormed, Mr. Apotienne (aka TRM) longed to occupy his bentwood chair (or occasionally the substituted pressback companion) until it might be late enough and dark enough that he could offer to walk Gloria home.   Though he had never played golf in his life, he saw the utility and appeal of a golf umbrella, room for two without overstepping, almost impervious to on-shore gusts.  He also knew himself well enough to understand that a day of walking skipped because of the weather was the thin edge of the wedge to sloth, and could mooning about and sighing be far behind?  He thought it trite to consider the stormy days bracing, yet they were just that.  So good for clearing a muddled head.  He hoped they worked some magic on his arteries as well.  Mr. Apotienne was by no definition a solely indoor and easy pursuits sort of fellow.  He was imaginative about fixing things and building simple, time-resistant furniture.  Beginning in childhood, life had revealed itself to him through the land, the seasons, the birds and beasts, what would grow and what would not and a gradually acquired ability to read the sky.

What prompted him to bring much of his Noel Coward collection as a portion of holiday reading he could not say.  As he ambled, or, more accurately,  shuffled, back bent, peering along his shelves before packing, the familiar spines seemed to, well, shimmer, standing apart from other titles in a way that made them alluring and right.  Once he had stacked the volumes on the floor, his commitment to them declared, no other books called attention to themselves in any way.  He was on his own for the rest of his choices.  Nor could he explain - and it is important to know that Mr. Apotienne was loathe to explain any of his behavior or thought process ever to anyone - why he pocketed the paperback with three plays including Blithe Spirit when he set out that first morning for a light repast.  He knew there must have been a sharp jab with an imaginary pointy stick that caused him to begin reading out loud while waiting for his first - oh, the heaven of it - plate of Gloria's breakfast pastries to be set before him.  He examined himself for bruises or punctures when he returned to his cottage and found none.  Which did not mean the jabbing hadn't happened.

Bukowski, partial answer to What is the meaning of life?

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

Charles Bukowski

Anxiety - Anais Nin/Debbie Millman

My response, after some brain leveling, to my own post of yesterday.  Ewwww.

Original art by Debbie Millman

Gloria laughs

“Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea?”
― Noël Coward

 When he heard Gloria laugh aloud at some bit of Cowardesque humor, The Reading Man did two, possibly two-and-a-half things.   If his feet were both on the floor, he tapped the right one, lightly.  If his legs were crossed, he tilted his foot as though to tap it.  He managed to smile though you could tell the full weight of that smile could only be seen from the inside, and he glanced up from the page after placing his right index finger on the last spoken word, and, if she wasn't turned in his direction, looked at Gloria, quick as a blink, then back to the page.

There is magic in making someone laugh, in knowing them so well you can anticipate what will amuse or surprise them.  There is magic in the spontaneity of laughter, the eruptive power that can't be held back, though Gloria had an aunt who once described a movie she as seen as being so funny, "...she could hardly keep from laughing."  It remained one of the family mysteries.  The Reading Man imagined, once he was back home, away from his temporary haunt among the pastry, of phoning Gloria.  She would answer, he would say, "Hi, it's me," and they would both laugh from pure, silly, held-my-breath-too-long, what-if-you-weren't-there, joy.

Each day when The Reading Man, Mr. Apotienne by name, took reluctant leave of the tea room, he walked the length of Billington's Cove, taking one direction on the paved seaside road, returning by the pebbly shore.  With the amount of baked goods he consumed - and as irresistible as they were, he thought his restraint admirable - he would need to buy new slacks at the place that outfitted the fishermen, that being the nearest supplier of masculine trousering.  Canvas pants so sturdy they could hold him up like leg braces did not meet his requirement for the wardrobe of a courting type.  So with actual pleasure he paced off the butter, sugar, flour, a great deal more butter, eggs and the like that, among other influences, made him light-headed each morning in order to maintain, even as Gloria did in her way, a certain standard.  He was beginning to wonder how much his old life would miss him if he never went home.  That evening, he promised, he would list reasons for and against letting himself be slowly absorbed by the sand and the lanes and the intoxicating air of what had to be a pocket of enchantment that he might not find again if he ever left.

Ash cloud from Krakatoa dims light of certainty

How to maintain equilibrium when one wakes up on a Wednesday, a sense of clarity and destination proclaiming itself like a heartbeat, then falls asleep to wake up on Thursday, beset by doubt, even dread, no identifiable landmarks, just the deep and uncertain sea.  Is consistency too much to hope for and is the inconsistency all mine - certainly possible, though I don't know myself to be so mercurial, especially about fundamentals, like getting through a day - or has it drifted over to mess with us, as the ash cloud from Krakatoa affected world climate from the 1883 eruption until 1888?

Solid footing, like sturdily-constructed yet affordable furniture which we don't have to put together seems not to exist.  I have no comfort zone when too much is unknown.  Perhaps tomorrow I will return to a degree of acceptance that we live in the questions but right now, it overwhelms, asks more of me than I think I possess.  I realize what I'm seeking is the willingness to buy into the illusion.  If such a thing as solid footing was ever a trustworthy constant, and that seems unlikely with life being as it is, it has become a much more fickle companion, the uncle/aunt who misses Christmas and your birthday for five years in a row, then sends a cargo container of exotic treasures from somewhere across the Pacific and puts a $50 bill in the greeting card.

Each of us is, I am not confused about this, our own greatest resource, booster, navigator and helpmeet.   Sometimes we run dry.  Usually reliable founts of support and inspiration fail to lift the spirit.  This will pass, I know, but how, without helpful pharmaceuticals and the covers over our heads do we get through without weeping and/or shrieking?  Half an hour in the interrogation room, amid those extremely cool and costly aluminum side chairs that every tv police drama has for its suspects,  half an hour with whoever is behind this and we'd have some answers.  They might not be the answers we want but they might be more welcome than this.

Today, my voice is not able to convince those assembled that everything is not only going to BE okay but that it is okay right now, regardless of how it feels.  Today, maybe just for this moment, it and I feel flimsy like those assembly required items whose parts don't quite touch in the essential, weight-bearing places.  It makes me queasy to mention this state, which is all the more reason to do so.  I don't imagine I'm the only one.  And everything may look different tomorrow.  Please.

Why notebooks are necessary - repost from 2010

Ironic, I thought, coming upon this vintage post as I just, once again, reminded myself about never being without a notebook and writing instrument.  I grabbed one - a miniature composition notebook - and went about my business.  I could easily have obsessed about the ideal mechanical pencil that I do not have.  Today, I kept it simple and relatively sane.  A pen that works.  Sufficient.  And a middle of the night thought about return address labels.

And apropos of nothing other than having seen it in my computer-side Book of All Things, "Despair is a useless way of connecting with the world.  Slow down and love what there is."  The words of William Kittredge from WHO OWNS THE WEST.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Noted

An act of imagination is an act of self-acceptance.

Today's sketched-out posting was going to begin with my wondering why I stopped keeping a writing notebook and when that creative shoelaces-tied-together prank took place. It did happen, why and when are irrelevant. Since I may take whatever meaning I choose from Richard Hugo's quoted statement, found in THE TRIGGERING TOWN,
my interpretation tells me that my fugue state has come to an end, I will resume keeping a notebook and I may reward my imagination-sustaining act with self acceptance.

By declining the chance to punish myself for being un-writerly, for making my job that much harder by not saving quotes or noting observations or ideas as they appear, I am not quite so stuck and may continue in the direction of my destiny. (Sidebar: the name under a tv interviewee this morning was "Monnreal," which my son first read as "monorail." He said, "That's a funny last name. Must be the heir to the monorail fortune." To which I responded, "Write that down. You have a story right there...heir to the monorail fortune...heh heh heh....")

Writers who blog, and who are serious and good, help me remember this is not hocus-pocus and luck. I can give myself real-world help by making notes, keeping track of what comes from dreams or overheard conversations or the mis-read names of missing hikers. As I read, I can keep track of writing that makes me aim higher. Before the world was espressso bars and laptops, I loved to write in my notebook wherever I was. Airplane, restaurant, hospital waiting room, riding in a car. I kept track of things I'd seen by writing them down, not trusting them to memory. And memory was better then.

I have a bad habit of making notes on the backs - or fronts - of envelopes, then shuffling them around depending on what they contain. This is not reliable for information retrieval. There is a notebook, and a pen that works, near each house phone, but it is not always what I reach for first. Tendencies to overcome.

The amount of research, memory, information and, as a friend said today, magic, that goes into writing a story is daunting, if you mistakenly thought it would be easy. I forget. Each week I do a certain amount of writing that comes from my head, maybe supported by checking a fact or two. I grow impatient with what feels like too much research; I want to get to work. But as with the red plaid pajamas, there are no shortcuts to doing it well. Unless one is blessed with total recall and encyclopedic knowledge, and I am not.

My second reading of THE TRIGGERING TOWN will begin my new notebook. I also have Post-Its and a pencil for marking passages. I dawdle along, believing that I take myself seriously, until I look at what the serious writers are doing that I am not. Whether it exemplifies a desirable work ethic or is one ingredient of the magic, I return to something I know to be useful. Finding the right notebook, the right pen, I call that fun.

While Hugo's book emphasizes poetry, it is directed to all writers. He said, "What a silly thing we do. We sweat through poem after poem to realize what dumb animals know by instince and reveal in their behavior: my life is all I've got. We are well off to know it ourselves, even if our method of learning it is painfully convoluted."

When you write you are momentarily telling the world and yourself that neither of you need any reason to be but the one you had all along.

Posted by Marylinn Kelly at 4:34 PM

John Lennon sing-along

Because he is so beautiful and because we can not possible do any of this - the endlessly, enormous all of this - alone.  Next best thing to being able to stand side-by-side and hold hands.  I'm off to fire up my love beam.  I know it will reach you.  Be safe and well.  xoxo