Shame

Today I prepare myself to sit down and lose myself in Steve's meandering thoughts on writing.  Instead, I find him still pursuing his childhood, and therefore, stirring up my own memories.

I stayed with him through the movies and their inspiration, thinking I can address this later, I just want to read right now.

Then came the shame--his and mine following close behind.  I had to get a pen.

Stephen King's shame surfaced at the hands of Miss Hisler's unrhetorical question, "Why would (you) write junk like this in the first place.  You’re talented.  Why do you want to waste your abilities?" (49). 

He points out that he was 40 before, "he realized that almost every writer of fiction and  poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God given talent."  He continues, "If you write someone will try to make you feel lousy about it..." (50).

My shame came at the hands of the one who encouraged me the most, my dad.  I remember a conference that included belittling of my 'rapturesque' poetry-complete with someone rising into the sky (My mother played a lot of Jimmy Swaggert and Tennessee Ernie Ford) and not much positive to say about my second focus, issues of the heart (the most recent was John, the boy next door.)

I suppose that is when the ambivalence towards writing came in.  I was twelve.  What I had once embraced as mine, a place where I wondered on paper rather than through imaginary gateways into other realms, was seen and found wanting.  I kept those gateways open in my head.  No one could make judgments on what stayed inside, but on paper it never measured up to my potential--just ask my dad.

It was about this time though, my body broadened its physical limits.  Once content to play in the yard, I now found the potential of my feet and bike.  On the outskirts of Springfield, Oregon I would jump on my bike and ride closer and closer into the heart or walk down Deadman's Ferry road and lose my self in the quiet solitude of the Mackenzie River.  Out there no limits exited.  That world atlas I had pondered over for years began to take shape in my physical world, if only in watching rivers and roads make way into the distance and my mind traveling on with them.

Snapshots

I thought Stephen King might lead me along some passageway that would strengthen my desire to write.  And yet I find my mind flooding with childhood memories as he meanders through his....

1) Playing in the creek behind our house with my brother, five years wiser, who is intent on a game that takes two people see sawing on a inner tube.  Each time, yes, more than once, he times his exit just right--when I rise in the air he slips off and leaves me to flip off the tube sputtering and bawling to dad.  I believe this is the first memory of a chance to say no not taken.  Wasn't dad, even at my tender age of three, from his vantage point encouraging me to just say no and stop? 

2) I lay in bed at night waiting for the trains whistle to vanish in the distance.  This signaled that my friends, led by a tiger that, mysteriously, resembles Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh, could gallop up the hill into my room.

These imaginings continue throughout my childhood.  Morphing through the years, but always including a different, hidden world that only I was privy to--an insignificant sink hole at the edge of the creed leads to an underground cavern containing an entire mansion and adventures.  This same creek had an above ground mansion further downstream. I often walked alone there in my daydreams. The owner's butler would meet me and the kind owner would provide me with a menu of my desires: paints, horses, lessons, strawberries, my own room.  All the desires of my ten-year-old heart.  (It is funny, now with my teaching certification, possibility of employment, and children nearing the time of departure, and therefore "independence" for me, I become the mysterious man who continued to arrive in my daydreams into high school.  And maybe, unrealistically, it is what my subconscious continued to look for until this above realization...I can be the prince of my dreams.)

A little later in life, I simply had a secret world at the foot of my bed under the covers.  I merely waited for the matron of the girl’s school or orphanage, although my parents were alive and well and present just down the hall, for me to crawl to the spot where my imagination slipped away into another world of adventure.  (Adventure being another imagined theme in my life.)

3) There was the playing outside in the woods and on old cars looking out over the Summer Lake vista...one I understand the water is returning to.

4) Watching the Monkies on TV and becoming positively out of control as I mimicked the physical comedy of bouncing off the couch and tumbling on the floor, spinning around and bumping off each other--until we collapsed or are mother yelled for some civility or to take it outside.

5) This followed closely by the manic craziness of Get Smart, which I would run from the bus to watch.  PBS had nothing on afterschool TV in the early 70's if my memory serves...

6) I started writing early on also.  I wrote silly stories.  One of which was about a hamburger.  My teacher, Mr. Cushman, encouraged me to continue writing and I did, to a point. It is odd to think this banjo playing, thick mustached, hippy is now living somewhere at sixty-eight or seventy-five.  Bless him wherever he is.  He only encourage me, reigning me in only in consideration to allow other people to shine (as I did have a tendency of hogging the stage once I had it.)

7) I, too, had my tonsils out.  At seven.  I was the only child on the floor and used it to its fullest extent--visiting nurses at their station in the middle of the night, demanding crayons and eating my fill of ice cream.  My only grievance was the nurse that came in a shot me in the butt as I talked to my brother on the phone.  I didn't let off screaming at the top of my lungs until I felt both my brother and the nurse knew exactly how I felt.

8) I shared my childhood illnesses with my older brother.  We timed it well enough to spend several days together in our bunk bed making twisted landscaped of sudden ending roads and deep caves for his Mattel cars out of our bed blankets, playing an endless amount of card games and eating popsicles.

9) Steve's mother's matter of fact horrific story of the man falling to his death reminds me of my father's explanation of the grate in the fireplace of our home.  He did not tell it in a nonchalant manner.  His story included flames, Beelzebub and the depths of hell just through the grate where we sent the ashes back as a gift for his allowing us the use of fire and to keep him at bay.  (The details of this story may have suffered from poetic license over the years.  Suffice it to say he scared the hell out of me and at seven I vowed to be obedient in every way.)

It is interesting to revisit your childhood.  As I read Steve’s line that he is, "when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group.  The final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit," (On Writing, 34).  I realize, although I am not a novelist, I am one of those lucky "last few" who grew up outside on a bike, climbing trees, and, as my sister says, "with a book permanently attached to my hand." 

I look forward to visiting it more as I wonder about.

Open Sesame...

After my divorce I moved another thousand miles further away from my father and brother.  Looking back over those years I say it is because I needed to hear my own voice in my head.  At the time though, I believe it was just because I wanted to go east and I saw the opportunity to do what I wanted.

I have had those lucid moments of acting on free will.  We always have free will. Sadly, for me, it is most often drowned in the jelly like fluid of authority.  My heart stops, my ears fill up-- I lose foothold on whatever hill or mountain top I was ascending and become the obedient, little girl once more.

At 48 I realize that no matter how many miles I travel, my initial response is to listen to what I am told. 

Listening to what I am told has stymied school, career and adventure choices. It has gotten me involved in fields of service and work simply because I was told, "you are good at it."  It has even led to sexual coercion.  With all of these, but especially with the last one, I carry a shame, believing it was my fault because I allowed it.

And I believe becoming aware of this shame actually opened up a door for me.  A slight light poured on the floor and through the door I saw opportunity--opportunity to say, "No." I believe I have tried before, but I have scurried back in when I was told to go to my room--to "behave," and remember my place.

I need to take the time to acknowledge just how deep that belief went in me.  So deeply that I, like a mermaid, in order to get acceptance, recognition and "love," gave up my voice, my will, my worth.

But now I believe I can make the choice to step out of that room.  I can throw the door open wide and wonder through other rooms, down hallways, into forbidden parlors, and, heaven help us, out the front door into a wide, wide open world of possibilities.

It would be nice if the hallways were empty, but alas, I am probably correct in assuming they won't be.  The naysayers roam the rooms I wonder.  So to combat the naysayers, those who in the past I quickly responded to by placing my tail between my legs and scurrying to where I was told, I choose to bring along my own companions.  Some I already know from my childhood, others from just a few years past, and others I have yet to meet.  But one thing I know, words are mightier than the sword, and books are full of them. 

And for my beginning venture into the dark and lonely hallway I need someone a bit irreverent and with teeth...I choose Uncle Stevie--Stephen King and his book On Writing. 

And you are welcome to follow the trail of words I write along my journey.

Signs of Life

...there was nothing for awhile. 

 

Then I wrote this entry.  As I came to the end of the entry I realized my entry about The Seven Year Cleanse and this entry, about my admittance to a near implosion and opening the door to wonder, went together.  And so, here is a perfect place to continue on...

 

 

I said to a friend that I felt as if there were a thin, transparent wall between the world, and me and that behind it I was vibrating and about to burst into tears.  If I did, I knew the wall would shatter...I would shatter.  She said, "It sounds like you are describing what I feel all the time.  Maybe that is just the way we are suppose to feel."

 

I sat for a moment looking out the car window.  Feel like this all the time? 

 

"No.  I disagree.  I believe we are meant to feel peace. I have to stop."

 

She is not an easy person to say no to and it seemed I was opening a door.

 

 

Jubilee!

I read somewhere that the body completely replaces itself every seven years.  Upon entering my 49^th year I considered how this had happened for my body seven times and being the year of jubilation I decided to take a closer look at the idea and my body.

I had not been good to my body.  Surrounded with a fast pace world of convenience, short cuts and sugar my body reflected this lifestyle to me in the mirror.  As a single mother of four all of the above was multiplied exponentially.  I weighed in at 230 pounds and at five foot five inches the weight was not particularly proportional.  More than that I knew that under my skin amongst the layers of tissue and fat toxins had settled in, with no intent to give up residence.

The cost of putting off till tomorrow; yoga, cooking the vegetables and spending just a little bit more on me for vitamins or a massage or a moment had brought me to a point that I was certain I was too young to feel this old.  I hurt when I walked. I hurt when I slept.  I hurt when I sat.  Beyond the physical my mind forgot…leaving me mid-sentence with a thought whose words did not leave the end of my tongue.  My spirit was entrenched in a war of survival and had forgotten how to soar.

The realization that I was headed to the fate of my mother before me caused me to pause.  At 73 her mobility was restricted to a walker or wheelchair. She constantly fought off illnesses related to upper respiratory.  She could not hold a phone for a conversation longer than twenty minutes.  She was repeating questions and asking me not to ask how she was.  The most disturbing of all was the image I had of her as a young woman, a grin on her face and tan I would never hope to have from her days in the fields and woods, juxtaposed to a woman who anticipated the day the pain and aging would stop.

My dreams were once large.  I could see them out of the corner of my memory—travel the world, farm, photojournalism or documentary maker, social change, write.  Lately, these were covered with white sheets, ghosts, and I found myself painted into a corner of “earning a living.” 

Maybe what I saw on this birthday was the possibility earning a life I wanted to live.