Hiroshi has a nightmare

Remember what I said about the creative process? Here it is, brought to life for your viewing pleasure at 1:03 a.m. -- in all its screaming glory.

I had a nightmare, and it was a doozy.

A friend of mine -- we'll call her Hadley -- was driving us in a VW bug through an icy stretch of highway. It looked like Alaska: glistening mountains, tall pines, and drifts of snow. Above us, a serpent of metal pipes wound in the crisp, blue sky. I held a baby on my lap. The radio was on. My friend Hadley is a violin player for an orchestra, but she asked me the classical piece on the station. At first, I identified it as Mozart, but then corrected myself. "Tschaikowsky," I said. "It's from The Nutcracker -- 'Waltz of the Flowers.' Some people think it's the 'Skater's Waltz.'"

No sooner had these words left my mouth than a huge piece of pipe dropped onto the road in front of us. "Oh my god," I said, so calmly, so calmly. "They're closing the road today. Look out." We swerved around the pipe. I looked up through the window to see a crane getting ready to drop another mammoth section on the road. "Don't hit it, Hadley." The radio was still playing that lilting waltz, and our car danced and twirled. Then there was a blare of horn beside us. We turned to see an eighteen-wheeler barreling by, and Hadley said, "They don't know the road is closed."

I watched as they cut in front of us; for just a moment, I glimpsed the horror ahead. "Hadley," I screamed, "the road is ice." And our wheels began to spin. So did the truck's. It jack-knifed and tipped on its side, still skidding over the road like it was on ice skates. A snow embankment was now the only thing that separated us all from the cold ocean. "The truck is going to sink, and don't you go with it, don't you go with it, don't you go with it." I repeated it over and over, my voice harsh and steady. Not screams now, but firm commands. Hadley pumped the brakes and the car spun in crazy circles. The baby was giggling. My heart burned my throat.

The rig plummeted down the ice hole, while our car teetered at the edge. I knew we were going to be okay, and I was so relieved that I began to cry. I stared out the window, down through the ice. And I could see the truck driver. He was a handsome, brown-haired man in a flannel shirt. He beat his fists uselessly against the window, his mouth open in a wide, silent scream. The truck fell down, down through the crystal water. I knew I had to help him. I knew I couldn't. He was screaming, and banging on the window, and begging for me to save him.

I close my eyes now and I can see his face, mouth contorted in a shriek I can't hear. My dreamscape is littered with fantastic deaths, but this is by far the most gruesome. It is 1:24 in the morning, and I had to come write it down. I wouldn't be able to sleep if I didn't.

The rest of the dream is already fading. I know someone put me and the baby in another car, and I was crying, sobbing to break a heart. "We have to help him," I said, but as I looked around at the people standing by the accident site, I saw that none of them could. They were all women. What we were to do? We shouldn't go with him. We can't go with him. I wept into my baby's hair. It smelled like spring, like life. I felt so helpless, furious at my weakness, terrified, horrified.

And... relieved. It wasn't me. We didn't get taken too. And I couldn't save that man. I didn't even dare to try.

Most of the time I can't tell you what a dream means. This time, I know. Elections are today. For months, there will be hundreds of mouths open in silent, desperate screams. But my "baby," my treasure, my Rider, won't be there. My fear and sadness will be tempered by a bitter-tasting relief. She can't go with them. She won't be lost.

I don't think Waltz of the Flowers will ever sound the same.

Hiroshi Writes A Story

Want a laugh? I did, desperately, and so I turned to the 8th grade English text I am supposed to review for my Literacy class. I was flipping through the book and found a unit called "How to Write a Story." Goodie, I thought. Let's see what I'm doing wrong.

I give you the Houghton Mifflin version of the creative process:

Lesson Objective: Students will list and select story ideas
Focus: Ask students to consider how creative people develop their ideas. (A sculptor might sketch an idea on paper before sculpting it.) Ask students why this process is valuable. (Many ideas turn out to be too difficult, too time-consuming, or flawed in other ways. Thinking ahead can prevent wasted effort.) Tell students that writers use this process of planning to develop story ideas.

Next the students are supposed to brainstorm story ideas. Houghton Mifflin gives fictional Hiroshi the task of illustrating this process. Hiroshi's story:

Hiroshi had been keeping a notebook of story ideas. He chose three ideas and made some notes on each one.

• A school's top runner loses a race and learns that you can't always win. [This would be quite a serious story, and Hiroshi decided he would rather write something lighter.]
• A space traveler goes to Earth to locate his only living relative. [He had a great plot in mind for this idea, and he could already imagine the setting and the characters.]
• A scientist visits an active volcano. He returns with startling news. [This would require too much research, and Hiroshi was unsure about how to end it.]

Hiroshi circled the space story idea on his paper.

***

Is it any wonder that our middle school kids are bored to tears? Is this any way to describe the writing process? Why don't we tell them the truth?

***

Hiroshi's first draft:

A spaceship was heading toward a space station. Steven Ozlo, a pilot-in-training, felt as though he had been cooped up forever. Commander Wilson was explaining something to him, but Steven wasn't paying attention. He asked to be dismissed, saying he didn't feel well. It wasn't a lie. Steven has never felt well since the day the terrible news came.

Lord, lord, it gets worse. Next, I'm supposed to conduct an activity with them where I have them pantomime subjects such as brave man, scared puppy, and willow tree. This is going to help them understand how much more effective it is to show, rather than tell. They should add interesting details to their writing to describe a scene (I should note that for my concurrent grad lit class I am wading through Hemingway, and how would I explain him?!?).

Hiroshi's revision:

As the spaceship made its long journey toward Molenium V at light speed, Steven Ozlo, a pilot-in-training, listened to the engine's endless humming. "If only it would stop for just five minutes," he thought. Commander Wilson was explaining something about the wall of screens and dials, but Steven wasn't paying attention. "May I be dismissed, sir?" he said. "I don't feel well." It wasn't a lie. Steven hadn't felt well since the day the terrible news came.

Starship Troopers this ain't.

I think Hiroshi should be guided toward some other, more noble profession. Writing isn't this neat and orderly. It's crawling on your belly through shit and mud (and in Cindy's case, the distinct possibility of Cheez-wiz). You don't get three story ideas at once. Usually you get none, and you pull your hair out and promise your muse you'll open a vein and bleed on the keyboard if she'll help you just one more time. When the ideas come, they come fast and furious at three in the morning and you have to haul your warm body out of bed to your writing table and pray that you'll remember that word or image long enough to write it down. In the morning, you'll look at your notebook and realize that your pen was out of ink (which is no problem, since you've scrawled so hard that you've made a legible imprint). You'll realize that the image makes no sense, that the word is not pronounceable, that the idea has been done a thousand times over... but you can't leave it alone. You turn it over and over in your mind, the way kids play with a pebble or a piece of bottle glass... over and over and over. Your body moves through the day, but your mind isn't with it. People talk to you. They're underwater and miles away. You're only half in this world, but that excuse doesn't sway your boss, your spouse, your landlord. You lose things: car keys, checkbook. Children.

But you gain things too. Like weight. Perspective. The Click. And the click is so damn powerful that it becomes a craving, then an addiction, and then you're staying up until two or three in the morning doing research to find more clicks. This click-hunting is enough to make your spouse say, "Maybe you should stop, honey." But you can't. You're not ready. You know you're not good enough. You'll never have enough information, time, skill to tell the story, to write the book. You know it, but you still can't leave it alone.

And that's the truth about writing.

I'm going to take a stand here: Hiroshi, you suck. I'm not telling my eighth graders about you. I'm going to tell them the truth. Writing is hell. It's a drug, a demon, a yoke on your back, a wall between you and everyone else, a source of irritation, a fountain of wonder, a chore, a delight, an itch you can't scratch, a need you can't fill, a song from the stars, an ache in your soul. You will never write the story you dreamed. Sometimes you'll write it better, which is cruelty enough to keep you grasping again and again. You will wish you were a plumber or a sales rep. You will never want to do anything else. You'll be glad you see things as no one else seems to. You'll be different. You'll be lonely. And so many times you'll want to stop writing. "Give this story to someone else," you'll say as your fingers bleed. "I can't do it. Let Hiroshi have it. I'm done." And your muse will laugh at you, because she's a bitch and she knows you'll come back. You'll always come back, begging like a masochist for the release you need. She knows the truth about you.

You can't leave it alone.

And what's really funny is that I know all this, but I haven't had a single line of work printed yet -- other than those poems from college (which will, with any amount of luck, go completely unnoticed when I do become successful). Maybe Houghton Mifflin is right. Maybe Hiroshi, with his clean, sterile process, is the proper thing to teach. I certainly can't tell them Hemingway's process, now, can I? (Drink, write a little, yell at your fourth wife, go fishing, drink some more...)

Wait till I get to Faulkner!

In the interest of self-preservation...

I may have to delete the last post. Scholar doesn't like my blog and would probably never visit it, but he would literally have a baby if he knew I was airing our dirty laundry. Frankly, I don't want to clean up the placenta.

I will leave the summarization of our fight to a terse "it sucked." I maintained that I had actually been teaching while working at the agency. Scholar was adamant that I had only been presenting. I wasn't a teacher, I was a presenter. Because when I say I was a teacher, I am apparently misleading people into believing that I worked in a school district (even though whenever I always describe myself as a prevention educator for a crisis center). The distinction was so important to the both of us that we actually ended up screaming at one another for a good forty minutes. I felt Scholar was being dismissive of my experience and skill. Scholar pretty much thought I was nuts. We're usually such good communicators that when we cross wires, it ain't a nice thing.

We're good now. But I'm still right. There is no doubt in my mind that I was TEACHING. But the truth is that Scholar only thinks of teaching as delivering information on a core subject, keeping a grade book and collecting a paycheck. As I said in my little poem, we'll leave him to that. For now. But sometimes his limitations smack me in the head with their 2 x 4s and leave me thinking, "huh?" I have a couple of goose eggs this morning. It's not nice to be crying hysterically just before bed.

We had a fight...

Observe the Scholar at his desk:
His mind so neat; his soul a mess;
His truth so clear. No room for doubt.
His kindness -- well, we'll leave that out.
Take note of clean, well-ordered life;
Mark well the tear on cheek of wife.
Her feelings, alien to him.
Her wants, her needs -- equations grim.
Such puzzles he declines to solve,
Instead, he'll keep him uninvolved.
He'll hide himself in logic pure,
the practical, the un-obscure.
For what a trial, this wifely mate
And such a bother to translate!
Much better, facts and figures cold.
They're never noisome. Never old.
They argue not, nor make demands.
He'll work them now with angry hands.
We'll leave him to these numbers Real.
He'll think, and think
but never feel.

Teacher's Pet

I have just finished my first week of classes. You know that old "this is your brain...this is your brain on drugs" ad?

Fried. My brain is absolutely fried. Fried brain. MMMMMM.

Pet Sounds

** Fair warning to my devoted fans: this is a book, and it has some sad parts. Do not read if you've been watching Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias, or listening to Tori Amos.**

That whiny mewling you're hearing right now? No, it's not a lost kitten or a stray puppy dog. It's me, lamenting the sad truth that it's 4:38 in the morning and I can't sleep. For some odd reason, I feel like it's Christmas and I've snuck downstairs early to watch the fairy lights on the tree. The child in me is so excited to start school today. The adult in me is sobbing because it's too early to be up, and I'm going to be crying a lot harder when I'm falling asleep in my evening class. Oh well.

My rule about insomnia is that if I lie awake for more than thirty minutes, I have to get up and do something. Even if it's just heating up a glass of warm milk, that's still better than tossing and turning. Or raising my arms up over my head and tickling the insides of my elbows, which relaxes me (I feel compelled to confess that I also do this while I'm sound asleep. Scholar finds this very amusing). So I got up after thirty-one minutes of tickling and felt my way blind into the spare bedroom. We've been missing the following items: insurance cards, the next round of blank checks, the lighting bill and the charger for my mom's cell phone. I found them all in about fifteen minutes. Insomnia can be productive.

**

I called this post "Pet Sounds" because of a weird little obsessive thought tormenting me as I tried to sleep. To understand the thought, you must know something about our family: we are pet-crazy. In my lifetime, I have been mom or big sister to a menagerie: cats, dogs, horses, baby geese, baby ducks, rabbits, snakes (not mine!), goats, fish and a couple of parrots (who both met tragic ends, but more on that another time). I'm not going to lie and say that all these animals touched my heart; to be more accurate, some of them just lived here. Some of them we didn't even like too much, but our family would chew light bulbs rather than turn animals out or leave them at a shelter. Once they're ours, they stay ours. Scholar found this out when our dog had some behavior issues. "Maybe we should take her back to the shelter," he suggested, and I looked at him like he was proposing infanticide. He got the message.

Anyway, as I was saying, only a few animals were pets in the bonding sense of the word. There was Beau, a German Shepherd with a heart of gold. And Dolly, our Shetland pony (the words "patient" and "long-suffering" spring to mind). We had a mutt named Christy Love who was sainted upon her death -- not since Benji has there been a sweeter, more devoted dog.

And then there was my Moonshine.

Moonshine was a Turkish Angora cat, pure white with long, silky hair and deep, knowing eyes. I got him when I was ten and he was my heart-companion for a decade. I had never been adopted by a fur person before. Oh, there were cats who liked me, which for humans is a high compliment. But Moonshine was My Cat. We loved each other, and it was as simple as that. He used to jump on my back and settle himself onto my shoulder; I'd walk around with him perched for hours. He sucked earlobes. He slept with me. When I left for college at seventeen, I left him in the care of my parents. While I was away, he stayed outside for days at a time, coming in just to eat and visit with humans. But my mother always said that he knew when I was coming home -- even for a weekend visit -- and he would perch himself on our front porch to wait for my arrival. He was always there to greet me when I pulled into the driveway. Always.

Except the spring that he wasn't. I had come home at the end of the semester, and there was no Moonshine on the front porch. Mom said she hadn't seen him for a while, but that was par for the course for this cat. I didn't start the feverish worrying until mid-morning the next day, and then I was like a woman possessed. I walked into the woods next-door, calling and calling for him. No cat.

On the third day, a friend of dad's came over to the house for a beer. He'd been working over at the barn. "Do you have a white cat?" He asked me, and my heart stopped beating. We live near a busy rural road -- a direct connection to one of the major corporations here -- and we've lost countless pets to it. But the friend went on, "There's a white cat out in the pasture. The horses won't go near it."

I would not be exaggerating to say that I raced from the house to the pasture. My beautiful cat was stretched out by the gate. He was so, so thin, and at first I thought I had lost him. And then he picked up his head and mewed. He didn't have the energy for more.

Knowing what I know now, I would guess that he started crawling home when he heard me calling. I can't imagine how painful that must have been for him. I didn't know what had happened to him. He wasn't hurt, but he was pitifully frail. I picked him up and hugged him tight to me. And I didn't remember until I wrote this blog, but I've realized just now that he was purring. It was like everything in his world was right again. I was home.

My poor, poor little man.

We rushed him to an emergency vet hospital. I was young -- only twenty -- and I still believed that doctors and vets could fix anything broken. But he had contracted feline AIDS, the cat version of our devastating immuno-deficiency virus, and the doctor said his chances were slim. I knew in my heart that he had spent every last bit of his strength getting to me. There was no more fight left in him. The vet recommended that I not hold him when she euthanized him (for hygiene reasons). She told me to take all the time saying good-bye that I needed. And I held him, and loved him, and told him he was the best of all cats. And then I let him go.

That was the first death -- the very first -- that ever cut me. And as I sit here crying, almost fifteen years later, I can still feel it. I swore that day that if I ever got another cat, I would take every precaution: regular vet checks, vaccinations, a healthy diet. Because the sad truth about Moonshine's death was that a $15 shot would have prevented it. Fifteen dollars. Would I pay fifteen dollars to have him back? Oh. Yes.

Maya Angelou says that we do the best we can with the information we have, and when we know better, we do better. I loved Moonshine with all my heart, but I was young and hadn't learned enough yet about the responsibility of being a pet owner. In fact, he was the one who taught me. Soon after he died, I had a dream. I was sitting on the old stone trough by the corner of the barn, and he jumped into my arms. I rocked him like a baby while he did starfish paws on my shoulder. And he looked at me with those old moon eyes, then wriggled free and scampered off. I had no doubt upon waking that he forgave me, that he loved me, that we would miss each other like crazy. That he was happy.

But I couldn't love another cat.

Four years later, I moved into an apartment at college that allowed pets. I toyed with the idea of getting a kitten, and answered an ad in the Pennysaver for a Siamese mix. When my friends and I drove out to the farm, I picked up the only black cat in a litter of chocolate-points -- and that was it. I got adopted again. On the drive home, the little guy stretched himself over my collar bone like a necklace, and I was a goner. My Theo.

He has all his shots. He goes to the vet for regular check-ups. He stays indoors. And two years ago, we came close to losing him when his urinary tract became blocked with struvite crystals. He has to have a special cat food, which costs about two dollars a bag more. I consider it a bargain.

He sleeps in my bed. He watches me write. He introduced me to Scholar (another story for another time). He is the best damn cat in the United States, maybe in the world (sorry, Starlet). And he's not Moonshine. He's his own Theo.

Where was all this leading to? This was backstory, remember? My wandering mind had fixed on Moonshine; for some reason tonight, I was missing him something awful. Even with Theo warming my feet at the end of the bed, which must be kind of like your girlfriend crying out an ex's name during sex (no, never mind that analogy. Forget I wrote it).

I missed my Shine. And then, all of the sudden, I realized that I've been remembering him wrong. When I think of Moonshine, I think of those horrible final days: the fear, the guilt, the sorrow. And that is not a fitting tribute to my wonderful friend, because he had about 36,499 other days with me. Better days. It occured to me that we humans tend to think about the death more than we think about the life. Maybe we've been conditioned. We're horrified by death; we fear it; we keep it at arm's length for as long as we can. But when we're faced with it, in all its various and sometimes grisly forms, we're fascinated by it. Witness the sensational television coverage of the tsunami. Witness the coverage of Iraq. Witness 9-11. We ruminate on the deaths and ignore the most important thing about any creature's time on earth: that creature was here. Moonshine was here. Living, breathing, meowing, growling, singing -- whatever. Here. I've been remembering his last moments and forgetting the most important and wonderful thing about him. He was here. I knew him. He loved me.

My sister has been wrestling with the death of a comrade overseas. He died horribly in combat. I've been feeling so helpless; I can't say or do anything to make it better for her. But I know that the most important part of this soldier's story is not how he died, but that he lived. He was here. He was her friend. She loved him.

As for me, I got to hold my Shine for a lot longer than those few, sad moments. I want to remember those times too. I can't forget how he died, but that's not all there was to him. When my time comes, I hope that I can find some way to tell the people I love that the fact that I existed was far more important than the events of my expiration.

And I close this lengthy, late-night (early morning) post with a gift from a dear friend who lost her husband to cancer two years ago. She sent this out when she notified us of his passing, and I've kept it ever since. It's by Henry Van Dyke.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

Snow Go

It seems to have stopped.

Right now the world seems soft and still. Hushed. The snow has stopped, the sun is out, and the air is refreshingly crisp. Since I have to be out in this all morning, I'd prefer less refreshment, but I'll deal. What's important is that the horses were blanketed, victualed and watered last night. I felt good about leaving them to face the elements. You see, half of them stay in stalls indoors, but the other half are pasture boarders, which means they are outside all the time. It's not as cruel as it sounds, until you get weather like this. Horses are hardier than humans, but they are prey animals, meant to expire when nature is red in tooth and claw. Or white in snow and ice. I was worried, but with some help from experienced horse people, we got them fed and into bed.

So today I trudge out to do it all again. Tonight I play SuperEducator, with a presentation to some randy college students about sexual responsibility. And then tomorrow...tomorrow...

I'll be a graduate student.

I am so excited for this. I had convinced myself that I would never get into graduate school, and then I did. Now all my books are purchased; I have shiny new pens and a rainbow of notebooks (only one of which I shanghaied for story purposes). I am ripe with highlighters. I am Ready.

I have expressed to my parents that I am doubtful of my capabilities to do well in school, but that is a little bit of a lie. I'm nervous, true, but I feel certain that I can handle the work. What I'm worried about is whether I'll want to. I have a little problem with motivation, and I tend to not to do things I don't like. Some people might call me "spoiled" or "lazy." I prefer "willfull," or maybe "energy-challenged." If I'm inspired, I will devote hours upon hours to the work. If I'm bored, I will procrastinate, then reap the dubious rewards of blowing things off. At least, that's been my modus operandi in the past.

Not. This. Time.

I can't afford the luxury. This is my Big Chance to right some wrong decisions. I want to gain myself a career that gives me an adequate salary, good benefits, excellent vacations and the freedom to write. A career counselor long ago warned me against teaching. "You'll spend all your time grading papers," he said. "You want a job where you're done by 5 and you don't have to think about it anymore." So I listened, and I waited for some great job to fall out of the sky right into my lap. I took some awful day jobs, and I didn't write much of anything. And we fell deeper and deeper into debt.

Then I realized something about day jobs. They need to actually give you enough money to pay the bills, and you should sort of like them enough that working while chasing your real job doesn't feel like punishment. This new direction is a sure and certain path, because even if I never write another word (doubtful), I will still love my day job. I love teaching.

In one year, Scholar and I will have doubled our earning power. We will continue to pursue our dreams, but we'll have a more stable track on which to run. This is a good decision. A hope-filled one.

I just have to remember that when I'm slogging through the snow.

Flashbacks

I'll admit it -- I'm a lurker. I like to read other people's blogs. It's like reading someone else's diary or mail (no, I would NEVER do that). It's becoming a habit for me -- kind of like watching a favorite television show. I can't begin my day until I've checked my daily blogs.

It started with a visit to http://www.alittlepregnant.com. The site owner is a good writer with a biting sense of humor, and over the weeks, I began to feel like we were chums. Even though she's never met me, even though I never posted any comments or introduced myself in any way, I still felt a kinship. She's a fellow smart-ass. From her blog, I followed the links to others, and soon I was reading eight or ten a day. I was a crack-blogger. All the women had that same sarcastic bent; all of them were struggling through conception, misconception, traumatic pregnancies, and what-have-you. It was so compelling -- I had to see how they were doing. Had to.

Today, I wish I hadn't. I checked one site (http://brooklyngirl.typepad.com) that I visit regularly and read today's post. Little too close for comfort. Suddenly I was back in the bad place -- the Friday that I sat home by myself watching "Maternity Ward" and patting my belly and thinking about my baby. The Saturday that I told myself I wasn't really bleeding, just spotting. The Sunday that I finally called the emergency room and the doctor on-call admitted that clots weren't a good sign. The Monday morning when my OB/Gyn confirmed the worst.

No heartbeat. No baby.

I don't think I've ever cried like that before. Not hard, not whiny, no sniffles, no hiccups. Just tears. The weeping seemed to come from this well inside me -- so much water, so deep down. And when Scholar came home, all light and breezy (because he'd convinced himself that I was overreacting), I told him the news in this grown-up, matter-of-fact voice, and I took sadistic pleasure in the shock and sorrow on his face. I don't know why it made me happy to see him affected, but it did. I had proved him wrong. Assinine way to do it, I suppose.

But what frightened me most of all was how empty I felt inside. I was full for a moment, and then I was hollow. I tried so hard to get full again, as quick as possible, so I wouldn't have to think about what I'd lost. I avoided friends with newborns (I know they understood). I continued to work, and life went on. When we got the Beagle in September, just a month before I would have been due, I felt a small release. Here was someone who needed me, and I could shower her with as much smothering affection as I could muster. I relaxed a little. Soon, it seemed like it happened a thousand years ago, to some other woman somewhere far away.

But when I stepped into the hospital last week, I had a powerful urge to run out the doors. Then today, with this stranger strumming my pain with her keystrokes, some murky stuff is stirring up beneath the calm surface. And yes, there's a whole lot of jealousy that she got to hear a heartbeat.

It's difficult to articulate. I'm not in pain. Not traumatized. It's so hard to explain the distinction -- that it's something that happened to me, it makes me very sad, and I'm okay. Not over it. It's like I have this scar on my body that people can see, and they look at it with awe, and maybe a little bit of revulsion. "Wow," they say, "that must have really hurt."

"Yeah," I say, even though I don't recall exactly how it hurt. To remind myself, I press on it a little bit, and yup! It's still there.

It's not the same kind of familiar sorrow I have when I think about other traumas of the past. It's not Outrage. It's not Fury.

It's just Sad.

I guess that's what the Buddha meant when he said that pain is a part of life, but suffering is a choice. My miscarriage is one of those memories that makes me cry, but not scream. Is there such a thing as pure pain? I think so. There's no bitterness attached to these memories, no sense that I've been wronged or victimized -- just terribly, terribly unlucky. So I move on. In a way, it's good to know that sorrow doesn't have to fester. This is a clean wound.

I'm really not doing a good job at explaining it, but writing helps. I don't talk about this as often as I think about it, and I don't think about it as much anymore. But -- yup! It's still there.

The New and Improved

I'm back from my most recent trip to Coldburg, and well-rested from a full night of sleep. Finally. What a difference a humidifier makes. Last night, Scholar didn't shake the rooftop with his thundering snores. The pillow and mattress didn't create painful pressure points in every muscle of my body. Ah, home. Where would I be without it?

We have just one week left before classes begin. This means one week to buy books, buy supplies, buy contacts, get a haircut, work out like an exercise fiend from hell (that's where they live, you know), get the struts fixed on the car, and paint the upstairs lounge. No sweat.

I'm excited. I'm going to be a scholar now, too. And I'll have hours to sit at the library, hog a computer and write. I have nailed down a lot of backstory, and I feel closer than ever to a workable outline. Things fit together and they make sense. Rider blew my mind last night with a little tidbit that is fantastic and perfect, and I LOVE IT (she reads this blog now, so the cryptic reference will make sense to her). Everyone else can wait and wonder. This story kicks proverbial arse.

Surprise for Cindy

I have a surprise for my good friend Cindy. She doesn't have a clue what it is -- tee hee hee. But it should be arriving by mid-afternoon today...

Oh, I'm no good at keeping secrets. It's me! I'm on my way for a visit to the Cold Country, and I will be calling her soon!

SURPRISE!!!

All You Can Eat

So I'm better. Much better. As a matter of fact, I feel like myself again, and I'm significantly less dead -- er, deaf. So my whole-hearted recommendation for all of you poor saps who are sick this winter is to take an ENTIRE day and sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep until you can't sleep anymore. I think Aerosmith wrote a song about that, didn't they? Sleep with me, Sleep for the years, Sleep through the laughter, Sleep through the tears...Dream on.

From Steven Tyler's lips to my ears. I slept until 10 a.m., and then I went back to bed at noon and snoozed until 4. When that sleep was done, I took a little nap from 4:30 until 7. Then we went out to dinner. What a satisfying day! Happy sigh!

I do have another major coup to report regarding my resolution to become healthy and fit. When we went to dinner last night, it was to an All-You-Can-Eat Chinese Buffet. What a way to break my fast, right? I went from Hurling-Girl to "pass the chopsticks, please!" But don't judge me too harshly, internet fans, because I was very restrained. I had won-ton soup and steamed rice, some lovely vegetables and grilled shrimp. For dessert, I had a light sampling of pineapple and melon. I felt supremely proud of myself. In the past, All-You-Can-Eat buffets seemed more like a challenge than an invitation, if you know what I mean. Kind of like they were testing me to see how much I really could stuff down my gullet. At the end, when the maitre'd was rolling me out the door, I would ask weakly if I'd won. Took me a few years and a couple thousand pounds of sesame chicken to understand that it wasn't a contest (you'd think they might post that somewhere, for cripe's sake).

As an aside, I like the way they've renamed some these restaurants. They're now "All-You-Care-To-Eat," meaning that you ought to stop and think about it. It's not whether you can eat everything in sight; it's whether you really want to. In the future, I'm betting the Powers That Be will revamp the whole thing entirely, and call them, "You-Could-Eat-A-Boatload-At-This-Buffet, But-Frankly, We've-Seen-Your-Thighs, And-You-Better-Stick-To-Our-Salad-Bar." Would that be too complicated to put on a neon sign?

As vengance for my day of rest, I got worked today. Hard. If I thought the horses would cut me some slack for being sick, I was sadly mistaken. They didn't call to see if I was okay. There were no flowers, no cards. But the moment I set foot in the barn, Cookie's nose was over the stall doors and the rest were huffing at me. "Good, you're here," Cookie neighed. "I could use a refill on my water, my manger's empty, and I left you a steaming pile in the far corner. Oh, yeah. Welcome back."

And you know, all my poor, bedraggled self could think was, "They've missed me." I toted water and lifted hay bales all day, and then -- just when I thought I was done -- discovered that the little beggars had downed all the water and eaten all the hay. So I did another round. Apparently, they thought they were at an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet.

Did I mention that I was sick? Death's door yesterday, wasn't it?

One of my mom's students gave her a horsey calendar for Christmas, and the very first page shows a beautiful white horse running in a field of daisies. The caption is "Horses are from Heaven." I know better. If there's one thing I've learned and learned well over the past twenty or so weeks, it is this: Horses are demons from hell and they have no mercy.

Consider yourself warned.

Death Bed

Still sick. This cold has impressive tenacity. It just keeps hanging in there. Today, I succumbed to the inevitable and crawled under my blankets. I slept from noon to four p.m. Somebody peeped in to check on me, but I didn't even acknowledge his/her presence. I slept as though I was in a coma.

And you know what? I feel better. Maybe if I sleep all weekend, the cold will get bored with me and go fester somewhere else. All I know is I am SICK of it, and I am going to fight the damn thing with the rage of angels. I will not spend my whole winter coughing/aching/sneezing/sniffling/popping/whining. As God is my witness!

So saith I.

Celestial Pop

Scholar and I got into a very interesting discussion while on a long drive yesterday. Fleetwood Mac's Sarah came on the radio, and we got to talking about Celestial Pop. We coined this term long ago; it's a song that seems to have come directly from heaven, straight to one's ears. The kind of song that gives you goose bumps when it gets to that certain part -- you know the one -- where the drums kick in or the guitar wails or the bass sounds just so. Surreal. Fantastic. Like the band is channeling the angels.

There are absolute categories of pop (in our humble opinion). Some of it's crap. In fact, most of it's crap. But then there are good pop or rock songs, unlikely to win any awards and yet so easy on the ears. The vast majority of what's out there falls into these two categories.

And then...there's the Celestial.

Naturally it's a matter of taste. Scholar, for example, hates Tori Amos. He calls her the Shrieker. I can't say that Stevie Ray Vaughn does much for me (although there's one song that does a lot for me, if you know what I mean). But on Celestial cuts, we usually agree. For example, we feel that the Beatles are in the all-time Celestial hall of fame for having the most songs which possess that transcendency, that Otherness. When we listen to The Long and Winding Road, or A Day in the Life, or Penny Lane, or a host of others, we know that some divinity was singing to the boys from Liverpool. They were just writing 'em down.

Scholar and I also agree on Celestials from Fleetwood Mac, the Police, U2, and Prince. Gypsy, for instance, is a dead-on Celestial song. As are Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, With or Without You, and One. Every Breath You Take, though creepy, is celestial. So is Where The Streets Have No Name.

We part company in a few places. I rate Who's Gonna Ride Your White Horses as Celestial; it leaves Scholar cold. He loves Led Zep; I have yet to embrace their mystery. For him, Pink Floyd's Learning to Fly raises the arm-hairs. For me, it's Wish You Were Here. We both rank Elvis Costello's Every Day I Write The Book as a Celestial, but Scholar doesn't agree with me that Duran Duran deserves some kudos. I might be biased.

But nothing makes a car trip go faster than when we get on this kick. We both love our music so much; it's one strong ingredient in our marriage glue. I get a kick out of Scholar when he's jammin' out to some tune. He gets this goofy smile, and he'll tap my arm when a good part comes up. "Ready?" He'll ask. "Ready?" And then the drums will kick in or the guitar will wail or the bass will sound just so, and his eyes will close. He's lost in this blissful place, and it is so damn cute and sexy.

I must confess... there are definitely moments when I think my Scholar has a little touch of the Celestial, too.

Lovely Muse, lovely, lovely, lovely

Once I dreamt that my muse visited me and told me her name. We were standing on a lonely cliff and the sea was pounding below us. She was very tall, very blonde, and very Greek in her white toga and laurels (she looked a little like Jean Kasem). She told me her name was Benedictine. Can't argue with that.

Now look at the Kaballah meaning of the word: http://store.yahoo.com/hlsl/benedict.html.
Pretty cool, huh? I knew it meant something like "to speak well" or "good voice." I had no idea it was so rich and layered.

Anyway, the point of this spiritualistic meandering is that B. was whispering in my ear last night. It was three in the morning (her favorite time to visit -- and I don't dare complain). I woke up and padded out to the upstairs landing, where I sat on the first step and leaned my head against the iron pole of the circular staircase. My neurotic cat, Tally, surprised me by being affectionate, so I loved on her while I thought. And thought. And thought.

And opened my eyes and drew in a breath and knew. I knew lots and lots of things. About my story, about my characters, about the plot and where it's headed. It is deeper and more beautiful than I ever dreamed, and I'm so proud. My fingers are itching to write it, but I'm still going to wait. When the itch becomes unbearable, like poison ivy on the inside of my bones, then I'll know it's time. Until then, I wait... and listen. Who knows what my blessed Voice will bring me today?

Lovely Muse, lovely, lovely, lovely. All hail, Benedictine. Visit me whenever you want, Babe. I'm ready and willing.