A Work in Progress #5: Somewhere East of the City

Posted on November 6, 2012 by randomyriad

As I was not able to meet my friend the next day, I remember a conversation with a shaggy young grad student who had cornered me at an informal literary  function.

“Man, you gotta get out in the country around here. There are mysteries and outrageous weirdness surrounding this city.” He leans in close and gestures frantically, like a  marionette in the hands of a novice puppeteer, so that I am afraid he will accidentally strike my face with his flailing fingers. “You can head any direction and find something worth seeing.”

At the end of this very energetic speech, he settles into an angelic silence, peace exuding from his body and face.

I rise early and pack a day pack, heading out down an east bound thoroughfare, the Avenue of Snakes. By noon five miles east of the city, I am surrounded by small herds lazy cattle grazing in the cool sun. One hill rises conical with a flattened top about a mile further on. To the south of this promontory stretches woodlands interspersed with villages, farm compounds and fields. The original trees, mostly valley oak and small bay laurel with madrone and manzanita that still crowd close to the streambeds, had been cleared for farmland and replaced by great stands of eucalyptus, maple, elm, pine, cedar, and Cyprus among a few remaining ancient oaks, their immense twisting shadows spread over the fields.

 As I explore the woods around the hill, I can see very clearly, the separate nature of each layer of woods like entering new worlds as I move into the heart of it. Starting at the edge, a light and airy clump of eucalyptus which becomes increasingly tangled with saplings, the floor covered with crunching leaves and aromatic gumdrops all mottled by sunlight filtered by the thin waving leaves above. I follow a narrow track overgrown with redbud and wild rose scrub as it descended into a small pinewood. My footfalls are cushioned by piled needles. Bent over and knees bent, I duck into the enveloping shadow fortress of fragrant branches that blanket the side of a hill. Emerging from the shadows, I stand in a scattered woodland of aspen and beech, leaves flutter and whisper in the slightest breeze like a conspiracy of taciturn elders. Beards of pale green lichen flow like mossy flags. The new green leaves glow translucent and shift in wavering patterns making muted shadows on the scraggly yellow grass below.

On a shelf at the top of a gentle hill a pond opened up shaded on one side by a massive ancient oak. Wild flowers bloomed concentric rings of color around the edge with the golden oat grass as a frame about the whole. I sit under the oak and gazed into the pond which due to the angle of light seems a bottomless well. Water striders darted here and there on the blue-black surface making tiny scratches the rippled outward.

I lean back against a rot softened stump and close my eyes opening my mind to the music of summer afternoons in my childhood.

Posted in Dreamtime, Fiction, mindworks, NaNoWriMo, novel projects, paying attention, Self-Experiments, spring, whereever you go there you are | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Work in Progress #4: Failure of Memory

Posted on November 5, 2012 by randomyriad
Piano mechanism - English type.

Piano mechanism – English type. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My friend stirs her drink some more, staring at the straw blankly.

“They got us to Switzerland in ’39. I was 7 years old,” she says still looking at the straw. “My sister says by that time I was accompanying my mother on piano every night as she sang. My mother taught me how to play the piano. I can’t remember playing the piano, though at the moment Margo said this I could hear in my mind a woman singing. I had heard this same song in dreams and thought it something that my mind was making up.”

She looks up at me, shaking her head slightly in a puzzled way.

“You know the strangest thing is, I sat down at a piano shortly after this conversation and tried to remember how to play and all I could hear was the woman singing. No experience of playing the piano came back to me at all.”

“We stayed in Switzerland until the war ended. In Zurich, with what Margo says was a nice family that treated us like fragile dolls. I went to Zurich to the address that Margo gave me. I got only vague feelings like the ghosts of memories as if I had been a doll and simply existed but not really lived in Zurich. From Zurich, in 1945, I was 13, we went to New York to an orphanage. And in a few months I was taken by the family, I know as my family now, to Hoboken and put into intensive tutoring to learn English, and finally I went to High School and did fine, as you know.”

“I remember you in high school. I used to dream about your beautiful accent. How you used to say ordinary words and make them sound mysterious and inviting,” I say remembering how much infatuated I had been with her before I met my wife.

“The thing is I cannot remember anything before Hoboken, only wisps and phantoms that remain intangible.”

“I know that in my own life memories before the age of five tend be like that. I can’t tell what happened or what I imagined. I remember my brother going to sleep with gum in his mouth and waking up covered in strings of gum and thinking that the devil had done something to him, but he doesn’t remember it at all. So I don’t know if this happened or not.”

“I can still speak German fluently, but have no memory of the piano. I went back to the town I grew to seven years old in and even found the house I lived in, but could remember nothing. Margo says she remembers me being like my mother’s shadow. Why can I not even picture here?”

She bites her tiny lip and closes her eyes. Her face, still very smooth and youthful, seems to blur into the dimness of the room as if she could disappear and I would not have known her.

Posted in conversations, discovery and recovery, Dreamtime, Family, Fiction, mindworks, music, NaNoWriMo, novel projects, Self-Experiments, Telling Stories, time travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Work in Progress #3: A Circle of Dreams Part II

Posted on November 4, 2012 by randomyriad

Standing in the brilliant cold sun, I grip the large golden ball of the door knob and twist. It is locked. The voice of a man speaking with care comes from behind me.

“I know you asked for a pink balloon, but can you play with a white one?”

I turned seeing a young man on the sidewalk handing a 2 year old child a white balloon which she accepts with a smile and trots down the street to where several children of many sizes play various games with balloons. The young man glances over at me and shrugs, puts his hands in his pockets and strolls after the child.

As I stand watching the children bat and chase balloons, clouds gather, hiding the sun moved by a damp breeze smelling of ocean decay and immensity that blows intermittently, sometimes barely noticeable other times strong enough that I can lean into it and maintain my balance. Across the street beyond a little parking lot there is a bright orange potting shed with a window cut in the shape of star. Tendrils of low drifting clouds encircle a church spire one or two blocks past the little shed. In the other the direction I see the golden trees have made a carpet of leaves over the sidewalk as the more distant clouds darken as they overlap to the horizon. The colors and shapes of seem to fit into a space in my mind like a puzzle, maybe of a sunflower leaning against a pumpkin on a rocky beach.

I look at my watch and see I will have to hurry to meet my friend at the station at our appointed time. I have no time to get something for my head and stomach. I must walk at a brisk pace over the golden carpet of fallen leaves under the swaying maples that lean out overhead. Small spatters of rain filter between the branches. As I navigate the names of legendary beasts. I am trying to imagine what my old friend looks like as I have not seen her for many years. How many now? At least ten. I last saw her at a conference held in the city I lived in at the time. She will either have grey hair or will be dying it. Will she have gained weight or maybe she is thinner, as I am, becoming fitter with age.

I arrive at the station just as the clouds unleash a furious downpour. I lift my overcoat over my head and dash for the doors, sliding between two people who stand gazing out at the sheets of blowing water they will face when they move outside. I drop my coat around my shoulders and look around for the person I knew so many years before. The station’s vaulted glass dome, supported by massive bare black girders and truss work, makes for an immense airy space over which the arrhythmic hissing slash of the rain whispers and mutters like a suspicious crowd. There are very few people waiting either to be picked up or depart on a train bound for some other station perhaps in another city grey with age.

“Is that you, M__,” A female voice from behind me says. Turning I see my friend, much changed but recognizable. It seems odd that I picked out several likely women from among those in front of me waiting in the station, but none of them now look anything like my friend. Even though I do not have a good picture in my mind of her, I am able to recognize her immediately when I see her in front of me. She looks older and more brittle. She had always seemed a bit thin and stretched. Now she had taken on a harder quality.

“It’s me,” I say smiling. “You’re looking fit.”

“You mean thin. But, you are always the kind one.”

“Only to those who deserve kindness, I can be a real asshole if you get on my bad side.”

“I am so glad you came. Now this conference will be much more enjoyable.”

“I agree, but at the moment my head is splitting and my stomach feels like a washing machine on spin cycle.”

“You do look a bit pale and drawn. Let’s find the hotel and settle in and find you something. I have so much to tell you. I am so sorry for not writing or calling more. Now that I am with you I feel like you are one of the people I should have reached out to more often.”

“Distance does funny things to friendships. I feel the same way.”

I take one of her bags and we head for the now dripping exterior as the sun finds a hole in the clouds and streaks of light strike the industrial building across the road.

“Is it close or should we take a cab?” I ask.

“The hotel is by the university all the way across town.”

“I have never been here before. But what am I thinking. I have to go get my luggage from the locker. If you wait here, it’ll only take a second, and we won’t have to lug these back and forth.”

We find the hotel and agree to meet in the bar after stowing our bags and composing ourselves after a long day of travel.

“Do you remember what I used to tell you about my past?” She says stirring her drink with a small red straw.

“I remember you telling me that you could only remember disconnected facts but never actual experiences.”

“Yes, as if someone told me about my childhood.” She says. “Well, I finally found my sister. Do you remember I was looking for my siblings, Peter and Margo?”

“Yes, I do, and I remember that you weren’t having a lot of luck in your quest.”

“Well I found Margo in Amsterdam about 3 years ago, thanks to the work of a detective I hired. He was a thoroughly unpleasant man, but totally worth his pay.”

Posted in autumn, can't really complain but, capturing light, change, conversations, Dreamtime, Fiction, mindworks, NaNoWriMo, novel projects, Self-Experiments, visions from the dark side, Walking | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Work in Progress #2: Title Search and a Dream of Circles

Posted on November 2, 2012 by randomyriad

I have been thinking about a title for this piece of writing. The only one I can come up with at this point that sums up the feeling I have for what my life is now: “Work in Progress.” For the last two months it seemed as if any movement was painfully slow, when I was moving forward at all, usually in a more holding on or sliding back movement. Now I can say that I may be moving in a positive direction toward something. I can’t really say for sure except that I want to work with people on something that matters to me and other people and gives me a good living. I haven’t a good feel for how the rest of my life comes together. But, no matter where I am headed, I will use writing as my scaffold. I write to explore what happened up to this point and find the structures that will keep what is left from collapsing altogether. I write to have something on which to hang the loose debris from my life as it has been up to this point. I write as support for new ideas. Writing slows down my thoughts to a speed at which I can examine and organize them. It helps me try out new ideas of who I am. More than anything I need a new image of myself functioning in the world.

I guess I could also call this project “preview of coming attractions” even though it may not end up being so attractive. My mind is starting to show me some trailers of movies that I would want to see myself in, instead of all those film noir versions of an older man sinking in a quagmire of loneliness and poverty. I can see a place that is mine and actually want to live there. The situation may still suck, but my attitude is improving.

In the afternoon sunlight his face twitches into many expressions as the dream of his childhood in the mountains changes into an urban nightmare where he skateboards through mazelike alleys crowded with dumpsters overflowing with soggy piles of refuse. Finally a smile relaxes onto his face as he reaches his destination, a circle of mirrored sky, rippled smudges of clouds herded across in a sweet warm breeze. Peering into the water he sees great white birds gliding in precise, complex patterns.

“These birds are trying to tell me about the mountains,” he mutters to his reflection in water. “I wish they would be more specific.”

His hand slashes at the water disrupting the image of a lined face framed in frosty stubble with eyes sunk in dark circled rings.

As he wakes blinking into the brightness, he feels the gentle rocking motion and muffled clatter of the train moving deep under the seat. Slowly the ancient gray city comes into focus, as the train’s clatter shifts into a higher register on the trestle as the ground drops away below into a sluggish, murky river. A queasy feeling engulfs his entire being as he remembers why he is on the train and what the birds were saying as they wove patterns in the dream sky.

The light of the world comes sifted through a filter of haze he carries. Confused and weary he wanders into the streets from the massive girded construction of the station. The street names are mythological creatures: Minotaur Road, Chimera Way, Medusa Drive, Sphinx Avenue. How can he find his way to his destination 26 Winterbower Parkway. Nobody he asks knows the way.

An ache begins behind his eyes and spreads back through his head joining the uneasiness in his stomach. His footsteps become tentative he stops in front of an apothecary shop, Dr. Black’s Drugs and Remedies and under these large neon green words, a painted shingle, If We Can’t Help You No One Can.

There was a day long ago, lounging on a small flower patterned sofa in a large white walled room, his attention shifting between an intricate story about poets in Mexico and the summer blue sky, a breeze washing through wide windows carrying the familiar voices in quiet conversation mixed with the shrieks and giggles of children in the sprinkler next door and disturbing the drifting motes of dust as flies perform figured shapes of ancient rituals they flew before the great, great relative came from the east to the mountains with a vision of a day when a farm and house would frame and cover the grass and scrub woodland of the natural clearing followed by groups of houses and a general store and other businesses, and finally a town with tidy suburbs edged in woodland. Still the flies trapped in the wooden box searched for the deer scat in the threadbare carpet, their wavering buzz humming in his head as he gazed at the flickering neon of the sign in the city that existed for hundreds of years before white people sailed to the eastern shores of the land he grew up in. Everything had been moving west, a tidal flow of history he swam against coming up against this feeling of circles traveled inside larger circles and on shifted levels and dimensions, invisible trails traveled by birds and insects over millennia. Other people moved east, some came all the way around or up one side and down, like birds flying 24,000 miles without resting their wings over the cold deep water connecting the life of the planet to the skies, and around again.

Posted in All part of the process, Art in Nature, can't really complain but, capturing light, change, Dreamtime, Fiction, internal landscape, mindworks, my life, NaNoWriMo, Of the Road and The River, paying attention, Questions and riddles, Self-Experiments, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, visions from the dark side, whereever you go there you are, Wild Life, Works in Progress | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Not Exactly NaNoWriMo

Posted on November 1, 2012 by randomyriad

Every November for the last 5 years I have attempted to write a novel. I have succeeded once. I am still struggling to put this cumbersome piece of fiction into some kind of publishable order. I sat down in front of this computer to try to write another novel, but some other thoughts are overwhelming any attempt at forming a cohesive vision of story or characters. My life is a drama right now. This month I will be attempting to write 50,000 published words. This is for me, but, whoever you are, I welcome you to join me in this experiment. I have no idea how it will turn out. It might get a little scrambled and messy, or boring (I do not live an exciting life), but I promise to make it as real as possible while being gentle with the people I interact with on a daily basis. Some of these words will be about my actual life some will be about ideas that come out of what I am living through but they will all be about who I am now at this moment whenever I am sitting at my computer firing brain cells and moving my fingers, making words into sentences. I will post at the end of each day the words I have worked on for that day, maybe even a few pictures and other odds and ends.  It will be good for me to take responsibility for my life and attitude and figure a way forward that makes sense to me. Writing is usually a good way for me to sort things out. Hopefully this exercise will help.

Very soon I will be living on my own in the same town as my wife of 27 years but separately. I cannot tell how this will turn out. I am filled with doubt, but also with wonder at the parts of life that get closed off when choices are made. I have chosen to live with this fascinating woman for all these years. I have chosen to fear her moods and love her victories as my own. When she told me she chose not to be married to me, I felt the bones of my life being ripped away and my life collapse into a shapeless mass of events lacking a framework to hold it up as cohesive body. It still has not completely come back into shape. At this point, I live in a sagging wreck of a collapsed life. I am rebuilding. As I examine the ruins, I find many pieces are warped to fit into the shape of life with another person. I am also finding some pieces I put into storage because I could not find a place for some time or other, but did not want to lose, waiting for a place to fit it in. Now I have a lot of empty space to fill. I am recovering enough from the shock of shifting from living as a part of a relationship to living on my own, and I see I have opportunities to build a brand new life. I will have to rework some old pieces, find some I have put away, and go out in the world to find some new relationships to support me in moving forward.

“I just don’t want to be married anymore,” She said.

It still stings so deeply. Tears form. I don’t know if I will ever be able to accept that I have lived with someone so closely for so long, and I cannot, even after all we have shared, be able to work this situation out so that we both can be happy and support each other as a married couple. Now we will be single people who love each other struggling to figure out this life in our own private spaces. That is one way to look at it.

Every now and then I am visited with brief vision of a live separate from Mary. I expand into my living space which comes alive with art and music. I have always carved out niches to clutter with artifacts and tools. I have lived in the corners of our shared houses finding small spaces to fold creative ideas into.What if my home became my life and anyone who entered would be drawn into my creation.  I can’t speak for Mary, but I think she has struggled with the same issues. We have lived trying not to take up too space away from each other.  I want space to organize into a working system that can include others as well as express the creative processes that form naturally from my explorations of the world. I am beginning to see possible futures that are not overwhelmed by regret and alienation. This will be new for me as I have always felt apart from the world, and my relationship with Mary is another filter. What if I remove all the filters? What would my life look like if I were totally authentic in my interactions with the world?

It is now 6:22 am. I have been up since just after 4. It is time for coffee and a little more to eat.

 

 

Posted in All part of the process, can't really complain but, change, developing relationships, discovery and recovery, Family, Fiction, House and home, make your own world, mindworks, my life, NaNoWriMo, novel projects, paying attention, personal history, Questions and riddles, Self-Experiments, thinking in words, whereever you go there you are, Works in Progress | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment