Within the White Hot Flow of Writing

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books, Deborah J. Brasket, fiction, Flow, Novel, revolution, Romance, This Sea Within, writing, writing process

That’s where I am. Where I love to be.

I began a new novel almost as soon as I finished the last. An idea I had entertained years ago kept coming back to me. You may remember a blog post I wrote a while ago about wishing I could find a really good steamy novel that was also a novel of ideas, that had substance and depth. Some of you encouraged me to write one if I couldn’t find what I was looking for, and that stuck with me. You should write the novel you want to read. I’ve always believed this.

I also love long novels set in exotic places that reveal the political unrest of the times. And having spent so much time in the tropics when we were sailing, I’m drawn to that kind of locale.

It all fit perfectly with an idea I had played with some years ago about a young naive girl from California who travels to Central America to find her missing mother (I must get the bottom of all these stories I write about missing mothers!) and gets swept up in a political struggle and the revolutionaries fighting to free their country.

As I began preparing to write, I noticed how similar the process of writing this novel is to the one I wrote last time.

First there’s a germ of an idea, and then the need to anchor it in reality. The need to immerse myself in some aspect of the history, the setting, the geography, the larger ideas that underpin what I’m aiming to write: Research.

I went of a shopping spree and bought Salman Rushdie’s memoir of traveling in Nicaragua during the Contra wars, Smile of the Jaguar. I also bought Blood of Brothers, Life and War in Nicaragua by Stephen Kinzer, a journalist for the New York Times during and after the revolution; The County Under My Skin, A Memoir of Love and War by the poet, Gioconda Belli, who fought in the revolution; and The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems. I already had Tom Hayden’s The Long Sixties, a signed copy I got at a fundraiser I organized years ago. Although my novel will be set in a mythical country along the isthmus, studying the war in Nicaragua would help me get a better understanding of what was going on in the region during those turbulent times.

Next in the process comes the need to discover the names and voices of my main characters. I cannot write a word without that.  This  almost happens simultaneously. The voices must have names to embody them, the names must have voices to bring the alive. The names evoke the voices, the voices evoke the names: Lena and Raoul.

Once I have these, there’s not stopping them. They take over my life. They start telling me their stories and I run and grab a pen. I keep on writing, pages after pages in my notebook and on my computer. I look up and morning has turned to nightfall. It doesn’t matter. They follow me to bed. I sleep with them. I dream them. I wake up writing love poems in their voices.

Then I need at least a vague sense of how the novel will open, how it will close. It may change along the way, but I need this parenthesis to contain my writing and to show me where it’s moving. They tell me.

When I have the beginning and the ending, keys scenes in between emerge. I write them down quickly before they disappear. They may change over time, but at least I have key points upon which to hang my novel.

By then my characters have become real to me. They have flesh and bone, names, voices, histories. They have deep, deep urges, conflicting desires, inner and outer struggles, a sense of transformation.

It’s like watching a miracle unfold. How they seem to come from nowhere, out of thin air, then suddenly they are breathing bodies, passionate, possessed.

This miracle of the white, hot flow of words.

Next comes the need, for me at least, to discover the title for this novel, something that embodies both of their stories and what happens to them.

I need a hook, like I did with From the Far Ends of the Earth. Whenever I felt I was becoming lost, a bit overwhelmed, unsure about where the story was going, how to proceed, if this fit or that should be cut, I went back to the title, which embodied my main theme. Then I knew.

The title was a thematic blueprint for what I wanted the book to be. The impact I was after. A book about gathering up and bringing home all the lost parts of ourselves and our families.

So I searched for something like that, some touchstone that would lead me back to that germ of an idea I began with. The point around which all else revolves. And I found it: This Sea Within.

Lena, a California girl, a surfer in love with the sea, restless, passionate, caught up in the turmoil of her times, the Sixties, travels to a mythical country in Central America where her mother was born, searching for the woman who abandoned her, but finding instead a people and culture and land that feels like home, like a part of her lost self. And there she meets Raoul, the leader of a band of revolutionaries whose base camp is on a remote stretch of the sea. And well, you can imagine the rest.

But this is also meant to be a story of ideas, of the tension between a life of contemplation and the life of an activist, the urge to save and savor the world at the same time. It’s about the tensions between a huge, powerful county and what it sees as its smaller vassal states below its border. It’s about the need to find purpose and place in one’s life, to serve a cause greater than one’s self. And it’s about how poetry and art can keep the spirit alive when the world we live in is bathed in blood, figuratively for some, and literally for others.

It’s also about the cycle of time, this never-ending (r)evolution that creates the ever-changing world we live in. It’s about the slow march of history, whose arc is indeed long, but hopefully, must, must, bend toward justice.

This Sea Within. The restless times from which great movements and revolutions are born, and two lovers caught up in that turmoil. That pretty much sums up what this book is meant to be. For now.

It’s all subject to revision.

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Pinch Me! Writers House Accepts My Novel

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From the Far Ends of the Earth, literary agent, Novel, Robin Rue, Writers House, writing, writing process

Writers House, New York City

I’m so excited. Robin Rue, a senior agent at Writers House, one of the top 20 literary agencies in the nation and the largest in the world, will be helping me find a publisher for my novel, From the Far Ends of the Earth.

I never expected it to happen this fast. I’d planned on giving myself six months to a year to find an agent and/or publisher for my book. If it didn’t happen by then I would turn to self-publishing. I really didn’t want to go that route. All the work involved sounded exhausting, but it was important to get the book out there, one way or another.

I had been working on it, on and off, over the last several years. It went through dozens of revisions, two sets of readers, a period where I absolutely hated  it and was tempted to quit, and a long 18 month period where I didn’t work on it at all when going through some major life changes.

It was time to put this baby to bed.

So I created a list of about 20 agents who I thought would be a good fit, and created a list of about 20 publishers who would accept manuscripts without an agent. I worked and reworked my query letter a dozen times. And then the first person I sent it to, Robin Rue, asked to read it. A week later she wrote to say she loved my novel and would be proud to represent me. Yesterday she sent the novel out to a dozen top-tier publishers.

But I had help, and a foot-up in the process. A writer friend who had read and loved my novel offered to refer me to her agent. So that’s where I sent it first. And that’s where my search ended. I am so grateful to her and humbled that I lucked out in such a wonderful way. I’m still pinching myself.

For you writers out there, and those who want to know what my novel is about, here’s the body of the query letter I sent to Robin:

From the Far Ends of the Earth is a 100,000 word literary novel with strong upmarket and book club potential. It tells the story of three family members left behind when the mother at the center of their lives mysteriously disappears. How they cope with her disappearance, learn to reconnect with each other, and forge new relationships in her absence create the heart of this novel.

One day Fran heads toward the grocery store and keeps on going till she reaches the tip of South America. Meanwhile she leaves behind an empty hole in the lives of her family: Kay, a cranky grad student studying archaeology who adores her mother but distrusts men in general, her father and brother in particular; Cal, a heroin addict living in his parents’ home when his mother disappears, left with a father he fears and no other means of support; and Walter, a dedicated  husband but distant father whose random bursts of temper have always set the family on edge.

Adding to the mystery of the mother’s disappearance are the “gifts” she sends her family: The breathlessly elated messages she leaves on her daughter’s answering machine, but never when she is there to pick up. The strangely distorted photographs she mails her son, who studies them like hieroglyphs he must decipher to save her, and save himself. The credit card bills she leaves for her husband to pay, allowing him to continue caring for her as he always has, while he uses them to track her journey across the continent with push-pins on a map.

Except for the beginning and ending when we hear the mother’s voice, the story is told from the perspectives of the three family members left behind. The mother remains an absent presence that permeates the novel without inhabiting it. She is seen only through the filters of her family’s memories and perceptions of her.

Ultimately the novel is about the journeys of self-discovery each protagonist takes to piece back together their fragmented lives and make themselves, and their family, whole again.

Writing this novel was certainly a journey of self-discovery for me as a writer. After some time to celebrate, and a long-awaited trip to Europe, I’ll be starting a new novel.

 

 

Poetry that Takes Us Beyond Articulation

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inspiration, meditation, National Poetry Month, personal, poetry, Spiritual transformation, spirituality

Pierced by the Morning Light, by Rick Stevens

Some of us are always seeking a path beyond ourselves, beyond articulation. It’s not escape. It’s the opposite of escape. Its entering the present moment so fully all boundaries fall away.

Beyond articulation, beyond words . . . and yet poetry is often the way we savor those moments. It becomes the latch that allows us to re-enter that rare space.

I’ve written about these moments in the past and shared some of the poetry that rose like mist in the aftermath, capturing the essence, if not the thing itself.

Here’s one I wrote and shared in Wheeling Away on the Isle of Pines, slightly altered. If you’ve had such moments too, or know poetry that takes you there, please share below.

A Path Beyond (Ilse du Pins)

There is a path
green and thin
that wends away
and wheels me in

Rising, falling,
tree by tree,
lanced by light
through streams of leaves

Breathing pines
that breathe in me
like heady wine
flowing, free

Green above
and green below
no in, no out,
no high no low

Winds are water
everywhere
I walk on water,
float on air

Drifting mindless
round the bend
bursting out
bursting in.

by Deborah J. Brasket

More of Rick Steven’s amazing paintings

Other posts that savor such moments:

Walking Among Flowers

Into the Flow

Taste and See, I Am Spare

Bearing Witness – Art that Hurts, Art that Heals

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art, bearing witness, creative process, creativity, Deborah J. Brasket, From the Far Ends of the Earth, healing, pain, writing

So much of art-making is bearing witness–to things we love, to things that wound. And often they are the same things: The beauty that breaks your heart. The brutality that tears it open and lets the light in.

The image above, Rodin’s seven-foot bronze study for his most famous sculpture “The Burghers of Calais,” is art that hurts, and heals. It tells the story of how six citizens during France’s Hundred Year War with England volunteered to sacrifice themselves to save the town. The sculpture shows the pain and suffering, self-doubt and determination of the men as they are led away to captivity. It bears witness to that cruelty, that self-sacrifice, that love. How it’s all wrapped together.

This need to bear witness to how it’s all wrapped together is not new. It’s been written over and over again by poets and artists though the ages. I’ve written about it here on these pages, in my homage to Marc Clamage’s paintings of the homeless, in my meditations upon a deer’s scream and my mother’s death, and the beauty and brutality in the hills of Vietnam.

Not surprisingly I write about it in my novel From the Far Ends of the Earth. And I write about it there in terms of art-making, how turning the underbelly outward in our art can be a healing process, how it lets the light in. For the artist and the viewer.

“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?” Franz Kafka once asked. “What we must have are those books which come upon us like ill-fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves. . . . A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.”

Gwendolyn Brooks wrote:

Does man love Art? Man visits Art, but squirms.
Art hurts. Art urges voyages–
and it is easier to stay at home,
the nice beer ready.

What we see and experience out there in the world and in our own hearts bears witnessing. Not only the beauty, but the brutality as well. While the first lifts us up and makes us soar, the latter throws us down in the pit. It confounds us, it confuses us, it demolishes us.  It makes us want to stand up on our hind feet and howl. It makes us want to cut open our wrists and bleed out our anguish on the page. It makes us want to splash our pain in brilliant colors across the canvas.

It makes us rage against the night, and at the very same time trace the frgile broken bones of the milky way across the sky with awe and wonder.

It’s the roil of chaos that boils over into stars and star-dust, and becomes the tender, naked beauty of an infant’s breath.

We cannot help writing about it, welding it into our art, because it is us, and we are it. It’s the thing we were born to bear witness to, when we are awake to do so.

 

Walking Each Other Home – Why We Write

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amwriting, creative writing, Deborah J. Brasket, Novel, writing, writing process

I’ve reread my novel after being away from it for well over a year.

I did so with some trepidation. Much earlier in the writing process, after I had completed and revised the first draft, I put it away for several months. Then read it with a fresh and very critical eye. The result was terrifying: I hated it.

Eventually I came to realize that if you approach any piece of writing with too critical an eye, from a disdaining or resisting distance, you fail to grasp the thing that connects reader/writer. There must be, at the very least, a willingness to allow the story to lead you forward.

I was pleased that my reading of the novel this time did grab hold and keep me reading, keep me involved. I’m going over it again for a final edit but finding little that wants or needs work. The place I’m spending the most time now are the those crucial opening pages, and these too I now feel are ready to go.

I plan to write more about this novel on these pages in the coming months. For I find that I enjoy writing about writing, as so many writers do. And the topics the novel touches upon and themes it explores are important to me, painful as they sometimes are: addiction, homelessness, poverty, life on the street, father-son-mother-daughter relationships, the inability of ever truly knowing anyone, loss and grief, art as self-discovery and redemption, love and romance, spiritual transformation.

In some ways, all I care about, all I am, why I write, why I care, are contained in these pages.

Recently I came across an essay on writing that captures so clearly why I write, and perhaps, why I read. The passages excerpted below reflect my own writing experience.

From Why Writers Write about Writing by Brianna Wiest

 Writing is speaking to yourself, but letting other people overhear the conversation.

The people who are compelled to write down what they feel are the ones who feel it hardest. They make up truths where they didn’t exist before. They put to words what would otherwise go muddled in their minds. Every single writer who can be honest can stand and ratify the fact that wedged between their words, laid subconsciously before them, were great loves and greater losses and deeper insecurities and projected fears. Nothing gets written without the intrinsic motivation to make something confusing and painful clear and beautiful.

I recently saw a quote that went like this: “we’re all just walking each other home.” And sometimes our maps and hands are offered in words. Sometimes we are lighthouses and sometimes we are lost sailors. Writers know you are best crafted out of being both.

And ultimately, the thing about writing is that it forces you to surrender yourself to uncertainty and vulnerability, which, if you ask me, is the most important task to master. My favorite writer . . . Cheryl Strayed once said something along those lines: that the place of unknowing is where the real work gets done — the vulnerable, uncertain place.

Because the best things are written out of the dark parts of us. Because things are always scary when they matter. Because things are inherently neutral and we assign value to them, and looking deeply into the words that touch us may be the greatest way — or the only way — of understanding those parts of us.

“To make something confusing and painful clear and beautiful.”

To help “walk each other home.”

That’s why I wrote this novel.

 

The Pieta & the Writer’s Palette, Redux

Tags

art, creativity, painting, short story, the unconscious, visual art, writing, writing process

It’s been said that for writers the blank page is our canvas and words our paint.

But I don’t think so.

Images and ideas are the paint, words the loaded brush, and sentences our brushstrokes. The mind and imagination of both writer and reader is the blank canvas.

Nothing is there on the page—mere white space, black ink strokes. Yet in the act of reading the mind becomes awash in colors, images, ideas, emotions. Like magic. What the reader draws upon is not only the writer’s words and images, but the reader’s as well, his memories and associations. Our reader co-creates with us.

What both the writer and reader draw upon, as do all visual artists, are all the images and associations from our own lives as well as all those who came before us and left their imprints upon our imaginations, through books and artwork and film and advertising. Scraps of overheard conversation, images of bloodshed and atrocities on nightly broadcasts. Scenes drifting by a train window, songs played upon the radio, sounds of playground laughter. Faraway land and cultures and wilderness areas glimpsed in our travels or from magazines or TV documentaries.

We draw upon myths and legends, iconic images and personal histories passed on from one generation to the next, spanning back to the beginning of life, perhaps, if we do indeed carry within our genes memories of primeval birthing. All these images and association stored in our personal or collective unconscious.

What interests me in all this is the creative process. How we dip our brushes into this swirling palette, and bring out more on our loaded brushes than what we had intended or even realized at first glance. And yet our work is the richer for it.

Here’s an example of a scene I created without being fully aware of its implications until in the midst of the writing, and moments afterwards. This is from “Tamara in Her Garden.”

I was eleven years old when the house burned down one night. Burned clean to the ground. Nothing left but heaps of ashes and twisted metal folded among the stone foundation. Sifting through the silt and rubble, firemen found the charred remains of my father, who had died in bed, and the broken bones of fifteen young men, boys really, buried beneath the house.

They found me crouched in the garden, dress torn and singed, eyes so wide, they said, it was as if the fire had burned off my eyelids and I would never sleep again.

What I remember most about that night now is the way my Aunt Rose held me afterward, drew me to her lap and rocked me. I was tall for my age, taller than Aunt Rose by then, but she held me nonetheless. Gathered me up, all the odd and bony parts of me, the long thin back and stooped shoulders, the heavy head. Folding herself over, stroking and holding, rocking me like a baby, like I was part of her lost self. And I, spilling over her yet holding too–tightly, tight. And thinking with open eyes: She knew. She knew, too.

Now when I remember, and remember how she held me, I am reminded of ancient Italy. Of towering cypress pressed against an Aegean sky. Of sun-drenched doorways and crumbling stoops. Of Michelangelo’s Pieta, cool and smooth in a cool, dark hall, the Son’s body spilling half naked across the Mother’s lap as she held him. Holding and spilling. Holding and spilling. Remembering places I’ve never yet always been.

As I was creating the image of the child being held by the Aunt, I began to realize I’d seen this before—it was a deeply familiar, iconic image, steeped in religious, artistic, and maternal associations. The Pieta was already part of my palette.

I didn’t realize until after I had written the words that drawing upon this iconic image was thus imbuing the scene with a sense of suffering and sacrifice, of sin and redemption, of death and the hope of resurrection.

Realizing this, it became part of the story. The protagonist herself realizes the implication and draws upon images of beauty and decay, life and death, art and darkness, all washing together but impossible to hold without spilling. She draws upon places we’ve all been, or know, figuratively, without perhaps having been there ourselves.

The phrase “remembering places I’ve been and never been” is particularly potent because it captures for me some deep truth—that humans, particularly with our exposure to film and art and news, are exposed to places, scenes, people, cultures, that become part of our world view, our memories and associations, without ever actually having “been” there.

Which brings us back to the original point of this post: The paint we dip our brushes into is so much more deep and vast than any of the creators who came before us had. Along with our individual experiences come experiences filtered through the minds and imaginations of others, framed by their cameras, their perceptions, their agendas, their images—but it all becomes part of our consciousness, gets missed in with the personal, and recreated into our works.

Art that inspires us becomes part of our subconscious, our memories and association, part of that “paint” swirling around in our minds upon which we draw when we “paint” with words. The Pieta was already there, already steeped in associations, already all-ready for me to draw upon when seeking the perfect image for this particular scene of a wounded child being drawn to the lap of her maternal aunt to be comforted, the child herself being “too big”, her wound too devastating, for the Aunt to hold, so spilling past her, unable to hold it all, to even grasp it all, all that her niece had suffered, and so spilling beyond the aunt’s ability to comfort, hold, heal.

And yet the act of attempting to do just that—that despite the enormity of the task, its impossibility, its futility, the attempt in itself becomes a kind of absolution, a love beyond love, a sacramental act, that touches the child more tenderly than anything else might have.

I think in writing this, I have touched upon, unawares, a realization, that this is something I seek again and again in my writing to capture, articulate. The impossibility of healing, comforting, redeeming, forgiving, witnessing, the sorrow and hurt of this world as it unfolds in each of our lives, and yet the absolute necessity to attempt to do so, for just the attempt itself—the whole-hearted, deep-throated, full-bent attempt—is enough. The attempt despite no hope of succeeding, is precisely what’s needed, and will suffice.

If we live a million years, we can do no more, nor less, than that.

We are so much deeper and wider and richer than we will ever know, so much more than our personal histories can account for, and we might never know it but from these percolations bubbling up from the deep Unconscious, or those deliberate dippings below the surface.

Lending our pens to that which writes us.

[I wrote this post several years ago before I began painting myself. Now I find it more true than ever. Even for painting, my “brush” is dipped into the deep unconscious before I ever put a stroke on paper or canvas]

 

My Art or My Novel. Which Would You Choose?

Tags

art, Blogging, creatiity, Novel, painting, personal, Pleasure, writing, writing process

Dorothea Lange’s iconic photograph

Someone asked me recently what I loved more, my painting or my writing? Or, she added, is that like trying to choose which child you love most?

It is a little bit like that. Writing has always been the love of my life. Like a first child, I never thought I could love another as much as I loved him. And then number two came along and I learned that I could. Just as much, but differently.

Some children are easier to raise than others. My writing, like my first child, has wild mood swings. It’s like riding a roller coaster, one moment were up, up, up, dizzy with exhilaration, and the next were down, down, down, hating each other and sure we will never write another word again. But painting, like my second child, couldn’t be easier to live with, and there’s never been a cross word between us. She’s always ready to play when I am, and she keeps me delighted for hours.

Painting gives me more pure pleasure than writing. There’s pleasure in looking for a new project and in planning it. Pleasure in the process of painting and in the finished product. Pleasure hanging it, and every time I enter the room to view it anew.

There’s pleasure in writing too, especially in those first few hours, or days, or weeks, when the writing is hot and flowing out of me like I’m taking diction from some inspired muse. There’s even pleasure in the revision process where I’m weeding out what is extraneous and trying to make it as lean and luscious as possible. There’s pleasure in reading what I’ve written when it goes well, when I’m in the right mood, when I’m feeling confident or inspired.

Those are the peak moments. But in between all this pleasure are deep, deep lows. The sense of futility and frustration and despair can seem overwhelming. And then there are the long droughts when nothing inspires me. And the long, cold slogs when nothing is going well. And the times when I cannot force myself to sit down and try again, to keep it going. When I’d rather clean the toilet or go to the dentist or pull out my own teeth with pliers than sit down and write.

With painting, I never have to force myself to start or finish a project. If anything, I have to force myself to leave it be so I can do the laundry or prepare dinner. It’s not that I absolutely love everything I paint. But at the end of the day, it’s deemed good enough. And I feel my time was well spent. Sometimes I’m thrilled with the results and hang them on the wall. Other times I’m mildly pleased and lean them against some bookcase or pin them on bulletin board. Either way they keep me company. They suffice.

But writing, when I’m finished, disappears from sight. I might get pleasure re-reading it from time to time, but mostly I don’t bother. The few pieces that get published seem to go into a dark vault and are forgotten. Worse are the pieces that were much-loved but remain unread, unpublished. Instead of pleasure is a sense of loss and regret, of unrequited love, of stillborn life.

Given all that, you might wonder why I bother to write at all. Why not give it up for painting?

Because I can’t imaging life without writing. In some ways, for me, it’s like breathing. It seems a natural, intrinsic part of me. I can’t live without it, as difficult as it might be. I’m writing in my head all the time. Thinking and writing gets all rolled up together. Writing–putting thoughts on paper–takes me to a deeper place, and sometimes I don’t know what I think until I write it. It’s like the act of writing pulls up astonishing things from my unconscious and twirls them before my eyes so I can see what I’ve never seen before and be amazed. How could I give up something like that?

Writing this blog gives me pleasure and is a great outlet for my need to write. And your “likes” and comments help to sustain that pleasure, make it seem worthwhile. I don’t feel like the writing has dropped into a black hole or disappeared into cyberspace. I don’t feel I’m engaged in a futile exercise.

But my novel. My poor, poor novel. Unless I return to it, it will remain stillborn. And that I can’t bear. Pleasure or no, I must do it justice and publish it myself if nothing else. But all that takes time. Days, weeks, months of dedicated painstaking work. And I’ve become bewitched by painting. I can hardly stand to be away from her for a minute, let alone days, weeks, months.

So if you were me, what would you choose? Pure pleasure, or high anxiety and uncertain results? The answer seems obvious.

And yet, and yet, in the still of night my novel still calls to me.  In soft, wistful whispers.

Into the Flow, Bringing the Mountain Top into Market Place

Tags

Flow, harmony, in the zone, peace, sailing, spirituality, Tahiti

Have you ever felt being in the flow of things? That optimum experience that many athletes and artists feel when time disappears and everything you are doing just seems to click effortlessly into place?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who has written extensively on flow, calls it “an almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness” in which you “become, at least temporarily, part of a larger entity” or even “at one with the harmony of the cosmos.”

I’ve experienced this a few times for extended periods, but most often only for brief moments. The type of flow usually comes after long periods of meditation, usually when I’m outside, immersed in nature, when thoughts cease and sights and sounds flow through me. “Mountain-top” moments you might call them. But occasionally, more rarely, they happen in the “market place,” unexpectedly, in the middle of a busy day. I love it when that happens.

The first extended period of this came when we were sailing in the South Pacific. We were anchored in a cove off Tahiti and I went ashore to do some shopping.

I felt unusually light-headed, as if walking on air, or as if some filter called “me” had disappeared, and all that was left was this crystal clear awareness taking in everything and everyone I met—that “not-two” feeling I mentioned at the end of my last post on ‘Lightness of Being.” That sense stayed with me during the bus ride to Papeete and slowly dissipated as I went about my shopping.

I wrote a poem about the experience when I returned home, focusing on the bus ride. When sitting in the open-sided bus looking out at the passing landscape that sense of “flow” was especially intense.

On a Bus to Papeete

Wind through the window
Streaming through my hair

I in my stillness
Hurtling through the air

Trees and grasses and roads bending
Faces with flowers and houses blending

Objects like petals on a dark stream,
streaming through me, leave me

Clean and empty as a hollow reed, still
faintly tingling with the rhapsody of being.

It happened another time when we had returned home from our voyage and I was working as a manager of a small popular family restaurant. It was Sunday morning and we were slammed. Folks were lined up out the door waiting to be seated. The hostess was going crazy trying to keep up with the demand, scribbling down names and crossing them off, leading couples and families to tables, bringing out highchairs and crayons and coloring books, taking out trays of water.

The waitresses were buzzing around the room taking orders, pouring drinks, balancing up to six plates at a time in their arms. The poor busboys were clearing tables as fast as they could, wiping them down, hauling cartloads of dishes back to the kitchen. Things were at a fever high pitch of frantic in the back of the house too, as cooks called out orders, slapped slabs of bacon and sausage on the griddle, flipped pancakes, whisked eggs.

And I was everywhere at once, making the rounds, helping out as I moved along, taking around coffee, refilling cups, chatting up the guests, helping to clear tables and seat people, checking up on missing orders, lending a hand to the stack of avocados that needed peeling to make up a new batch of guacamole.

Everywhere at once, acutely attuned to what was needed in the moment and filling in the gap, just streaming along, light-headed, calm, exuberant, being all things at once and nothing at all, just letting the ebb and flow of activity move me along, marveling even while in the midst of it, at how natural, spontaneous, hyper-aware, hyper-alive I felt.

It lasted all morning and well into the early afternoon. Then as the stream of guests faded, and the restaurant began to empty, so did the “high,” that sense of flow, and I was gently landed back on the ground again, normal me, but not a bit tired and still very happy.

Now most of the time I feel I’m being carried along mid-stream, not “in the flow” at the center as I was then, but skirting it, somewhere between the flow and the swirling eddies at the edge of the stream. It’s a pleasant place to be, knowing the “flow” is right there beside me, ready to whisk me away again when I’m ready and things are just right.

But happy too that I’m avoiding for the most part those pesky eddies that try to pull me away into the shallows—-those petty, tiresome swirls, and fearful spins, and down-spouts of grief and anger that are always there, ready to pull me under and upside-down when they can. Usually I am able to scramble free easier than I have in the past, knowing that whatever trouble in the world they represent is more easily solved when I’m not tumbling around in the turmoil.

Mostly it’s a balancing act, trying to bring those mountaintop moments into the marketplace and finding myself somewhere in between. Not an unpleasant place to be.

[First posted this in May 2013 under a slightly different title. Things are rather chaotic in my life right now and I found this post a soothing reminder. Still seeking to bring those mountain-top experiences down into the market-place.]

Hot Hills in Summer Heat, Revised

Tags

creative process, Deborah J. Brasket, Nature, poetry, writing

“I watch them every summer, the hot hills crouched like a lion beside the road, tawny skin pulled taut across long, lean ribs. I would take my hand and trace round ripples of male muscle, feel the hot rise and cool dip of his body. . . .”

So begins a poem I wrote years ago as a young woman driving along the Central Coast of California on my way to class at Cal Poly University in San Luis Obispo.  I loved the commute along highway 101, especially that stretch between Pismo and Avila with the golden rolling hills studded with oak groves towering up beside me on one side, while on the other side lay the Pacific Ocean, cool and shimmering,  far below.

My commute was a kind of communion with silent companions that lay still and passive while I moved past them, watching them fervently. I traveled with my hands stretched out, tracing the changing contours of the passing landscape with my fingers. I felt the silky coolness of the sea, the soft brush of the hot hills– physically, intimately, intensely. And I felt as if I was leaving part of myself behind as I streamed past them

It was an overwhelming feeling, permeated by a sense of longing and loss, because that sense of connection, of “oneness,” I felt so keenly, was so fleeting.  A waft of perfume, a balmy breeze, that slowly dissipates and disappeared.

Knowing this, sometimes my watching was like a spurned lover or jealous mistress. Sometimes like a distant voyeur, or persistent suitor, watching and waiting, watching and waiting.  Waiting for that moment, as my poem concludes, when the lion so still and silent beside me would “rise, stretch his sensuous body against the sky with one low moan” and “pursue me”.

Pursue and devour, was the unstated implication.  “Swallow me whole” is the metaphor that comes to mind these days—consummation.

All that waiting paid off, it appears.  My relationship with the natural world has matured over the years. How I remember so long ago watching the streaming stars passing overhead on those hot, balmy nights, and being filled with a deep sense of longing and loss.  This too must pass, I thought, and it was almost unbearable.  But no more.

Now when I say goodnight to the stars before going to bed–the nights hot and balmy or crystal clear and cold–there’s no sense of longing. When I turn away toward the house nothing is lost. It’s all a part of me now.  A sustaining presence.

And the passing days and nights, that sense of fleetingness that the poets have mourned over the ages, is “a dark stream streaming through me,” as I write in another poem.  It’s all one, the stream and the streaming.  It always was.

For those curious, here’s the complete poem I quoted earlier, written so long ago and recently revised.

 

Hot Hills in Summer Heat

I watch them every summer, the hot hills

Crouched like a lion beside the road,

Tawny skin pulled taut across

Long, lean ribs.

 

I would take my hand and trace

Round ripples of male muscle,

Feel the hot rise and cool dip

of his body.

 

I see the arrogance—rocky head held

High against a blazing sky, the patient

Power unmindful of the heat

that holds me.

 

One day he will rise, stretch his sensuous

Body against the sky with one, low moan.

On silent paws he will pursue me.

And so I wait.

[I first posted this in September 2012 with the original version of the poem. This post features the revised draft. It’s a work in progress, as all things are, it seems.]

“Looking for Bobby,” or Losing & Finding Ourselves

Tags

"Looking for Bobby", Deborah J. Brasket, fiction, identity, literary fiction, short fiction, short stories, Short Story Month

May is short story month, and in celebration I’m posting a short story I wrote years ago and published in an online journal, Bareback Lit. Unfortunately, the story can no longer be read on that site.

It’s a strange little story that plays with how we identify ourselves and each other, and how we lose and find ourselves in those identities. It’s not a story to “enjoy,” but I hope you find it interesting.

LOOKING FOR BOBBY

By Deborah J. Brasket

Bobby is bad. Just turned seventeen, he’s big and mean with hands the size of basketballs. Not that he plays basketball. He likes the clean, straight edge of a razor or knife better.

Bobby is loose. His long sharp bones seem to hang in his tight skin; and when he walks, he dances.

Now he runs. Behind him the drugstore, the cop, growing smaller and smaller. And the sun, the morning sun, soft on his back. Before him races his long, clean shadow, his sharp legs slicing through the sidewalk like knives through butter. He smiles at the image, then turns, darts down an alley. With a quick glance behind him, he spreads long, powerful hands on the top of a wall and scrambles over. Dropping lightly, he pauses, crouched and coiled. His small dark eyes sweep up and swallow the neat back yard, the little house before him. The screen door gapes open like a black hole and he springs for it, entering. He jerks the door close behind him.

“Out boys! I told you kids to stay outside for awhile!”

The house is dark and steeped with strange, myster­ious odors. Bobby hesitates, his breath big as watermelons and hard to swallow. A taste like blood. Soon his hard, dark pupils grow soft and fat with the darkness absorbed. All around him rush shapes, objects, unfamiliar. Bobby jumps.

“Greg! You hear me? I mean it now. Just git on outside!”

Slowly, stealthily, Bobby approaches the open doorway and the voice behind it. He places his hand on his hip pocket, feels the hard shaft within, and then swings forward to fill the doorway.

The room is draped against the light. Only the glow of the TV and the woman’s pale skin can be seen. She sits curled in the corner of the couch, plumped up like a big pillow, one bare leg tucked childishly beneath her. Bobby grins.

The woman glances up, annoyed. Her round eyes grow rounder as she takes him in. “Where’s Greg?”

“I dunno no Greg. You just sit quiet little mama and you won’t get hurt.”

“Me sit quiet? That’s a laugh! You’re the one making all the noise!” Her plump legs unfold and she pads toward the TV, turns the volume up. “Sorry, but I’ve been waiting all morning to watch this. Go ahead and sit down though. It won’t be long.” She smiles, curls up into a ball again on the couch.

Bobby flicks a wet tongue over his lips. Smart ass, he thinks. He strolls over to the TV and yanks the plug from its socket. Now there’s no light but hers.

“Well, that’s a fine howdy-do! Guess I do watch too much TV, though. That’s what my husband says anyway. Thinks I spend all day parked in front of the tube. As if I had the time! But those soaps. You watch them once and you’re hooked. All those lives running out every which way. And you got to ask yourself–how will it all end? You never can tell which way a life will turn, can you?”

She sits now on the edge of the couch, elbows on knees, her wide pale face caught between the palms of her hands like a moon among clouds, watching him as he stands there with the plug in his hand.

“It’s all right now. You can sit down. I won’t bite or anything.” She winks. “I can see you need to rest a spell. How ‘bout a Coke?”

Bobby flings the cord away and springs to a crouch, whipping his knife out in an instant where it lays now in his hand like a living thing.

“Who you think you talkin’ to, woman?” he says, eyes narrowed to slits. “You see this here?” He turns the blade so that it catches a stray beam of light, making it dance in his hand. “This here’s my own special baby. My very fine and lovin’ lady. She do anything for me. She like nothing better than to decorate little ladies like yourself. So you sit there real quiet-like and don’t get her riled none, hear?” Bobby’s feet move, restless, beneath him. The knife feels like a fish, cold and slippery, in his hand. And this woman like a deep, round pool.

The woman gives a startled little laugh. “My! You’re quick-like, aren’t you! You remind me of my brother. He was wild like that and all. Always springing out at a body! And look what’s come of him!”

Bobby snorts. “Lady, I may be a number of things, but I promise you this, I ain’t nowhere near like your brother!”

“Why sure you are! Look at you. You have his mouth—— corners all droopy, like his smile fell down, I use to tell him. He never did like to hear me say that. No sense of humor. You don’t want to turn out like him, though.”

“That a fact?” Bobby says. “So? Just what happened to this all-bad bro’ of yours?” he demands, curious.

“0-h-h-h, you wouldn’t want to know,” she assures him, shaking her head slowly, her round eyes grip­ping his and never leaving his face.

Bobby’s knife slips from the light as he feels the room moving back and forth beneath him. He gives his head a shake as if to free it. With an effort he lifts his knife.

“You one crazy woman, you know that? Why don’t you shut that fat face awhile. In a little bit, I’m gone, and you ain’t never gonna know I was here at all. See?”

“Oh no you don’t!” she says firmly, rising. “You can’t stay here one minute more with that knife in your hand. Heaven’s! You’re not that much like my brother! The mouth maybe, and the funny way with your feet like you’re going to fall flat on your face, and your eyes. . . maybe. But no,” she adds decisively and strides past him toward the front door. “This won’t do at all. I have two little boys to think about. Why, if they should come home now and see you here like this . . . why, I don’t know what they’d think! It’s bad enough on TV. But in their own home?”

She opens the door, holding it for him. The light on the lawn is dazzling, rising in waves of green. The sidewalk lays across it like a white-hot poker.

“Go on, now. Go home where you belong. Take a nice long nap. You’ll feel lots better.” Bobby steps out into the light and shakes himself free from the cloying darkness.

“Git, now!” she shoos him away with the back of her hand. “And for heaven’s sake, put that knife away! Remember what I told you about my brother!”

Bobby shoots away from her touch like a bullet.

The noon sun is hot and intense upon Bobby’s head as he slows to a walk. He studies his shadow laying in a fat, round puddle at his feet, fishes it for lost images of himself. That crazy broad! He tries to laugh but can’t quite manage yet, can’t quite figure out how she failed to know him. But he ima­gines how he’ll hoot when he tells the others. Tells them how this crazy fat lady mistook him for her brother, tried to sit him down and feed him hot chicken soup and cookies for lunch. They’ll get a kick out of that one! For they know him well. Even the young ones know all about ol’ Bobby and his dancing, blinking blade!

He feels better now and begins to run, his knife reaching out before him. He feels his blood pumping through his veins, pumping so fine and fast it would like to cut loose without him.

He’s almost to the corner when he hears a sound behind him.

“Freeze! Hold it right there!”

Bobby grins. At least the Man knows him. He stops and turns. The sun dancing on his knife blade seems to leap from his hand like a fish.

Slowly Bobby slips into the pool lying like a shadow at his feet. The splash is the sound of gun fire. Cool, cloy­ing arms reach up to grab him, pull him under. He breaks loose, struggling for the surface, for the light, for some forgotten image.

Lying in his own dark puddle, Bobby looks up to see the fat sun wink. And close its eye on him forever.