Fighting Darkness



                 I am telling him about my first blog entry.  The one I wrote about Brian Doyle and how storytellers are given the job of “fighting darkness” in the world.  Stories are beacons I say; they shed light in dark places.  They illuminate, they’re important.  Storytellers have a big and uneasy job to do.  I am telling Blaine about this.  He is visiting us from Seattle where he is currently undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma.  He wants to get out of the city and visit us on Whidbey Island before he starts his stem cell transplant next week.  It is starting to remind him of cancer, and he doesn't want Seattle to be all about cancer for him.  He likes everything else about the city too much for it to be just that.   Please come up and visit I tell him.  We’d love to have you. 

                So here we are in my minivan and I am showing him around Anacortes.  We hit my favorite coffee place and chat for over an hour before heading over to Washington Park to do the loop and get some views that can basically be seen from the vehicle since he is currently using a cane and isn’t able to walk up or down many stairs or go long distances.  The car is a compromise, but both of us will take it.   It is what we can do today.  We went to Mt. Erie earlier, but couldn’t manage the steps leading down to the lookout, so we decided for plan B and head to Washington Park.  As we are driving I get serious for a moment.  We have been telling jokes and carrying on just like old times the entire weekend.  We were roommates in Alaska for a summer and most of the time he had me in stitches.  Then and now.  He’s an actor with a wicked sense of humor, and I love it.  Potty jokes have been on the menu all weekend, even at the dinner table, which is usually a no-no at our house, but because he is Blaine and there’s really no stopping him, we let it slide and laugh our heads off.  But here in the car I get serious.  I am thinking about my previous blog post, about Brian Doyle, and how there is something about the cancer epidemic affecting all of us that is dark and scary.  I wonder if Blaine will let me write about it.  I get serious for a moment and ask him.  “Blaine, what story from your life would you tell to fight fartness?”  He looks at me and we both start to crack up.  Apparently the potty humor is becoming ingrained and I really did ask him how he would “fight fartness”.  I can’t even be serious around him when I’m trying to be. 

I correct myself immediately and say “darkness, what story from your life would you tell to fight darkness?”  And he tells me this one.  This one right now.  The one that I’m in the middle of; the cancer one.  I ask him if he has a desire to write about it, or to blog about it and he says not really.  I think that even though he’s a good writer, maybe he’s not feeling well enough most of the time to write about it.  I see him grimace when he moves; when he goes to stand up it takes all of his effort and will.  The pain, even with a handful of painkillers every day must be really difficult to bear.  They inserted a slew of hardware into his back last spring when tumors were found on his spine, and he claims his body is still adjusting.  Then he had chemo, and stem cell harvesting, and now the stem cell transplant looms on the horizon.  I wonder how much a body can handle.  He’s been given advice just to do it.  To listen to his doctors and follow the protocol.  He will get through it.  But it certainly isn’t easy to witness, even with his humor and the gift of laughter and love he has brought to our home this weekend.  I wish I could put my hands on him and make it go away. 

We drive into the park.  There is a driving trail that takes us to the uppermost part where there are sweeping views of the islands and ocean surrounding Anacortes.  I back in and out and in and out again.  I want his view to be perfect from the car in case he doesn’t feel like walking.   After about five minutes he gets frustrated with my doodling around.  “Just park here.” He says.  “I can walk.”  And he can and he does.  And the first thing he sees is this tree.  It is a cool looking tree and we walk over and practically hug it and he is taking a picture of me by the tree, and then we are going to do a selfie, more like a twofie, with the tree, and this lady says she will take a picture of us by the tree together.  She tells us that she only takes pictures of herself from the waist up and then she looks at them and the longer her vacation goes on the higher up she requests photos of her be taken.  We laugh and Blaine says she can probably tell how long the vacation lasted by how high up the pictures went on her body.  He thinks by the end of a long vacation all she has is pictures of her nose up.  We all laugh because it’s true.  We want to look our best.  That is our reality.  Blaine wants his hair back.  He lost it after his last round of chemotherapy.  I want to be 20 pounds thinner and not have stretch marks from carrying two babies.  We all have our vanities and physical desires.  But just as we are, we stand by the beautiful dead tree, so pretty there on the bluff overlooking the blue water of the inlets below.  Inside I am happy to just to be here with him.  Outside I wonder if I will look 20 lbs too fat in the picture. 

                Our weekend goes on and we laugh and talk and watch Jimmy Fallon, Will Ferrell, and Kevin Hart’s lip sync contest.  We like Will Ferrell better than Jimmy, and Kevin Hart better than both of them.  We watch episode after episode of “An Idiot Abroad” and feel sorry for Carl.  Steven Merchant and Ricky Gervais are so awful to Carl we think.  But Carl is making his living off of being tortured by Steven and Ricky, so in the end we don’t feel that sorry for him.   We watch a bunch of TV. 
Our favorite part of our Saturday viewing marathon is Will Ferrell dressed up as Little Debbie on The Tonight Show, but I digress. 

                The day I have to take him back to Seattle I show him the picture of us by the tree and the one of the tree by itself.  I notice that the branch on the far left is full of green needles.  I tell Blaine that one branch of the tree is very much alive.  He tells me no way and I tell him yes way and show him the picture on my phone.  He is kind of amazed too.  We didn’t notice it at all while we were standing next to it.  It is almost like that one branch of the tree is alive and well to make sure the rest of the tree survives there on the bluff.  Strange.  He says it is still a cool looking tree and I agree.  We’ll appreciate it just the way it is even if it is different than we first thought it was.  What else is there to do?

Today I am nursing an emotional hangover.  I dropped Blaine off at his condo in Kent, south of Seattle, yesterday and I miss him.  In his absence I decide to write in my journal.  I see the package of Para-grams sitting there on the couch where he left them.   While he was here he found them on my bookshelf.  He brought them into the kitchen and said, “I used to have some just like these!”  I know I said.  You gave those to me.  He gave them to me 20 years ago when we were roommates.  Every time he wrote in his journal he would randomly pull out one of his Para-grams, which are little cards with a topic printed along the top and underneath a bit of corresponding wisdom written by spiritual guru Paramahansa Yogananda.  He would copy the quote off the card, then write his own journal reflection on the topic under the quote.  I liked the idea so much that I started following him to the coffee shop and started journaling too.  He eventually gifted me with my own set of cards.

  I decided to pull a card and write in my journal by myself today.  It felt a little lonely, but I decided I would quote it and reflect on it for old time’s sake and because I couldn’t shake the intense emotions that were surfacing for me after spending time with Blaine this weekend.  I reached in and pulled one entitled “Banish Fear of Death”.  I know that sounds almost too perfect for this post, like maybe I grabbed a few cards and sifted through for one that fit the situation.  I didn’t.  I pulled this one.  I will quote it here for old time’s sake, for myself and everyone else out there “fighting fartness”. 

Banish Fear of Death

A “Para-Gram” By Paramahansa Yogananda

“You can begin your march toward freedom from the fear of death by ceasing to be attached to the duties of the body: eating, sleeping, exercising, and so on.  Perform your duty to the body with joy but with nonattachment.  More and more you will realize this truth, that man is a soul, but has a body; you will no longer dread parting with the fleshly garment.  Attachment to the body is a self-inflicted torture brought on by ignorance.  Death gives new roles to actor-souls so that they may play in new dramas on the stage of life.  The sage who has developed his inner spiritual sight knows that the cessation of earthly life gives man a new beginning in another, supernal life. “





Blaine (center) playing "J.D." in Skagway's "Days of '98 Show" - 1991





I pulled another card when I got done reading the first one, this time for Blaine.  We each need our own to reflect on.  His said “Hope”.   



Our cool tree at Washington Park - Anacortes

 







A Little Tail

Preface

 

I posted this picture on my Facebook page after spending a few days at a writing conference. 

A friend saw my FB post, and challenged me to write to this nonsense prompt:  “So this guy walks into a bar with a salami under one arm and a poodle under the other ....... there is your writing prompt....go!!.” 

 Why not? I thought.  I haven’t written much fiction.  I entered a 100-word story contest a few years ago, and I wondered if this could be another 100-word short story.  It turned out very differently than I anticipated.  It happens.  It happens almost every time I write, but I am grateful for the surprise that always accompanies full engagement in any project, even a project as silly, or maybe as serious as this.   

I ran into my friend later that week at my son’s baseball game, and told him I took him up on his salami prompt.  After all, it’s a good taste of my own medicine.  As an intermediate elementary and former middle school language arts teacher, I assign homework for a living. 

 He said it came from the movie “The Breakfast Club”.  I was curious, so I did a little internet research when I got home and learned that actor Judd Nelson, John Bender in the movie, improvised the joke.   It goes like this:  

“A naked blonde walks into a bar with a poodle under one arm and a 2 foot salami under the other.  She lays the poodle on the table.  The bartender says, “I suppose you won’t be needing a drink.” 

“Naked lady says…….”

     Bender crashes through the ceiling before he finishes the joke.  People have been speculating on the punch line ever since.

 I have no idea what the punch line is, but I do know that in another version of the attached story, Frank undoubtedly is…a naked blonde.   

 

A Little Tail

Shock, horror, disbelief.  Frank stumbled over the threshold of Tiny's Taproom with Roxy, his prized teacup poodle under his left arm, and what moments earlier had been his baby, his beloved Chihuahua Gaucho, under his right.  

 "Hey Frank...good to see ya back, long time no see!”  bellowed Tiny, the big-hearted-soul of a man Frank knew better than his own brother, as he hustled from behind the bar as fast as his hefty frame could humpf over to where Frank stood frozen, blankly staring into the taproom. 

 "Hey...ya got this one with ya!” Tiny said patting the curls on Roxy’s head, “but WHAT the HELL is that?" he blurted, pointing quizzically at the inert object held fast under Frank's right forearm.
                Frank’s eyes rolled between Tiny and the salami.  "I'm...I'm not sure," Frank stammered.  "I…I…think it's...it's a salami."  He could barely speak.  He only knew he held a sausage instead of Gaucho, his favorite companion and best friend during the long evenings and weekends he passed alone, especially now that he had quit coming in here every day.  Desperately, he searched his mind for some rational explanation, but finding none, settled on something he could believe.  This, he told himself, was a hallucination. 

At his last AA meeting they had talked about hallucinations and how they sometimes accompany quitting a terrible addiction to drugs, or in Frank's case, alcohol.  Of course, he was hallucinating.  He stood there in the doorway for the next few moments wrestling his mind to recount his evening, desperate to tether himself to a familiar reality. 

It had been a day like any other.  Frank left work a little early, took Roxy and Gaucho to their grooming appointment, then leashed them up for a leisurely walk home where he anticipated having his frozen fish dinner, chocolate chip cookies and a full night of drinking O'Doul’s while watching “Dancing with the Stars” on television.   Frank looked forward to this plan, and all had gone according to plan until the encounter with ‘Her’. 

He was just six blocks from home when a sinewy hand reached out to him from the edge of the sidewalk.  She stepped in front of him.  He tried to circumvent her, but even with her small stature she somehow blocked the entire sidewalk.  A mass of unkempt, matted hair and layers of worn out clothing gave her the look of a common homeless vagabond, but her eyes elevated her to some unidentifiable status.  The look of them both entranced and terrified him.   And her voice.  Was it real?  It stopped him and he stood momentarily paralyzed in front of her.   She asked if she could pet Gaucho; said she'd had a pup just like him as a little girl, but couldn't afford one now.  Wondered if he'd be so kind as to let her hold him for a moment.  Gaucho, curious about her too, pulled and stretched out on his leash to more closely inspect the hem of her ankle-length skirt.  

 "No way.” Frank grumbled, yanking back too hard on the leash.   "We just left the groomer and you’re not gonna dirty him up!" he snapped.   Something about the encounter set him off, and he reeled up the leashes, gripped a dog under each arm, and stormed past her.  With a taste for good bourbon on his tongue that hadn't been there for weeks, he charged down the sidewalk.  It was all too much.  He was trying to improve his life, but everywhere he went there was someone or something at him, forcing him to defend himself, and giving him a reason to drink again.
                The open sign hanging in the window made a welcome glow on the steps leading into the dank little establishment that had sufficed as his second home and family for the better part of the last decade.  This would be fine.  Just one more drink to calm his nerves.  He could handle it.  Just one and he’d head home.  But on the final step up into the bar, he’d looked down to adjust Roxy who was wriggling under his left arm, and what he saw next caused his stomach to lurch so hard he nearly vomited all over the entryway.  Gaucho’s head and legs were gone and in his place Frank held a long, red sausage.  Catching his balance, he resisted the urge to throw up, but couldn’t move his feet.  Thank God Tiny came to greet him and stayed beside him, blocking the “family” sitting at the bar from seeing him like this.   
     "Frank...you OK?"  Tiny softened.  He took Roxy and lightly caressed Frank’s shoulder with his big round hand-paw.  "Hey, maybe drinkin' ain't what you're supposed to be doin', " he whispered so the rest of the regulars couldn't hear them.  "Maybe you should go on home and get some rest."  

Home sounded like a good place to finish hallucinating.  Frank shook head.  He must look ridiculous standing there.    

                 "Yeah...yeah....you're right Tiny.  I shouldn’t be drinking.” Frank reached and took Roxy back, adjusted the salami under his other arm trying to act like nothing was wrong, and tripped-staggered out into the crisp, cool night air.   Inhaling deeply, he took all the oxygen he could into his lungs in an attempt to find the courage to look back down at himself.  When he did, he saw that he was still holding the sausage.  He wanted to put it down and run, but he couldn’t let go of it.  It was Gaucho.  Wasn’t it?

 Panicking, he was determined to get home, but the farther he went, the more desperate he felt.   Fear weighed him down, weighed down his steps and his breathing.  Just six blocks to go, he could make it, but he needed to lean and clutch to the familiar streetlamp to steady his steps and his breath.  He needed to breathe and calm himself and hang onto everything, including the salami.  
     Resting there, he heard a whisper.  What was that?  Surely it wasn’t a human voice.  Startled by the sound, he looked around frantically, fearful that his hallucinations were now auditory. 

      When he turned back to clutch the lamppost, she was in front of him again in her ragged, layered dress, with her disheveled hair and empty outstretched hands.
     "Sir, if I may ask one more time.  Do you have anything I can eat?  I haven't always been like this.  But I'm hungry and alone and I see that you still have something I could eat.  Will you share it with me?"  She paused, and Frank looked straight into her questioning eyes.  Her voice was like a bell, and he felt it vibrate through his ears and down into his chest.  Hummingbird wings fluttered inside of him where he thought his heart should be.  "I promise to return what I can if you trust me to repay you.”

Why was she asking “one more time” for something to eat?  Had he been carrying the salami all along?  He left the groomers with both dogs...he knew that much, or thought he knew that much.  Had she asked him for food the last time he saw her?  He was sure she had only asked to pet and hold Gaucho.  It was all so confusing.  He put Roxy down and dropped to his knees as his resolve cracked open like the broken up sidewalk in front of him.   
                "You can’t repay me”, Frank screamed at her.  “You have no idea what you are asking of me!”  He was hysterical now.  She continued looking at him, but did not move or speak.  She simply asked again if he would share with her, then looked at him patiently, waiting for a reply.  Her quiet demeanor ruffled him and he screamed at her again. 

                “Here!" He slammed the salami in her outstretched palm, “take all of it!  I don't have anything else." he quavered in a voice so shrill and high-pitched he barely recognized the sound as his own.  
     She examined the salami and put it up to her mouth.  "Thank you sir" was all she said, then consumed the meat immediately and with such hunger that it made Frank cry to watch her.
     He wailed there on his knees, cupping the back of his head with his hands; forcing his face into the ground.  He let go, shaking and sobbing; clinging to the sidewalk as if to keep from falling off of it.  Frank gasped, but did not turn to face her as she touched him and whispered into his ear, “Do not be afraid of what you don’t understand.”  

                Frank felt her hands on him now, and could only assume that she was feeling for his wallet.  He didn’t care.  The pain of losing Gaucho in this weird and horrifying way was too much.  Too much, and he was sure that he would be going away soon too.  Maybe he would turn into a salami, or be taken to the place where they take people who hallucinate, and have nervous breakdowns in the middle of dimly lit sidewalks in silent little towns. 

       He cried for what seemed like hours.  So long that the woman had gone.  She had eaten and left quietly as not to disturb her benefactor.  For whatever it was that had shaken him so badly was no concern of hers.  She knew.  Years of encounters with men of questionable character and emotional status had taught her that much, and she ate, touched him, and silently wished him well as he broke himself down into all of his pieces there on the sidewalk just beyond the neon window light of Tiny's Taproom.   As suddenly as she appeared, she vanished between the rundown buildings behind the familiar streetlamp into the middle of the night.
     Time passed.  Frank wasn't sure how long he'd been there.  He felt empty and exhausted.  He exhaled one long last agonizing wail that echoed off the quiet storefronts, and as he did, embarrassment slithered over him and humiliation turned to fury.  He thought perhaps she was still behind him.   Was she mocking him?  He lifted his face slowly off the sidewalk.  She was the one who should be ashamed, not him.  He knew how to hurt her.  He would ridicule her for her nasty clothes, ugly hair, and begging on the street.  He would put her in her place, and then leave her where he’d found her. 

He pushed up, spun around to face her and readied to fire.   No one.  The first consonant fell from his mouth into the empty air in front of him, and he stood in stunned in the silence.  He surveyed the emptiness up and down the street.  No one in any direction.  Just Frank.  Just Frank and Roxy.  Roxy, who by now had sniffed her way down the sidewalk and over to the garbage can attached to the streetlight on the other side of the road.  She was happily eating garbage that had fallen from the can, and he could see her there sniffing and licking in the lamplight.  Thank God he thought.  She was safe and still with him, and he felt every muscle in his body release.  

Frank walked the few blocks to her, bent over and reached out for her.  As he stooped down to touch her, a quick flash of light reflected back at him and seemed to bounce up off the pavement into his face.  Frank looked for the source of the light.  His eyes followed the refractive glow to the silver side of what appeared to be an aluminum wrapper from a discarded hotdog.  Keeping his hand firm on Roxy, he moved the wrapper around so he could see how the light had bounced from it so boldly into his face.  Again it flashed and Frank could see that the streetlamp and the moon together were illuminating this patch of sidewalk.  The light flicked back towards the sky and upon closer examination he could see that the white underside of the wrapper was covered with little red bloody-looking, ketchupy paw prints leading off the wrapper and on down the sidewalk, into the grass beyond.  

Roxy was spotless when they’d left the groomers, and the prospect of having a ketchup-covered pooch on top of everything else pissed Frank off.  He cursed as he lifted her up and away from his chest in order to clean the inevitable red goop off her paws.  Searching his jacket pocket for the tissues he always kept there, he felt something foreign.  He squeezed his hand tight around whatever it was and tried to identify it within his grasp.  Not able to do so, he pulled out the object and found he held not tissues, but Gaucho’s leash, complete with the little metal bone engraved with his name.  For the second time today Frank was speechless.  He remembered searching himself there in the doorway of the Taproom hours earlier when he realized he was holding a salami instead of Gaucho.  He’d checked his coat, and pants pockets for Gaucho, a leash, anything to explain the unexplainable.  He found nothing then except his wallet and his tissues. 

                He thought of her touch.  Certain that she’d been searching for his wallet; he reached back now and found it undisturbed in his back pants pocket.   Why had she touched him?  Confused, he continued with the task of wiping Roxy’s little feet.  Turning one, then two, then a third and a fourth he discovered she was completely clean.  How is this possible? He thought.  Surely she made the prints there on the sidewalk.  Didn’t she?    

What is going on? He wondered, feeling slightly afraid again that he was losing his grasp on reality.  He looked around, over each shoulder, then back at Roxy.  He didn’t want to allow himself to feel the strange lingering hope that was seeping into the corners of his mind.  He leaned hard on the lamppost.  He closed his eyes and a loud sound escaped from his throat.  He didn’t know what else to do besides yell.  None of it made sense.  Absolutely none of it, and Frank wanted the dark void of night surrounding him to know he didn’t know what else to do.  He yelled, and yelled and yelled into the night, at the moon, and at all the things he couldn’t explain. 

He paused to catch his breath, and before he started yelling again he heard it.  His voice echoing back at him in the form of the faint and familiar howl he loved so much.  Was it?  Could it really be?  

He yelled louder this time, and again a howl came back, this time familiar and unmistakable.  Joy wriggled into Frank’s chest and his eyes came open as he popped up from the lamppost.  He listened now, both ears intent on hearing what he thought he heard.  He couldn't reconcile what he knew, and what he felt.  He knew Gaucho turned into the salami earlier that evening.  He knew the street woman ate the salami under the streetlight.  So how could this be?  Was not one thing transferrable into just one other thing?   His mind held fast to the linear progression of things: a dog into a salami, a salami into dinner, a dinner into a woman who walks away from a man who is broken on the sidewalk over the loss of a dog.  Yet, here was evidence he could hear.  Gaucho’s call.  But could he believe it; could he trust that it was true?  

      The questions were big and unanswerable.  All he knew is that Gaucho was out there somewhere beckoning.  He heard.  He held the leash.  It was enough.  Frank dropped to his knees and looked up at the moon and stars beyond the streetlamp.  He’d never looked that far out into the sky before, and doing so made him feel different.  Bigger and open somehow.  He wondered if he really was hallucinating.  Perhaps this was something else. 

                There he paused.  In this wonderful, awful, half-way world; on this familiar street surrounded by glittering garbage, Frank understood he had been given two choices, each with their own special consequences. 
      He could go back to Tiny's, order that bourbon, bury the salami, and the events of this entire evening forever.
     Or, he could step off the sidewalk, out into this wild and illuminated night, and follow the call.  

He gently swooped up Roxy and started to go.  

 

Just for fun check out the link to the clip from The Breakfast Club (1985) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo21CkoxEmA

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting Games

 

It has been clear to me for quite some time that I am becoming less than I could be, and I need to get an oar back in the water of words.  All self-realization comes with a little prompting and help from others, but to take form and have meaning it must be sought after by oneself.  After battling against my better self for years, I finally started seeking out inspiration and guidance to uncover the reason for this deep and mysterious urge I have to begin writing.  First at a cozy, boutique writing conference called WRITE Doe Bay on Orcas Island, and then during bi-weekly author’s group meetings, and most recently at the Chuckanut Writer's Conference at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham.  I am working on a novel based loosely on the life experiences of my great-grandparents, and I traveled to this latest conference to learn all the best published secrets on fiction writing that could possibly be packed into one long weekend. 

With my breakout session itinerary in hand,  I penciled in exactly which authors I was going to go listen to and which ones I was going to pass up each day.  Brian Doyle was on my “pass up” list.  Not because his bio in the program wasn’t intriguing.  It was.  It was just that I had never heard of him, and he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was going to talk about the tips and tricks of writing the next great American historical fiction novel.  I planned to grab a late lunch and maybe take a prolonged coffee break while his session was happening.  Fortunately, the cafeteria ended up being closed for lunch by the time I got there, and they were out of hot coffee.  It was a sign.  I trudged back over to the auditorium and took a seat just as he was starting his talk.  I was meant to be there.  Hearing him was great medicine that came exactly when I needed it. 

            I learned that Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine, and he’s a prolific writer with many published books to his credit.  In addition to being an author and editor, he’s a roller-coaster ride, a work of art, a stand-up comedian, a heart-breaking realist and a metaphorical physician.  His words provoke, motivate and heal. 

The longer he told stories of everyday heroes and punching his brother in the face and his deep regret over shaking his 10-year-old son to the point of having him fear him, the more I realized I was in the presence of someone really powerful.  His writing is grounded in his faith, and it was apparent that he wasn’t there for the speaker’s fee, or fame.  He also came right out and told us that he wasn’t there to help us improve our writing skills either. Just like the mysterious little grinning frog on the cover of his book entitled Grace Notes, it wasn’t immediately apparent what his purpose was for being there.  What had he come to do?

  He was on a secret mission I think, and had a great message to share with us.  It was probably the most important message I have heard about writing.  I am stepping onto the path of writing with intention because of his words.  They went more or less something like this.  I would have liked to remember it all, but I couldn’t type as fast as he could talk.  He said:

"You are the ‘seanchai’; do you know what that means?  It is the Irish word for storyteller.  You were given a great, strange, painful gift and you have to use it every day.  Your job is to do this.  You don’t have to even think you’re good at it.  Your job is not to always write about yourself.  Realize slowly and painfully that it is your job to go around and listen and watch others. 

Who are you but the stories that you carry?  You are the seanchai in the Irish tradition.  You are the catcher of stories.  You are a catcher of stories and don't take it for granted.  It is hard to get published, but do it anyway. 

'Violence is a failure of the imagination' said the late poet William Stafford.  Your job is to use stories as weapons against the dark.  You didn't choose this did you?  It chose you.  We as human beings have one tool in our arsenal...our imaginations.  Catch and share stories that the world will remember."

I came home to reevaluate.  I have been selling myself short.  It has been years since I've posted anything on my blog.  So long that it isn't even really a blog anymore.  It is a collection place for some old published pictures and captions, and some articles and pieces of writing that never got out of the draft phase and never saw daylight.  Fat chance of those stories being ‘used as weapons against the dark’!   

What happened?  Life I suppose.  Life was, and is happening, and I have been letting the time go by and I have been playing waiting games with myself, putting it off, and waiting for the muse to come and show me the best time to begin.  This is common I hear, with writers.  They wait for inspiration to begin writing.  This must be why every book you read, or workshop you attend on art or writing informs you that you have to begin in order to be inspired, not the other way around.  The muse doesn’t show up for those who wait.  She shows up for those who begin. 

And on this day, in this auditorium with Brian Doyle and a few hundred other story catchers, I am broken by one man’s stories.  The roller coaster ride ends and I get off with my legs shaking and my soul stirring.  I have been broken before by a few other artists, but like a stubborn horse, I see that I will need a few breakings.  

I leave this time to start writing stories.  The waiting games are over, and the work begins.  Life will happen, but I’m determined not to let it sweep me along.  I intend to have an oar in the water and to steer the words.  I know if I do, the muse will steer the boat.

  I do believe I have a 'great, strange and painful gift' and I am called to use it.  I promise myself that writing, and breaking, and writing again will be part of my life from this day forward.

 

 

Author Connection: Link to Brian Doyle's article in which he mentions William Stafford -  http://www.smokebox.net/archives/word/doyleimagination403.html