DianeOutLoud

My last posting, filled with so many asides (in parentheses) has elicited a party of parentheses! I have been inundated with emails from readers and friends, packed with witticisms bouncing gleefully (back and forth (tra la la)) between those two curved arms. Parentheses are fun (whee!).

I seem to have a hang-up about applying correct punctuation marks and retaining grammatically correct ways of expressing myself. I turned to my friend Sharon, a technical writer, who lent me her Strunk and White, “The Elements of Style.” “No book in shorter space, with fewer words, will help any writer more than this persistent little volume.” (Persistent!) There are still periods and commas escaping (here, there and everywhere) in my writing, and I’m sure I’m still not consistent in keeping the dots, and dots with tails from wagging over to the wrong side of the brackets and quotation marks. But thank you, Sharon. I’ve come to think of parentheses as goalie nets. Sometimes the point gets in on the first try (good one!), but sometimes it doesn’t (and you can have another go at it).

I dug out J.D.Salinger’s “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction.” First having read this as a teenager, I had absolutely swooned over Salinger’s delivery. The profusion of parentheses enchanted me. In “Seymour An Introduction” Buddy Glass says, “Please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).” (I fell in love.)

And so my dear friends that urge me to write (and then actually read me), “(((xo)))”. I thank you without parentheses (and within). (You sustain me.)

What is it about an empty house that has me perched atop a lifetime of memories? Oh what a view. Everyone away for the long weekend, I hear the silent floors below me acutely. My landlord Derrick refers to me as God, as in, “Ask God up above.” I continually remind him to be gender correct, “That’s Goddess, Derrick, Goddess.” The attic seems higher now that I am alone in the house, and my bed under the skylight even closer to the night sky. I am uplifted in the dark and the quiet of this house, and felt myself shape shift in and out of all my roles and incarnations. When I whispered aloud my thank you prayer, for the first time I said, “Goodnight Father. Goodnight Mother,” and knew myself the young child of parents of a vast universe of such goodness and breadth.

Without the bustling household to keep me present I wandered in nostalgia. I wanted to find again (and did) the reason why Salinger named his other book “The Catcher In The Rye.” Holden Caulfield is telling his sister Phoebe that all he wants to be, if he had the choice, is to be that person from the song, “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” Phoebe corrects him, and tells him it’s from a poem, a Robert Burns poem, “If a body MEET a body coming through the rye.” But Holden is undeterred and says that the only thing he really wants to be is that catcher, the catcher in the rye. He keeps picturing a field with thousands of little kids playing some game, and he is the only big person there. And it’s his job to stand on the edge of some crazy cliff. That if one of the kids is running, and forgets, and gets too close to the edge, that he Holden will catch them if they start to go over the cliff. “That’s all I’d do all day.”

In 1975 I shared a cottage on the very southern tip of Quadra Island with another young mother, Christine. She with her son Koby and me with mine, Jonah. The day I sat with my legs dangling over the side of the high bluff, looking south, the late afternoon sun shimmered spectacularly for miles and miles down the Georgia Strait. Off glinting ice topped mountains, the most brilliant blue overhead and the glistening waves glancing below and beyond, I had one of those moments when a picture turned crystalline, clearly into focus. I looked behind me. I’d heard about this place. The children were safely asleep inside, and between the cabin and the cliff’s edge the long, tall grasses were swept in a dance. To and fro by the wind, flattened one way then another, then springing up, obscuring the cliff’s edge. I had become the catcher, the catcher in the rye.

Re-reading these books that have been so pivotal to my younger self had the same impact, but what a longer view! Out of curiosity I looked up the study guides on “Catcher In the Rye,” and they said the key issues of the book were alienation, loss and betrayal, and that Holden does not mature through the novel. That the cliff symbolizes the transition from childhood to adulthood, and his grandiose wish, to be a catcher in the rye, is him wanting to keep them as innocent children and prevent them from turning into phony adults.

Returning to Holden Caulfield and Buddy Glass again, this time I saw a conjoined love story (spanning both books), that began with Holden as a teenager and evolved into Buddy in his later years. And Buddy did make the transition to authentic adult. Both Holden and Buddy are grieving the brothers they loved and lost (Allie, Holden’s brother, to leukemia, and Buddy’s Seymour to a self-inflicted gunshot to the head). They continue to hold them. What I hear in Holden’s desire to catch those kids, is his grief and love for his brother, and a longing to keep someone SAFE. And Buddy, now the writer, in his loving backward look at his brother Seymour, in the writing, finds himself now joyously running alongside him.

At my son Jonah’s birth, I gave him Seymour as his middle name, in homage to his “Uncle,” Seymour Glass. And now startled, I have looked up, I have looked back, from these books, from the woman I am now to the teenage mother I was then, in grief, with longing and with love, and I see it; I have finally caught me.

We are writers all. We determine the page of our days. Our deepest desire is to write our own life into a love story. “Seymour An Introduction” is simply one of the greatest love stories I have ever read. I invite you to re-view these two books through the lens of who you are now. And I share with you a piece of writing advice that Seymour wrote to Buddy, two questions that we can ask ourselves at the end of every day…

Were most of your stars out?
Were you busy writing your heart out?

Good Life
diane

If you still have Spring Fever after the Summer Solstice, is it serious?
(FORWHY = because…)

Crazy
1. Informal: insane
2. Like crazy = wildly
3. Extremely fond
4. Foolish or eccentric

Ah, crazy in the attic (BOLIDE = fireball, and SINCIPUT = forehead). Starting to have a ring to it. But it’s a wonderfully sunny day. The music’s on (Teddy Thompson, Anthony, Rufus) and I’m thrilling at my lofty position (KITTIWAKE = cliff nesting gull) in this weather. The breeze (ZEPHYR) blows through it. Unfortunately, toy boy next door has just started up, he’s plugged in (BILLINGSGATE = profanity), and my concentration is now punctuated by drill bits and my thought processes sawed in half (AMAUROTIC = blind). I’m rethinking this blog, working title now, “The Sniper In The Attic,” (GASCONADE = bravado).

There was violence at The Greater Vancouver Zoo, Mia abducted (CAITIFF = cowardly) and Jocko bludgeoned (HECATOMB = slaughter). I was taken to the zoo for Mother’s Day last month. Two zoos in one year, a new trend for me. Funny, as I was once the keeper of my own exotic wildlife (life with many children), (REMONTANT – blooming twice). My family and I walked the acreage, no hurry, a cold wind but no rain. We had Hayden’s eyes to look through. My grandson (LEMAN = sweetheart) at eighteen months, is the youngest ornithologist I know. Or future student of the scientific study of birds. Right now he’s in communion. He can appreciate the goats of Wright Street, the baboons that shriek at our sight, the gray majesty of a tilting elephant, or the ant in his mother’s lavender plant. But if there is birdsong, if one lone bird passes in his peripheral or overhead, he will stop, and listen, and watch. Always he will murmur, “Bird” to himself, reverentially. (ORISON = prayer.)

What a dream, to lean against the fence in the wind and watch a giraffe (BORT = diamond fragments), high stepping daintily on such precariously long stick legs, making her way to what looked like a storybook, or cartoon house (ANAMNESIS = recollection) in the distance. A doorway cut into two stories, to allow for their height.

As we were leaving we stopped at the memorial to the spider monkeys who had been violated. There were flowers attached to the fence, notes (GLOSSALGIA = tongue pain) and photos from happier times, thank you’s, condolences for Jocko, prayers for a safe return of Mia. I held Hayden in my arms. We looked at the pictures, at the candles flickering (SALTATORY = leaping). There was a ghetto blaster with a tape playing an instrumental rendition of Amazing Grace over and over (SEMPITERNITY = forever). I walked to the parking lot carrying Hayden (SUMPTER = pack animal) and sang my Gospel version and he sang too. Didn’t know the words but pressed to my throat, he knew the meaning. He sang scat from the vibrations. (SCANDENT = climbing.)

I’m getting new shoes on Monday. This is very exciting for me. My walking shoes have collapsed inside and I cannot wear them. (RAMPIKE = standing dead tree.) This is my equivalent of getting a brand new set of wheels. (AUTARKY = self-sufficiency.) Now with summer here (INCHOATE = just begun), I know that the bright-eyed dawn can call me and I will answer (BIRL = spin).

As an employee now in the restaurant business, I went to a customer appreciation day at the local Domaine de Chaberton Estate Winery (CRU = vineyard). We were all invited to a wine-tasting and open house. There were door prizes and I won a set of luggage (SCRY = read a crystal ball). Bye bye, bye bye, bye bye.

Walking home from work Friday night a little earlier than usual, I saw the lights of the opening reception at The Fort Gallery, the community overflowing into the street. It was not over yet. I knew a look at the art (GHIBLI/REMUDA/GHAT = desert wind/herd of horses/stairway to water), would BESOM (broom) my blahs away. The women were chic (SALTANT = leaping), the men flirtatious (by morning a KATZENJAMMER = hangover). On the white walls between the beautiful pieces were the macabre red smears (ICHOR = blood of the gods) of the mosquitoes that are puncturing Fort Langley. The patrons had fought back! “We will kill for our art.”

I am on a word swoon, although my stinginess (PARSIMONY) with trusting myself (POLTROON = coward) to come to my blog and seek clarity (GLIM = light source) has escaped me. I have practiced my own COMSTOCKERY = censorship. My outlook has been MURREY = grayish, purple. My latest attempt at relaxation is the online vocabulary test (ATARACTIC = tranquilizing) at http://www.freerice.com. These are not the most beautiful words I’ve fallen for, but they surprise me, and I am learning. My attraction to words is like EUPNEA = normal breathing. And to believe that this word game (SCIOLISM = superficial knowledge) is putting rice into bowls for hungry people, well, then my own speechlessness (APHASIA) has made way for a greater cause.

I can’t be the only one. If you’re crazy and you know it, clap your hands. I will be listening, but no CLAQUE = hired applauders. And if you’re Buddhist, just work with the one.

I’m out stealing roses.

Good Life
diane

My horoscope said that it’s lonely at the top – no kidding – and sometimes you just have to get out of the attic. So I went to hear drummer son Jonah play. The Princeton Pub is a resurrected drinking hole on Vancouver’s Powell Street. The regulars are longshoremen, walk in locals from the east end neighbourhood, karaoke singers, pool players, punks, barely there teenage drinkers, and The Princeton’s very own, very inebriated in house dancer Johnny.

There was a blackboard of events above the bar, and I noticed that Johnny’s name was up there too, for the meat draw held every Friday. He must be the one who pulls the name of the lucky carnivore. I sat back and watched Johnny dance, deciding to forgo dismay at just how drunk he was, bombed in fact, a calculated guess that in the past, present and future GONE was his state. But this little guy could move, and he was up for every song. Light on his feet and uncanny in his rhythm, he danced with uninhibited joy. Eyes closed, big grin on his face, his rubber appendages gyrated, swung, bopped and grooved. Some young mini-skirted girls took turns dancing with Johnny, laughing and getting pictures taken of themselves with their cell phones. He didn’t mind. He’d dance alone or with anyone. A bald, fat, squat man in black and chains danced nose to nose with him. Tattooed arms and chest and neck bulged from his black wife beater T-shirt, but he and Johnny looked sweet together. I admired their abandon.

There was an opening act duo whose singer looked like an impoverished choir boy but who wailed like a world weary Tom Waits. When I stopped the drummer on his way out to compliment him on his chops, he flashed me a grin so loaded with hardware I knew his parents would be paying that bill for years to come. Oh The Princeton, my eyes and ears were sated with its feast.

Then Sunday morning coming down. Car-less I made my way home to Fort Langley. The connections are fewer and far between on Langley’s Sabbath, and sure enough when I got to the Langley bus loop (that inglorious paean of reverse advertising for the transit system), I had missed my bus by ten minutes. I’d have to wait another hour. There seems to be a higher percentage of folks on crystal meth in the parking lot of Liquidation World, and I’d seen too many tempers go from zero to a hundred in a split second. I thought I’d walk a bit up Glover Road, at least head in my direction north, and take my book to another bus stop. Sitting on a bench I watched and waited. I glanced at the logo on the garbage receptacle beside me, Langley – The Place To Be. I looked up at the expanse of sky. The cars were infrequent and the drivers intent on their destinations. No one looked my way. That very busy crossroads became very still. The book lay open on my lap. It all fell away.

The wind blew more chill, grey clouds scudded, shredding quickly now with drops of rain hitting my book more frequently. I didn’t mind. I have felt my own storm clouds thundering and posturing in my chest, it could look like this. The moment comes when it all blows through, and the rumbling subsides. Laying on the acupuncturist’s table, the needles are map pins, my body a map. All the inner and outer worlds correspond and reflect. The places of pain and joy and longing, the weather systems of our high emotion. We all have our puncture wounds, my Texas and Ireland and walking under any sky, where the joy erupts or the pain is eased. Kristnamurtri, one of the world’s greatest spiritual teachers, asked his audience whether they wanted to know his secret. They all leaned in and it was this, “I don’t mind what happens.”

Oh how I know I’m not there yet. But I’m somewhere at the moment. I’m in Langley, the place to be. The Best Western was right over there, and I got a sudden hankering for a piece of pie. I went in through the lobby and discovered all the families that go to Sunday morning buffet after church. But the dead flower arrangements and the mediocrity of the decor was so lifeless that I couldn’t queue and wait. Back to the bench. I chose the deluge from the sky, there’d be other pie.

Good Life
diane

It has come to my attention that I am not funny any more. That sarcastic, mouthy me, feared and revered by dozens has virtually disappeared. I’m sorry. So this blog needs some humour, and a few animals.

I am sharing my attic with a little black spider. He’s moved in and he’s getting away with it; because his legs aren’t that long, nor that hairy. He just doesn’t scare me a bit. I’m kind of amused by how busy he is. I can be reading my book in the living room and look up to see him traversing the ceiling. Later that day while I’m in the cubby writing at the computer, he’ll get my attention rounding a corner and heading towards the kitchen. I flicked him off the bed covers one morning and warned him, “A little too close buddy, a little too close.” Since he’s been around so long I thought I should name him, you know, something cute, something trendy. I heard of a guy who called his dog Stella, so that he could lean against the door frame late at night, in his undershirt, and howl, “Stellaaaaaa!” But what I’ve come up with is George Bush. Why not? A month or so ago Gazebo the cat and I were having a cuddle on the bed when something caught his eye and he batted another little black spider to the floor. He noshed on that for a minute before rejoining me. It’s only logical to think now that that was George’s predecessor, George Bush, Sr. Yesterday I opened the door and George Bush scurried out across the threshold and I thought that was the end of him. But wouldn’t you know it, I swung the door open later to let in the air and the sun, and back in he ran. But it’s only a matter of time. Life goes on. The cycle of sinners and tyrants all end eventually.

It’s a rather odd, anti-climatic career move, but on my way to the trail I saw a sign in a restaurant window – Help Wanted. As I walked I tried on the idea of waitressing again, and felt a flicker of interest. I’d been feeling so low but decided to resist that flight reaction again, and the fantasy of walking across Canada. At first I was squirming once again by my lack of ambition. I started the internal debate. Should I not be trying to excel? Leap ahead? To where? Over there? Oh, how friggin’ tiresome. I slammed the clock off and went in and got the job. So this is my new incarnation – It is me playing the part of an actress, playing the part of a waitress, in the movie of my life.

There is a story from a book called “Sunbeams,” quoted by Thomas Powers…The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, “I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.” I feel like God told me that story, and said those exact same words, “Diane, I understand. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.” Well, that would be me.

It’s three weeks later. I can do it, I will do it, I’m doing it. And I’m the one surprised…I love it!

“Even a shabby camel can carry the load of many donkeys.” – Goethe.

As I walk along the path inside the cemetery on my way down the town, there is an exuberant dog that galumphs to the fence to say hello. She lives in a trailer adjacent to the cemetery and I’ve watched her grow from a pup. I’ve never known her name, she has no tag. I’ve nicknamed her Rosemary because she very enthusiastically licks off all my hand cream while I scratch her head. Rosemary looked so surprised the day she cleaned my fingers on my way home from helping Angela at the chocolate shop.

I told Angela I could see her new sign for EUPHORIA CHOCOLATES from my balcony. But I realized with a start one night while I was standing in the quiet, that that was not the direction of the chocolate shop at all, and that was not her sign glowing in the dark across the cemetery. It is the neighbour’s next door, the medical clinic, and it is a cross. And not all crosses stand for CHOCOLATE! HELP IS HERE!

What I know is funny, but feels excruciating, is learning the new “machinery” at work. It took me eight shifts to discover that I was using the wrong ratio of water to coffee. Argh! If you had the most watered down coffee at THE ADOBE GRILL in the last two weeks, come on back and I’ll buy you one. It took Kirsten and John and three customers to help me figure out how to pump coffee out of the urn. Everyone was so helpful, all clustered round, talking all at once. I was laughing so hard I had to hide in the dish pit for ten minutes. You’d better laugh when you’re up to your elbows in hot water.

I am enjoying seeing my old book store customers coming in for a meal. They are so surprised to find me there. They ask me if I’m working my way down the street. I say, “Next stop is the river!” And we can still talk books. I asked one table if they’d like anything else and they all groaned and held their full stomachs. I inadvertently started a conversation about “Fast Food Nation” and the movie Supersize Me. I’d finally seen it and it brought back all my horror at the fast food life I’d witnessed last Fall. Texas has the most cities of all the states with the highest rate of obesity. Dessert, anyone?

And what about goats? If you go walking along the outskirts of town on the west side, there is the Molenaar Farm on Wright Street. They have the fakest sounding goats I’ve ever heard. They sound like a tape of a goat trying to sound like a goat. (I know, double standard, goat bias.) I was standing at the fence the other morning when a brown goat trotted over to check me out. While I was busy feeling how attached to his head his horns really were (what an opportunity), he had used his time to ingest the wooden buttons on my coat. I was just barely able to reel them back by their cords. If you witnessed this tussle when you were driving by that morning, I assure you, there were no goats hurt in this incident.

What charms me about Fort Langley is that you can almost get outwitted by a sneaky goat on a Sunday morning. And a miniature horse will bow her head, and let you touch the velvet of her nose. That’s my kind of church.

But what does the dyslexic insomniac think about all night, laying there in bed?
…If there really is a dog.

Of course there is. Her name is Rosemary.

Good Life
diane

With gratitude to Dr. Bill, the biggest Heal in my life.

I have hesitated and hesitated to write again. Then I stopped by my friend Sharon’s. She told me she had read my last blog, and she expressed her condolences at the passing of my friend. I had to say too, that I am sorry. All I can write about is longing and leaving, and it’s all so sad. But Sharon makes me laugh, and told me a Carolyn Kizer quote, that poets are interested mostly in death and commas. Ursula LeGuin’s response to her was that prose writers are interested mostly in life and commas. And Leonard Cohen says, “If your life is burning well, then poetry is the ash.”

I can do this. I am in such good company.

A few weeks back, we had those sunny, golden days. Mellow, limpid, one after the other. I was walking a lot, and sitting by the water, and crossing that Jacob Haldi Bridge. About halfway across I started experiencing a trigger like reaction right around the same place each time. I wondered if it was just a flee response to grief. There was something about the sound of my own steps falling, the sun in my hair that blew across my face, and I wanted to keep walking. I started to entertain a little daydream that gave me so much pleasure. Anne Lamott’s acronym for FEAR is fuck everything and run. Well, I don’t believe I felt fear even though death was on my mind. And I don’t run. But what I really wanted to do was walk. I felt such a pang; I missed my brother, and I thought how great it would be to just walk over and see him. And I really wanted to do that.

But my brother lives in Ridgeway, near Crystal Beach, right there on Lake Erie, in Ontario. So you see how part of that acronym, say about half, really appealed to me. I got so excited thinking about walking. Walking without a cause, walking without any type of competitive value. Just walking. I wouldn’t even carry a pack, just my satchel. There’d be no such thing as cheating. I could take a bus, or scoot ahead on a plane for a province or two. Roslyn said, “Don’t call me when you get to the Rockies.” But I know she meant that’s WHEN I could call her. I am so afraid of cars, so I wouldn’t even be able to walk on the secondary roads. What do you call it (besides the long way) when the roads heading in the direction I want, are smaller and smaller than secondary roads? Neighbourhoods I guess. Cutting through neighbourhoods, walking across Canada. Oh boy! I would stop at diners, the ones that aren’t that good. But they aren’t chains, and they have booths and sometimes a jukebox. There is always a chub chub waitress, friendly and hard working. You just know that she’s got kids at home, is tight with her women friends, and kind to her neighbours. “A hero is one who does what she can.” And I’d have a piece of pie, and my tea.

I am so afraid of living beige.

I wanted to go. Just go. All that is most precious to us is beyond our power to keep safe. We have no control. I’m not saying that I’M not worth keeping safe, that I want to take crazy risks. But I have had a family of seven, and now it’s just me. The risk factor seems so low. I thought of an old poem of Leonard’s, and I felt feverish to find it. And I phoned up my friends at Chapters and bugged them and said, “Please find me that poem, the one about the bus, the one about that feeling!” And they looked on the shelves but Chapters didn’t stock it any more and I needed somebody to read it to me, please. But Craig came through for me, and there it appeared in my inbox, and here it is now…

THE BUS

I was the last passenger of the day,

I was alone on the bus,

I was glad they were spending all that money

Just getting me up Eighth Avenue.

Driver! I shouted, it’s you and me tonight,

let’s run away from this big city

to a smaller city more suitable to the heart,

let’s drive past the swimming pools of Miami Beach,

you in the driver’s seat, me several seats back,

but in the racial cities we’ll changes places

so as to show how well you’ve done up North,

and let us find ourselves some tiny American fishing village in unknown Florida

and park right at the edge of the sand,

a huge bus pointing out,

metallic, painted, solitary,

with New York plates.

……………………………..

I just want to go. That feeling.

But I didn’t keep walking farther than this town. I stayed on the trail. I sat by the water. By way of the bridge walked home to the attic. And thought about happiness and about balance and how one can get weary feeling buffeted by the systematic cycle of extreme opposites that life is made up of. And I found a story in that Larry Dossey book that is so chock full of interesting, insightful things…There was once a king who commanded his wise men to make him a ring that would make him happy whenever he was sad, and sad whenever he was happy. They thought and thought, and finally decided that the ring should simply be engraved with the words, “This too shall pass.”

Aha. Aha. Aha. Aha.

So this is what I’m going to do. I’m not leaving yet. I’m going to sit in this chair and give you my longing. And I even went out and got a job. I didn’t get the job I was afraid to have. And I’m still holding out for the job I’m afraid to want. But I got one that I feel good about. For every AHA moment, no matter which way you look at it, you can laugh or be enlightened, and those are pretty great odds.

Good Life
diane

When I got the call last week that an old friend had died, I experienced it where most people first feel their grief. Like a pain in the heart, or a blow to the gut. All the energy leaked out of my body and was replaced with sand. I had not seen him for some years but always assumed that of course I would again. My grief focussed on just how well loved this man is; and as the news was picked up by one newspaper after another, I could feel the impact on me of his passing joining with the collective grief being felt across the country.

By Monday the sand was up past my knees, almost to my thighs, and I knew I had to get out. It was hard to lift my legs, so heavy the weight, but I got past the Jacob Haldi Bridge and a ways down the beach before I had to sit again. The sun was so beautiful and the area deserted. I found a fallen tree to sit down on and lay back on its branches, giving my face up to the sun. Going down to the river was the right thing to do. It released all the flashbacks, how can you not have them? When I first met Willie I was sixteen years old. Beneath my lids the years progressed; the images of our lives clear and in focus, held up as if from a deck of cards that a great hand was pulling up and showing one by one. All the years of music, listening to Willie play his songs; being one of the swaying, bobbing heads in the audience that recognized that love song, that favourite, that anthem of inimitable Willie P. Bennett hi-jinks.

It struck me that he is one of only a handful of men in my whole lifetime that have immediately skipped my name and shortened it to Di. It turns out that’s a shortcut to my heart. There’s some indecipherable code for why they would and why I’d love it. Instantaneous affection. My memories don’t fill a bucket as much as they are long, span these decades, and bring back sweetness. Willie P. had so many people in his life, and so many invitations. But when he was tired and knew another party or all-nighter would do him in, he would stay with us in the big house with all the kids. He could sit with his coffee, me with my tea, and we’d talk about the books we’d read. We were a couple of romantics. He picked up a book on one of his trips to Vancouver and couldn’t put it down until he found out what happened to Hannah and Tim. In a series of short stories in an Elinor Lipman book, “Into Love and Out Again,” shy and gentle Tim falls helplessly in love, while in line at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, with beautiful, nine months pregnant Hannah. During Willie’s stay with us, we took turns sharing the book in snatches, breathless to find out, like a couple of soap watchers, whether love would have a happy ending for Tim and Hannah.

When I was a kid, we didn’t phone our friends to see if they could play. We just showed up at the door, whoever got there first. Sometimes on a Saturday morning when I called on my best friend Margaret, she’d still be doing her chores. She’d come outside with a plastic bag of a white malleable substance, that had a little black button in it. And that button was full of colour. Her job was to squeeze the colour button and spread the golden yellow dye uniformly through the vegetable oil, to make it the margarine they would eat.

I thought of that childhood pastime this week. Remembered Margaret and I walking around her yard, taking turns kneading the bag, making sure the colour was evenly spread to every corner. And when someone you love dies, you do have to squeeze the colour button. Push that black thing until it’s obliterated. Let all the sweetness and regret (should have called, should have looked past the chaos of my personal life, should have bridged the past with the present, should have taken the time to say, “I remember you,” and “How are you?”) mix together and become one, and accept it for what it is. It’s the hand that we hold.

And I thought of the concentric circles of things, and how sometimes it is not until the looking back that we’re able to see the mystery of the design. I had gone in to Vancouver last Tuesday and was in my son Jonah’s living room looking at his massive CD collection. I picked a few to borrow but it was Willie’s that I played night and day. Returning them on Friday when I saw my son again, not yet knowing what this Friday would come to mean.

So I sat on the beach and pushed and pushed on the colour button, and the sand drained out of me and I left it behind when I stood up and walked away. I sang Willie’s song, Down To The Water, “Let’s go down to the water, and show me what you think is so true. Let’s go down to the water, I’d show you my crown if I could.” And I remember the sweet card of friendship, of Willie P. standing in the doorway smiling, saying “Hi Di,” to me. And I am grateful for the legacy of his beautiful music, the honesty of this wordsmith will not fade away. Willie was a musician’s musician, and I am in awe of the numbers, all the good men and women that are crying and crying for their friend. And I sent my love from where I sat by the water, back home to his lover, to his family, and to the people who spent time with him, and the friends that knew him best.

It took two days of going down to the river. As I walked back over the bridge, looking out past the railing and across the water, I could hear the sound of my footfalls scuffing along the sidewalk. And I feel lighter and lighter on this earth. Godspeed Willie. And thank you.

Good Life
diane

I got so lost in the past few weeks. All I’ve done is spend time with Ross and Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey, Will, Grace, Karen and Jack. I should have known better, creating such an artificial environment for myself. It just didn’t work, I’m not very good at that way of relaxing. Now I feel like I’m getting a case of the spiritual bends, coming up from where I lay so low. The thing is there’s been a lot of sickness in January, and all the resolutions and high hopes and grandstanding deflated like a big, fat, garish Happy New Year balloon.

I’m not normally sick and I’m not good at it. I’m a smiley on the outside, snarly on the inside, kicking about the attic kind of sick person. Just leave me alone and let me plummet in peace. Ha! It has caused me to think a lot about the nature of illness. I’ve been reaching for the Louise Hay book, “Heal Your Body – The mental causes for physical illness and the metaphysical way to overcome them.” Looked up sinus problems. The doctor had said that half the people in Langley had a sinus infection right now. “Irritation to one person, someone close.” So, other half of Langley, you know who you are.

I gravitated towards a Larry Dossey book, “The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things,” which has 14 chapters, of 14 natural steps to health and happiness. Slowly and painfully I’ve been squinting my way through it. The chapter on Tears was particularly relevant as a significant part of my poor health this past month was an eye infection that lingered on. I read as naturally and as often as I breathe, so my frustration at not being able to take the world in through my eyes has been especially trying. I learned that emotional tears are more protein rich than tears caused by an irritant, but both contain toxins, proof that crying not only releases stress but improves health. I’ve wondered why my eyes are faltering again. This happened not that long ago in Texas and Louise said, “Anger and frustration at what you are seeing in life.” We all know I struggled with my vision of Texas but here I am, back in the attic, believing that I have an attitude of gratitude.

In Julia Cameron’s “Artist’s Way,” she talks about the Sanskrit word kriya, which means a spiritual emergency or surrender. And again she points out the similarity of words, that kriya is so close to crias, or when our souls are crying.

In one of the most spectacular un-Hollywood crying scenes I’ve ever seen, the actress Juliet Stevenson in Truly Madly Deeply bawled her eyes out through the entire movie. Tears ran down her face; she wiped away mucous from her nose with her fingers, the sides of her hands, her shirt sleeves, the front of her blouse. She pressed her palms against her eyes and still the tears streamed out. Many years ago I was in a play in which I had to stand and simply read aloud a letter from my husband. The letter in itself didn’t say much, but because of the behind the scenes improvising I had done on my character, there was a line three quarters of the way down the page where, like clockwork, a tear left my eye and travelled slowly down my cheek. Was I faking it? Do actors fake those tears? No. It is in our memory, our bodies’ memories. Unlike the definition of crocodile tears, phony tears crocodiles shed for their victims, as they are devouring them.

I think of how I’ve always said that walking is my meditation – Solvitur Ambulando – and January was a month without walking. Being so stationary I have been unable to leave my own disquiet. Walking is a way of moving into the eye of the storm where it is quiet.

In the chapter on Music there was an anecdote about a woman with a sinus headache who had heard about toning and humming as a way of curing sinus problems. She began making a sound that vibrated through her whole head and her sinuses opened up and began to drain. My experience was more amusing than curative, as Gazebo the cat reacted quite out of character for him. In frustration I had thrown myself across the bed and began to chant Om over and over. The first Om was still reverberating when he ran across my bed, stared me in the eyes, and then head butted me. I have no idea what he thought I said to him.

But something that both Roslyn and Freud kept pointing out to me was, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” And that means too, “Get over yourself already!” Being tired of being sick is a first sign of health. I’m still not sure if I learned anything at all that first month of this new year. I couldn’t use my eyes but I heard the double meanings in every word. How to be a patient patient? Be healed in body and spirit so that I can walk with my heel and my sole on the earth again. A tear in the spirit that causes a tear in the I/eye.

We think of onions when we think of crying, the most common cause of tears in the world. The word onion is a derivative of the Latin unio, which means oneness and unity. Spelled with an “o” but pronounced as though it’s “union.” Throughout the ages and encompassing many cultures the onion has been venerated and celebrated. The Egyptian King Ramses IV was embalmed with onions in his eye sockets. Could there be a more fitting place?

January is over. I’m relieved. I’m ready to get on with it again. But our bodies do speak to us, and for us. They remind us of the wounds and weaknesses of our physical beings and the spiritual need we must put our attention to. And so we go, peeling down, down, down through the layers. If we can laugh until we cry, so can we cry until we laugh. So cry baby, cry.

Good Life
diane

My friends are very patient with me. I may have become a source of curiosity and wonder too. “How long is she going to stay up in that attic without DOING anything?” Good question. I may have created a situation up here not unlike reality TV. Nothing is happening but great portent is read into it. A part of me is ashamed at the emotion and despondency I’ve felt from going on one little job interview last week. It undid me. I made a great big deal about it. I am straddling a couple of attitudes, now that it is the new year. One is that I should keep it in perspective, an income is needed. I’m a big girl; I’ve done it, I can do it, just do it. The other is that there is something just for me, not for anybody else. It’s out there, it’s coming, it’s mine. If I will just keep listening and be willing to hear my own heart.

The first attitude had me following a good lead. What I thought was saying yes to the universe, showing that I am willing and watching to see where I’m meant to go. It was a six hour trip for me just to go to Guildford Mall area for the interview. The rain was bouncing as high as my knees. I went very early so I could find the address. The bus is the place where you can find the most faces all lined up and seated of those that lead lives of quiet desperation. Already I felt rebellious as I paid my fare. I do not want to live that way, nor quietly. Time for Osho:

“What a life!” said one new soldier. “Miles from anywhere, a sergeant who thinks he’s Attila the Hun, no women, no booze, no leave – and on top of all that, my boots are two sizes too small.”

“You don’t want to put up with that, chum,” said his neighbour. “Why don’t you put in for another pair?”

“Not likely,” came the reply. “Taking ’em off is the only pleasure I’ve got!”

I needed to get in out of the rain once I’d located the address. That meant the mall which is never a good idea for me. I sink. I disappear. The excess overwhelms. Before Christmas I made the mistake of walking through Metrotown and I thought my heart was going to throw up. Okay, it’s time. Get over to the building. Pep talk myself. Do the interview. Felt somewhat revived just from interaction with good people. Unfortunately the mall after; the washroom, checking the bus schedule, and then racing through the parking lots to catch it. The poor connections. Nothing when it’s summer and the light is there longer to read by, but it’s still raining. I cannot see the sky, only feel its tears. The smokers have claimed all the shelters but invite me to, “Come in out of the rain, are you nuts?” Six hours to navigate through an urban landscape devoid of depth and soul. Faltering on attitude number one.

Attitude number two; I think of Henry Miller…I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

I am DianeOutLoud, aka QuietNotLikely. Leap and the net will appear. I will alchemize this suspension into words that I can reach for. Words that will hold me up as long as it takes for that net to be fashioned. Where are my placebo wings? They will do while my faith fades in and out between attitude number one, and attitude number two.

I wonder if my path was set so long ago. My first job was at sixteen, playing the piano at a ballet studio. Margaret, my best friend, took dance all through our school years, at a ballet studio at the edge of downtown, from a ballet mistress called Maria. Maria was a Polish single woman, “married to the dance.” She walked with her feet out turned in a perpetual first position, wore her hair in a strict bun, had the posture of one who was still standing at the barre. Maria talked, lived, breathed ballet. Margaret told me that she had played piano accompaniment for a few Saturday classes rather than the usual records that Maria used. Ding! I stored that fact. And when I was ready to quit high school I took myself down there and introduced myself to Maria.

For two years my job began after school hours when the students would arrive. Classes ran at hourly and hour and a half intervals; from four o’clock, through the supper hour and on through the evening. The studio was in a little bungalow across the street from where Maria still lived with her parents. The living room had the barres running the length of the room, the floors were beautiful wood. There were large mirrors at both the front and back of the room. I played the piano in the kitchen, with the gorgeous Heintzman piano pushed into the doorway. From my bench I could see Maria and the class and she and I could communicate with each other. We did well, she and I. She would ask for a waltz, a march, something up tempo or a certain beat, 3/4 or 2/4 time. I had a repertoire of suitable music and I would hastily think of something and play a few bars to which she inevitably would give her enthusiastic approval. And I was proud of how tuned in to each other Maria and I became. After two years we got to the point where she could demonstrate a few steps and I would know the perfect piece for the class to dance to.

Those were heady, creative times. My sweet boyfriend Roland would slip into the waiting room towards the end of the last class, and wait for me. So many nights the three of us stayed late; telling stories, listening to music, drinking herbal tea and hot chocolate in the kitchen. Talking, talking, talking. Maria adored us. Roland was such an idealistic intellectual, and a boy from Paris to boot. Maria took me under her wing. We took busses to the big city, Toronto, to the National Ballet School, and to see performances by the very best dance companies. I saw Karen Kain, Frank Augustyn, Veronica Tennant, Erik Bruhn; visions in flight. If you ever get the chance to see BILLY ELLIOT, that last scene in the movie, that last shot, that’s the one. Those were the times; what take your breath away. Maria also exploited me shamelessly. She paid me peanuts per hour, nothing on par with the type of creative service I was providing her studio. I was too young and too proud to ask for more money. Shocked by my tiny, little paycheque and the reality of how cheap my rented rooms had to be, and how spartan my needs. As I’ve written these words and relived these memories, I see how the path and the pattern has continued. Share my creativity, never get paid my worth. (Note to self…)

But now I can’t help but think I have done well after all. I’ve stayed true to myself. Avoided the mcjobs as much as possible. Can still laugh at myself and say, that’s my motto: Live and never learn! (And never believe it for a second.) It’s a good exercise to do. Write down an experience or memory from your younger, fabulous self. You may be surprised at who you were then and what it was you valued. And whether you still recognize that self, and feel either grief at the spirit you’ve let go of, or triumphant for that trusting, joyous child that has walked into the future and is still standing, dancing, leaping.

I love this Ojibway wisdom. It has hushed my ingratitudes and stopped me in my fear many, many times…Sometimes I go about in pity for myself and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky.

Us. Bearing all of us across the sky.

Good Life
diane

It just feels so auspicious. I can feel that calendar page being lifted, turned and settling down. It’s a new day, new year, new breath to take. What I wish is for us all to wake up to it. We are so privileged. If we have access to this blog then undoubtedly we are somewhere lit, and somewhere warm. Probably safe, and have the time to either live, or waste. There is a roof over our heads, we are the lucky ones; we have a home on this earth. We have our great joys and our petty concerns. And so on, and so on. How privileged is that.

We need to surpass ourselves.
Grow our selves.
Use our hearts.
Take chances.
Listen in.
Look out.

Leonard, I always hear you singing something that catches my attention. “We are so lightly here…” How true. We are fragile. And yet so strong. And then, we’re gone! But we have the chance and the opportunity and the privilege to leave a mark on every single day of every month of this new calendar year. Already it’s close to midnight, January 1st, 2008. Go!

Let’s shine. Make it illuminating, stellar…of the stars.

Good Life
diane

I got a phone call from my friend last night. She said, “I just read your latest blog. Thought I’d better call.” Oh boy. Is it that obvious? (Thank you Cylia, for looking out for me.) Okay, I’m looking at the word resume, and it’s definition in the dictionary. Resume = A summary of one’s qualifications and job experience. But I cannot find the accent key to make that word differentiate from THIS word. Resume = Return to an activity or a position. Every cell in my being is balking at both these words right now. Yes, I am unemployed. In the summer, when my idle days really started to kick in, I gleefully changed that from unemployed…to unemployable. I refuse now to get back on track, not the donkey track anyway. I don’t want to go round and round in the same circle in the dust, that withered, old carrot in front of me. What I need to do is come up with a new credo for who I am now. These past six months of working for no one and learning how to LIVE, definition = have LIFE or continue in LIFE, and not being defined by what I do to earn my living, has felt so absolutely right.

Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life.

It’s time I re-connected with the outer world aka get out of my head and get a job. Time to pay for the roof over my head and the food in my mouth. So I need to play around with a new definition of what I want now. One year my friend Roslyn and I picked BRING IT ON! as how we would tackle the summer. The dog’s sick and the vet bill is going to kill me. BRING IT ON! I’ve got a love interest and I’m kinda’ jittery. BRING IT ON! I feel like quitting my safe job and trying something else that scares me. BRING IT ON! Perhaps that’s the place to start. That will be my acronym and I will advertise who I am and what I want now.

BIO or BRING IT ON!

I am willing to work three days a week for an exorbitant amount of money. The position must be fascinating, involve creative thinking, with interaction between amazing, fair, fun, and calm people. My contribution must add something of benefit to this world.

I am grateful to accept a patron who supports my writing.

I am agitating to have a syndicated column a la Anna Quindlen’s NY Times Public & Private, in which I will write about my observations on anything I want. What really spurs me? Put me on a plane, or make me walk! But Ireland is next while my hair is still red.

I have had a re-occurring dream for more than twenty years of the same unforgettable man in a long dark coat. I have never seen his face. I am ready for that man to knock on my door while I’m awake.

Did I cover everything? Gainful self-responsibility? Delirious abundance? The writing life? And the man in my dreams? Bring It On!

Contact me by clicking the COMMENTS field below.

Good Life
diane