Looee finishes her Nano Novel - almost

Looee finished her word count for the day: 2,037. She could have written more, but figured she could chunk out the remaining 1521 words in no time at all tomorrow, and tomorrow she would have the time if she didn’t waste it like she did today. It amazed her how easy it was to spend time like it has no value. Just run here, run there, check this out, check that out. She didn’t even remember her day very well. She did remember that she got next to nothing done even though she supposedly had lots of time. She did take a nice walk with Emma who was a good listener and would walk, arm in arm with her, along the beach as Looee picked up unusual shells, took pictures of beautiful moments, and discussed the things Emma might consider doing now that she was alone. Actually, they were both alone and could do things together. They did discuss needing to go back to Vegas to have chocolate martinis and hot fudge sundaes. None of the friends wanted to start making the martinis at home as they’d all become alcoholics before you could say social security.

She knew it wouldn’t be hard to complete her word count tomorrow, November 30^th, the last day of National Novel Writing Month. This was her fourth attempt, and her fourth win she thought proudly. To win, one must complete 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. She started to think “I guess I shouldn’t count it as a win quite yet. I could get hit by the proverbial bus, but probably I won’t.”

However, she’d already been hit by her bus. Her husband of 40 years had left her. She didn’t know if it would be permanent, but he was tired of her woo woo ways and wanted more realism in his life. Realism. She didn’t care for it at all. Whose realism is it anyway? Everyone’s realism was different and she liked hers. She didn’t like being alone, and she felt guilty, as if she had kicked him out, but she had hidden her gifts and talents long enough. She wanted to come out of the closet so to speak and share her truths with the world.

She was ready to get up and start doing something else. She decided to go downstairs to get something to eat. She blew out the candle that she always lit when she wrote, or did anything at the desk in order to burn up any untoward energies. She never left it lit when she went away from the desk since the incident of the burning desk several years previous. She’d lost a lot of paper and her cell phone melted a little too. As she headed for the kitchen her inner voice piped up and shouted at her:

“Hey, where are you going? You’re not hungry, just get back here! That’s right. Go on, sit down, light that candle.”

“Oh you’re right,” she said to herself. “I’m not hungry, just wanting something to make me feel better. She decided to do something that she felt would help to answer the gnawing she was feeling inside. She decided to do some bibliomancy – the art of opening a book and expecting an answer – and maybe even finish the novel early.

Her original novel this year, her 4^th year writing a novel with hundreds of thousands of others across the world through NANOWRIMO, had been a story about a pod of souls who had come to the plant to do something or other that was important and good. The issue was that they all needed to be together and there was one soul missing; she’d been seduced by some bad guys who were keeping her well ensconced into the physical world where she would not be very interested in the spiritual part of her life, and so would not be tempted to find this group of souls who were waiting to do something fabulously important.

She liked the story, but was having trouble making it work and was also obsessed with Charlie leaving her. She decided that what she really wanted was to heal the relationship inside herself so she could really let him go and in turn let herself go free. So she called her novel Heart Break because she decided that she’d put the breaks on her heart and was wanting to release and let them go. Today’s writing had been quite fruitful. She had started to write about the relationship and the things she wanted to blame him for and the things she didn’t want to take responsibility for.

She realized that her biggest issue, though her friends might not agree, was that she didn’t feel very worthy because she didn’t feel that she was doing anything of value with her life. She was feeling like a lump of coal waiting for a fire to be lit under it. But until Charlie left she was happy being a lump of coal and had no problems staying that lump, but she knew that she was being hard on herself. She did have a life. She did do things.

“What I am aware of,” she had declared in her novel, “is that this crazy lack of confidence in myself and my unwillingness to release and let go of my past is holding me back from being the incredible being that I was born to be. I really do want to appreciate myself and know myself as worthy.”

“My worth is intrinsic,” she called up to the moon. “It is not based on who I know, the house I live in, the car I have, the food I eat or don’t eat, the weight of my body, what I do for a living or anything else.”

“I believe that God made me and the guy (or girl or it) doesn’t make junk. I don’t know how I know that is true, but I’d bet my soul on it!” She started to laugh and said “I guess I am betting my soul on it. In my heart I know that we are all worthy, we are all good, even the worst of us.”

If Kate were here right now listening to me, or reading over my shoulder, she thought, she would be having a coronary. It’s what I believe and I’m out of the closet now baby! She said mimicking Kate’s voice.

She sighed, opened her document and continued writing “My true, insane, airy fairy nature is on the page for all to see. I know this sounds crazy, but I have a swelling of joy and peace inside, and my heart is smiling. Heck it’s laughing. And that tells me I’m right. So I will open A Course in Miracles and know that it will confirm this.”

She opened to page 270 and the first words on the page were “Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world you do not know it. But you have the means for learning it and seeing it quite clearly.”

“So HAH!” she said, “I am worthy. A Course in Miracles says so.” She looked at the shelf and decided to continue. She pulled down the book Frequency, by Penny Pearce.

She opened the book, but got confused. The first quote was by Donald Hatch Andres and said “The universe is more like music than like matter.” (page 24)

She began reading and it was all about vibrations and beings sensitive to and picking up the vibrations around us. Then she decided to turn to the previous page and saw START BY BEING PRESENT. In caps, just like that.

She sat with her eyes closed, becoming quite and present. She breathed deeply and evenly and when she opened her eyelids, bringing her consciousness back into the room, her eyes were shiny and she had a broad smile on her lips. She wrote “What I am discerning from this is that when I feel like I am unworthy, when I feel like I am confused and frustrated I may be picking up something I don’t want and don’t need to hold on to. I just need to let it pass. It’s just music, it will flow and float and I don’t need to hang on to it. I just need to START BY BEING PRESENT. The truth is that God is present in each moment, and THAT is the vibration I want to tune into. Next…”

She decided that she couldn’t just use her spiritual books so pulled her copy of the 10^th anniversary edition of “Tin House” from the shelf. Again she heard Kate’s voice in her head saying: “Girl, everything you’ve opened so far is fiction. Jeez!”

She smiled and laughed a little. She loved Kate’s down-to-earth attitude about life even though it wasn’t her own. “I know this one is going to be good. The call out on the page she opened to said “What Brantford had expected from life and what it had actually given him must have been so distinct and so dissonant that he probably felt his dignity dropping away little by little until he simply wasn’t himself anymore.”

“OH MY GOD. OMG,” she said out loud. She laughed at herself. OMG was initial speak that the kids used today. She was getting pretty good at it as she loved to be up on the latest in cultural literacy. She continued to write: “The part that resonates with me is that the wear and tear of Brantford’s life caused him to not be himself any more. I am not myself any more, and it is time for me to get myself back. This will be my task from here on in. My task is, like Michelangelo’s was, to take the marble and remove the bits that are not the beautiful statue.”

She concluded the day’s writing with “It is time to take the breaks off my heart. It is time to step on the gas of my loving and go. It is time to explore and express and become the me I have always wanted to be. I’m not far from 69 and it’s time. I’m a poet and I don’t even know it. Life is good, like it should – be. Well, that wasn’t such a great rhyme, but I will call it a close rhyme. At least I feel like I’m back on track, the close call I had to finishing my life as a lump of coal on the floor is over. I am up and running again and only 1,000 words, exactly, from being done!”

Lavender

by Susan Cameron

Well. The new story I'm working on refuses to cooperate, so in exasperation I dug into the file pile. Lo and behold, Kate in one of her earliest incarnations -- not fitting in with the recent Georgie, Emma, and Looie narrative at all (understatement of the century!), but I'm going to change her name here, and everybody else's, and let her stand alone and talk. Some day, maybe I can dissect this piece and use bits elsewhere.

* * * * *

We've written back and forth a long, long time, you and me. Still, I didn't expect the question in your last letter -- "What's your secret desire?"

I stayed awake all night wrestling with that question, then wrestling with one of my own: "Should I tell you the real answer?"

See, you might have been expecting a funny, trivial answer. You might have been expecting old Rita to write, "A night with that pretty Brad Pitt! Or Sean Connery, if he can keep up with me!" Or maybe, "I'd like my real red hair back so I can get Miss Clairol out of my life!" or "I've always wanted a chocolate factory in my back yard!" And you wouldn't be wrong to think that I'd say those things, because you know me. I should say, you know the me I've let you know.

But oddly enough, I'm about to throw you a curve ball by giving you a straight answer. Let's face it, I'm very old and probably don't have much time left, and if I'm not going to tell it straight now, when will I get the chance? So I'll tell you my deepest, most secret desire, but there are things you need to know first so you'll understand my answer. These things aren't pretty.

You already know the basics, of course. You know I joined the WACs back in World War II. You've seen my old photos, you've heard the old stories -- but you don't know this one.

Marilyn's brother Jimmy and I fell in love in the spring of 1941. I was a senior in high school, and so excited about graduating in June. I'd been working on the school newspaper since I was a freshman, taking photos and writing articles, and I was looking forward to graduating and getting a job on the Troy Hill Daily Dispatch. Never mind that they'd never had a female reporter before -- I was going to be their first. And from there -- the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, who could say? I was full of amorphous plans and fluffy dreams. I refuse, even now, to say I was full of shit, because I wasn't. I just didn't know how much I didn't know.

Anyhow, we girls would be on Marilyn's front porch after school, drinking lemonade her mother made for us and talking until dinnertime. One afternoon Marilyn's older brother Jimmy came out after work to join us. I had been smitten with him when I was a freshman, but he was a senior then and didn't notice me. He sat on the glider next to me and I felt my heart crack open.

I remember lifting the glass of lemonade and thinking, take a sip. Now swallow. Carefully. I couldn't make myself speak for the rest of the afternoon, distracted as I was by his thigh touching my thigh, but he was there on the glider with me the next afternoon, and the next. I loosened up -- and how! -- and Jimmy listened to me rattle on about becoming a real reporter. He looked into my eyes and said, "I know you can do it," and he smiled. I remember staring back into his eyes and thinking, ah, this is why they call it falling in love, you can't feel the solid earth any more, you just fall into somebody's blue eyes like a bird soaring into the blue sky, and earth's gravity loses its power over you.

Jimmy attended Marilyn's graduation, and therefore mine. He kissed me on the cheek in front of his parents, but at the party afterwards, he danced me out the door and really kissed me for the first time. Ah, Jimmy's kisses. To this day I can shut my eyes and recall those kisses in such perfect detail -- it's as if he's still here with his lips on mine. When you grow up in an era where good girls don't do anything but kiss, you get damn good at it, let me tell you! You turn kissing into an art form, a marathon event, a symphony, a three-act play.

Jimmy kissed away my tears when the Troy Hill Daily Dispatch refused to hire me as a reporter, but offered me a secretarial position -- he kissed me until I didn't give a damn anymore. He'd drop by my house every day after work to talk, and he took me out every Saturday night, every week up until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. All the young men of Troy Hill joined the Army, including my Jimmy. My Jimmy was going to war.

I walked into the recruiter's office and signed up too.

Jimmy got his orders and I got mine. He gave me my engagement ring and we made love the night before he shipped out. I got shipped off to England the following month, and I puked every morning and didn't even realize it was morning sickness. I can't believe I was ever that young.

So there I was, pregnant, in uniform, in a foreign country, unmarried. I wrote to Jimmy and told him the truth. He wrote back, delighted. He was going to be a daddy and he wanted to be a husband, and as soon as he could get leave, he'd come to me and we'd be married. I collapsed in my quarters weeping with happiness. But Jimmy never made it back to me. Marilyn was the one who had to send me the bad news. Jimmy had been killed in action.

I remember the notepaper smelled like lavender.

That letter was in my hand when I went into labor, and I crushed it in my fist as I screamed and cursed and pushed our daughter into a world that stunk of lye soap and lavender and blood. I hated the nurses with their starched white efficiency, and I hated the doctors with their pursed-lipped superiority and wedding bands, and I hated the Nazis for killing my Jimmy, and I hated my Jimmy for dying and leaving me behind, and I hated my baby when I realized she had Jimmy's face. He was gone, and had left me a baby with his face to wrench my guts out each and every day until I died. I still believed suicide was a mortal sin back then or I would have flung myself out the fourth floor window. I told the nurses to put the baby in an orphanage and turned myself away, so I couldn't see her blue, blue eyes.

How do I tell you what a bottomless pit of regret feels like? I could explain other things, certainly, things you've heard of -- post-partum depression, temporary insanity, things like that -- but how do I explain a regret so all-encompassing that it has no discernable boundaries capable of holding it?

I can tell you that once I was out of bed and on my feet again, I felt the rage and numbness seeping out of my brain, a tingling feeling like frozen fingers coming back to life in front of a fireplace after a long winter's walk. I can tell you that I set out on foot one day to the orphanage to beg for my baby back. I can tell you about the siren screaming out moments before the bombs fell. I cannot tell you how long I lay unconscious on the sidewalk.

I came to, rose up on my hands and knees, felt chunks of brick and concrete tumble from my back, puked bile into the rubble, and wiped the blood from my nose and ears. No wonder I didn't hear myself puke, I thought, looking at the blood. I walked on, picking my way through the broken pavement toward the orphanage. I couldn't hear my feet scrabbling through the detritus but I remember watching them move, and I thought they looked like they knew where they were going.

I tripped and stumbled through the blasted pavement, skirted the edge of a huge crater, tripped over pipes still attached to a bathtub that had been blown into the street. I couldn't hear anything, not even my own breath, just a high-pitched hum, like standing too close to power lines. My eyes burned from the dust and smoke from the fires, but I knew I was getting close to the orphanage. The wind shifted. I smelled charred meat. I stumbled on.

There was a pile of scorched animal cages -- no. Baby cribs. Half-burned sheets flapping in the dirty wind, white flags flying and nobody to surrender to, just me, bearing witness. The burned crib nearest me still held its tiny charred occupant, curled up on itself like a blackened prawn, and I couldn't even hear myself screaming.

Marilyn discovered a few years ago that my baby lived. It was too late for me.

You know what? All that writing I did in my long career, the newspaper reporting, the photojournalism -- all of it was other people's stories. But this? This is one of my stories, and I wanted (needed?) to tell it to you. I did it because of my deepest, most secret desire, an incredibly selfish desire, and I didn't even know I harbored it until you wrote and asked:

I wish that the people in my life could know what I know, see what I've seen, and really know who I am. I want to be understood.

Love always, and thanks for listening,

Rita

copyright 2011 Susan Cameron

Road Trip

We’re on the road to Las Vegas in Georgie’s convertible, top down, and I’m in the back seat with my gray brown hair spiking out around my face like something in an illuminated medieval manuscript. You know, where the women have this dull gold circle around their heads. Instead of a medieval gown, though, I’m wearing khaki capris and a white polo shirt.

The desert is the color of my pants and goes on forever, with only the faded gray of the road to break the monotony. Georgie has a heavy foot on the gas pedal and everything’s a khaki blur as we streak down the highway.

“Get your motor running. Get out on the highway,” Georgie and Louie sing out. Louie looks back at me and says something I can’t hear. I smile at her and give a thumbs-up so she thinks I’m okay. They’re having a grand time, and they’re determined I will have fun, too, on this first girlfriend trip since my husband, James, died. They’re pretending it’s a trip to celebrate our upcoming sixtieth birthdays, but I know better. Really, it’s about pulling me out of the funk I’ve been in for the past eight months.

We stop for lunch at the Lucky Miner Diner and Trucker’s Haven. The little desert town doesn’t look like any miner here has ever been lucky. Nor does the diner, with its ripped green plastic booths patched with duct tape and tables flecked with garish gold sparkles. I scrape at the gold flecks with my thumb, trying to dislodge them, but there’s no way they’re coming loose. I keep on scraping anyway.

Georgie says the best food is at truck stops, but not if the Lucky Miner is any indication. I poke my fork at the brown lettuce in my chef’s salad – admittedly not the best choice at a desert diner - but end up eating three packs of Saltines from a gold painted basket on the table, even though they are stale. I do succeed in peeling off some of the gold paint from the basket, which gives me a strange sense of accomplishment. Georgie and Louie have cheeseburgers, French fries and chocolate malts, smacking their lips while they eat. I ogle the hot fudge sundae the kid at the counter is eating and wish I’d ordered that for lunch. James would have frowned at that idea, but look where all those leafy greens and acai juice got him.

In Vegas we check into our hotel, shower, change clothes and head for the bar.

“What’s scrumptious?” Georgie asks the bartender. “We need something special for our friend here,” she says, pointing to me.

I’m wearing the flowery sundress Louie made me buy for the trip, and Georgie has insisted on making me up with glittery eye shadow. Just for fun, she says. I feel like a stranger.

The bartender gives me a good hard look and says, “I have just the thing. A chocolate martini.”

I start to protest that I never drink hard liquor, but Georgie says, “Perfect! We’ll take three of those!”

What the hell, I think, I’m on vacation.

The chocolate martinis are indeed scrumptious, and after two of them, I start to loosen up. I pick up my glass and drain out the last of my martini, letting my tongue swish back and forth along the inside of the glass.

“Christ, Emma,” Georgie says. “We’ll just get you another one if you’re that desperate for more.” She’s about to order another round, when Louie pipes up.

“I’m hungry,” she says, “and if I don’t eat something soon, it won’t be pretty.” She swipes at an errant curl that has been flopping in her eyes for the past half hour. It rests along her forehead right above her nose. I watch it bounce there and think about the nursery rhyme.

“There was a little girl who had a little curl,” I say, slurring the words a little.

“Right in the middle of her forehead,” says Georgie, taking up where I left off.

“She was horrid. Are you horrid, Louie?” she giggles.

“She could be very very good,” I say.

“No, that would be you, Emma,” Georgie says. “You’re the good one.”

“I will be horrid, if I don’t get some food,” Louie says, grabbing hold of the curl and tugging it back off her face, securing it with a purple comb trailing silk lilies of the valley. Louie always has some ornament dripping from her hair.

“Okay, okay,” Georgie says and signals the bartender to bring our tab.

His name is Brandon. Georgie found this out early on and has been flirting with him ever since. Brandon is about thirty and has deep olive skin and wavy black hair that swirls around his ears. He’s wearing a bright white shirt that’s open two or three buttons to show off his smooth muscular chest. As he leans over the bar talking to Georgie, my eyes lock onto that chest, and I feel a flutter in mine. I shouldn’t have had so many martinis, I’m thinking, as I trace an imaginary line up Brandon’s neck to his strong square chin.

I’ve never known any man but James. We started dating when I was fourteen and got married when I turned nineteen. Until now I never even looked at another man. I feel like I’m cheating on James, but I tell myself that’s stupid. Brandon could be my son, and besides James is dead. I’m not married anymore. That thought makes me swallow hard, and I suddenly feel very much alone in this bar teeming with people.

I watch Brandon’s mouth forming words. His teeth are white, white, white, and his tongue runs over them once or twice. I look up to his eyes, deep brown with flecks of gold dancing there when he smiles. He’s looking at Georgie – she’s always got men looking at her – and whatever she’s saying is making him laugh. I know I’m staring at him, but I can’t move, my head resting on my hand, elbow propped on the bar next to my martini glass.

Brandon is beautiful, exotic. No one like that would ever look at me, talk to me the way he talks to Georgie. We’re the same age, but she seems young and I look older than I am. I feel like a dirty old woman ogling the beautiful young man.

He’s laughing until he looks my way. The minute his eyes meet mine the laugh fades. For a moment he looks sad, then he averts his eyes, swiping at the counter with the cloth he’s holding. My own eyes shift down to my empty martini glass. I am mortified.

I realize I’m crying. I can’t help it. Yes, I miss James, but it’s more than that. Suddenly I feel like I’ve missed so much in my life, like I never even had a life of my own. I always took care of everyone else, making sure they got what they needed and wanted. What about what I needed? What about what I wanted? In the fog of chocolate martinis I can’t even think of what it was I did want. What do I want now? I feel Louie’s arm around my shoulder.

“It’s okay, honey,” she says softly. “It’s late, and we all need something to eat. Let’s go.”

“Is it too late?” I say, making no sense at all.

“No, sweetie,” Louie says. “It’s never too late.”

I let her help me off the barstool. Holding on to each other, the three of us make our way out of the bar and through the clang of the casino toward the all night cafe beyond the poker machines and the blackjack tables. There’s so much noise, colors swirling like a kaleidoscope before my eyes, people having fun all around me.

My head is spinning but I’m clear about one thing. I’m tired of being sad, tired of holding back. And I’m sick and tired of doing what I’m supposed to do. It’s time to start living.

“I’m having a hot fudge sundae for dinner,” I say, expecting Georgie and Louie to put up a fuss about that. But I’ve forgotten who I’m with. These are my girlfriends, my childhood buddies who have been egging me on all my life to be a little crazy.

The girls are all smiles.

“Perfect!” Georgie says.

“Awesome!” Louie says.

Arms linked, we stroll into the café like three teenagers.