Wave of Modulation_old

analOgia

For as long as I can remember, I've been making up stories in my head. This is one of the reasons I keep thinking I might enjoy a switch to fiction after the memoir. For the past couple of years, I've been mulling over a one story in particular.

This particular story is about a girl born without the ability to feel pain. She has congenital analgia. It is her story of growing up; a story of her responses to the world and people around her, and their responses to her.

Congenital analgia is a rare disease that prevents a person from feeling pain. People who have analgia often experience the normal range of sensation, with the exception of temperature for some. Cognition seems unaffected. There are no detectable physical abnormalities, no known pathology.

In the story I am writing in my head, the girl's analgia is extended to her emotions.

Alternately, I have been considering allowing her to feel physical pain, just not the emotional pain. Of course, there are people who do not feel emotional pain, but it is typically the result of pathology. Often traceable.

In this story, I don't want there to be a reason "Why".

It has to be "Just because".

Peonies

Journal Entry - June 29, 2004 (re-post)

I bought 3 peonies today. Wound in tight, slightly imperfect little balls, except one. Shiny, like striated satin. Like the coat of a horse or a dog all wet, smoothed in one direction. The wet hair pressed against the muscle and skin. Solid. A thin layer of covering over the real power, presence, weight, warmth.

The peonies look like they are painfully tight. They are under pressure – almost to bursting. In fact, bursting. But they don't burst like popcorn popping. Which is what I expect. I expect them to rip wide open, popping like the sound of a gun shot – or fireworks, exploding. They somehow open more slowly and less violently than that. Maybe up close, on the microscopic scale, it makes a huge roar like an earthquake. Or a tree falling in the woods. Wood fibers ripping, snapping. Maybe there's even a spray of moisture that flies out and away. Hard to know. Maybe they could catch it with that special camera, that special film they use to see water drops flying and glistening through the air, hurtling wavy blobs, holding together having flown out of something falling apart. That film they use to watch a bullet ripping through an apple, the sound like a nuclear blast. I am too big and too far away to hear it. To see it opening. I just periodically look back at it changed, changing.

The last time I bought peonies they were a similar color, but darker. These are dark red, almost the color of dried blood crystals.

We saw so many trees in Yosemite, uprooted by something. Not all together in one spot, but it was a repeated theme. A tree can fall over and not die for a very long time. It was our last trip to Yosemite when I learned that the only living part of the tree is the outside, not the heart of the tree. The outside layers are the strongest. The middle is the wettest part, the part they make pulp from. The outside is what they make houses from. Unless you slice the whole thing up and cure it, dry it. Then you can use just about the whole tree to make something. Make something that is not a tree anymore.

So many petals. The outside is so smooth, but the petals almost look like they are shredded when they open, each one a different jagged shape. Each edge its own shape. Hundreds of layers of petals, they must be much thinner than paper.

Sitting here next to it, you'd think I'd be able to hear it 'pop'. Ever so slowly, creaking open like a door and then BAM! Like in a scary movie when the camera stares at a closed eye and suddenly it flies open. I always seem to scream, even though I don't want to, even though I know it's coming. M says I jump a mile in my seat. Each petal breaking open just that first fraction of a millimeter. It must be so loud close up. Except I am wearing headphones, so I can't hear it. Listening to music opens me up.

Ok, I am smirking at myself.

The flower inside appears to be divided into four quadrants in the middle. It is firm and hard. I never noticed the sections before. Like a heart. Ventricles. Atriums. When I see atriums in buildings I think of atriums in the heart. I think of oxygen inside a structure, a shelter.

- - -

When I worked at a flower shop years ago, I learned the trick of buying roses that won't die right away. You pinch the head of the rose a little bit up from the base – if it is not tight it will not last. But there are some roses that die right away, even if they are tight. You can cut the stems to ensure water will flow into them and keep the hydraulics working. This is what keeps the flower standing up after it's been cut off the plant and you put it in a vase. It is hard to protect roses against that unexpected limpness, death.

The owner of the flower shop said the fallen roses look like broken necks and there was no saving them. "Throw out those god-damned broken necks", he said. My mom says smashing the stems with a hammer works. Keeps them standing longer. Saves them.

old & new & old

decomposing leaf

I think about things I want to write, sometimes for years, without ever even writing them in my journal. Somewhere in me is the belief that I can't write about something until I am sure I understand it and can do it justice. Somewhere in me is a fear that, if I write about it too soon, force it out, I will change it into something it isn't meant to be. Somewhere in me there is a fear that I will waste an opportunity for learning and expression.

I think that fear is valid, and false.

orchid

My sister in law sent me an article in Salon last year by Ayelet Waldman, the writer. She warned writers against blogging in the piece, Living Outloud -- Online. "Don't do it!", she said. "It will ruin your life!"

Excerpt:
As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fiction, I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory, mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.

But in the months I had the blog, I was spewing as fast as my family was experiencing. My initial idea, that the blog would act as a kind of digital notebook, was not panning out. Once the experience was turned into words, I found that it was frozen. The fertile composting that I count on to generate my fiction was no longer happening.

For me, "blogging" is not exactly like this. I am not compelled to write here. I think this "blog" is a place for me to open myself up, carefully, slowly, deliberately. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is forced. I'm comfortable falling back on letting the pictures do most of my talking, especially when I am feeling tongue-tied. I am not popular, thank goodness, so I feel no pressure or opportunity to do anything else with this space than what I do with it. This space is about the inside, and how the inside affects the outside.

I do want to write here more than I do. So there's that. Because the things I write here seem to help me unlock the locks, frame the view. I write almost every day in my journal. I am also writing a memoir of my life. Been working on it now for three years, I think. When I started, I didn't even know I was writing a memoir, I just couldn't keep some things to myself anymore. I've struggled with putting some of the pieces of my life into words, and yet other pieces seem to flow up to the surface so effortlessly.

I come, I open up the editor and type straight into it. And I try not to edit much, here. Here of all places, I don't want to second guess myself. In my journal I write in a scribble barely anyone could read (not even me), in partial sentences, word fragments, doodle-scrawls. My journal is all impressions. But this place, it is a mirror. This place is a translator. The place where I practice speaking in my feeling voice. Truthfully, sometimes I write things here that I can't or won't, or just don't, write anywhere else. Speak anywhere else. Here, I learn.

So, yes, I think about some of the things I want to write, sometimes for years, without ever even writing them in my journal. Big things. Well...small things that feel like they might become something big. Something important. Something new. And also... something very old. I might not even recognize it until I press publish. Something that will someday change the way I see and think and feel. Or maybe something that already has changed me, is changing me right now. For me, blogging has become part of the natural cycle, encouraging the compost to ripen and rot and eventually transforming it into something new.

I am transforming into something. I just can't quite put it into words yet.

- - - -

If you blog, what are your reasons and motivations to do it? What are the best things you get out of blogging?

old

Hydrangea bush outside my house. Not quite ready for spring.

I love this bush. I can't tell you how much I love this bush. When we leave I wish we could take it with us. sigh.

Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 2:38 PM

Two year old email conversation with my good friend, S.

From: me
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 2:38 PM
To: S
Subject: an obersavtion [sic] for your writer's notes

Last week M_____ was breaking out on her face and I asked her about it.

She said she had used one of those gel peel-off masks.  This was the second time she had used it and she loved the feeling of pulling layers off her face.  She said it made her breakout, she thought because it was pulling bad stuff and toxins from deep inside her body out to the surface.  She said she didn't mind breaking out if it meant she was getting rid of bad stuff from inside.

For some reason I thought you might find it interesting.

Excerpt from letter to a new friend

I have a post semi-written somewhere about this but, a long time ago, a girlfriend writer of a close friend of mine said that in my writing, I had a habit of dragging everyone to where I was.  Or maybe making them come with me. And that was bad. Because really good writers bring what is inside them to the surface, write it in a way that others can be there without going there. Ok, I don't remember her words, but the meaning comes back to me something like that.

I do know more about bringing myself to the world. I am afraid though, that I could get lost. And if lost, I might recede, and I might lure others to follow.

Ok, but that is not about the other writing I want to share with you. I honestly think I need some kind of sounding board, especially a fresh ear and eye, to give me impressions, or advice. Whatever comes to the surface.

I used to write a lot of poetry. And I respect that economy so much that it is hard to take anything as wordy as a sentence very seriously. I'm going to have to continue to pretend that this journaling, this blogging and the writing project are some flight of fancy. Some satisfaction of a guilty habit, like conversation.

Is that evil, to think that way? Seems like shame. Which I am in principle, dead set against. On the other hand, shaming is human. What the hell do I expect anyway? If I spend anytime considering omniscience it just throws my shit into confusion.

Impression of you. WHY? I do not know, but... But, I think of you as open in a way I cannot be. I think of you as similar in some way to Charlotte's character in Lost in Translation. Except of course you are not silent and therefore, not as mysterious, but somehow, yes, mysterious. I don't know, of course, but you seem restless, though maybe in not as deep a way as she. And I think of you as having chosen a mate more focused on you than she did. I think of myself, now, soon to be 38, and walking with a new part of myself I do not know, carrying an old part of myself I know too well. I think of being 20-something as you are, and not having any blinding identifying marks on me. I think of life as an open empty road, full of strangers and strange experiences as you. And I think it is somehow freedom, unknown to itself.

I'm sure that is somehow not the whole truth.

Best Written Weblog You've Probably Never Visited

Suspended by nyl rebma is creative and creativity-inspiring, evocative (to me) and quite frequently updated. No pressure, nyl rebma.

There's no "blogworld bullshit" on Suspended.

I got nyl rebma's permission to post this link.