October 17, 2019 – Thursday
(Somehow this didn’t post … so, here it is now!)
I roused myself from my warm bed long enough – to dash through the bedroom, avoid the slumbering dog on the floor, and grab my laptop from the hall counter where it was sucking up its nightly juice – before freezing.
I was thinking I’d have to sit in the dining room – letting the moonlight wash over me as the cold seeped into me – when I realized I could steal away BACK to my cozy bed and write. Oh, the luxury of wifi!
I started this blog a few days ago but it didn’t feel quite right. I needed to let it settle – there has been turbulence within me, like a paper boat at sea, and I’ve been having a hard time figuring out what is going on.
Until tonight.
Thoughts had been rolling around in my head and I knew I had to get up and write them down or they’d be gone – like the stars at daybreak – as I am a “one and done”creator.
I was toweling off from my shower when thoughts came speeding into and then out of my brain … like one of those emergency bulletins at the bottom of the TV screen warning you of impending thunderstorms or tornadic activity. Except whereas the TV keeps streaming those blurbs (how else did we midwesterners learn the names of our neighboring counties than by those repetitions?) what comes into and then goes out of my brain happens only once … and then is gone. Forever. I try to conjure up what those words were … wisps of thought flit through … jumbled and tumbled words and letters like some forgotten code or alphabet soup but nothing more. Sigh. Those words are gone. I need a magic wand to get them back.
Alas, no magic wand. How many times have I wanted one of those in my lifetime? So, there I was wet-headed looking more like Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid than I really cared to – trying to get what was in my head through these fingertips before the thoughts were gone. The little poodlette by my side was not helping as she was peeping every 3 minutes, like a live squeaky toy, and was driving me slowly insane. Well, not exactly insane … but significantly distracted.
Paris has been in my thoughts … everything Parisian has been swirling around for a while but moreso this past week. I had guests in from Paris – sailing through – and they were lovely. I wished I could have visited more with them. I wouldn’t even have had to have been in on their conversation … I could have just sat and listened and drenched myself in French. Oh, that extraordinary language … lilt and musicality … it poises on the tongue and then floats out leaving mouths pouty and lips suggestive. I can almost see the words visible in the air … gilded and in sumptuous calligraphy like a formal wedding invitation.
Ah, Paris. I long for it. How long has it been that I have been pining for a place I have only visited once – and so briefly? I long for it like a lost lover, a gone parent or childhood. The air is the same there as what I am breathing here but yet it is so vastly different. Love, light, and depth are infused into it somehow … amidst the gargoyles and baguettes, art, bridges and trumpeting buttresses … I imagine even in ash. Very few days go by when my soul doesn’t whisper to me … return!
I just finished reading the book … The Little Paris Bookshop – which oddly isn’t about a little Paris bookshop at all but of a gentleman’s life. He has a book barge and it is known as a Literary Apothecary. He knows exactly which books to offer people to heal their souls. An interesting concept. I borrowed it from a neighbor who borrowed it from her friend and so, one to another we share the threads of this book – this writing – that has shaken my soul.
This is what has been causing the turbulence.
It is one of those books that I read and put down and picked up again a few days later – not my normal book devouring. This one was a difficult read and took me a while to realize why. When first reading, I thought I’d return it but was told to keep going … so, I plodded on finding the main character so troubled and pathetic. I was impatient with him. Get a life! –I kept thinking. But the more I read, the more I found myself relating to him and his plight as it’s less about books and more about life’s journey and love and loss and grief and finding your light again.
While reading I was bemused that my French wasn’t cutting it with my stuttered pronunciations of towns and words (wasn’t the 6 week class I took from the local junior college a million years ago enough?!). I am glad I was not reading it aloud as I butchered the language so well that Oscar Meyer would have been proud.
As I got more into the book, however, I realized where my impatience stemmed from … that the difficulty in reading this story was that the main character was … me. He was me! The realization took hold last night and it’s with slow seepage that I’m letting it find a place in my being. I feel like I’m in public – naked and vulnerable – for all to see and witness. I don’t like it … but there it is … in black and white and well, French. And I felt compelled to share the power of this writing – even if it exposed me.
In reading those words, something has shifted … as the character was finding his way – so was I! An epiphany of sorts had occurred and it’s as if years of darkness have been cast aside and something has been sprinkled about me … the soothing lilt of French conversation, moonlight, glittering seas, knowing that grief takes time – and who is to say how much? Not so much demons but emptiness … hollowness and loneliness creep into the crevices of your soul when there is no light.
And suddenly … through Monsieur Perdu … there was light. I traveled his journey with him – at least part of it – and have stepped into the light of a million stars. I could say sunshine – but it is night that I love more … when the velvet sky wraps around us and the sky sparkles with a million diamonds. I’ve always been a glitter girl.
It was sometime late last night, between when I put the book onto my nightstand and before I drifted off – just when I was thinking about the seal pup I saw on the beach and when I was marveling at the moonshine coming through my bedroom window – when I felt the shift … literary therapy had come full circle. Life imitating art.
And so, in the pre-dawn hours I vowed not to continue on the path that I have walked for so long. The time of healing – the in-between time of having to say goodbye and choosing to say goodbye – the long (or short) period of grieving/of mourning – gives way to going forward with all that was as a new beginning. I don’t mean to sound so dramatic – but there was such clarity. Sadness takes up a lot of room in one’s heart. Great things are ahead – for anyone who is missing a loved one – if only we allow them!
Which brings me to my blind date. In about a week I will be on my way to NC, again. My 4th/5th time? I have a date (not in the traditional sense but perhaps with destiny?) and am hoping that this is IT! I know – been there/done that all before – and I know I’ve been saying (for a long, long time) that I have to get off this rock. But, I’m actually giddy! I’m apprehensive but excited … and something feels different this time around. So, I will go to the middle of the state and check out the Triad area (Winston-Salem/Greensboro/High Point) and amble, soak up the sights and smells and sounds … kick up some leaves … and figure this out. Once and for all.
I know it’s there. It’s time. I’m ready. My future is before me. Life awaits. C’est la vie!