fifteen hundred

 

One thousand five hundred days! 

Dear You,

Where are you at?  Because I want to meet you there!  I think maybe you are worried that you are on a different level, and that I might not want to skate with you, but that couldn't be less true!  I want to skate with you wherever, whoever, you are.  If you have never skated, I want to go with you to the rink and rent skates with you, hold your hand, and show you how to play the "Numbers Game."  If you want to just put them on your feet, stand up, and sit right back down, I want to loan you my skates and be at your side on the bench or sofa.  If you are way, way beyond me and three-turning, waltz jumping, hurricane kicking, hill bombing, and dropping in all over the streets and parks, I want to come and timidly roll on your sidelines!

It's possible that you have some other concerns; maybe you worry you will get hurt, or maybe you worry that you are too old, or that your friends will ridicule you.  To these concerns, I suggest taking it slow, no one is too old, and keep it secret.  Or, if secrecy isn't your thing, you can just ignore criticism, just like (hopefully) always.

It's a funny co-incidence, but in sifting through my old papers, I found a note of criticism, from a dearly admired painting teacher of mine.  Do you know, that it was rubbish?  No, really, it was terrible!  It suggested that I needed to have 'a break through soon.'  A break through?  To what, for pete's sake?  I spent the rest of the day mentally searching through my teaching interactions, praying that I would not remember myself saying such a stupid thing.  A thousand curses upon me, if I did such an ignoble thing!  I tossed this old letter, and I thought I might take a few minutes sometime soon to mentally immolate the people in my life who have said similar things.  I notice, in considering these people, that they are all white, old, men, and that they 'held' a lot of power over me for various reasons.  Of course, that's the deal with paralyzing and damaging criticism; if you didn't care what they said, it wouldn't matter what they said.  

I bet you are already thinking, "but, if you burn them up, if you erase their negative words from the record, won't you have to delete the positive things they said, too?"*  I have wondered about that, but I think that the positive lessons from these people are already integrated into my thoughts.  Also, I have a plan!  I am going, by removing this dusty junk, to make space on the shelf for some really encouraging words; some real appreciation for my own work.  Yes, you guessed it; I am going to put the words there myself, and I am not even going to ask anyone's permission to do it!  

To return to my main points here, I encourage** you to try roller skating, and, to also think hard about what words would encourage you, what words would make it safe for you to try, what words would open the door, give a little nudge, or reassure a person, and then, please, speak those words to yourself and to others!

* The very tiny scraps of praise that keep you coming back, whimpering for more from these masters?  Hmm, maybe the praise isn't that great anyway.  If you can see yourself as this kind of pitiful dog (and I know I do!), call to the poor pooch, and give it a biscuit, won't you?

** Roller skating encouragement for the very young.

The Near and The Far

Dear Readers,

I will now publish (in the blog post sense) the world's shortest novel for you, dear reader! 

You recall my project for this year of writing a novel, which came about from being inspired by the Novel in a Month folks.  I decided February was ideal for a month-long project, because it is short; the shortest, even. 

On February first, I began.  I typed into my computer for a good long time, trying not to judge my work, but unable to keep the promise of never hitting the delete or backspace key.  I just couldn't move on down the sentence with 'herad' there instead of 'heard.'  After a while of never going much of any place, as in following a line this way, then cutting it off, and heading down another path, I thought, yes, this is writing a novel and I can do it.  After more time, I thought I'd stop and review, just to see how many of the 2,000 daily words goal I had set down; surely something like 4,000 by now, I imagined.

522.  Yes.  I was done already, with only a quarter of the quota.  I think I am done in fact, with novel writing, but I give it to you anyway, unedited, but fairly deeply and perhaps too harshly criticized:









The Near and the Far

They came in plaid dresses, six of them. They came to tell of what they’d seen and heard. The first asked if they ought to begin. No one said a word

The far.  It was a long view.  The light was coming in low and slanting under clouds. The hills had taken on a furzy appearance, like a mist was rising up from them. They seemed blurred, warm, and giving. This was to be the place of The Telling.

The near.  As the women approached the hillside, they fidgeted with their cuffs, and straightened their hems. A few of the women were quite young, and wondered how The Telling would go. They asked each other questions and murmured encouragements. What did they have to tell that anyone would want to hear?

The far.  The walk had been long from the shore. They had met the boat, the ship, the birds that carried the messages. They wore plaid, because they’d made their dresses of old draperies that had been scavenged from abandoned seaside hotels. Simple sheaths, without sleeves, and wraps to cover their arms from the cold. Shoes were out of the question.

The near.  One was the daughter of an older one- she would hold her mother’s hand as they walked. The mother and the daughter would talk more than the others. They said: when you see a sad thing, you feel sad, but when you think a sad thing, your feelings pass along ridges in your mind, changing into a story, and then, what does it become? Is it sadness anymore? Are sad stories more true than the happy ones, she would ask her mother. The others would listen, but they said very little in response to this pair and their conversation at first. Later, the other four would come to contribute to their conversations.

The far.  It happened a long time ago, that the people moved away, most of them, to a far place that after a time, stopped sending messages back.  It’s an old story, some of the tribe heads off to find a better land, a better way. Sometimes they return, some of them. But many evaporate into time and space. The distances, really, even between two people standing quite close are astronomical. They can’t be measured at all. Distance isn’t very easy to fool, or shorten, or shrink, despite what you may read.

The near.  Sewing by hand, with dull needles, is slow. The space between where the needle slips under, and then back up again can be large or small, but if it is large, the wind can come through. So, they made the spaces small, and their fingers and hands would cramp and shake.

The far.  When things first began to look lonely, they’d tell each other not to worry, that the others would return. Then, they spoke less and less of it.

The near.  "When they come back, we will clear this debris, we will mend these things, and begin to organize.” They felt less and less like organizing, so they didn’t. They arranged rocks to make pathways, and lined up sticks in patterns. They wondered at their future and they made patterns. As before. The sticks had fallen from the trees for many years and they were of many lengths. Some would sort them by color, or texture. Many would arrange them by size.