the week that was or reflections on thinking

Ah, so here we are.  April.

I was under the impression this was going to go down as a pretty non-descript sort of week.  The sort one expects in the aftermath of a major event you anticipate for a month… or pretty much since the start of a job.  But, yeah, no… the sound and the fury continued this week… and I find myself content to not stray far from home at week’s end.

I did talk myself out of that desire for laziness to go to a book reading on Wednesday.  One of the instructors at the WAM is also a member of the WWC.  Maybe because I found a renewed interest in my own writing recently.  Because my writing is historic fiction… and this was historic fiction.  Or my newfound determination to appreciate the local community of creative thinkers.  Or because it was at work… it was a good way to spend the second evening of April to see and meet more fellow Worcester area writers.  

I did use the time between the end of my work day and the reading to accomplish more with my own manuscript.  I started mapping out my scenes.  Something I did long ago when I started this novel over fifteen years ago, but haven’t really attempted in the last two years since I revived it.  I know quite a few writers for whom this is the method always.  I write everything differently… and this time around I wanted to just see where my instincts led me.  It is a story of memories… and we don’t tell our memories in linear fashion.  Especially as that memory fades… but ultimately this novel needs to make sense.  So I moved some things.  I saw where there were holes in the understanding… and I made a colorful page of scribbles.

This illustration also made me realize I didn’t need as much fleshing out as I thought was going to be necessary.  My contemporary character is seeing the past through the eyes of her grandmother’s conversations and photographs.  And that story is going to have a lot of holes for her not living it.  Just as I have come to understand parts of my grandmother’s life by seeing those pictures from a lifetime or two ago… there are just as many mysteries that could never be fully understood from my only knowing through hearsay.  All to say, life is full of not knowing another person’s story completely.  We, of necessity, will connect the dots.  Sometimes rightly.  A lot of times wrongly.  But it is our own secret of our own lives, in spite of the self-exposing of Facebook and selfies and Twitter.  It is still as Charlotte Bronte wrote: “The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.”

Anyway, I’m excited about this book again and have found determination to make time each day to edit or finish crafting the missing scenes.

… the which I intended to do yesterday.  But then there was an opportunity to visit with my nieces, whom I don’t see as regularly since they started day care and don’t have a weekly visit with Nana.  I’m impressed with the vocabulary – but more than that, the mental recognition of knowing what to ask for, ask for it, and not hesitate or filter oneself in the asking or the refusal.  Of course, as the aunt, I can find that fascinating and not frustrating in having to deal with the constant “nos”.  I do love how they interact with one another – both with unrestrained affection and peevish cruelty.  Spending the hours with them tearing apart a cupboard or falling on top of each other on my parents’ bed or discovering the difference between standing on the recently thawed grass or a rock peeking through the fallen pine needles shows how easily it is to entertain oneself and see the beauty of things.

Of course, that wisdom went right out the window when I got home to a dark house.  After months of a brutal winter, the spring winds caused a neighborhood power outage.  If you’ve been to my neighborhood, you will understand how completely dark it was.  Although, being far from city light pollution, once my eyes adjusted, the half-ish crescent-ish moon still lit up the outdoors against the remaining piles of snow.  It wasn’t too cold to be miserable.  I thanked myself for the wisdom to buy a bottle of wine on the way home and went in to start a fire (of course I had five logs and the rest were in the cellar, when I told myself earlier in the day I should bring some upstairs and didn’t) and light some of the several candles I have decorating the mantle and piano.

And disappointing to me, I was immediately bored.   Bored is better, of course, than freaked out by being alone in a big house in the dark.  But something about being trapped in my living room with candles made me tedious and impatient for the repairs to come.  Not like I didn’t have enough with which to occupy my thoughts.  I had that writing – the history of which got some immediate reference point without the modern convenience of Facebook to distract me.

I thought about reading my library book that is due on Thursday… but I didn’t want to shut off my iPod and find the creepy factor of that dark house.  So I wrote in my journal and watched the wax drip in curious sculptures over the varied candlestick holders.  And I think, honestly, it wasn’t the sudden reflection in a dark window of a candle or the sound of the wind outside that offered the creepy… it was being alone with my thoughts… without opportunity for distraction.

A curious thing to realize for one who lives on her own in the middle of nowhere.  But… even with my militant refusal to own a smart phone and non-subscription to cable, I have enough to distract me from being with myself.  Which is an interesting contrast to my argument we use those things to distract ourselves from being with one another.  But … really… how can we bear the silence and the dark of another person if we can’t tolerate it within ourselves?

Well… I wish I had an answer to that.  But the power did come on, quite literally as I was lifting a candle to blow it out and did a double take to the fact the lamp was on again.  Then I heard the shudder of the furnace returning to life… and needed to fill that silence with the noise of the internet.

Maybe I didn’t learn the lesson, but I’m thinking it planted something in my mind to continue to contemplate and unravel.

But not now, because there is a birthday to go celebrate.