Somebody Once Told Me, Part Two

A family member once told me that a person (meaning me) should be able to be happy regardless of the place in which they reside. The lesson I was supposed to take from this admonishment was that if I were better or stronger or logical, I would be just as happy in place A as in place B.

Forgive me, but seventeen years later I still say bullshit. Anybody with an ounce of creativity can and will tell you that every place has a different feel to it. Anybody who would tell you that Manhattan has the same feel as Seattle is blind. Watchung Reservation, for all that I loved it, pales in comparison to the woods of the northwest. The air is different. The colors are different. Life is different. As every person is different, so every person fits better with some places than with others. I know where I am miserable, where I am content, and where I belong.

As a writer, I find it nearly impossible to be creative here. If I were more new age, I would say that this place feels as if it is leeching the color from my aura. As it is, I can only say that living here, I feel as if my soul is being sucked dry. How sad it is that a person could be stuck somewhere like that, a glowing orb stuck in an iron box.

So to all of my artistic compatriots, I wish you air that frees your breath and earth that moves your soul.

Perchance to Dream

A friend once told me that I was lucky I have a dream, something to which I can aspire. It's a heady thing, desire. A lifestyle, a person, a career...it is all too easy to waste a lifetime dreaming of things that may never be. So how do you know when a dream is just that or when it's something worth pursuing?

My therapist tells me that what I dream is worth the longing, the pain that comes with wanting something I do not have. She's right, it is. Writing is more than something I like to do. It's all I've ever wanted. It's a part of who I am. I live inside of my stories - at times, to my detriment. It would be impossible to create characters who truly live without doing so. I don't know if other writers write like this, but for me the two are irrevocably intertwined. I don't have an idea and write it. I see my stories in my head and I try to find the words to describe what I've seen.

I think of a writer as the introvert to an actor's extrovert. Opposites of the same coin. We both put ourselves into other people, other stories. As a writer, I create stories and place them out in the world. I hope they will survive. I hope that somebody will find them, love them and nurture them. A great actor brings his/her character to life. It feels a little like looking for your other half - looking for the person who will take the character I've created and bring him to life. Maybe it's a little like love, this dream. As I look for my other half, my characters look for their other halves - the ones who will bring them to life on the screen.

Life would be so much easier without all of this desire but we're not just the sum of our experiences, we're the sum of our hopes and dreams as well. The things to which we aspire give us drive, make us alive - and aye, there's the rub.

Dream #2

He had lost the lower half of his arm in an accident. He was in a wheelchair and had trouble standing up. I told him that if anybody could do it, he could. Later, I asked him what we were. He said that now I was his friend, but I was going to be his girlfriend.

Epistolary Ghost

I have always loved letters. For years, my friends and I wrote letters to each other. I have made a study of love letters. I have read hundreds of letters sent from one heart to another but I have never received a love letter myself. I've spent a lifetime waiting not only to be a receiver of love letters, but also a writer. I wrote my letters to a ghost, and I tried to give it shape. I tried to turn the mist into something solid, something my pen could reach out and touch.

Each night, my dreams take me from one love to another. As I sleep, I am the ghost. I pass from one world into the next but am never substantial enough to survive the dawn. Dreams do not create reality. The strength of a soul cannot lend solidity to a ghost.

Dream #1

I just woke up at 7am after falling asleep at 2am (watching Zombieland) with this dream:

I was at a camp of some sort. We all introduced ourselves. I mentioned wanting to be a writer and that I was working on a couple of novels and a screenplay. One girl jumped down and rather intensely asked me what my screenplay was about, because she was writing one, too. I wouldn't tell her the plot, only that it was called Eden. I went about being myself, playing in the rain and swimming in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. I wasn't hated (by most, at least), but I certainly wasn't popular.

I met a guy there - how he looked kept changing. He changed back and forth from the kinda cute dorky that I like to this sort of young homicide detective-in-training. We liked each other a lot right away, got to know each other. One night, when he was the dorky one, we kissed on his bed in his room.

The order of this next part I'm not sure of - two main things happened:

One, the group of us (minus the guy) were standing out by the pool and having a heated religious discussion. I spoke, and another guy verbally attacked me and called me a hypocrite because I had either said or given somebody something that had to do with George Washington and in his mind that meant I was acting in accordance with his religious views. I made my case quite effectively, and then the girl standing next to me (with whom I thought I was friendly) put her arm around my shoulder. Every time the counselor turned her head away, the girl moved her hand up to my neck and started choking me. I yelled for the counselor, but she never saw it so she didn't believe me. Finally, I was able to pull an exacto blade out of my pocket and cut her enough with it to make her yell and jerk back. The counselor saw the choke marks on my neck and was ashamed that she hadn't believed me.

Two, my guy was back in detective mode and told me that tonight (which was the night after we kissed) he got called on an assignment - his first chance to go out into the field. He seemed to think I was going to be upset and not believe him. I smiled and told him I was happy for him and I knew he was going to do a great job. I was in an office with the counselor and he was standing in the hallway. He asked the counselor to close her eyes for a moment. She said she would give him thirty seconds. He came in, put his hand on the back of my head and kissed me.

And now, hopefully I can get back to sleep, with the dream and The Dream Life of Rand McNally stuck in my head...

Answers

Four months ago, I asked a question. Another question followed, and another. There are always questions; the answers, it would appear, are a little more elusive.

Last year was indubitably the worst year of my life, filled with trauma after trauma. Trauma is a funny thing. And in the aftermath of trauma, people have a variety of reactions. We change. We shuffle about, try to reestablish our place in the world.

Each day, I search for a connection to myself in the things that surround me. One day I find myself with Ingrid Michaelson, another day I find myself a Muse. One day I am in Wicker Park, another day I am Serenity. One day I am fighting zombies, another day I am a vampire. I make choices. I make sacrifices. I sacrifice comfort and companionship for love - or at least, the hope of love. I sacrifice the safety of normalcy for acceptance of what I most love about myself - the ability to live completely in my mind, in the things that I see and then put onto paper.

Is this the dark path? The light? Does it matter? I don't know. Will I succeed? I don't know. Will I be happy? At times. Will I ever get one thing that I want? Yes. If nothing else, I will be myself. I will create worlds and characters and bring this strange and wonderful universe to life. If the only love I find is love for myself or the love I give my characters, it will be enough.

It has to be.

Question This

It’s human nature to question. We question everything – our environment, our lives, our thoughts – even the questions themselves. Why am I here? Is there a point to my life? Is it too late? Have I failed? Will I ever be happy? Will I ever succeed? Will I ever get one single thing that I want? The answers are elusive. They are fickle. They taunt us with promises of happiness. They promise peace, a respite from the confusion and pain. They offer us glimpses of contentment and then, like a glimpse of sunshine on a cloudy day, they are gone. How long can we go on, how long can we survive, without the answers? And if the answers we do find lead us down a darker path, what then?