Passion--where's mine?

My husband makes wands. Wands for Harry Potter fans, wands for witchy types, just nice carved wands for anyone who might want to have a wand in his or her life. Last week he walked into the Witchy Shoppe in the city and sold eleven of the things in a go without even trying. He doesn;t make them because he can sell them; that was just a nice bonus. He's always had a thing for sticks and the wand thing grew out of it naturally. Now he's working on a website devoted to his wands.

Or I have another friend who quilts. Her latest project is called "Catnaps:" small quilts for cats. She has a lovely website too. But she doesn't make them because she can sell them; she's said herself that's just an excuse. She likes to quilt. More than that, she loves fabric. The quilts and the website are an excuse for her to get more and more fabric. To indulge in this thing she's passionate about.

I think about things like this and wonder where my passion has gone.

I had a lot of it when I was younger--like in high school. For music, for writing, for painting, for all kinds of stuff. Well, we;re all passionate in High School...but don't most of us keep some of that passion as we age? Whether we put it into a career or a hobby, don'e we feel something for what we do?

I don't. At least, not mostly. I do remember feeling some passion when I was working on the stories for Dragons of the Mind, but that was so long ago I can hardly remember what it felt like. Mostly, my life is one of extreme...flatness: odd for someone with Bipolar Disorder, but there it is. I just don't feel interested in the things I do. Not the way I have sometimes in the past.

I think it's weird for a creative person to feel so little. Because I can still create, but it doesn't feed me in any way, you know? It's just something I do automatically. Or don't do recently, because I'm so fed up with this whole business of finding everything so boring.

Some of it could have to do with the meds I'm on to "even out my mood." Because my fits of passion could easily have been episodes of mania. I think they were. But I also remember being into stuff without being manic about it. I don;t feel into anything these days. It's all just...flat, like I said.

Where's my passion gone? Sometimes I think they beat it out of me in the hospital. Sometimes I think it was gone before the first time I was hospitalised. Like something broke in me and though I've been in therapy for years that thing has never been recovered. I wonder if it ever CAN be recovered or healed. When I think about what I would need for that to happen I think of things that seem impossible, like selling a million copies of my book or winning the World Fantasy Award or stuff like that. But I don't know if even that would help, or if it would just provide some more outside motivation to keep going when what I want is internal, not external.

In college I wrote a poem:

Once everything was a poem.
Now nothing is.
Not even this.

That best describes what I'm talking about, Once everything was involving, a source of inspiration and creativity. Now I have to work at it all the time. Now I have to pretend, and I don't like pretending.

When I try to talk to other writers about this they looks at me like I'm crazy. I mean, the common wisdom of the time is to follow your passion--if your passion is writing then write! They can't conceive of writing without it, which I do every day.

How do you follow your bliss when there is none?

What I've been doing...

So what have I been doing in the last few days, other than fretting about the situation I posted about last, smoking WAY too much and playing Bookworm Adventures until my eyes fall out?

Well, I've been thinking a lot about She Moved Through The Fair, the next book in my Caitlin Ross series. In it, Caitlin tracks a destructive magical amulet through the week-long Gordarosa Harvest Festival and eventually finds it closer to home than she suspected.

SMTtF started as a mundane murder mystery. In fact, it was the first Caitling Ross story I thought of (with the help of my darling and creative husband) some five or six years ago. Consequently, it's changed a lot since then. For one thing, Caitlin was a simple musician, without any of the more arcane elements to her persona that we come to hear of in The Unquiet Grave. For another, for all you people who are interested in the writer's process, it was written in the third person. And Timber had red hair.

But the biggest stumbling block I'm having now is that it was mundane. A Ha! you say, That's where the magic amulet comes in. And you'd be right. I invented the amulet when I was about halfway through TUQG so that there would be a reason for this book to be a Caitlin Ross story and not just a random Cozy.

But I'm having trouble remembering just how the amulet fits in to the murders. That's what I get for not writing things down I suppose. I know I had a Great Idea and pretty much the whole book planned out at one point. But did I take notes? Of course not. I thought I would remember. Of course years have gone by since the Great Idea and I DON'T remember. And I feel like I can't get started writing until I do.

Editorial meeting, help! This is where I need a team of writers to back me up with little notecards all filled with ideas that I can pin up on a bulletin board, just so I can keep track of what's going on. Because I have at least six Caitlin Ross books in my mind at this point--enough to keep me going for several years if they ever become more than vague notions (or should I ever sell a book to a real publisher or win the lottery so I can keep publishing them by myself).

Oh, and in case you've been wondering, the narrator of "Gifts of a Generous Heart" in Dragons of the Mind WAS indeed Caitlin Ross.

I've also been thinking about writing a letter to my mother, but that's another story that would entail the use of much tobacco and perhaps some whiskey.

Got My Mad On

So, the last few days have not been good ones for me. Why? I'll tell you:

Background: some of you may know this, but several years ago I was in a band with a woman who I had known for some years and was close friends with--or thought I was close friends with. To make a long story short, her disruptive and hostile behavious in the band, her compulsive lying behind my back and her refusal to do the work that was needed to play her part caused the end of the band and the end of our friendship. In fact, I haven't spoken to her in some six years.

Well, this woman is involved in the same volunteer organisation that I'm involved in (fortunately we don;t ever come into contact and never have to interact). A few days ago, another person in this organisation sent out an email to the listserve requesting that people who hadn;t RSVP to a meeting he was setting up with the intention of bringing the volunteers closer together and finding new ways we could contribute to the organisation. Sounds like a good idea, no? Well, this woman didn;t think so and she worte back a long screed--which she posted publicly--about why it was a bad idea and unnecessary and all that. This post was, in my eye and ear--for my husband reminds me that when we read stuff she's posted we can;t help but hear her intonation and see her expressions and they have had a lasting effect--patronising and condescending and pretty much out of line, especially to be posted for all to see. Well, the person organising the meeting took it like a gentleman and I suppose that should have been the end of it. But both my husband and I were so riled that he couldn;t help but comment on what he saw as the inappropriateness of the original post, saying that he thought the forum was a place to exchange ideas in a supportive atmosphere not to condescend to and lambaste people for their ideas and willingness to go one step further than absolutely required.

Of course this caused a huge stink. One person wrote back, "A good lanbasting...is good clean fun," a sentiment with which I can't agree, having been on the receiving end of too many of them to count. Lambasting someone for his idea is hurtful and non-constructive. And I said as much, and I added privately that this particular woman couldn't leave the organisation soon enough to suit me if that was her attitude. Boy, I shouldn;t have said that! I was told in no uncertain terms that that was out of line as she had contributed so many volunteer hours. Excuse me, but there's more to volunteering than hours put in, in my book.

Well, anyway, just when the flap had started to die down, this woman posted again saying that the matter should have been between her and the other person involved and it was really no one else's business to comment on it. excuse me? then why did you post on a public forum, you moron? In my opinion, this was another attempt on her part to create dissent where there shouldn't really have been that much--a simple yes or no reply to the invitation would have sufficed. She went on to say that "If you want to REALLY contribute to this organisation," one should find out how much money she's giving to the next fundraiser and match it. Boy did that make my blood boil. It all comes down to money, does it? Well, we all can;t be living off trust funds like some people I could name. I feel like posting the Biblical parable about the poor woman who gave her last three coppers to the alms box and what the Jeez said to the Pharisee who derided her for it.

If anything, this should have proved to people how destructive this woman is, but no. No one seems to get it and if I say anything it's just put down to my being crazy with a grudge about the band stuff. I hate that. One person said, "My bullshit meter rates (this woman) as okay." I want to tell him his bullshit meter must be broken and I hope he never has the opportunity to find out just how broken it is.

But there's a conspiracy of silence among some elements of this town about just how dysfunctional it is. That's something I really can;t cope with. And this whole thing has brought up the band issues and the lying and the hostility and all again for me when I thought I was fairly over it. So I've been mad and sick at my stomach, not to mention believing that everyone is going to come down on me and burn me at the stake for what I've said. But come on. I broke off a 25-year friendship with this woman over her behaviour. Do you think I;d do that on a whim? Can you get that there might be some ruth on my side of the issue? Obviously not.

So that's why the last few days have not been good for me. Hope yours have been better.

One good thing came of it: I was so mad I cleaned my house. Now THAT'S mad!

Unfinished

I was going to write about anxiety today. But I have a headache and while that's not pleasant it keeps me from feeling particularly anxious. And when i'm not feeling it, it's hard to describe. Hard to take myself seriously when I'm trying to talk about the absolute certainty that the angry villagers with torches are going to show up any minute to drag me out of my house and tar and feather me in the town square. Because that's what it feels like a lot of the time.

Or hard to describe the feeling of terror as I walk downtown and SEE PEOPLE. Some of them say hello to me. my mind tells me this is perfectly innocent. My other self wonders what they want, why are they talking to me, how long before they start throwing things or laughing behind me back. A car can drive by and have people laughing in it and I KNOW they're laughing at me.

Unpleasant.

Anyway, I remembered that once while I was out walking I started having an anxiety attack and started composing a poem about it. I never finished the poem--I rarely do once the feeling has worn off, not much of a poet anymore though I used to be considered quite a good one. But here's the bit anyway:

Unstuck

Anything can start it
Strange pain, unexpected sensation
Unfamiliar situation
Any stress, however momentary small,
However likely to pass unnoticed

There’s a jolt like I’m sitting
In the electric chair and someone I can’t see has just
Pulled the switch. It tingles
Through my chest first, reaches my limbs, suffuses
The extreme tips of my fingers and I am
Unstuck. Part of me leaps
Across some indefinable gap into somewhere else.

This is not a safe place.
This is the place where my other body lives
The one that knows the things I cannot know and feels
The things I cannot feel: all those experiences stored up
Like snapshots in a box to be sorted
In a later time that never comes.

So then I started looking through more files of old unfinished poetry and I thought I'd share some more. Here are a couple:

The Fossil Record

I

Underneath this ocean
Far beneath this blue ocean
Beneath this calm, blue ocean where the halcyon nests
Laying her eggs on its smooth, solstice surface where they rock
Unborn infants cradled by grandfather’s rolling waves:
Beneath this ocean where checkered corals coin
Calcium cities, where winged fish leap, flashing
Flighted jewels sparkling through spray,
Where laughing dolphins make sport of holiday ships
And wise whales turn head-downward, singing many-throated,
Mapping mysterious global journeys for unseen cousins:
Beneath this ocean lies
A world of darkness.

Here be dragons. Here lie
All those things that thrive without light
Without breath.

And another:

(in that place)

they taught you words for what you feel but what you feel
is not a word. What you feel
cannot be described in any language. The best you can do
is to come close: step softly around its outside edge, sending out
feelers like a snail’s, fleshy and formless,
ready to draw back at the first touch
of that solid knot at your core,
that thing at your center that defines you
though it has no name.

Even this cannot describe it.

What cannot be described cannot be realised;
What cannot be realised cannot be experienced;
What cannot be experienced cannot be lived through
What cannot be lived through cannot be over.

Hope you enjoyed these fragments.

K.

The Tragic Saga of My Garden

So, about ten years ago we moved into this house with a huge garden space. It hadn't been kept up--the woman we bought the house from was no gardener. But the woman who owned the house before her was an avid gardener and you could see the potential: huge flowerbeds, big space for vegetables: in short all the things a gardener could want.

At that time, I fanicied myself a gardener. It kind of runs in the family. My mother spent all her summers gardening and my sister does and my grandmothers both did...you know how it goes. Plus, we were friends with an avid gardener who thrilled us with lush descriptions of Ratatouille made with vegetabloes fresh from the garden: plump ripe tomatoes, fresh sweet corn, peppers, eggplants, potatoes--the whole lot. Well, if I'm not a gardener I DO like to eat and I couldn;t resist. The result? I became, perforce, a gardener.

The vegetable part was relatively easy at first. The neighbour had been growing tomatoes and a few other things, so the space was all ready for a fresh crop. And boy did we enjoy those first few crops. It came down to saying things like, "Do you think we could put in a patch of wheat and mill it for our bread?" You know, crazy stuff like that. Of course, we didn;t think it was crazy at the time. We were gardeners.

The flowerbed was something else again. It was severely overgrown and I spent a year just looking at it trying to figure out what to do. Then I spent another year digging. And digging. And digging. I dug up weeds. I separated day lilies that hadn't been separated for ten years. I put in bulbs and removed others. And the next spring I was rewarded with something that looked very much like a flowerbed.

I felt good about it. I kept it up for about two years, always thinking of the five-year plan, at the end of which I would have a glorious garden that pretty much did its own work, with maybe a guiding hand or two every so often.

Then I got sick. I was sick for a couple years. And the flowerbed went to hell, as did the vegetable patch. And I realised in that time that I don;t really like gardening. I know this because there's a real gardener across the stret from us and she's out there in all weathers, pruning, planting, deadheading, and basically keeping the whole thing running. She's out there in 100-degree heat and in freezing cold, So much for my concept of a guiding hand or two. She made me realise tat gardening is really a full time job--one I don't want.

Now I should have realised this early on. Like the first july, when the bindweed came up and I spent about two hours pulling it before getting that I had better things to do than bend over a patch of stubborn weeds coaxing them out of their nice home in the blazing heat. And so, for the months of July and August, I tended to let the whole thing go to the proverbial pot. Which, of course, made my job all the harder the next year.

In any case, it took getting sick for me to get that I don;t like gardening much. And now, after three years, I'm right back where I started except worse, because the vegetable patch is also so overgrown that I can't even find it. Of the flowerbed, it's better not even to speak. I think a lot of things have died. Unfortunately, none of those things are weeds. Why is it that the weeds can stay alive even when you've given up on the whole business, even to the point of stopping watering?

Now I fantasize about having a landscaper come in and take care of the mess for me. 'Cause it's sure that I'm never going to do it. I feel guilty every time I look out the window and see the lone rosebush struggling to put out blossoms amid the waving orchard grass. I can't see another well-kept garden without feeling sick at my stomach. I'm even contemplating taking out a second mortgage on my house to pay someone to deal with it. My father would be rolling in his grave. If he had one.

Someone please come and rescue me from this situation! Some gardener without a place to garden maybe.

Or maybe I'll just let nature take its course. The sunflowers don't look too bad, really. It's the ragweed that gets me every time...

grey and gunky day

so today is one of those days when it can't decide whether it's going to rain or just threaten to rain. I tried to go for a walk and the sky started spitting down on me, which of course gave me the perfect excuse to come back home after about a block, which I wanted to do anyway. Now I'm sitting here smoking, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my day, if not the rest of my life.

There's this woman in town. I used to know her very well, in fact we were close friends for 25 years. But some BAD STUFF happened and my therapist told me, "This person is toxic to you; break off contact." My therapist, BTW, usually doesn't go around telling people what to do.

So I did break off contact--not without regrets. I really wish the BAD STUFFF hadn't happened. I really wish I could have made it better. But she wasn't going to change and in fact seemed bent on sabotaging the projects we were involoved in together. Well, you've probably heard it all before. The point is, I have many regrets and think of her often and wish it could have been different.

Well this woman has lost an AWFUL LOT of weight. She claims she did it all through Weight Watchers. But man, if she's going to meetings someone ought to tell her to stop. She looks like the walking dead. And having some experience with anorexia myself, I wonder what I should do... My first thought is she's got anorexia; my second thought is she's on speed and my third and distant thought is that she's ill. I really want to go to one of her associates and ask, "Have you mentioned this weight thing to her? because people around town are talking." But if she's ill that would be really tactless and I'd feel like shit. On the other hand if she's in a place where she needs an intervention.... I'd feel bad for not speaking up. I know when I was anorexic no one tried to talk to me and I felt such contempt for them. This woman, in fact, told me when I weighted like 85 lbs that I looked great and I couldn;t believe it. I knew I didn;t look great. I knew I lookekd like hell.

I wonder if she knows she looks like hell. From what I've heard, she doesn't... It's a problem having compassion for people you don;t associate with and don;t really like. What do you do?

It's still not really raining. But I don't feel like doing much. Does that make me a bad and worthless person? Or just human? I don;t have to be superhuman, but I have problems knowing the difference sometimes.

very random indeed

Why is it so hard for me to keep up this blog???

I used to journal all the time. I have boxes and boxes of old journals that I read from time to time and I'm amazed at the content....just the volume of it. I had so many more thoughts then, it seems.

Maybe it's because I actually have people in my life now that I can share these thoughts with. Or maybe it's just that I don't have anything to say. That's a terrible thing for a writer: to feel like you have nothing to say.

But anyway: The Unquiet Grave is finally finished except for a few polishing touches. I have it out being read by a few people and so far they all think it's brilliant. Which leads me to the question: Do I go the self-publishing route again or do I try to do the traditional publishinng thing with its depressing round of submissions and rejections? I just can't decide on one or the other.

The big problem is marketing. I'm bad at it. If I thought I could self publish and market the book effectively, so that I made up my costs at it, there would be a big "DUH" factor in this approach. I have to say, I'm not all that fond of the "traditional" publishing route. It takes a long time to get a response IF you get any, whether from an agent or a publisher. Mostly you get "No thank you's." It's just really depressing. And they don't help you market much anyway. But at least I'd see some money up front without putting any out.

So if you;re at all interested in seeing The Unquiet grave in print, please coontact me. It would be nice to have some contact from my website other than spam offering me cheap rolex watches, which I have no interest in.

Is anybody out there?

I suppose I should update my website more: write another rant or something but I just can't be arsed to do it right now. It seems like I have no strong opinions anymore. And as that takes me back where I started I'll leave it there....