It's crunch time

Good Morning Blog readers - UM WHERE IS THE SUN???
If you are here in Virginia, it is a bit overcast and this is not in line or cooperative with my melting poolside fantasies. I had a private Dave concert on the books for today and the taste of salt water lingering and dried on my lips. Grrrrr, go away clouds - I need me some sun.
Well last night's meet was spectacular and yes, tiring.
Although it was blazing hot here in Fluvie when I left home at 3:30 to head in town to the Elk's pool, as I drove deeper into Cville the sky grew ominously dark minus the bright flashes of lightening. The sky opened up and dumped a ton of rain and the storm clouds released thunder clap after thunder clap. Each rumble meant another half hour before we get on deck. Sigh. Brian and I set up tailgate style in the back of the B2FLMS mobile and waited for the rumbling to dissipate. Eventually the sun returned with a vengeance and the meet was on, however late to start. My kiddos rocked the waters hard last night, both dominated and I was as proud as a Momma could be. Love to see my kids succeed, both such fierce competitors. The best part of my night was undoubtedly watching my kids behave like me. I know right, pat myself on the back - but no seriously - it's good to see that they are paying attention to what is most important - kindness. My Emma Claire girl was so supportive of all of her team mates last night that I myself was even a little surprised. She is always the most kind hearted of all my peanuts, but last night she was really really really ON. She cheered so loudly for everyone "GO GO GO" and for her best pals, she scooted right to the wall and was there to hug them as soon as they lifted up and out of the pool. She even, was there, screaming her lungs out for her brother who she usually hates and is trying to figure out a way that I can reasonably abandon all my sons and just move to a loft in New York with her - "yeah Mom boys drool" she would say.
At one point. I was like "where the hell did Mimz go" and then I spotted her with Matthew's towel draping him in it lovingly as he exited the pool. I watched them walk around the deck together, talking to each other about his race, all up in their own relationship and I teared up a little cause I am a sap and they really do have something that is all their own that even I am not a part of. Sigh.
And then surprise "Where the hell is Matthew now?"
Oh wait, there he is pulling Emma out of the pool after her killer win in breast stroke. Look at him two hand pull her up and oh my god he is hugging her and picking her up right off the ground. Oh heart be still in that moment - take that whole vision in deep deep deep.
Love my kids - Love the way they supported each other and their team - sports are so important for kids at their age - teaches them so many valuable lessons that they can only get from that team experience.
And with that a rain drop just fell on my laptop and I think I may cry....
No more rain please - I need the sunshine....(insert desperate pathetic whine here)
My Nana had surgery yesterday in Boston at Brigham and Womens Hospital, they apparently drained her kidney which was full of infection and a big ole kidney stone. She had heart complications on the table and is not stabilizing satisfactorily, so she has been moved to ICU.
Hate that I can picture her scared eyes and that she is alone. I am hoping my sister Ashleigh gets to leave work early today and can go be with her so at the very least she has the comfort of a family member by her side.
I am hoping she is not suffering most of all. I hate to think of her suffering. And although she never reads blogs and I am not sure God does either, I say just to say it, it's more than okay Nan to just let go now, it's time God, take her home.
I hate it, hate every second of it and yet I am completely calm. It is the calm that worries me - I am very much the calm before the storm type. Not that I will storm, but that life will storm. Can't think of a bigger rain cloud than losing my Nan. But it's okay Nan, go...
Mary and I did our usual morning talk today. We discussed a myriad of topics that ranged from Nana to my book outline.
Clearly Nana is on the forefront, but Mary has also been bugging me relentlessly to get my book outline done before I leave for my trip home to write. I will have an entire week at the PH house (Prospect Harbor Maine) to write without interruption.
Considering the stack of writing I accomplished this past semester with the kids interrupting my train of thought every fifteen seconds, it is more than plausible that without that lack of focus - I could actually hammer out a good deal of my book.
OMG am I really going to write a book? Why yes, yes I am. I have no idea how it will turn out, have no idea if it will be any kind of good - but I am going to do it none the less. It is my personal goal of all goals.
Jason Mraz posted something on his facebook the other day - a quote that I can't quite verbatim back at you, but basically the gist was life is short but art lives forever.
I wrote back YES YES YES.... It is my need to create something lasting so that long after I am gone, I will remain in the form of my art.
I want so much to leave a lasting piece of me for all of eternity.
I love that about literature - love that we still contemplate the identity of Shakespeare's dark lady in the year 2011. Love that a classroom can ignite over drastically different perceptions of Isbens 'dollhouse.'
I have no doubt that I will be a Zora Neal Hurston and hate what I produce - wish to change it and do it all over again - that will just have to be book #2.
Not sure that artists ever feel they have captured what is in their head and given it to the world in accuracy. I know for me, what I write NEVER looks like what I feel - that is my challenge - to hone in on how to get what I express in verbal communication to translate on paper. I want you to feel like we are talking.
That is a hard thing to do.
I have been reading "The Bluest Eye' by Toni Morrison and "Cane' by Jean Toomer. Both literary masterpieces - Cane more so because it is undefinable - I can't tell you what it is, a book? A novel? A journal? A collection? IDK. Amazing writing though, that I can tell you. And a mystery to me.....How the fuck does he pack so much in to an eight word sentence? Toomer lays down, literally, these condensed sentences that have endless multiple meanings (if you are insightful like me) and so eight words takes on infinite possibility and the scope of his point just explodes in all different directions. Reading his work is like watching shutter exposure on a camera in low light....The shutter clicks and opens, then hangs there, the initial gunshot having long been heard and gone - the lens just gapes open for what feels like forever and you think you know what you were pointing at, but then you have no idea what has been captured in the nuances of the shadows and light. Did that make sense, probably not and I am going to write a book, awesome?!!
But that is the only way I can think to describe it - you look at Toomers words and get it immediately, but then in the shadows they cast on one another, in the layers of meaning they create, there is just more and more and more that can be thought, understood, perceived. He was a genius. As is my girl Toni Morrison. She is the same kind of powerfully descriptive author - her visions pack a punch right to the gut. She gets in so powerfully and turns me all around inside. I hug her books a lot when I read them - I hug them so hard and squeeze my eyes tight and say Thank You Jesus for making her this way - thank you for giving her such grit.
Literature, like music, gives me a place of belonging that I have not experienced elsewhere, except for maybe in my relationship with Mary. I feel like I belong in the midst of a million mingling words - I feel at home there in the print, like I am where I am truly meant to be. And I guess beyond immortality, that is why I write - to give some of that, to some Deb somewhere, who will get my sick sense of humor, my deep and raw perceptions and truths and feel as though she belongs too.
I was listening to one of my all time favorite songs the other day poolside, Robert Palmers "Every Kind of People" - I have loved this song like it were my own creation since the first time I heard it a million years ago....It takes every kinda people to make what life's about yeah...yes Robert is really does - a simple lyric that makes me feel like my "EVERY KINDA" is integral to this time and place. Because really it is. What would the world be without me?
For a lot of people, it would be boring. The world would be lest flavorful without my specific spice. Yes it really would be - so I gotta do the work and get it down, so that it remains - my branding on the earths surface. My words.
I will tell my story - The Canary Memoirs - it is daunting I tell you, daunting.
My story is something else, I can guarantee you that...
And so it is crunch time. Time to give myself a definitive outline that keeps me on track. Dr. Wert has taught me to narrow my scope to begin, start really specific in theme - you cannot be general at all - you gotta start tight and expand from there - the opposite is a writers suicide. Not at all like writing these blogs where I sit down with my coffee and puke up my thoughts in random order and meaning and don't really care if you get it or not. Not that I don't care about you all, because obviously I do to share my life with you so openly - but I mean I don't write for you to GET it - I write for you just because I am a good sharer. haha, nice word.
My book has to do more - has to really tell the story of a coal mined canary turned trapped in a gilded cage.
Sigh. Outline Deb, out line.
And if I get the book written, if I knock it out while in PH, I have decided that I will add a canary to my tramp stamp 7 that one day will in completion will resemble a vegas slot machine - not the jackpot mind you. A bunch of symbols indicating my gambling nature and my thought that to win, you gotta keep pumping in quarters and pulling the knob. For me the winning combo is not a bunch of symbols and numbers that look the same - for me it's a Robert Palmer version - a little bit of this a little bit of that, a little bit of "EVERY KINDA" - If you are an every kinda that makes it on my body - you are a significant piece of the puzzle.
If you do not own that song btw, go to itunes and purchase it and make it your 'Deb Does Life' contribution to your musical world - that and #41 of course. And you really should buy "Beautiful Mess" by Jason Mraz while you are at it cause he really did write that for me.
Losing focus - shooooooting all over the place now. OUTLINE DEB, outline.
And I will say it again - I know who some of you readers are, but you all show anonymously in the form of a growing number - I wish I knew who you all were....hmmmm?
I wish that I knew, so I could sign my first edition of 'The Canary Memoirs' to each and every one of you personally. When I get published, we will talk about revealing identities.
Until then, enjoy your anonymity and guess what? Here comes the sun little darlin'.
Peace and love and words, hundreds and millions and pages of those words....
:)