Last time I wrote about God playing Travel Agent in my life, it was about a different October, and the blessings that arose from my stay in a psych ward. (Halloween-themed craft projects? I’m now an expert!) This time God played a more literal Travel-Agent role… and naturally I have a Story to tell.
To set the stage, let me tell you what I think about myself as a Travel Agent:
I’M AWESOME!
I love the planning-parts of travel. My dad (who was himself an avid world traveler) always said there are three “stages of enjoyment” with every trip: the planning, the trip itself, and reliving the memories afterward (and in his case, disseminating them via Kodak slide shows).
Atlas? check. Post-its? Check.
So I don’t just book the locomotion and the landing-spot before a trip. I research places we might want to eat (so we won’t be standing on a sidewalk searching “food near me” on our phones when our needles have dropped below “hangry”). I make reservations in advance for Experiences that require pre-arrangement (boat, horses, fishing trips) because Experiences are what we travel FOR. I study maps with my highlighter (call me old-fashioned: I love me a paper map!), collect ideas, dream up routes that will take us on new roads… Sometimes I make up a little “travel brochure” for my husband, providing itinerary of pre-planned parts, and an array of additional options we might undertake.
the cover page of a “travel brochure” from this summer…
It’s the only fictional-character-birthday I know, and not because I’m a big Tolkien nerd (though I am), but because it’s also my sister’s birthday. Just before my own birthday earlier in the month (or as I like to think of it: the annual reminder from my mother about what LABOR day REALLY means!) I read a piece referring to September as the fresh start of the new year for many pre-Gregorian-calendar cultures.
That feels right to me.
Maybe it’s because my personal calendar turns over its “counter” in September; maybe it’s because the rhythm of school-years imbued my early decades of calendar-use; or maybe it’s because I tend to start things at this time of year.
Case in point: my Blog’s (11th) birthday is today.
In its early years I posted several times a week—a frequency facilitated by the fact that I was freelance-writing for a living, i.e. always at the computer, and when I hit a wall and needed a brain-break, the most natural draw was the open browser-tab with my FUN writing in it. In recent years I’ve drifted away, and back, and away again… and today I notice that my “back-agains” arose in autumn or winter, every time. My creative life broadens as day-length dwindles. I’ve never made that connection until just now, counterintuitive at first blush… but in the next beat, I felt its truth.
My job, too, has a seasonal rhythm. Last week’s rodeo, the Pendleton Round-Up, marked an end to the months where a “day off” might mean only five work-hours instead of nine to fourteen. This week I’m filling our RV sites with monthly residents, traveling workmen arriving for construction on a nearby wind farm, and the processing of guests (phone call, reservation, questions, email, park map, check-in, orientation, more questions, parking, hookup, other questions, conversation, check-out) will drop from the turnover of a thousand guests a month to just a few dozen. You could say our “work-week” is organized on an annual scale: Spring as “Monday”, Summer as “Tuesday-to-Thursday”, Fall as “casual Friday,” and Winter—long-awaited and hard-earned—is more or less our weekend.
Well how fortuitous! The circannual rhythm of my Creative cycle may actually be synced with a job where I have TIME, just when I might actually be most disposed to (literally) make something of it. The purple index card taped to my roll-top desk just above my screen is my reminder:
Time is the currency of your art. In this transaction … writing accepts no form of payment other than your time. “
~Paulette Perhach
there it is: a purple reminder
A person can BE A WRITER without publishing books you’ve heard of (or even, as in my case, published in books you’ve never heard of). A person can BE A WRITER without publishing anything at all, ever. It’s not the publishing that “makes” a writer—it’s the act of writing. So what a person can’t do… is be a writer if she’s Not Writing. In high school I lettered in cross-country, but (for several decades now) it would be inaccurate to say I AM a runner. Same goes, if I don’t engage in the act of writing.
But. Have you ever seen a visual aid of air-flow being deflected around an aerodynamic vehicle or shape?
That’s exactly like my brain’s response to a blank screen: it veers to the side so smoothly I don’t even notice I’ve been redirected.
I am really skilled–disgustingly skilled–at sitting down “to write” and then tripping down a rabbit-hole of writing-related-activity that is still Not Writing. I might be fiddling with settings or images on the blog, or fussing with my writing area, or (my most frequent offender) looking something up for the piece I’m “working on.” This summer I wanted to come up with a visual detail to add texture to a scene (a Manhattan street in 1841) and I ended up spending two days on historic maps and buildings and businesses and newspapers—finally pulled myself up, midway through reading the script of a play that had been onstage at the time… In two days at the computer, I had written one sentence. Framed as entertainment, it’s fine—I get a kick out of that kind of thing. But in terms of productivity? Fail!
My late husband used to say: “Don’t ask a question unless you actually want to hear the answer.” I forgot.
See, I’ve been writing. And yesterday when I checked out some Dictionary apps, a ‘Dream Dictionary‘ showed up in the search. I downloaded purely for kicks, a few laughs… like reading a horoscope. ZERO percent of me believes in astrology (especially since ghost-writing a BOOK on it once!) but stripped of their power, horoscopes sometimes amuse me… and I thought of this ‘dream decoder’ in the same (entertainment-only) light.
In other words: sheer fool-aroundery this morning, zero serious intent.
I forgot. I forgot to factor the difference between a ‘Virgo-blurb’ and a dream; namely, that MY brain created the dream. True, the off-its-rocker-crazy-Crayola part of my brain authored it… but even that bit of the brain is working with the raw materials of MY thoughts, experiences, feelings.
In other words: don’t ask what someone said about you (even ‘someone’ within yourself) unless you actually want the answer.
My therapist is going to LOVE this. Here’s the dream I wrote down this morning:
…I’m standing on an interstate with all the traffic entirely stopped and drivers just standing around waiting. Every vehicle is a truck; I’m surrounded by trucks; some are even stacked up like Lego bricks. I’m strolling around pretending to chat with all these truck drivers, but I’m secretly searching for the Bad Guy in a yellow shirt who has created this standstill. An apprentice-agent appears and I send her scouting uphill through the woods to find a cell tower.
Total garbage, right? I know, I know—and I opened the Dream Dictionary expecting a hearty, self-mocking laugh out of the whole thing:
Stopped Traffic: not progressing where you want to go. [Well duh. That one’s barely even a metaphor.]
Truck: carrying a heavy load or difficulty. [Ouch. That’s, um… Heavy, actually. I did mention ‘therapist’, right?—We’ve been working through my husband’s suicide and some bad shit. ‘Stacked trucks’ pretty well describes it.]
Yellow clothing: Anxiety. [Seriously? Why did I know the Bad Guy wore a yellow shirt? But yeah, Anxiety has definitely snarled up the traffic of my ‘truck’-loads.]
Uphill: an undertaking or project.
Woods: your mental space or unconscious.
Tower: a refuge, a place of strength.
Well shit, I got robbed of my laugh. Unless you want to count laughing at myself because I had to do some Thinking instead. Whether or not I consider those dream-definitions “real,” that particular decoder-ring painted a pretty plain picture of my whole Therapy.
Ha, the irony! It was the endless freight-train of Nightmares that goaded me into therapy in the first place. I think it was the morning that I woke myself by hurling a coffee cup at the wall… Picking up the pieces {no metaphor there, cough cough} of my favorite mug, I decided to enlist some help with my Thinker.
I’ve deleted the Dream Dictionary… But maybe I’m listening better to my Mind.
My mom, who lives a couple miles from my son’s college dorm, reported this morning that he came over for dinner and laundry last night, but left after only one NCIS episode because he “had some writing he wanted to do.” I’m grinning just writing that. (Christian hasn’t spoken to me in five years, but [sorry, Kid!] he continues to be very ME.)
She noted that he does a lot of research for his fiction, which made me grin again: I spent all of yesterday surrounded by untidy piles of books and my “nerd notebooks” (indexed and topic-tagged!) of information collected for my own piece of fiction. See, Research is part of the FUN! (You did catch that part about being a nerd, right?)
For my story set on a whaler, that means unearthing my sailing manuals; whaling novels, histories, biographies, and news stories; whaling films; websites of whaling museums, historical societies, rigging diagrams, weaponry… I just sent off an email to a model-ship-builder whose website engrossed my attention for two hours last night…
some of the stuff from my (messy!) end of the couch
I know perfectly well that of all this stuff I’m soaking in, maybe only ONE detail will end up on my page.
But man, will that ever be an AWESOME Detail!
And man, do I ever enjoy a good mind-wind tangled through a themed thread of Research. I guess that’s the thing: this Quest is recreational in its own right. Even if I never wrote a word with it.
This evening’s project? FACES! I’m collecting faces. I’ve got a whole ship-crew of blank paper dolls needing features, and I’m pretty sure this is what Pinterest is FOR!
For four decades I’ve been submitting an annual catalog of book-titles for your consideration. (And okay—some other, less-noble-sounding stuff as well. Thank you, by the way, for that Pink & Pretty Barbie in 1981: a fantastic exhibition on your part of compassionate acquiescence in the face of a petitioner’s truly horrendous personal taste.)
As the bookshelves will attest, you have been very good to me over the years, and I’ve always tried to do my best by you in return. I hope, for example, that you enjoyed the peanuts and beer I used to put out for you. It was Daddy who pointed out that you might be tired of milk and cookies (though I also hope you don’t mind the substitution of coffee once Daddy & I both got Sober). And I’m pretty confident (based on the hoofprints in the snow that Mommy pointed out to us one Christmas morning) that Rudolph & Co. enjoyed the carrots we put out, even if the water-bowl froze over and was kind of a bust.
Well, Santa, I know you haven’t had to do a whole lot of adapting over the centuries—so I thought I’d better give you a heads-up, before you gear up and hit the road sky next week, that the world got wonky this year, and there are some new rules.
Note #1: Face Mask
Before you leave your lovely, safe, isolated and quarantined North Pole (are you SURE you want to venture out this year??) you will need a face mask. Perhaps for any accompanying elves as well—I don’t believe the science has thus far addressed this species-specific question, but as presumable primates they should probably play it safe.
If you’re not wild about the aesthetic of a surgical mask with your uniform, I recommend hitting up my mom and her sewing machine. (I mailed her a box of my husband’s used-and-abused KOA tshirts, and she sent a return packet of enough uniform-matching masks for our whole KOA staff! Comfy ones, too.)
Note #2: Social Distancing
Mask or no, it’s 2020 protocol to keep a distance of six feet between yourself and any person not from your own household. (Or your own “Bubble,” which is a Thing now. A Bubble being the circle of people with whom you have agreed to interact, on the understanding that none of you are interacting with any other people outside the Bubble. Not sure a “Bubble” is a practical proposal in your case, though.)
So this year when Cindy Lou Who creeps down the stairs, you’ll need to maintain an appropriate Social Distance while in her living room.
(Good luck with that, by the way. I personally recommend traveling with a six-foot stick. Makes it easy to assess the distance, and doubles as a prod if you need to fend someone off from your personal space. Maybe, St. Nick, it’s a good time to resurrect that old shepherd’s staff you used to carry in earlier iterations…)
Note #3: Zoom Conference
I’m assuming by now you’ve got the North Pole wired, and possibly an IT department among your elves, and I’m sure the little guys will be happy to help you with this next one. See, pretty much all the things we used to do For Real, out in the world, we now do while sitting at our computers and using Zoom. (Yup, that’s a Thing too. Lots of new terminology this year.)
There are definitely some pluses to this, like having a much richer array of A.A. options online than what used to be available in this small (one-Meeting-a-day) town. Or “attending” my sister’s Seattle-area church from my couch in Oregon. Or chatting face-to-face (sorta) with my mom, my godparents, my sister and her kiddos… In the absence of in-person contacts, I’m grateful for Zoom.
But Santa, I MISS HUGS. I miss hugs before church, I miss hugs after A.A. meetings, and I so badly want to squeeze my little niece Marian when she opines, using my mother’s and my family nicknames: “I miss Grandy and Aunt Sam!” I will admit to some amount of cumulative “Zoom Fatigue” (that, too, is a Thing now—as evidenced by its examination in venues such as Psychiatric Times) but it’s a tool to tide us over, and I’m sure your elf-staff can handle rescheduling your usual Mall Appearances to Zoom.
Note #4: Local Laws
Boy oh boy, do I hope you have a legal department, because the world is currently a crazy-quilt of different restrictions and regulations. From nation to nation, state to state, county to county, even sometimes town to town, there are different laws in place to clock and comply with. It’s tough enough for the travelers passing through our RV park, scouting ahead to see what’s open and what’s required and what’s forbidden, and they’re only crossing a couple jurisdictional boundaries a day.
I can at least make it easy for you here: Dining In is prohibited in our county, but I’ll have your snacks ready in a take-out bag!
And just a thought: you might want to consider using people’s porches instead of their chimneys this year… because if you come down with COVID, the Contract Tracing will be a bitch!
BOOK covers. I’m between the BOOK-covers of one of the hilarious social commentaries novels penned by Charles Dickens—and this particular copy of this particular book has me thinking…
I really do love the heft and the presence of a real paper book. BUT. Because I don’t have the shelf-space for a thousand books; and because a thousand books are portable on the iPad; and because I pick up all kinds of books for a couple bucks a pop from the Apple bookstore’s “sale bin;” and because I can look up, with a touch, anything I become curious about; and because I can read in bed without keeping a light on when my husband is sleeping; and… Well, because of lots of “becauses,” I do almost all my reading these days onscreen.
Still, when a mention (in another book) of this book prompted me to pick it up, I definitely went for the paper version. Because for this book I have a copy that belonged to my great-grandpa.
Great-Grandpa’s copy, “Our Mutual Friend”
As I turned the pages I got to thinking (in that rabbit-trail manner with which my mind works) about what age a work of literature gets to be before it begins to merit designation as “a Classic”—and that, then, got me wondering what age this printed copy of this classic might be, given what I did know of its provenance.
An easy answer was not forthcoming. Nowhere on the book could I find a publication date, edition number, or any other reference to the year. (Fitting, I suppose, for a novel that opens, “In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise...”)
Ultimately,I ran down my answer in a history of the publishing house, which went belly-up in 1898—the year after printing its run of Dickens novels. Huh, I thought, that’s kinda cool. (I mean, I knew it was Great Grandpa’s—but age-wise, that only guaranteed its birth-year preceded mine.)
Considering the hundred-and-twenty-three-year age of the book in my hands, my mind jumped next to pondering how new the novel itself was, when this copy of it went to press. (Did I mention a propensity for looking-stuff-up?) The answer, to frame it differently, is this: when this book printed, Our Mutual Friend was the same age of Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games NOW. Or Robin Cook’s Outbreak. Stephen King’s It. Fried Green Tomatoes. The Whale Rider. Mrs. Doubtfire. Where’s Waldo?
Imagine a Dickens novel being even a relatively recent piece of pop culture! What a shift in perspective, to think of Dickens in any light but “Historic”…
In my own mind that word—“Historic”—used to mean “before ME.” And when I was young-ish, that was a pretty decent working definition. But closing in on my own half-century mark, I acknowledge that the boundary line, the one delineating “History” from “Regular-Stuff-That’s-Familiar-to-ME”… Well, it’s moved. In fact, that line scoots right along, keeping pace behind me like a stick tied to a string tied to my belt loop, all the time converting some portion of Regular Stuff Familiar to Me into that “Other” category I think of as History. (Did I think only other people’s lives slipped into Historic rear-view? Did I think that regardless of how long I might live, my entire life would feel to me like “Now”?)
This book imparts an unexpected lesson of… Perspective.
As in… It Doesn’t End Here.
As in… I am not some grand culmination of everything History was building up to; in fact, I rank merely as “someone else” to everyone else in the world.
As in… What shall I DO with this role of “someone” in everyone else’s History?? It’s lovely to imagine, in 120 years, a great-granddaughter enjoying a book from my shelf. Better yet, from my pen. Maybe even, by then, “a Classic”?
I’m enjoying the book. Though I do miss the built-in Definitions I’m accustomed to summoning with a touch. (Because I don’t care how great your vocabulary is—Dickens requires a dictionary!! …Terpsichorean?? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? …Nah, me neither. I’m gonna go look that up.)
Kana's Chronicles 