Dream-White Dog

Despite a lifelong love of black dogs, I had a dream about a white one last night. I am not sure how I hooked up with it, but somehow I ended up with this sweet little white fluffball, and she had a name that was a little too similar to Little A’s name. I knew I couldn’t keep her with that name, so I named her “Apple”.

Apologies to Gwenneth Paltrow, etc., but Apple is a cute name for a little doggy. Then again, I wanted to name my dachshund “Doctor Heimlich”, but Tony put his foot down on that one. I still don’t know why he had such strong feelings about that, but he refused to permit me to name my dog such a thing.

In the dream people were giving me a hard time for naming my little friend Apple, but she was pretty darn cute. Her fur was soft as cotton fluff, and she had a very smiley sort of face.

I read on a few dream interpretation sites (Gawd, I so love the interwebs! What a geek I am!) that dreaming of a friendly white dog is supposed to be a good omen, foretelling of success in business and in love. For women it is supposed to mean an early marriage.

I am a bit old for an early marriage, and in any case already married. But it was such a sweet little dog. I keep thinking about it and wishing I had it to play with.

I already have a fantastic dog, of course. Ember is just awesome. But there is something going on with me that I want a new family member to dote on. Some frustrated mommy-thing that needs something or someone small to hold. Losing a family member this year has triggered some last minute biological clock jangling that I find positively annoying.

I like the idea that I would dream something good, for a change. An actual GOOD omen? That is unheard of for me. I am so Type A that I am usually much better at fretting than taking good news at face value and relaxing a little.

I want to believe it. Someday soon things need to start going my way. I don’t need to have the whole world at my feet, but I wouldn’t say no to some magi-given gifts for a change.

Shell Shatterday

Despite a strange midsummer torpor, I took a 4 mile walk last night. I took a familiar long route around my neighborhood, and by the time I was almost home dusk was in full effect. In fact, it was probably fully dark, but my eyes were accustomed to the gloom.

I was walking past a house that had a evergreen tree with low hanging branches in the front yard right next to the sidewalk. In the low light, something pale and shiny on the ground caught my eye, and I bent down to investigate.

It was the pale blue curvature of a robin’s egg. I couldn’t tell if it was a piece of egg cast off by a new chick, or a whole egg, so I reached out to gently touch it, to roll it on its side.

I thought I was being gentle, but what turned out to be an empty half of an egg shell shattered into tiny fragments at my touch. I let out a little “Oh!”

I was heartbroken that it was broken, and that it was my fault. In retrospect, I think those feelings are displaced from other things. But in that moment, I wasn’t just a woman on a summer evening walk. I was the destroyer of beautiful things. I felt horrible.

Is this how I am going to feel about my life today? That I can’t be trusted with it or it will break in my hands? No matter how gentle I am, I am sure to shatter?

And like that eggshell, I feel small and hollow. My baby bird has left the nest, and my restless heart turns over shell fragments and calls into the dark.

Shhh! I am reading.

I am off school for the summer, so I am getting a chance to enjoy some novels and non-fiction books that have lingered on my shelf. Often while I was studying over the last few months I would glance longingly at them and wished I could curl up with a good book. Not that “Understanding Pathophysiology” isn’t a good book, but it isn’t exactly a gripping read or a light diversion.

I am also working for the summer, so my books are going with me to work to be read during my breaks. Strangely enough, some of my coworkers look at a person reading a book and think it is no big deal if they want to interrupt to gossip.

Can’t you see I am reading, here?

I have been a lot quieter than usual. I crave the silence of just sitting and reading a book. I am not too interested in the TV, and talking to anyone who is not a close friend is just not appealing to me. I don’t want to have to explain myself right now. I just want the fit of hand in glove that comes with my old, treasured friendships. They know I am going through hell, and they let me choose to not talk about it if I want. But I also know that if I suddenly fall apart and start crying they will be on me in a moment with comforting hands and murmured words that have the magical effect of keeping me from flying right out of my skin.

Least of which do I want to put down my book to talk about who is dating who in Hollywood, or weigh in on who should get poor doomed Michael Jackson’s children. Maybe it is the way my life is rolling out these days, but I just don’t have any patience for trivial prattle like that. Not without a full complement of cocktails, anyway.

I know that the majority of the people I work with don’t need to hear about the very serious business that my life has become, although a few of them do want to hear about it for schadenfreude purposes. And it isn’t their job to give a flying fig about me, but it is so much nicer when somebody does. I just don’t expect my coworkers to invest like that.

I just want to read a book. Shhh…

I don't approve-Corporate Radio Edition

If I slip into a coma at my desk any time in the next seven weeks, blame the soft rock emanating from the radio in the next cubicle. Some of the songs are alright, but I wonder if it is turning my brain to mush to hear “Hotel California” every day. Not that there is anything wrong with that song in and of itself, but the radio station plays the same stuff over and over day after day. It is making my eyelid a little twitchy. If I have to hear Bette Midler’s “Wind beneath my wings” one more time, I can’t quite be responsible for the violence that is sure to ensue.

I have a lot of complaints about radio stations in Reno in general. I don’t know what it is, but we seem to be at a lower rung on the new music ladder. All I know is that when I visit my friends in the San Francisco Bay Area, I hear songs I never heard before on the radio. BETTER songs, too. Songs I am sure to just about never hear in Reno. What the hell? Who decided that I don’t get to hear that? Did some market-survey test group flunkie make the choice for me? I disapprove.

And while I am at it, allow me to complain about the talking. Who the hell made the brilliant choice to create the “morning show”? What was wrong with playing music in the morning? Why is it all yakkity-yak-yak when I haven’t had that much coffee yet? Ugh. And they are so never funny. I have a job that involves listening to people talk all day, so I don’t need to get a jump on the “listening to people bitching” action during my commute.

I wish I could listen to my ipod at work, but no dice. The earbud competes with the phone I have permanently affixed to my ear. Plus, listening to music I actually like might make me smile. You know that would just never do.

As it is, I rely heavily on my coastal-dwelling friends in SF or Seattle or Boston or LA to provide me with tasty treats for my ipod. Thank goodness for my friends. I would have absolutely no cool at all without them.

Poetry-Frail Flowering Words

They call it a rib cage so my heart can’t escape.
Trapped against straining strings, beating feebly,
Stretched against bonds that keep it from flying forth
In search of the cherished other, leaving its home.

Protest songs from a coal mine canary.
High and sweet, echoing into the deep.
Longing for fresh air, pure as dreaming,
Scented familiar and laced with memory.

Words woven, a gentle bower made,
Illusory as incense smoke wafted prayerfully.
Even scorched earth pressed to my lips
Tastes of home beneath the burning landscape.

Pole-star driven through shifting winds.
Reaching blindly to finger the raw edges
Gingerly binding, close the wound
Leaving a scar that rises as proud flesh.

My mind keeps touching that empty place
Like an old soldier with a missing limb.
No matter how gently I approach
It still startles like a filly at the starting gun.

Restless pacing and losing the race
Crying out from behind muscle and bone
Muffled but still clear enough to hear:
“Forget me not, I beat for thee.”

© Stacie Ferrante
6-22-09

The Despair of the Creative Mind

I like to think of myself as a writer first above all other things. An artist soul with a decent day job, as it were. I have lots of writing projects percolating on the back burner. Even more are on the prep table and haven't made it to the stove yet. I am currently waiting for my head to clear a little bit so I can select which to give my attention to. It has been a rough couple of months for being creative.

But every once in a while I read a book that makes me want to abandon all of it. I love to read, and I have a voracious appetite for books. Not all books are well written, perhaps especially the best-sellers. Right now I am reading "Bad Monkeys" by Matt Ruff, and I am in despair.

I wish I could have written this book. It is clever, witty, and has gripped my imagination. It is a thriller in the sense that it lacks thriller cliches. I can't wait to see what happens next, but every sentence I read keeps telling me that this is something that I couldn't have written. I am not that clever, perhaps. Or my writing has a different rhythm. Something about it is both delightful and degradingly other.

I was in Barnes & Noble yesterday, Borders Books the day before, and Zephyr used books the day before that. NOTHING caught my eye, and I didn't buy anything. I was contemplating how difficult the wold of publishing is to break into these days, and yet some writers make it even though merit isn't always the reason. This isn't sour grapes, as there are many writers I admire greatly. But I think you'll agree that the bookstores give up a lot of real estate to the common denominator, mass-market pleasing sort of stuff that is destined for the bargain book rack as much as for the faced-out, top of the escalator position.

Sure, I write for the sake of it. I write for catharsis. I write for the joy of creating something I shyly call art. But even Shakespeare needed to get paid sometime. I don't relish being ink-stained for life so that I can die with boxes of unpublished quasi-genius.

I have my moments when I am writing something really good and true where I am gripped with a fever. Words flow. It is the most awesome feeling in the world, as riveting as sex but more civilized for polite company.

It is time for me to do some more writing, but this book is so good it makes me falter. My confidence is rattled by it. Of course, it has been edited and polished. I can't even get to the point where I could get edited or agent glanced. Ugh, that sucks. And thinking about that will not help me write anything.

I want to pick Matt Ruff's brain for process methods. I want him to notice me and encourage me. I also want to hurt him. I want to blink back tears as I strangle him for throwing me into a state where I have to look too closely at my own mediocrity. The battlefields of the world are littered with the unburied bones of half-decent swordsmen.

I gotta get burning again. Gentle warm fire will not uncover anything in me. I need to be incendiary. The energy I am wasting in the echo chamber will get me absolutely nowhere. Fuck.

I'm coming out of the fog into my own personal dystopia. I'm almost ready. Things are percolating. But damn, I am creaky. It could even be argued that the energy I put into blogging takes away from the whole, but we will just have to wait and see.

Perhaps one day some other writer will feel that way about me. When someone breaks into my reverie to tell me that my book is so good that they must murder me to make themselves feel better, I will know I have finally done something worth talking about.

Lost Mitten

My house is full of evidence that up until Friday I was a mom. Just little things here and there, art on the fridge, stray puzzle pieces under the sofa, and silky blonde hairs in the bathtub drain. We are still in the process of cleaning the house after moving our foster daughter. There is this stray mitten that I guess I need to throw out, because I never found the mate to it so I could send it with the rest of her stuff.

It is just a little purple mitten. So small. By next winter she probably would have outgrown that pair anyway. But my eyes keep gravitating to it, and it would probably be healthier for my well being to toss it out or put it away, rather than picturing the soft little hand that belongs in it. The hand that fit so well in mine.

Better to discard it lest I do something crazy like sew it on the inside of my coat, so it can lie over my heart, secretly where nobody will see it. Because the rest of the world will become accustomed to my childlessness so much faster than I will. They won't have to think about her every day and wonder how she is doing, worry about whether she is happy. Worry about the unseasonably cold mornings and if she has something to keep her hands warm.

I have an empty mitten, and she has a cold hand. That is how I see it. She hasn't even been gone long enough to miss me, or notice that she isn't coming back. She'll figure it out in her way and probably get the reasons for it all wrong. I am sad for myself, but even more I worry for her. I just want her to be happy.

The county would gladly fill our empty bedroom with another child if we wanted them to. But there is just no way I could take that on right now for lots of reasons, so we are waiting. Need to heal. Need to get through nursing school. I feel like I need to conquer the world a bit and get my confidence back and get out from under the watchful eyes of the gaggle of social workers that in the end don't do any of the heavy lifting that foster parents do.

I don't know how long I will keep this mitten. I guess until I don't need it anymore. Maybe I need the proof that while I had her, I took good care of her.