When I decided to heed the loving
advice of my trusted word-smithing colleagues and open a blog I had
two simple stipulations. The first was to give myself the permission
and time to not only do it, but allow it to be a sort of organic
therapy. Humans like to convince themselves that they're 'just too
busy' to 'bother' with doing those very things that are strenuous,
yet right. I am a good-life house-cat that just decided to step
outside. Walking through the door was hard, but the crickets' song...
and the scent of the breeze... and the promise that other cats are
around out here somewhere, happy and free, it fills me with a sense
of liberation. Outside is foreign. Outside is beautiful. Blogging and
possibly connecting with people that I hadn't hand selected into my
life is foreign. Blogging and possibly connecting with people that I
hadn't hand selected into my life is beautiful. It's an incredible
feeling.
The second (and more to the point of this post)
stipulation was a promise I made to my own mind. If I were to commit
to a blog, I had to commit to authenticity. I would love to put on a
mask of loft and claim that 'I owe it to those who read
thisblahblahblah', but this is a choice I had to make for me. I feel
like my root issue with the self-promotion and connection with others
is a problem of expectations. I feel like I don't want others to
expect anything from me. It's an unfair sphere. But it is a sphere in
all it's roundness and never-ending form. Now, I will happily give to
others. I want to give to others. But, I hate to disappoint, so I
recoil. I can't allow that sphere (which is very much a part of who I
am) taint the point of committing to a blog. I have to be honest and
just give those things which I, were I an outsider, would appreciate
to receive.
Let's move on before this unravels into
something too esoteric to ever see the light of day. The points are
there for the record, and surely, will have individual blog entries
all unto themselves at some point.
I want to tell you a story.
It's a tale that I've only just shared for the third time today, over
coffee, at the house of someone who I feel will be in my life until
life leaves me. She means that much, so I sat and spoke of this
strange and deep thing. And she said to me, “You have to tell
people what you just told me.” I cried, and I don't quite know why.
So, let me tell you a tale of Diary of Mimosa Creek.
I
had in my mind, a thing. A little tiny gem locked in the box of a
child's memory. My family, on my father's side, for many generations,
have been concentrated in population to the Wire Grass region of
South Georgia. Every place has an essence. A spirit, or soul, for
lack of a better construct. It is that thing that pulls at you to go,
or leave, “Home”. I had a memory that lingered and
watched me like an ancient ghost. I knew Troupville mattered to my
heart.
I knew embarrassingly little of the place. It had been
a distant point in time from those old when I was young. But, I had a
memory of a strange stretch of land, just beyond which, pine tress,
as old as time tickled the clouds while smaller pine children
gathered in clusters in an opening. Bricks, no more than a foot
high,whispered secrets that something alive had been breathing there.
The Little River ran into the Withlacoochee River there behind it.
Someone lived, and had breathed, right there. I wanted to give that
phantom a body, and in that body, I wanted to fill that heart with
the heaviness and reverence I felt. And the isolation. And that
sorrow and loss. That bright, burning love and that vacuum of loss.
With NaNoWriMo 2012, I decided that,
for better-or-worse, I had my Frankenstein on the slab, and I so
loved my monster and toiled and fretted at giving it life. We lived
in Covington, hours from the Wire Grass and soft winds of that place.
As it was November, it was chilly, but I set myself up in the garage
of our home, in a lawn chair (which, coincidentally, I am sitting on
whilst I type this), with my laptop and hand-written manuscript atop
an old dresser. I needed to give Mimosa Creek a place all to itself.
I had my candle* (*More on that in a future post) and my fingerless
skeleton gloves while bundled in a red hoodie. I was the modern image
of absurdity, shivering and deep in thought and consternation. That
absurdity is my reality.
I wrote and wrote and stressed on
word-count and the deadline. I sent little messages to a dear friend,
and NaNo participant, Kirstin, as well as Martha, an avid reader of
all things, brilliant mind, and close friend who maintained the most
steadfast and loving 'you can do this' sentiment that anyone could
every wish for. Yet, I began to crumble. I would weep at Katherine's
mind. That mind, I created for her. That twisted, sweet mind: that
was my doing. I would stare at the words I gave her to express her
world, my world, Troupville, and just walk along with her. I could
smell the snap-peas and the perspiration of Henry-Lee's diligent
presence. I had given that phantom a life.
My research, as I mentioned, was badly
lacking. I sent off for archive books, specifically something that
could give me an idea of Troupville's layout. Nothing arrived in
time, and armed with little more than my comprehension of how towns
ought to be arranged, I constructed the place the best I knew how. I
knew where I wanted to place the house of Mimosa Creek, and from
there, the rest grew. The events which set the pulse were less of an
issue. I let that horrible war and the documented birth of Valdosta
set the pace. That tree, that lichen covered tree with 'Ichabod'
carved into the body, is a real thing.
I finished it in late November and
decided to go back and insert a section that I withheld initially. It
had been the only thing that didn't come over from pen-and-paper to
typed while working. It was a late entry in the physical book.
February 9, 1854. I don't even have to look that up. I had been
sleeping with my own daughter in my arms, and a voice in my own mind
just kept pressing me with 'please don't forget me'. I held my
daughter tightly and gave honest consideration to just forcing myself
to sleep. I watched her sleeping face. I felt a mother, completely
external to who I am, begging me to feel her maternal presence. I
don't want to paint a picture of an actual, physical, textbook ghost
haunting me. This was my mind pulling itself apart. ….'please don't
forget me.' February 9, 1854 had me in a ball of physical pain and
unwavering, unrelenting sorrow on the filthy ground of a garage,
gripping at the side on an old dresser while trying to catch my
breath from the hyperventilation of absolute attack of mournful
tears. “I didn't forget you.”: actual words came from me. I spoke
to the air and used those actual words to calm myself. There is some
measure of madness and melancholy to the craft. Without it, we lie.
A couple weeks passed. (Here is the
tale I have told very few. That which you read before this,
specifically February 9, 1854, I've told no one before now). I was
feeling very fancy about all I had accomplished. I was proud of it. I
am proud of it. I was in the phase of writing where, having completed
it, release it to the world and just breathe in the calm of a job
well done. It is not unlike nursing a broken wing on a small bird. It
could fly and your love and care gave it what it needed to do so.
And then the mail came.
It was a bundle of books bought
specifically to research the finer point of Mimosa Creek. What were
the trade routes? What was the cost of coffee and cotton? How was
Troupville situated: what did it look like? And then, again,
something odd. I looked down at this map of the town. The thing, the
one thing that seemed like the most valuable treasure that I could
never find. The town was as I built it. It was a little busier,
building concentration-wise than my plans had been. But, there was
Little River, running into the arms of the Withlacoochee.
And
there had been a house there where I placed Mimosa Creek. It belonged
to my grandmother's father's mother's line of people. Let's soak that
in. Counting me, that (at very least) is six generations deep. That
house. That place to which my mind fixed itself, is my story. All
those layers of time and the grit of memory pulled at me until
noticed. It isn't about any actual claim, mind you. But that patch of
dirt that I had Katherine stand, I know not how many times, is part
of me. It was, until now, a secret I held onto very tightly. A little
gem.
(From Michael O. Holt's Images of America: Valdosta. 2011)
((Close-up) Here is Joshua Griffin's home. There where the rivers meet.
This is where I built the house, Mimosa Creek, in the book)
To be fair, and to be clear, one can
not throw a rock in the air without striking my kin down around these
parts. I say 'these parts': we recently moved rather close to old
Troupville. A twist of coincidence. We're stacked deep and thick and
have been for a long time. It really is a game of statistics, and I
know how statistics work. The meaning is not diminished to my heart,
though.
It is something that would be unfair to
not share. It's unfair to keep my secret. I understand now.
'….please don't forget me....'... How
could I? I could just as soon forget my own hand and call it a thing
unrelated to it's function. To forget is to see a eggplant at the end
of my arm. I could not forget my heart. It's all very 'Hamlet gazing
into the eyes of his father's ghost' isn't it? Luckily, I am no
stranger to Hamlet and know how to avoid the complete destruction of
the court.
Now, being a honest teller of tales,
I'm admitting that I won't go back and re-read this for edits. I know
myself well enough to know that I'll sweet-talk my own mind into
deleting the whole of it and offering 'tips on writing regarding the
concept of external motivation' or somesuch.... This time, I will
just let it be.
