The House of Mimosa Creek

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.