Joy, where have you been hiding?

Quiet rush of stilled air around the ears. Ho, you say, it’s nothing, only silence; or wild cheers, hosts of angels, violins, water rushing, wings beating?

Picture of myself 12 years ago at someone’s wedding: wide smile, clear face, Joy? Where have you been hiding? These days the face is a mask that sags into tiredness and fatigue, battling inertia or exhaustion. Fight or flight mode. Too many ancient walls crumbling, retreat from defenses, desire to come home to simplicity, breath, stillness, stretch the body to find its source, not will power, a different motive for moving. Plans yes, plenty, and renovations, vacations, readings, publishing projects, meetings, the Green coalition, the 6th Grade committee, annual general meeting of poets, computer emails phone calls, designer, friends, sisters, all want to plug into the computer already. Start the day! But I lay sleepless in the night for three long hours. Finally dreamt so I must have slept –one eye twitches now, signs of stress, fatigue. There is nothing I can do to save the world today.

The kids are safe in school, the laundry pile awaits downstairs and this rendez-vous
with her untold stories, unmet ghosts awaits her too. What did that singer say- her shed is immaculate, cause she is putting off doing her music work, cleaning house instead. How long can she put off meeting with her younger self? The dark younger One waiting in the shadows, too much evasion, no self-honesty. How deserted she still feels. Time to book a vision quest in the woods. Time off, alone, somewhere to leap into ghazals or poems, on Cortez island, or find a teacher she has not met yet, still wants to learn about this mysterious shaping of words, this in-between state, the cloud of unknowing, learn to trust her dreams, messages, unspoken hints, directions she is too timid to take, but can’t the muscle of trust can be strengthened with use, like any other? Who else if not an intuitive introvert to interpret the signs? It makes her an observer, a reporter, describer of small details, perhaps not a builder of novels or characters yet, but that will come later, if she trusts the small words forming, where? Not on the tongue, it moves not. In between the ears? Or eyes? This awareness looking through her glasses (far sightedness), or the impulse sending words/neurons to the end of her fingers and pen, where do thoughts come from? and why in the middle of the night are they so dark? And unfriendly?

She doubts everyone, even her faithful husband in the dark. It comes, sweeps in like a tidal wave (or a mad dog), insidious at first, but builds into a crescendo until she wants to squeeze her eyes, wring the thoughts out of her brain like a wet cloth, find calm sleep.

Who does she love? Who is the actress playing the part?
Rose scented cream, a raw silk pink shirt, tight over the breasts, the phone rings it’s the bar St-Sulpice, changing the room of the reading planned for the Writes of Spring, and it is a good thing she is rooted in the breath of Tao because she forgets she has decisions to make.

Volunteering at the lit festival, leading authors to their signings and readings, she loved the stimulating panels, the multi-media poetry and sound shows, the gentle conversation with women authors about “chick lit” and the brash New Yorkers, versus calm Montrealers, she would have bought all their books, but came away with just three. Love being around writers, hanging out in the atmosphere of this meeting ground, and of course came away thinking of I shouldn’t have said that, or that was smart, so self-centered and foolish to tell my birth stories to the pregnant CBC host who was kind enough to remember my poetry reading at a Mothering Matters group. We volunteers arrive causally, are thrown into the confusion and crowds and learn to swim very quickly. Did a stint at the info table and learned where everything is, I love to be helpful.

And what I saw was a need to climb out of my cozy nest and make a name for myself. Oh that naming thing again. The hermit poet doesn’t need a name or a public but the writer woman self (still childish) wants to play in the big playground on the big swings with the kids who have published books and risked looking foolish and put down in writing their obsessions – see Joel laughing at his own self-obsession, unrequited love. Well, we all write from something, some desire or need to tell a story, our own story preferably (if I am honest) and have an audience. And the love of theatre, the appeal Catherine says is mixing the private solitary art of writing with the performance before an audience, that mystical alchemical bond with people’s eyes ears hearts listening while you pour your heart out –need confidence in the rightness or deepness of what the heart’s voice has to express – can it be deep uplifting hopeful (reassuring, yes, there is a purpose to all this searching) without being formulaic as a romance novel. Want to work on poems, stories, plays –whatever can bring me to that play acting place of words on a stage, under lights, an audience drinking it up like reading Naming Adam in the Zenon Bar in Trois-Rivieres. I was happiest then, on stage, at those moments with the rhythm of a good poem, words moving through the heart and mind, lips body, out into other ears heart body – so to do this, write your hear out, then in, again.

“This outer is an elaboration of this inner. I prefer the origin.” Soul of Rumi

Do I?