Lemonspouting: A Writer's Blog

To Be or Not to Write

2010-12-27T05:13:00.057-07:00

I have been thinking about Shakespeare’s writing, "To be or not to be," in light of my writing.

Each new piece of writing starts in a state of nothingness, in the grace of not being or "not to be." It takes shape through my thought, the language of words, the beauty of sounds and the influence of meanings and logic. Slowly, my writing becomes. The decision of to be or not to be is made. Nothing is written into something.

When I was twenty-one years old, I was terrified of dying for six weeks. Death followed me everywhere. Rather than keep my fears to myself, I openly asked friends, family members, acquaintances, even strangers what they thought about their own death. In retrospect, I’m surprised people were so open and tolerant sharing their thoughts.

I eventually woke up one day and realized my fear was gone. I reasoned that since I didn't exist before I was born, and had no recollection of being in pain, the same would probably hold true after death. My exit out of the world would be the most mysterious part of the journey, possibly to be feared, possibly not. After death I would return to the same state of peace and grace I was in before birth.

I am. One day, I will not be.

This story of to be or not to be circles my life, for it consists of choices, which underline my choice to write the poem, the blog, or compose the play of my life. It takes hard work writing on a blank page. As a writer, I must constantly question if I have the courage, the being, to do it or simply slip under the sheets, cover my head, and give up.

To set the sparks of words in motion and watch them flame, that is when the writer in me knows that nothing breathes everything. Everything is written from the seed of what is not, and fanned by the writer who believes in what will be.

Mona Lisa Wisdom

2010-12-27T05:08:00.039-07:00

I am replacing my desk, which is currently a black table top, with four ugly silver coloured legs.

I would like buy a desk with form, beauty, function at a reasonable price. In visits to stores all I could seem to find were high priced monstrosities needing their own rooms. They belonged in dank castles, attended over by brooding mad kings or queens.

Every desk was 99% factory made, without the light of a human touch in the creation of its design. I was getting cold. I found one prefabricated beauty that lit my heart up and plunged it into darkness at the price. It was a cool white, made of gleaming white plastic, with a smooth pull out drawer, elegant legs and a concealed flip top lid for my laptop. It was even more posh, cool and somehow ceramic to the touch when I greeted it in person. The ice beauty was being offered at an hostage price reduction of $1498.oo…

I distinctly remember when Superstore opened in Edmonton. It marked the beginning of an era I like to call 'mega-stores.' I was around 17 years old at the time. I was horrified and fascinated. It reminded me of the time my Aunt had taken me to Seattle and we visited a 'mega-complex.' Blocks and blocks of stores with no direction, and burning concrete filled with cars. I’d hoped these complexes would never come to Canada when I was a young girl, but my hopes were quickly dashed.

What struck me about Superstore, and mega-complexes, were the lack of beauty. All I could see was row upon row of mass produced goods. I wondered how long these goods would stand the test of time. As a writer, and artist, it felt like the end of the world. I thought of the legacy and beauty of unique, handcrafted goods, and architecture, that stood the test of time. I worried about local business and wondered how they would survive in a society beginning to favour the quick and the cheap.

None of this is a revelation. None of this is new. I do think, though, it’s important to regularly shout out at the top of your lungs, 'Beauty is a right!' For everyone in society. Not just the elite and the higher paid. It’s not a price tag. Beauty in design, in craftsmanship, in care and in longevity. This aesthetic is a universal one. The mass produced can live alongside, but not continue to dominate.

It’s not artists who create the mass inflation behind their work: rather a society that needs to examine its values and the legacy it wishes to leave behind. A timeless Mona Lisa for every citizen's home? Or 50% off a pre-fab 'what's it' from XYZ store thrown in the landfill every year, to be replaced at warehouse store a year later?

In a time when we care so much for the environment, and the ups and down of the economy, it is amazing just how much junky, ugly stuff we go into working for, making, buying, throwing out, cleaning up, and destroying the planet with. I’m part of the problem, too, as much as I hate to admit it to myself, as we all are to a lesser or greater degree.

In the end, I did not buy a desk, but instead switched my undesirable old desk with a desk my mother no longer wanted. I had always loved it, and she had wanted mine. Everyone’s happy in the end, and there was no waste.

I still have a lot of questions flying through my head. I'm going to ask Mona what her opinion is. She has been around long enough as a representative of eternal beauty and remained quite silent. I’m certain she would like to voice some advice with that sly little smile of hers. What secrets will she tell? In fact, I’m surprised no one ever had a frank discussion with Lady Lisa before.

Writing Becomes Breath and Gypsy Driftwood

2009-08-05T08:35:00.039-06:00

The joy of writing is that once it truly starts, it rolls and picks up like a powerful bowling ball. I watch it form a living, ever growing ghost of light. My ideas form intricate paths that weave like fine silk and soon my head fills with so many meanings and worlds my fingers are itching to write.

I was thinking that our English expression, 'He has cobwebs in his head,' does not relate to silent mad confusion at all. I think it instead involves being in a state of having too many stories to tell, combined with the inability to spit it out. Perhaps it also involves living in a society that is more isolated, where we don't listen to each other's truths as often, or hang out to tell stories of our daily lives.

I love chatting to people about themselves as I go about my week. I meet amazing people everyday. I'd love to write a book of lives, of every individual life born, their thoughts and visions. Without an outlet like the written word, it seems to me that unhappiness would be entangled memories and thoughts. It’s like regular cleaning.

I've always found the dust piles up, the lint gets trapped in the dryer and the extra socks disappear into the silence of nowhere. I have had to make it a habit, like brushing my teeth, to reach down to my honest core and release. That’s where writing comes in for me.

Keeping open is essential to my writing and I keep it fun by treating it like a James Bond Zen practice. I can never remember a time in my life when I did not believe you should always try something new at least once. Part of this risk taking involves truth. Letting go and releasing the story of your life to others. Shaking out the attic, refusing to go cloaked in cobwebs.

I read an article that 'trying everything once' is evidently not the right approach. I evidently haven’t reached the right milestone ‘'to be a successful adult woman.' according to certain experts. Oh well. I agree to disagree.

Fully living my life and making safe deliberate choices, choices to be courageous, independent, outlandish, changeable, in fact, whatever I want to be within, bursts open my writing, making it disciplined but mutable. Easy, free, and unencumbered in mind, is the best place to be, in my opinion, when writing.

I give myself full permission to sink and swim; I can laugh when I get caught with my pants down. I enjoy blushing in the moonlight, running fresh from the waves and drying off among salt dead driftwood. I wish I sometimes did not feel the fool. Instead I dream of being a gypsy and a sand dancer, who walks on water, offers up fortunes and yes, always tell tales.

The Truth Arrived Underneath the Door

2009-08-01T23:04:00.091-06:00

I sleep in a Queen sized bed. It sits there like that sentence, useless really when you are single. I mean, I’m not complaining, it’s a great bed. Fabulously comfortable, a Princely bed even though it’s a Queen. The frame is a lovely wood, even though it’s from IKEA.

My Queen bed feels like it’s taking up prime real estate in my 465 square foot apartment, which is neither Princely, Queenly and never Kingly in its prime. Jokerly is what my apartment is. Or maybe it’s more like a Voodoo-doll in terms of its disrepair, and I walk the plank. All I know is I pay a Queen’s sum and soon a King's ransom to live where I do. Jump, jump! Off with her head!

The reason I bring up my bed, is that before Y2K, you remember, WHEN THE WORLD WAS GOING TO END BECAUSE THE COMPUTERS WERE GOING TO CRASH BECAUSE THEY COULDN’T RECOGNIZE THE YEAR 2000, I had a live-in boyfriend. I shared my bed with him for several years and he body-checked me into the future. To this day, I am glued to sleeping on the very wee right side of my Queen bed.

Maybe I'll rent out the massive space to the left of me.

The drawback of all the space on the left is that it makes me think. When I think I cannot sleep. When I cannot sleep I worry about all the people who do not have beds in the world, and I consider how much space I am wasting. I decide I have to immediately get rid of my bed in the morning and buy a twin.

This momentarily dispels my anxiety, and I can uncurl from the furtive foetal position I’ve been maintaining all night. I momentarily relax. This calm rarely lasts, when I realize if I have a twin bed, where will I have sex? Then a more ridiculous idea comes to mind. I realize if I’m unable to have sex, I can't get married. What?! I think to myself. I’ve never wanted to get married! Or, have I?

I don’t want to seem like I suffer from some kind of child-like twin bed psychosis when I meet my next partner. My interests and personality are an acquired taste, even though I’m proud of who I am. I know my eccentricities are also foibles. I recognize what I lack as an human all too well, that is why I avoid the book section titled 'Self-Improvement' and try for a little progress each day. To get it all right, I try to move on to wherever I’m going in some sort of grace. Buying I twin bed, I conclude, is neither graceful, nor in my life's plan.

Long after losing my virginity, I still feel like I am chaste every time I start a brand new relationship. As a single woman, I feel scrutinized and unsure about my sexual identity. I don’t feel fluent, able to walk the landscape of choice between chastity, responsible experimentation, the desire for marriage, and never wanting to marry. It seems I must announce my single title, know where I’m going and announce my intentions for show and tell. The part of me who thought she was a feminist rages up and wishes I could simply announce myself as Mr. to enjoy the anonymity and power men seem to have.

With all this worrying, I got out of bed one morning, exhausted, to fetch a small glass of juice and proceed back to bed. As I was shuffling back to my bedroom, I noticed a piece of paper tucked underneath my apartment door. It was upside down. I flipped it over. It read "The Truth." "The truth has arrived underneath my door,” I said quietly to myself.

I tossed the paper out. The huge ego of my bed deflated, and my anxiety left the room. I felt less puffy. The inside of my apartment swirled and whooshed, draining itself of my ridiculous thoughts. I threw my head back and laughed. My truth had arrived, and I was going to be fine.

Lemonspouting, Napkin Notes & War

2009-08-01T21:26:00.122-06:00

Last night, I parked unevenly in my covered parking stall at my new apartment. I wasn’t in the habit of making this ruthless mistake. I’d only lived in my new high-rise for four months and had never parked over either yellow line: left or right, nor too close to either line.

This is where the lemonspouting came in: Number 84, as she called herself, decided to leave a napkin note on my windshield the next morning. Number 84, referred to her stall. When I saw my mistake, I felt bad for my error. I wanted to apologize, but I was given no opportunity. The napkin note I’d received from Number 84 suggested an undercurrent of rage. Polite script with wolf’s teeth. Lemonspouting with acid dripping off the lips. Sure, she wasn't spitting lemon drops at me, but she wanted to bite.

In the current climate of environmental protectionism, I understand SUV owners are really under the gun. Number 84, SUV owner, took my crooked parking as a sign of disrespect toward her larger vehicle. This thought hadn’t crossed my half-baked brain when I pulled in that night. I hadn’t crossed the yellow line, but I’d parked exactly up to it on her driver’s side. Number 84 sniffed political affront. I drove in very late that night, too tired, and accidentally parked off-centre. End of story.

My mind reeled at the implications. How often do we lemonspout and imagine the end of the world, before really checking out the pure simplicity of the situation? I know I often do. Would she laugh if she knew what had happened was a silly, impersonal, mistake?

I doubt it. The next day, the car to the left of me parked over the yellow line into my spot. I laughed, but also groaned. How ironic! Even though I squeezed over as far as I could, Number 84 was still going to have a tight fit. Then I thought, is this how wars are started?

I began to meditate on this. If you could take a war back to its beginnings, what original dispute would have sparked the fire? Were they accidental misunderstandings? I remembered Number 84 as I caught a glimpse of her getting into her SUV. I’d first met her in the elavator when I was moving in and had said hello. I also told her the elevator had been sticking. She looked straight at me and said, " I’m not going to deal with you."

I was trying to be a new friendly neighbour, but immediately gave up. Ironically, we found each other parked side by side for 2 years. Number 84 waged other parking battles with me when she found the opportunity, lemon dripping from her teeth.