I wake to a stream of light through the window. A curved bowl hangs, shining, holding golden liquid that streams down in a beam onto my floor. The moon wanes and rests mid-sky.
I force myself to wake – it must be time to write – then realize it’s only 3:19am. I can’t go back to sleep. In the dark of my room, I watch a video of Chinese doctors chanting over a woman with cancer. They show the tumor on an ultrasound screen dissolving in less than three minutes. They say it’s not a miracle but a tool. This power of intent. This feeling in the heart. To feel that she is well has made it so.
By 4:30am I’m back to sleep and dreaming of poetry.
At 7am I wake to dusky purple light. It’s been a long time since I’ve slept till sunrise. I hear the bullfrog at the stream. He seems to have one simple drone, free of having to decide how to express.
What if there were just one tone that I was given? I could stick with that, let go of mind, and just move my song to calm and trance. No doubt and never wonder.
photo by Jessica Dofflemyer - all rights reserved - Big Sur Sprit Garden
But I’m human, and I wonder
Would I really like a single key?
For those that follow the Archives, you may know that my “post-a-day-for-40-days” went beyond the 40 days and now I’m somewhere past 100 posts, happily blogging away. Yet yesterday I did not hit that bluish “Publish” button. Not one, but two written pieces sit in Draft status while the Editor takes over my right pinkie, deleting and backspacing in spiraling minutiae.
If there is blame, we’ll direct it at the Submission. That essay with the impending deadline that sits beside my bed with a pen. It’s been combed, perused, and fluffed. Seen more than plenty pencil marks on paper and my pinkie finger on the keyboard.
I’ll need to research this more, but I believe that the Editor and the Creator live in different hemispheres of my brain. When I write, I’m hoping to hold the ultimate Summit. In rare moments, I actually pull it off and we rule the world supreme.
Putting the Editor on vacation, I’m offering the Bohemian Creative her space here to express freely. It’s a collage – you know, the artsy kind that sometimes don’t make sense? Now, now (that’s the Editor chiming in again – she really is so relentless sometimes and just can’t leave her post!). Ok, BC, it’s all you, feel free to let’er fly!
Says my friend going through a divorce, “You let go in stages. When you’re ready. I finally ‘hid’ them on Facebook because I didn’t need to see their status updates any more.”
Draft version 2: 1/25/11
After dropping Jeb at school, I embark on the 45 minute drive to the Women’s Center, all the while imbibing both a travel mug of coffee and a big bottle of water. I am drinking the required 32 ounces of liquid for easier viewing of my womb.
I am not pregnant or ill. Just checking in on that lone ovary to make sure all is well. The last time I had an ultrasound a woman named Isis revealed to me the sex of my unborn child. That was seven years ago.
In the waiting room.
Draft version 3: 1/25/11
At the risk of sounding like a granny, I’ll say that I do remember days before the cell phone and internet. I traveled the continent in my car with communications strung together by random pay phone booths. Somehow it all worked out just fine. I’d write a letter to my family, with an update. Maybe send a printed photo from my camera (the one with film). I loved the days when I could go to a concert with 60,000 people and find my friends through pure intent. When our paths crossed we felt a magic and knew that it was meant to be. At the last stadium show I saw, when it came time to pay homage to the slow song, lighters were replaced by illumined cell phone screens.
Draft version 4: 1/25/11
Things have changed at the Women’s Center. Isis is gone and Blane has taken her place. I comment on the speed of his one-handed typing. He’s impressed I am aware of mittelschmerz. His eyes search the monitor. “Ahh, an artifact,” he says when the screen reveals that copper T. “Anything that’s not a natural part of the body, we call that an artifact.”
artifact |ˈärtəˌfakt| ( Brit. artefact)
noun
1 an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest : gold and silver artifacts.
2 something observed in a scientific investigation or experiment that is not naturally present but occurs as a result of the preparative or investigative procedure
DERIVATIVES
artifactual |ˌärtəˈfak ch oōəl| adjective
ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from Latin arte ‘by or using art’ + factum ‘something made’ (neuter past participle of facere ‘make’ ).
Draft version 2: 1/25/11
I decide that no archeological references should be made in relation to my womb. ‘Historical interest’? Pfft. Yet the theme of ancient history abounds. Just last night Jeb and I read that the Boxcar Children found a whole archeological area full of Native artifacts on Surprise Island. Violet, Benny, Henry and Jessie – they’re going to create a museum! As for me, I’m trying to preserve my own museum of old journals and printed photos. Wiping mold from decorated book covers and storing them away.
Well, maybe we didn’t hold a Summit, but the Bohemian Creative got to let her freak flag fly. The sun is coming up and Jeb’s ready for his breakfast. I’m not sure exactly where the Editor and BC go, but now Mom brain is taking over.
In Sunday morning light a solitary root stretches long across the sand. Sun bleached and long-since functioning, it’s still heavy and unmoving.
Tracing the root to the source, I stand beneath a thriving canopy with exposed roots as tall as me. For years the tides have come and slowly eroded the earth they held. Salt and splash, lots of time, and now that sturdy system is laid bare. Surely the smooth and aged wood no longer feeds it, but the tree grows on somehow. Old-time roots are its foundation.
The thick and twisted tendrils create a natural root cave. Jeb can climb through the web of wood just like a jungle gym. No longer steeping in dark loam and worms, these roots now bake in sun. Fallen leaves meet their surface.
photo by Jessica Dofflemyer - all rights reserved
A white, jagged specimen of corral nestles tightly in a notch just like an alter. A reminder of the elements that shaped this situation. Many, many moon cycles. Water, sand and wind.
Roots remain, the tree’s still growing. Folks with lawn chairs come for respite in their shade. Small feet and hands explore the woven patterns.
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