A Beautiful, Scary, Uplifting and Uncertain Time

Posted on 09/23/2011 by Jane Devin

It’s an unsettled time. A beautiful, scary, uplifting, hungry and uncertain time. – September 21, 2011 Journal Entry

“Can you do addition?” the White Queen asked. “What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?”

“I don’t know,” said Alice. “I lost count.

* * *

The correct answer to the White Queen’s question is ten, but like Alice I often lose count. Of numbers, time, and time between posts. My blogging has been sporadic lately. There’s just been a lot going on — as many as six impossible things before breakfast — but I’m hopeful that all my work and worry now will eventually have a happy ending. In the meantime, there’s:

Faith & Belief. 80 people made my Kickstarter publicity campaign for Elephant Girl a success. 40 people have left reviews on Amazon. Several readers have sent me personal messages letting me know that my story was also theirs in some way, or moved them, or made them see something in a different light. None of this makes me feel proud or redeemed. I feel, instead, incredibly humbled and slightly overwhelmed by the sense of unity. I’ve walked alone most of my life. Someone told me last year that I should be used to it. I never did get used to it. I had just reconciled myself to a certain amount of solitude and “blamed” it on being different — on being a writer, on circumstances, on being me. To have this level of support now, at 49 years old, feels like the gift of belief. I am believing in myself more because other people have expressed their faith in me and I am determined not to let them down.

Imperfect Focus. My lease ends in 6.5 days. I have no idea where I’m going next. I had hoped to have a car by now, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to work out this month. I’m scrambling for quick solutions while at the same time really wanting some kind of longer-term security. With the support of friends, I put everything I had into writing this book and getting it published, and I don’t regret one minute of it, but its time now to come up with a more sustainable plan for the future. In the meantime, I’m filling up spreadsheets with the names of newspaper editors and book reviewers. I’m scouting out printers who can get my book into brick and mortar stores. I’ve begun my own, somewhat scattered process of outlining my next book which will be, I think, different than anything I’ve ever written before.

A Want of Space & Balance. I want to write until I’m exhausted and fall asleep in my clothes, or until I notice the world has suddenly changed color and I’ve stayed up to greet the morning sun. That time isn’t here yet. I’m not in the right space, physically or emotionally. My anxiety level is high and my paragraphs are full of stutters and distractions. I write drafts and throw them away, sometimes embarrassed by how much effort I put into stories that end up in the trash. I miss in-person friends and human-to-human companionship, but I also know I do my best work when I’m alone. One day, I hope it’s possible that I have not only a “room of my own” but also the balance I seek.

Hope & Doubt. I have a long way to go and reasons to be both excited and discouraged. Janis Ian, one of my favorite musicians, (a few lines from her song “Lover’s Lullaby” are excerpted in Elephant Girl), took the time to write me a note and say my story was beautiful. (She could have said it was brown paper plain and I would still be grateful she took the time to read and respond. What a gracious artist and woman). Sheri Salata allowed me to send her a copy. A film agent in L.A. has promised to read the paperback as soon as she can. On the other hand, some reviewers, online and off, won’t even consider a self-published book. Due to the subject matter of Elephant Girl (poverty, child abuse, single parenthood, Aspergers and more) it’s going to be difficult to find corporate sponsors for a book tour to visit indie bookstores and social media clubs.

Reminders That It’s Not Just About Me. Like many people, I find it easy to get wrapped up in my own life and challenges. And sometimes, just when it’s needed, something comes along to alleviate my myopia. This past week, it was watching a small group of internet thugs unjustifiably attack Mark Horvath, founder of InvisiblePeople.tv, his supporters and his sponsors. I wrote this article about the “I Can Do Betters” who don’t really seek to do better at all, but merely wish to hurt those they feel have gotten too successful or who have gained too much attention for their hard work and efforts. I encourage you to read the post and the comments. I’ve been attacked online before. It’s hurtful and frustrating. I’ve learned: There’s no arguing reasonably with unreasonable people who are determined to find fault in everything you say or do. It’s just a fact of living life openly and somewhat publicly that some people aren’t going to like you, but a campaign of personal destruction, replete with fake accounts created to spread misinformation, is particularly ugly. Mark spends his days and nights serving those most disenfranchised by society. He has worked tirelessly to bring awareness to the plight of homelessness and to give visibility to those society has left behind. In the name of goodness, and of countering hostility with support, I’d like my readers to think about helping Mark and his InvisiblePeople.tv mission here or here. I will do the same. In October, I will choose a week when all proceeds from the sale of Elephant Girl will go towards Mark’s continuing mission. Stay tuned for more information.

Strength, Trust & Feelings. I know what it’s like to move forward even when somewhat tied by circumstance. To push and scrape even when it all feels impossible. I know how to recover my spirit when it has been crushed. To pray my way into a sense of well-being. To write my way out of despair and into the best of possibilities. I know all of this, yet it’s never made me feel particularly happy. There are times I just don’t want to have to be strong, or work against the odds, or try to heal something. Times that I’d just like shed my well-worn muscles and expose all that’s vulnerable— to fall and know that someone is there to catch me. The older I get, the more urgent this need feels. . .which makes me afraid of getting old. More than that, it makes me think of how many elderly people are homeless and hungry, with no loving family and no where to go. It bears repeating. These are among the people covered by and helped by the friends and supporters of InvisiblePeople.tv, both in the United States and Canada. Please go watch the stories as told by the homeless themselves, be moved, and consider doing what you can to help.

Share this:

Our House. Two Dogs, A Sunday Paper & Thumbtacks

Posted on 09/13/2011 by Jane Devin

Our house is a very, very fine house. With two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard, now everything is easy because of you. – “Our House” 1970 – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

I was about eight years old when the song Our House hit the airwaves. It was a song that promised tranquility, love and happiness and I glommed onto it like a prayer. As the years went by, I rebuilt the lyrical fine house with my own visions. The cats became dogs. Instead of flowers in a vase, there was colorful fruit in a wooden bowl. And of course, it was near an ocean.

When I was in Key West last year, I found a small, yellow house that struck me as being just the sort of cozy home I’d envisioned for the past 40 years. I paused across the street from it and let my imagination drift past the patio and into the front door – the color of which is the only thing I might have changed, from seashell pink to cloud white.

The first room I stepped into was the living room, where sky blue pillows rested on a soft, rainy day gray couch. The dark wood of the floor was like the earth, covered in the center with a wave of ocean-colored carpet. A muted seascape, sea foam green with hints of blue and silver, hung above the fireplace, while another wall held a shadow-box map of the world, with red thumbtacks marking all the places I’d been, and green for the places I’d yet to visit.

In the dining room, a bowl of apples and pomegranates sat upon a cherry wood table, where a Sunday morning paper waited to be read. While the sun was streaming lightly through open windows and a slight breeze was billowing white curtains, fresh Kona coffee brewed in the kitchen. A cupboard was open, ready for the hands that would take out thick blue coffee mugs and breakfast plates. On the wall to the right of the gas-lit stove, there was a corkboard, where handwritten recipes, notes and grocery lists were tacked with cheerfully colored pins.

Down the hall, past the bedroom with its four-poster bed and thick down comforter, was my small writing room. In the center, there was a mahogany desk with an amber lamp on one side and a filigreed silver box on the other, containing pens collected on my travels. The white walls were made colorful with art, most of it painted or drawn by friends — a watercolor by Kaitlyn, a pen & ink drawing by Suzen, a collage by Tasmi — and on the left wall, aligned with my desk, another corkboard filled with notes, some written on paper napkins, others on index cards or scraps of paper.

A sanctuary of skin & mutuality…a love of hope.
The 7 words that changed me.
4248 and other strange commonalities.

Dozens of notes overlapped one another, some sharing the same thumbtack, some buried under others. There were sparks of thought ignited in cars and coffee shops — feelings that surfaced while half-dreaming under white sheets or a blue beach awning — small epiphanies had while engaged in work or conversation.

Standing in front of the little yellow house, I let my mind wander. I dared to dream of a home that was full of love and belonging. Although weathered by age and jaded by 40 years of experience, I was suddenly eight years old again on this street in Key West, praying for a happy ending, and choosing to believe that nothing, ever, is impossible.

Come to me now, and rest your head for just five minutes
everything is good
Such a cozy room…
the windows are illuminated
by the sunshine through them
Fiery gems for you
only for you…

Share this:

Maybe Someday, Baby

Posted on 09/09/2011 by Jane Devin

In desperation, we scrambled to make it to bus stops, factory doors, and daycare centers. We carried our heavy loads, balancing children on our hips, and tried to forget there was a time when we would have stopped to pray for, or at least consider, the lives of those less fortunate.

We lost many things on our journey. School pictures, cherished albums, love letters tied in teenage yarn. We had no place to store the proof of our memories, so we left them roadside, along with our burned-out cars, or gave them away like we did the bright, youthful clothes we no longer had occasion to wear.

We traded dreams for practicalities and tucked our stubborn hopes away in empty pockets. Our skin grew pale as we traded iron for baby food and protein for something that was 10-for-a-dollar. In parking lots, the women with their late-model key chains and freshly styled hair scurried to move their children away from ours, as if poverty, with its day-old bread and generic boxes of rice cereal, was catching.

We shielded our children from glaring or sympathetic eyes and, with never-enough guilt twisting in our stomachs, somehow always managed to find an extra dime for the gumball machine or a quarter for the merry-go-round outside. At night, as they rested in the crooks of our arms, we read our children fantastical stories of faith and transformation: ugly ducklings that turned into swans and earnest frogs that became princes. Wanting to believe in miracles ourselves, we read with animation, perfecting the voices of wicked witches and wise fairy godmothers. It’s never too late, we taught them, to become the person you were meant to be. At the same time, we feared our own lives were cautionary tales with no assured ending. We knew that hope without any real, tangible possibility was futility. We prayed that it would be different for them — that the things that had proven impossible for us would not be our children’s curse to bear.

We taught them to read and write, and drilled them on spelling, numbers and songs so that when they went to school with the sons and daughters of the women with the late-model key chains, they would not feel the weight of their hand-me-down clothes or five-dollar shoes, but take pride in their achievements.

Under a set of fluorescent lights or out in the elements, doing tedious work that required no special skills except the labor of our hands or the strength of our backs, we tried to grow numb, thinking that if we could sever the nerves that attached emotion to circumstance, we might not feel the depth of our own despair. We might not feel the empty space left behind by lost potential, or the oppressive pain of not being fully alive — of being nothing more in the working world than a nine-digit number with 10 expendable working fingers or a strong, replaceable spine.

Yet, we knew the feeling of half-dead wasn’t dead at all. It was only a shrunken, dried-up sponge of emotions waiting for the next disaster, reflective hour, or inescapable conclusion to burst its cells open and overflow. At unexpected times, while in the middle of work or staring out of a bus window, we often found our eyes watering with the pressure of a spirit looking to find its way back in — to be heard, acknowledged and perhaps even nurtured.

And when our children asked questions about the future, all we could tell them is the same thing we told our spirits. Maybe Someday, Baby.

Maybe someday the cupboards will be full.

The night will not be frightening.

We’ll find a car that runs.

Our hopes will turn into possibilities &

the ugly duckling will turn into a swan.

It is also what we told ourselves in the hours we were alone, when we were not only resourceful mothers or strong-spined workers, but women with soul-needs of our own. We told ourselves that everything that we never had or that we lost along the way would be found or rediscovered. That there would be new pictures to frame and set upon a mantle — a future full of love letters, ticket stubs and pressed flowers to revisit on a sentimental winter’s day — and a little black dress with no practical purpose to hang in our closet.

Maybe someday, baby, we promised ourselves

There won’t be as much to fear.

The panic will subside.

We’ll pick up the guitar or paintbrush again &

walk barefoot along an ocean shore.

Maybe someday, baby, we’ll find love.

Share this:

Letter to Vincent

Posted on 08/25/2011 by Jane Devin

Dear Vincent,

I’ve laid out a straw mat for the dogs so they can lie under the blue sky in comfort. I’ve filled a glass with ice & tea and set it near a tattered canvas chair. That’s as far as I’ve gotten in a morning that’s thick with promise and lean on execution. Everything, it seems, must wait. Clouds and dreams alike are in a holding pattern, at the ready to either part or darken.

My head is pounding today and, of course, that made me think of another year and another space, and then everything that followed in the year after that and the months since. . .

It still haunts me, Vincent—she still haunts me—and there’s not a person in the world that would ever understand that except you. That even as I do all the normal and expected things, there’s a piece of me that’s locked up tight, that’s ground down and shattered, and afraid of what might happen if I reach inside myself and pluck out the shards.

I comtemplate the ugliness from the corner of my eye, even as I draw my words in bright colors and paint layers and layers of warm comfort over cold memories. From the side of my mouth, I whisper to the god of encumberances and plead for lightness. I ask that I, with the elephantine memory, be allowed to forget. That one simple stroke of a brush would erase her and give me back the piece of myself that was capable of dreaming of someday-love, someday-belonging.

I sit outside and the sun shines brightly. My sentences are swollen with a confidence that’s borrowed from something outside of myself. I fear abandonment — the prospect of being left more alone than I am — and I fear, perhaps more than anything I’ve ever feared, being once again embraced, by anybody or anything, and then abruptly discarded. As you know, it is really not better to have loved and lost any more than it is better to birth a dream only so that you could feel it die.

It’s August 2011 and I am the potato eater of summer, Vincent. Dry skinned and dry lipped, hands rough and gray, skin and soul weathered by sun and storms

but by day I dream of yellow rooms
filled with sunflowers.

& at night I count the swirls
in a cobalt sky
& imagine myself a writer
lost in words & amber light

I walk through fields of flowers
to find the church where I might heal
(If I ever find it, I will, like you, leave off the gargoyles
& let the sun stream through cathedral windows).

I pick nests fallen from almond trees
and plant them on dusty sills
hoping that they’ll sustain me
through the tongue-tied silence
of a waiting season.

The dogs yawn and stretch. Sky blue threads unravel from a canvas chair. Ice melts and skin warms, but the heart, Vincent, this heart. . .

You know it’s still breaking, even in its sheltered hiding place.

I beg you to paint me something beautiful and not so out of reach.

Love Always,

Jane

Share this:

So, What’s Your Book About?

Posted on 08/21/2011 by Jane Devin

Share this:

I Spill Out My Burdens and Dust Off My Wings

Posted on 08/14/2011 by Jane Devin

A beautiful card from my Twitter friend, Maggie.

The path from the Martin’s house to the small strip mall, with its grocery store and Starbucks, is a 3/4 mile long trail that’s been cut into the desert. Everyday and sometimes twice a day, I walk or bike ride through the dirt, even if I don’t need anything at all. It’s become a ritual — my time to commune with myself, Van Gogh, God, the fates and the future. I talk out loud, spilling secrets, worries and wishes into the sky, into the sagebrush, into the ears of whatever benevolent guardian might be listening.

And someone or something has been listening, I’m sure of it.

My future still hangs in the hour-by-hour and I have no idea where I’ll go in 17 days, which is when my lease with the Martin’s expires. I still don’t have a car, or a sense of security, and there are no big miracles in plain sight, but. . .

I needed an interior book designer for the paperback version of Elephant Girl. I found one.
I needed to redo the electronic versions and correct a few errors. I could.
I needed to order proofs to get to the next step of the process. I did.
I need to see a dentist for an emergency. I get to see one on Monday.

Small miracles are happening every day. People are good and kind. I am grateful to long-time friends and new friends alike, who have offered assistance and encouragement, and who are spreading the word about Elephant Girl.

While I haven’t sold as many e-versions of EG as I’d like, the response so far has been positive. Nine people have left reviews on Amazon and 352 people have “liked” the Facebook fan page. Many people have told me that they are waiting for the paperback version and if all goes well with proofs and corrections, it may be available in less than two weeks.

Young artist Kaytlin Kuns paints her vision of Elephant Girl for me. I love the imagination in this painting.

I’ve always found it frustrating that I can’t draw or paint. I’m a visual thinker without the ability to use more than words to bring my mental images to life. One day, I was telling my friend Karoli about a picture that I had in mind. I wondered if perhaps her teen daughter, aspiring artist Kaytlin Kuns, would want to give it a try. A couple of weeks later, I received this beautiful watercolor in my email. It is so close to the kind of life-saving, happy visions I carried around in my head at 14, 15, 16 years old that I was moved to tears. One day, I will frame this painting and hang it in the imagined room with the mahogany desk.

I’m living on faith, heart, belief and imagination. I’m making plans one day and one possibility at a time. And although I haven’t been blogging as much, I have been writing. Letters to Vincent, a short-story collection, and the yet-untitled sequel to Elephant Girl, which will be written as a novel.

I have my fears and worries, and there are times I wonder what the hell I’m doing, and how far I’ll get before I end up starving and homeless, but as Toni Morrison once said, “If you wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” Fear is a heavy weight, and doubt wraps chains around even the most believing heart, so when I feel myself starting to sink I just spill out my burdens and dust off my wings.

Share this: