Every Stone a Story

Spent much of today at the storage unit, clearing, sorting, repacking, and shifting. Tomorrow I’ll drop several boxes of craft supplies at the Creative Reuse Depot in Oakland. (Then I get to spend the afternoon playing Dogs in the Vineyard.) Old files are mostly being stored—I did a serious File Sort before I moved back into the house. I’ll take excess dishes, pots and pans, and other kitchen stuff to thrift shops. I’m keeping the irreplaceable, of course, and the functional things we need. You’ll have to wrench my Atlas pasta maker from my cold dead hands. But many things I loved are going to other homes.

Some things I’ll try to sell. Time to start thinning out beads and selling more of my old soap molds. Time to cut the library again—yes, even after last year’s Big Purge, when I sold 22 boxes of books and gave away half a dozen boxes.

The process of cleaning out the storage unit seemed impossible at first. Then it seemed possible but unending. Now I can count the number of boxes left to sort. gramina, justifiably wary of my optimism, just asked me, “How many digits?” Single. Of course, after the storage unit is done I have boxes in my bedroom and in the garage. But I’m feeling strong and ready to strip away the unnecessary.

Some of these boxes have followed me around the country for two decades. Others were packed and shipped in haste from the East Coast to California, and I couldn’t bear to unpack and sort them—to see what had and hadn’t survived the split with my ex-husband, the move, the leaky storage place, and the looting by the storage/moving workers. None of it matters any more. I’m letting it all go.

I always felt protective toward the thrift-shop finds and roadside discards that I found and that Billy and I painstakingly refinished. I valued them when no one else cared; I made them beautiful again. I felt guilty when I had to sell the pieces I’d cherished, as though I were abandoning friends. Eventually I realized that someone else would find them in the junk stores and antique shops to which they had scattered.

So the missing pieces hurt less, even the ones I'd keep if I could. The little papier mache dragon incense burner my big sister got me when I was 10 seems to be gone. So is the inlaid box where I kept my dice—and the dice, of course, though kind friends have given me beautiful dice. Someone else may discover the box and marvel over the dice. Someone who can actually burn incense may find and love the dragon.

Time to let them go. Out into the world.

These fine queries are from juliansinger, who included the last set of unanswered questions she had asked as well as some newer ones.

If you want to play along at home, you know the drill--ask if you'd like me to interview you, and I will come up with five questions.


1. What don't you have in your life right now (I mean, that you want)? Is there a way to get it? (This can be either minor or major.)

What I need and don't have is a reasonable balance of job, home, love, self-care, and work (i.e., writing). Love seems to be where I'd like it to be. The job is swallowing too much of my time and energy, and home is not getting enough. Neither is writing, though that seems to be changing. As for self-care, there has to be a better way to live than mainlining caffeine all week and sleeping all weekend.

1a. Tell me about a book that has profoundly touched your life in some fashion.

Although I cut my teeth on nineteenth-century novels, Jane Austen came as a revelation to me. I didn't read Pride and Prejudice until I was 16. When I did, I closed the book and said in wonder, "All you need to be a great writer is to see clearly and speak honestly." (See my profile for what a lasting effect that insight has had on me.)

I was stunned by the vigor, humor, and simplicity of her writing—quite different from the high Gothic Brontes in both style and subject. Now that I think about it, Jane Austen is considerably closer to Louisa May Alcott than she is to the Bronte sisters. Alcott is also truthful, though generally less acerbic, about domestic conflicts. And both Alcott and Austen are merciless enough to let their heroines humiliate themselves. Jane Eyre suffers, but she doesn't make a fool of herself.

I recently reread Pride and Prejudice for the first time in ten or fifteen years, then watched the Jennifer Ehle/Colin Firth production, which was superb. What struck me this time around was how very daring, almost outrageous, Elizabeth Bennet was. When I was growing up, young ladies could say disrespectful things to the powerful. It might not be encouraged, but it was conceivable. In the context of her time, Elizabeth's sarcasm, even her willingness to stand up for herself, were astonishing.

The underlying anger in Jane Austen was always clear to me. She didn't pretend home life was particularly happy, nor did virtue guarantee a happy outcome. Most of the women (and some men) in her novels were caught in situations where they generally get screwed over whether or not they behaved decently. Having money was the only guarantee of freedom, and there was nothing one could honorably do to get money except marry. Charlotte Lucas, who married a pompous jerk in order to get a home of her own, survived by encouraging him to spend his time in the garden or his study, leaving her the rest of the house. Nevertheless, she still had to endure his sexual gropings—by the end of the book, she was about to present him with a little olive branch.

The BBC production was, of course, beautifully done. Colin Firth, who seems to have made a profession of playing jerks, is superb as Darcy, and Jennifer Ehle’s expressive face and inward merriment make her the benchmark Elizabeth.

2. What would be your incredibly-minor-but-useful superpower?

Oooh, good question! Make everyone around me use their turn signals? Not minor enough. Instantly find what I'm looking for in the fridge? Not a big enough annoyance.

I've got it: know the contents of any digital storage medium just by touching it, instead of having to mount it and read the filenames.

3. What /are/, say, three of the (physical) places that are important to you? (This can mean entire towns/cities/regions, but since I do know the general regions (or I like to think so), I'm actually thinking more of specific buildings/copses/coves/fields/trees.)

a. The first house I really remember living in was a hundred-year-old farmhouse high on a ridge in Columbia County, PA, surrounded by pastures and fields of corn and wheat—each field with its lone apple tree, where the plowman could stop for lunch. A bank barn across the road housed pigs, dairy cows, a few beeves, and some chickens. (The barn has since burned down.) The house had a summer kitchen—a two-story outbuilding attached to it by the porch—where I used to play, and a wooden screen door to the kitchen we used to swing on. Just a square, solid, white clapboard house, with lilacs, a black walnut tree, a sour cherry tree, an ash heap out back. (The house was heated by coal, which had to be shoveled into the furnace by hand, and the ashes raked out.) But it was perfectly set on its lonely road, with magnificent views across the hills and fields, and it’s where I spent the years when I was 2 to 6. I remember the moon rising behind the house, and the sunsets, and the flagstone paths, and the trumpet vines growing over the old outhouse. The interior was spacious and well-designed, with pocket doors, a dumbwaiter, and a wall of double-fronted cupboards between the kitchen and dining room. I’m imprinted on that place, and I’d buy it in an instant if it were ever available.

b. Rte. 280 has been called the most beautiful highway in the world, and I can’t imagine that many other roads can equal its lovely scenery. (It’s also well-engineered and usually not too jammed.) If you turn off at Woodside to take 84 west into the Santa Cruz Mountains, you first pass through the genteel speed trap of Woodside itself. Then you start climbing and climbing—a steep, twisting, badly cambered, narrow road often crowded with bicyclists and motorcyclists. On one side there is a cliff; on the other a steep ravine. In some spots you can see all the way across the Bay and into the heart of Hayward. In others, all you can see is the dense redwood forest, from which you may emerge into a hairpin turn and a dazzle of western sun full in your eyes.

But, if you’re me, your heart lightens with every foot upward. The self-conscious old-money beauty of Woodside also includes some groves of eucalyptus so fragrant that they leave their scent in your car for days. And as you climb into redwood country and away from the valley, the deep velvet strength of the forest calms you. Skylonda is a crossroads with gas, a couple of restaurants, and the beginning of a better engineered segment of road. In La Honda there’s a little grocery store and a bar/pool hall—and the memory of Ken Kesey. Turn left at La Honda onto Pescadero Road, and you’re going even deeper into wilderness. And then, at the last great turn before the swoop downhill into Loma Mar, there’s a place where the whole world is open before you—a view that looks southeast over chamise, oak knolls, redwood forest, and toward the rising full moon. There you can shut off your car in the middle of the road and be utterly alone and at peace under the stars.

c. The dream country.

or 3a. Coffee, tea, or cocoa?

Tea.

4. Did you always see the Stuff That Happened To You As A Kid as abusive? What was the process of figuring it out? How did PTSD come into the picture? (I mean, that is, after the stupid fucking doctor who said you couldn't be having flashbacks, how did you figure it out and/or integrate it into your perception of yourself? I ask because I've read (some of) the Stuff That Happened, but not the process to address it later on.)

This is an enormous question, which I will answer in a separate post.

or 4a) -- Talk about your spirituality some. How'd you come by it? How's it feel? Or is it primarily intellectual?

As far as I can tell, my spirituality is innate and experiential—a direct mystical sense of the Divine, particularly as revealed in the natural world.

5. (Stolen from someone else.) You are walking down the street when an old woman asks you for some food. You share your food with her, and poof! Just like in the fairy tales, she reveals herself to be a witch or fairy or some other mystical creature, and offers you a reward for your kindness. She will give you an absolutely true, certain, and definite answer to any one question. What do you ask?

Hmm, you mean like, "What is the meaning of life?" I know what the meaning of life is. (According to onty Python, "Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.")

I don't know if I want answers; I like questions. But now that the murder of Julia Wallace seems to be solved, I might ask who killed the Bordens.

or 5a. Do you ever describe things synaesthetically? ("This tastes like a warm fall day looks.") Do you ever /experience/ things synaesthetically?

I'm not a full-fledged synaesthete. What I usually say when I'm tasting or smelling or feeling something that really appeals to me: "It's like sex!" To which certain people respond, "You haven't been getting any lately, have you?"