And Toto too?

And Toto too. Toto most of all.  Wasn't it Toto who got Dorothy into her predicaments in the first place?  Because Toto jumped out of his basket and ran in Miss Gulch's garden and tried to bite her, Dorothy was forced to give her beloved pup over to the soul sucking Gulch.  But he wouldn't be restrained.  He wouldn't give in to his  imprisonment, into the neutering of his wild-ness.  He broke out and ran to find Dorothy, who was bereft without him.  So Dorothy had to escape from her loving but unimaginative and conventional aunt and uncle who  wanted to keep her safe.  But Toto wouldn't let Dorothy settle for safe.  His energy couldn't be contained in safe. Off to Professor Marvel.  Off to instigate the tornado.  Off to being closed out of the root cellar.  Off to Oz.  Off to finding her strengths, her brain, her heart, her courage, her outrage. Off to uncovering the 'wizard' behind the curtain.  Off to becoming her self.

I'd like to go to Oz.  Or to Wonderland. Or to Cinderella's house, even.  Or to any of the scary/wonderful places from the fairy tales that have stood the test of time because they tell us the truths each of us needs to discover on our journey. And they get all this wisdom in two hours on screen, or the length of a bed time story to send us off on sweet dreams.

Dorothy's adventure-- her spiritual and heroic odyssey--is a necessary dive into life, a step beyond  fear.  She acts on the fierce love she has for Toto, who I was delighted to learn, has long been recognized as Dorothy's own animal nature and intuition; that inner voice that we are supposed to follow when we cannot think our way out of a problem.  Is it too much to suggest that Toto is a gift from God, an answer to prayer, a means to find our own yellow brick road when life is dull and predictable and just not enough? He is a natural force who gets us first into trouble and then out of trouble by following his true nature and letting Dorothy in on hers.

Maybe Toto is the real Wizard.

All these words to find the way to my point:  we live only a whisper of our life when we don't follow our deepest nature, when we let convention rule where our soul cries out for real.  Life will often provide us with tornadoes just to wake us up, shake off the dust, ask the necessary questions and see what we are made of.  We can hide in the cellar or we can spin around 'til we land in Oz.

Oz is as scary a place as it is wondrous.

But, what if Dorothy had given Toto over to Miss Gulch?  What if she caved to the scary lady's demands?  What if Toto had been so well trained that he no longer had what it takes to jump out of the basket and find his way to Dorothy?  Toto would have been 'put down' and Dorothy would have led a life of regret and longing for over the rainbow.

Prying Eyes

I had a dream recently about coming upon a room hidden away under a staircase, cloaked by boxes and the usual debris of a basement.  I worked my way through the camouflage to the door, opened it, invaded the space and discovered what could have been  telltale signs of gambling, or could have just been evidence of someone's need to be alone to play cards. That seemed to be the mystery.  Had I discovered someone's secret- that is nefarious- life, or had I stumbled upon someone's private thoughts and need  to keep his own counsel?

Which brings me to this question:  How much of ourselves are we expected to divulge and how much are we allowed to keep to the privacy of our own heart, mind or soul?

There seems to be a movement to tell all, to reveal a lot of "stuff" without the need to ever be honest, open, confessional. If every one were confessional on places like Facebook, could we stand it?  I doubt it.  Do we really want to know what everyone else is thinking or doing?  Absolutely not.  There is enough nudity, in its many forms, to overwhelm even the most probing gossip monger or salacious voyeur.

Somehow, this brings me to the nature of what I am working on (and, boy oh boy, I don't mind telling you, it's become a long and arduous process).  I had spent several years writing in the non-fiction vein, that is, essays of both a general sort commenting on family life and relating that to spirituality  (short version: Family Life Spirituality) and more personal, first person accounts of the events and people in my life.  But, really, that became in one way too easy and another way too hubris-tic (is that a word?) on my part commenting on real people's lives.  So, I thought I'd try my hand at fiction, hence the long suffered task of my novel.  But, being me, I must wrestle with the same themes.  But, why?  Just let go and let your imagination based on years of observation (and internal wrestling) take over.  In a novel the readers want and expect to be let in on the inner workings of the characters.

Alas, (a little pretentious, huh?) I need to overcome my cultivated struggle to politely look away from the secrets and lies and struggles of my characters and give in to my natural and abundant curiosity of what makes them tick.  Otherwise, what kind of novel am I left with?  Polite is just not that engaging, unless you are Jane Austen, and I am not.

Mail, by any other name

I like getting mail from an old friend, or a new friend, don't you? Now that Post Offices are threatened with extinction and the romantic picture of a fearless messenger riding across the prairie on his sturdy steed has fallen into the realm of fairy tale, we (humans, that is) like to get mail.

Perhaps not as textile and tangible as opening a letter written in the distinctive handwriting of someone you know, e-mails serve a similar purpose. It is vogue in certain circles, though, to decry the use of the internet as impersonal, cold, and a vehicle for turning the younger generation into isolated creatures who have lost the power of speech.

I have discovered myself to be a defender of the internet.  To anyone who knows me well, like my husband, this may be a bit of a surprise.  For years I was so anti-tech that Gene dubbed my laptop "Quill" (as in quill pen) to affectionately poke fun at my lack of technical skill or curiosity, for that matter.  But--- wonder of wonders---- word processing entered my world, so that now when I write something I can correct it without having to start all over on a fresh paper in the typewriter.  Waste baskets do not overflow like they used to with discarded drafts at inexpert stabs at creativity!

But lately I have discovered new reasons to root for the Internet and all things cyber. There are so many people I am in touch with via email, Facebook, web sites, blogs that quite probably would have fallen off my radar without this fabulous tool.  I have "met" people that I have not yet had the pleasure to shake hands with or sit down and share a meal and an old fashioned conversation.

Several months back a fellow student from St. John's found me in an internet search.  We hung out at the same lunch table for most of our tenure as undergrads.  It was great to hear from someone I haven't seen in years and develop an ongoing "conversation".  I bet we talk about more things now than we ever did all those years ago.

Sure, communication is different.  There is a certain romance to opening a card and having a handwritten note and maybe a photo or two.  But, when I get an email from Katie with a video of my grandson jumping in excitement over a silly song that she is singing to him, I am so grateful for that.  It's not the same as seeing him in person, but since they live a long distance from us, it is a good temporary fix.

I doubt that we will ever grow out of our need to know and be known by others, to be in community, however we define that.  Since our society moves so quickly and our loved ones are many miles away, I know my heart beats a little faster when I open my laptop and am greeted by a message from a friend.     I know it's not the Pony Express, but it sure is express.

Link to History

At a family celebration last evening, my daughter Katie, who finds it necessary to remind her parents of their increasing age, proclaimed that I am their 'link to history', since I am the oldest member of our little tribe.  She said this while holding her 6 month old son on her lap. Link to history, eh?  I'll take that.  She joked of the days of rotary telephones and black and white TV.  The old days, natch.  Well, sure.  Though my father is hanging on at the age of 90, I am a link to my children and now grandchild, to the family stories and events of not only the years I grew up, but the means of passing down the stories that I absorbed from my parents and grandparents.

When Katie was born we lived in the upstairs apartment of my Aunt Jule's house, the house where my mother grew up, where her father died in 1935, the house my grandmother had trouble leaving.  So she was born into history, in ways a little more intense than is common nowadays.

Aunt Jule was 92 when Katie was born and had just turned 95 when Michael was born.  These two oldest of my children are the only ones who were born before Aunt Jule died close to her 96th birthday.  She was a more than a link to history, she was a sturdy bridge.  She was born in 1889 and lived until 1985.  Two World Wars, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, the rise of the suburbs, the turning life on its head nature of the Sixties, the Vietnam War, etc, etc.

When Katie was little she and I went down to visit Aunt Jule almost every afternoon to have tea.  Aunt Jule kept of box of Peak Freen strawberry cream cookies that Katie would 'steal' on these visits.  Aunt Jule told me so many stories of the people in her life, my ancestors and friends of my ancestors.  She was better than a history book.  Today would be her 120th birthday, and although she has been gone for 24 years now, she lives on in stories and in great affection in our family.

Happy Birthday, Aunt Jule!

Progress

I've made some progress on my novel this week. Yeah!!  I've had a long stretch of thinking of scenes and situations and movement of the work, but very little of actually putting words down in the documents. Last week, though, my writers group had its reunion after a summer break. This is our second year of meeting, so we decided to up the game a bit. There are four of us scribblers and after a year of sharing our work and witnessing the only man among us finish two, count 'em, two books which will come out early in 2010, we agreed we can all reach a little higher.

We are sending each other some kind of writing: good, bad or indifferent, at least once a week to keep us on task. Let's face it, there are always other things you can be doing than hanging around your desk pushing words around. There's always laundry or cooking or raking leaves, and don't forget all the wonderful stuff on television. And, most importantly, don't forget books. After all, you can not progress as a writer unless you read.  Voluminously. So, there, reading books is honing the craft. Except when it becomes an excuse not to write. That is one sin I will admit to in public.

We will continue to meet in person once a month and at that gathering, hopefully, we will have polished our bigger works through the process of sending smaller pieces each week. I would like to be finished with a respectable draft of my novel by next May. That's 7 months from now. Now that I've said it, hopefully I will have enough of the diligent student left in me to complete my own assignment.

I don't know if I would have made any progress at all without having a group to share with and be accountable to.  So, thanks guys.