Boundaries

My world is very small and self-contained, and has been for many years now. Its bordered mainly by the four walls that make up the house I live in, and a little beyond that the fence that encloses our yard. On good days–or on desperate days with the aid of hydrocodone–my horizon can expand to include anything within a 3 hour drive of home: Central Washington, Northeastern Washington, Northern Idaho. On very rare and special occasions, I push my body and my boundaries beyond their limits and dare as far as Seattle or Portland… or a plane trip to Texas. Because the FSM treatment is helping keep the pain at a lower level, but it isn’t making it go away, and so most days I still find myself spending the majority of my time on the couch with nothing but a book, a movie, my writing to keep me company. 

A friend of mine just got back from New Zealand, and last night I was looking at all the photos of her trip, incredible mountain vistas and waterfalls, the ocean, Hobbiton, the wind whipping her long hair into curly kinks that just made my jaw drop… And it hurt to look at those photos. Not jealousy, because I was truly and completely thrilled to see her have such a good time, but sorrow because this is something that is so far beyond my reach. Even with FSM, it’s going to be a struggle to make it to Texas for my brother’s wedding. I will never travel abroad, never see New Zealand or England–I’ll probably never even see the East Coast. My boundaries are tight, my world claustrophobic, and I don’t think I will ever stop mourning for everything I lost six years ago when I injured my leg and became disabled.

And yet, even though my world is so tiny, so isolated, it’s a pretty darn good world to be stuck in. The Inland Northwest is an amazing place, crammed with almost every kind of landscape a person could want–we’ve got swampy marshlands, lush valleys, snowcapped mountains, rolling meadows, and harsh rocky plains, each of them providing an unique beauty that works on your heart so deep you don’t even realize you’re falling in love with it all until you wake up one morning and discover that your heart has changed. And even though most of my friends and family live far away, I’ve got my husband, and he’s the one who creates silly songs and zany characters that can make me laugh when I don’t even want to drag myself out of bed in the morning, the one who brainstorms about my fiction with me (not to mention just letting me babble for hours at a time about it), the one who gets me out of the house on the good days and the desperate days, the one who goes above and beyond the call of duty every day to encourage me and make my claustrophobic, limited life a little better. So my world will never expand to include the far-off horizons of other countries; so my life will never be what I hoped it would. It’s still my world, my life, and it’s good. And this is the song that I feel has become my anthem. It’s a new secret I have found…

The king’s eldest daughter

The path spiraled ever inward,
brambles tearing her bare feet,
leaving bloody prints behind,
pointing the way to the forest’s dark heart.
She knew the stories:
the witch with great golden screech owl eyes,
the stone lion who demanded payment for his lark,
the den of death that awaited the bandit’s young bride.
She did not know which tale she had fallen into,
but the wolves of the wood snapped
at her heels, harried each halting footstep
as she fled. Fairy lights twinkled
among the trees, glowing amber and green,
sickly warning colors that quickened her bloodbeat.
Music in the mist:
wailing bone flutes and pounding drums
that echoed the drone of her pulse,
snippets of song in the nightmare dark.

My birdie with its ring so red cries sorrow, sorrow, sorrow
My love will mourn when I am dead tomorrow, morrow, morrow

And the cold tears tracing her cheeks
turned to diamonds that dropped like wayward stars
along the spiraling path, but she left them
there for the wolves and the howling winds
that cried lamentation and loss at her passing.
Shadows tread alongside her, the spirits of all
who had gone this way before:
the kind-hearted king who wielded a scepter of iron,
the green-eyed dragon-girl with her wards,
the wandering pig-herder who wore a crown.
They knew her name, whispered it
to the bone-white shadows of the moon,
but they could not tell her the way home
or the secret word that would unravel
the magician’s spell.
So she ran on, over the rickety planks
of rotting wood above the stygian stream

Trip-trap, trip-trap, who’s that tripping over my bridge?

and on
past trees of copper, silver, and gold
and the banks of the lake where Little King Loc
had captured the child Abeille,
through graveyards where stinging nettle grew
and fields of blood-red flowers that cradled pearls
within their folded petals
as the sun rose and fell and
rose and fell again,
until at last, on the third night,
she came to the castle that stood silent
and foreboding at the center of the forest.
She froze, panting for breath, aching in every bone
and bleeding her very heart into the night.
Behind her sounded the howls of a hundred
unspeakable terrors that craved her flesh.
But the castle gave no promise of refuge, she knew.
She might enter and discover Baba Yaga
waiting to boil her bones for broth,
or fall victim to the charms of Mr. Fox.
She hesitated, caught between two fates.
But the forest taught strength as well as fear;
magic had seeped into her marrow
and she knew: it was a beginning, not an end.

She opened the door.

In honor of National Tell a Fairy Tale Day.

For those who are interested, the following fairy tales are referenced in the poem: The Singing, Soaring Lark; The Robber Bridegroom; Jorinda & Joringel; The Three Billy Goats Gruff; Kari Woodengown; Little King Loc; The Wild Swans; Baba Yaga; and Mr. Fox. There are also allusions to three fantasy novels from my childhood: The Iron Scepter by John White, Dragon’s Milk by Susan Fletcher, and The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.

Transformation

If there is one ‘constant’ in the structure and theme
of the wonder tale, it is transformation.
~Jack Zipes

It’s how a cloudy day in the mountains can become something wondrous if you take the drive slow and stop every so often to really take a look around you. It’s a way of looking at the world so that you don’t see what everyone else sees, just the endless gray skies and frosty trees–you see the pine needles as a starburst of rime, a snowy firework, the beginning of a winter fairy tale in which the princess pricks her finger on a shard of frost rather than a spinning wheel. It’s what goes on inside you on a level so deep you often don’t know it’s happening, don’t catch on until the change has become so profound it spills over into the parts of your life that are visible–but even then, you don’t know what it means.

Every year is different. 2010 was the year I grew, grew so much it hurt, but it was beautiful, every last tear. 2011 was the year that started out amazing, then became the year of breaking down, and there was nothing beautiful about it–it was all dark and despair that continued without ceasing through 2012, the year I struggled simply to stay alive. I was not expecting any of it, and so now that I am on the other side of all those things that changed the landscape of my heart, I am looking at the visible signs of metamorphosis and wondering what they mean for who I am.

I blog a lot less these days–the words simply aren’t there, even when I visit other writers I love, and so I am a largely invisible presence… and have been for a long time now. But I’m writing more fiction than ever, and it is spilling across the boundaries that normally contain it into every facet of my life. And because I write fairy tales, that is what everything inside me gravitates toward. I read them, I write them, I watch them in movies and on TV, I dream/breathe/speak/create them, and there is a restlessness in me when I put them aside.

But I’m not using them to escape this time. Escape is what I did last year, or what I tried to do, and the fairy tales weren’t there. My friends were there even when the words weren’t, poetry was there more often than prose, drives into the countryside with my husband and our silliest music were there, but not the fairy tales. They are here now because their story is my story, and I have to read and write and live those stories because that is how I face all the things that have happened in the last few years and what it means. Because that is what fairy tales do.

I keep trying to go back to the person I was before the Year of Breaking Down, keep trying to get myself to blog regularly, comment regularly, reconnect with everyone and everything, and it just doesn’t work. I’m still here, I’m still me, but the words inside me have changed. They still tell my story, but in a different language now, the language of magic and metaphor and symbolism. I don’t know what it means yet and I don’t entirely know why, but I know it’s necessary. It is the language of my heart, and it is all I have for the time being. I hope you will journey with me regardless, whether you first came to my blog for the photos or the poetry or the simpler words of years past. Those things are still within me too, and always will be. You might just have to take a brief trip or three through the land of Faerie to reach them. ♥

Inevitably they find their way into the forest.
It is there that they lose and find themselves.
It is there that they gain a sense of what is to be done.
The forest is always large, immense, great and mysterious.
No one ever gains power over the forest, but the forest possesses
the power to change lives and alter destinies.
― Jack Zipes

More than one kind of magic

These photos are part of Kelly’s Year of Ordinary Magic. For February, we’re looking for hearts, and I have to admit, I feel a bit silly posting a photo of a heart-shaped onion slice from my lunch when other people are finding hearts in the frost, the sky, reflections. But it’s still a heart, and it’s more significant than it seems because it represents the first time I’ve been out of the house (except for doctor’s appointments) in several weeks–and even better, it represents what I hope–what I believe–is the first step in healing.

You see, it’s six years ago today that I slipped on the ice, did the splits, and injured the tendon in my left leg. Six years that I have spent getting poked, prodded, jabbed, scanned, and X-rayed; six years of being diagnosed, misdiagnosed, and re-diagnosed;  six years of staying home on holidays, struggling to do normal things like sit in a chair for any length of time, and slamming back muscle relaxants and hydrocodone in order to be semi-functional. I’ve had traditional physical therapy, neuromuscular therapy, chiropractic care, and acupuncture, and while some of it has helped to a degree, none of it has restored me to anything resembling a normal life.

Last week, I started yet another new treatment: Frequency Specific Microcurrent. A single hour of having my pelvis wrapped in warm, wet towels and electrodes… and the next day, I made it all the way to my favorite sandwich shop in Colville, an hour and a half away from home, without taking a single pill. I felt so good that we went the long way home, up over Flowery Trail Road into the mountains, and I ended up taking only 1/2 a pill for all that extra mileage–and to be honest, I may not have exactly needed it. After six years of pain, I’m sure you’ll pardon me for playing it safe when I started to feel some slight discomfort. Over the last few days, the pain has gradually returned, but this is normal for the first FSM treatment, and it still isn’t back up to the level it was at before. I’m trying not to sound the trumpets just yet–there have been other things that gave me a measure of relief for while, and so far I’m still disabled. But I’m more excited, more hopeful, than I have been in a long time. So here’s to the ordinary magic of finding a heart in your Saturday lunch, and to the nigh-miraculous magic of the possibility of healing.

Ordinary Magic: The coyote

From the photo above, you’d think I happened upon a couple of coyotes fighting in the snowy fields north of Colville. Actually, I found this guy wandering in an alley less than a mile from my house this morning. And that scary snarl? He’s really just licking his lips, enjoying the heck out of someone’s discarded chocolate milkshake.

Even as much as Sean & I go driving out into the country, we rarely get to see coyotes. To see one at all is a treat, but to get close enough for a photo is so rare it must be magic.

This post is part of Kelly’s Year of Ordinary Magic.

Through the looking glass

Here she is again: the girl in the mirror, the girl in the shadows, the girl who fades like a ghost. This is the part of me I don’t talk about so often, but is always there nevertheless, the part of me that loves photographing graveyards on All Souls’, adores Ren Faires, gets utterly lost in Patricia McKillip novels, and has never outgrown fairy tales. The part of me that writes fiction, elaborate fantasies spun out of dream and myth. And she makes magic with her words, this girl on the other side of the mirror: she weaves fairy tales into reality and discovers the enchantment of a single rose thorn, of a half-forgotten melody, of memory unraveled like a thread to navigate the treacherous labyrinth.

And the more I work on my novels, the farther down the road to publication I get, the more bold and daring that girl becomes. Like I said, I don’t talk about that stuff very often here, but I think I’d like that to change. And so today I’m opening up a new section on my blog where the girl in the reflection can come out and play from time to time: The Looking Glass. Perhaps you will join me there in the shadowy borderland on the other side of the mirror, and then together we can travel beyond those shadows into a place where the numbers 3 and 7 really are magic, and even the darkest tales end in redemption.

To christen this new part of my blog, I’ve dusted off “Nameless,” a short story I started back in 2011 and added a few chapters. It’s not done yet, but I hope you enjoy the story so far–and yes, as I promised so long ago, I will finish it. It is, of course, a fairy tale… and you can find it here.

The winter sky

There’s something strange that happens only on certain winter nights when the clouds hang low in the sky, catching the city lights and transforming them into a muted aurora that can be seen glowing dimly from miles away. And it’s nights like these that Winter spills beyond the borders we expect to contain it, the ordinary magic of silent snowfalls and icicles that refract the sun into a thousand rainbow shards, into a realm of peculiar enchantments that turn every shadow into a trembling brush stroke, every dash of color into a poem in some long-forgotten language. Nights like these, I love Winter most of all.

December Views: That crazy little Christmas monkey

We’re a little odd, my husband and I, and we like it that way. And so, among all the traditional Christmas decorations, there is also El Mono Juan. There is no rational explanation for this, but we sure do love that crazy little Christmas monkey. So from all of us, may you have a very Merry Christmas, filled with the fun and silliness that only El Mono Juan can bring!

December Views: White Christmas

All December, it’s snowed and melted off, snowed and melted off. But with 3 inches of snow on the ground this morning, it looks like it might be a White Christmas after all. =)

December Views: Kitty!

Angel says, “Mom! Stop taking photos of me! I’m trying to take a nap!”