Pay-dirt

If you aren't going to go deep, then you won't find the pay-dirt. I suppose the logical next step for me is to write about some heretofore forbidden topic. For example, here's what I have never written about: sex, money, bathroom going-on, obsessions, and noses (picking, blowing, and sniffing). Also, family secrets.

 

But I don't feel like taking that next step today, no matter how logical it might be, so don't expect a new direction from me. Perhaps another day.

 

I read an interview with an author whose name escapes me. He has written a memoir that covers not just himself but his family. Asked about the difficulty of writing so honestly about his life, he answered that he has done it for years, starting with writing about his experiences as an alcoholic—and then giving up drinking. He said, "Once you've made yourself write about repeatedly waking up soaked in you own urine, you've pretty much gotten over the shame of baring your life to the public." He then went on to say that writing in an equally honest way about his family is a different kettle of fish.

 

But I was struck by that "waking up soaked in one's own urine" sentence. Have I ever written anything half so honest? (I have to say here that I can't remember ever waking up soaked in my own urine, though perhaps I did when I was still in diapers—which I'm pretty sure is not quite what he was talking about.) When I write about my life, I stay on the surface, where things are funny and not too scary. Occasionally I dip down into the well and come up with some mud-covered memory, but I make it a point to give it a good rinse and a shine before I lay it out on the page for all to see.

 

Sanitized pay-dirt lacks grit.

 

 

Copyright 2012 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

Awe

Seeing the heron rise from Grenadier Pond and fly away, his huge wings flapping, is awe-inspiring. If I'm lucky, I see it once or twice each summer.

 

When except for that do I feel awe?

 

I felt awe the day the snake stared at me from the water.

 

My husband and I were vacationing in Prince Edward County. We had gone to a park on the water, though the water was actually fifty feet below the level of the park. We followed the steps down to the beach, which was covered with round and oval stones, and I led us over to an area of large flat rocks, where we could sit and look at the water.

 

Just as I reached the first flat rock, my husband about 20 feet behind me, a snake slid out from under it and raced to the water. I was startled but not frightened, and I was surprised that it had gone into the water. I hadn't expected that a snake would be water-friendly.

 

The snake had disappeared into the water, so we, a pair of well-fed, smug tourists, sat on the flat rock to look at the world around us. The water was smooth as glass. At the horizon the water and the sky were the same shade of grey, so the meeting point was not distinct. Water became sky became water became sky.

 

We turned and looked at the cliffs behind us, up where we had left our rental car. We looked over to the left, then to the right, seeing the curved shoreline and the trees that marched down the slope of the cliff toward the water.

 

Then we turned back and looked straight before us. I saw a stick standing straight up in the water. An odd sight. I didn't remember having seen it earlier. The stick didn't move. But I saw that this stick was thicker at the top. This was a stick with a head.

 

"My dear," I said, "is that a stick or a snake?"

 

We watched the "stick" and the snake watched us, unwavering. She stared directly at us from twenty feet away, standing, apparently, on the tip of her tail, as straight as a die, reaching her head skywards and watching us. Watching us.

 

And willing us to move, I finally decided.

 

"I think she wants us to change rocks," I said. We did. We moved over to the next flat rock, some 15 feet away, and we watched the stick/snake. She began slowly to lower herself into the water and then to move forward, always keeping her head just above the surface and always watching us.

 

At water's edge she continued on up over the rocky beach, sliding more quickly now, and then disappeared under her original home.

 

We never saw her again.

 

I have no doubt that she communicated with us. She told us, through her stare, what she wanted: she wanted her home back. We got the message. We didn't have to leave the beach. We had only to change rocks.

 

How could I not be in awe of this encounter?

 

And yet, several years later, when I had another chance meeting with a snake, in the Bahamas, I forgot what I had learned and I met this second snake with the fear and loathing with which we ignorant humans often react to snakes.

 

I was getting ready for bed. As I reached to close the blind at the window just above my bed, I noticed (not wearing my glasses) a something on the inside of the window screen. Still without glasses, I reached to touch it. Oh. A snake.

 

And I forgot awe. I forgot the origin of the serpent. I forgot goddesses. I called for help.

 

 

Copyright 2012 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

Lovely Lilacs

What's so lovely about lilacs is their everywhereness: a poet's lilacs, the Indiana lilacs of the child-me, lilacs in Tennessee around the foundations of old farm-houses, lilacs in this morning's laneway (both purple ones and white), growing so tall above the brick wall that they were unavailable for a sniff (some people stop and smell the roses, but me—it's lilacs at nose level that I find irresistible), lilacs all along someone's back fence or lining the sidewalk on the way to the campus. Gather ye lilacs while ye may.

 

That's not all I have to say about lilacs. I almost bought a lilac bush this year. I was looking for a replacement for the viburnum that gave up the ghost during winter's snows. I looked and looked at lilac bushes, but I couldn't make a decision. If I planted a lilac in that same spot, creating a dream of lilacs at the corner of my house forever, and if that lilac bush died (and it might, for who knows why the viburnum failed to thrive), then I would feel the loss too strongly to survive. I myself would die from lilac-yearning.

 

Besides, how could I choose the appropriate lilac? What I really want is an old variety, a true lilac smell (not one labeled "spicy" or "extra-sweet"). What I really want is for someone to have planted a lilac bush twenty years ago at the corner of the house. I resign myself to the fact that it's too late now for me to start anew with my own lilac bush. I'll just continue to stop and sniff every lilac I come across.

 

 

Copyright 2012 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com