It’s Spring Equinox today, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. Not a moment too soon.
I decided to finally get on this quarterly newsletter, fresh with the spring seasonal plantings. If you’re receiving this newsletter, Happy Ostara to you! Happy Nowruz! May your astral new year begin with all the joy. Failure is Compost for Your New Spring Garden. Starting out the astral new year I’m coming out of the gate with a heavy-hitting letter about my list of failures. This last year was one epic chop and drop learning experience. While I know there is no such thing as failure, per se, I can’t help but feel like sometimes the circuitous route to a sliver of success can FEEL like failure after failure. I have to remind myself on the long days that it only feels like failure when I can’t see around the next bend and the sun hasn’t come out yet. But the sun will come out—it always does. The key is not fearing failure as it is part of the process. A key part of the process. Still, every spring during my review window I sit down and have a conversation with my failures. Failure and I go way back. We’re old pals. I hold their hair when they’re hurling in the John, and they hold my hand when I’m weeping in my cereal. We’re buds. We didn’t always have a great relationship--lots of judgy, complaining, bickering stand-offs. But over time, I began to realize failure was one of those unshakable companions that would never walk out on me. No matter how hard I tried to ditch the bitch, they always seemed to show up at the most incredibly defining moments in my life… margarita in hand. Consolation or celebration really just depends.
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It was a rough day of issues related to country living; a water filtration malfunction in the most epic way, then spectacular rescue from my neighbors to help cap the water pipe and fix the generator, prep for the storm and cleanup the shattered tree limbs from the storm two days prior--I’m rethinking my winter plans. The glass biolight sleeve had shattered inside the UV casing, shooting broken glass into the water system, and as I squatted in the shed, temperatures dropping outside, with my hands clamped over the pipe trying to keep the glass from entering the pipe system into the house—I realized many of the issues I’m cleaning up now could have been prevented with regular maintenance that I’d deprioritized during the push to get projects out and contractors settled. In my panic in the moment, I forgot to reach for the shutoff valve for a whole thirty seconds. My neighbors are amazing. Once I remembered the shutoff valve, then scrambled for a bucket to try to flush the system I’d managed to contain and capture the remaining glass—I ran to my neighbor to see if they had a 1” compression cap I could borrow to seal off the UV casing and bypass the biolight system until I can order a new glass sleeve. Both my neighbors rushed in ready to help stop the mess from getting worse. I wouldn’t have running water today without them. As it is, I’ll be drinking bottled water until after the hard freeze when I can flush the full system and do a hard reset on the filters and light just to make sure there’s no glass. (Also, bypassing the biolight means whatever comes out of the tap is basically straight river water from a very shallow aquifer—No drinky.) The first storm that came through dropped a bunch of limbs from the 150-year-old Douglas fir, and shattered my favorite ceramic pots on the deck. Along with rattling the whole house and blowing my tarps all over the yard, the storm flooded the creek and pushed sizable debris around. It also dropped a tree in my neighbor’s yard. Long story short, this is all just part of living so far off the beaten path. These are the daily issues. Much of which could have been prevented if I had been on my game, but I was not. That sleeve in the biolight system should have been pulled and washed when I shocked the well back in November, but I told myself it could wait a minute. So many other urgent things to tackle first. And now it’s a much bigger problem. So new winter plans include re-setting the property so I can focus more freely. Yes, winter is my writing and building season—but if my cottage is falling down around my ears, I won’t be able to focus. The to-do list is significant. Basically, everything that wasn’t a top priority for the last 18 months needs to be prioritized over next six weeks. This will also free up some worry around the need to travel to LA and know the house is safe and well-tended while I’m gone. Also, I won’t ask the house-sitter to drink bottled water—the whole water system needs to be redone, flushed, and reset prior to having a sitter. Plucking a sliver of glass from my hand today before sitting down to write was that moment of—I’m not sure this setup is working anymore. To be able to jump back and forth freely from the woods to the city, I’m going to need a more automated setup and system of upkeep. I don’t have one in place because I hadn’t seen that far ahead. So, now is the time. This space needs to be a retreat, a safe place to return, write, produce and build (and recover) without interruptions between meetings and events in California. I’m sure everyone has a system to help maintain their sanity during those pushes. Thus, this space will need a reorg and a plan in place for it to run more efficiently and be that kind of safety net spot—at least for a while. Meanwhile, the ice front is moving in. I’ve got the firewood prepped, the blankets piled up, and the laptop charged for writing. See you all on the other side. **Update The ice front moved in. Despite putting a heater on the water system, the pump still froze. So, it’s a good thing I had prepped with bottled water. Oye. Meanwhile two days of below freezing temps and I managed to get much of my re-write list knocked down and a bit of the studio organized. Huzzah! Publishing is a storytelling medium I can happily swim in without feeling disoriented or overwhelmed. I have to remind myself it wasn’t always so. I have to remind myself that there was a time when I constantly needed bearing checks and a lighthouse to avoid the shoals.
The Hollywilds can feel like choppy waters, turbulent and chilly one moment, then warm and calm the next. The only orientation I have in learning not just a new medium of storytelling, but understanding an entertainment industry in the middle of its own structural upheaval and transformation is to look for the lighthouses. Coming from publishing to screen is not a one-for-one match, of course. But it’s a lot closer than many other fields. Having a financial background and project management/business development backgrounds helps immensely. I’ll say boldly, that those backgrounds probably help more in the conversion to entertainment than any other creative experience I have. It also makes the case for diversifying skill-sets, and for having another form of employment or income that allows my creative side to breathe freely without being beholden to the whims or fickleness of others’ “creative” expectations—which are almost always financially incentivized… and not to my benefit. When asked what I would do differently? I don’t know. I only know what’s working or not—and that will be different for everyone based on their skill-sets, desires, processes and willingness to grit (more on this in a minute). All I know for me is that the traditional pathways that I keep getting coached toward, by the most well-meaning and wonderful people, don’t actually work for me as an artist or an individual. “This is the way it’s always been done. These are the things you have to do.” That doesn’t seem to roll in my favor, and from the looks of it—not much in anyone else’s favor either most of the time. I’m not special. I have no delusions of being important. But I will say, The Pillars of Dawn is not a common size or proportion to what usually fits in those “always how it’s done” models. It’s a full storyverse. A galaxy of interconnected stories. I can’t even tell you how many “what the fuck is this?” statements I’ve heard from middle-men. Or how many times I’ve been coached to make it smaller, easier, “dumb it down or the executives will be confused and pass.” Yet, the first two studios we tried both seemed to spot it right away and are kindly reviewing it as a full scale Storyverse. I was asked to put the slides back in the deck that explained the original intent of the scale, and resubmit for review. My heart might just explode with happiness. All I wanted was for it to be considered in its fullness. It can be chopped up and meat-balled after that, because I understand full well that the production restrictions of film are real and resources are finite. In publishing, I have carte blanche with budget. I can imagine or build or synthesize anything with raw, uncontained language. Words don’t have limits. The mind lives eternally in its capacity to dream ever-bigger. Hollywild budgets have limits. Thus, while I adore that the scope is under consideration—I’m realistic enough to understand the probabilities. Don’t mind me while I soak it in for a minute, though. There are tried-and-true paths for other creators. Somehow, my feet never found those. Maybe I pushed too hard to keep my independence. When my author friends were signing agents fifteen years ago, and landing publishing deals with the big houses—I refused to make the core changes that were required to move to an agency. (Take a male pen name, or a gender-neutral name or write other people’s projects, re-write Murder of Crows from Liam’s male point of view, etc.) I declined two large publishing contracts because I refused to change the Avians to vampires, turn the Muses into men, or “add a magical school” to the core storyline. (If you read Sinnet of Dragons, you’ll know what I did there in a bit of a frustrated “kiss my ass”.) While my friends were selling thousands of books and gathering thousands of reviews and quitting their day jobs—I was doubling down on a Kickstarter to self-publish and launch a publishing label, while working a corporate gig. Don’t get me wrong. I tried to give up so many times. SO MANY TIMES. I might still give up. We’ll see. If there’s a coffee shortage, like, ever—I will just fucking quit at everything. In the meantime, coffee and keep trying. Keep pushing. Keep annoying people by showing up. Keep irritating the way it’s always been done. Keep pulling on the loose strings. Keep whittling the knot in the wood. Look for the lighthouses, avoid the shoals. Here’s where the willingness to grit part comes in. Part A is knowing what kind of artist you are, or want to be. What do you need to feel fulfilled? There’s no right or wrong answer to this. IT’s YOUR WORK. YOUR LIFE. Do what fits you. If you’re the artist who wants to meet a metric, make a paycheck, handoff to let others run the ball while you release creative strings and control. I recommend finding someone, a team even, who will set you up for the life of “handoff + paycheck”. Cool beans! Do that. Find your peeps. I’m learning the middle-men in the Hollywild love those types of writers and even expect it. If being fulfilled means hands OFF. Then you’ve got it made! If you’re the “other kind”, well, then. You might be in for some grit work. Don’t panic. It’s going to be okay. Look for the lighthouses, avoid the shoals. Novelists are frowned upon by many (not all) of the middle-folk of this industry. The teacher in my showrunner course didn’t know I was a novelist and spent half an hour ranting about how novelists “think they’re writers but they aren’t. They don’t even know storytelling, and if you get stuck with a novelist for an adaptation, be prepared to have to handhold and placate in order to take their work and make it better.” Then he lamented no one wants to do adaptations because the writer’s original vision is so lame, and “his author” had only sold 40 million copies so wasn’t even one of those writers you should have to care about their opinions—not like George R. R. Martin or anyone valuable. No need to take my word for what he said in his rant. You can purchase the class and download it for yourself—IT WAS FUCKING RECORDED and resold as a class. Avoid the shoals. If it had been a one-off, that would have been it, but over the last two years there have been multiple instances where similar statements have been made. Ladies, I hate to say this in writing—but every single similar statement that was uttered was made by a dude. Every. Single. One. Still, there are many wonderful male allies in the field. Don’t lose faith. They are here and ready to collaborate. So, the data is out on whether it’s a dismissal of novelists in general—OR a male dismissal of female voices. Will get back to you on that one. The point is that when you come in as a novelist there will be bias, and not in your favor when it comes to middle-folk, gatekeepers, and often the producers. And there will be yet more bias if you’re a female novelist. Look for the lighthouses. HOWEVER, not all hope is lost. One hundred percent of the time, my involvement with adaptation and my grasp on the source material has been a boost to the performer's interest and engagement. All interactions in person and via email thus far with performers have netted a surprising response, “If you’re going to be involved or be a producer and stay close to what you’ve written in the books—I’m in.” I did not see that coming. What a lovely surprise, especially after smashing my face against the other wall so often that my nose gets bloody whenever I even think of having to email a gatekeeper. Male, female, non-binary performers have unanimously been encouraging, helpful, and interested in me remaining involved. This is both flattering and worrisome. Because I don’t know how much I’ll be allowed to be involved once I part with the options. So, my concern is that a few will drop out if I stop participating—and I really like them as people and as performers. The Pillars of Dawn won’t be the same without them. The lighthouse here is that there is no apparent bias from performers regarding gender or storytelling format. HORRAY! Keep gritting. Willingness to grit is still sending those emails. It’s still bird-dogging the potentials. It’s still following up with the people who have already determined you to be low value, amateur, undeserving, or false. Worse, they have already decided you can’t script because you’re a novelist—or that the work you’ve submitted is too “something else that’s not quite right”. Was the formatting wrong? “No, there were no errors. It’s perfectly clean.” (I had help!) Was the method incorrect? “No, it’s exactly in line with method.” What’s the problem? “Well, it’s not a shooting script, it’s a concept script. It’s just that it reads different from expected.” Did I screw up the story? “No! The story is great. Concept good. Dialogue okay. I mean, the dialog could use some tweaking…” Cool. I can do that. Is there something really wrong with it? “Well, it’s just going to be expensive. So expensive.” So, it’s not the novelist thing—it’s the cost. “Exactly.” Ah. More gritting, then. Willingness to grit is annoying your agent when you know she’s busy. Willingness to grit is going back to those banks and making a case. Willingness to grit is taking out high interest credit to hire pros. Willingness to grit is clinging to your vision as long as you can. Willingness to grit is studying the aforementioned “ways it’s always been done” then finding enough of the similar ground you can live with that’s not a catastrophic compromise and blending it into the work so the “respect” has been paid, and the conversation can move on and the “stodgy old crabs” can feel like you at least earned the right to speak two sentences in their room. (Don’t worry, you can remove those pieces of the changes later, after their flinchy hackles have gone down. ) Willingness to grit is adding yourself back to the emails after a man has consistently removed you from the conversation. Willingness to grit is speaking up when the male producer in the room has asked you to be quiet so he can sell the concept, because “you don’t know how to sell yourself.” When really, he means, “I want to be lead and get the credit for X,Y, Z—before you open your mouth and contradict my plans for controlling your work.” Willingness to grit is KNOWING that obstacles are present in many forms—and still finding a safe, comfortable, healthy way to navigate around, over, through, across, or under them to get to where you want to be. Willingness to grit is also having a bingo-point in the back of your brain. That number or metric or moment at which you have already decided to pull the plug because the cost of being actively inhibited by a system or “collaborators” is financially, emotionally, or mentally detrimental or cost prohibitive. Willingness to grit ends the moment I know without a doubt, there is no future for my work to be made to story-spec and with love in an industry that has no room or appreciation for the process or for me as an artist. That’s okay. I’ve got books to write. Then bounce. Just peace out, knowing and believing no stone was unturned, no door left untried. Pack up and go live life—back in the woods, writing my novels, and discovering new creators to publish through the label. Either way, life is good. The most brilliant gift I can give myself as an artist is to work only with those people who can see me, the work, the vision. And if that’s not in Hollywood, that’s okay. It’s not going to stop me from creating, or writing, building a publish world or engaging with interested parties down the road. The lighthouses are there to keep you from wrecking on the reef. Orient to the lighthouses until you’re safely in port—even if that port is back home where you started—no deal in hand. Life is short. Go build something. Winter is my usual writing season. The last few years of adaptation work to move my books into a streaming formats for shopping have happened mostly over the winter months, which means I didn’t have my usual snuggle-into-novel-writing-time. Crossing my fingers I get some good novel writing time in this winter. I’m hungry for it. Aching, actually. Anyone in my company too long can probably pick up on the twitchy desire to get back to my desk.
Don’t get me wrong, the adaptation stuff is fun. A blast, actually, but it’s a different set of building tools and an alternate set of muscles. A collaboration stretch is needed to bridge the gap between my brainpan and the team—and because most of the worlds for The Pillars of Dawn and The Life Erotic are still lodged in my noggin, it can feel like people (even people I like) crawling around in my mental space, dusting things up, and refiling my system that I had just the way I liked it so it will all still fit in my gray matter. It can be intrusive and exhausting some days. It’s unavoidable. The people in my skull pulling out the materials for world build are all very polite, courteous, and patient with me—but it feels like the kindest strangers re-organizing my mental underwear drawer and very kindly not looking at my ratty period panties. It’s a very intimate process. More so as I’ve been solo and isolated for so many years. It can sometimes feel abrasive, vulnerable and itchy. I need a lot of naps or quiet time to refresh from having other people in thoughts. If I could give any piece of advice to my younger self, or to any other world builders out there—don’t keep the bulk of your world-building data in your brainpan. A head cold, or a round of sneezes sets off all kinds of re-org issues. Plus, when it comes time to collaborate, then you’re pulling brain data and importing it into computer systems for others to understand, and they don’t have your mental shorthand notes for reference. Use an exterior, or alternate backup space for your build. There are a dozen great programs to help sort and store your world builds. The wiki builds for The Pillars of Dawn and The Life Erotic are both designed in Mandalic Storyverse Structure. What does that mean? Let’s be honest, I just made it up. It’s not a real thing—UNLESS you believe, like I do, that story as medium, as a wave of creation energy never actually ends. It is limitless potential until given a new shape. Story is energy that persists, regenerates. We’re taught that story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Tada! Complete. Now you may go about your day and live your best life. But really, if you go about your day, and live your best life, you are in fact—continuing the story. A well-told story now lives in you as a reader, or viewer or participant. You cannot be what you were before. This is why fearful people ban books. Mandalic Storyverse is the creation of story universes, interlocking, supportive, interdependent filaments of ideas that inform patterns and build ever-expanding spaces in which to house star clusters and galaxies of stories all of which are expressed through a library of mediums. Stories within stories within stories—forever. We’re conditioned to this with the MCU or DCU and other franchises that have “Universe” in the description. The difference being that their CORE structure never solidified and their builds are so flexible and changeable that they slide all over the place. Audience timeline sickness, and story waffling makes for loss of trust and eventual sameness in the build. As audience, we are watching as those universes fold back in on themselves and go through re-boot after re-boot, despite the reality that audiences are already bored of it, and have lost faith in the core. The CORE in a Mandalic Storyverse is the hard construct (the heart, bones, brain), the pieces that cannot and should not be broken. Often this is considered to be the timeline, but I disagree. The core is always the frame/soul of your build—the mandala forms around that core and the storyverse populates and shoots out from those primary points of soul matter. Without it, the storyverse will eventually hit a tipping point under its own weight and fold inward. A Mandalic Storyverse built around a heart will die when that core truth is compromised. Mandalic Storyverse structure allows for perpetual expansion and growth with the framework established. GENERATIONAL STORYTELLING and BUILDING. Thus as the audience grows and evolves socially, spiritually, and the collective pool of knowledge, education, and global ideas SHIFT, the storyverse can shift and grow WITH the audience without needing to constantly be rebooted to catch up to new audience trends, needs, desires or pace of understanding— because it is built in advance to be able to grow and stretch to those needs without compromising the core. A Mandalic Storyverse BREATHES. It learns. It imagines. It anticipates. It is a narrative form of intelligence that creates active bridges to new forms of creativity, energy, and the human adventure through our shared experience and evolving consciousness. It is not AI, because it has a soul, and it is fostered, nurtured and protected by human creatives for other human creatives. (We can argue about AI souls and singularity on another thread with some bourbon, yeah?) And when a branch, or a galaxy of stories within the Mandalic Storyverse has bloomed, shone, and it is time for it to spread its seeds and winter—those seeds germinate new galaxies with the core heart, and carry the new tales forward. Just as in real life, right? Mandalic Storyverse is the most closely related structure I know to life and how we live. In terms of a gendering, I often refer to this structure as “feminine” because of its natural mothering and birthing capacity to expand. It is the story that keeps generating, keeps nurturing, keeps sheltering, keeps homing and so on. Whereas the standard three-act structure we’re most familiar with in the Western world is typically a one and done. A rinse repeat. It can begin to feel formulaic and linear, a driving force that loses its momentum at the infamous “dark night of the soul” mid-second act, only to rally and finish. (then light a cigarette, or take a nap) We could go down a rabbit hole here of Joseph Campbell’s work and the hero’s journey, but that would be forty pages of rant. Love him. Love the work, but it’s missing 50% of the story. That other 50% is found in a mandalic pattern, a generational build—not just generational “telling” but the build itself. I would argue even that those “hearts” of three act structures, of those single shot stories are seeds from a larger Mandalic Storyverse, and we have been taught only to see, hear, and believe in one seed at a time. *I’ll spare the longer version of this* Anywhoo, that’s a very long way of saying, one of the greatest challenges of building in a Mandalic Storyverse Structure and then trying to adapt for television is converting that SCOPE, SCALE, CAPACITY, and POTENTIAL down into a single shot story so others can grasp it and convert it into usable material for an audience that’s conditioned to three-act, and is expecting a three-act. (Though I would argue, the streaming capacity to develop and house larger Storyverses and world-builds is feeding an audience with a new hunger for those bigger builds—people/ audiences want to live in these Storyverses and it’s showing in the data.) My storyverse has been living and developing alone in my brain space for over twenty-years. Moving it to a more digestible format for audiences has been tricky. Mark Heidelberger has been a gift from the heavens for helping me focus on one point at a time rather than trying to download all my mental files at once. Dude has the freakin’ patience of a saint. Note to self: Send Mark a fruit basket. There’s really no wrong way to do a world build. Each one is specific to the work, to the idea or the story that will be housed or carried by the build. I like to think that the more diverse our world-building methods as artists, the more eclectic and magnificently grand our human experience will be. So as I tuck in for some winter writing and world-building with mulled wine by the fire. I wish you all a happy holiday season, and all the adventures of your most courageous world-building plans. Sincerely, Athena I saw this land in a dream years before I met it in person. It was made to hold me while I work. It was made to heal me when I was broken. It was made to free my wilding self so I could join my characters in a heart-thundering race through the ferns.This land sings, it weeps, it groans, it serenades. It falls in love. I don’t know how to wake up without the lullaby of its sounds anymore. Its heartbeat is as reassuring as the slumber of a nearby lover. When I am off the land for more than a few days, there are no orienting notes. The sun and shadows forget to tell time. North and South become meaningless directions and not freckles or marks of time and space. Here, at least, South is a light, a view to the ridge, a hum of deep earthen boulders on the property edge. North is the mossy side of my roof, and the face of the sugar maple. West is the direction the water flows and easterly is where the salmon swim in to invite me to play in the creek. All other directions orient to those markers. Without them, I wouldn’t know how to tend the beehives, or when to turn the garden beds. When the full moon shines through the eastern stand, it’s time to release old injuries, and when the new moon makes a hole in the night between the alder and the fir, it’s time to put seeds in the ground. Polaris always shows the way home. Always. Outside this land, time is just a word. Breath is just a clock. Outside this land, I need GPS to navigate, because even the bees don’t know where to go once they leave my mountain. The creek roars. It burbles. It chatters happily during spawning season, and rages through the winter storms. Then, in the heat of summer, it offers cool refreshment and entices me to linger, dip my toes, and tell it my stories. The trees gossip. My god, do they gossip. The maples are the worst conspirators. Recently, in the last few years, they have included me in the jokes, and on more than one occasion, they have colluded to hide me from hunters or passersby with questionable intentions. On those occasions, they then chattered about it to one another for weeks, as there was little else to talk about at the time. The elk visit regularly. The birds swing by daily; an eagle, a mated pair of blue jays, a single great heron, and several golden finches, hummingbirds, swifts, woodpeckers and so on. Evening bats keep my nights on the deck free of mosquitos. So you see, I am never actually alone. Oh, and there are flowers, berries, mushrooms, maple syrup, wild mint, and a thousand delicacies to nibble on as I walk the trails. If I walk toward the sound of white water, then cross the foothills toward the scent of moss, I can pick food and wander through timelines filled with history, lost worlds and forgotten love stories. By the time I get home, my lips are berry stained, my pockets stuffed with pretty tumbled stones and interesting pieces of lichen, and my basket is overflowing with flowers, fungi, and frogs. Then I take a nap in the hammock and wake up to dance my way through a few chapters. There is a notable impact on my relationships with my characters, and the saturation of my spiritual connection to the stories when I am baked on asphalt plains, or crammed into population, or stored safely behind hermetically sealed glass panels. That’s not to say it can’t be done, that I’m unable—only that it has a cost. The hours spend in traffic cannot pay for the blissful engagement of story arcs meeting their destined conclusions on the page. The point is, I came out here to work. I left the city so I could learn to hear again. I found a cottage and settled into a slower rhythm so that I could think, feel, breathe. It can be inconvenient sometimes. Yes, there have been times when I was utterly terrified or pushed to my breaking point with unmet challenges of remote living and isolation. But there has not yet been a day when I haven’t stared out the window and felt a wash of deep love and appreciation for the land I’m sitting on, and the peace it brings my life. And it’s only been because of that peace that I have been able to reconnect to my voice, and tell these stories. Will I ever leave it? When the time is right. When the correct situation calls and the garden gate blows open to a new direction. Until then, the song is alive in this space, so this is where I work.
Here's a link to the year round video of The Elder Glade.
One of my earliest memories of my father is when I was perhaps two or three. We were at a church dance, a father-daughter event. I was too small to dance, so he tucked me in his jacket, buttoning me to his chest; then he danced us both to a poorly played waltz, like I was a queen in my reluctant ruffles, and he was a prince with roasted potato and sweet onion breath from the potluck. I remember his beard being scratchy, his chuckle raspy. I had never been so happy. My father chastises me in bass G, and laughs at his own jokes in a middle baritone D. He whistles when he’s happy. He laments, compassionately soothing other peoples’ worries in a gravelly low C, and warm hug. He taught me about energy, photography, pretty stones, and people. He showed me how to use my cameras, shoot a gun, and change a tire. He understood my need to find things out for myself—so when I’d ask a question, or grip onto a puzzle, he’d grumble in a hoarse b minor and say, “What do you think, you odd little duck? You tell me.” He gave me my love of travel, so I associate the D3 hum of rubber on asphalt, and the E4 of a six-cylinder engine in fifth gear with his road-trip chats, while I aired my feet out the passenger window across the most impressive byways of the Rocky Mountains. On these trips he also gave me Led Zeppelin, and Bach (on opposite sides of the same cassette), and his undying crush… Bette Midler. My father never had a day of musical training in his 75 years, but to me, because I adore him, he is the perfect compositional arrangement. I’ll be 44 on August 5th, this year and my father has never told me I’m beautiful, not even on my wedding day when he gave me away to another man. I never felt the void of that conventional statement other fathers generally give their daughters, because I felt beautiful in the resonance of my soul pitch in direct relationship to his. I saw it in his smile. His tone was pure, his note steady, unwavering. To be honest, the fact that he never needed to say it, and I never felt the lack of it, only proves how well matched our chords synchronized in this lifetime. We had harmony. I say had, because with all great scores, there is a transition key. A point when the notes tremble and the tempo shifts. My father is touched by Mnemosyne’s Curse, and so his linear timeline has fractured. It began about a decade ago, so I’ve had time to reconcile how I want his final days to be remembered. In the beginning, I was angry, grief-stricken, and full of pounding staccato rage at the life theft implied in his diagnosis. Minor, dissonant keys and chaotic mismatched chords and syncopated rhythms tarnished our conversations. I usually left in a mess of tears, believing I had lost him, even though he is still struggling to hold on to this reality, he cannot leave his children behind just yet. I sense he needs us settled so that he can rest. There was a great chasm, a long empty drift in our connection right after his announcement. Over time, I realized the bitter blessing in this stage of his life; he only remembers me as I was in his favorite recollections, those moments he repeats to me again and again. They are often not my favorite or brightest moments… that’s not important, because they are clearly his. What his fractured timelines brings up, I am able to see through his eyes, the dolce delivery of our history as father and daughter, as his final refrains are moments when he watched me grow beyond needing him. When I took my steps to become a woman of this world. When I stretched myself to find a purpose and fulfillment. His repeats are the moments he was most proud of the fact that I surpassed him in love, building community, or chasing my own dreams; dreams he had been too afraid to reach for himself. I somehow, unintentionally, gave him the coherence he was searching for on his fatherhood quest—his voice is full of song when he shares those memories. He’s so far gone, I cannot expect him to understand that I only achieved those dreams because I stood on his firm resonance, his bass voice and sturdy tones. He was the foundation from which I found the courage to leap. I sometimes wish for him the clarity to understand what I mean when I tell him, “We did it, Dad. You did it. You broke the cycle. It’s okay to rest. Take a break.” On a good day, I have about an hour with him. On a bad day, his memory resets every six minutes or so. On those days, when he resets, I say first thing, “I love you, Dad.” Each time his voice lights up, and he says he loves me too, like I haven’t just told him every six minutes for the last hour. It’s just as newsworthy and welcome to him each time—so I am happy to say it as often as it delights. When 44 years is distilled into six-minute intervals, there’s no room left for blame, or accusations, complaints or judgment. There’s no room for regret. There’s only redemption, forgiveness, and acceptance. There’s only enough meter for gratitude. I realize now that his refrains, those looping moments are his last dance with me. Our waltz is a very long goodbye. Over the years the waltz has gotten slower, legato, softer. I take time to cherish it. This disease he wrestles with has purified all emotion and memory into its most crystalline integrity. Neither of us are the youthful people setting out to discover a lifelong friendship anymore; me in my reluctant ruffles, and he with the raspy chuckle and sweet onion breath. Our duet and final meanderings in ¾ time of six-minute intervals around a room are conversations of old events, hazy with displacement, rich in love. And really, why do we do anything at all, if not for that? For that perfectly synchronized harmonic merging of notes into a powerfully unbreakable chord? I apologize for the nostalgia. It’s fresh on my mind, as it’s my dad’s birthday today, so the language/music is easy to access. The point is, we are all a collection of sounds, as you know. Sounds that are meaningless, unless in connection to or relationship to someone or something else. Only in the interactions do we become chords, and keys, and rhythms, even if that connection or relationship is internal, spiritual. That music and language can affect the human body without touching it, is the closest definition to what I might call divinity. My father was a violent and religious man in his youth. During his mid-point reversal, he went down a different path, a spiritual walkabout to discover the divine feminine and Eastern philosophy. He gave away his guns and swore a path of passive non-violence. He sought a newer kind of salvation. In doing so, he had to leave the God he’d loved, and the church that had been his home to embrace totality. Thus it is that I learned about divinity, not God, but music and language and the principles of agape, bliss, and eternal grace from a man who’d forsaken the pulpit—to give his daughters, whom he named after goddesses, a better chance of success in a man’s world. If that’s not the very definition of an Aria… I don’t know what is. (The song of my father. Excerpt from musical scoring notes and musical theory study)- Athena |
AuthorAthena lives and writes in the Siuslaw Forest, Oregon. Archives
March 2024
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