the sound of what cannot be seen.

i've been reading a new book- "reading like a writer," by Francine Pascal. it's one of those books that i find myself continually picking up and putting back down again, but i think i tend to do that with books that i read very closely, re-reading paragraphs, sentences, thoughts, making sense of the concepts outlined on the page. from my first venture into the book, i realized that i knew most of these concepts already... and it took an adjustment to learn to put aside my ego and learn from a published writer, teacher, novelist. the book encourages a close reading of the text, stresses the importance of picking the appropriate words, a strong knowledge of grammar rules, sentence construction, and the deliberate breaths between paragraphs.

all of those concepts i understand. it wasn't until i studied poetry with one of my most respected professors that i realized the impact a single word can have on the page. i never understood poetry, and was worried she would see through my facade as a top student of literature when we started diving into 19th century poetry. instead, she gently guided me through a painstakingly close reading of each text, stopping to ask what i was feeling, what emotions each word invoked. it was then that i came to appreciate seemingly minute word choices each author made. it became easy to imagine that a short poem could take years to perfect. i imagined authors erasing, scratching out words on the page, and holding their heads in their hands as they searched for the right words to place in the right spaces.

grammar is a lesson i am always kicking myself for never quite mastering. it was in spanish class that i learned about what a subject of the sentence meant. i learned words like predicate, past participle, and clause. too bad i didn't understand spanish and instead passed through spanish 4 by writing verb conjugations on my desk and then rubbing them out with my thumb the second the teacher walked towards me. in college, i stumbled through a grammar class with the most airheaded professor in the department. needless to say, my time spent diagramming sentences was as successful as my time spent learning was a square root was (read: nonexistent).

the chapter on sentence construction fascinated me, however. pascal uses the voices of the masters to point out examples- everyone from flannery o'connor to katherine mansfield and ernest hemmingway are used to bring home the fact that beautiful sentences can be the length of an entire paragraph, diagramming those sentences would look like quite the spider web of independent and dependent clauses (don't ask me what that means, i have no idea), or the short, staccato style of a no-nonsense writer seeking to evoke simple and powerful images. i found myself wishing i would focus more on each description, each analogy, each step in the process of writing. and to be honest, yes, i should read more often.

when i was little, i would write and be annoyed with myself if i found myself writing similar to the most recent book i had read. how was i ever to stand out if i continually copy the style of the author i just read? pascal addresses this issue in the first few pages- suggesting that the ability to copy the masters is the first step in becoming a great writer. it's like painters in renaissance italy and beyond- they learn by creating copies of masterpieces, slowly breaking down the techniques, learning the rules so that they can then create their own, or disregard them altogether. i'm realizing that writing as my favorite author does is possibly the best exercise for me to do... now it just comes down to reading and feeling inspired.

to be honest, one of my biggest challenges with writing is not constructing sentences or choosing words... it's feeling vulnerable to those reading my words. a professor told me once that if you've lived a year in junior high you have enough material to write five novels. i laughed and thought about all the material i have that could be used for future novels. however, even if what i am writing is pure fiction, it still comes from my mind, my experiences, and my perceptions of the world. i have so many people whose opinions mean the world to me... and for them to read my words and see my thoughts, sometimes horrible, tragic, or sensual thoughts- even if it were (for all intents and purposes) 'fiction,' it's difficult to let the wall down.

in truth, it is my life- my perceptions, no one elses, and i should be able to separate the narrator in my head from the voices outside- i realize the value in rejecting feelings of insecurities and doubts... i just don't know if i'm ready do so, yet.


in other news- it has been quite the rough month. first, bella came home and was taken away faster than any animal should be. then, we brought little, funny maisie home. in between stressing about her health (i still have fears about parvo), maisie decided to not spend one night sleeping in her crate and instead cried and barked for 5 straight nights (going on 6 now). we got up every morning at 5am to feed her and take her outside... and by friday, i was exhausted. then on friday, spencer left us. spencer was the dog i begged for when i was 11 years old. he was my first real family pet- and he was the best guy. he was fun, happy, and so loving. i really find it incredibly hard to find words to explain the amount of love i have for him. he was the best. i guess that's all you can say. at 13 years old, he had been loved and brought love to so many people. .... there's nothing else i can say about my favorite guy- the words seem fake right now, not enough, or something.

the snow is blanketing the ground and i feel deflated... i know how wonderful my life is- i'm sitting here in my warm, beautiful home with my husband and new puppy sleeping on the other couch, my family a 5 minute drive away, and dinner plans with my very best friends tonight. but after everything, after all the emotions and all the tears- i'm just not myself right now... the main question i have is the process of aging. i guess i understand the getting old part of it... maturing, growing, experiencing life and love and loss. but i don't understand the time process of it all. if we only have 100 years to live- what impact can we have on the world? i understand having children, leaving a legacy, raising a family, keeping the cycle in motion. but i don't understand the shortness of it all. it seems cruel- 100 years out of how many thousands or billions? for some- its not 100 years. it could be as little as minutes, days, weeks. 8 weeks for bella. 13 years for spencer. both seem just too short- spencer was taken from us even though he had so much love to give. people, animals, it doesn't really matter with me- it all puzzles me, and it all makes me question the finality of life and the impact of our choices, our footprints. and all of these thoughts are definitely giving me pause... time to be contemplative, deflated, reflective.


Often, i write all day long with white ink on white paper, late into the night, until it is all i can do to feel the letters curving to earth from the tip of the pen and then, i fall asleep. dreaming of running, or maybe driving in a car the color of water and i wake the next day remembering nothing and i gather the stack of paper and a pen of black on the desk in front of me and the words begin to dance over the page like long legged insects across a still lake and the words in white whisper behind and underneath the new day. if there is any secret to this life i live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can. and there is nothing more to it than that. -brian andreas, story people

and we all keep on moving

the world just continues on after something traumatic and terrible happens. isn't that always a shock to us? and it always is a shock to me that time does help. the night bella died, i was filled with such incredible sadness, i felt that my heart was breaking in little fragments and i didn't even have the strength to grab a broom and keep up with it. bella being who she was, and being with us for such a short time really taught me quite a few things about love, loss, and family. it's no secret to those reading this blog that i'm not necessarily from the most traditional family. on the outside, sure, i even am told how much i resemble my parents. but i am adopted, and while it's a wonderful blessing to have started my life with so much love- the love of making sure i had a good home, the love of making sure i had a life, and the love of my family... etc, etc, etc; sometimes it doesn't feel like it began with love. sometimes it feels cold, calculating, unfair. and i don't just mean for one side or the other. on both sides of the exchange, it feels unfair at times. when you dive into the issues of giving up a baby, and not being able to have your own children, there's a lot of "unfair" going around, i guess.

so my concepts on family and love and the fairness of the world have been complex, starting probably when i was 12 and may or may not have screamed nasty things at my parents as i stomped upstairs and slammed my bedroom door. to come full circle with this blog in one sense, i said when i started it that it was a discovery of this post-marriage, post-maiden name, post-college me. and it has been a discovery- what goes into a marriage, what goes into creating a family is all becoming new for me somehow, in some way. bella taught me an important lesson in love- one that seems to correlate to my complex, somewhat over-analyzed views on marriage and family...

you see, it took less than five minutes to know i was going to love her. isn't that wild? yes, we didn't know her that long. yes, i held her for an hour before taking her home. yes, we discussed it backwards and forwards. and yes, she was only home for 24 hours, and only with us for about half of that. but the crazy thing is, time didn't matter. once we decided to love her and bring her into our family, that's what we did. and everything else really doesn't matter.

and by the way, time really does help things. that first night i felt anguished. the next day, i was angry, later, i was sad- projecting guilt onto myself. and later- i realize it's just not. fair.

the story doesn't really end there. i haven't stopped talking about bringing another puppy into our house since two days after bella died. i'm not quite sure what was wrong with me- maybe i needed somewhere for the excess love to go. maybe i'm just a freak of an animal lover and i needed one. and, maybe this goes back to deciding that i need something and finding a way to get it. husband needed more time. i'm glad he did- because secretly i think i did, too. we ended up bringing little maisie home on friday night (yes, it's 4:53am on monday. i clearly suck at crate training). part of me was worried- am i expecting a little puppy to heal my heart? that's a lot to expect from her. she isn't bella- she is someone new to love and in way, she deserves all the love bella received and more. maisie is easy to love... in that careful, cautious way. the i-just-got-my-heart-broken-so-don't-think-you're-gonna-get-in-the-door thaaaat quickly way. i find myself like a teenager though, a little hardened from the last hurt, but still hoping for a kiss goodnight to make me feel swoony. (for the record, i never really had my heart broken by a boy. somehow husband managed to capture me at the tender age of 17... although emotional teenage me certainly could imagine what it would have felt like to have him decide to go out with my best friend).

so here we are, maisie, husband and myself. not sleeping, unsure about what to do with disciplinging this little pistol. (she loves shoes, finding a thread to yank from a rug, and doing everything she can to distract us at the dinner table). maisie is very easy to love, and husband and i are figuring out how to love a little furbaby again. (p.s. part of me is terrified that something will happen to her. if you pray, or think positive thoughts, i would appreciate some positive thoughts her way... although we bleached our entire house, parvo is still contagious and it still fraeks me out).

alright, enough for now... i'm going to try to get some sleep with my puppy who spends every night ccrying and then peeing in her crate. (for the record, her crate is divided. there is barely enough room for her to turn around in there. i know dogs don't pee where they sleep, but she does, because 1. she doesn't seem to sleep in there unless it's 4 in the afternoon and sunny, and 2. she pees and then gets upset about it, waking us up. and 3. we take her out every hour to go pee. by the time bedtime comes she is to the point of pretending to pee so she can come back inside since her little bladder is so empty. it magically fills back up again sometime between 2-4am.)whew... it's gonna be a fun ride with this one.

sometimes it's unfair

the hardest day of my life happened two summers ago. i was driving to work at my dad's company prior to finding a "real" job... normally when i get in the car, i end up plugging my ipod in, getting my phone out to call someone, or at the very least, flipping around the radio. that morning i did none of that. i got in my car with my phone in my purse, the radio silent, my ipod put away. i was just driving, both hands on the wheel and everything. as i rounded a curve in my sleeping neighborhood, i felt my car hit something and stopped suddenly, terrified. i had not seen anything in the road and my thoughts were spinning- did i hit a garbage can? a box? something much worse? because i did not see anything, i sat in my car, dazed for a minute, listening to what i can now describe as the worst sound in the world. i heard a howling, but couldn't connect (or didn't want to) it to what had just happened. then i realized that i had clearly hit someone, and realized i needed to get out of my car.

i saw the prettiest dog you could have ever seen, sitting in her front yard, one paw dangling in front of her, howling. i almost passed out, and didn't want to go near her. she came to me, though, not knowing or realizing that i was the one who hurt her... she just wanted someone to help her.

the owner was the nicest she could have been- understanding that her dog frequently took off after cars, joggers, squirrels, and spent the first ten minutes of our interaction comforting my strange, hyperventilating sobs. my mom came after a frantic phone call- she knew the house i was at, she had seen the dog run out before cars too many times. that day i spent crying in bed, angry at myself, at the dog, and at the woman for not recognizing that her dog needed to be kept on a lead.

i'm the girl who hid kittens in my garage and my bedroom, knowing full well my dad was severly allergic to them. i've gotten out of my car to try to lure strays to come over to me... i've called animal control about baby deer too close to the road. i realize i love all animals a lot more than i love most people i meet.

so, last night was really hard for me. husband and i brought a new puppy home on sunday- a little sleepy boston terrier we named bella. she was beautiful but very timid. she only wanted to be held, and would drag herself on your lap and curl up to go to sleep in favor of walking anywhere on her own. the most excitement we had was at 12:30am, 2:30am, and 4:30am, in which she peed just a little in her crate and was very, very upset about it. she found a pile of pillows in the family room and immediately found her new bed when she couldn't find a lap, picking her head up to watch you with big eyes as you moved in and out of the room. too many people told us she was just a new puppy, adjusting to a new home, but she wasn't... 24 hours later, i rushed our new puppy to the animal hospital... she had been throwing up, getting sick, and then crying the saddest puppy cries as she pulled herself onto my knees. as i drove to the vet i kept telling myself she was just a little baby, probably weak and tired from her travelling. i told myself i was crazy to be making her go for another stressful experience. i think we knew something was wrong with her, though. my husband met me there and we learned she had parvo... a deadly puppy virus that is highly contagious. bella spent tuesday and wednesday in the hospital before she died. we called every four hours to check on her... the night we dropped her off we came home to disinfect our home, then went to buy her a leash, a pink collar, and puppy toys, convinced that if she had a nice home she would bounce back. little bella was a fighter, but she didn't stand a chance. she was too little, too young, too weak.

it's hard to feel ok in a world in which puppies die. i realize there are greater catastrophies, greater sorrows, but seeing her one last time, curled up and looking like she was sleeping was one of the saddest and hardest moments of my life. we only had her 24 hours and she had captured our hearts. i am so glad we brought her home to us, though... without us, she may never have had a home. she may never have been able to sleep in someone's arms who loved her very much... and she may never have experienced love and comfort in a time when she needed it the most.

bella also brought my husband and i closer. we worked to get our home ready for her, we talked more, let the dishes slide and instead went to dinner, cried together, and made plans for her to be a part of our family.

i'm crying as i'm typing this... and i realize i seem completely lame and sappy. she was just a puppy, after all, and not even a happy, funny little ball of energy she should have been. we never knew her but as a sad, sick little baby. but she was loved- if only for one day... and i think anyone deserves at least that.