Becalmed. Deeply uncomfortable, since I expected forward movement.
There’s nowhere to go but down, into the fathoms of unexplored shadowlands beneath my hull. Heat stroke like a sluggishness drug, an IV drip drip to erode the well-focused plan until I only vaguely remember what, why, how…
Like road pizza I’m pissed off by this. I remember when I had bones, muscles and lungs that worked. It’s been weeks and weeks, flattened by heat, protecting the core of my good humour by rendering it invisible. A possum pretending to be dead, but no – more like a coyote, trying like an idiot to fool the weather.
And yet, I have deadlines. I need to be there. By then. This is pre-scribed, written, indelibly.
Queen. Kate Bush. MIA & A.R. Rahman, Johhny Clegg, anybody – please: Help. Loud help.
Truly I’m not prone to panic. But out of three months full of potential I have only a handful of days to answer Scribe with the good juice she needs in order to keep writing what happens NEXT.
My intention in the spring was to dance like Shiva through all misconceptions and inconsistencies, chop them with my many-fingered hands, and eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Somehow this hot hot humid rainless summer folded me inside myself, where there’s not a great deal of room for dancing.
Possum says, ‘Wait. After sundown, go somewhere else.’
Sure, okay. Down below, to look for pearls. In Georgian Bay.
Here’s the incredible thing. Kicking and screaming my resistance to what needed to happen, I found them. Pearls.
huh.