What is writing? Is it an art form, a craft, an innate
skill, something that burns to be released from the belly of the beast? When I
read that question, the following visuals ran through my head: Renoir painting,
a homespun art project made of pasta and Popsicle sticks, and Moby Dick.
Clearly the answer is “D: All of the above.” In every good
book, not even a great book, there need to be moments where the writer and
readers' souls surrender to the power of the word; the descriptions captivate and
take the breath, cause laughter to bubble up, and tears to fall.
Like all of you, I pick up books and at some point I am either
engaged or disappointed, because I see every book as the potential to travel
and explore. It can be time travel, travelling to another world, exploring the hazards
of tangling with a vampire or the social etiquette of Victorian England. For
the most part, I will read any genre, so long as it moves me, because in every
book there is self-discovery.
Ideas for books flit through my head all day long. It is extraordinarily
challenging to figure out what ideas are worth pursuing, because every moment
has potential. I recently read a book, Circle of Grace, where one of the main
characters is introduced to us as a student at the Iowa Writers Workshop. To
get to the meat of this part of the book, the director of the workshop helps
his students realize that not only is it important to write what you know, you
must write what you feel, you must be willing to explore and then expose your
emotions to be an effective writer.
Last week I published Venus
Rising. The original goal was to write as a comedic fifty page short story,
yet when my fingers hit the keyboard the idea morphed into something quite
different, because I listened to my heart and it needed me to write big
feelings.
It was very important to me to really understand the world I
dared stepping into. So many hours were spent researching the hows and whys of
the world we live on. Venus Rising isn’t loaded down with
dates and data. My hope is that my research pours you into the skins of Akshaya
Bertrand and Jared Harrison; makes their journeys palpable and their travels
tangible.
The following are the first two brief but critical chapters
of the book. I hope you enjoy them.
Thanks for reading!
Venus
Rising
Early March 2011
His head
pounded, he felt his eyes pulsing! His chest heaved as he gasped for air and
there was nothing to be done. The strain on his body felt unbearable, and at
some point the release of so much emotion was just too much. He fractured. The
two pieces, body and soul, fractured. Never having been a spiritual person, he
could only assume this was what an out of body experience would be. The body
and soul were at war with each other. The
soul’s way of accepting that the body had endured enough. He took in the visceral
experience and accepted it for what it was. A death of sorts. Years of
observing the world from a distance had led to this outburst.
And so
he wept.
How long
did he sit there? He had no idea. It was the shadowy flutter on the wall that attuned
him to his body. He felt the easing of his balled up muscles and the last of
his tears leaking. The last sobs wrenched from somewhere very deep. A quake
echoed through his body and it was this echo that seemed to initiate the
reconciliation of the two halves of himself.
In an
effort to calm himself, he stretched out on the couch. It wasn’t lost upon him
that he was finally doing as his therapist had been suggesting for months. He
was lying down.
He chuckled,
“Has this couch always been this comfortable?” His voice thick with emotion and
mucus.
From a
close distance a voice devoid of emotion said, “Yes.”
“God, I
feel like shit.”
Silence
sat in the room with them.
A final long
tremor ran through his body, signaling that the emotional overload was at an
end. He ran a hand through his thick dark hair and parked there, his other hand
rested on his stomach, clenched. While he lay staring at the ceiling, he did
what all people do, he counted the dark blobs on the white sound proofing
ceiling tiles. When this proved overwhelming, he tried to sort out what he was
feeling and what he wanted to say. It was all a jumble. The image of a tornado
flitted through his mind.
Giving
up on creating order from chaos, he sat up, blew his nose, and started collecting
the pile of used tissues from the floor. The number of white wads scattered
about startled him.
“What
are you thinking?” He asked the other occupant in the room. Uncertain whether
it was because he felt exposed and wanted to find out if he had finally
revealed enough of himself or if it was because he was killing time.
“Both.” He
thought to himself.
The
bland face said, “I am wondering what you are thinking, what words you would
put to your feelings.”
“That
answer feels like part of the problem. Why is it that when I ask questions you
always redirect them back at me?” Jared asked with anger in his voice. He put
no effort into disguising it.
“Alright.
I’ve been wondering when you’d get pissed. I think it is really sad that even
now, in here, you still suppress your real feelings. I wonder if you do that to
protect me or yourself.” Dr. Jackson answered.
Staring
at the clock straight across from him, Jared saw that there were only a few
minutes left. “I don’t like feeling this way. It seems pointless.”
Dr.
Jackson followed Jared’s gaze and saw the time. “Do you think the Lexapro is helping?”
Evaluating
his behavior from a distance he answered, “Yes, better than Zoloft. The
headaches and nausea are gone.” He registered he hadn’t been feeling quite so
overwhelmed by the past and felt like the future was, usually, manageable. “I’m
sitting here wondering if I will feel like this in an hour or a day or a week.”
“Then
it’s a good thing you’ll be here in a week. Unless you want to come back this
week, I can check my calendar.” The psychiatrist answered. Similar to the couch
issue, the doctor had been endeavoring to get his patient in more than once a
week.
Attending
therapy more regularly only added pressure to Jared’s life and it wasn’t a pressure
he wanted but perhaps needed. Given the imminent future, maybe now was the time.
He gave it a long moment’s thought and said, “Do you have any appointments open
on Thursday?”
Minutes
later he sat in his car and noticed that the trees all had tender lime green
leaves tightly balled up, waiting to unfurl. A few more warm days were needed.
His eyes surveyed the area and touched upon the bright yellow tulips and an
unknown shrub with tiny white berries.
He blew
out a long deep breath and fully absorbed winter was over and spring was now.
Summer would be next and summer would be long.
**********
Mid- March 2011
Grimacing
at the clock, Akshaya realized it was time to pack up for the day. Thursdays! She
had a love-hate relationship with Tuesday and Thursdays. Not always, just for
the last four months. Four very long months.
She
stepped out into the fresh air and smelled the promise of spring. Walking along
the concrete path from her office to her car she searched for the sun and upon
finding it squinted into the pale sunlight. She stopped and closed her eyes.
She let the moment hold her and she felt buoyed by the promising warmth.
Giving
in to what must be done, she continued on her way, gingerly stepping around a
small pile of slush, a last remnant of winter. Quickly and efficiently she
loaded her things along with herself into the car and headed away from the
known, and steered herself towards the unknown.
On
thirty-two occasions, over four months (twice a week, an hour each day) Akshaya
had walked through the medical building’s double doors. Walked down a long
gloomy hallway, passed through a dark wooden door, flipped up a switch, and
then sat down in a lobby, waiting for the doctor. Dr. Meyers was usually on
time, so the wait was short. Today, she scrounged through a pile of magazines,
looking for something to read.
Flipping
through a Smithsonian Magazine, she was surprised when she heard a door open,
and heard footsteps approaching. Out of courtesy, she diverted her eyes back to
an article on “The Wonders of Alexandria.”
There
was muffled walking, the sound of a door closing, and then a few minutes later,
the same door reopened. More muffled walking brought Dr. Meyers to the switch,
which she pressed down, and greeted Akshaya with a smile. Once inside the doctor’s
office, she said, “Sorry to keep you waiting. We’ll adjust your appointment and
go later if that works for you.”
Inwardly
Akshaya felt two emotions equally. Angry for being kept waiting, and unaffected
because she really didn’t think she needed to be there anymore. Internally she
knew that the real problem lie in the fact that she wouldn’t tell Dr. Meyers
her true feelings. This is what kept her coming.
Dr.
Meyers clearly understood emotions were unsaid because week after week she
said, “I’ll see you soon.”
“That’s
fine.” Akshaya responded politely. She spent her days with students and knew
very well that appointments ran late, short, but rarely as scheduled.
Once
settled, her eyes drifted to the clock to see what the actual time was. Their
appointment was for 6:00 pm and it was now 6:14 pm.
Breaking
the ice, she led with, “I will have to leave at the usual time. I have a
massage scheduled.” Irritation now leaked into her voice.
“Okay.”
“I
usually have a massage on Thursdays after I leave here.”
“Is it
to relax or part of your treatment?”
“Both.
I’ve had weekly therapeutic massages for years. It might help with the
procedure.”
“How is
that going?”
“Fine, I’m
still floating the idea around.”
“Would
you like to talk about it?”
“No. I
need to think about it by myself for a while longer.”
“We
could talk about it, together. That is one of the conversations we could have
in here.”
“I know.
I just… don’t want to. Honestly, I just need to process.”
For
Akshaya, saying that she didn’t want something was a big step, so Dr. Meyer
contented herself with, “Okay. How is everything else?”
“Fine, the
same. Tension is high. The work is harder than I could have ever imagined
possible, part of me wonders if I should have just bailed.”
“Why
didn’t you?”
“Because,
I have dreams, this dream I didn’t even fully understand until he made it
happen. Now there’s the possibility and I’m unwilling to pass it up.”
“So why
do you wonder about bailing?”
“Sitting
here I’m removed from the stress, so I am unwilling to give up, but when he and
I are together there is so much tension. What if all this time and effort is
wasted?”
“But,
that is what you do, your modus operandi, you have the mask that you wear that
says ‘stay away’ and then you have you. The person that needs you to come here.
You could talk to him. He doesn’t have to talk to you. Would that make you feel
better?”
Akshaya
began pacing the office. Not something she did often, but today she felt like
she was in a cage, needing out, but leaving wasn’t an option. She tugged on the
cuff of her sleeves, fiddled with the scarf around her neck, and paced. She was
aware of the tension in her neck, her throat feeling squeezed shut.
“Which
dream are we talking about exactly?” The doctor asked, sitting on a stool in
front of an easel, blobbing paint onto a canvas. Painting something quite
indeterminable.
Akshaya
walked over, grabbed a sturdy wide fan shaped brush and set about blending some
of the colors together. Unconsciously she loaded the brush with watered down
ochre and started to blend a patch of darker brown with a golden splat. Dr. Meyer
slid her stool slightly aside to give Akshaya all the room she needed to paint.
After a
minute or two of muddling, Akshaya loaded a filbert brush with Robins Egg Blue
and set about building swirling bands of color in the back left corner. When
out of paint, she returned to the present, dropped the brush in a glass, and then
sat in the familiar oversized chair in front of a window. She flipped her legs
over the arm of the chair and pressed back into the cushions, staring straight
ahead, at small patch of empty white wall.
“Dreams…
I can’t even think about my dreams. Right now I’m angry. As if there weren’t
enough complications, he told me today that he asked two contacts to check into
my past. What right does he have? He should have asked me. What if these two
idiots do something I don’t want, what if…” She stopped mid-thought, not
entirely certain that she wanted to understand what might follow.
“What if
what happens?” Asked the always pressing doctor.
“Forget ‘what
if’. What about whom? Why didn’t he ask me if it was okay for people I don’t
know to root around my past? Shouldn’t I be the one who gets whatever
information they find out? Why does he get it first? They should be telling me
what they find out and not him!”
“I don’t
know. Maybe he is trying to protect you.”
“Fuck him.
I don’t need protection. I can manage my own life.”
“When is
the last time you sat down and truly talked to him?”
“Just
after Christmas.”
“Do you
think you are the same person now as you were at Christmas?”
“No,
obviously not.”
“How obvious
is it to him, when you haven’t had a personal conversation with him since
Christmas?”
“I know!”
She snapped! Anger rushed out with the response. Akshaya moved back to the
easel. After letting go of the initial urge to pick up a palette knife and
spread a thick layer of black, she kept her hands clenched at her sides,
studied the painting and then decided that the blue needed a hint of grey.
“So?”
Dr. Meyer prompted.
“He’s
different. He’s not the same guy at all. To him I am just a woman who has
skills he needs, nothing more.”
“Is it
possible that he is simply treating you the way you asked him to treat you?”
Anger
poured out of her and she let it loose on the canvas. She picked up a large
paint brush, loaded it with white paint and brushed long powerful strokes from
left to right. The bristles dug into the existing paint. The results were
horizontal bands of color, white to brown.
**********
