Let Me Be Frank

Saturday was a good day.  It was a breezy one.  I collected myself for what Ruthie would call a decent dose of flanerie, aimless idle behaviour (aka adrift on the winds of adventure).  I put my ear-buds in to ward off the wind and headed to downtown Dartmouth to visit the art gallery and shop I’ve been hearing such wonderful things about.  My first stop was ‘Kept’.  I fell in love the second I walked in.  It is full of wonderful sundry gifts, jewellery, and other neat things to feast your eyes and spend your hard earned money on.  I was in the market for a few little trinkets for Christmas gifts which I found.  I completed the West Coast Santa box there.  I also got myself a neat Leonard Cohen print and some cards for card tag.  I exited before I maxed out my credit card and went next door to ‘The Dart Gallery’ (word play for art gallery in Dartmouth).  It’s a bright, inspiring space complete with an in-house pet bunny named Huxley.  There, I bought one Christmas gift for my bud and purchased myself a fabulous piece of music-related pun art.  A cheeky take on Sgt. Pepper by artist Ben Jeddrie.  It lives right on my writing desk next to the photo of my published poem in the first Open Heart Forgery anthology that Kiersten took for me and my Mary Magdalene print from Patti. 

These are my gifts to me from Saturday:

Cohen print from Kept and 'Sgt. Pepper' pun art by Ben Jeddrie

There was one painting that I kept coming back to. It is called ‘Boredom’ and if I was the kind of person who had a spare $600 odd dollars kicking around I’d have brought it home with me too.  It really captured me.  I will have to settle for a picture of it I took on my phone that is now the background on my laptop.  Isn’t it fabulous?:

'Boredom' 

I wanted to have a bite of lunch at Celtic Corner but when I cracked the front door of the pub it was noisy with sports and sports fans so I crossed Alderney Drive and parked myself at The Wooden Monkey.  I had pasta with scallops.  The pasta was made with quinoa and it was finished with parmesan cheese and cream.  It was also beautifully quiet.  I sat peacefully overlooking the chopping Halifax Harbour and listened to the music overhead.  Was perfect.  If you’ve never been to the Halifax or Dartmouth ‘Monkey’ you should go.  And if you ever leave enough room for dessert, the tofu chocolate pie is to die for.

Monkey art on The Wooden Monkey wall.

By now many of you are aware that my Dad is very sick.  These past few months have been fantastically difficult and emotional.  My father has always been a bright and vibrant man, full of energy, pranks, and laughter and firm insights.  Despite his smallness and frail form, I can still see the signature twinkle in his blue eyes.  It especially comes to life when something makes him laugh.  He spent his entire life entertaining people so I take a lot of comfort in being able to entice a chuckle from him now.  Like when I showed him the photo of Erica and I done up like Mexicans for Halloween.  He almost lost his teeth he smiled so wide.

I admit that up until the last week or so I’ve been holding up pretty good.  I’ve been realistic and logical and adult about it.  I fear now that my heart is starting to slowly overthrow my brain.  For example, I was sitting at work the other day busying myself with my daily tasks and broke out into a full-blown panic attack which can only be attributed to not allowing myself to be emotional about what’s happening.  It took me several minutes in the bathroom to be able to catch my breath, regain my composure so that I could return to my station and continue working.  I’m not good with big crowds lately, not good with being alone and when I’m out and about I’m not good with that either.  I don’t have the words to express how I’m feeling and don’t want to fill the ears of those I love with my strife because I dislike being a burden.  However, it is building up and seeping out.  So, in typical me fashion, I wrote it out.  I started writing this poem the day of my panic attack and finished it today.  I didn’t have the heart to go back to it until today.  My bravery came from thinking about so many people today, on November 11^th, who lost their loved ones to war.  I thought about my dear friends who have been through losing the patriarchs of their families.  I thought of their eyes, their hearts and their willingness to be beside me and I finished.  My Dad is a proud man and would probably hate this blog post but if he hadn’t had an important hand in making me I wouldn’t be able to write poetry and use it as an outlet for my pains and my glories.

Some of what is in this poem are his words, most are mine.  My one collaboration with the first man I ever loved:

 Let Me Be Frank

let me be frank with you I am almost ready to expire

this last fever is juddering my words out slowly, softly

into a reliable memoir you will all thumb through in time

regrets do not overwhelm me the dark rum has run dry

and my farewell highlight reel has surreptitiously circled

I would like to burnish a bit more and I hope to be remembered

if for nothing else other than sweeping curls of laughter I initiated

let me be frank with you I am almost ready to sing a sweet goodbye

an old man once young inching onward, nearing man-made Nirvana

to transfer the burden of sentiment into a simple refrain on the wind

let me be frank with you while my night is muted with sweat and ache

I want to tell you this: in my final refuge I am what I am surrounded by – Light

**

I love my Dad.  I’m scared to lose him.  And when I do, I am going to be terribly sad poet but I know that he’ll be in everything that I do.  That is a comfort.

In propinquity,

Nic

Broken Hero With a Poet's Name

Sunday. November 2^nd, 2014.  The first day of the time change.  Gaining an hour of sleep they say.  For me, it’s one less hour of sunlight that I require.  I am now facing those several months where I will be getting up in the dark and going home in it too.  While I do enjoy the nighttime, sunlight as I get older tends to hold more promise and it alleviates the seasonal blues.  Must buy some vitamin D.  It doesn’t help that it’s cold as a witch’s teet today and has been pouring rain all weekend.  Such is Fall, just like cool cousin Spring.  I have had enough of sitting around, I am going to get out today and stretch my legs and browse around, hopefully get a visit in with my Dad if he’s up for it and then prepare my noodle for the return to the 9 to 5.  I daydream about a retreat every Sunday, a quiet place to think and write and wonder.  I think I’m just longing for a vacation.  A real one.  Not one where I just don’t go to work, but one where I am away from my daily life, somewhere other than here.  I’m still hoping for a trip down South in the Spring before my bud moves to Newfoundland.  We planned for it last April for our 40^th birthdays but circumstances prevented me from being able to have the time off.  It HAS to happen this April.  I long for a real grown up vacation.  I work my tail off.  I deserve it.  Most importantly, I need it.

I did get up this morning when it was still dark.  I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t get my noodle to settle long enough to rest.  I read Ru’s blog last night and a line in the preface to the new piece she posted stuck with me, ‘a broken hero with a poet’s name’.  I haven’t written a thing in weeks.  And since this line stuck with me, I thought I’d try to use it as a beginning of a poem, inspired by her creative wisdom.  I hope she doesn’t mind.

This is what I wrote.  Unedited and raw, in Sylvia Plath’s ‘blue hour’ and in the pouring rain:

Broken Hero With a Poet’s Name

I encountered a broken hero with a poet’s name

the weight of his dark eyes evoked an eccentric peace

I put him in a clamorous setting on a critical piece of paper

the noises, crashing cymbals, tambourines, vociferous voices

I wish it had been more of an airy dream under weeping trees

our happenstance was a mere trace of the truest North

a romantic’s naiveté where the moon is always just the moon

the broken hero with the poet’s name propositioned my fate

gone longer than he was present but not without a quiet farewell

I encountered him in the place where I was supposed to be

the stark adequacy of his small oblivion touched me for hours

the broken hero with the poet’s name

entered my emptiest spaces without a word

and re-wrote the laws of chaos into exquisite verses

I sing them now against the wind and into the sun

**

A little writing exercise to flex my muscles just a little bit.  I abandoned all of my stories and characters that were present and I feel really bad about that.  I do try to work but lately I haven’t had the heart for it but I feel like I should be a responsible writer and force myself to do it.  How can I even call myself a writer if I don’t do it each day?  I am desperate to be back in that place where I was prolific and productive, churning out stories faster than I could ever believe.  That was an amazing feeling, a happy time in my creativity.  I hope to have that back.  No, not hope, I WILL.  Right?

Oh, and Halloween was a gas.  We went as happy Mexicans.  I was stunned at how unlike myself I looked.  I was stunned by how much I looked like my oldest brother.  The comments and laughs our costumes got were fun and eased my worried self for a few hours.  Grateful for that and for my friends.

In propinquity,

Nic