Things I Haven't Said Yet

Pearl S. Buck on being creative:
"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create – so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, just pour out creating. By some strange, inward urgency, he is not really alive unless he is creating."

Now for some things I forgot to say or haven't said yet.
Things I forgot to say about plants:
The shrubs in the Arroyo Canyon showed me something about myself. Many of the same plants that flourish in Seattle would quickly shrivel and die in the southern California heat. But by the same token, some of the plants doing so well in LA would rot and grow black mold in the damp air of the Pacific Northwest. I am no shrinking violet, hiding from life in the shade. I am not an evergreen, either. I generally dislike the cold and I avoid winter sports. I am not a rose bush, requiring excessive pampering in order to thrive, though I'll take it when I can get it. I am a Heather. I will grow where I am planted. Each transplant takes something out of me but leads to new growth.

Things I never said about Maryland:
We moved to a farm in southern Maryland. I was eight and nine years old and I rode my bike down country lanes, past the farm where the Amish father drove a three horse team, past the other farm with the Brown Swiss cows looking forlorn with their liquid eyes. It was hot there in the summer, and the roads were dusty and dry. I rode through the inches of red dust, avoiding copperheads and crossing over culverts, to visit Little Jim and the other horses that livednearby. However, even though I liked dreaming and playing outside by myself, I also got a lot out of playing with other kids. I liked hosting events even then. Each summer I had my July birthday party, featuring hot dogs and hamburgers, ice cream cakes, and movies shown in our cool, dim basement. I always liked some boy. (Then, it was Scott. I was the only girl he invited to his birthday party. I got a bad sunburn because we all swam like crazy and played Marco Polo and I was very fair-skinned). I still nearly always like some boy but they are distracting and I have to watch out or they'll pull my hair.

Things I never said about Mississippi:
We moved back to southern Mississippi (a fun state to spell and to live in) to a part of the Gulf Coast that has since been completely destroyed by Katrina. My old house doesn't exist anymore. Back then, when I was ten years old, there was an old estate that had been abandoned after the plantation mansion blew down during Hurricane Camille. The lot was overgrown and then it seemed vast and mysterious. Daffodils still sprouted up in the spring, because no one told them that the garden was no more. In the sweltering heat, I climbed magnolias, had my feet stung by fireants, and scratched bites left by a million mosquitoes. I dreamed of the family that used to live there and their charmed life in the mansion.

And I still loved boys. I fell for Paul Gardener, who played Alexander Graham Bell in the school play. He sang this song that went "Dot-Dash-Dash-Dot" and he was a born star. I bet years later he went on tour with members of Wire. So ahead of his time.

My favorite pasttime was going down to the gulf and wading out for what seemed to be miles on the soft golden sand, the water barely reaching my knees some days.

Things I never said about Montana:
We moved to Montana when I was 11. We owned some 200 acres of land up in the mountains. I didn't really like the other kids at my school, so I retreated more and more into books and writing and making up elaborate fantasies about how amazing my life was going to be someday. I thought about it while I rode horses around in the fields. I took a million melancholy walks through the aspen-filled western section of the forest. (All those things people say about the cathedral of the forest, well, it felt like God was hiding everywhere.) I would wander around for hours and dream and dream. Sometimes I thought I would marry the beautiful Jamie Boyer from up north in Eureka (unfortunately, he was an Aries, so it was destined for failure), and resign myself to life in a small town. Or I'd marry Pat Triplett, a local cowboy who was too old for me, and we'd travel across the country togetherm and he'd be the 1 champion rodeo man in the country, which would somehow help me become a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader and a Doctor.

My favorite story for a long time was about Steve Howe from the band GTR. At the time, I was really into prog rock like Yes, Asia, Toto, and GTR (which featured members of my then-favorite Yes). Never mind the fact that he was already 40 years old or so and I was 12. I developed some pretty elaborate schemes for how I was going to meet Steve; I would win some national photography competition and get sent to New York, where I'd meet someone whose mom worked in the music business and she'd get us backstage passes to GTR, and then I'd meet this guy and he'd undoubtedly realize that we were meant to be together, and we'd agree that we would need to wait to get married until I was legally able to have sex with him.

That's the way I thought: if you can dream it, it could happen. It might need a bizarrely convoluted plot to get you there, but it could happen. (To tell you how much I liked this guy, I actually wanted to get my hair thinned so it would look like his. Now that's devotion.)

Lastly:
Here is something you may want to know about me: I still love being outside by myself, and my fantasy life is still AMAZING.