Today I felt
nervous. I have a lot of new things I'm doing/trying and today I
felt really nervous. I tried to read something and my brain just
would not accept reading as a calming activity. I was too fired
up... but in a bad way.
So, suddenly I got
the idea to go on Pinterest and look at pictures of the prairie. It
was really amazing at how well it worked to calm me down. Actually,
it was almost embarrassing. Whenever I was anxious as a teen, I'd go
for a walk out to nowhere. And it really was nowhere. It used to be
my ambition to write stories that took place in my hometown, but it
always failed, because nothing ever happened there. Nothing could
happen there. And I was not able to write a proper novel until I had
spent enough time in Edmonton to set a story there.
My hometown was the
place ideas went to die. But there was always a gust of wind and a
sunset and a view of the mountain range far away. There was clover
growing in big itchy or cooling clumps (depending entirely on the
position of the sun), and there was a sky so big, you wouldn't know
what was happening on all nine sides of it at once. And yes, the sky
had nine sides. Big clouds. Cemeteries. Sometimes it seems
impossible that I met and married a man there, because my memories of
my hometown are remarkable void of people. Sometimes I became a
person who spent too much time alone. Wandering on the edges of
fields that didn't belong to me or people I knew. I pet the noses of
their cattle since they were the only ones curious about what I was
doing there. Home wasn't home. And nine sides of sky were not
always welcoming. And there wasn't much to think about. Doing
anything would start you doing more than you could stand. Can't
sing. Someone could see me and call me weird again, because being or
doing anything would be weird. And their view of me might make me
more alone.
After all my griping
about how I couldn't think an idea for a story to set in my hometown,
I finally gave up writing a novel and wrote a short story called
'Blog Entries of the Brokenhearted.' And it really is all that my
hometown was... but like I shone a spotlight on it and then cut the
cord to set it free.
Here's a link to it.
Free reading. Leave a comment if you like.
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