There’s a mouse nibbling at something in my closet. Spring is springing here in Oregon East and the mice seem to be holding tea parties in my boxes of crap and stuff. Now, yours truly has been on a writing slog so yours truly has not been the little housewifely creature she never is, ever.
Alice in Oregonlandia is progressing. My sequel to a novel I just finished, for now called House on Clark Boulevard.
I’m also writing festering crap I would not show a Danger Noodle, let alone the tender readers who dare my clumsy words, galumphing sentences and frothy artistic confections. [Oregon Gothic. Have I mentioned yet, or ever, that I wrote a book called Oregon Gothic??? Don’t worry, I’ll mention it. I promise.]
Alice veered into territory that’s a bit dark and awful, but hey, it’s supposed to give a few tame thrills to readers in the Shivers Department. I’ve been rereading it and trying to get back into it, because I let it rest for a bit and now I’m going, uh, where was I? Where was this actually going? Why did I write about eating hearts and now there’s something about rainbows and puppies?? Was it going anywhere but off the rails on a crazy train?
Great. Now Ozzy is wailing in my head. Wail, Ozzy, wail! Get it over with, brain.
Yep. So. Also trying not to succumb to that utter darkness that wants to suck me into the void. I know! How cheerful am I? Not cheerful at all. No cheer here to give.
I won’t descend into some maudlin screamwhine about my inner hellscapes.
I present them publicly via my writing and plays, so why do I need to further reveal that I am one savagely, probably chemically, depressed little mama? Is it not de rigueur for a writer to be an emotional, physical, mental mess? Does that not ‘fuel’ our art? Would we even know who Virginia Woolf was if she had not gone off the rails on a crazy train?
DAMN IT, BRAIN.
But. Mice.
I hear them at night. I used to be scared shitless of them. Little rodents just trying to survive their fate as tiny tasty prey to dogs, cats, hawks, owls, coyotes and whatever else lives in the walls of my house. [I do have a horror bent to my writing at times, hello.]
Then I found out they’re smart. They sing to their babies. They’re social. They’re…uh. My Cute Animals Syndrome kicks in. Where cute animals deserve saving and ugly animals don’t.
A mouse is rather a darling little thing, if you look at one. That little face, their little pink paws, ah. The Rescuers! Ah!! I still get annoyed when mice are found in my stuff. I’d rather mice than cockroaches, if I had to choose a vermin from a list.
The cockroaches in Honduras made me scream and head for the nearest flame-thrower. Yep, they were BIG. And if I didn’t have my computer playing something, I could hear them. Hear them. Hear their cockroach feet tap-tapping. Made me want to embrace Jesus in the worst way and just beg Jesus to Rapture me already because surely there will be no giant, thinking about jumping on you, bugs in heaven. Cockroaches know they freak you out. They KNOW. I know they know, they need to be honest and admit that they know they freak us out and do things to freak us out and then go off and have cockroach giggle parties.
I probably spend way too much time alone.
No, I do. But. I cannot stand other people right now. I have an actual phobia to other folks. Probably just my common sense showing up at last to the party that is moi. I’d rather deal with the odd mouse and even a pack of viciously gleeful cockroaches bent on making me try to figure out how to work a flame-thrower. Oh. I did promise not to get all confessional. Because I was already confessional via my writing.
My tooth is loose. I can rock it back and forth in my somewhat sore gum. My tongue plays with it. Hello, poverty! I just watched The Grapes of Wrath, the one with Henry Fonda [Is there a remake or a gritty reboot of this already gritty drama?] and yes, I can relate to the Joads.
Oh you betcha. Ahem!! I am poor and cannot afford the dentist. That’s a thing here in America. Our healthcare system, or rather, lack of anything resembling any sort of compassion toward those without a trust fund. Which has been pounded into the dust and sand and mud and ooze. Politics.
I listened to grown men in the other room praise 45 for that speech. One of the men was Japanese and there’s internment camps you can go look at right here in Oregon where people who were Japanese-Americans, during WWII, were put. For safety. To keep America safe. Anyway! That speech!! Back on the rails…DAMN IT, BRAIN. NO, BAD BRAIN.
That carefully orchestrated performance piece [the State of the Union address] to make a certain Orange Slushie look and sound ‘presidential’ and they, the grown men, some of whom are related to me, gushed. They gushed like teen girls over the newest national or international crush. They sounded like teenyboppers practically having kittens to some cutie pie in some movie they just saw.
If only people would give him a chance. That was a pretty neat speech! I don’t know why those people are upset. He speaks his mind!
I swear to Jesus and Allah and Ra and Odin and The Great Flaming Vagina of Doom– that’s what was actually overheard by this wide-eyed trembling soul. I had an actual out of body sensation. A real ‘this is not my life’ fireworks boom in my head. A moment of ‘They know I can hear them so they’re just having fun with me’, rather like those damn cockroaches and their tappy little feet. Just. Like. That.
And then I mused over how people can hear the same political slickster speech and hear two completely different versions. And isn’t that funny?? Isn’t that rather…ugh. No. No, it’s not funny at all. Hello, darkness, my constant friend. You’ve come because you never went. You’re always here in my head, you’re here when I get up and when I go to bed!
So I should probably clean out the places in my little space that need cleaning out; it is spring! Spring cleaning. What can I throw away? What can I discover tucked away? That I can get out for a bit and then tuck away again? What little bit of something will spark an almost artistic effort? What little bit of forgotten something will…I do cannibalize. Which I admitted in another post. Maybe I left some bones with meat still one them! Ooooh!! This works on both an actual need to clean and sort and throw out level and the metaphysical declutter the brain miasma. Wow. I’m obvious and shallow all in a few handy sentences! Good for me!
Darkness and mice and spring and my tooth and life and Orange Slushies and too-aware cockroaches and depression and writing and Jesus.
I’m going to be honest. I need a haircut.
Did you think I would blurf out something about life, suicide, despair or rivers? Sorry. You’ll have to comb through my writing for my state of mind, darlings.
ANN WUEHLER 