WEEKLY WRITER'S PATH #15
There is no reason to check my mailbox on my way out for a walk for any signs of agents, publishers or Hollywood producers wanting a piece of DIZZY SUSHI. Or my email box, either. DIZZY has come home to rest for the moment, so I head into the wind and dark grey clouds.
Walking in snow can be bitterly cold, but its sparkling softness dazzles and entices you along. It’s different walking in wind; wind fights you. Wind is a force. The clouds look like a dirty mattress that has been chewed on by a dog, trails of stuffing dragging along the ground.
It’s a numbers game, isn’t it? Getting published. I mean, if you’ve written something that people enjoy reading, and you’ve got color and narrative and poetry and your characters arc or kink or bend, then it’s just a matter of time before it finds a home, yes? I can’t even count how many people I’ve sent my manuscript to, but you’ve heard the stories
Wind season in Santa Fe is followed by hail and lightning season. Per capita, we have the highest incidence of lightning fatalities in the country. The clouds in New Mexico are different from the clouds out there; they’re closer. Yes, those summer storms were pretty regular when Ron and I moved here 25 years ago. We were landscaping North DeVargas Mall and at 4:00 every day gathered under the portale until the clouds tired of raining, about fifteen minutes. Almost every spring now we’ve had hailstorms with thunder and lightening shredding the apple tree just as it’s about to bloom in late April.
I always remember my dad sitting outside on the plantbox in his pajamas, barefoot, watching a thunderstorm come in. We had some doozies west of Chicago. In Santa Fe the thunder rolls in and away in a groundswell. But in Illinois, I remember the huge winds, the cracks that blinded you, hiding in the closet. My mom always opened the door to the front porch and demanded he come in or he’d get struck by lightning, but he never did. Otherwise I would have started this essay, “I’ll never forget the day my dad was struck by lightning. . .” Instead I remember him whooping it up when the big ones came down.
I only dreamed about my dad twice after he died. Once he was sitting in the rocking lounger that was “dad’s chair.” The only other time, he introduced me to a magical gardener I met years later. Here’s what I wrote in my dream journal on April 23, 1986:
I am walking through a greenhouse trying to get away from these "Zen Buddhists." An older woman comes up to me and puts seeds in to my hand. "They’re called 'rabbit’s ears,'" she said. They looked furry and were grey-tinged with pink and lavender. They were shaped like two angel’s wings put together. Suddenly she was gone, talking to someone at the other end in the dappled sun. I tried to thank her but she was too busy talking to someone else and didn’t acknowledge me. Out of this long greenhouse and into another and I meet my father. We embrace for a long time and there is a silver tear in his eye. The two men with him say that he has been sick for a long while, and that is why I could not see him. He is weak and they suggest we all sit down. We crowd into a booth.
My father would have understood this numbers game of submissions and flowery rejections. Being an engineer, building a plantbox to sit on during summer thunderstorms, I think he would understand that it could be the combination of mathematics and physics that brings DIZZY SUSHI home. Or that lights up the night sky.
