Endings and beginnings (Telling Stories Part IV)

A post a day in May 1/31 

This year’s Post a Day in May begins with the fourth and final instalment (below) in the flash fiction story I wrote during our recent Spark Your Writing course. 

Flash fiction (short pieces, generally under 1,000 words) is an exciting form to work with because the constraint is really tight for the writer. Whether working with just six words or one thousand, the length is the determining factor. Everything the writer wants to say must exist within that word limit. It’s a marriage between idea and craft, wherein the focus is on cutting the extraneous and crafting the essential. For me, that is fun-with-writing. 

Equally fun is the challenge I set myself this month: Post something on this blog every day. The constraint here is the daily deadline, so not every piece will be perfect; I know this in advance. But every day, a piece will be posted. 

The marriage here is between that daily deadline and my commitment to craft the best writing I can within that tight time constraint. It’s like a fitness routine for a writer. And anyone who has ever signed up for a fitness routine knows the excitement of beginning it, the relief of moving past the mid point, and the joy of arriving at the finish line. I hope to see you there, dear Reader! 

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You can read the previous instalments at these links: Grasping. Gardening. Composing. 

LIVING

When I moved away after Maxine died, I left with even less than I had moved in with. What did I need at this stage of my life? I lived alone, made do with a meagre pension, and had few precious possessions.

I did treasure a couple of photos showing my long-ago life and I took them with me, but I left behind for the next tenant my ratty furniture and odd-ball collection of books. My new place was furnished, barely, but sufficient for my stripped down needs. Importantly, it was on the fifth floor and faced south-west, so I had nice light coming in through the afternoon and evening, my best times. Mornings had never been my friend. Too much god damn optimism in the brightness of morning; I prefer the muted late-day and early evening light.

In this new place, I was trying a new thing. To live bare, to rage less, to love more. Jesus, no! Not romantic love. That only complicates things. I mean personal love — or maybe it’s not personal, really. Maybe it’s universal. They call it self-love these days. Whatever. All I’m wanting to do is to live with myself with less rage and more peace. Which comes first? The love for myself or the peace within myself? Others seem to think — and feel quite free to tell me — that so many years have passed since the fire that I should be ‘over it’, should ‘get on with it’, should live my life again. That’s what they say.

But that’s what they want. What I want is to find out what it means to be me, after all these years to really figure it out: just me. No child to mother; just a childless mother. And a guilty one to boot. No Maxine, the neighbour-friend to natter with. No one. Just me. What could my days look like, feel like, be like if I just lived my life, my own life? Not the life others think I could or should, but my life. My own days with my own thoughts and my own way of moving through time. No expectations. Just my ordinary life.

I’m so tired of rage driving me. I want a different source. So I’m going for peace and love. Big expectations! But I’ll start small — with myself, in this small apartment. I don’t need to know my neighbours, at least not yet. For now, I’ll keep my own company and see what happens. I can look across the main street to a park beyond and, one day, I’ll get myself there. Maybe.

In the meantime, I’m content with the library branch at the end of my street. It has quite a collection of classical music CDs. Rummaging through them recently, I discovered a string quartet called Carpe Diem, who play a lot of Beethoven. I like how they bring his music alive with just the four of them, and I’ve spent several afternoons there, listening through headphones to their beautiful sound.

Who knows. Maybe I’ll wake up one day and realize that this is my life: Quiet. Solitary. Less rage. Music. And more peace.

It could happen.

I’ll just need to be brave enough to seize the moments, the nano-seconds of beauty in the day. 

Carpe Diem.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Manny Becerra on Unsplash