Life as Metaphor

Last week was spent cleaning the basement. Sounds straightforward enough, right? Not so much. The curse of the writer is to spin life events into metaphors. When you're ankle deep in dust and memories, it helps pass the time.
We've spent well over thirty years in this big old house, and in consequence have been able to store things: old furniture; boxes from many times; tools and lampshades and such. Problem is, when it's time to clear some space for a furnace estimator, it's a bigger job than just shifting stuff around. Room must be made, access must be found. Things must be organized, sorted through, disposed of.
Once we get past the "just one more cup of coffee" stage that first day, we plod down the stairs to begin. We run through the tool room with efficiency. Lumber can be stacked against this wall, and tools are sorted into various containers. Much sweeping ensues. Not too bad. Then we walk into the storeroom, filled not only with our belongings, but with things that belong to our children, now grown & without much storage space of their own. We open boxes to check content: forgotten toys, old college books, bits & pieces of enthusiasms now relegated to the past.
Memories waft out like old potpourri, and what was just a spatial, muscular exercise becomes a mental slide show of our kids at different stages. Along with sneezes from the dust come lumps in the throat and yet deeper recognition of how much time has passed. Cross-country skis evoke recollections of sliding across mountain snow, listening to our kids alternate between laughing and complaining of the cold, then drinking hot chocolate at a little diner in Nederland.
I find a box of doll clothes, some sewn by my grandmother. She had a treadle sewing machine, and she taught me to sew on it when I was nine or ten. I pick up a small flowered dress with ties for a bow in the back & remember the doll who wore it. Her name was Joanne.
We move old doors--heavy ones!--in the furnace room itself, clearing space, finding two old floor lamps. My husband attaches a ceiling light and now we can see how much fine dust has to be swept & vacuumed. Leaves have sneaked in through the ventilation window & I rake them up, cast suddenly into autumn even as the sun shines through the cracked glass. Christmas decorations are moved to the tool room until the fate of the furnace is known.
We finish on Labor Day and celebrate with hot showers & glasses of wine. Our magic alley (the things we set out disappear!) is lined with boxes, an old television, red shutters that were in our daughter's room when she was a child. By the next day, much of what we've left is gone.
I'm still finding places to tuck things, like the afterthoughts of a first draft. I have a bittersweet feeling of accomplishment: we've reduced our pile of belongings, we've organized what we still have. The lingering sense of melancholy is the same emotion I feel at museums, when I view what was once important to those who lived before my time. Sigh.

Where it began...

Today I celebrated my August birthday with my BFF, and we made a pact. We are both women of a certain age & our paths are getting twistier as we proceed on our journeys. The pact was that each of us would write a page and post it to a new blog. So here is Wisdom Court, which is both a name and an idea.

I am a novelist with three published books to my credit, and for the last umpteen years I’ve been working on a trilogy about Wisdom Court. This is a place where women are invited to live for a year with total financial support. Anything these women want to do, be it research, artistic creation, writing the great American novel–anything can be done. The only requirement is that the recipient has to live most of that year at Wisdom Court, which is located in Boulder, Colorado.

The first novel of the trilogy has to do with Andrea Bellamy, a forensic artist from Oregon who wants to develop her talents as a fine artist. The founder of Wisdom Court, Caldicott Wytham, bought one of Andrea’s paintings some years ago, and she has invited Andrea to spend a year at the renowned women’s institute. When Andrea arrives in Boulder, she finds that what has appeared to be the chance of a lifetime is more complicated than she thought it would be, and more dangerous.

So much for the tease, at least for tonight. The notion of Wisdom Court arose from the collision of two ideas: Virginia Woolf said that every woman needs a room of her own. At Wisdom Court, each woman gains a year of her own to do what she wants. The very possibility is irresistible. Combine with that a faint memory of the old TV show, The Millionaire. As a child I watched each week as the show’s characters received one million tax-free dollars from John Beresford Tipton, an eccentric millionaire (surely he must have been a billionaire to fund so many people!). The stories lay in the reactions of the characters to sudden wealth, and the repercussions of disaster, unintended consequences, and, occasionally, sweet justice, were wonderful fodder for my burgeoning imagination. I loved watching these people as they dealt with something that was not only unexpected, but was also anonymously given. Without knowing how the choices were made, the recipients were left to decide their own worthiness to receive such a gift, and frequently the moral issues really messed with their minds. Heh-heh. I was fascinated, and the seed of Wisdom Court was planted with those episodes, which, if I were to watch them today, would probably disappoint me. I hope not.

One of the reasons my BFF and I made the pact tonight was that we’re both standing at personal crossroads. Decisions must be made, actions must be taken–you get the drift. I’m about to finish the latest revision of the first Wisdom Court novel, Edge of the Shadow, whereupon I will begin again to compose scintillating letters to literary agents in an attempt to peddle the book to editors. I really do want my baby to be read by all of you out there. What has made the whole endeavor more interesting than just composing those letters is that while I’ve been writing the book–with a number of Byzantine detours as life has gotten in the way–the entire publishing industry has transformed. The traditional publishing route, which I took three times, has almost disappeared. And blogs and websites and other such entities have become members of the publishing community(ies), and I’m trying gamely to keep up with the changes.

So, as I look at what I’ve typed, I see that I’m opening a conversation that is–so far–with myself alone. What I intend to do with this blog is periodically reflect what happens during the next year as I try once more to complete the circuit between writer and readers. I’ve missed having my words read and responded to. I’m ready to prep myself for the battle by sending out missives from behind the lines. I look forward to hearing from any and all of you who might read this. I’ll answer your responses as I can, and will be as respectful of them as you are of mine.

More later,