Publishing this on March 31, a day after I should have. The photo of a salmon tie is one I found online. I don’t remember what the original salmon tie looked like, nor do I really care. I’ve probably given one or two as gifts since the one I once gave “Pinocchio.” This one is meant to be a representation of his.
When I think of salmon, though I’ve never had an in-person view of them swimming upstream, photos and art have led me to imagine the sight more similar to another tie, an old one of Tom’s. When I decided to write this letter, I used Tom’s tie as the backdrop for one of my One Word Art paintings I chose never to sell: Seek (acrylic and glitter on 4×6 canvas, 1997).
“Dear Pinocchio: After our ending, when I tried to break down not so much the pathology of your dishonesty as the way I so easily let myself believe you, I came to conclusions I shared with you later over dinner in a restaurant. (I’d stopped having any private meetings with you for several sound reasons. It’s possible this was the last time I ever saw you.) I’d stopped wanting to exhume or examine all of your lies. I no longer had faith that you would, or maybe even could, admit your culpability and how manipulative it all was. Possibly it was only human nature for you to ascribe the best of motives to your bad habit. I’m no psychologist, but why wouldn’t your compulsion to lie to others also enable you to lie to yourself?
It wasn’t my problem then and still isn’t. My problem was making sure I was rigorously honest with myself, about myself, what behaviors I should have identified, and what I could have done differently, so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes or choices again. Ever.
I remember you listened to my assessment of certain of your qualities that reminded me of other people and made you attractive to me or drew me to you. Of outside events that left me vulnerable to your dishonesty. Of my anxiety about the future that had once made you seem like someone stable who offered me a brighter future. That maybe you were even similar to a character or life I once wrote or imagined before I ever met you.
Instead of hearing the accusation and blame I was directing toward myself, not you, you finally said, ‘Maybe this is how you need to rewrite history, but none of what you say is true.’ Possibly, you were judging me by the purposeful lies that guided your own behaviors. Again, however, I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about me. You were the liar who couldn’t recognize when a person was trying to tell the truth to herself about herself. Possibly you thought so little of my wisdom because I’d shown so little of it.
I always say I write fiction, not memoir. But I gave some of the details of events in our past to a character in one of my novels. She wasn’t a main character, and her decisions were much better than any I ever made. I wrote her not because she was like me or because I ever behaved as well as she did. I wrote her as a reminder to myself of how I wish I’d been; how I wish I’d behaved. I gave her all the dignity and strength I didn’t show in my situation with you. Her story reminded me that I always have choices; that I want to make good ones instead of poor ones. I haven’t always lived up to her example, but she’s still like a really smart friend. And I’d rather think of her than berate the person I was way back then.
As for you, I rarely think about you or the other characters in your story. Besides the novel mentioned above, I never consciously include(d) you in any other stories, poems, or lyrics I’ve written. Though you have shown up in a few posts on this site. Peace out–Becky.”
I finished a mystery I was reading on Friday; I have unlimited respect for Louise Penny and her work. Her characters are like friends I rely on for humor, sanity, intelligence, integrity, and compassion. The most recent novel’s written with her usual deft ability to lure readers back to a world they’ve visited for twenty books. The plots can be heart-stopping, sometimes heartbreaking, but there’s comfort that somehow, all will be well in the end. This time was no exception except that The Grey Wolf ventured a little too close to a reality that frequently costs me sleep and peace of mind. Maybe because a lot of the current real world exhibits very little humor, sanity, intelligence, integrity, and compassion.
After finishing Penny’s book, I looked forward to a very different novel for my next selection, the fifth in a historical fantasy/supernatural series, Deborah Harkness’s The Black Bird Oracle. I was racing through it before it came to a natural stopping place at my bedtime. I fell asleep easily, but the last section I’d read made its vivid way into my dreams with its concept of “bottled memories.” Literally, a human (or ghost, or witch, or vampire, etc.) can choose to pour their memories into a bottle and seal them inside before…well, whatever comes next.
Wednesday got away from me–a whole lot going on at Houndstooth Hall at the moment. I read a stunning poem by Lynne Shapiro in Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems, and it inspired me to begin a character poem, but I’ll need to finish the poem later and will return to this post to add it when it’s ready. (ETA: Done! See bottom of this post.)
Below is the poem I wrote using the word list and title from Write The Poem. It’s a scene that’s maybe two novels away in the Neverending Saga, though it’s been planned a long time. It’s as if whoever put this list of words together could see into the future. My poem is the reason I thought of Steve’s sculpture.
