The Furious Spinner

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. —Mary Oliver

The novel I have been working on for months, the novel I went halfway around the world researching, has been falling apart bit by bit. It's been like watching the waves come to shore and wash over a sand castle, a sand castle I built. A wave rolls in and takes that turret. "Oh, well," I think, "it looks better without that anyway. Who needs all that space? You just gotta fill it with furniture." And then the walkway to the turret is gone. Didn't need that since the turret didn't exist any more. What the heck. Oh look, the coming wave is going to take out the front room. What do they call the front room in a castle anyway? Yep. The wave slips toward the castle, making that soft noise waves make as they polish the sand; in fact the world is all white noise now and I, you, we look out at the ocean, forgetting about the castle, it can't be saved any way, who needs it, and you, I, we almost can't hear the hera's cries. "Help! Save me! It's you, it's you." But all you can see is the ocean. You feel the tug of the sea on your wild self, and you look down and see the iridescent blue green scales that make up your tail and all you want to do is dive into that great wild thing that is the sea.

Yet there's the castle. Maybe you, I, we need to stay here, there, and save the castle, tell that story. Maybe that'll be the one, the one, the one that will feed me, keep my head above water. Maybe I'm just a coward and don't want to push through it. Maybe I just don't want to do what needs to be done in this ol' world of ours. Grow up. Grow old. Get your head in the game.

And yet. There's the call of the wild.

And yet. Sleeping Beauty is in that castle and the next wave is going to wash away her home.

Here's the question: Would you rather be asleep and beautiful or awake and ugly?

So what is it? What is it?

Heads or tails?

Labels: sustainability, writing

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.