French Christmas

The Scintilla Project 10

Talk about breaking someone else's heart, or having your own heart broken.

She took to eating briney Greek olives; it was the only way to bear the saltiness of the tears. And she ate other things that were reminiscent of the ocean, slick wiggly sardines or tiny pink Himalayan crystals, layered over chocolate and caramel.

In the deep part of the night she would stand, a sliver of night light leaking from the refrigerator, and stuff them one by one into her mouth. As though she could choke back the shards of heartbreak rising in her throat and curl back into the sea.

The Scintilla Project: Day 9

*So. This isn’t exactly the post for today, but I’m getting caught up. Almost.

 

Talk about a time when you saw your mother or father as a person independent of his or her identity as your parent.

Last week the moon hung so full and heavy and low to Earth, you could almost feel her breath on your shoulder. She was watching and waiting. I could feel her leaning in close, as though she had something important to say.

And later that night, in those moments that are called symbolism or metaphor or synecdoche in a fictional world, Moonstruck was on. And what else could I do but settle down on the couch, because it would be a sin to waste this ripe poetic moment and not watch Moonstruck with the moon, the real moon, putting on such a show outside.

Loretta Castorini tossed her way onto the screen, with her sharp wit and her flashing eyes and her wild beautiful hair, and I knew right then why I had always loved this movie, and all the movies with Cher, and with Susan Sarandon, and Ellen Ripley, when I was little.

These ladies, like mirrors, reflected the side of my Mom I never saw but I knew in my heart of hearts existed. With me, my Mom was soft hands on a feverish forehead, low voices reading stories at night, reassuring looks when I tried something new.

But I knew there was another side of my Mom; you could turn the kaleidoscope and there would be a new reflection of her, one that was clawing and fighting for her way out there in the world. Battling dragons and putting out forest fires. Refusing to settle.   

The moon and the movie reminded me what a big and scary place the world can be when you’re six, and the kind of women you want to have on your side protecting you from it, and the kind of woman I want to be now, facing that big wide world all on my own.   

The Scintilla Project: Day 8

 

*these are a little out of order, I know. I’m still tweaking the post from the day 7.

What are your simplest pleasures? Go beyond description and into showing the experience of each indulgence.

I distrust the easy pleasures. I sniff around them like a dog, doubting their intentions, wondering if there’s a snake or a scorpion waiting on the other side of that soft, fluffy exterior.

What I like: things that are hard. Things that make my heart gallop. Things that make the sweat drip down into my eyes. Things that make my muscles pull and bend and shoot like an arrow.

These things are the matchstick, the spark, the uncomplicated flame consuming the fear and frustration of the day. The harder I run, the faster I can feel it burn, rising like a mist from my skin.

And at the end there is a tingling release. The electric twitch of a tendon. Peace.

The Scintilla Project: Day 7

Talk about an experience with faith, your own or someone else's.

It is not religion. It is not an ethereal thing, some idea conceived by men, that floats like a cloud in a faraway, pristine, untouchable place.

For me it’s more animal than human, more instinctual than reason. It hugs low. It hisses warnings and trumpets opportunity. It is the hard flipping of my stomach or beads of sweat on my palms or hair raising on the back of my neck or the soft cracking sound of my heart. It is all the places where flesh and soul intersect, all the places we knew how to listen to as children, but that we have forgotten. That we have forgotten because we became smarter, more reasonable. Because we grew up.

The layers are tangling around my feet as I try to peel them back. But Faith, she leaves me breadcrumbs along the way, at the exact moments I’m certain I’ve stumbled off the path.

The Scintilla Project: Day 6

 

Show a part of your nature that you feel you've lost. Can you get it back? Would it be worth it?

I thought I had locked her away, that fragile human thing, with all her messy fears and hungers and desires. I marched them all together up to the attic with a shotgun at their backs. Then I slammed the door shut and built a wall of bricks against it.

I loosened the collar of my shirt and for awhile it was quiet. Quiet and empty and clean.

But then the low whistling came through the cracks in the ceiling, the muffled sound of screams and tiny feet and hands scampering, tracing the corners of the room around and around and around.

I put my hands to my ears to quiet the rush, but there were so many of them now, so many that the ceiling bowed to their weight and then came crashing down all around me.

And I am picking up the pieces one by one, the price for locking her away for so long.

 

Photo via Christine Mandich.

 

The Scintilla Project: Day 5

What does your everyday look like? Describe the scene of your happiest moment of every day.

At night, when the shadows flicker on the walls, I chase the fireflies. As I’ve said before, it doesn’t always work out as planned. But it’s the hope that keeps me going. The hope, that today—tonight—might be the night that I catch something.

The Scintilla Project: Day 4 (Bonus Round)

Saturday Bonus Post: Talk about a time when you left home...

Two houses meant the leaving got easy. I was forever leaving parts of myself all over Southeastern Michigan: a soccer cleat, a music book. There was also lots of driving and waiting and time, enough time to let a perpetual feeling of unrest stain my fingers, like a smoker’s fingers adopt the dark yellow of nicotine.

Even now, there are times I wake up in my own bed in my own apartment with my own name on the lease and I’m unsure of where I am. I close my eyes and try to listen, try to make out the low, metronomic hum of my homing device. I know it’s in there, even if it has a dent or two.  I know it’s there somewhere and so I try to block out the buzz of the other radio stations that would drown it out.

 I try. I listen. I practice. It's still hard to hear sometimes.

The leaving was always easy. It’s coming home that’s hard.

The Scintilla Project: Day 3

What's the story of the most difficult challenge you've faced in a relationship?

Maybe you weren't just lovers or midsummernight dates or dance partners. Maybe I hurled myself at you, all of you, as though you were an anvil I could break myself on.

The pressure, you see, from this swollen heart was becoming too much. I was going mad with the need to release it, how it ate at me and haunted me and made my hands heavy and swollen. But I didn’t have the necessary leverage, I couldn’t get the right angle to slip the crow bar in, I didn’t have the strength to crack my own ribcage. I needed someone else to do the dirty work.

So that’s where you came in. Yes, you split my heart open, but I asked for it first.  

The Scintilla Project: Day 2

When did you realize you were a grown up?

Many times, over and over, but most of all that night at the bar, when all the voices were high, bouncing against the pitched wooden walls and ricocheting back towards Earth. Below we were laughing, spilling complicated cocktails we couldn’t have afforded five years ago, and declaring emphatically that it was too damn loud.

But the shouting felt kind of good, didn’t it, after being cooped up in cubicles and offices all week, after sitting hunched over spreadsheets and expense reports and rglaring screens. The air was warm and our long curled hair brushed against our shoulders and we lounged back in our chairs like queens surveying our kingdoms.

We all took turns. One of us was talking about sketches for a wedding dress, and one of us was talking about lay offs, and one of us was talking about setting up hospice care for a sick parent, and one of us was talking about winning a case at work, and one of us was talking about losing a long-time lover.

That’s when I know we’ve left it behind, that soft playground of youth. Things weren’t easy then, but now the deepness of tragedies and triumphs alike are a shock to the system, a sudden drop off just a few feet from the shore.  

The Scintilla Project: Day 1

1. Who are you?

I am shaking up the sands in my own personal hourglass. I am those same grains of sand settling down in the small spaces between rocks and tidepools. I am the sound of waves hitting the expanse of sun-soaked beach. I am the taste of salt in ocean air.  

Sometimes I am big epic things and sometimes I am small insignificant things. I'm still trying to figure out how it all fits together.