:: The Projectile ::

The Projectile

We sipped tea.
Politely musing on possible reasons for the success of my books in your country.
Slipped into talk of pain and humiliation you find occurring, and recurring, in my stories.
And that element of sheer chance.
How all this translates in terms of sales.
I looked into a corner of the room.
And for a minute I was 16 again,
careening around in the snow in a ‘50 Dodge sedan with five or six bozos.
Giving the finger to some other bozos,
who yelled and pelted our car with snowballs, gravel, old tree branches.
We spun away, shouting.
And we were gonna leave it at that.
But my window was down three inches.
Three inches.
I hollered out one last obscenity.
And saw this guy wind up to throw.
From this vantage, now, I imagine I see it coming.
See it speeding through the air while I watch,
like those soldiers in the first part of the last century
watched cannisters of shot fly in their direction while they stood,
unable to move for the dread fascination of it.
But I didn’t see it. I’d already turned my head to laugh with my pals.
When something slammed into the side of my head so hard
it broke my eardrum and fell into my lap, intact.
A ball of packed ice and snow.
The pain was stupendous.
And the humiliation.
It was awful when I began to weep in front of those tough guys while they cried, Dumb luck.
Freak accident.
A chance in a million!
The guy who threw it, he had to be amazed,
and proud of himself, while he took the shouts and back-slaps of the others.
He must have wiped his hands on his pants.
And messed around a little more before going home to supper.
He grew up to have his share of setbacks and get lost in his life, same as I got lost in mine.
He never gave that afternoon another thought. And why should he?
So much else to think about always.
Why remember that stupid car sliding down the stupid road,
then turning the stupid corner and disappearing?
We politely raise our tea cups in the room.
A room that for a minute something else entered.
— by Raymond Carver & poem dedicated to Murakami, one of my favourite authors…

I have not been active on my blog for awhile now and I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that I am still here & alive! It has been an awesome beginning to the 2017 year, even though extremely busy. In mid-December, while I was working in my office, my husband came in to announce that we were starting the renos “now”. “Now” I said? And he said yes… within 2 minutes, I was already starting to move books from their shelves, putting them in the few boxes that we had, he was already sawing at one of the floor boards… oooh! What a start! So since then, we are in a huge reno mode that has not stopped. My house is totally tipsy turvy… sometimes I cannot even find my dog, as he does not seem to like all of the ins-and-outs that are happening amongst the workers that spring up at every hour of the day on “his” territory. One good thing about renovating in winter, is that the workers are all free! And when you call them, they arrrive. Very different from a summer renovation.

So I took the time tonight to sketch the front of my fireplace that is inundated with books and mostly 3-ring binders… as we are moving the office from the réz-de-jardin to the first floor, and the bedrooms are moving down. There are mostly perks to this. The réz-de-jardin faces the brook and the main area of our property, it stays fresh all summer even if the temperatures reach high humidex levels and it is very very quiet as there is a 3 acre area of forest free of any human activity.. cool! And lastly, this area opens up to a main screened-in porch that is tucked away in a nook — quite wonderful for sipping your morning coffee or your afternoon tea -).

Soooo, here is the mumble jumble of a part of my living room. Enjoy and hope to be back in shape and ready to sketch in about 3 weeks time -)