Floating Foam

I haven’t looked at my book in weeks. Instead, I decided to get sick. Very sick. So far, I’ve been sick more than well in 2010.

Today, I opened the file, crept back into the book, and I’m feeling rather uneasy.

I want to rewrite everything, strip off the paper and paint the walls, pull out the plumbing, lay down a new floor. In this scenario, I feel like I need to summon all the laziness I possess and just let things go. The goal was not to write anything brilliant or even extraordinary; it was simply and only to do it, to lay down the idea and let it be.

I’m at a point with this particular story where I want to pack it up and ship it off, but I can’t bring myself to do that just yet, not without a more polished product, a stamp of approval from my inner critic.

I’ll do my best to do my worst. It needs to be done.

I started work on the first draft of Flesh Pets this morning. I’ve edited four pages so far, and removed a full page of text. Pulling out paragraphs is really tough, as I have forgotten much of the book and would hate to delete something that proves necessary later on.

I think the editing process as a whole will go by much faster than writing the book. What I want to avoid is impatience. After more than a year of work, now is not the time to take shortcuts.

The first draft is done.

105K words are now recorded for Flesh Pets, and it’s still not done! I’m really close to the conclusion of the book, but I’m unable to stop myself from adding more, telling more of the story. When I started I never thought I would have too much to say.

Here’s a sample from the chapter I’m working on right now. In it, the main character, Charlie, has let himself go, let himself and the people around him down and completely isolated himself. He has just learned that his estranged ten year-old son has come to visit him unexpectedly.

I suppose you could make your own metaphors for those singular moments when you are “discovered,” when you are absolutely and undeniably revealed to both the audience of your life and to yourself. Maybe the police come to your door with a warrant for your arrest, or your best friend reveals some heinous betrayal, or you witness an act so vile, your faith instantly vaporizes back into the gas you knew it always was. No amount of composure can buffer against the catastrophic change as you instantly deflate and weakly attempt to re-pressurize for the coming wind. If such a blow comes with enough vigor, it will smash you with a new gaping mouth, darken those two duplicitous eyes, and crush your once tolerable posture. From your corporeal wreckage, you may even recognize the possibility that you will never fully reset these physical features, never again hide from who you are, what you’ve become, and what you’ll never regain.

In two weeks, my grandmother will turn 102 years old. I don’t think she’ll make it. She’s dying right now.

He face is a swirling drape of skin all sloping down to a drain that has replaced her mouth. It lies open always, a puttering vacuum that shakes with each attempt at suction. I could hear the morphine in her body, that thick low breath that comes with the stupor. I’ve heard it before, and I expect I’ll hear it again. As I neared the side of her bed, I picked up the sound of her mucus, bouncing around in her chest like globby pinballs.

Inout…………..Inout…………..Inout…………….

That’s the best I can do to visually describe to you this style of breathing, if you haven’t had the opportunity to hear it in the past.

The staff at the home that cares for her had called my mother yesterday at lunchtime.

“Come now,” they said. “Just come right now.”

My mother went right over. I showed up a few hours later, driving from near Sacramento to near San Francisco to get there. We were it. She’s two weeks from 102, after all. There aren’t many people left who know who she is.

I spent the night at my mother’s house. We had seven and sevens, talked about Grandma, joked about how tough she is, what a fighter she’d always been, how she’d probably be sitting up waiting for breakfast in the morning.

She wasn’t.

Inout…………..Inout…………..Inout…………….

She can’t be more than 80 pounds now, her skin just a hair thinner than the muscles that it covers. She has a thin brown pony-tail tied on the top of her head even though the wild eruptions of hair on her temples are as gray as ash. I can see more than just a vein or two behind the skin on her face.

She has achieved translucence.

After an early morning visit, breakfast in Burlingame, and another visit, my mother and I part ways in the parking lot to return to our respective jobs, the nurses ready to call should anything change in her condition. That was 9:30 AM. It’s 8:30 PM and no such call has come.

She’s still there, still here, still breathing. Amazing.

I was standing a moment ago in front of the kitchen window, looking out on our street, watching some leaves tumble by. I imagine her standing in front of the kitchen windows of her own long, varied life. So many people she’s known, so many friends and family and lovers. She’s outlived them all, watched the world go by, come back around the bend and go by again and again. Almost 102, after all.

I thought about pouring myself a seven and seven tonight, stirring the cocktail with my finger and lifting it in honor of her. But I couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t take my eyes off of the empty street in front of my house. Hayden’s asleep. Heidi’s out for a little while. It was just me in the quiet, watching out of the window, my body almost frozen, trying to freeze.

A dog barked faintly in the distance. A siren traversed nearby Gibson Road. The wind stopped troubling the leaves. I checked my jeans to make sure my phone was with me. I didn’t cry. Maybe I will in a little while.

Is that just the world moving by, Grandma?