The 7 tea roses sitting on the deck, roots untangled and exposed, tilted in their makeshift pots, looked like fish out of water. I stared at them through the picture window. The wind whipped the mustard ash leaves across the peeling gray paint. We called a handyman to help shore the deck for winter. He is coming Thursday. And we are looking into gutters for the small white cottage named Indria. Another way I knew I loved Liz – when she referred to her home by proper name.
I have felt like a fish out of water most of my life. A grand sweeping statement, not made of detail or feeling. Living an alternative lifestyle is a long swim upriver. Strong. Strong and long. Luckily, I am a good swimmer. But lately, weak in the knees. And fish don’t have knees, do they? Only fins and gills. They breathe with gills. Oxygen out. Or in? Now I’m confusing lungless fish with the leaves on the oaks that bend and gnarl across skies to the west of me.
I’m longing for more confidence. Everything is going fine. Swimmingly, in fact. Yet that nagging doubt. It rises this time of year, when the skies grow darker and the hours of light, leaner. I am sad to see the light go. Happy for a snowy winter. Can you have it both ways? Maybe in pulp fiction.
The tea roses – Liz drove home from work, unpadlocked the shed, and out came the square-toed shovel. I was commenting on red Ravine and peeked up to see her bent body over a grassy hole. I had to go out and help. 7 tea roses. We inherited them from our friends who moved last summer, only 10 minutes away. They bought a new house and are not fond of the idiosyncrasies of hybrid roses.
But Liz never shrinks from a challenge. It is I who run. She has the greenest of thumbs and now I’m thinking about the time we visited the Jolly Green Giant sign down in rolling, hilly southern Minnesota, Le Sueur. She snapped a photo of me standing next to the pea-clothed big guy. Did he have a leaf for a hat? Oxygen. If I find the photo, maybe I’ll post it. But then I’d have to blur out my face and body leaving nothing but – this writing practice.
Last night before the rain, I pulled on steel-toed motorcycle boots and helped Liz plant the 7 tea roses we dug up from our friends’ home on Sunday. They have round white tags with silver edges and names like Queen Elizabeth and Glowing Peace and Elle and Mirandy and Betty White, but we gave Betty away to our neighbor, Bev. And when we were done, they looked happier and no longer like fish out of water, but roots in wet land.
And my fingernails bled dirt underneath and my hands smelled like a ribbon of earthworm. My hair blew back behind my eardrums and the wind was so loud she swept the changing season that seems to pound through my head. We walked into Indria and made chicken and dumpling soup. And all seemed right with the world until I remembered the fish that I’m allergic to now, and the lump came back into my throat. The same watery lump that dumps me on dry land, wondering which decision it is that will tip the gray scales.
-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, September 26th, 2007
-from Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – FISH OUT OF WATER
That’s freaking beautiful, QM. I’m smiling and crying and totally relate to so many parts of that vignette.
LikeLike
This is so beautiful, QM, and I had the word “beautiful” in my head in store for this comment before I saw that’s what Bloomgal called it, too.
I laughed at the part where talked about confusing lungless fish with leaves on the oaks. And again when you thought through the photo and then needing to blur out all of you and being left with, well, this writing practice.
Bless your heart. It is a tough time. The season, the age. I don’t know. I’ve been weepy, too. Transitions.
Thanks for this practice.
LikeLike
God, you guys, this practice thing is amazing. I can’t believe what came out of you, QM, in one 15 minute surge of free association around a trigger theme. It’s like a prose poem, with such depth and imagery that weaves back and forth so playfully with such profound meaning. THIS is what I don’t want to lose from your going to “submissions.” To me, this post is the essence of what the best blogging is about. But what do I know? I’ve only been at it for two months.
LikeLike
Bloomgal, thank you. I don’t know where it came from. But it felt so good to write a practice today.
ybonesy, I laughed at the lungless fish part, too. I read it after the practice and thought, “What?” Then I figured, well, in some strange way, it makes sense. BTW, I still can’t get my mind around the elementary facts – okay, fish breathe in oxygen from water through their gills, right? And then what do they exhale?
TIV, I’m new to blogging, too. And I’m not quite sure what it’s about. But I learn a little more each day. ybonesy and I will surely keep doing writing practices on red Ravine. It’s a part of us and our daily structure. And today it was a runaway train of tea roses. Thank you.
LikeLike
Beautiful — very stream of consciousness, full of spontaneously gorgeous images.
LikeLike
Hi Q
excuse – late at night and in hurry so haven’t checked the above out.
A quoin is a sort of wedge, I think you told me?
Take the vowels in widget and reverse them = wedgit – so a vowel-reversed widget is a wedgit, i.e. a Quoin-sort-of-thing.
Below is the rhyme-zone entry for Des Moines – so it would rhyme with quoins but that’s no good, unless the plural of quoinmonkey is quoinsmonkey!
Words and phrases that rhyme with Des Moines: (13 results)
1 syllable:
coin’s, coins, goines, goins, goynes, groins, joines, joins, joynes, moines
2 syllables:
adjoins, burgoyne’s, rejoins
A self-professed lady named Quoin
went down to the store for pork loin
(‘loins’ not mentioned in rhyme-zone I must point out)
She paid over some coins
to a boy from Des Moines
with spots and a bulge in his groin
(yello, Yb, this is for you too, if she doesn’t censor it first.)
LikeLike
Damn, I chose the wrong place to pop up with my idiocies – something made me go back and read your piece, (even though it is 1.45a.m. here on the S coast of England) and it is very…. In my cards, everyone has a typical feeling associated with them. Mine is bittersweet – so you can see why your piece resonated with me.
LikeLike
So you follow the writing practice, just as it’s posted- you keep the pencil/keyboard/pen moving the whole time? Do you edit at all or post it as it appears? Just curious…
I really have the sense reading that you get to the point where you mine an almost subconscious vein. Particularly the last portion; it seems to go between the images and the inner. It gives this reader a visceral impact of what was being experienced through your senses.
LikeLike
amuirin, yes, you keep the pen moving (no matter what) and time your write. If it’s 10 minutes, stop at 10 – 15, stop at 15. In the beginning, the timed writes help you focus in on whatever the Topic is.
Oh, and as for editing, we post the raw practices as they are. But we do use spellcheck (since we are posting these on the blog). We made a conscious decision to spellcheck in the electronic versions. When we are writing these in the notebook, we let it rip. All the mistakes don’t matter.
You probably already have the Writing Practice rules from Natalie’s Writing Down the Bones, but here they are again:
1) Keep your hand moving. Don’t stop until the time is up.
2) Don’t cross out. Don’t backspace.
3) Punctuation, spelling and grammar don’t matter.
4) Lose control.
5) Don’t stop to think.
6) Go for the jugular. Say the things you think you ought not say.
Thank you for the comment. Always a pleasure to hear from you. Looking forward to your practice!
LikeLike
QM: I’ve no empirical proof, just the dim, almost subconscious memory of many anecdotes; but I think those who feel doubts like yours, longing for that confidence, accomplish much more than the smug, complacent, and satisfied ever do.
LikeLike
stranger – I hope you return to this post to read my response to your two comments. Yes, this was the wrong post for the “bulge in his groin” rhyme. Actually, I can’t think of any post where that rhyme would fit. I was going to let the comment go, but I’ve let one or two others go that made me uncomfortable.
I have a pattern of avoiding and/or ignoring sexual comments (whether made in person or in writing) that make me uncomfortable. It’s a byproduct of having been sexually molested by my oldest sister’s first husband; I tend to absorb others’ shame for them. But I don’t want to do that any longer. I want this blog to be a place where I feel comfortable and where QM is comfortable. We don’t have a choice about being here.
I enjoy your quirky sense of humor. I hope you will continue to comment. But please make your comments salient to the post in question. Remember that you don’t really know us and we don’t really know you.
Humor is great. I don’t mind sarcasm. I’m the youngest of five kids; I love to kid and be kidded. But be aware that if what you say makes me cringe, I’m going to tell you. I think you can handle it. I hope so.
LikeLike
Yb
Rest assured – I love Honest and Direct: God knows there’s too little of it about. I’m truly sorry I upset you. You’re absolutely right – as a Taurus, I can get into throw-caution-to-the-winds, head down and charge mode BUT as you say, these blogging ‘relationships’ have a strange one-dimensional quality, where we ‘know’ the other person only in some wierd virtual way.
Sometimes I get drunk on words – that’s what was going on. Someone elses’s blog is just not a good place for that kind of self-indulgence.
The way you’ve meted out the correction which I obviously needed – honestly and directly but without vindictiveness, has my admiration, I promise you. Thank you.
In fact, this spontaneous writing is interesting and the results impressive – I should have paid more attention from the outset to what was going on here.
LikeLike
Apology accepted.
Onward.
LikeLike
[…] -related to post, PRACTICE – Fish Out Of Water – 15min […]
LikeLike