Lost Kitty

I've been going through an emotional tumult the past week.  My kitty cat of six years, Juliet, has disappeared.  I don't know where she is, if she is hurt (or worse....God forbhid), or where to even start looking for her.  I feel helpless, and that is such an awful feeling.

I grew up on a farm out in the country, and while growing up I had tons of cats as pets.  I think at one point in time we had over 20 cats that lived on our farm and more than a handful of those cats were "my" cats.  So I am not new to the ordeal of losing a pet and the grieving process that goes along with it. 

But there's something different about it this time around. 

Don't get me wrong, I am trying to stay positive and hold fast to the idea that Juliet will come home. Yet as each day goes by my hope wanes little by little.  Juliet was mine and Dean's first pet.  She was with us through our years at WSU, through moving into our first house, and through our first year of marriage.  We taught her how to play fetch with a little toy mouse, and spied on her as she would sit in the window and squack at the birds outside. 

I'm reminded of her absence everywhere I look.  Her half empty food dish, the empty guest bed that she would nap on, even the litter box that I haven't had to clean for a week.  I never realized how big a void one little cat could leave in someone's life....but that is glaringly apparent now.

My sadness sits just under the surface, every now and then overtaking me.  Everytime we take the dogs out for a walk I find myself scanning the park for a glimpse of her brown fur, or the sound of her tiny jingle bell collar.  I'm hoping and praying she finds her way home. 

Until then, I'll allow myself to feel, to go through the grieving process.  It's really the best way to heal.

Are we ever satisfied?

Last week the hubby and I spent some time outside doing yard work.  We mowed, edged, raked, watered, did just about everything we could think of to get the front and backyards looking in tip top shape.  As the sun set that Thursday evening we sat on the porch, admiring our hard work, and taking silent satisfaction in a job well done.


Later the next day, we started devising a plan for spring.  We talked about where to plant new grass, when we should fertilize, and the prospect of planing new bushes and trees.  The momentary satisfaction of the work we had accomplished the day before was soon forgotten.  Our minds were moving ahead to progress.  To change.


Satisfaction is such a fleeting concept.  When we have it, we feel complete and accomplished.  When we don't have it, we're unfulfilled and striving to find a way to make our yearnings a reality. 


As humans we get bored.  We long for change.  This causes dissatisfaction to a certain degree.  But is it possible to keep that feeling of satisfaction around, or is it inevitable that before long we are back to feeling unsettled?


Small moments of satisfaction can go a long way, but if you're like me, your mind is constantly running down the list of endless To-Do's, wondering how there can possibly be enough time for everything.  This is overwhelming, and for me personally leads to feelings of dissatisfaction.


I feel like we are constantly bombarded with messages of "bigger and better."  We are being subliminally coached into thinking that what we have is never good enough, and that we should be making steps toward change.


Change can be refreshing.  Sometimes even a necessity.  But there is something to be said for staying put, for accepting things the way they are and being content.  Is it possible to feel this way always, or are we conditioned to eventually cave in and search for ways to further increase our satisfaction? 

I suppose I don't have definitive answers to these questions, and maybe that's alright.  Maybe it's up to each of us to find our own personal limits, and once those limits are met, our own personal satisfaction will be, too.      

Urban Legends

My fascination with urban legends began when I discovered the wonderful collection of stories by Alvin Schwartz.  Perhaps some of you remember "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," "More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," and "Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones."  In these collections Schwartz gathered a wonderful assembly of urban legends, some in their original forms, some rewritten, and presented his readers with some truly classic stary tales.

 

As a kid I never really paid attention to where these tales came from, but recenly as I was flipping through the indexes of the books I found that Schwartz made a point to not only include American folklore in these books, but also legends from other countries.  

Urban legends, in my mind, are cautionary tales.  They are vehicles for lessons on how our lives should be lived, and the sorts of situations and people that should be avoided.  I love these stories for their ambiguous nature, which in a way is odd because as a writer I have always been taught that details and establishing time and place are imperative.  But urban legends don't have to have a setting.  You don't have to know the time of year, or the backgrounds of the characters involved.  These are probably the only types of stories where you can get away with that.  Of course, this goes along with the notion that urban legends were commonly used as a vessel for passing down lessons.  In that respect, because the stories were being told over and over again, year after year, things like place, time, and setting weren't really a necessity.  They could be adjusted and changed as often as the story was told. 

In urban legends, the endings are always the best part.  Whether it's the young couple finding the bloody hook hanging from their car door, the girl discovering a man with a knife hiding in her backseat, or the babysitter discovering that the mysterious phone calls she is receiving are coming from a room upstairs, it's the endings that pack the punch.

In terms of whether there are any truth to these stories, the answers are somewhat vague.  It's always customary for the storyteller to claim that a particular story happened to "a friend of a friend," and so on.  For me, this adds an irresistable charm to the tales.  There may not always be conclusive evidence to prove that a story is true, but if it's told with enough conviction a seed is planted in the mind of the person listening to the story.  Because there is always the question of "what if....?"  

Again, the mind comes into play.  Regardless of what we know, regardless of evidence to the contrary, there is always a possibility that the unfortunate occurances that befall the victims in urban legends can happen to us if we are not careful.  And of course, it's very easy for us to believe that when we are home alone with the lights out, and hear strange noises coming from the upstairs.       

A Closer Look at Fear

Imagine you are sitting home late one night.  A storm is raging outside, rain is pattering against all the windows, and the wind is howling so loud it sounds like a large animal is waiting outside your door.  Suddenly, all the lights in the house start flashing, until finally the go out completely.  You're sitting in the dark....alone.  Then you hear a noise from upstairs.  Footsteps.  Someone is in the house.  You feel yourself start to panic, you start to breathe faster and heavier, you become lightheaded.  Just as you're about to run for the door, you look up the stairs and see your dog come racing down.  He had been upstairs the entire time, you simply forgot.

And yet....

Even if you had rememberd that your dog was upstairs, would you have immediatly dismissed the footsteps?  Or would you have wondered if something or someone else had found their way into your home?

What you just experienced, just for that split second, was fear.  But why?  And how?  What exactly causes us to be afraid?

According to Discovery Health, fear is a chain reaction in the brain that triggers our fight-or-flight response.  The stimulus for this reaction can appear in many forms, from a bee, to a clown, to an auditorium full of people waiting for you to speak.  Strangely enough, fear is an autonomic response, which means that we don't conciously trigger it, or even know what is going on until it has run its course.  

Additionally, fear is created in the brain and is entirely subconscious.  In the process of feeling fear, we are actually using two different paths in which to "handle" whatever it is that is scaring us.  By taking the low road, we are literally taking no chances with what has scared us.  Sure, those footsteps upstairs could belong to the dog, but then again they could also belong to someone who isn't supposed to be there.  It is much less risky for us to assume they are the footsteps of a stranger.  On the low road, one does not take the time to analyze and ask questions.  

Contrarily, the high road to fear response takes a much more methodical approach.  Your brain passes along the information of the footsteps upstairs and tries to establish context.  The brain will ask questions such as, "Have I come across this stimulus before?  Are there other possibilities?"  This all happens at a much slower pace, and yet it happens in conjunction with your reaction on the low road.  Therefore, by the time you have reacted to the footsteps as possibly being an intruder, your brain is working out the possibility that the footsteps could, in fact, be something entirely different.  The high road takes longer to travel.  This is why you can literally feel yourself calming down after a startling incident, because your brain has taken the time to tell you that no, in fact, there is nothing to fear from that particular stimulus.  

The overall purpose of fear is to promote survival.  If we weren't afraid, or better yet, didn't know what to be afriad of, we would get ourselves into all kinds of precarious situations that would ultimately lead to disasterous results.  Fear serves as a protecting agent against a number of things.  For instance, many of us have never been bitten by a poisonous snake, and yet we know that if we come across a rattlesnake we shouldn't reach down and try to handle it.  The fear of being bitten has been conditioned in us, and we have learned over time the consequences of handling poisonous snakes.  

To boil it all down, your brain is what allows you to feel fear.  Over time you learn to be more afraid of certain stimuli, and on that same note you learn how to determine if it is entirely rational to be afraid of something (i.e. the footsteps upstairs).  Of course, we will at times fear irrationally.  Sometimes we will feel afraid for no particular reason, or at least no rational reason.  This most often happens to people who are considered heavy media users.  People who are considered heavy media users consume more than 16 hours of media content in an average day.  Aside from an overall lack of satisfaction with their lives, they are also prone to irrationally fear normal, everyday situations based on the premise that something bad could happen.  The term "You've been watching too many movies," can be adequately applied to these situations. 

So, there's our lesson for today.  Now that we are all a bit more educated on the basics of fear, we can dive into the really good stuff and start exploring some of the tantalizing stimuli. 

Macabre musings

Alright, I'm just going to let the cat out of the bag and break the news to everyone out there who wasn't already aware of this.

I am a confirmed horror junkie. 

I have lived with this addiction, no, preoccupation my entire life, and there is absolutly nothing that could ever rid me of it.  You wouldn't know it to look at me, would you?  I know, I know, I'm a master of disguise.

So why the personal confession?  Well, in case you haven't looked at a calendar lately we are already halfway through the month of September.  Fall is in the air everywhere I go, which means that Halloween, the horror addicts most treasured holiday, is just around the corner.  This time of year my mind cannot help but wander over to the dark side, over to thoughts of restless spirits, haunted locales, and things that go bump in the night. 

In my opinion, there are a couple different kinds of horror addicts.  I consider myself to be of the classic breed, the kind who are naturally drawn to unexplained tales of strange happenings and cases of the supernatural.  The classic horror addict can appreciate a good campfire ghost story, and is known to partake in the original cult classic films of the horror genre (I'm thinking "Friday the 13th," "Halloween," and "Psycho" to name a few).

On the other side of the spectrum, there is the shock horror addict.  A more modern breed, this is the addict who needs the blood and guts factor in order to appreciate a thrilling tale or movie.  The shock addict thrives on the gore, demanding something even more outlandish and outrageous with each viewing.  The shock addict mainly sticks to movies, as the visual appeal of blood and guts is usually too tempting to pass up.  For this addict, the story does not matter nearly as much as the special effects.  

Of course, there is usually some overlap between the two breeds.  One does not have to be completely one or the other, but more often than not a person will fall into one category a bit more than they do the other.  I am not here to say that one addict is necessarily "better" than another; we can't help what we're drawn to.

Being of the classic breed of addicts, I am currently fixated on the subject of urban legends.  Tales passed down, often as warnings, meant to scare and to educate an audience.  I'm not yet prepared to delve into the subject on this post, but you can expect one in the coming days.

For now I will leave you with this dislcaimer. For the next month (possibly longer) the posts on IMW will have a darker edge.  There will be noticably less light shining through the windows as we close the blinds and prepare ourselves to explore the unexplained.  We will be delving into the subjects of fear, of monsters real and imagined, and trying to get to the bottom of what we're really afraid of. 

I think this is going to be an interesting ride. 

Starting the Process

You may recall a few posts back I made the conscious decision to abandon my fears and insecurities of my writing being nothing but garbage, and finally set out to do the thing I have been talking about doing for months (maybe years).



Write.

I made a huge step the other night in this process. I sat down at my desk. I turned on my computer. I inserted my thumb drive and scrolled down through the list of unfinished stories. At random I chose one of the documents, opened it up, and read through five pages of the infant manuscript.

Wanna know a secret? It wasn’t half bad.

I was instantly energized, somewhat impressed with myself, and excited about the possibilities that lay before me with this as of yet unfinished work. But despite my excitement, I knew I couldn’t just dive right in and expect the words to pour forth like water from a stream. No, first I needed a game plan.

Therefore, like any good writer and mater of organization, I proceeded to make an outline. An outline of my story.

I detailed my characters, setting, background, potential plot twists. I thought of potential problems with the plot, then thought of ways to get around those problems. I wrote, and underlined, and crossed out, and circled, and after about 45 minutes I had in my hands an almost complete outline. (Because really, when is any piece of writing totally complete?)
I felt so good, but rather than let myself rest on this accomplishment I kept going. Four pages later I was actually starting to see things happen. I could feel characters taking shape, I could see the end of my story tying back in with the beginning, and for the first time in a long time I felt like I had direction.

Now for the bad news.

I am not anywhere near the end of this process. In fact, I am barely scratching the surface. There are a lot of things that need to happen between the first draft, the second draft, the third draft, and who knows how many after that. There is also no guarantee that the end product will be as exciting, as promising, as those first five pages. There is also no guarantee that I will finish.
I promise I’m not trying to sabotage myself. If anything, I’m trying to force myself to keep things in perspective. Writing is such a solitary activity. You have to completely lose yourself to the people and things around you and just live in your own thoughts, your own ideas, until everything of every possible meaning is finally down on paper. If you can’t do this, it will show in the writing. If you can do this, it will show in the writing. In this game, the words rule.

For me, writing is a lot like warming up for a softball game. I kind of have to ease into it. I have to sit down, read through a few pages of what I last wrote, and sort of digest it. That’s like my warm-up jog. Then it’s time to test the waters with a few paragraphs, see if I can figure out what’s going to happen next. You know, like stretching one’s muscles.

Then there will be periods where I just have to sit and stare. Not necessarily at my computer screen, but at the room around me, the pictures and books on my shelves, anything at all. I just have to look and think before proceeding, because maybe I’m in danger of losing focus and taking the story somewhere it doesn’t need to go. Sort of like sitting and listening to your coach before taking the field.

After all this, I can usually get in the zone and keep the story afloat. This would be like taking outfield and finally feeling ready to go after a dozen or so fly balls. Writing is a major exercise for your mind, your imagination. I envy people who can just sit down at the computer and without a moment’s hesitation start pounding away at the keyboard. Of course, these might also be the same people who get a side ache while running around the bases because they didn’t take the time to warm up.

Writing is a process. It is also a craft that can’t be taught out of a textbook (well, certain kinds anyway). For some, writing can be one of the biggest gambles ever because there is no guarantee that anything you write will ever see the light of day. This is a gamble not only of your personal time, but also your self esteem.


I used to think I could get everything right on the first try. I used to think that editing, and multiple drafts, and drastic changes to the plot were nonsense and time consuming. But it was this frame of mind, this pressure I put on myself to be perfect and get it right the first time, it was this pressure that was really holding me back.

So. I have started the process. I have committed myself and no matter how long the commitment I will stay the course until the final word in typed. I am crawling inside my mind, looking for direction and trying to figure out what these characters are saying to me.

I hope they speak loudly.

Teenage Insecurities

Last night as hubby and I were out walking the beagles, we found ourselves walking behind a couple of high school girls.  They were young, probably no more than 15, and due to our proximity and the decible volume of their voices, I happened to overhear a bit of their conversation.  Below is a somewhat official transcript.

Girl #1:  "Look, I have all this fat skin on my stomach." (Words spoken as she lifts up her t-shirt to expose her stomach).

Girl #2:  "You are so crazy!  Everyone has fat on their stomach."

Girl #1:  "I'm not saying I think I'm fat, I used to think I was fat but not anymore.  But I hate the fat on my stomach, its gross!"

Girl #2:  "But everyone has that, it's not a big deal.  I can see your ab muscles, you are so not fat." (Yes, Girl #1 still has her shirt lifted up).

Girl #1:  "I just wish I could get rid of it.  I exercise, like every day.  Every morning, every afternoon, and I do, like, everything."

Girl #2:  "Well I'm just saying that you aren't fat.  You are so much skinnier than me."

Girl #1:  "Oh my god, you are so not fat!"

I'm really not trying to make fun of these girls (not entirely, anyway).  Because the truth is I remember what it was like to be that age, to suffer through those periods of insecurity, and unfortunately a lot of that insecurity is directly related to one's body image.

As hubby and I kept walking, we eventually veered off in a different direction than the girls.  Once out of sight, we each looked at each other and exchanged knowing smiles.  I secretly thought to myself how thankful I was to no longer be caught up on teenage insecurities...then I wondered if this was, in fact, true. 

I decided a long time ago that I didn't have the energy to be completely superficial.  I don't obsess about my weight, refuse to leave the house without makeup, or worry about how un-tanned my skin is.    

And yet there are still moments of insecurity, moments of comparing myself to others and wondering if something about my outward appearance needs to change in the quest for outward perfection.  There are times when I  yearn for longer legs, a smaller nose, or a flatter stomach.  It seems no matter how comfortable we are in our own skin, there's still a wish list that never quite goes away. 

I am fairly certain these insecurities begin during our teenage years, and I am almost positive that the conversation I overheard could have easily been a carbon copy of various exchanges between my girlfriends and I during high school.  And no, I'm not about to veer off on a rant about how inward beauty is so much more important than outward beauty, blah, blah, blah.  I'll save that speech for the after-school specials.

I guess overall I was struck by the notion of how teenage insecurites don't always go away.  Years from now these girls might still think they are fat, and there will probably be a list of other attributes about their appearances they wish could be changed.  I wonder if they will remember this conversation years from nowm and I wonder how many other teenage girls across the country are having these exact same exchanges with their friends.

Growing up puts a lot of things in persepective, but when it comes to something as cut and dry as physical appearance sometimes it takes even more than the passage of time to help us see and accept ourselves.  I think as teenagers most of us just don't have the life experiences to appreciate this fact.     

All in all, life is too short to worry about a little bit of fat on your stomach.