She’s Got That Right!

“One of the great cruelties and great glories of creative work is the wild discrepancy of timelines between vision and execution,” writes Maria Popova in The Marginalian.

Creative engineers, too, so I have learned. Their work can take 10 times longer than planned. And it’s a good thing the guys who put a man on the moon didn’t know the work that would go into that project.

But Popova is correct. If we knew how long a project that was so exciting in the beginning would take us, we might never start. So, the Muse gives us amnesia regarding that timeline.

Somebody also scrambles my brain regarding other times, but maybe I’m just unorganized.

You know how some writers try to dash off a book in a month? Well, good for them. (Sarcasm) Two years ago, I tried writing 50,000 words while the pink dogwood blossoms were on the tree. The tree beat me by four days, but blossoms were on the tree for 30 days, and I enjoyed every moment with them.

I wrote the 50,000 words that was my goal. That didn’t mean the book was complete or even readable. It meant that I had written a shitty first draft.

Now, two years later, the blossoms have again fallen from the tree, only this time, they went out in a blaze of glory along with the spring rain we had last week. Now the tree is gloriously clothed with green leaves.

And my memoir is almost complete, although each day offers up a new memory.

 

 “When we dream up a project,” says Papova, “we invariably underestimate the amount of time and effort required to make it a reality. Rather than a cognitive bug, perhaps this is the supreme coping mechanism of the creative mind — if we could see clearly the toil ahead at the outset of any creative endeavor, we might be too dispirited to begin, too reluctant to gamble between the heroic and the foolish, too paralyzed to walk the long and tenuous tightrope of hope and fear by which any worthwhile destination is reached.”

(She’s the grown-up.)

If eight years ago, someone had told me that A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader (public library) would take eight years, I would have laughed, then cried, then promptly let go of the dream. And yet here it is:

It has great entries addressed to young readers, but it doesn’t look like a book young people would pick up. I think it is more for adults.

 

I love Anne Lamott’s entry:

“If you love to read, or learn to love reading, you will have an amazing life. Period. Life will always have hardships, pressure, and incredibly annoying people, but books will make it all worthwhile. In books, you will find your North Star, and you will find you, which is why you are here.”

 

That’s what I wished to convey in my memoir,

 

TIME TO STEP INTO OUR STORY

From

The Painter with a Pen

Jo Davis

 

Bridge Over Four Miles of Water

"Oh my god!" I screamed!

I was 196 feet in the air, on a bridge over water. Ahead, the road disappeared as it appears to at the crest of a San Francisco Street. No, like Disneyland’s Splash Mountain: you're floating log reaches the crest where you know it will plunge down. You try to look over the edge but don't see anything but space.

"Don't look down," I said.

"Yes, stupid, look down. You're driving. And you're doing down there whether you like it or not."

So, I screamed as the bridge-road took a 196-foot dive to a depth just skimming the water.

Sweetpea, lying on the seat beside me, couldn't see over the edge of the window and only knew that I tend to have outbursts once in a while.

So, why was I there?

Well, let me tell you, the Universe wanted to give me a thrill. And me, with my propensity for making wrong turns, it was an easy task.

I was in Astoria, Oregon, having just driven 350 miles from home, and could see my motel sign, a dip down onto a street below mine.

Ms. GPS was talking to me: "Turn left at Portway Street," she said. I spun around trying to see where Portway Street was and drove straight ahead onto the bridge's on-ramp. And then the little twerp GPS was silent. Did she tell me I had passed my turn-off? Nooo.

I was on the Astoria Megler Bridge, a 4.1-mile bridge, the longest continuous truss bridge in North America. It was built to a height of 196 feet at one point, so ocean-going vessels could sail beneath it without knocking their masks off. Or whatever they have on board that sticks up to that height.  

It was also built to withstand wind gusts to 150 miles per hour and a water speed of 9 miles per hour. The citizens of Astoria thought William Buggee, the architect, was crazy and said nobody would use it, but an average of 7,110 vehicles cross it daily, and Semis no less.

I had never heard of the Astoria Bridge, one of the best ways to have an adventure. I was fixated on that span of road ahead that was jacked up over the rooftops with a little bitty car climbing up its sloping entrance. "That doesn't look safe to me," I said, and then I was on it.

 Those aren't bugs up there, a tractor-trailer and a car.

 

 <-----------------------------------

The mighty Columbia. I would call it "Old Man River," but that belongs to the Mississippi. Instead, it's Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. I have been curious most of my life about the mouth of the Columbia, and I thought the bridge was over the mouth, but my friend, whom I was visiting, said I was over the river, you can't see the mouth as it is out in the ocean.

But there was water all over the place, first a bridge over a bay into the city, then the river four miles wide and its famous bridge.

 

I grew up in The Dalles, Oregon, alongside the Columbia River. We swam in that river before we knew Hanford Nuclear Production Complex upstream was leaking toxic waste into it. We used to watch great flotillas of logs pushed by tugboats being transported downriver to lumber mills. One year, the river froze with big chunks of ice floating downstream. We watched the building of The Dalles Dam, which flooded out Celilo Falls, an area of the river that was narrow, rapid, and created a natural fish ladder where you could watch salmon throw themselves up the rapids and thus gain access to their home spawning grounds. Folklore says that once the salmon were plentiful, you could walk across the river on their backs.

The Native Americans had a treaty with the US government stating they could fish there forever. Well, they got relocated. There are not many salmon in the river now, but some make their way upstream using cement-built fish ladders around the various dams that change the once tumultuous river into lazy lakes.

But I got to cross that bridge and the Columbia from the perch high above the river, a glorious sight, and better than a roller coaster. Sometimes the best adventures come from a mistake. Mid-river, Oregon changes into Washington State, so I had to drive to Washington to turn around and retrace those four miles back across the river. 

 

 

 

Sweetpea, my little dog, was so excited when we got to the hotel, she ran in circles around the room, up and up over the beds.

The following day, my friend told me that she once walked that bridge with a crowd of other people. Pedestrian crossing is allowed only once a year in October. A shuttle carries the people to the Washington side, dumps them out, and makes them walk up that incline (as punishment perhaps) back to Oregon. Her comment: "There weren't enough porta-potties."

I picked up a small newspaper from her coffee table called, as I remember,"The Columbia,” where an article explained the value of tugboats. The ocean-going ships—those tremendous rigs, cargo ships, and such-need moving water rushing past their propellers to make them maneuverable. In slack water, they are sluggish. The day's heroes are the lowly little tugboats that usher the big guys into the docks.

Prettier than a tugboat, this little lady escorted me down the hill from my friend’s house. 

 

 

 

 

 

Which Comes First the Margareta or the Flowers?

 

One year, when I was younger than six, either Mom or Grandma and I made a May Basket, I took it to the neighbors and hung it on their doorknob.

Our May Basket was a little holder made of colored paper and filled with flowers. The idea is to sneak over to your neighbor's and anonymously hang it on their doorknob.

That reminds me of Aloha and the lady on the beach in Hawaii who told me that Aloha is a way of life. It means to do good without expecting anything in return. (Aloha also means Hello, Goodbye, and I love you.)

I don't know where the May Basket tradition in my family came from, and I don't remember who instigated it, but I thought of it this morning when I realized it is May 5 and thought it was May Day.  However, I got my holidays confused, for May Day is May 1, while today is May 5, the Cinco De Mayo—Mexico's Independence Day, and for us Margareta Day. Hey, happy to celebrate a country's independence. We used to celebrate it in San Diego, and I would rather miss hearing a Mariachi band play Cielito Lindo, Mexico's folk waltz song. (See below for the translation and to listen to it played.)

This morning, I wondered what and if I should write. I usually post a blog on Tuesday and I will be busy tomorrow.

My uppermost thought this morning was what happened to us as people. Has entropy settled in?  Is it me? Is it prevalent that many people seem not to care?  Do you?

I felt that all our hard-fought-for rights are being stripped away, and somehow we are allowing it to happen. And why are people so concerned with how people are—black or white or yellow or red, gay, straight, bisexual, transsexual, Christian, Buddhist, Agnostic, Atheist, and want to legislate it somehow?  Do we really want everyone to be the same? So, see, I wasn't on the best end of the happiness scale.

 

 Then I thought of the May flowers and called my daughter to ask about the day of their wedding anniversary. I knew it was in May when the wild Iris' are in bloom. I looked out into the gorgeous spring day, and I thought of the fun and the Margaritas my best friend and I would order at the exquisite Bizarre De Mundo in San Diego, and remembering those salt-rimmed glasses makes my mouth water even now. 

 

 

My friend would order a fishbowl-sized Margareta as I was the designated driver. Her little boy and my two girls would run around within the confines of the courtyard, and we would send them to the toy store with enough money to purchase a tiny figurine they could add to their collections. My friend and I would talk for so long we would be clear-headed by the time we left, and on the Cinco De Mayo there would be a celebration with a spread of hors d' oeuvres in the court yard, and a mariachi band would play, among other songs, Cielito Lindo.

The rousing refrain is:  

Ay, ay, ay, ay,

Canta y no llores,

Porque cantando se alegran,

Cielito lindo, los corazones.

"Woe, woe, woe, woe,

Sing and don't cry,

Because singing, darling,

Lifts our hearts."

To Listen:

 

https://youtu.be/ojghyoSxsys

Cielito Lindo   (Sweet Belle, Oh Heavenly One, Pretty Darling, Lovely Sweet One)

One person described the song as a celebration of love, life, and the human spirit.

(The translation is more like from a lover to a loved one.—but then romance lifts our hearts.)

 

 

Through dark tresses, heavenly one,

a pair of deep brown eyes,

lower as they approach,

a stolen glance.

Ay, ay, ay, ay,

sing and don't cry,

heavenly one, for singing

gladdens he...

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/cielito-lindo-heavenly-one.html