Getting Unstuck with Words

April 14, 2010 · by Joanna Paterson · in

She was painting her toe-nails in the living room when he came back from work.

“Er, isn’t this a working morning?” he asked.

“This is it,” she said.  “It’s all I can do.”

“But you’re not in your office,” he continued.

“Not safe,” she said.

“Not… safe?”

“No.  Take a listen if you don’t believe me.”

She opened the office door.  A cloud of banshees came shrieking out.

“You’ll never do it, look at you, what do you know? call yourself an expert, it won’t work, it’ll never work, they’ll find you out, they’ll find you out, better stop before you start, that’s right, look at you, what a coward, always stop before you start, run away, run away…”

He slammed the door shut.  The shrieking subsided.

“Yikes,” he said, “see what you mean.  But what about your laptop, a bit of a blog reading, some twitter time maybe, that always makes you smile.”

“Not safe,” she replied.  “You try it”

He pressed the keyboard and watched the machine come back to life.

“All quiet here,” he said.

“Still warming up,” she replied, “you’ll see”

He sighed.  She always had way too much stuff on the machine.

Then the wailing started.

Whispers, wailing, shrieking:

“Look at me! This is how you do it.  Not like that! This way.  That way.  No, stop, look at me! You’re supposed to face it fight it ignore it deal with it go on this course or on that programme or just be imperfect I mean look at me I’m so perfectly imperfect can’t you see how it’s done I mean honestly where’s your sense of humour a little bit of wit to show you don’t…”

“Stop it!” he said, “make it stop!”

She closed the lid on the computer.

“Told you,” she said.

“But surely you could read a book,” he said, both an eternal optimist and still unfamiliar with the ways of the creative infopreneurs, “surely that would be safe.”

“Try it,” she said.

“Pick a book.  Any book,” she said, “Just open a page.”

He picked a book from the shelf, and flicked to a random page.

The page sneered.

“You again?  Still looking.  Still not sure.  That’s you all over isn’t it, always looking always lost, never really cracked it have you and never really will, well don’t expect…”

He closed the book.

“I’m out of here,” he said.  “I’m going to the shed.  I’m going to open the door and sit with the lawn mower and some old engine parts and that broken deck-chair we were going to throw out last summer and half tins of paint and a strange assortment of bolts, screws and nails and… you know, stuff.  Stuff that doesn’t talk back.”

He went outside.

She went back to her nails.

Nothing for it but to wait.  Wait for the wailing to stop and the whispers to subside.

She’d tried fighting them, facing them, working her way through them, round them, despite them. Some times, too many times, they’d won the day, leaving her cowed, small, and drained.

This time was different.

She’d a new secret weapon.

Nothing.

She was going to do nothing at all, and wait for the storm to subside.

Nothing but painting her nails.

~~~

I know, it’s not like me to share stories on this blog.

For one, I don’t write stories. I nearly didn’t write this one, because I couldn’t figure out an ending, and the rapacious inner critic (to whom this piece is dedicated) started sneering and whispering “see, told you, can’t do it, can’t write stories, no stories for you, nothing interesting in your life..”

But for once I said: stop.

Even full of faults and flaws and a tail-away ending I want to write this story. I want to share this story.

Because it’s important.

It’s really important to me to learn how to do nothing when these wailing banshees appear out of nowhere.

To be able to name them, and see if that helps.

And because I believe, I really do, through gut and instinct and years of experience, that writing about things helps to make sense of them.

This one does makes sense, of sorts, to me.  I hope it does for you too.

 

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