Hiatus

Sometimes I think of myself as a writer, sometimes as a photographer.  Yet the truth is I’m a professional student—at least Humdrum is.  Trixsay is often inspired by the results of Humdrum’s efforts.

My problem is that studying takes time—productive time unfettered by fibro and RA fatigue or by chores like doing the laundry and shopping for groceries.  At most I have two to four hours of free productive time a day.

With that time, I want to learn about travel writing.  As my cameras shrink in size due to my diminishing strength and my time in the field shooting shrinks correspondingly, I want to expand the writing I do.  I can write on my laptop or in my i-PAD or with a pencil, or I can dictate into a recorder.  I want to take notes while we travel on photo-shoots, then structure the notes into stories—creative non-fiction essays and stories—travel writing.

For example, you’ve read the two posts I wrote about our Brazil trip.  What you didn’t see was

• A Franciscan monk meditating on scriptures as birds fed on the seeds he’d scattered.  

• Or my spouse giving the guide one end of his walking stick before he unwittingly slid down into the water.  To free his hands and help himself out, my spouse let go of his end.  The guide fell backwards onto high ground waving the stick at the sun.  

• Or me sitting in the back of a boat trying to see jaguars through man-sized bodies while under strict orders not to stand up.  (I obeyed because if I fell into the river, I might well feed the piranhas.)  

So much of that story has yet to be told.  So much of the story cannot be seen solely through the photos we took or the poems I wrote.

I am going to suspend this blog until the first of the year (2016) so that I can study travel writing from themes to voice.  I want to organize my memories using our photos as reminders of earlier stories, to list the reasons people travel, and to study how to write personal essays.  Finally, I want to study how other writers incorporate these facets into their travel pieces.

Early next year we’re going to India and later to the Louisiana bayous.  I want to be ready to write those travel stories.

☻ Happy Holidays ☻

I'm Back

I’m back, but I’m not as organized as Humdrum was.  When Trixsay takes over, things scatter—and she always takes over when we travel.  For example, the neat narrow-ruled notebook was to be used exclusively for my travel journal.  But the information about most of the animals we saw is in my messy writing journal where any topic goes.

Worse than that, photography has begun to compete with my novel’s snowflake for my heart and soul—again.  I know I’m going to have to give up wildlife photography eventually for health reasons.  I was assuming that this Brazil trip would be my last one.  How wrong I was.

In the last three weeks, we’ve had one photographer invite us to join him and other amateurs on a new India trip next year.  In Brazil, our photographer-leader asked if we would be interested in a South Africa trip she’s thinking about for 2017.  So my brow raises, my heart pounds, and I begin to taste dust and smell curry.

I love wildlife photography.  That’s a given.  But can I physically endure these trips?  I decided that it was time to talk with my rheumatologist about prednisone.

Withdrawing from prednisone is a distracting process. My head spins like I’m riding a tilt-a-whirl.  I can’t walk a straight line, yet I don’t drink gin.  I’m just dizzy, ditsy me.

Monday at my rheumatologist’s office I received my overdue shots of the biological I take—one of those miracle treatments for RA.  It was time to withdraw from my self-administered flare treatment.  Or was it?

I confessed to the doctor that I started taking prednisone in Brazil.  She sees to it that I have a supply of prednisone on hand for flares.  I really didn’t want to come back from Brazil because without the steroid my corporal tunnel problem is worse, my feet hurt, my knees hurt worse, and my fatigue problems are downright depressing.

We talked about my feet.  My big toes tingle most.  It’s more annoying than actually painful.  She said I probably have the equivalent of corporal tunnel in my ankles.  The prednisone was treating all three problems.  She suggested that I could maintain treatment with a low dose as long as I get enough calcium and continue my Prolia shots.

I accused her of blessing me.

Trixsay was sticking her tongue out at Mysery.

I now know when I’ll get back to my novel (which already had been postponed at least five times for various reasons.)  When I break a hip or a leg, then I’ll give up wildlife photography and work on it (but I may be turning my photos into art by then).

In the meantime, I’ll write my blog (irregularly), process photos, and smile.  Trixsay is taking over my life.

Stained Glass Window at Chicago Museum of Art

From the Floor

“What?  Why does Jeter need us to climb in there?” Mysery cringed as she asked.   She  was looking at a backseat made up of nothing but a flat cushion resting on the hull of that propeller-driven two-seater.

“That’s the only way we can get to Little Salmon Creek,” Trixsay said giving Mysery a push in the right direction so they all could board.

Jeter ducked and his head went inside the plane following the camera bag, then he turned around to sit on the cushion and pull uncooperative legs inside so that the door could shut.  With more squirming, their feet were tucked under a real seat. Mysery was startled when the door slammed.  Close to tears, she sniffled.

Humdrum noticed a smell.  “Phew, what has the pilot been transporting—fish?”

Any attempts at conversation petered out as the engine roared to life.  Excited by the fact that the wings were positioned over their head giving Jeter a good view, Trixsay reached for the camera bag. Then she noticed to her dismay that the side windows were dirty adding a gray tinge to an already gray world.

Mysery huddled inside of herself keeping her eyes closed.

Once the plane reached altitude, Jeter’s Wee Folk could only be heard if they shouted.  The overcast sky was creating curtains of rain masking the view of the mountains on the far side of the bay.  Above the water, clouds were parting here and there to let light through and add sparkle to the quiet water.  “What are those things down there?” Trixsay asked.

Trembling, Mysery opened her eyes.  She screeched.

Humdrum ignored Mysery and studied the scene on the water.  “Fishing boats mostly.  Looks like they’re at anchor.  Those further out are pylons.  Probably marking where shallow water begins.”

“And that?” Trixsay asked as she focused the camera.

Humdrum reacted to what he too was seeing through the camera. “A tidal flat.   The tide is out.  See that river.  The flat is composed of silt which is brought to the sea by such braided rivers muddy with glacial melt.”

“How did you learn all that?’  Trixsay asked Humdrum   She studied the snow-capped mountains, some volcanic.

“In New Zealand.   Remember their braided streams?”

“Hello, we’re going down.”  Trixsay said as Mysery screeched.  The plane banked toward a clump of summer grasses, Trixsay put the camera away.

The plane landed and rolled a short distance.  Outside the window, they saw people waiting for them.  Mysery sighed with relief.

A few minutes later the side door opened and Jeter moved their legs out of the opening and down.

Humdrum studied the sand.  They were on a beach—and standing in a giant footprint left by a grizzly’s kin.

Alarmed Mysery looked for the beast with wide-open eyes.

Brown Bears Footprint in Alaskan  mud
by Jeter Sleet

Road Trips

My blessing for you, fellow travelers, is: May all of your stoplights be green.  Obviously this blessing doesn't count if you are traveling by air or rail or Interstate.  We were on the road last weekend which led Trixsay to ask a few questions about automobile trips—

• Why are the on-ramps to Interstates that loop around major cities labeled east and west when you want to go south? 
• Why are the Rest Stops one mile beyond the convenience store you stopped at to use the restroom because you couldn't wait any longer?
• Why do you always arrive 15 minutes after a Visitor Center closes?
• Why does a patrol car cut across the median to follow you when you've been passed by 90%  of the cars you've noticed in your rear-view mirror?
• Why isn't there more stimulating roadside reading along some stretches of Interstates.  Reading Slow moving traffic keep right or Ice may form on bridges ten or more times is boring.  Whatever happened to Burma-Shave signs?
• Why do some drivers interpret the word ‘yield' as a challenge to force another driver to move over into a crowded fast lane? 
• Why do the best scenes appear when your camera is locked up in the trunk?
• Why do men plan vacations when women's periods are due so they will be PMSing half the time and bleeding the rest?
• Why are zoos filled on weekdays with seven preschoolers per adult?
• Why are tourist traps so obviously tourist traps?

A tourist shop in Kenya
by Jeter Skeet

• Why does a two-star motel room cost twice as much in the center of town?
• Why are we continually moving from one place to another—tasting, but not digesting?  Why are we never in one place long enough to amass details that could become a setting for a story? 

In conclusion, I would like to offer just one bit of advice to you, my fellow travelers.  Fill free to call that driver who cut in front of you nearly forcing you off the road a ‘fucking SOB.’

Brainstorming

But everyone doesn't have to be a writer or photographer to help them cope.  Almost any pain-numbing distraction might work. I’m going to ask Trixsay to see how many she can list in five minutes after I take a restroom break—

• bake an rum upside-down pie

• read Dr. Suess to toddlers without getting tongue-tied

• sketch an ATV taking a dirt bath under a palm tree

• walk through a ghost town with museums

• play air-violin to Brahms’ Symphony #1 in C-minor

• work a 2000-piece puzzle of a picture of tadpoles

• talk to God like Tevye (Fiddler on the Roof )

• bathe this orphan orangutan--

Borneo-2011                                          by Jeter Skeet

My Wee Folk

Let me introduce the little people who live deep inside of me. One is the finicky Humdrum, another the fretful Mysery, and third the frisky Trixsay. I have no awareness of any others. Humdrum is a Leprechaun who can be a little difficult at times so I’ll let him have first say. 

Whatever you think, I’m not guarding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  I’m searching for one.  I’m not even sure what one looks like.  Yet, I’ll admit that I’m  driven by ambition. 

I’m not a cobbler by trade.  Instead of traditional shoe-making, I studied to be a chemist, but Jeter became a teacher instead.  As they say, ‘Them that can do; them that can’t teach.' 

I don’t much care what I look like.  Slouching comes from spending hours bent over books. Keeping up appearances wastes too much money and time that I could be spending on more interesting things.  Now Jeter’s husband has hooked her on photography—as if writing weren't bad enough.  Talk about distractions.

 If I have a fault, the others would say I am something of a control freak.  I don’t agree.  I’m just trying to help.

Humdrum has the knack of leading me into brick walls of discrimination mainly due to my sex, but that’s history.  Let me introduce the Banshee next.  Mysery is rather depressing to live with, and I don’t want to end this essay on her sour notes.

Woe be me.  

Jeter can’t ignore me all the time even if she want to. You see, I follow her around keeping tabs on health issues.  As if it wasn't bad enough raising three kids with nose bleeds, broken arms, and asthma, now it’s her own cancers, hypertension, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia.  I watch for flares and infections that are becoming more common as she struggles to find a balance between an under-active immune system created by drugs and a naturally over-active one.  She walks a chemical high-wire.

Enough said.  Where she sees woe, I see challenge.  Because of Mysery, Humdrum is applying his workaholic personality to seeing that I eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly.  It’s a team effort.
Let’s meet the third member on my interior trio, a Deenyshee who sees magic on the other side of my Looking Glasses.  I’ll let Trixsay explain.

They say I’m a fallen angel.  I’m not good enough to be saved or bad enough to be lost. Instead I’m one of the gods of the earth.  If I am, so is everyone else, little people and big ones.

I’m a poet and writer inspiring this attempt at creative nonfiction.  I’m driven by fun and curiosity, and I dream of turning photographs into photo-art and writing a blog.  

They say I’m capricious.  The problem is just that I have to depend upon Humdrum to learn how to give form to my creations.  He has a patience I can’t seem to find.   But I have to watch him.  He likes to take things over, and his writing smells like a spoiled fish. He is a decent editor.  Where do you think words like capricious come from?  I can just image what his photo-art might look like.  Oh well, what choice do I have.  We’re all stuck to this flypaper.

Flypaper?  There will be no ice cream for you tonight.

A version of My Wee Folk appeared in The Polk Street Review, Vol. 4, 2014

Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA

At the Helm-2

My Sea of Depression reflects gray skies. It has been this way for decades. I have long been searching for a way to cross that sea, but now Rivers of Infirmity flow into this briny deep.

Like a trawler caught in heavy waves, I'm rocking and rolling to ride out the pain. But Rheumatoid Arthritis and Fibromyalgia have tangled me in their nets, robbing me of both the energy and mobility I need to stay afloat.

Can you see me writing—

Today is dreary. Rain is falling. I soaked my knees in pain patches last night. My sleep was interrupted once by a thunderstorm and twice by cats licking my fingers.  I woke into a fibro-fog from loss of sleep.  I don’t expect to get much done today.

But I’m sitting in the café at Barnes and Noble’s writing this piece.  I’m wondering if I may have discovered my Bridge over Troubled Waters.  It is not a passageway. No passageway could stretch across this vast sea.

It is a bridge where Captain Kirk might have stood, where I can steer my body across the sea and up the rivers guided by suns and moons and the planet Earth (even though I’m often asleep when these stars are out).

Instead, see me writing—

Ghosts are out this morning.  I watched them walk about in a gray cloud.  I wonder if I should take my camera with me to photograph those ghosts—skeletal trees wearing tiny leaf buds, light poles fading into silhouettes, an SUV disappearing into a time-warp.  Fog is a natural filter.

If I navigate the world along the coast and beaches of my sea, my observations sometimes lead to words--and at other times, to pixels.  Like a ship’s pilot, I will learn to steer around the reefs or icebergs or other ships that inhabit the coastline.

I have learned that when my mind is focused outside myself, I’m unaware of aches and pains, of a future in which I can no longer control a pen or press a shutter button or walk through the woods in springtime.

Spotted Hyena spying on photographers
Kenya, 2007, by Jeter Skeet

PS.  I have had some problems with this post because of Trixsay’s inconsistent metaphors.  When I tried to revise it, Humdrum took over.  I hope this version is an intelligible compromise.