Visiting with Lori (Viginettes)

Window into the Soul


I’m thinking a great deal about one of my characters, her name is Lori. I often come across her when thinking of something to write about, and most often in the garden. If there is an ideal writing place, then for me it’s the garden, not always practical, I’ll grant, and not on a day like today with clouds thick, smoke-charcoal, fast flying and liquid. Today is a study day. How fortunate, I consider, that I have such a place to write when the elements, like writers block, hurl in fast and furious. I begin to wonder about those places other writers go when looking for solitude, if indeed solitude is required, but then I remember that good writing will take the writer to any place. That’s when I figure writing serves a double purpose; writing puts me where I want to be.

It might be a fleeting thought…

“Mr. Frank…” the call is accompanied by a tapping on my window.

Her face surrounded by clear rainproof fabric. I push open the patio doors.

“Lori…what a day to be visiting!”

“The gate was open Mr. Frank, I guess you were hoping I’d come?” She says, kicking off her rain boots, on the front of which frogs eyes are popping. “I’m not intruding am I, Mr. Frank?”

“Not at all, Lori.”

“This is a nice room, do you come here often?” she asks, looking around at the bookshelves, the prints on the wall: hares pulling a sled, elves having a picnic in the woods, photos of my children, and mementos from far and wide, documenting my travels. But she stares longest at a picture of the Divinity.

“Most every day,” I answer, watching her move toward the chair. “Maybe sit here, Lori, that chair isn’t safe.” I pull a piano stool in her direction.

“I like chairs that twirl, Mr. Frank.”

“I understand, Lori, I’m sorry, but that chair…well, it’s just a place I like to sit from time to time. Maybe another time, okay?”

“Okay, Mr. Frank. I bet that’s the chair where you get creative isn’t it?” She says, pushing her little self onto the piano stool, her legs dangling in stocking feet. “Did you always want to be a writer?”

It feels like a very grown up question. When I came home on the evenings I had the look where the sun and wind had cracked and bronzed my face and my imagination had been working overtime. I was a rebellious kid and gave my mother some heartache. I would often sulk and skulk off to my room and lie there on my bed, imaging it to be a ship, the ceiling a star dusted night. I knew exactly what was wrong. I mean exactly, but I never learned to adapt to the frustrations. I was too frightened that love was something that would disappear as quickly as it had come. I grew up with the sea. It was on my proverbial doorstep and yet it was so far away. In my heart I was for leaving the land, not standing on it.

“I was always a dreamer, Lori, maybe in that way I was destined to become a writer...”

How does a man attempt such a thing? I can always make it happen on the page, here in my safe place, you know the safe place, my mind dizzy with thoughts tumbling and falling all over the place, my world made up of scent and taste and touch and a world made of words, of warmth and mystery and excitement. Of course it’s hopeless and stupid and leads to some impasse that cannot be bridged by words alone. I wrote a story sitting in that very chair. In it you kissed me on the third date and strange as it may seem all the pieces fit together so easily. The cool air sweeping across my face and suddenly the kiss was over. “Goodnight, Kelly.” I think I swooned, something flew out of me, I called you and you turned and I went up to you and kissed you longer and you held me close. We stopped kissing and you looked at me, smiled, touched my mouth and then kissed me again. We said nothing at all. You turned and walked into your study.

“…and you, what will you become, Lori?” I ask, watching her slide off the piano stool and put her froggy rain boots back on. “You’re going so soon?”

“I know you want to write, Mr. Frank, I can feel it. It’s warm and safe here.”

“Yes, it is, Lori.”

“I’ll close the gates, Mr. Frank. Thanks again.” She says, pulling her rain hood to frame her face.


“You didn’t say what you’d like to be, Lori?”

She stands facing me, the rain falling on her in a soft hush.

“I know you hate cliché’s, Mr. Frank, but I would like to be a Window into Someone’s Soul.”

I watch while her dancer’s feet, in bright red rain boots, disappear across the garden.


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Father figures

I'm looking out on a clear day; the first in a few, with a sky swept clean of cloud. The ocean, as far as can be imagined, is without malice. To the sailor in me that's a good thing. I have a bulkhead of memories in my brain full of tempestuous seas. My father was at home on the waves, but by his own admission he always felt a slight unnerving twitch when his vessel was caught in the trough; having almost free-fallen into a dark blue valley, and shuddered violently hitting the bottom of the crest. The sea, he always said, takes those who love her most.

“Mr. Frank...you there?” It's a voice I've come to know very well, having taken up residency in my heart.

“Hey Lori, sure I am, want to come over?”

“Help me with the gate, Mr. Frank.”

Lori pushes as I pull. She burst forth and years off my life simply glide away, not because the child is angelic, not because she is without imperfection, an eye is cast, but because her young limbs stretch out, freeing herself in my garden to begin her games. It's always the same game; life goes on forever.

“Hurry, Mr. Frank. Or you'll miss him!”

“I'm coming, Lori. Miss who?”

“He'll be gone an hour from now.” Lori's hand is reaching out to mine.

“Well, we'd better hurry then.” I said.

Mystery is all there is to mystery, unless you count on the coming of it. As her tiny hand fits into mine the heart is transported, winging through a hole in the mist and overhead toward a hill that wasn't there an hour ago and will be gone an hour from now.

From our vantage point I can see his vessel as clear as a Monet. Some men turned for home when the winter came, he did not. The sea held my father as surely as the shawl of ribbons held him at home. He cared nothing of the adverse implications that dogged mere humans; his blood was diluted with the salinity of the ocean. He taught me that the most ‘hostile' environment is the one we ourselves live in and not the barren, hard, savage places. He never asked me about writing and quite honestly I never had much to say about it, how I do it, or even why. My father was never a difficult man to deal with; nor hard to please. He just made happiness a habit.

“Why did you bring me here, Lori?” I ask, shading my eyes from the burning in the sky.

“I didn't bring you here Mr. Frank.” She says... a petal on the grass.

“He did...” she utters quietly, her arm horizontal, its directing finger as sharp as a stab to my soul. He was my ocean and my stars, my God and all his heaven.

Before the first day of school we took a picnic down to the harbor, thick with tourists, the air's fragrance sun tan lotion and ice cream. We sat under the harbor wall, in the cool shade, and I paddled around waiting for dad; he was busy searching between the rocks, but I caught the expression on his face — an excited, gleaming smile as he came wading in to the water, his hands holding sea shells and sea pebbles. In the evening he told me stories about the mighty seas, describing those deep-sea fishes, those black, those blind creatures, un-acknowledged, but living all the same. I enjoyed the summers but far more, the winters — when the tourists had gone home, leaving us to cope with the prevailing winds, floods and storms that were an integral part of costal living — and when the sea was at its most powerful.

“Hold my hand, son.” I smile and move toward him, taking hold, feeling its strength, knowing all its work, and its beauty. “Put these in your back pocket, lad.”

It's a moment, an hour long.

Lori holds her hand open, raising it to me, a child befriending a man who has the unique ability to lose himself in a mist that covers his reality. I have protected myself well. I will always be what I write; be made happy, sad, rich or poor, I am just what the words say and no longer feel any ambition to prove otherwise.

In the garden, Lori is holding something in her hand.

“What do you have there... in your other hand, Lori?” I ask.

At the gate she holds open her hand. There are seven seashells; the same seven seashells that sit on my desk in the study.

I pull open the gate.

“Seashells.”

“No, Mr. Frank, the man who gave them to me told me they were Continents.”

My work gets done. Life moves along and there are times – a few minutes every day – when I forget about Dad. Well, maybe less than a few.

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Unicorns


Far beneath the bluff the ocean crashes and tumbles ashore like a restless spirit. I've always been drawn to the sea, not just in my life but in my writings, using the lighthouse as my signature; a beacon shining out periodically. Dawn to dusk is my favorite time to stand here and gaze toward the dependable momentary flash that is Point Reyes.

“Mr. Frank...” This voice is never distant.

“Lori?”

“Help me with the gate, Mr. Frank.”

My home is a grand sight – the redness of its bricks, the yellowness of the light through the window, and the love it shelters inside. Stepping from the grass onto the gravel driveway I tell Lori to push. The gate swings wide and her fragile hand finds mine immediately. The sudden joy is almost painful. Almost as if the warmth takes me back to my own childhood. I was a pirate then, going away, my skull and crossbones flying and it was always my very own glad adventure.

“What have you been writing about today, Mr. Frank?” She asks – matter of factly.

Before answering I think about her question. Writing goes beyond just the documenting of facts. It goes to who I am and why I do the things I do? I write to put flesh on my bones.

“Well, let me think, today I wrote about a magical Unicorn.”

“You did?”

We reach the rickety old bench. I sit. Lori first looks up at my face, then down at my crossed legs. It's a clear signal. I uncross them and she sprawls onto my lap, pulling herself upright, tiny hand touching my cheek...stroking....

“Does the Unicorn have a name?” She continues.

“Daniel.”

“I like that name, Mr. Frank.” The distant flash in the sky catches in the cast of her eye. Forever.

“I had a father called Daniel.”

“Had? Lori.”

“He died.” She drops her chin, swinging her legs more rhythmically. “He lives out there now...” she says, “...way out there.” Not pointing, just looking.

“Maybe...with Daniel?” I urge for comforts sake.

“Mr. Frank, you know Unicorns live on the land, silly bean.” And she floats wonder into a smile between us.

“Not Daniel. He lives in the ocean, its where he becomes the Narwhal.”

“He does?”

“Certainly.”

Her legs cease their swinging.

There are those who find love, maybe not here by the sea, perhaps in restaurants or an office block and these people give each other a ring to kiss. I remember a time when all I had was me, shabby most times, dreaming all the time. It's not much but when I find her she'll know; that's what I told myself. Anything to keep my empty heart open knowing I would one day find her, perhaps on an Alitalia flight to Rome, or having her hair done in the window of a New York coiffeur, or riding a rickshaw in Rangoon.

“I miss him still.”

“How long, Lori?”

“Maybe born three centuries before I came alive.” Her voice quiet, solemn, true.

Is she playing a game with me, I wonder. The bones out there are the bones of my bone and of my flesh. It goes to the pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes all the way to respecting their hardships and their losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that they fought to make and keep us a family. It goes to a deeper and immense understanding that they were doing it for us; that we might be born, that we might remember them. How many hopelessly empty graves have I stood before and cried? I've lost count. How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow below there is love for me? I cannot
say.

“You've always been young, Lori?”

“I have been before, Mr. Frank. Been loved before. I look for those who touched me and my life: that is my quest.”

My feeling is one of a man bound to wonder about his father. To put flesh on his bones and make him live again, to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. For me it is a cold gathering of facts when instead it should be a breathing of life into one who has gone before. I am simply the storyteller of the tribe.

“You are a child of love. You exist. Not an angel?”

How I found you I don't know. I've been everywhere, seen everything I ever wanted to see and never found you. I've been afloat on every ocean and never seen your light calling me home, spent days lost in cities and never heard you calling, then one day, out of the blue your words came and fired my heart, brought every dream of every woman into my life and how I fell so madly in love with you. I mean fell in love, head over heels, head to toe, slap bang into the magical world of you and all you are. I've never been so rewarded by anything the way you've rewarded my love for you.

“No not an angel, Mr. Frank. I'm Lori; a child of the Universe.”

“Thank you, Lori, for loving me, for sharing your wisdom and your laughter. I will be a better writer, a more special human being because of you.”

“I better be going now, Mr. Frank.”

Friendship never wears a mask. It removes the necessity for masquerading and false faces. Carrying a friend on your back you are carried, lifted aloft yourself.

“I'll help with the gate.”

Together we pull on the big iron gates.

“Where will you go now, Lori?”

“I'll be in the yellow light, Mr. Frank.” And her smile is heartbreaking.

“Most of all I confess that my existence lately only comes from loving you.” I whisper, unheard.

I turn toward the house, the yellow glow through the window and the love beyond.


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Lighthouses

Standing here, cup of tea in hand, this hemisphere's first radiance lights the belly of a sea fog as the waves come ashore soft and shallow, bringing everything but answers. A low mournful hum, an ancient fugue composed for a hobo sailor, emanates from Point Reyes and spreads beyond the shore's craggy coastline. I'm thankful for my jacket this early morn, bolstered warmth, with my hands squeezed around the mug. What is it that makes waves turn and begin all over again?

“Mr. Frank...help me, will you?”

I set my mug on the bench and walk toward the gate. Together we widen the entrance.

“You're up early this morning, Lori.”

Her wild strawberry hair, the crinkle in her eyes, breath that would awake azaleas from a cold snap, her child strength, and her gentleness on any given day. How I welcome her friendship.

“Hold my hand...” Such a thing, I wonder. To hold a child's hand.

Standing there, reaching, she looks momentarily alone. Not complete.

“Your hand is so warm, Mr. Frank.” I apply a small amount of pressure tightening the warmth.

Be on the lookout for the strength in people, their gentleness and how they smile - on any given day or throughout a lifetime, be on the lookout. Complete them.

As we walk toward the bench I cannot but wonder where she lays her head? What brings her to the edge of the ocean; to this universe I call imagination.

“What are you thinking about today, Mr. Frank?” She asks, skipping into my lap, looking into my eyes as though she were adult.

“Friendship...gratitude...love and other grown up things.” I respond, covering her hands gently around the mug of tea.

“That sounds big!”

“I suppose it is,” I respond, pulling a woolly scarf from my jacket pocket and looping it around her neck, twice.

Life is full of contradiction. Marriage has rendered this man unique, virtuous and wise - so would thirty years living in a monastery. If I have regrets or feel inadequate, it comes from quarrels of my own making. It is easy enough to see the truth of beach trash; a rubber sandal, kelp aplenty, cans, plastic containers, but with imagination and belief, with someone's spoken friendship and gratitude, then these too carry every kind of treasure to its edge. Such gifts from those we know, love, or befriend, allow me to trade back the worst part of myself.

“I'm your friend, Mr. Frank.”

“Yes, Lori. No matter what chilly wind blows, I'll be safe from storms with you by my side.”

You have to get up early, almost anywhere along the California coastline to find the best shells.

Another friend told me: To know love and beauty, a man must first reside in its midst. Words that bring me back, accountable, refreshed. This is new again, I like it.

“I better be going now, Mr. Frank.” She says, removing the scarf and wrapping it around my neck, twice, before slipping from my lap.

“Where will you go today, Lori?”

“Beyond the trees, following the foghorn's blow, passed all those times I've had to tell what kind of world lies ahead to those still sailing the seas; those who have all but forgotten my name.”

Together we pull open the gate wide.

“Someone called you Lori?” I venture, watching her disappear from my conscious thought.

“Why, Mr. Frank, you did! Love, Ocean, Radiance and Imagination” She answers, not turning.

In the overtones of her voice I hear a startling maturity and, for a moment, a vision of an older Lori; older than teenager, and in her hands and voice she holds a courage and a confidence, the courage to believe in the resilience of life, and the confidence to barrel forward, her imagination more indestructible than love. Has she invented me just to be unbearably full, euphoric, and miraculously hers?

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Friends

The way I am with my friends is, while explaining a paradoxical trait to become more the gregarious loner, to be closer through my work, to communicate with them on the page rather than over drinks. I think it was Proust who claimed the only way he could truly be with his friends was to first leave them. I get that.

The one thing I enjoy about writing is the independence it offers me. Thinking and being on my own. That said I know that I will not be the writer I eventually want to be without listening to advice. Time was I never sought such a thing, simply wrote freely hundreds and hundreds of drafts. When I look back I worked on those drafts correcting what I believed to be wrong; what I should have been doing was look at what I did right, and improve on those things. What, after-all, did I want to achieve? It wasn't clear for a long time, but to be thoughtful, to be articulate and eloquent. Those are the principles I wanted to follow.
These principles have not changed. I wanted, vainly, to have my own writing style. That vanity has not diminished. All this is good. But there had to be something more important. After so many years the pin fell on its point! I wanted it to be fun. Today writing is the most fun I can have alone.

“Mr. Frank...can you hear me?” The voice drifts on the wind, settling somewhere between my ears.

I look toward the gate and my heart does that little flippy thing.

“Coming, Lori.”

Together we ease the big gates open.

“I came yesterday, Mr. Frank...you didn't hear me calling?” She says, reaching her hand into mine.

Where is inspiration if not in the hand of child?

“You did...?” I realize that I'm sometimes not open to my friends.

“I think you were busy being alone. You like that, don't you...” I would have answered something; something that might not hurt her, but she went on...”Will you give me a piggy back, Mr. Frank?”

I lay awake hour after hour, night after night, trying to imagine why I want so much to escape from reality: to be infernally alone with just my thoughts, my imagination glowing red, making thought my language, giddy, full of hope and anticipation.

“Sure, here...” And with a twirl I take her up onto my shoulders.

Writing is about reaching new heights, moments of pure emotion, defining real excitement, to see and feel things in a new way, from different perspectives; seeing life beyond the gates. To carry a story forward the way one would carry a child.

“It's kind of scary, Mr. Frank...” I feel the warmth of her hands on my head, the trust, and yes, the trepidation.

“I've got you, Lori...you're safe with me.”

“Because you love me...?”

How much better to be a friend and have their utter trust, to have been with them when all they hold in their hand is a shredded tissue, and to know why they keep a scrapbook on the bedside table. To be a friend to any child: the sissy, the dumb kid, the smart, rich kid or poor kid, the kids who wear thick glasses, the show offs, the cripples, yes, especially the crippled child.

“Yes, Lori, that is indeed why.” She leans forward putting her hands under my chin, whispering into my ear.

It maybe that when the creative juices determine, a friend might say something he or she would not say in the reality; encourage this change, for are we not trying to create a different voice from the real life model.

“I hate you, Mr. Frank...when something or someone occupies your mind so much that you forget me; I hate you for allowing that.”

Shame is a strong and powerful emotion; it has a feeling all of its own, and one that sits uneasily on the page, quite different from embarrassment. I'm not good at shame. Embarrassment, well, yes, I perfected this in life. The hardest thing to do, I have found, is to feel helpful toward a friend going through a period of shame. All these years the memory of my love, and how I failed in its duty every Christmas since, not the rest of the year, but Christmas Eve, the ghost returns, I hear the beating, know the failure. Oh God!

“I'm sorry, Lori...” I'm guilt's target and her aim is true, no one person ever missed me, not once.

“I love you...“ she whispers, “...just be here for me, okay?”

Clichés, like spitting blood, mark a bruise on the page, rupturing our character on the inside.

Our perspective's change when the position we observe is from a different viewpoint.

“I will, Lori. It won't happen again.”

She rolls my ears over, touches my face; love comes through her fingers, cooling my skin, inflating a ruptured heart.

“Put me down here, Mr. Frank.”

The sky is opening less pale. I cannot think of being alone, feeling a hand on my cheek, an urge for a child to be free. Maybe she came out of a dream, maybe through the gate, after weeping, lying on her side, because she'd been alone with whatever she needed. There are times when I care so little I want to maim the story's concept, really hurt it, but then the story is my pride and joy; still is.

“Help me with the gate, Mr. Frank?” She looks over her shoulder at me.

“I'll be here at home, working. Nothing comes to me but you. Come back soon, okay?”

It is a strange feeling, this writing: the unfamiliar, yet familiar; the real, deep sadness and yet heart stopping relief. I would miss her so much. At the same time, for my purposes, she isn't leaving fast enough. I cannot wait another minute to start caring so much.

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Balloons

Sitting here on the bench, holding my McMartini, (so called because I like to add one part Johnie Walker Black Label to the five parts vodka and one part gin) watching the sun in its last throws, leaving in a splash of tangerine.

I've been told you won't truly understand the ocean until you're sinking into it. That's quite prophetic, and I feel a little tipsy, and light hearted, having eaten a good tomato and watermelon salad. There are a lot of things I don't know, yet I write about them, if not as a writer looking for an explanation, then as man wishing he knew more than he did.

I wish that we had moved more slowly, taken more time to arrive where we are. Danced and dined more often, learned each others glances at leisure, taken note how quickly time is passing. The sun completes its journey over and over, why cannot we do the same?

“Mr. Frank...you busy?” Speaking of timeliness!

“Be right over, Lori.”

If Lori were a balloon she'd be found sailing around the world on the trade winds of friendship.

“You've always got the gates closed, Mr. Frank.”

When I thought there was only the ocean left; having accepted there wouldn't be anyone again, knowing there will always be sea water and sea memories washing into one another, it was easier to lock away the heart; nothing in, nothing out was a comfort not to be taken lightly.

“I guess I do, Lori. Here....push...”

By April's beginning the waves start to rebuild the beaches they destroyed a season back.

“Hold my hand, please.”

The two of us, hands bumping, being twisted every which way to fit together but we are pieces of a different jigsaw, different puzzles, and yet somehow we try to make something fit in our lives...even if it's just a hand in hand.

“You were thinking about something, I saw you.”

“I was...?”

“Yes.”

Thoughts return broken, splintered, shards of love returning from another universe after being flung far off into space. Fragments that survived, coming back at you speaking of love, or friendship, or what goes with what. Of course we alone know the truth, all the things we leave out, cast aside on a Monday; on Tuesday hurtling down into the Pacific Ocean.

“Daydreaming, Lori...just daydreaming...”

“Does soda help?” She says, seeing my glass set down on a tree stump.

An Innocent question deserves an innocent answer. Johnnie Walker, like sunlight, keeps a light on in one's chest. Keeps it unafraid to meet with the empty dark; brave enough to seek out that never-never place between the petticoat rim and the deeper depths.

“Do you like soda, Lori. I can get you one?”

“Look, Mr. Frank...look...look...” Her delight is infectious.

A balloon still in the sky at sunset, first over the low hills, sails on. I want to shout come down! Have a cup of tea! But the yellow burst of flame sends it soaring over the higher hills, moving toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Look...another...!”


“They are beautiful, Lori. Would you like to be up there, floating,watching all the sheep, listening to the farmers, hearing the cows in the field?”

Balloons can teach us a great deal about marriage. The beauty of it is in the flying free. Neither one tethered. Love is a wind, trust in its direction; you'll end up in the same place.

“I'm a water baby, Mr. Frank. I'm lifted on the dart of a dolphin, gentled by the swell, a child of the universe, remember?”

“I do remember, Lori.”

“I better get going...don't forget to finish your soda, Mr. Frank.”

Maybe we don't need a crutch to demonstrate courage, or to do something right, even if we can only help by sharing our ideas and beliefs as illustrations, not as a definitive roadmap. We must be allowed, and allow ourselves, to grow and to continually change.

“Did you lose someone, Mr. Frank?” She asks, standing against the gate.

“I was found, Lori.” I reply.

And there remains always, and imagination at the heart of everything ahead.