life | Bertram's Blog

A Little of a Lot of Things

January 11, 2015 — Pat Bertram

Hurray for blogging! I’ve been on my feet all day, and if it weren’t for my wanting to continue the discipline of daily blogging, I’d be on my feet still.

I’ve been sorting and packing, which I’m sure seems as ludicrously long a task to you as it does to me since I’ve been working at getting packed for more than four months now. I don’t even have much personal stuff, maybe two dozen boxes of household goods, office supplies, and personal items, and that’s it. Well, three dozen if I include Jeff’s video collection and his VCRs, which I’m keeping for now. I have no furniture, no massive shoe collection, no clothes dating back to my youth, no vast number of books (no shelves to put them on, you see).

But when you’ve done a little of lot things for decades, you end up with a little of a lot of things. And that’s what I am having to deal with — a little of a lot of things and a lot of little things.

Today I sorted through a few boxes of flowers and flower-making supplies and condensed it all down to two boxes. Took me all day. I can see the frown on your face. Why would that take so long, you’re wondering. Well, the flowers are very, very small. To show you how small, I took a photo of this pot of roses sitting on a quarter. Each petal of each rose was individually made, and if you look closely, you can probably see my fingerprints.

I don’t know if I will ever make any more flowers or flower arrangements, but I’m not about to toss out or give away the thousands of hours of work I have stored in those two boxes. And that’s just one of the many things I have had to sort through during these past months.

For most of my life, I made crafty things for a living (a sparse living, but what the heck. I never starved), and I got good at creating unique items. Because of this, I can do anything within a very narrow range. (Successful marketing, unfortunately, is outside that range.) My two or three remaining wholesale customers for miniature cloth dolls (1-1/2” tall, fully clothed) want me to keep making the dolls. My few fans and my publisher want me to go back to writing. The people who have seen my jewelry, think I should go back to plying my pliers. Those who have seen my various scale miniatures think I should go back to trying to make a living at it. (Strangely, though thousands have seen the only piece of art I ever did — a one-inch-tall oil painting — no one has ever suggested I go back to painting. Do you recognize the painting? I tweaked it and used it for the cover of More Deaths Than One, which some people have called the ugliest cover of all time.)

The problem is I don’t want to go back to anything. I want to go forward to . . . I don’t know what. I keep hoping that someday my fingers will fill in the “I want” so I can look at it in amazement and say, “Aha! Why didn’t I think of that?” (My dance teacher wants me to keep dancing, as do I, but we both know there is no career in dancing in my future. Dancing is one of those things that if you start in your teens, you’re already too old.)

Meantime, I am sorting, clearing out what I know I will never use (and of course, those discards could be the very things I will need, but I’m okay with that), and packing the rest until I can figure out what to do with the stuff — or even better, until I can figure out what to do with me.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in blogging, life, writing. Tags: creating, going back, going forward, handmade miniature roses, making flowers. 2 Comments »

Catfishing

January 10, 2015 — Pat Bertram

Today I got a friend request from someone I knew online. I thought I’d friended her on Facebook years ago, but I couldn’t remember. I don’t see everyone I’m friends with since Facebook chooses what shows up in my newsfeed, and besides, I’d received a couple of other requests from people I was friends with, but who were separating out their personal connections from their author connections, so it seemed normal to me.

I accepted the friend request, and almost immediately got a message from her. “Hello.” Nothing else just the one word.

I responded, “Hi. I didn’t know you weren’t on facebook. Welcome!”

She: am sorry for me resending you a friend request it is just that i got a trojan virus on my old profile so this is my new account now

I got the gist at one glance — resending me a friend request, trojan virus — and didn’t pay particular attention to the construction of the message other than to wonder if she were using her phone to respond and didn’t bother to be grammatical. So I wrote back, “No problem – about sending me a request that is. A virus and having to start over are big problems. I’m sorry. How are you doing? No new physical ailments I hope.”

I unfriended the original her since Facebook has a cap on the number of friends you can have, and there is no point in padding one’s friend numbers with defunct accounts. Then I got this message from the new account:

She: Am good and very much happy now. Do you know Agentofficer Adeniyi morgan?

I started to feel a bit uneasy. This friend would never have said she was happy now. Not that I ever knew her to be either happy or unhappy, but she would simply not have used the word in such a way. She would have offered me a bit of wisdom, would have made a philosophical remark, would have mentioned specifically how she was doing, or would have asked about how I was doing after the death of my father. A bit hesitantly, I typed, “No don’t know that person. I’m so glad you’re happy.”

She: Agentofficer Adeniyi morgan? Who work for fedgov to help and support the young and old retired people, in the community department of compensation they are really helping do you got yours from him?

Now I knew something was wrong. This friend is an educated, literate woman, who writes spectacular historical novels, and she would never be so slipshod. Besides, the construction sounded similar to the spam messages I get on my blog as if the translation program the person used was faulty. So I wrote, “Email me, okay?” And then I googled Agentofficer Adeniyi morgan, found out the scoop, emailed my friend and told her what was going on. But she already knew.

I got one final fake message: “Really but i did tallk to him, because when the ups man came to deliver mine for me i did saw your name on the list of those that are going to get it too thats why am telling you if you have got yours from them?”

Apparently, this Agentofficer Adeniyi morgan or whoever is using that name, uses photos from someone’s profile (I thought he/she/it was cloning the account, but apparently it’s simpler than than that), sends friend requests to that person’s friends to try to scam money out of them. This person is offering $150,000 if you make a tax payment of $1000, and is targeting older people both online via Facebook and even by phone. So, beware of Agentofficer Adeniyi morgan or anyone offering you such an improbable deal.

This sort of scam my friend and I got caught up in is called catfishing after the 2010 documentary Catfish about an online romance that turned out to be something other than it was purported to be. Predators use catfishing as a way to trick the unsuspecting into romantic relationships, and as you can see, scammers use it as a means of trying to get money.

Actually, only the name catfish is new, the schemes and scams are old.

***

Posted in culture, internet, life. Tags: catfishing, cloning Facebook accounts, Facebook, Facebook scams, online scam. 3 Comments »

Letter to Jeff, Day 434

January 9, 2015 — Pat Bertram

Hi, Jeff.

It seems so damn pathetic that after all the trauma of your dying, all the grief, all I’ve done in the past fourteen-and-a-half months, all the striving to fill my life with newness, I’m still basically the same I was before you died. I tried to explain this to my grief group today when they were talking about the changes that a death brings, but after I spoke, they backtracked and said that death brought changes to our lives, not us. That we didn’t change. Shouldn’t we? More specifically, shouldn’t I? After all I’ve gone through, how can I still be so much the same?

They talked about the importance of hope at the meeting, too. For all these months, I have had hope. Hope for a new direction in life, hope for success, hope for some sort of personal growth (and I don’t mean a tumor). But now it seems as if all my hopes have died stillborn.

If my continued survival isn’t about hope, if it’s causing me more pain than happiness, what’s the point? I’m curious how this hand will play out, and that’s what’s keeping me going. Maybe it’s enough, particularly since I think people are wrong about needing hope. It’s easier (and less hurtful) to live without hope. So many of my dreams never came to fruition. So much of my grief was about hopes that were never fulfilled. Wouldn’t it have been better if I hadn’t hoped for anything in the first place? Sometimes I wonder if what I miss is what I never had. It’s just too damn sad — you, me.

Adios, compadre.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in grief, life. Tags: do people change, do we change, importance of hope, missing what I never had, starting a new life. 1 Comment »

Back to Class

January 6, 2015 — Pat Bertram

It’s been a long time since I’ve had the experience of a break from school, but I’ve been taking dance classes, and since the year-end holidays all fell in the middle of our class week, we haven’t had lessons for a long, long, long time. Well, it wasn’t that long, but considering how important those sessions have become to me, it seemed as if I’d started leading a whole other danceless life during the break.

Luckily today, our first day back, we took it slowly. Much strength and elasticity is lost with just a couple of weeks of inactivity, and there is no way to make up the loss in two-and-a-half hours. (One and a half hours for ballet, one hour for Arabic dancing.) Supposedly every day lost to dancing takes a week to make up when one is young, so there’s no telling how long it will take now. I’ll just be patient with myself and hope the teacher will do the same.

Still, it was good to be moving, to feel alive. Since most of today’s ballet class wasn’t taken up with all our usual barre exercises and stretches, we had time to learn a little dance. “Dance” might be too grand a word for those few basic steps, but it was elegant for all that, with développés, pas de bourrées, glissades, sauté arabesques, and soutenu turns. (I’m showing off. Can you tell?)

It’s amazing to me that anyone is willing to teach someone who comes to dance at such an advanced age, particularly since I will never be a “real” dancer, just as I will never be a “real” writer. Neither dance nor writing will ever be the sole focus of my life. I will not tolerate suffering for the sake of either art. (Quite frankly, I have no interest in suffering at all.) I have no passion to bring to either activity — I seem to be missing the passion gene, and the consensus seems to be you need passion to be a dancer or a writer. Although writing and dancing bring much life to my life, both seem to be not ends so much as means to what I really want, though continuing to be frank, I have no idea what I really want. (Which is sort of the problem, because of course, if I knew what I wanted, I could start doing whatever it is I needed to do in order to get what I wanted.)

But I’m getting off the topic of this particular bloggerie, which is today, dance, life.

Today I danced. Today I lived. Can’t ask for better than that.

***

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: ballet, ballet class, barre, dance class, dancing, passion for dance, real dancer. 2 Comments »

A Desert Revelation

January 4, 2015 — Pat Bertram

Ideas of an epic adventure of my own seem unreal at times, and yet, in my researches, I’ve been coming across the blogs of many older women who have undergone great losses and great grief, and are now finding solo adventures in their latter years. Living in RVs, stealth camping, kayaking in all 50 states, thru-hiking various national trails, pumping iron. It’s as if once women have been set free from all ties, we become bold and adventurous, treating the whole world as our own back yard.

Today, out walking in the desert, I had an interesting revelation. I was thinking about these women and their great adventures, thinking about the possibility of my own adventure walking or living on the road. I was wondering which I should do first, get a van conversion or go walking, when it hit me — do both at once.

I talk about thru-walking the Pacific Crest Trail, maybe walking across the United States, or some other epic walk, but such an athletic feat is beyond my strength and knowledge, at least for now. Even if there weren’t the problem of carrying enough water to get me through long dry sections, there is the greater problem that I don’t like backpacking. I do, however, like seeing the world at a walking pace of about 3 miles per hour.

I know people who would like an adventure but don’t have the financial or physical resources for an epic journey of their own. What if I got the van or camper, let these people use it, even paid for their expenses, and all they would have to do is meet me at the end of each day with my gear and supplies. The rest of the time, they could loll on the beach, enjoy the scenery from a mountaintop, maybe find the inspiration and the time to finally write again.

Meantime, I’d be just walking along, nothing in my mind but the next step, nothing in my pockets but enough water and food to get me to the rendezvous point.

I could even go to where such a willing volunteer lived, and find somewhere to walk around that region.

And if I had extended periods between walks? Come back here and take dance classes, of course.

***

Posted in culture, life. Tags: great grief, Pacific Crest Trail, solo adventures, van conversion, walking in the desert, women alone. 4 Comments »

Trying to Imagine a New Life

January 3, 2015 — Pat Bertram

It’s amazing the convoluted paths one’s brain takes when one needs to start building a new life.

Technically, I suppose, it’s never possible to start anew since we always drag ourselves and our experiences with us, but still, for me and others I have recently met, our old life has expired, become unworkable, or no longer exists. In my case, my shared life with my life mate/soul mate no longer exists. He no longer exists, at least not here on earth. I still have many of our shared belongings, but even if I wanted to, there is no way to retrace my steps. Not only that, my current life has expired. When my old life ceased to exist, I filled an interim niche looking after my nonagenarian father. And now he, too, is gone. Even if by some stroke of good luck (or bad) and I were allowed to stay here in my father’s house, it would not be workable because I simply would not have the resources to keep up such a huge place.

And so I am trying to imagine a new life.

I often think of living on foot, at least for a while. Although it seems physically impossible for me, I can’t get the idea out of my head. Could I? Would I? Should I? It’s possible that life itself would dictate my taking the massive first step. For example if my ancient VW were to break down in the middle of nowhere, I would need to start walking. And perhaps I would simply keep on walking.

Or, my latest harebrained idea — a friend has broached the subject of my visiting Florida. A long shot, and only in the first stages of consideration, but my thoughts immediately glommed onto the idea of walking back across the USA if the trip came to fruition. Supposedly, if one is going to make a cross-country trip on foot, east to west is best — probably because there are more resources in the east, such as close-flung towns and more water sources than in the dry west.

I would like to visit a friend in Louisiana, a very dear friend I have yet to meet. Could I walk to her house from deep in the Florida panhandle? There are roads, of course, mainly highways, but then I checked the national trails map, and oh, my. There is a Florida National Scenic Trail for hikers. (Click on the map, and then click again to zoom out if you’d like to see a higher resolution image.) The Florida National Scenic Trail is not finished, but there are connecting spurs via rail-to-trail paths and other such footpaths from completed section to completed section. (Rail-to-trail is a system of abandoned railroad tracks and rail beds that have been converted to various trails.) And so my mind spins wonderful possibilities as well as even more wonderful impossibilities.

I have been thinking about some sort of trek for so long, some day I will have to attempt . . . something. Even if I manage a single day and night, that would still be an adventure.

Meantime, I’m also considering the possibility of some sort of van conversion for an extended road trip. Should I buy something already outfitted like a mini camper? Should I get something inexpensive in case I end up hating the idea? (I’ve been researching renting such a camper van, and the cost for a year is more than the purchase price of a decent used model.) Or should I buy something that would also serve as a city vehicle, and just a throw a mattress in the back to start? Would I want to live in a van for any length of time? (That old Saturday Night Live sketch about living in a van down by the river comes to mind.) And if so, would I want to design and build my own interior as a couple of people have suggested?

I like the idea of living large in small spaces — there seem to be a growing trend to miniscule homes, 300 square feet or less. I considered such a house, even went so far as to check out the feasibility of building one myself, but to tow the finished product would require a stronger vehicle than I have or would want to have. Still, the idea of designing my own place based on my basic needs is an interesting concept. What do I need? A bed, of course. A computer and electricity to run it. Some sort of potty. Maybe cooking facilities, maybe not. Maybe a lovely and lovingly furnished interior, maybe not. Maybe a shower, maybe not. (Yeah, I know, “maybe” includes “maybe not” but I liked the alliteration and the emphasis.)

Some people who have chosen such a lifestyle have omitted bathing facilities from their tiny space, instead opting for a membership at a national health club where hot showers would be available. An interesting solution.

People caution me about planning too much. They keep telling me I have no idea what might happen, and that is true, so I am simply playing with these ideas. Maybe, contrary to my gut feeling, my father’s house won’t sell right away. Maybe someone will offer a suggestion that I fall in love with for my next step, something I didn’t imagine. Maybe . . . well, I did say I have no idea what might happen so it’s foolish to continue listing maybes.

But I will continue to wonder what it is I need from life, what it is I need for life.

***

Posted in culture, life. Tags: building a new life, camper van, conversion van, Florida National Scenic Trail, hiking, small houses, walking across the USA. 2 Comments »

A Good Day

January 2, 2015 — Pat Bertram

I woke this morning with no energy, no enthusiasm for anything, no ideas. I lay there dozing until long after the time I would ever admit to staying in bed. I finally dragged myself from the warmth to take a walk. Took more energy than it should have. In fact, when I sat to put on my shoes before I left, I just sat. And sat. Not thinking anything, not doing anything. Just sitting.

Eventually, I did make it out the door. It was a lovely day — blue skies, moderate temperatures, barely moving air currents. Due to other activities, I haven’t been out to the desert in two or three weeks, so it was nice reconnecting to that wild world. (Or as wild as land so close to a housing development ever gets.)

As I walked, I found myself wondering what it would be like to simply continue walking, heading . . . wherever. And it dawned on me why the idea of an epic walk keeps nagging at me. I feel most myself when I am walking. To be honest, I’m not sure exactly what that means except perhaps that when I am walking, I want nothing else, need nothing else. The easy movement, the ever-so-slightly changing scenery, the present moment are all enticingly hypnotic.

I am not so naïve as to believe that an epic walk would be as beguiling. There would be no shelter from the night or unpleasant weather, no home base, no ready source of water or food once I used up the small amount I carried. And yet. And yet . . . I’m sitting here smiling at the very idea.

I often express my worry about settling down — not just creating a nest for myself, but settling for less than I want. When I expressed that sentiment to a friend today, she first asked me what I wanted. I had no answer other than that I wanted to become enlightened, stronger, wiser, more courageous. She told me that I was too far on my path ever to settle even if I did settle, which is comforting. Life is a terrible thing to waste, and I want . . . I want . . . I want something I can’t even imagine.

Luckily for me, all I have to deal with is today. And today, I got out of bed. Went for a walk. Lived in the moment. And now I am writing.

As it turned out, despite the inauspicious beginning, this was a good day.

I hope your day was rewarding, too.

***

Posted in being me, life, writing. Tags: a good day, couldn't get out of bed, naive, settling, settling down, sitting, walking. 6 Comments »

Unimagined Possibilities

January 1, 2015 — Pat Bertram

This new year will bring many changes to my life, though I have no idea what those changes will be. I will be leaving my father’s house, of course, but other than that, the future is blank. (Not bleak, just blank.)

The only thing I know is that I don’t want to settle down somewhere and stagnate. I realize that settling down does not necessarily bring stagnation, but in my case, I am afraid that entropy would win. (If you’re not familiar with entropy, my understanding is that entropy is the quantity of energy in a closed system that becomes disordered and unavailable to effect changes in the system, and so the system gradually degrades into chaos, or even worse, inertia.)

The fireworks reduction to inertia is not inevitable. Some of the disordered energy can be allowed to escape, which reduces the amount of entropy, and new energy can be introduced. The problem is that when one lives alone, it takes a lot of energy to introduce new energy to the system. It’s so much easier just to go with the flow, and if you have no one to disrupt the flow as you do when you are living with someone, the flow is toward a decrease in available energy. At least for me and other introverts. Extroverts by their nature increase the energy in a system. It’s what makes them extroverts. (The strange irony here seems to be that although introverts prefer to be alone, they need a shared life much more than extroverts.)

At the beginning of a settled life, I would do things, of course, but as time passed, I would become entrenched in my habits, would get tired of the same sights, the same errands, the same . . . everything. And my world would shrink and continue shrinking until I became the crazy cat lady sans cats.

Such a shrinking is natural. Bruce Chatwin understood our heritage as nomads and explained the necessity for keeping on the move, especially by foot. Chatwin wrote:

Some American brain specialists took encephalogram readings of travellers. They found that changes of scenery and awareness of the passage of seasons through the year stimulated the rhythms of the brain, contributing to a sense of well being and an active purpose in life. Monotonous surroundings and tedious regular activities wove patterns which produce fatigue, nervous disorders, apathy, self disgust and violent reactions.

Chatwin goes on to say: We should follow the Chinese poet Li Po in “the hardships of travel and the many branchings of the way”. For life is a journey through wilderness. This concept, universal to the point of banality, could not have survived unless it was biologically true. None of our revolutionary heroes is worth a thing until he has been on a good walk. Che Guevara spoke of the “nomadic phase” of the Cuban Revolution. Look what the Long March did for Mao Tse Tung, or Exodus for Moses.

I do not know if I have the physical capacity for walking long distances carrying a heavy pack. (Hmm. Maybe I could hire a Sherpa. Are there Sherpas for hire here in the USA?) I have no interest in being a revolutionary hero or a spiritual leader, but I do want, need . . . more. More than stagnation. More than simply enduring the coming years. More than any life I can imagine.

If in fact, we do live in the closed system of our lives, perhaps it is possible to poke holes in that system to let in more light. Perhaps it is possible to gently push back the boundaries of that system to allow for greater breadth or let new experiences create greater depth.

Perhaps it is possible to . . .

The thought of how that italicized sentence might end fuels my new year.

Wishing you a year of yet unimagined possibilities.

***

Posted in culture, life. Tags: Bruce Chatwin, chaos, entropy, journey through wilderness, nomads, revolutionary heroes, unimagined possibilities. 5 Comments »

The Extraordinariness of Ordinary Things

December 31, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been invited to a New Year’s Eve party — nothing fancy, just pizza, salad, boxed wine, and sparkling cider. I’m looking forward to it with all the expectation as if it were a fancy dress ball because this will be my very first New Year’s Eve party. Even as I write these words, it doesn’t seem possible, but it’s true. In my entire life, I have never been to a New Year’s Eve party.

New Year’s doesn’t meant that much to me. It’s a relatively arbitrary date, and mostly signifies nothing but a new calendar, which, I suppose, is something to celebrate. My new calendar has 365 blank squares, and there is the question of how I will use those squares. With notations of appointments and special days, of course. Perhaps with reminders of bills to pay and chores to do. But many of those squares will be blank. What will I do with those blank days? I can’t even begin to guess.

I know I will be leaving my father’s house, which has been both a place of refuge in my grief and a place of horror because of my schizophrenic brother and dying father. Although I have been thinking of this leaving for several years now, I still haven’t a clue what to do with my freedom. How does one choose where to go or what to do when there is no particular reason to be anywhere, no particular reason to do anything? (Well, there are dance classes here, and good friends, so those are important considerations, but I do not want to settle down, not here, not anywhere.)

But all that is yet to come. This is the last day of the old calendar, and for the first time ever I have the square filled in. New Year’s Eve party. 6:00pm.

Not only have I never gone to a New Year’s Eve party, I’ve seldom even stayed up to midnight to usher in the New Year, though for the past few years, ever since the death of my life mate/soul mate, I’ve made a point of toasting the brand new year with a crystal goblet of sparkling cider as a symbol of my commitment to living a full life.

Despite all my devastating losses, I am living fully. Well, partying fully, anyway. I’ve never gone to so many parties in such as short time as I did these past few weeks. Thanksgiving dinner, birthday party, pizza/taco party, Christmas party, Christmas Eve party, Christmas dinner, luncheon, three tea parties (those three I hosted).

And now a New Year’s Eve party.

It’s ironic when I think of it. I’ve spent the past couple of years dreaming of exotic and impossible adventures (impossible because they are beyond my physical capacities) in the hopes of finding transcendence or at least a new way of looking at life. Maybe, for me, transcendence will be found in the ordinary. My life has been counter to most people’s lives. I’ve lived a life of the heart and mind — loving profoundly, grieving deeply, reading profusely, thinking enormously — that the ordinary everyone else takes for granted is, for me . . . truly extraordinary.

Wishing you an extraordinary New Year’s Eve.

***

Posted in culture, life. Tags: new calendar, new year, New Year's Eve party, New Year’s Eve, ordinary things. 4 Comments »

Here’s To a Life Of Insecurity, Uncertainty, Failure

December 30, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday was a wonderful day. Not only did I have two separate and delicious get-togethers with good friends, I felt no sadness, no tears, no angst when I was alone again.

I seem to have turned a corner — maybe not with the sadness, because sadness seems to be a constant underlying theme of my life even when I am otherwise happy, but with the angst. At the moment, I feel good. Unconflicted. Accepting. Though to be honest, I don’t know what it is I am accepting. Maybe that uncertainty is an acceptable way of life — because, truly, any certainty we feel is a matter of hope over reality. That the unusual doesn’t usually happen helps fuel the fantasy of certainty, but anything can happen to any of us at any time.

A friend sent me the following text: So here’s to a life of insecurity, uncertainty, failure, and most of all adventure. And oh, that sounds so strangely wonderful! We tend to think that security, certainty, and success are all things to be sought after, but what if they aren’t? What if security lies in uncertainty and failure? What if certainty lies in failure and insecurity? What if success lies in failure, uncertainty, and insecurity?

I don’t know what success is since it remains elusive. I don’t know what failure is, either, though I have suffered too much of it. Still, success sometimes brings unrealistic expectations, forces us into a role we aren’t comfortable with, or steals time from loved ones, and aren’t those all failures? Failure often brings knowledge of a sort, and isn’t truth a success?

Truth has always excited me, though the keys to life’s mysteries — life’s truths — seem out of reach. Each truth learned hints at greater truths, and so we truth seekers are always seeking. (Always failing, too, because truth can never be grasped.)

Although I miss my soul mate with all my mind and heart, when I am brutally honest with myself, I know we went as far as we could together in our search for truth. For us to have remained together would have stifled that glow of barely sensed knowledge, would have kept us tethered to ordinariness. But by his death, he took me to the ends of my reach, showed me emotions I didn’t know existed, let me feel the bonds of eternity and the bounds of the earth.

I sense something more for me in this life, sense . . . whatever it is that lies beyond the cone of my vision. I haven’t a clue how to move beyond my own grasp, though I sense that a life of security, certainty and success is not the way to do it. All of those are ties that bind, and since I am free and boundless for the first time in my life, I’m not about to tie myself in knots again, at least until life and age do it for me.

Sometimes I sense laughter deep within the universe. Sometimes I sense the playfulness that holds everything together.

Once a very long time ago when I was immeasurably young, my classmates were trying to read each other’s minds. They sat there, brows furrowed in concentration. My then best friend was one of the would-be-mind readers. I was bored with the whole thing, and played my own game of trying to break their concentration by shouting out gleefully anything I could think of. The gameplayers were so annoyed at me they blocked me out, so no one realized that I unwittingly shouted out the right answers whenever my friend was the one sending the thoughts.

So playfulness, laughter, uncertainty, insecurity — these are things to be gleefully and joyfully embraced. Oddly, I don’t know how to play, to be playful. Never did. I was a serious child, and except for moments here and there, I’m a serious adult. But seriousness will never get me what I want. Truth is a shy creature that can’t be hunted, only enticed with promises of play.

I’m being foolishly poetic, perhaps, but maybe, just maybe, I’m on to something. If nothing else, maybe I’ll learn to be playful.

***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, andDaughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.