Winging It

April 22, 2015 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday was my last night of being homed. Today I start my odyssey as a homeless woman. I could rent an apartment (that is, I could if they didn’t do a credit check — I have no credit, never having borrowed any money, mortgaged a house, or bought anything on time), but I can’t force myself to do that. It just seems so terribly sad to settle down without Jeff. And then there is the problem of incipient stagnation. At first, I’m sure, I’d do things, but gradually entropy would set in, and there I would be . . . the crazy catless lady.

That scenario is not entirely accurate, but it feels accurate, and that’s all I have to go on . . . feelings. And my feeling is to wing it for a while. “Wing it” meaning to do something extemporaneously. “Wing it” meaning to improvise. “Wing it” meaning to fly.

And oh, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive
And oh, I can fly, I can fly, I can fly
And oh, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive
And I’m loving every second, minute, hour, bigger, better, stronger power

(Chorus from #thatPOWER sung and written in part by Justin Beiber.)

The most complicated aspect of this homelessness is that at the moment I am also carless. My vintage VW is in the shop being prettified (it’s one thing to be homeless, another to look like it). I have also promised to stay in the area until after May so I can perform in a dance program at the local college. We will be performing two of my favorite numbers, a trio of Tahitian Apurimas and a powerful rendition of Hawaiian War Chant, so the promise wasn’t hard to make.

People are being very kind to me in offering to house me for a few days (and even longer), which is especially generous because my situation is of my own making. As I said, I could probably find a place to live, and my carlessness isn’t due to an emergency. (It’s like trying to get sympathy for a hospital stay when the surgery is strictly cosmetic.) On the other hand, maybe it is necessary. These visits will help ease my way out into the world.

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens. I’ll try to continue to blog every day (or most days, anyway), but don’t get concerned if I disappear for a few days. Ah’ll be bock. (That’s supposed to be a phonetic rendering of The Terminator’s infinitely imitated accent.)

Thank you for your support during these past five exhausting, angst ridden, grief stricken, terrible and wonderful years. Wish me well as I start this new phase of my journey.

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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.

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Becoming Dance

July 10, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Of all the strange places my recent life has taken me, this has to be the strangest. I am sitting in lobby of a convalescent home, waiting for my father to wake from a nap. He’s only here for five days to get intravenous antibiotics to help treat a bout of pneumonia, but the few hours I’ve spent visiting him have made me realize how incredibly lucky I am.

I can walk with a straight back and easy gait. I can breathe unassisted. And oh! I feel so very young. I know this is a temporary condition. If I live long enough, I’ll be as old and decrepit as these folks, but for now, I’m thankful for what youth I dancehave left, for the joy that now comes at increasingly frequent intervals, for the capacity to taste what I eat and drink, for the ability to write and laugh and dance.

Strangely, not only do I feel good, people often mention that I look good, too. Some even say that stress becomes me. The wonder is that I can deal at all with the horrendous stresses of my life — an ailing, aging father and an insane and insanely drunk brother who has spent the past several hours bellowing at me. I am blessed to have wonderful and patient friends who will listen to my horror stories, sometimes for the second and third time, and who will offer hugs when I need them. I have this blog, of course. But mostly I have dancing.

We all need vacations from ourselves and our problems, but when we go on trips, we take ourselves with us. When we dance, especially choreographed dances, we leave ourselves at home. We become the music, the motion, and something else — part of a dancing whole. As the teacher keeps reminding us, we need to do everything in unison — one body, one mind, one soul. When it works, when we know the dance and are in perfect sync, it’s magic. For just one moment, we become more than we are. We become Dance.

Of course, after dance, we become just ourselves with all our attendant problems, but we still have the memory of that moment of freedom to sustain us, and hopefully we’ll still have it even when we’re too old to dance at all.

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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.

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Point Where You Want to Go

June 1, 2014 — Pat Bertram

At ballet class the other day, I was practicing chaine turns and not doing a very good job of it. Chaine turns, in case you don’t know, are those often rapid turns performed in a straight line across the floor or a stage, moving from one foot to the other as you go. To keep from getting dizzy, you need to “spot” — to find something to focus on as you’re turning, and when you rotate out of sight of that spot, you need to whip your head around so that you can again focus on the spot. Trying to learn such a step after a certain age is difficult because one’s head does not whip around fast enough, so not only do you get dizzy, you end up not going where you want to go.

Seeing my difficulty, the teacher suggested pointing to the spot as well as looking at it on the assumption that where you are pointing, there you will go. And it worked. I mostly got to where I wanted to go. Still dizzy, but I got there.

twists and turnsIt seemed to me such a profound bit of advice, “Point where you want to go.” If you’re not pointed toward where you want to go, it’s hard to get there because we tend to go where we are looking. If we’re looking behind us or are distracted by side roads, it’s hard to keep focused on the goal. (It seems to me this is both metaphoric and physical, pertaining to actual physical movements and also pertaining to one’s journey through life.) Even something simple like gesticulating as we’re walking tends to keep us from walking in a straight line because we’re pointing everywhere but where we want to go.

One obvious image comes to mind as an example of pointing where you want to go. I’ve seen baseball players sometimes point their bat, in a grandstanding pose, toward the outfield where they aim to hit a home run. (Well, seen it in movies; I don’t know if they actually do it.)

Writers do the same thing, pointing where they want to go. In writing, such pointing is called foreshadowing. We writers need to know where we are going so we don’t get off track. and we need to know where we are going so we know to stop when we get there. We also need to give readers hints of where the story is pointing so they can find their way to the end, but we need to make sure readers don’t know where they are going until they get there, otherwise the suspense is lost. Hence, in writing, dizzying chaine turns keep the reader focused on the constantly changing twists and turns of the plot and not the end.

I feel so very cultured using a ballet term, but ironically, my very use of term is an example of the importance of sometimes not pointing where you want to go. I would never have made a point of taking ballet classes. It would never even have occurred to me, but when the option was offered, I grabbed hold of it. And now I am focused on the classes. (And yet I was looking for something to focus on, so maybe that counts.)

Twists and turns.

It’s what life, dance, and writing is all about.

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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.

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