Maybe I should quit drinking coffee.
I get up in the morning, get jacked up, and then I think I can do things, maybe everything. Wahoo, the world is my oyster. By the time I’ve finished my e-mails, I’ve put my signature to every tiny task proposed to me. As the caffeine wears off and the outside obligations fill my days, I begin to realize my edits to Blood Dance are gathering dust.
When will I learn to say “no?” Okay, here’s my pledge: Oct. 7. That’s when.
Oct. 7 is the date of the Luckiamute Watershed Council’s fundraiser. It’s a good cause, and dammit, my last hoorah until my book (or books) are finished. Come and celebrate my pending retreat!
Seriously. I mean it this time. No, really!
Meanwhile, another unedited (until after Oct. 7!) excerpt for your enjoyment, from Blood Dance.
Blood in the Water
Mayim is 12 years old, standing waist-deep in Oregon’s Siuslaw River, the hot sun on her hair, this cool coast range river pushing slowly at her back. Behind her, she can hear other Camp Lane pre-teens splashing upriver, their voices dulled by tall trees that surround the swimming hole. A few minutes ago, she was hand-standing in the water with her friends, her fingers in the gravelly sand, her feet in the air. Then, her swimsuit feeling too tight and her body tired and oddly achy, Mayim waded up the river. Now, she is around the bend of the river, distant and out of sight from her friends downstream. She is leaning over, looking into the river, watching the thin stream of blood flowing out of her, its red ribbon meandering downstream slowly, reluctantly. The ache in her lower back and belly is persistent, dulled only slightly by the cold water. Is this what Mom was talking about, Mayim half-listening, half-appalled, just a few months ago? She is strangely calm and sinks into the water up to her neck, swishing the blood away with her hands as it appears. She sinks into the floor of the river, mud and silt rising up to mix with this bloody end of childhood. A hymn comes to mind, because she is Christ’s girl at Christ’s church camp: “When I see the blood, when I see the blood, when I see the blood, I will pass, I will pass over you.”
She hums it over, and over until the cold river sinks in so deeply she is almost numb.
Later, when she rises out of the river, she reports to the camp nurse, who wraps her in white towels and lays her on a cot, dressed with a thick pad between her legs. The camp nurse, a friend of her mother’s, instructs her on the complicated belts and cinches that she would use once before abandoning it to tuck the pad into her underpants. The next day, she tucks it into her swimsuit before launching, cannonball style, into the Siuslaw. It falls out, and meanders downstream, bobbing brightly along the sandy bottom of the river. Later, alone in the water, she watches the thin trail of blood slip out of her body, and wonders what will become of it, although she has already learned in her favorite science class that her blood will spread and dissipate, splashing over slippery boulders, joining other substances and streams, rushing past Swisshome where it merges with tidal saltwater from the Pacific, past Florence and the sand dunes; past South Beach jetty and over the bar, merging with forever and the Pacific Ocean. Standing in the cold Siuslaw, her feet on the gritty bottom, the thought of this merger is a numbing comfort she takes with her when at last, she walks out of the river, renewed, baptized.
I get up in the morning, get jacked up, and then I think I can do things, maybe everything. Wahoo, the world is my oyster. By the time I’ve finished my e-mails, I’ve put my signature to every tiny task proposed to me. As the caffeine wears off and the outside obligations fill my days, I begin to realize my edits to Blood Dance are gathering dust.
When will I learn to say “no?” Okay, here’s my pledge: Oct. 7. That’s when.
Oct. 7 is the date of the Luckiamute Watershed Council’s fundraiser. It’s a good cause, and dammit, my last hoorah until my book (or books) are finished. Come and celebrate my pending retreat!
Seriously. I mean it this time. No, really!
Meanwhile, another unedited (until after Oct. 7!) excerpt for your enjoyment, from Blood Dance.
Blood in the Water
Mayim is 12 years old, standing waist-deep in Oregon’s Siuslaw River, the hot sun on her hair, this cool coast range river pushing slowly at her back. Behind her, she can hear other Camp Lane pre-teens splashing upriver, their voices dulled by tall trees that surround the swimming hole. A few minutes ago, she was hand-standing in the water with her friends, her fingers in the gravelly sand, her feet in the air. Then, her swimsuit feeling too tight and her body tired and oddly achy, Mayim waded up the river. Now, she is around the bend of the river, distant and out of sight from her friends downstream. She is leaning over, looking into the river, watching the thin stream of blood flowing out of her, its red ribbon meandering downstream slowly, reluctantly. The ache in her lower back and belly is persistent, dulled only slightly by the cold water. Is this what Mom was talking about, Mayim half-listening, half-appalled, just a few months ago? She is strangely calm and sinks into the water up to her neck, swishing the blood away with her hands as it appears. She sinks into the floor of the river, mud and silt rising up to mix with this bloody end of childhood. A hymn comes to mind, because she is Christ’s girl at Christ’s church camp: “When I see the blood, when I see the blood, when I see the blood, I will pass, I will pass over you.”
She hums it over, and over until the cold river sinks in so deeply she is almost numb.
Later, when she rises out of the river, she reports to the camp nurse, who wraps her in white towels and lays her on a cot, dressed with a thick pad between her legs. The camp nurse, a friend of her mother’s, instructs her on the complicated belts and cinches that she would use once before abandoning it to tuck the pad into her underpants. The next day, she tucks it into her swimsuit before launching, cannonball style, into the Siuslaw. It falls out, and meanders downstream, bobbing brightly along the sandy bottom of the river. Later, alone in the water, she watches the thin trail of blood slip out of her body, and wonders what will become of it, although she has already learned in her favorite science class that her blood will spread and dissipate, splashing over slippery boulders, joining other substances and streams, rushing past Swisshome where it merges with tidal saltwater from the Pacific, past Florence and the sand dunes; past South Beach jetty and over the bar, merging with forever and the Pacific Ocean. Standing in the cold Siuslaw, her feet on the gritty bottom, the thought of this merger is a numbing comfort she takes with her when at last, she walks out of the river, renewed, baptized.