I write a lot, like a lot a lot. Little of it is legible. Most of it I cannot even decipher. My life is a series of cubbyholes stuffed with tidbits of paper. My car’s cup holder, my nightstand drawers, my makeup organizer, all sweater and coat pockets, my purse – both the one I am currently carrying and the 2 others tucked away in my closet, and every drawer in my kitchen, all suffer the same fate. They are filled to the brim with incoherent ramblings that, should I ever be able to epiphanize the meanings, could net me either a bestselling novel or the secret to life. Since we are all still in hunker down mode, I decided to launch a grand cleaning and organizing endeavor. I call it “the winter that I wish were spring already” cleaning event. My goal is to have a single junk drawer in my kitchen, rather than a single decent drawer and a litany of junk ones, a closet full of wearable clothes instead of ones I’m compelled to keep from a decade ago, or more, and a nightstand drawer suitable for finding the chapstick after I’m already tucked into bed. I did not capitalize chapstick because, Texas. We are the home of generic name brands. All tissues are kleenex. All soft drinks are cokes. All lip balm is chapstick. But, let’s get back to all that paper: receipts with blotted lipstick stains on the back, fast food napkins, corners from memo pads, spent grocery lists, and even the odd magazine subscription insert. These fragments contain my life’s work. There are ideas for columns, ideas for blog entries, ideas for novels, & snippets meant for poems. They are mixed medium works written in ink, yes, but also pencil and map color and crayon and even eyebrow pencil. Each idea made perfect sense when I was compelled, often times against my will, to write them. Now, though, I struggle to pick up that ethereal web-like line of thought that has faded to invisible. So I gathered them together in my kitchen, unsure of how to save them but unwilling to say a final goodbye. Then, just yesterday, I was doing a legit writing exercise in my handy dandy writer wannabe training manual. The exercise was imagining you had fallen down a rabbit hole designed just to your specifications. I was to describe everything I saw. I looked to my right, greeted by the mountain of paper fragments that resembled the volcano Richard Dreyfuss makes out of mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Lightbulb moment. Let’s build a rabbit hole based on the ramblings of a mad woman – but first, a poem.
A tiny room with earthen walls/a little mouse named Biggie Smalls/a bed of feathers makes a soft place to fall/a slice of perfection to get away from it all.
This writing exercise reminds me of those social media surveys people post. Here are 6 pictures. You can only pick 2 of these things to have forever: leggings or lipstick, coffee or books? I hate these surveys. I tire of irreversible choices in a world where nothing is as it seems. So much trickery and deceit in a survey. Why, they don’t even say if the coffee has flavored creamer or not. Is the lipstick matte or glossy? Do you get the matching lip liner? Nevertheless, were a rabbit hole to be designed in just a certain way, it could be a beautiful thing. Let’s use all these incoherent paper snippets and design the perfect spot. My rabbit hole isn’t only made from objects. It’s framed in emotions and insulated in aromatherapy. Once I’ve fallen in and gotten my wits about me, I hope to feel warm sun on my back, the kind of feeling when you take a long dip in the Galveston Bay, then lazily wander back to your beach towel, collapsing onto your stomach. There are seagulls chattering and waves crashing. You can feel the cold ocean water drying on your skin. You can smell and taste the salt. You fall asleep effortlessly. Warm sun doesn’t penetrate a rabbit hole, you say? It does here. My space would smell of basil, roses, and my grandchildren’s heads. My rabbit hole is on the cool side. The floor, however, is made of down comforters wrapped in soft linen duvets. The walls are adorned with ancient Turkish rugs. There are cashmere blankets in all the corners. Soft pillows are everywhere and leather bound first edition classics are within fingertip reach. My daughter is there, too. She is laughing hysterically at something I said.
We are wearing matching sundresses of lace and white eyelet. We are incredibly tanned. She smells of Lucky brand perfume and her toes are painted in Estee Lauder’s Rosa Rosa. She has a velvet ribbon in here hair. It is my favorite color, pink. But, it’s the kind of pink velvet that used to be burgundy a million years ago, until someone discarded it in a sunny window and never came back. As she says goodbye and comes in for a hug, we fall back into the cushy linen floor. She smells like Heaven.
Here’s to a year of paper crumbles and beautiful dreams.
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