chapter 1
I come into the world dancing, fuzzy black hair and eyes barely open.
My mom holds me out the window to show me off to the world as we drive .
Well… maybe not all the way out the window, but she wants to.
I remain an only child. My mom has just begun her career as an electroacoustic composer. She starts recording everything. She sets up a microphone in the doorway of the bathroom while my dad is giving me a bath. My 9 month old sounds sing song with the drip drops of the water as I splash around.
chapter 2
I spin in my pink leotard across the community centre ballet room.
I run to my pen and paper as soon as I get home.
I sing at the top of my 5 year old voice.
I pretend I know french and offer free lessons to the other kids at pre school.
I write stories and illustrate them, unicorns and girls with long black hair to the ground.
My own hair is now white blond and dead straight.
I join a circus.
My mom puts her microphone to the side and sews endless rows of sequence on my leotards.
I walk the tightrope, twirling on the inch wide cable as if were the earth itself, always there when i landed,wherever I placed my feet.
I throw myself in the air, end over end. The world is on my side. I can do anything.
My dad thinks so too.
He interviews me and my friends about God and Santa and publishes our answers in his magazine.
Kids should definitely be heard.
chapter 3
I bend over my school project seriously, drawing a first nations village scene on a large poster board.
I am that girl on the shoreline, collecting clams for dinner. I built that fire on the beach to cook them on. I belong to this land… Can’t you tell by the colours I am using?
Can’t you tell by the way I outline the trees on the water’s edge? By the way I drew the eagle flying? My blond hair is just a disguise, I decide, a trick of the light that will make the spirits think I am one of them.
I fell in a ray of sunshine one day as a baby and the spirits coloured me light.
That’s why i can still see them…Or this is what i secretly wish was true….
But I am not a child anymore…and my hair is definitely blond and not black to the ground
So I leaf through Seventeen Magazine on Long Beach while my dad cooks crabs on the fire.
I’d like to belong somewhere
chapter 4
I spin in the mirror trying to see those other angles.
Trying to see what someone walking behind me sees, or someone looking over from the desk beside me.
I cut and paste glossy teen models from magazines and place them beside lists of how to be….
this or that….wish lists, shopping lists, makeup tips, dos and don’ts,
The rules apply to me too, if I want to be Someone.
One choice may be more flattering than another. How will i know without the right formula?
I dance with my reflection, watching closely from outside this time, careful not to miss a step.
chapter 5
I write poems from the epic dramas unfolding in my mind.
I think hard and craft my words to sound older, deeper, more meaningful.
I draw a murder of crows in charcoal.
I carefully shade the protruding ribs of the girl with the long black hair to the ground.
I point my toes and spin a near perfect pirouette.
I buy the perfect jeans.
I tie dye t-shirts with my friends.
i want to do it perfectly and if i can’t, I won’t do it at all.
chapter 6
The drawings in my journal have more colours again,the shapes less jagged.
I travel and come home again.
I see more clearly.
I draw beautiful girls dressed in Sari’s with long black hair to the ground.
I find my dance again, barefoot on beaches and the banks of rivers,
the only mirrors are the other dancers.
i find my love and he dances with me.
My teacher the music.
My body the language.
I speak freely.
chapter 7
Words are fierce when speaking of death.
The body fiercest when birthing.
They are one in the same.
In that rawness I create life,
and when I show them my love that is my voice to the world, my response to the fear.
I trust my body to feed them and all creation goes into it.
chapter 8
I do what i need to do.
My creative spirit is assigned to daily tasks and endless cycles within the awe-inspiring job of raising children.
When they are happy, I am happy.
Partner, kids, house, car, job
Pretty simple
Yet this feeling that something inside is missing.
So I walk, I write a little, draw a little, dance my short rebellious dances to loud music in the city.
I steal time at the office for dreaming of a better life.
I make the CEO of the company cry with my charity videos
I know the formula
but I don’t believe it anymore
chapter 9
I run from the city streaming with tears like the rain there.
Bittersweet change into a life I have no idea
nestled in the mountains.
I struggle to slow down.
I reach for anything that will validate my presence here.
Make this home.
I garden, swim in the lake, horseback ride by the river,
I research edible plants and learn to use a chainsaw
I take my kids to get ice cream while I should be looking for that job
that job that doesn’t exist.
Out here they say you have to make your own.
My creativity is a moving target, circling anxiously,
blurred vision scattering my plans over the beach like pebbles.
I stare at the glittering face of the lake for hours,
Inspired thoughts leading me to invent project after project in my head
By the time I get back to my car I’ve talked myself out of all of them,
chop wood carry water.
chapter 10
I do not want to be master-of-none at 40, i think as I swing the ax through the air
but i know, now…
Nothing is good enough until I slow down enough to really see it.
Go about my business as the grass grows,
let the river flow and wash it all past me.
Maybe when all the cards line up
Maybe when…
I’m sick and tired of “maybe when”
and then one day there’s the line
and I step over it
and I can focus again,
I can move the way I want to again.
And I can keep going even when I am full of fear
there is something I want more than that dreamy horizon
a place of my very own carved out just right in the vastness
just the right speed, just the right music.
a place with quiet when I choose,
and sounds when I use them to move myself in time.
Its fine that the door is closed
Its ok that I sometimes say no
its that time
none like the present…. sonjarue2020