commands

Le Notre has come to visit again. I am so grateful, for his sternness comforts me as I grapple with the middle of the novel whose ending is still vague. Prune here, he announces. Plant there. Lift and carry and work. It’s physical labor, and I need it. October is a grace month in Houston, when humidity lifts and temperatures drop.

I plant violets, not the proud African ones of my girlhood, with their large heart-shaped leaves and deep purple faces, but Australian ones, the only ones I can find, with smaller, less deep emerald leaves and faces that show both white and purple. I love violets, have tried to start them any number of times in my shady yard, which they should love, without success. Le Notre points to where he thinks they might thrive. If you water, he sniffs. His face is lined with age and knowledge and Louis XIV‘s confidence in him. He’s fashionable for his time, a wig, a satin coat, shoes with buckles, a long, long staff like the one Lully used to direct the king’s orchestra. I like this stern taskmaster who tells me what to do in the garden and bears with no excuses.

I know my garden is symbolic of something, as is my choice of Le Notre as its muse, but I don’t want to probe the symbolism. There are violets to plant. There’s a woman in the novel with a heart-shaped face, who was called a shy violet by history, when it bothered with her at all. She was scorned because she wasn’t ambitious. She turned to God in her pain. Perhaps I plant for her.

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scales

Last week, I listened to Houston’s Brene Brown talk about vulnerability. Among its bright attributes are its necessary place in joy, creativity, adventure, joy, belonging, authenticity, and love, which I hadn’t thought of. Among its shadows are feelings of fear, shame, and uncertainty.

Certain behavior of mine—around the reluctance to write, around days when I can’t force myself to sit down in the chair because fear jumping-beans in my pulse—came into clearer focus.

I am vulnerable when I write. I am vulnerable when I am published. I am vulnerable when my work is read and people comment upon it. The dread I carry inside is the dread of being vulnerable.

Brown also quoted  Teddy Roosevelt about daring greatly–that the man or woman who attempts something in the arena of life, even if he or she fails, will have dared greatly. So I balance these on unseen scales inside myself each day that I write fiction: vulnerability and daring.

Interesting. I wonder if having defined the feeling will ease anything. And then I am reminded of some redneck advice that I like: The world ain’t even honking at you. You just think it is……….