MindSpinner

Sometimes living is walking at night, in deep fog; sometimes it is crawling, blindfolded, feeling the path, the way forward. Sometimes it is sitting very very still because any movement at all is not yet right. Sometimes it is dancing where you are. And sometimes, light falls on the way ahead so clearly that you can see to run.

As soon as the box office at the Kentucky Center opens this morning, I will have two tickets for the Kentucky Author Forum on April 6. The Forum will present an hour’s dialogue between Sue Monk Kidd and Jean Shinoda Bolen. I’ve had the Secret Life of Bees on my shelf for a couple of years, along with a handful of other novels in waiting. I haven’t yet picked up The Mermaid Chair, but I will today. It was Dance of the Dissident Daughter that leapt off a bookstore shelf into my hands in late January. (How else does one explain such things?)

Sue Monk Kidd’s background is strikingly like mine. There are so many connections at so many levels, so many shared images and arresting moments, that reading her story of awakening in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter at times takes my breath away, at times brings sudden tears. I will meet this woman. It’s not enough to listen on NPR when the forum is broadcast. I must be in the same room with Sue Monk Kidd and Jean Shinoda Bolen on April 6.

I started to write a little about my background this morning, to clarify, but I rather like existing here on this blog sans the context that once threatened to render me invisible and would, even now, define me as I am not. The costs of opting out of that context, though substantial and in part unjust, have been a small price to pay for being able to breathe and to make my way.

The box office is open. I can call for tickets now. The sun’s up. It’s cool out, but not too cool for gardening on this first day of a two-week spring break.

Noon Addendum: I bought the last two tickets available - at first there was only one, but then pleading produced another, and there had to be two. Those were tickets for the forum only, not the more expensive dinner. The dinner cost too much. I didn’t dare the dinner. Until the tickets were ordered and I had hung up. Why wasn’t I opting for the dinner and the option of further conversation. Because I don’t have anything suitable to wear? Because I don’t need to spend the money? Because I haven’t been out from under my rock in a very long time? Because I find the notion intimidating? Of course. All of the above. Not good enough reasons, dammit. If, once upon a time, I mustered the gumption to debate with Stanley Fish over his reading of a line of Milton, winning my point, then I can go to dinner with Sue Monk Kidd and Jean Bolen. I called back. I have dinner tickets.