Mrs. Everett Goes to Australia

After nearly two years, I’ve finally come near to the end of my Mrs. Everett story. Only one more chapter to go! For those of you new to this blog, Mrs. Everett is my around-the-world transmedia story of Prue Everett, a woman who went rogue on her life and traveled the world in search of a new one. In this scene, she is at her long-lost sister-in-law’s to mend old wounds and in the process re-discovers her love of animals and a simpler way of life. It’s a long one, so pour yourself a coffee or glass of wine and enjoy. The transmedia version of this chapter will be posted shortly on my business website so keep an eye out for that. (It includes photos, text and phone conversations with Mr. Everett-very juicy stuff.) Sorry it’s so long but as I often say, a writer has to serve the story, not the other way around. Final chapter will be posted shortly: Can you guess where Mrs. Everett ends up?

***

Mara looked older but the lines around the sides of her mouth and eyes made her appear warmer, the brittle pointedness of her face now softer with age. Prue studied her, trying to assess how Mara felt about her arrival–if she was genuinely happy to see her or if she was welcoming her out of a sense of duty as Edward’s sister.

“Welcome traveler! You should be fine to park up there by that truck just beside the house.” Mara had picked up the Australian accent and Prue was surprised at how much it suited her.

Indeed, it seemed like Australia had been good to Mara. All her younger prickly energy had fallen away and replacing it was a generous openness in her body that Prue had never seen in her before. Not that Prue had seen much of Mara in the past; Edward had made a point to ostracize his sister and often belittled her in front of Prue. Pure always admired Mara’s spirit and more so when she made the leap to live on her own just after high school. That decision, Prue remembered, came after an enormous row with Edward not surprisingly. Mara was always the rebel and Edward the hero; it was a hopeless situation that Mara wisely chose to leave.

Mara closed the gate behind her and Prue drove cautiously up the dirt road towards the house. She looked in her rearview mirror and watched as Mara whistled and made a small gesture towards the field. A spark of black and white whipped through the tall grass towards her and leapt up to her thighs as Mara leaned over to stroke the dog’s ears.

Prue shifted into first gear and eased into a spot next to a dusty truck with hay still in the back of it. She felt proud of herself she’d learned stick shift in Italy. She would offer Mara a ride to make sure she didn’t think of her as the same woman she’d been when she’d seen her last–sitting in the back of a car with a driver, never in the driver’s seat.

You don’t have to prove anything. You are who are you now. And that is enough she told herself. 

Yes. It was enough. 

With that, she grabbed her leather pack and stepped out of the car and walked towards Mara.

“Prue, you are driving that car!”

Prue beamed.

“Yes, indeed I am Mara. And would you believe it’s manual?”

Mara let out a deep laugh and slapped her hip.

“Does Edward know? My god, that is just delicious.”

Prue stepped back on one leg, pausing, pulling up her inclination to hug Mara short. Just the mention of Edward had yanked her back and she hesitated, unsure now of her place here, unsure why she was here even.

Mara measured her face and body and stopped.

“I’m sorry, you know, I shouldn’t have brought him up, it’s just the thought of him seeing you behind the wheel–

“Oh, forget it, you know? You have every right to be surprised.” Prue wanted to let the past be the past but here, with Mara, it was thick in the air, a layer they had to cut through and discard before they could be at ease with one another.

“How about a drink? You must be parched after that drive.” Mara walked by her and towards the steps, stopping to give a look that said, I won’t take your bags for you so you’d better hurry up.

“Yes, a perfect suggestion Mara, a drink would be grand.”

Behind Mara banged a screen door, the same kind of bang you’d hear in the background in movies. It was an idyllic porch . With an idyllic door.

Prue opened the back door and looked at her worn bags, flopped over with her folded hat spilling out onto the far seat. She felt worthy for once in her life. Those bags had seen the last year of her life. Transatlantic flights. A heartbreak in Italy. Coasts, mountains, oceans, taxis, buses even. Many happy solo adventures.

She held the screen door behind her with the tips of her fingers until it made a puff and settled into its dusty soft worn frame.

Inside it cooled in temperature, and Prue became aware of how wet her hair was against the back of her neck. She craned her neck around an enormous bookshelf and saw Mara. She was swirling a dark wooden spoon in a pitcher of red liquid. Oranges circled the bottom.

“Am I lucky enough to be in the same house as a cold jug of Sangria?”

Mara tilted her head and smiled. “You, my long-lost sister-in-law, my world traveler, are correct in that.”

Prue walked towards Mara, unsure of how to say what she had to say. It needed saying. It needed saying before drinks were poured or masks were tied on.

“Mara, I want to just be Prue if that’s okay? I want to just be Prue and you just be Mara. And we get to know one another like that? Is it possible, that we can do that?”

Mara looked up at her and was as calm and settled as the floor beneath them.

“That’s a relief Prue. I’m really happy for you. And yes, of course we can. I’m  really happy you came.” Mara leaned in and pulled Prue’s shoulders towards her.

Prue laughed. Mara’s hug felt incredible. It had been months since anyone had touched her and at least several years since anyone had hugged her and meant it.

“I hope you have an extraordinarily–obscenely— large glass for me.”

Mara burst out laughing again, a sharp punchy laugh that leveled you and made the room feel like a party had just started.

“Well, all right then sister, let’s get our sangria on.”

They sat in the shady living room, with afternoon light filtered by the long overhang and uneven lead windows, making the room have the air of an antique store. Prue sat in a rattan chair with a peruvian blanket draped over it. She pushed the sleeping cat to the side to make room and settled down with her sangria, hoping the loud creaks were not a harbinger that her bottom was about to break through the chair and drop to the floor.

“It’s a little less glamorous than you’re used to I think Prue?” Mara leaned back and took a long sip of her drink. “But it’s our home, a little torn on the edges but we’ve been really happy here.”

Prue paused and looked around the room. She remembered how she might have looked at this room and been uncomfortable in it in the past. How she would have noticed each picture, whether matted or framed, archival or cheap backing, crooked or straight. And she would have gone on from there, noting each imperfection like a coroner, making notes in her head like, ‘for christmas remember to tell Edward they need a large gift card to Ikea’ or ‘remember to tell Edward they could use a decent rug from 1st Dibs’ and on it would go, from wall to wall, a ticker tape of judgement that buoyed her up while at the same time fencing her in like an old Victoria torture chamber, it’s iron lung staged in her mind creating a vacuum of feeling, a mirage of humanity.

“It’s so lovely Mara, really, to be in a home, and your home, it has such meaning for me now. Trust me, after a year and a half of traveling in hotels, seeing photos in frames of real people, lived in furniture, the smell of meals, and…family is lovely. I had no idea how alone I’ve been until now.” Prue paused and Mara waited, calmly petting another cat nosing her hand for attention. Prue made an attempt to put what she was feeling into words. “When I first left, I reveled in the anonymity. It felt like I had jumped from a great height and was hang-gliding in my life, just swooping and landing wherever the wind took me and never having to think about answering to anyone, recognizing anyone, or being recognized and I could be entirely…”

“Selfish?” Mara laughed then and lifted her glass to Prue. “Way to go is what I say Prue. I salute you. I do, really. It took some courage to do what you did.” Mara lifted up her glass to Prue.

“Yes, well it didn’t come without a lot of pain upon landing but I kind of got the hang of it. Though I think it took Edward a little longer.”

“Hey, you know what? We’re just the two of us in the room. I’m in too good a mood to talk about Edward.” Mara made a silencing gesture with her hand. “Besides, you know once he figures out you’re here the phone will start ringing until we hup-ho and give him answers.”

“True.” Prue paused and looked down. “Should we bring the pitcher in here then or?” Prue smiled and pushed herself out of the low chair with some effort.

“Bring ‘er on in Prue. Pour us both another. I gotta bring in the horses now but will be back in a jiffy okay?” Mara called out to the kitchen and Prue yelled back. “Horses? I didn’t know you owned horses!”

“Yes we do and you’ll meet them all tomorrow don’t you worry. No one rides for free here, we’ll put you to work.”

The door banged behind her as she left and Prue heard her boots hit the three porch steps hard. That was Mara, thought Prue, sure of her step, no wavering or pausing or gingerly doing anything. Straight on, assured, with purposeful blinders on that filtered out what wasn’t useful or needed and kept her life one that answered to her deepest instincts.

She realized Edward was the same but his intense focus didn’t serve anyone beyond himself. It didn’t serve to deliver goodness or kindness or empathy and this was what Prue had come to realize was missing for her. She needed, more of her life spent being in service. She had no idea how she would do it but she was sure that being here, being in Mara’s world, had something to do with it.

***

Was someone calling her? Prue looked up from her book. Mara stood at the end of the drive, waving vigorously. Prue stood and letting her book fall onto the cushioned bench.

“You should come and see this!” Mara yelled, motioning excitedly for Prue to come to the paddock that was home to her many horses. Mara had long been a devoted animal lover, taking her passion into a career as a large animal veterinarian. While she may have grown up riding and jumping posh show horses, Mara preferred to work with sport horses or ‘equine athletes’ as she preferred to call them. She took a scientific approach to nursing lame horses back to health and their owners paid her well for it. She was the top vet in Australia for thoroughbred race horses and was careful about who she took on as a client. It was hard work and it consumed her.

Prue was looking beyond Mara where a sleek brown horse and elderly woman who looked like Jane Goodall, appeared to be nuzzling one another, deeply intent on some mysterious conversation only they seemed to understand.

“What is that woman doing?” Prue asked as she came alongside Mara and perched her feet on the lowest run of the fence to get a better look.

“Prue, you’ve no idea–you know me, right? Well, maybe not in the last decade much–but I know when a horse is untreatable, when there’s just no hope for it. I’ve made that call only a few times and was ready to on this handsome chap but I met this woman and she said she could turn him. He’d just become impossible for the polo field but…” Mara tapered off, staring at the horse in disbelief.

“Does he bite or something?” Prue asked.

“Oh lord, does he bite?” Mara slapped her jeans and puff of dust rose up as she did. “He bloody well kicks, bites, screams like a little angry toddler, just impossible for the rider and owners. But me thinks that last rider really made him go off–what a prick he was. “

Prue watched the woman alternate nuzzling with the horse and holding his face then laying her arms along his sides in small increments. He gave a small kick when she got near his hind quarters and she immediately went back to forehead contact and talking to the horse in what appeared to be an earnest dialogue.

Mara turned to her and smiled wide. “This horse would have bitten your face off a few weeks ago. Stunning to watch this.”

“Who is she?” Prue asked.

“Oh, why that’s my dear friend and mentor Olivia Bruselez. She’s what some might call a horse whisperer but I call her a practitioner of spiritual horsemanship. Sounds slightly less kooky, right?” Mara laughed her big open barking laugh and the horse abruptly jumped and ran out of Olivia’s embrace. Olivia looked over at Mara, shrugged and started to walk over.

“I just love her to bits.” Mara walked down the length of the fence and met Olivia at the gate. They hugged tightly and Prue felt self-conscious, as though she shouldn’t be looking then realized it was because she hadn’t been in normal life for so long she’d forgotten real friendships and what they looked like.

“Prue, Olivia, Olivia, Prue, my sister-in-law.” Mara extended a gesture to Prue and Prue shook Olivia’s hand. Olivia placed her hand over Prue’s and held it as she talked.

“This is wonderful you are here Prue. Mara’s told me lots about you. It’s really quite an incredible undertaking traveling around the world as you have been.”

“Well, thank you but it’s not quite around the world just yet. Happy to be taking a reprieve from hotels and be in a home for a change.” Prue didn’t know how to make small talk about why she was here. The story was too complicated for sound bites.

Olivia had deep-set eyes, and even deeper wrinkles. Her head was framed by gray hair that looked like a soft yellow halo in the sun. She smiled at Prue and Prue realized they were still holding hands, looking at one another. She reminded Prue of little of her grandmother and felt instantly drawn to her.

Olivia turned to Mara: “She not at all what you said she’d be Mara, she’s wonderful.”

“Olivia! Don’t poke the bee’s nest when we’ve just calmed it down, alright?” Mara scolded Olivia but not with any force behind it.

“It’s fine, really, both of you would have been right about me six months ago even. I get it.” Prue gave a resigned shake of her head and pulled her hand away from Olivia’s.

“You know, actually, I think I’m going to go in, this heat is zapping me of all my energy. “ Prue turned and walked but to the house, hoping they’d give her some space. She suddenly longed to be on the road again, alone, with no history, no husband or need to explain herself. She let the screen door bang loudly behind her and took solace in her small, quiet room at the back of the house. She was followed by her married ghost self here and she didn’t like it. But what else did she think would happen at Mara’s? Did she think that all could be forgotten so easily? Prue pulled the light sheet up to her waist and buried her face in the pillow. She let the sounds of the farm, sangria and heat eventually lull her into sleep.

***

Mrs. Everett Goes To Tasmania

Dearest readers you probably forgot about me by now. I nearly did. That writing self, the one who makes it a practice to blog every week, where did she go? Mired in ordinary work I’m afraid. I’ve come to realize writing for someone else all day really takes the wind out of my creative sails by the weekend. I did carve out some precious time for my own work, however, and in a flurry of words, I managed to crank out the longest segment of my Mrs. Everett story since it began. It’s her voyage to Australia and Tasmania and it’s really about four chapters but given it is a transmedia story, I’ll just give you a little section of prose intro here. You’ll find the rest of it unfolding on my biz site at http://www.whatisyourstory.ca soon. Notice I don’t commit to a date.

To catch you up, Mrs. Everett has been in Italy on the Amalfi coast having a romance with a gentleman named Lodano. Of course it didn’t work out and she felt for the first time in two decades, a bit of a broken heart. Not a real broken heart (because we know those can be fatal), just a little hairline fracture but nonetheless it hurts her deeply and in this chapter we are joining her as she sets off for the wide-open spaces of Australia to heal her heart. At the end of this chapter we’ll see Mrs. Everett reuniting with Mr. Everett’s younger sister, Mara, which doesn’t go so well at first. But that’s a whole other story to unfold down the road.

****

She let out a sigh of relief as the plane door was finally shut with a deliberate clunk of the metal latch. It was the most comforting sound she could imagine hearing at that moment and she happily leafed through a safety pamphlet in Italian, feeling her shoulders ease and drop. She hoped the seat beside her stayed empty. She wasn’t in the mood to make anyone else cheerful. God knew she wasn’t.

How foolish she’d been! She stuffed the pamphlet roughly into the seat back ahead of her and stared out the window. They had begun to roll down the runway and the plane heaved and creaked as she leaned forward, hoping she could somehow help speed it up and get as far away from Italy as possible.

Lodano.

His name rolled around in her mind like dice in an endless game. It made her think of ice cubes and she looked up for a stewardess. A red seat belt sign frowned down at her. No drink to ease her nerves yet.

Lodano.

How she loved to say his name, hesitantly, joyously, sensuously, whispery. She felt ashamed at how much she’d said it. Like an addict, she had binged on his attention, watching his eyes watching her lips as she’d cooed to him, a long-lost femininity fluttering up into her face, her eyes, along her skin, and flooding her mind.

Until she woke up in their hotel room early one morning and looked out the window to find  him exploring the back of a sundress on a young, curvy Italian woman.

She’d believed her days of being cuckolded were over. Still, there was a certain sense of whimsy to it all that she’d not felt since she’d been in high school. She knew Edward would say she was an easy target, a cliché, but she’d really been deeply infatuated with Lodano. Or was it Italy? No matter,  she was on her way to Australia and she was determined to have an adventure. She was circling around the idea of visiting Mara, Edward’s sister, but first she needed to hole up and knit back the hole she’d torn in her newly acquired confidence.

***

It unsettled her. This feeling of apathy. What was wrong with her? She’d loved every Four Seasons she’d ever stayed in. But she realized Italy had changed her forever and no amount of amenity or luxurious food, bedding or service would be enough to shift the weight, to unburden her from the sense that the time had come for her to really and truly let what she’d set in motion happen, unfold and become.

The front desk was agitated. There was a lineup and luxury hotels don’t like lineups. They moved in precision with clipped, hushed tones as she leaned on one leg then another, watching for a every inch she could move forward. She was normally an acquiescent tourist but now she was a traveler and she wanted out of Sydney.

“Yes, that’s correct, today. I realize it’s several days short of when I’d reserved for but something has come up.” She had nothing else to add. She stared flatly at the woman who paused, with a brief nod that conveyed her slight annoyance and offered a polite  ‘certainly, ma’am, by all means we are pleased you enjoyed your stay with us’. Well, she hadn’t enjoyed her stay but it wasn’t the hotel’s fault.

At the lounge the night before she’d met a BMW instrument mechanic who had purposefully spent most of his life on the road so he could avoid his marriage. He was matter-of-fact about it and they had an immediate commonality of travelers with no true ‘home’. They’d shared a dinner of appetizers in the bar and he’d described his travels in Tasmania in such tangible, colourful stories she knew that she would have to go there next. It sounded like a place where she could escape everything. It sounded like a place where she might also find what she’d been looking for since she’d started her journey.

***

On the ferry to Tasmania there was a rack of cards advertising places to stay. She couldn’t understand what they were. They were pictures of homes with people’s faces on the front of the brochures holding dogs and proffering baskets of food seemingly on their own front porch. Did they rent their living rooms? She turned one over after another. They were B & B’s. Bed and breakfast. Breakfast in bed? In someone’s actual bed? Not a hotel bed. It was an odd idea.

She wandered to the deck and considered how she might sleep in someone’s basement. The prices did not seem a lot lower than some of the hotels she’d stayed at so what was the selling point? She imagined soem kindly husband supporting his wife’s small business, walking by in his boxers int he middle of the night, giving her a small wave and she brushed her teeth.

No, she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

Stop it. You came here to do try new things. To remember how you used to live in the world. How your body felt without props, artifice or Edward. Why travel to the ends of the earth if not to end something? If not to find what you have lost?

She looked out over the cheerful expanse of blue ocean meeting blue sky and for the first time since she’d been a teenager realized she was truly free.

***

She stood at the edge of the property and looked up towards the house. She had the urge to call the taxi back. She felt like she was trespassing. There didn’t seem to be anyone home anyway. She turned to call the car back when a burst of energy piled out of the front door including two dogs, a man and a short, wiry woman with an unruly mop of silver curls that bounced as she bounded past her husband and met her with a hug. Prue broke into surprised laughter as her upright stance was  caught off guard and she stumbled in the woman’s embrace. The woman introduced herself as Ann and the man behind her as her husband, Ellis. He offered his hand and it was warm though roughly calloused.  Ann expertly guided her towards the shade of the deck.

“Are you parched? It’s hotter than usual out here the past few weeks and if you’re not used to it, can affect the noggin’, right?” The woman spoke quickly, sharp and precise like her movements as she scooped Prue’s bag from her shoulder and crossed the porch into the house, opening the door wide open for Prue.

“No, I’ve learned since traveling so much this year to always have a bottle of water by my side, thanks ever so much.”

Prue suddenly felt too formal and self-conscious, like she’d just barged into a family of perfect strangers (which she had) but her hosts instantly sensed it and offered her a tour of the house. It had large wood beams on the ceiling and artwork on every inch of the walls, with colourful  stained glass hanging in the windows that flooded the room with beautiful light. It felt like a home. She’d forgotten what that felt like and she her eyes blurred with the sudden prick of tears. Ann took no notice and kept up a steady stream of monologue as she led Prue to her guest room which was a kind of semi-detached space off the back of the house with its own small deck that looked out over a yard brimming with Ann’s artwork in all shapes and sizes of sculpture, paint, glass work, and pottery. The room was utterly silent save the soft chirping of birds she’d never heard nor seen before, some with flashes of green feathers as they moved between branches at the edge of the garden. The small bed butted up against a half-wall made of white slatted wood and huge windows surrounding it. Small wooden shelves lined one side filled with books and brightly painted pottery. An old-fashioned coverlet with bright embroidered flowers covered the bed. Prue instantly wanted to lie in it and listen to the birds.

“Allight then, you have a lie down and we’ll set about fixing a lovely dinner for you when you are good and ready for company. If you want to that is! We’re not fussy here and don’t want anyone telling us when and where we need to be–ever!” Ann said this with a kind of fervor that made Prue smile. She liked the rules of the house already.

“Thank you Ann, I think I will lie down for a bit,” Prue said, a yawn escaping before she could cover her mouth.

Ann made a noise of approval and whisked off, her salt-and-pepper curls dancing after her as she leapt up the two stairs to the door the separated them from the main house. The smell of the ocean drifted through the screens on the window and she was glad she’d chosen Coles Bay to begin her Tasmania adventure. It was remote, beautiful, and unpretentious. And so far, very poor cell reception which suited her just fine.

Prue had not felt so sleepy since London when she’d visited the hammam. As she closed her eyes she made a mental note to herself that this was the best check-in of her life.

***

© Margaret Doyle 2014

Photo credit Laurine Croasdale

New excerpt from Mrs. Everett

My story Mrs. Everett, has still been going on I just haven’t written it down. At any rate, here’s a recent phone call between Mr. and Mrs. Everett. She’s in Umbria *really* living it up now and since she’s in such a good mood, she is uncommonly friendly to her normally freezer-cold husband who we begin to see, is human and just possibly, was once a man who loved deeply. 

E: “What does it look like?”

P: “It looks like someone tossed olive oil and lemon over the landscape and made a salad with it. ”

Long pause.

E: “Why can’t you just ever say something simply?”

P: “I’m not lonely. ”

E: “Why should you be? You’re holidaying.”

P: “I am not holidaying. That’s akin to merrymaking. It’s much more than that.”

E: “Oh, of course. You’re on a journey of the soul.”

P: “Edward…you know it’s just so.. simple to play stupid but in fact I know you are not stupid and I know that you understand everything about this but were you to admit that than you would also be admitting your culpability in it.”

E: “My culpability?Ah! Oh yes, my bank account, right, that’s right, I totally forgot for a moment who is funding this sojourn.”

P: “Did I mention I’m going to visit your sister?”

E: “Peg? Why on earth? You will hate it there. “(Starts laughing).

P: “You think I can’t go to the outback and shear a few bloody sheep? I’m much stronger than you give me credit for Edward. ” (She laughs a little finally as Edward keeps laughing.)

P: “She’s promised me free accom for exchange of some help with getting some exposure for the farm and such. And I should remind you I’ve been living off my own resources.”

E: “Yes, I did notice a rather big drop off after Paris. Your grandmother then?”

P: “Yes.” Prue goes quiet.

P: “I have to go Edward. Don’t–

E: “I won’t, have to run myself….Prue?…I am here, if you do–

P: “I’ll be fine, good night then or rather good morning over there.”

E: “Good night Prue.”

Line goes dead. End of scene.

Mrs. Everett Goes to Paris

This is the next draft excerpt from the chapter on France from the Mrs. Everett story. To read the full story, keep an eye on the main story page, I should have it done by the weekend! Just too busy with ‘real-life’ these days, sorry for the delay in my Mrs. Everett saga for those of you following along on her travel odyssey.  But you can follow her on Twitter or be her friend on Facebook  between chapters if you want to see what she is up to! She’s at the Hotel Eza right now, absolutely stunning!

Her taxi turned right on Rue de Verneuil and lurched half a block and stopped abruptly. Since her luggage had been lost, she simply paid the driver, and stepped out onto her first Parisian street in over 16 years. An unnatural feeling of joy filled her feet, then her chest and she had the urge to jump or skip or clap, perhaps even all at once. This was her third country since November yet it was Paris that made her feel her liberty as a solo traveler. The last time she’d been here she’d been a wife concerned only with the feelings and happiness of her then husband Edward. Or rather unhappiness as it had been then.

“Bonjour Mademoiselle Everett!” the concierge warmly greeted her, stepping out from behind a petite but elegant desk to attend to her non-existent luggage. She explained that the airlines were going to send her luggage along once it was found but that for now she was just going to bed. His eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“A little wine to take with you?”

“Oh, I think…” She let her voice trail off as she watched him open a small glass cupboard and take out a demure half bottle of white wine. She wanted to say no but then remembered Edward wasn’t upstairs. There was no one to frown dourly at her from across the room.

“Oh, well, perhaps, a wee glass would help after traveling” she cheerily offered him as  she accepted the bottle and started towards the tiny elevator. It seemed everything was made for a small person including the tiny handles but then the hotel was 300 years old. Maybe they weren’t as tall as her back then.

She noticed the man had pressed the button for her and he explained they were renovating but had put her in the top floor with a lovely view.

“Merci!” she called behind her as she slid into the miniature elevator and pulled the door shut. The walls of the elevator had a kind of carpet or upholstery on them and there was barely room to turn around. Edward would hate this place. She already loved it.

It was 4 am Paris time. She opened her fabulously tall window and looked down the street. As far as her eyes could see, Haussmann style roofs, fairytale grays and blues and flourishes of architectural details from an era where a woman like her would have been out on the street and not in a beautiful suite in one of the nicest areas of the Paris.

She kicked off her shoes, shrugged out of her dress and slowly  crawled from the bottom of the bed to the top. She hugged the downy pillow and giggled into it. After a harrowing start to the new year, she was at long last with one of her greatest loves.

*****

Transmedia Spring

Artists are always making fools of themselves. It is required. Fail fast. Fall on your face. Test out boundaries. How else can you produce anything original? As some of you who read my blog may know, I’m writing a year-long transmedia travel story about a woman named Mrs. Everett. She’s adventuring around the world, having left her husband, whom, she has recently been informed, has been having an affair for 9 months with a very young woman by the name of Violet. The tricky part is all their messy financial, no wait, his (Edward is his name) messy financial situation as happens with extremely well-off people who are discovered having an affair. But to know more you’ll have to go read the chapters and follow it along on Facebook or start with the prose version at http://www.whatisyourstory.ca. Be Prue’s friend! She is on her way to Eze, France at the moment but would love some advice for traveling in that part of the world.

Here’s a poem written and spoken in the character of Prue about her husband and about discovering the ‘eternal sunshine’ within herself. I risk sounding like an idiot but I have to support the story so here is her (my), our, latest poem in the story.

Prue Gets Visual

I had a great talk with Lance Weiler at the beginning of January and one of the things he told me to do is to use my digital assets of my Transmedia story, Mrs. Everett, and start to make video stories from them. So, I’ve started to do a series of her poems, or really I like to think of them as tiny audio plays, but nevertheless, they will tell another layer of her journey. I started at the beginning for my first one, which is when she is making a reservation for herself and her husband for their 20th wedding anniversary. She knows in her heart the marriage is dead but she feels compelled to try. She is ghost-walking through it and in this video you can kind of hear (I hope!) her sadness and the beginning of her realization that her marriage isn’t giving her what she needs as in, at all. I’m going to to be posting these videos to Prue Everett’s Pinterest page. Some will be on her secret board for her Pen Pals only! You can sign up to be her Pen Pal on my business website. You can interact with the story and help her decide where to go, what to pack, things to see and once in a while she even sends her fans souvenirs from her trips! She also has a Facebook page and she’d love to be friends with you there. You can vicariously live through her as she travels the world; I know I do.

A sneak peek at Mrs. Everett’s trip to London…

She cleared security with relief (she always worried even though she was likely the safest possible traveler they could have on board), wriggled back into her favourite Valentino flats and wrapped her Pashmina around her neck. She stood for a moment wondering what to do next? It was odd to be traveling on her own with no one directing her. She was so used to Edward’s directives that she sometimes stood completely still unable to move her body, like a laboratory mouse that had been conditioned to pause until the right cue came along. She sighed deeply with no small feeling of regret for the years she could not undo. On this trip, Edward would not be carrying her luggage or streaming angry comments on poor service non-stop in her ear or clenching his teeth as wings were de-iced or flights delayed or hotel rooms inspected, upgraded, or angrily changed. Thankfully she wouldn’t have to witness him returning his coffee rudely to waiters as she cringed at his brusque air of entitlement.

Gone. All of it. She sunk down in a comfortable chair in the first-class lounge and pulled out her new Moleskin notebook. She remembered in her first year of college how her English teacher insisted they all keep a journal and she had. Up until her marriage when her then new husband felt that journalling at night was taking away from their time together and so, she had quietly put it away and never opened it again. Until now. She could smell the new pages and the soft leather cover and feel the crisp paper between her fingers. She felt shy and could think of nothing to write so instead she made a list.

To do:

-find new walking shoes of some kind (new TB. or Valent., red)

-buy winter coat (wool/Harrod’s?/Westwood?)

-speak to Ted re: account info, logins

-find a hammam!

She’d read that hammams were excellent for detoxing the whole body. She certainly had a lot detoxification to do and she’d heard there were some good ones in London. That was how she would spend Christmas she decided. Not in some silver glittery dress smiling at Edward’s business contacts in a demure wifely act of interest and delight but rather in a steamy room with strangers losing a self she was loathe to keep inside her anymore. She smiled. That sounded both erotic and biologically interesting. Indeed, it would be snakelike and restorative. She smiled again. Edward hated public bathing and pools of any kind. She vowed to swim in every hotel pool she ever stayed in for the rest of her life.

This would be her first international trip alone. She felt a little ashamed. How could she, at this age. be doing this only now? Never mind, she scolded herself, get on with it and don’t rummage around in the past looking for why’s. Now is now and besides it’s time for a very crisp martini. No, that wouldn’t be good for her skin. Best to hydrate and head to bed. She felt the sag of jet lag seeping in as her driver made his way through the dark streets of London on the way to the Four Seasons Park Lane hotel where she was staying.

Live, Prue, live! came the voice from inside that she didn’t recognize as her own but yielded to it anyway and replied:  yes, yes, yes! 

Museum Bar at The Savoy Hotel. Photo credit Kaitlin Wilkes, London content creator.

Note: If you subscribe to Prue’s Postcards you will get scenes, audio recordings, be sent letters from Prue, and souvenirs from her travels. You can also join her on her journey on Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook.  

The Next Big Thing

The title of this blog award has big shoes to fill so I’m kind of awed that my friend Tess Wixted nominated me for it. But happy and also grateful to be thought of by her (thank you Tess!).

Here are my responses to the questions that come with accepting this award.

What is the working title of your next book?

Mrs. Everett

1. Where did the idea come from for the book?

It started percolating when I saw a picture from the 60’s of this chic woman sitting in first class in an old Boeing 747 looking out the window about 3 years ago. It just hit me, the whole storyworld of Mrs. Everett. And I became obsessed with telling her story. The story often wakes me up to be told in the middle of the night. I’ve never had a story so insistent on being expressed. So, mostly I just try to make time to listen to it.

1. What genre does your book fall under?

It will be a Transmedia experience which means there will be a main ‘spine’ of prose as a stand-alone book with co-existing narratives in various forms including text (as in iPhone text messages), audio (as in a phonographic story), poetry (an entire poetry book written ‘floor by floor’ for every room Mrs. Everett stays in over the course of a year), Twitter (as in, a year of tweets), Facebook, same, and Pinterest with a board for every ‘Escape’ (ie destination) that Mrs. Everett visits. The idea is to make it more and more collaborative with hosts in cities/destinations creating content and adding continually to the breadth and depth of the story. As more people sign up for Postcards from Prue (her letters to her pen pals), I think a better online community can grow around the story. So, please sign up.:)

1. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Well, since Prue Everett loves Grace Kelly that would be my first choice. My second would be Marion Cotillard. For Mr. Everett I would choose Ewan McGregor without question because I think he can play a complex man very well. For the role of Violet, I would choose Scarlett Johansson. For the driver, Ted, I would choose Willem Dafoe.  For her estranged younger cousin Mary, I would choose Zooey Deschanel. There will be other characters but I can’t talk about them yet without compromising the story.

1. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

That is a challenging question. Okay here goes:

Mrs. Everett is the story of a woman who escapes the seemingly prison-like confines of her privileged life with her husband and goes on the lam by traveling around the world and in the process of discovering destinations comes to see herself and the world in an entirely radical new way.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

If there were a publisher with the cojones to publish this I’d be pretty impressed but at this point, I’m pretty sure I’ll be putting together an e-book that will include all of the digital media forms in one intensely amazing experience.

1. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I’m writing it right now and it will be completed December 2013. If I were honest, I could be writing this all day every day but have to try to carve time to pay some bills so I jam it in and around ‘regular’ life. Transmedia is not for the faint of heart, it’s a mind-bending amount of work to run multiple-narratives over time. A regular novel will feel like a cake-walk after this.

1. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

There are none. Which is why I’m writing it. I have been in the Transmedia space for some time and a much of what I was seeing I couldn’t really relate to. I was seeing a lot of cyborgs and aliens and games where people are killed and pirates and mystical places and  space tales and large ‘Hollywood’ style productions with budgets of millions of dollars.  I respect it all, I know how hard they’ve worked on these projects and I feel a part of that tribe but I wanted to find my own voice in Transmedia and create a story that didn’t rely on special effects, a big budget, or non-human species. Also, I love (and work in) tourism and hotels and travel and I wanted to show how destinations could look at Transmedia and see how it might work for them. To me, it’s a no-brainer to use a Transmedia approach to any and all destination development and marketing but I realized I had to do a proper case study to show my clients to win them over. Also, I wanted to explore a single narrative Transmedia story. A more intimate, one-to-one experience versus the typical Transmedia production which shoots for mass consumption as the ultimate benchmark of its success. I want to encourage people to get involved in the story, and change where Mrs.Everett goes and be a part of the narrative with me. I want the readers to be collaborators. I want it to be participatory and immersive. It’s way more fun that way.

1. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

A few things. That initial picture I talked about earlier and the idea I wanted to tell a different kind of Transmedia story. But if I can be candid, characters appear quite fully-formed for me and Mrs. Everett (Prue) did just that.Magically showed up on my doorstep. I then usually have to fumble around in the fog chasing my characters to where they pull me along to. I try my best to serve the characters and relate their storyworld to those behind me reading. It’s hard, I feel I never provide the true experience of their story but I’m trying, I’m trying! Some of the plot and other characters have been inspired by the relationships and past experiences over the last two years of my life and the travel part is fueled by my many years in the tourism and hospitality industry. I am blessed to have a lot of contacts around the world to help me with the story. Another inspiration was the Orient Express company, who still value old-world traditions and a style of travel long-forgotten by many. I like their idea of a travel world, where the unforgettable experience is the ultimate goal and money is no object. That is how Prue travels. At the beginning.:)

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Beyond the interesting fact the book is told across multiple platforms and has a living, breathing social media experience, there is the core narrative of a woman who discovers the life that she has been leading for 20 years is an illusion. As she peels back the layers of the illusion, she comes to find the horrors of the reality she has been numb to for decades and in her discovery, she has to face her own demons and her own complicity in it. It is an exploration of the lies we tell in our relationships, the pain we inflict on the ones we love, the often savage degrees we will go to to protect these illusions, and yes, the dirty little secrets of what appears to be a ‘perfect’ marriage. Blackmail, death, wealth, corruption, power, intrigue, luxury travel, glamour, spirituality, awakening, self-love. It will all be in there. I hope you’ll be friends with Prue along the way. She needs your support!

Like Tess Wixted, who nominated me, I want to support just one writer by nominating them. He doesn’t have a website yet (we’re working on it) and I did interview him but we’ve decided to do it over as we didn’t like the results. First time podcasters so we’re going to get that interview up and posted this week so please circle back here to find out about Zero Lee, an extraordinary writer who is working on a book that we will be talking about and sharing some insights on in our chat. He is also my writing partner for a Transmedia play we are working on that will be completed this spring and go into production in Vancouver next fall. Stay tuned for that, it’s going to be killer.

Analog vs Digital Love: How Memory Is Curated

I am reading a great book called Paris: A Love Story by Kati Marton. It’s a memoir that takes you back before the days of the internet, when phone calls were made with phones still attached to walls. When letters were written transatlantically. When people were together fully, with no second tier of attention, person, thing, or device to interrupt them or tug them away from the moment.

I remember those days too. I remember being in love in university and the feeling of a lazy day in bed then rushing to the theatre, where my boyfriend would race through Noel Coward dialogue then rush backstage and kiss me between scenes. Most days we lay on the rocky shores of Dallas bay beach in Victoria and drank wine and talked of art and life and our love, replaying our first disastrous date over and over and laughing in our own secret world. There were four am whispers that spoke to our 20 year old innocence, full of hopes and dreams and big plans. Sun set, sun rise. Always holding each other. We had no cell phones or computer, only a bare room, a shared bathroom with other renters in a big old character house, a bed, and sparse little cooking area. No one in the house loved us because we were so in love. We felt bad about it but there was nothing to do be done. We needed long baths and we had to cook in the middle of the night and rehearse dialogue loudly ‘with feeling’.

I wrote love notes and left them on pillows. If we were apart, we had to wait all day to speak to each other. I used to run from the bus stop to our apartment after hours of separation. There was no digital bridge between us, only the haphazard will of time marking off the distance between one touch and another.

I don’t have any text or tweets or emails or Facebook  statuses to look back on. No skype conversations, no digital footprints of our great love that held thousands of words and gestures, tears, and laughter. Not a trace.

Fast forward to now and I can’t seem to get out of the mire of leftover digital debris of love now gone. Just when I think it’s all been tidied away I come around the corner of a digital file to read:

“My heart and soul is with you all day. xxx”

or

“Counting down the days until I hold you in my arms again. I should be landing soon, same gate! Hope it is warmer in DC!”

 

Tweets, emails, instagrams–endless trails of relationships held in the ether. When I read these I don’t see an image or have a feeling. I just see text. A lot of short text messages. In fact, one of my Twitter direct message streams between my boyfriend and I equalled 995 pages. Yes, enough for a book.

I wonder as we gently open our memories and look back if analog love will feel different than digital? I think it does. In my analog love, there’s only the pictures that run like an old movie in my mind: us running for the bus, laughing so hard in a movie lineup I pee my pants, roses by the bed, champagne bubbles making me hiccup. They all seem saturated and three-dimensional and evocative and there’s nothing else attached to these images. Only the feeling, made more precious because they exist in my personal memory and nowhere else.

But when I look back on my last few relationships, they are crowded with so much confusing digital noise it’s hard to just see a simple picture. There’s so much of our relationship that happened in fractured transmedia style stories told across multiple platforms that it’s harder for me to pull a single moment out and cherish it. There’s a lot of content. There’s also a lot of sadness in those digital remnants that is harder to ignore and let the simple happiness shine through.

Yesterday I was walking along the dyke near where I live and ran into an 84-year-old man who was photographing a bird. I stopped and we started chatting. He took up photography only a year ago and felt completely lost with the digital camera at first but he showed me his pictures and they were National Geographic quality. I was stunned. There was the owl he was watching, flying towards the viewfinder with his wings outspread and his head upside down. Amazing capture. I said, you need to publish these! He just laughed and laughed. I said, what do you do with them? He said ‘I don’t do anything. My wife doesn’t want me fooling with the computer. I just like taking pictures.‘ Turns out, he hands his entire sim card over to a Nature Conservancy every few months for free.

So there we were, just being in the moment, enjoying two short-eared owls hunting for vole with no purpose other than to just marvel in their beauty and try to capture it on film. It felt really pure to me. The old man said, ‘I get these pictures because the birds trust me. They know me. I come here everyday for 3 or 4 hours.’

Bill, shooting the owls hunting by the dyke.

I am thinking differently about digital these days. In part because of Bill, my new friend, but also in part because I am seeing how my life has changed since being immersed and connected all the time.  I’m not sure where this is going to take me but I’m curious to know others thoughts on analog versus digital experiences, and how we will remember in 10 years, and, more importantly, how our hearts will be curated in the ether.

Mrs. Everett goes to the Hollywood Roosevelt

Here is a draft excerpt from the next chapter of Mrs. Everett, my Transmedia story. In this scene, Prue is hiding out at the Hotel Roosevelt, soaking up her new found freedom and trying not to think of the husband she has just abruptly left. 

From the Chapter, Mrs. Everett Goes to Hollywood

If she stayed out long enough, she thought to herself, maybe the sun would bleach away her memory.  Little black dots appeared in her vision and she wondered if her eyeballs were in fact sunburned. Sweat trickled down her back and her sunglasses slid slowly over and over down her nose. Was Los Angeles always this hot in October?

She rolled over, burying her face in the soft white towel and adjusted the bottom of her bathing suit. The corner of the magazine she was reading pressed into her cheek and her mouth still tasted of the salty guacamole chips she’d eaten at the bar, aptly called the Tropicana.  She felt the sun burning its way down her back, marking her white skin with tiny, yet to be seen scars and she sat up, hating the idea of dark moles spotting her future skin. She may be in her 40’s but she’d kept relatively sun spot free and she intended to stay that way. Fumbling for her glasses, she got her bearings and peered around her.

There were many more bodies now in white loungers around the pool. How long had she been asleep? She scratched at her roots which always got itchy when she needed her hair dyed and she absently made a note to talk to the concierge about getting someone in to do her hair. Later. For now she was okay with just the basics: two towels, a lounger booked for the week, cocktails from the Tropicana bar.

Suddenly a hairy arm was below her offering her some kind of tall, effeminate cocktail that anywhere else would look cliché and desperate.

“You look thirsty” came a voice from beside her and she looked up into equally dark glasses as hers, a wide mouth with smooth lips and self-conscious beard trimmed to the requisite 3 day I-want-to-be Brad-Pitt scruffy length.

She felt immediately angry. She wanted, needed, to be alone. This is the exact thing that never happens to you when you are in a long marriage she realized, where she’d been cloistered like a nun, in her quiet nunnery-home.  She’d not been hit on in a decade. Certainly never by her own husband.

She smiled politely and offered what she hoped had a ring of finality about it, “If I am thirsty, I will quench it myself. Thank you.” She lay back down on the lounger and just to solidify her desire to be alone, she turned over and buried her face in the damp pool towel.

“You’ll get burned with all that white skin” the man offered, still hoping she might be open to conversation.

She ignored him and he stood for a few more brief moments then set the drink down gently beside her lounger on the pool deck. She opened her eye an imperceptible amount only to see him squatting down, his white shorts–what did they say, Liverpool or some such nonsense on them?–stretched tightly across his groin. Oh dear heavens. Well, I suppose it’s to be expected she chastised herself. You are at a pool in a hipster hotel in the middle of LA Prue.

Wait. That was not her voice. It was her husband’s.

“Wait” she said to his departing back. “I’m sorry, I’m…I’m just married.”

“So?” he replied, smiling broadly, his teeth so white and gleaming they looked like a package of  Chiclets.

“Thank you” she offered somewhat sheepishly, picking the drink up gingerly and drinking from the straw, her neck craned at a torturous angle.

“You know, it’s easier to sip that sitting up. Just saying.” He came and sat down at the edge of her lounger and she did sit up then, bolt upright, pulling her feet back and tucking them under her.

She looked at him, the dots clearing from her eyes, and she noticed he was young, without a wrinkle or gray hair anywhere on his well-formed shoulders that weren’t shaped in a gym but rather by the water. Perhaps he was a surfer.

“I don’t really want company, I’m sorry to be rude, but I’m…” she stammered, unable to think of a reason why.

“That’s cool, I understand, totally. It’s nice to slip off somewhere in the sunshine, you know, into our imaginations. There’s nothing like the Hollywood sunshine to let you escape.”

She coughed and laughed out loud. “Hollywood sunshine? Versus say San Francisco sunshine?”

“You’ll know what I mean once you stay here for a while longer. You’re around right, here at the Roosevelt?” he asked her, leaning in just enough to make her uncomfortable.

“I don’t know. I have no idea and I wouldn’t certainly be sharing my itinerary with a perfect stranger so if you don’t mind…” She felt herself getting annoyed again. Please just leave me alone is what she wanted to say. She didn’t know how to navigate herself in this world. She could feel him looking at her like she was an unbalanced, overly paranoid person. Oh, fine, she thought to herself, then that’s what I am. But I don’t need some strange man telling me anything I don’t need to hear. I have a well-known man telling me things I don’t want to hear all the time.

He stood up and put his hands out in a gesture of compliance. “Hey, it’s chill, I’m not a stalker okay? You just seem…really interesting. You struck me. That’s all. Have a great afternoon. Don’t get burnt.” He stood and walked away, his shoulder blades sliding up and down his back in perfect symmetry and his swimmer’s legs softly padding along the edge of the pool towards the Tropicana.

Prue stared at him for a long minute then turned into her towel once again. She smiled to herself. He can’t be over 30. What would Edward think? With that happy thought, she slipped back into a doze, the taste of vodka, lemon and something else she couldn’t name on her tongue.