I’m a city girl. Haven’t ever shared space with furry folx who don’t speak a language that can be fed into a translator app. When I was a kid in SoCal, we chose museums over zoos and hotel rooms over tents so my interactions with land that is grassy, rocky, unpopulated by humans is limited. I’m into the learning curve though. Outside my window, there is on a daily basis a furry something whose existence is completely alien from mine with the exception that we’re both sharing roughly the same living space. Last week during daily strolls a small fox (perhaps a pre-teen?) bolted across the road in front of me; a flock of chickens squawked, then kept pecking at the dirt as I walked by; and a cow side-eyed me as I passed its field of clover. When the dog for that particular farm, whose job it is to protect the place, began to shout “back-off” at me, that’s when I turned around for home.

Out our window currently, there’s plenty to see. A woodchuck who lives under the back shed and who we thought was a singleton, turns out to be a plural with a newly sprung family. We discovered this yesterday, when, while staring out from the kitchen there appeared the familiar rolly-polly furry we’d come to know foraging around in the backyard. Then, suddenly, there was another equal-sized furry followed by four tiny little furries. A goddamn family of adorableness. Woodine, Chuckie and their tiny snufflers moved across the back yard eating their vegetarian meals unaware that our entire household had sprung to attention. Desi and Lucille quivering at the window, D and I rapt above them. This went on for some minutes until our heartbeats returned to normal and we realized that was it, all we were going to see was them munching. I mean, we didn’t need circus tricks or anything, it was just a family out to eat. D & I went back to whatever it was we were doing, Lucille went back to her window box for an afternoon nap, Desi, on the other hand, stayed glued to the window perhaps plotting how to remove the screen to go introduce(?) himself.

Desi is a problem solver (or at least I think he is, or at least I’ve anthromorphized him enough to decide that to be true?) and so his attention is laser-like. It seems while appreciating this new living moment in front of his face, he also wants to keep eyes on it and figure it out/get closer. This morning a small deer was breakfasting out the bedroom window and as it moved toward the side of the house where no windows are, he couldn’t accept that. He kept darting back and forth from the original spot where said deer had appeared and over to the wall where there was only a barrier with some funky wallpaper perhaps thinking well, if i just give it a minute, a view will appear and i’ll be able to seeee. Naturally that didn’t happen and after a half-dozen relays back and forth, he sighed (I swear), settled back on the bed and returned his peepers to the yard. It wasn’t a total waste given a few minutes later a couple of chipmunks began to tumble around. But he didn’t seem as excited by them.

I can relate to this whole scenario (perhaps because I assigned all those emotions to him; thanks Desi). In my life, when I catch sight of something I want to know or understand, bloody-hell if I don’t want to keep eyes (inner/outer/all that) on it until I can either figure it out, own it, feel safe around it, let it go. Obviously I’ve decided I need to keep the thing in my sights before any of that can happen. One of the reasons I find the phrase “the call is coming from inside the house” so terrifying because where inside? WTF am I meant to actually do with that information? But not to get too horror-movie about it, I can also appreciate that the things we don’t know, can’t see nor control but are still quite aware of directly impact our lives. Control and a direct view aren’t really a thing most of the time.

Months ago I found out that my first novel (now called Alex in Wonderland), which I’d sent out to agents in the pre-pleistoPandemic times of 2017-ish and gotten some interest but no offers, then on a whim submitted to the Mslexia Novel Competition had been long-listed for some important consideration. Meaning that among thousands of entries, Alex had become one of a few dozen to get attention and be read by a small group of judges. I was also told to keep this information under wraps until the finalists and subsequent winner had been chosen. I got that information, became very excited, then lost the view. I kept running to the wall in my mind where there was no window to see what would happen next. Natually I made things up. One day I was the winner, the next I expected to see an email saying there’d been a mistake and, no, that long-list thing? They hadn’t meant it. The mind is a wicked place when it doesn’t offer the direct sightline you think you need. It makes all sorts of really not very useful stuff up.

Of course I could carry on not knowing what was happening with my novel. In fact, out the window a million other views were unfolding, lots of shiny objects for me to train my attention on even if at first I was looking beyond them, straining into the woods of my imagination to see if I could catch sight of what might be happening with that original obssession: my novel. I just found out that Alex hadn’t become a finalist, and while that was a disappointment, it was also extremely fine because it meant I was now free to send her back into the world to tell anyone I wanted that she’d been chosen in the first place. I looked out my window as she stepped back into view, her hair a little mussed, eyeliner smudged. She looked a little rough but yet smiling with a kind of readiness to take on the world. Honestly, though, her natural state is a bit mussed and smudged while willing to keep on until she gets what she wants. That is in fact why I love her. GIven I’d been staring at the wall so long trying to see what had become of her that once she came back into my sightline, I realized, it would be OK to let her go again so she can travel into other people’s views trusting whatever’s gonna happen just will. Maybe someone of an agent-y type will open up their shades and see her standing there and invite her in. In the meantime, there’s plenty of other views to keep my occupied and dreaming.