Coloring Outside the Box

I thought you were dead, but here you are, right in front of me on the street, smiling at me. 

Now what will I do?

For those of you who don’t know me, I am thirtyish, a woman with a career and lots of other interests. Those interests were probably the cause of everything. Yes, I blame them. They are the little people who climb up onto my shoulders or swim in my head, saying, 

“Wouldn’t it be interesting to do… to try… to go…?

That’s one of the ways they seduce me, because in some ways I’m a rather impulsive person. I can focus, dig deep, when I’m at work, but there are also moments when the cells I use for thinking just take control and lead me down an unexpected path.

Examples:

At three in the morning I might decide to make a full-scale paella because I love that dish and am not bad at producing a paellera (brought back from my travels) brimming with rice, peas, seafood, chicken, with just the right amount of olive oil and garlic. Mmmmm… The only this is the time I choose to make it. Obviously no guests come to dine with me at that hour.

At midnight I might decide to go to the town square and sit. Quietly, of course. There are no musical instruments with me, no cigarettes (smoking is disgusting), not even an animal companion. I just want to go listen to the night. Sometimes I go to a bench and other times I select the gazebo up toward one side of the square. I do that when I want a bit broader perspective of the grass and trees. Rarely, rarely, am I disturbed at that hour. Quiet is nice.

At noon I might decide to write a book. Not anything related to what I do for a career. Just a book about hiking in the Pyrenees or the Grand Canyon, although I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon and don’t really have much interest in going there. It just doesn’t speak to me. 

I think you get the picture: Despite my professional accomplishments - of which there are quite a few, but it would be self-centered to just enumerate them, not to mention boring - I have a tendency to act on impulse. Some would diagnose this as some sort of syndrome, but I rather think I was just born with an extra dose of spontaneity. Making something whole out of the odd. That’s something I enjoy.

The trouble is, that urge to be spontaneous - and I only gave you three examples - has gotten me into more than one difficult situation. The odd hour syndrome - if you really need to classify it as some disorder - has gotten the attention of the wrong people. Or wrong person. It made me stand out, no matter how quiet I tried to be. You know, I was in the wrong places at the wrong times. Not doing anything wrong, just doing something when nobody else was or traipsing after an impulse when I had other things to do. People aren’t supposed to do that. It means they’re not following the rules.

That difficult situations were caused by my having acquired a stalker. The stalker apparently watched my house, saw when lights came on and stayed on at odd times, or detected when the door opened and followed me to places like the bench or the gazebo. I never noticed. Fortunately, the police believed me when I reported the creepy guy, who sure curtailed the spontaneity of my night jaunts or made me nervous about sitting down to write next to the bay window. Obviously he could see me with all that glass and nothing to block the view from the sidewalk.

The stalker was never determined to be dangerous and I’ll never know if he was (I’m ninety-eight per cent certain it was a he). He did try to come in my house once, thinking I was there, probably. He didn’t know I was out, oddly enough, and since he knew I rarely locked the front door, he tried the knob and walked in. However, I was returning from the grocery store at five in the morning - we have an all-night place about a mile away - and saw the door open, so I called the police. No way I was going up to my door. It was still dark out.

To make a long story short, the police came and the stalker ran off. I said it was a man, but to be honest, all I had seen was a dark figure, not too heavy, not too thin, not too tall, not too short, dressed in dark clothing. Black, maybe, or navy. The figure had close-cropped hair. I heard the patrol car speeding in the direction the figure had run, then nothing. It was silent and I needed a cup of freshly-ground coffee, so I went inside. Nothing had been touched. A day later, I heard the police had shot the person. My stalker was dead. I heard that and believed it. 

I didn’t have much to say when they questioned me, because I couldn’t prove that the person I’d seen running away had been my stalker. I’d never reported being followed before and the person was dead, so that was that. It served me right, not speaking up. I hadn’t said anything because I didn’t want to be laughed at, but even more because I didn’t want to admit that somebody could be watching my every move. Would you like to go through that? Maybe it was only a robber, they said.

I should explain that it was my gender bias that had told me the stalker was male, even though women have certainly been known to engage in that activity. I was positive I knew he was a man and that was that. Intuition is good for some things. 

At least after the break-in at five in the morning had ended in the fatal shooting, I felt I could breathe more easily. I might try to curb my odd hours activities, however, and thus direct my need for spontaneity toward safer things. The dark figure had just made all these night jitters blossom in me and I wasn’t enjoying the gazebo sitting or the lonely paella banquets like I did before. It would be worth trying to follow a more normal schedule for a while, simply to clear my head and calm down. 

In my new life, as I liked to see it, I was more like everybody else, unless, of course, you want to include people who work the night shift at the factory or the hospital. Even those night creepers, though, had a more regular schedule. My problem had been that spontaneity thing. It felt as if I had to act on my thoughts, but maybe I was just odd. Maybe I am odd.

***

Today is a day like any other. I am out for a walk, a very normal walk, and

I thought you were dead, but here you are, right in front of me on the street, smiling at me. Who are you? WHO ARE YOU????

You know full well who I am.

I don’t, I really don’t. What do you want from me? Can’t you see I’m reformed? I do things at normal times, like everybody else. Maybe I still go to bed late, but lots of people do. I’ve always done that. My whole family used to do that. We were all night owls. I am still a night owl. WHOOOO ARRRE YOOUUU?

I am….

But the figure was gone. I was drenched in sweat, shaking. I looked around to see if anybody was watching. They weren’t, and I had been afraid of that. I wanted witnesses, because my stalker was back. The stalker I knew was dead. Right?

With the encounter still floating before my eyes, I turned around and headed home, no longer enjoying the normal walk. It had turned out not to be normal. It was probably better just to concentrate on things I needed to do for work. I had to read some articles and write a summary. Easy task. Safe. No imagination needed. The stalker certainly wouldn’t be interested in me sitting at my little wooden desk, looking at a computer screen. I wasn’t even interested in that, but it did pay the bills. 

***

Life hasn’t been all that interesting without all the unplanned occurrences that there had once been. I was safe, true, or at least I thought so. On the other hand, I felt useless and bored, even with my career, a nice little house that I’d just had repainted my favorite color, and a cat to curl up with on silent evenings. I do crave silence, that I admit. The problem was, I was slowly languishing. I needed more scatter, more flurry, in my life, and the stalker had teased it all out of me. I had unfortunately learned I didn’t have the right to do oddball things, even if they never hurt a fly. You probably have realized I am not a violent person and surely agree that oddball isn’t illegal.

My stalker stole almost everything. Stole my right to explore the night, to cook up a storm spiced with thunder and lightning, to put words out into the world that weren’t dictated by company policy or hazmat regulations. I haven’t told you about other things I liked to do but that seem now to be forever banned, but maybe I should. You need to understand all that I’ve had to give up with the second coming of my stalker, who might not ever die. I want you to feel my pain.

Things I used to do but can’t now:

1.Dance around the block, using ear buds to ensure the music wouldn’t disturb anybody. I really like reggae and punta music, but also like Greek folk music and can even call a few square dances like Dad used to do. (I tried not to call them out loud, because that would have attracted attention.)

2. Go to the nearest stony beach and forage for mica. That was appropriate at any time there was daylight, but people did stare, seeing me pick up little glistening things and flick them into a wooden box. I had plans for the hard, shiny flakes, but nobody ever asked; they only stared. Mica collecting is really not so weird, I wanted to scream, but never screamed.

3. Go out on a warm, soggy night in late summer to pick up night crawlers. You know, worms, not zombies like in The Walking Dead. That is not my favorite program at all. Dead stalkers? It’s a myth, because they aren’t dead, they’re up and walking around, just like my stalker is, apparently. Dead, but walking. If you think it strange to go out foraging for worms, putting them in tin coffee cans stuffed with rotting leaves, then you haven’t met many people who fish. I used to fish, although rarely go now. I just like the conversations that arise when you’re out under the stars and your flashlight catches the coils of earthworms, you aim with thumb and forefinger, and add another to the cache.

4. Head to my tiny shed, so well made, and look at the things stored there. Flower pots that might make it through another year, some diatomaceous earth that has multiple uses, the remnants of a white picket fence I had removed in order to replace it with a split rail. I walk along the back edge of my lot, wondering if the salvaged pickets will be enough to fence off the line there so the deer don’t get in to eat all the hostas that were planted.

Et cetera.

The list of my past is endless, but I can’t do any of those things now, because my dead stalker ruined everything. I can’t just create my days and nights now without planning; I have to be rational, think things through, sit properly at the table, not putting my elbows on it because that’s not good manners. If I were a child again, a child in kindergarten, I would be told there is no such thing as a purple cow or a red ginger man, and I would just have to suck it up and use the brown crayon.

It’s getting so I’m afraid to go to the refrigerator and get out things to make juice or soup. I used to love being creative and never really got upset if my combinations didn’t taste good. I just never made them again. No harm in experimenting, right? Some kitchen sink recipes turn out fantastic. Maybe my bananas and kale smoothie wasn’t very good, or tomato-and-honey salad with pecans, but they didn’t harm anybody. Nowadays I stick to banana and orange juice, or tomato and feta with chopped basil. Approved recipes, no hidden ingredients.

This is not the life I want!

The stalker has to go. I suspect that the first one probably was eliminated by the police, though, and that the current one is different. Somebody who follows you secretly won’t just come up to you and smile. What did I do to deserve a new person in my life who stifles even my nightmares? Who looks me in the eye, says nothing, yet takes my breath away? 

I know only one thing: I can’t stand it any longer.

The police will not believe I have acquired another stalker. After all, what is there about me that would want to make someone follow my every step, breathe down my neck, send shivers down my spine and install goosebumps on my arms? Nothing, right? I always let my spontaneity loose very discretely, never trying to call attention to it. It was a nice little spot to be, and the conversations there, the things I saw, the flavors, it was just for me. Nobody had to join me, nobody who knew me, anyway.

There is only one solution, one way out of this invisible prison, this transparent universe with no purple cows and no paella. I will have to eliminate this stalker, this current one, plus any others who refuse to die. I will kill the figure that is now over there in the corner, almost smirking, frightening my poor cat. I cannot let that happen. My cat is an innocent bystander.

DONE!!!

I will never really know if my stalker was male or female, or if there was more than one. I doesn’t matter, because I’ve got my life back, I’m free. You see, I got every ounce of courage up and confronted that shadow in the corner of my quiet little house, telling it to leave my cat along and that this issue only involved us, nobody else. Then I sat down at the dining room table, my warm, reddish cherry wood table with rounded edges, nothing sharp.

The stalker, obviously, became intrigued, because the real draw to that sort of person is always following in secret and there I was, inviting company. The paper was there, my favorite fountain pen was there, I was there. Sitting quietly. When the shadow had moved in as close as possible, I knew it was time to act. I picked up the pen, filled with one of the many colors of ink I keep in a closet because I like colors (cf. kindergarten cow and ginger man), and raised it to about shoulder level. Then I stabbed the figure, the shadow, the darkness, the stalker - stabbed until there was no ink left.

When I finally stopped the wild, maybe wicked attempt to eliminate my nemesis, the white sheets of paper were full of scrawls. At least I thought they were scrawls, until I looked more closely and realized they were real words. They were a story, the story of a person who had been stalking creativity her whole life.

I slept well that night for the first time in a long time. My stalker was dead. Or maybe not, because I hadn’t seen anybody leave. 

I can live with that.