Where Drum Lives

There needs to be a drug for writing. A stimulant, a depressant; an enlightener that puts my ass in gear, makes me put one word in front of the last. I guess that's what I'm doing now, but even as I process and re-process the book, I feel that I am in a holding pattern. Drum is languishing. It needs to be revived, reviewed, re-imagined.

Had a dream the other day that had me trying to park Drum, the boat on its trailer, in a parking lot. It was too big, even with the pontoons folded in. There just wasn't enough room in the lot, and I remember thinking this wouldn't last, this situation cannot be sustainable. Such a revealing dream. The situation I am currently in as Drum awaits revision, this situation is unsustainable. The thing cannot simply be parked here forever.

Drum needs to sail. We all know that. What I know to be true too is that it was made to sail, maintained and caressed and coaxed to sail. Michael knew the boat inside and out to the last millimeter. If Drum failed, it was Michael who failed. This realization is something Jade needs to make. Michael is not infallible. He is not the idealized hero-brother of her childhood. He is--was--human, full of error and fallacy, and while Drum is his conceit, Michael is Jade's conceit. He is her idea of a certain past, one largely shaped by her own life and what she has projected onto the disappearance. She lives in her brother's shadow and it is within this shadow that she may well fail, herself (or fail herself).

But there is Cordelia, the love shared, and what this represents to Jade. She is seeking just such a love, idealized, romanticized, yes. But it is genuine, and Jade understands that this is what survives. Whatever became of the boat and occupants, it is what they shared that lives on in Jade not as ghost or abstraction but as palpable reminder of the vanishing moments of her own life.

So, what do I think when ------------- contacts me to let me know that there may be more FBI information relevant to the case--some "other department" that has information which may (or may not) be released? I suppose I am grateful that he is taking this on, but I am also a bit ashamed that I did not pursue these documents myself years ago. This shame can also feed Jade's perspective. That it takes an utter stranger to do this work serves to illuminate just how buried, how sequestered, the loss is in Jade. I can use this, let this realization sink into the reader: Jade is a loser. But she is also someone who may rise above these shadows. Herein is the weight of the book.