My pixie alter ego.
I have a Pixie figurine sitting on my desk in a prominent place to the left of my keyboard and in front of the microphone I use for dictating. She’s about 4 inches high. Her legs are crossed in front of her and she’s sitting on her bum. One eye is squinted shut. She leers as though she doesn’t give a hoot about anything that doesn’t matter to her. She wears a shapeless, dark grey hat that looks like it might have been pointed originally, but now it’s crumpled and stretched out. Her brown tunic looks organic, as though it might’ve been fashioned out of dead leaves and twigs on the forest floor. One of her dark brown shoes has a face on it with the same leering expression, a detail I only just noticed. Her ears are pointed and ginormous, way out of scale to the rest of her body. One of her fingers has disappeared deep into the left one, looking like she’s digging something irritating out of it.
She’s both my muse and my alter ego. She reminds me to be myself when I write. She still hasn’t told me her name, even after all these years.
I bought her in 2003 when my husband, son and I were touring Western Canada for two months. My husband was on sabbatical and we pulled our young lad out of school to take him with us. I found her – to be accurate, as she found me – in the general store in Coombs, British Columbia on the way to the beaches at Tofino on Vancouver Island. The store was a tourist destination in its own right, because it had a sod roof, and because goats grazed on top of it.
We took the requisite pics of goats climbing onto the roof and then grazing. I investigated what was inside the store. One of the first things to catch my eye was an entire tabletop display of figurines. My Pixie was among them. They were all different but for some reason my eyes were drawn directly to her and I was transfixed to her gaze. She even spoke to me. I heard her voice say inside my head, “Well, it’s about time you got here.” She’d clearly been waiting for me. What else could I do but pay for her and take her home? Clearly the universe wanted us to be together.
In 2003 I “retired” from the paid work force and started freelancing from home. I began by writing first-person essays about my life. It was the first time I’d ever written about myself. Before then in my professional life I did communications for three universities, and a provincial government. It was so easy for me to write using the corporate, institutional and impersonal tone, that I could’ve written it in my sleep.
But now I was writing about myself. What did my voice sound like? It was almost 20 years ago and I think it’s still evolving. I hope that my blogging voice will be different from the first person essays I wrote at the beginning of my freelancing. I fear it hasn’t changed enough. I guess the proof will be in the pudding. Wish me luck. Did I mention I have chronically itchy ears?