Puzzles

First, a poem I once wrote about my fascination with puzzles:

Puzzles
 
Why have I always liked puzzles?
Hours, days, weeks, months spent
Trying to make sense of a jumble of pieces,
Forming them into a comprehensible whole,
Perhaps hoping that life could be like that;
That, one day, I’d have an understandable
Picture of my own jumble of pieces,
That someday I’d understand why
This thing and that thing happened,
See that everything did, indeed, have a reason;
That I got up, went through the motions --
Showering, working, buying, sweating --
And that it wasn’t all for naught.
Each day of apparently meaningless existence
Takes me closer to the edge (and sometimes
I peer over it), but those puzzles bring me
Hope that someday I will finally see
And appreciate the picture that is
My life.

It’s true that I have always enjoyed putting puzzles together. Nowadays, I like to put together puzzles that are book or motorcycle themed, but I especially like to put together puzzles containing more than 1,000 pieces. The more, the better. If I’m going to spend time on it, I’d like to be challenged by it.

Here are a few photos of some of my most challenging and/or enjoyable puzzles from the past few years.

This puzzle has 3,000 pieces. The sky was especially challenging! It’s the castle in Segovia, Spain. I’ve visited it twice in person.

This puzzle also has 3,000 pieces. I don’t recall where it is, but the sky of this one also gave me fits.

Someday I hope to visit this German castle!

Two of my many book-themed puzzles. Aren’t they pretty?

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been putting puzzles together. I like all kinds of puzzles, especially word puzzles, but jigsaw puzzles are my favorite.

When I was a kid, I so enjoyed putting puzzles together that I drove one of my friends crazy by insisting we race to put together puzzles. These, naturally, had much fewer pieces than the puzzles I do now, but I think we all can admit that puzzle races aren’t typical childhood games. Additionally, they were my puzzles and I was much more interested in putting together puzzles than she was, so I always won. In my defense, brain activities are the only things I’m speedy at, so she kicked my ass in every type of outdoor race. I appreciated that she was willing to play my silly puzzle racing game every now and then, though.

Nowadays, I much prefer to take my time with a puzzle and savor it. Much like life, as I mentioned in the above poem, as one ages, the need to savor things becomes more pressing. Also, the challenges of life become harder with time, but they also become solvable with patience and stepping back to look at the big picture — or where puzzles are concerned, to look at the big picture on the front of the box.

I tried to get my children interested in putting puzzles together with me, and they did enjoy the ones made for young people for a while, but when it came to the large, time-consuming puzzles I like to do, they both balked. I enjoyed it when my friend, Silvia, lived with me for a couple years while she was going to college because she also loves to put together puzzles, so it was something we could do for hours while we also chatted and drank hot tea — this was, and still is, an especially pleasurable activity when it’s cold and snowy outside.

Most people look upon putting together a puzzle as a solitary activity, and I’d say that it is if you want it to be, but it can also be a great activity to do with someone else. The difficulty lies in the view you have of the puzzle. It can be hard to find the correct pieces when you are looking at the puzzle upside down, but isn’t that also true of every difficult task?

The worst part about putting together a puzzle is getting to the end only to find out you’re missing a piece or two. Something about that discovery ruins the entire experience. I think it’s because we feel robbed or tricked. We did all that work and can’t have the satisfaction of seeing it complete. I understand that may happen if I’m doing an old puzzle or one picked up at a garage sale or checked out of a library, but it is totally inexcusable that it should happen when the puzzle is brand new. If I took the plastic wrapper off the box or slit the sides open with a knife, every single piece better be inside that puzzle box.

I’ve never been one for gluing together a puzzle to hang it on my wall. I enjoy putting together puzzles more than once, but when I take it out of the box for the second or third time, I break the pieces all apart, so I can start afresh. I won’t begin anew with even two of the pieces from the first time still together. That makes me weird in some people’s eyes, but I’m okay with that. I like being weird.

In normal fashion, though, I usually begin with the edges. Even when doing a puzzle on the computer, I will put all the edges together first. I don’t do the computer puzzles very often, though, because I much prefer to feel the pieces as I put them into place, but one thing I like about the computer is that I can change the number of pieces to make each puzzle easier or more challenging according to my mood or time constraints.

Currently, I have a cat who likes to mess with my puzzles, so I have to cover them when I’m not working on them to preserve the progress I’ve made and to keep him from knocking pieces to the floor where the dog will eat them. Unfortunately, the most recent victim of the dog was my fault. I inadvertently knocked a piece to the floor and didn’t realize it until I saw the dog chomping on something. I did manage to fish it out of her mouth, but you can tell which piece she ruined.

The Palacio Real (Royal Palace) of Madrid, Spain. I’ve also been here twice. Note the lovely misshapen and discolored bottom piece — a victim of the dog.

Currently, I’m working on a different type of puzzle. It’s the novel I’m writing. I’ve come quite far in it — over 80,000 words, in fact — but it’s not coming together the way I need it to just yet. I keep finding (or creating) pieces I need to incorporate, but I’m not totally sure where they go, and since I don’t have a handy big picture to look at, it’s taking longer than I’d like. I know it will all come together in the end if I’m patient and just keep working on it — a skill I’ve honed from years of putting real puzzles together.

I’m going to share the prologue and first chapter as they stand right now. Things may (and probably will) change in them when the picture clarifies completely for me, but I’d love your input on this much of the book. It’s meant to be a mystery/soft thriller that intensifies as the story progresses and as the protagonist begins to learn things — essentially, she begins to put together a puzzle that clarifies things for her.

If you’re not a paid subscriber yet, please consider becoming one, so you can have access to all the content. I would love any and all feedback you’d care to give me about the beginning of this, my fifth, novel.

The working title is “Trouble on Tybee.”

Thanks for reading.

Tammy Marshall