about hope.

I wrote today. I cranked out 2,000 words in a sitting. Just the start of something. I thought about things I haven't thought about in a long time. And there's no escaping that feeling of having sunk deep inside of yourself. You try to come back out, but the dim light streaks hot in your path and it's too hard to open your eyes wide again.

Now seems to be the time to write about resolutions. New Year, new life, right? I make casual resolutions every year, mostly a dialogue with myself. I don't always write them down. I just say it to myself: I will be better in this way or that. For several years, my only serious resolution was to quit smoking, which I failed at more times than I care to remember. This is the first time in five years that I'm not making that resolution. Seven months smoke free, which is quite surreal.

I know a lot of people think resolutions are stupid, mostly because we don't often keep them. You know, we're all going to go to the gym and drink lots of water and eat only vegetables....but then.

be here.

Some while ago I read something, I can't remember where. A post on a blog or maybe an essay. It was about fear and this reassurance: Anything could happen, but it usually doesn't. I've been letting my brain chew on this thought for a few weeks now.

I carry a lot of fear around with me. I don't usually acknowledge it to myself, or even anyone else. I am afraid of losing things and people that I love, afraid of people dying or abandoning me, afraid of them abandoning themselves, afraid of change and the unknown and feeling out of control. Usually my fear is something I push back when it surfaces. But lately it has been fighting it's way through, sharp pricks and wet eyes. I am forced to confront it every day and I am confronting it now head on. I am tired of living with the constant expectation that something evil is just around the corner.

Over the weekend, I read a piece in the latest issue of Poets & Writers that was about writing as healing and discovery in the face of a spouse's death. I read the first sentence, "On the night my husband died..." and immediately the black hole opened up in the pit of my stomach. Death, there it is, looming over me and everyone else I love.

memories of a gorilla suit.

I can't remember what I ate as a child. I know I ate things, I know we had meals. There are pieces, mostly memories of melting cheese on chips and watching I Love Lucy. There's the sugar bomb cereal that none of the neighbor kids were allowed. They always wanted to sleep over for the breakfast.

I don't understand why I can't remember the meals, years and years of my life. What was I eating? In my adult life, I structure my entire day around what I'm going to eat and when. I love food and I love to make it. I will gladly devote my entire evening to buying groceries and making a meal. I read food blogs like it's my job.

Memory is a funny thing. The pieces that carry through, the things you remember, and the things that are lost. Years of life, significant acts, eating, all lost. In this moment now, you can't imagine a time when you'll forget. Can't imagine not remembering the feel of that hand or the way the Boston air smelled after a cold December rain. But you might forget.

global climate change.

Check out my newest post at the Friendly Atheist:

Understanding Christianity and Global Climate Change

mapmakers.

A few weeks ago, Anthony Doerr posted a recommendation for The Story and It's Writer at The Lit Pub. It's a beautiful piece on the precious place that books and stories hold in our lives.  Towards the end, he evokes the image of a map, across our lives, containing all the books we've read.

Imagine you could draw a map of all the experiences you’ve had in your life, and superimpose it over a map of all the books you’ve read in your life. Here you worried your daughter was failing out of school, here you gave a nun a stick of chewing gum, here you saw a man dressed as a referee weeping in a Honda Accord. And here a boy in an egg-blue suit handed you an ornate invitation to a party at Jay Gatsby’s, here you met the harpooner Queequeg at the Spouter Inn, here you floated a stretch of the Mississippi with a slave named Jim.

Since reading that piece, I've been thinking over and over all the maps in my life. I could do a layover of walks that I've taken, houses I've lived in, friends that I've loved, and so on. Lately I've been stuck on the map of music in my life.

I'll be honest: I'm one of those people who obsesses over a song. I play it over and over until I kill it good and dead. I think that makes music especially defining in the emotional and intellectual landscape of my mind. There are dozens of songs I can listen to and be instantly transported back to a different time and a unique set of emotions. There was Bon Iver, Skinny Love and heartache. There was Old Crow Medicine Show, Wagon Wheel and old friends. There was Blitzen Trapper, Furr and falling in love.

more listening.

risks.

I wear neutral colors. I choose my words carefully. I'm a lover, not a hater. I'm soft-spoken. I want to keep the peace. I don't like much attention.

But when I get down to business, the things that I need to write and say are difficult. They're controversial, maybe even offensive. They might hurt people that I love.

That's the battle I've been fighting on a daily basis and right now, right here. I'm only dusting off the iceberg - I haven't even begun to chip away at it. What's the answer? I need to write, I know that I need to write. Something in my gut tells me that my writing will never be what I want until I can confront the demons and write the hardest things. The fear, instinct, knowledge, emotion - I'm left nearly paralyzed.

I had a conversation yesterday about the challenges as an artist to separate yourself from your work. It is still nearly impossible for me. The words are an extension of self. They are intensely personal. I don't know how to make the divide.

something completely different.

I'm now guest posting at Hemant Mehta's Friendly Atheist blog. My first post went up yesterday.  Check it out here:

Dissecting Rick Perry's 'Strong' Ad

If you're new to my site, check out the About section - and feel free to say hello!

push along.

It is a true thing: sometimes it doesn't really get easier. There are things that tug and pull at you, your emotions, your thoughts, and they just aren't going to go away. Do you know what I mean?

For me, it's smoking. I am slowly and calmly (sort of) trying to accept the fact that I will always want to smoke. Just over six months in the clear, but I still get the jealous, violent pang each time I see someone smoking. I will get better at ignoring the voices in my head, the ones that scream, It's raining, I'm tired, I have a headache, I feel emotional and I need to smoke.

And I will get better at pushing myself along. Towards goals, towards creative growth, towards greater empathy and love. One of the amazing and accidental purposes that this blog now has is this: on the days like today, when I'd rather gnaw off my own fingers than write, I can still say to myself, Just write something for the blog. As soon as I get that out, the spark is alive again and I can keep going. Thank you, internet gods, for that.

the notebook, continued.

Here's the deal:
Two months ago, I said I was going to finish the notebook. I only had seven pages left. More or less the moment I said those words, it became impossible for me to do it. I still wrote, finished two pieces, blogged, wrote in other notebooks. But something in me resisted finishing this notebook. I don't understand it so I can't explain it. I kind of lied a little, mostly to myself, and said it was done. Well, it wasn't.

I know this might seem insignificant - maybe it is insignificant. But it matters to me.

So today, holed up in Starbucks on my lunch break with an Earl Gray tea, I wrote the last seven pages. There, it's done. I want to throw it away something fierce, but I will not.

The notebook ended on this:

And now I'm staring at these last pages gripped with fear, fear of the beautiful words and the ugly words and myself. Just another face in another Starbucks scribbling things that seem so important. Well what is it? I will not throw it away. Keep on keep on. Stand in the long line and creep forward with each moment and word, stare out the window, look back and blink. 

***

funerals & clasped hands.

I walk by a funeral home every day. At least twice a week, there's a crowd outside, gathered after a funeral. I stare those people down. I can feel loss and death on that corner, underneath my fingernails, creaking in my elbows and knees. I dwell on those people, perhaps too much. The loss of another human being, a life, someone who was loved. I don't want to see, but I can't turn away.

In return, I also devote myself to beautiful things,

Such as this wonderful wire sculpture by Gavin Worth,

different kinds.

I read some beautiful writing today. The kind that makes your palms tingly. The kind that makes you unconsciously hold your breath. I live for those moments. I can't tell you why, exactly, other than this: in those moments there's a wholeness in the universe and myself that is complete. It is the closest thing I can imagine to the absolute. And I know it's real when I read something and say to myself, Someday I'll write like that.

There are different kinds of writing in my life.

There's journal writing, which I have done on and off since I was 13 or 14. It's self-absorbed fear and heartbreak and mad love.

There's notebook writing, writing practice. I've really only been doing it for the past 3 or 4 years. And even then, I've really only been dedicated to it for a year or less. This is usually where I plug in freewriting, make lists and let ideas gather some energy.

when you see it.

I am stubborn. I hate to be told I'm wrong. I hate to be told what to do. I also have widespread insecurity about my talent and abilities and I tell you what: I have a hard time with criticism.

I know that it's something I need to work on.

Here's the thing with writing: it's not all objective. I can write a piece, edit it, read it through twice, feel pretty good and then discover that someone else doesn't get it. Outside of my own head, it's completely possible that it doesn't make sense.

I am trying to get serious about this. I am trying to live the writing life that I long for. I am coming back, again and again and picking up the pen. I am fully aware that a necessary step in my writing self-actualization (as it were) is learning to accept and get comfortable with criticism. I'm trying.

My usual reaction follows this pattern:
I send off the piece, it doesn't matter to whom. Total stranger, someone who loves me, whatever. As soon as I click the send button, my heart starts racing. I imagine them reading the words and feeling total disgust for the words, and obviously by extension, for me. Obviously each word I have written is a tiny little representation of my person and self-worth.

for listening.

say yes to yes.

Sometimes it's a Monday and you need to freewrite. Just garbage, you just need to get it out, clean out the gutter, empty the trash, get something moving through your head and your hands. I feel inspired today. I feel uninspired today. I have no desire to write about anything other than how much I hate my writing. I can accept it. These days come and go.

Lately, I have been easier on myself because I realize that, even when I'm not writing, I'm building the material in my head. I am always, always thinking about everything I see, about philosophy, about people, about life.

I know I still need to write though.

I can or I can't. I want to or I don't. Whatever.

I have been thinking lately about what I recently heard someone call chronic powerlessness. That is, he thought we all suffered from censoring and limiting our own dreams because we feel held down by you-name-it.  Power structures, social structures, relationships, religion. I see it all over in my life. We all get it, don't we? Sometimes I think it's nothing more than a coping mechanism - it is easier to expect less or nothing and never be disappointed. Well let me say it again: WHATEVER. I can deal with disappointment. I will not deal with fear and immobility. Write something, write something. Write.

woman with the gray bun.

This happened first: I tried to make myself write something about lists. Or write a list. I don’t know, it wasn’t working. I was staring out the window and taking unnecessary bathroom breaks. I was trying to mold my mind and fool my creative juices into producing something other than what they want.

Here’s what I really want to write about today: a stranger. I write at the risk of sounding a little crazy. I might be because I make friends with strangers in my mind. I’ve said it before: I see the same random sets of strangers each day as I walk to and from work. I spend about an hour each day walk-commuting and passing by people on the street. The familiar ones have nicknames in my head. I’ve imagined various lives and stories for them. I feel relieved when we pass on the sidewalk. I wonder where they are when we don’t.

My favorite stranger is the old woman with the gray bun. I always pass her at the fence around the big green space by the college. She’s average size with a steady walk. Her hair is always pulled back, center part, into a bun. She wears large framed plastic glasses, the kind that rest on your cheeks and lift up and down as you talk or smile. I have never seen her talk or smile, but I imagine it would make her glasses dance. She always wears a long skirt and sensible shoes. A fanny pack is buckled over her sweater or turtleneck. She carries a large leather briefcase in her right hand and her right step hits a little harder. Yesterday it was cold and she was wearing a yellow quilted down vest. Her glasses were a little foggy.

distractions.

Most days, I bring one or two pieces of fruit to work with me. Usually an apple or an orange. You know, I try to be healthy and fruit is good. Here’s the thing: I almost never eat the fruit. I like the idea of eating the fruit, but when it comes down to it, when it’s 3pm and the sun is beating through my window and the fluorescent lights are buzzing and I have the slightest headache just behind my eyes - well I’d rather run across the street and get a burrito filled with cheese and a cookie the size of my head. Just the thought of other face-sized food options turns me off to the lowly apple sitting in my bag on the floor.

Someone who loves me has kindly deemed this my purse fruit.

So I’ll just own up to it: it’s not uncommon for me to carry one sad apple back and forth to work all week and never eat it until one day, in the midst of hunger crisis, I’ll fish the bruised mushy thing out of my bag and eat it. It happens.

Today I discovered the trick to getting myself to eat the fruit.

voluntarily lost.

I am afraid of being lost.

I mean this in the physical sense. I look at maps and they make me feel safe. I study directions before I even have my shoes on. I don't usually wander, especially not in a car. Rarely on foot.

This is on a long list of things about myself that I am constantly denying and/or trying to change. I often claim to love spontaneity and adventure, but the real truth is I appreciate spontaneity and adventure, I don't often regret it, but I rarely long for it. What I long for is comfort, safety and familiarity. Is that so bad? I don't know. Do I wish I was different? Yes. Sure, I find contentment easily. It doesn't take much to make me happy. But what about excitement? I don't know.

Well, I'm thinking about this today after reading this post and wondering at the joy of being voluntarily lost. When I'm on my own, I am never voluntarily lost. And sometimes I struggle to be lost when I write. But I try to practice. I force myself to write even when I hate it (except sometimes I clean the kitchen and read a book instead). But slowly I'm loving it more, loving the freedom that comes from writing each word without knowing what comes next.

the real doubt.

I’m bad at drafts. I mean, I can edit. I can clean up sentences, choose new words, trim extra commas. But real drafts, the kind where you cut everything up, tear it into pieces and then put it back together again -- I have a hard time with that. Once the structure is on paper, I get attached to it. It feels familiar and I don’t want to let it go.

I have been putting off editing a piece I started over a month ago. I know it needs some mashing up and rearranging and I can’t bring myself to do it. The result is that I freeze up, change a few words, write very little, nothing new.

Here’s what I need someone to write about, for my sake: the real doubt, the kind that cripples you and fires around in your head with whips and electric fences. I am typing word after word, typing them in a row, in a line, line after line. They’re weak, contrived, I don’t like them, to be more precise I hate them. I am staring at the screen and I know: I can never be a writer. The moment the pressure is on, there are no words. I mean, listen to these sentences I’m writing. They’re pathetic. No one wants to read this. I know it’s a mistake to give voice and free reign to that critic in my head. But I have to write about it so that maybe someone else can read this and know that sometimes when you write, you hate yourself for writing.

on the non-form form: the lyric essay.

It’s about time I introduce my love affair with a so-called sub-genre of nonfiction, that is the lyric essay. I studied the lyric essay my last year of college in an attempt to understand and write in this style. Even now, it is vague and undefined. You can find any number of descriptions and definitions floating around, but when put on the spot, I always answered by explaining that it is non-linear. It is somewhere between the land of the essay and the ocean of the poem.

I have spent the day reading critiques of the lyric essay. Blog posts arguing that it only produces a sort of shallow writing or it was formed from the anti-narrative movement of poets coming out of Iowa’s Workshop in the late 90s.  I have somewhat idealized this writing form in my mind. I can be honest - I’m naive. I come from an English program at a extremely small, intensely religious Midwestern school. When I stumbled across that issue of the Seneca Review that introduced the lyric essay, I became intoxicated with writing in a way that was experimental, unexpected. I jumped at the opportunity to push the bounds among my classmates and in the department.

I have continued to make attempts at writing in this “form” and have hit my fair share of walls. It’s loose and undefined. There’s a very fine line between work that is nonsense and work that is contrived, at least for me. So I’m going to try something new, an experiment in how I think of writing in my own head. I’m going to toss the idea of the lyric essay, at least for now. Just to try it out and see what happens.

battles.

Sometimes there are too many battles to fight and wildness is creeping into your ears and the lids of your eyes. So sit down and eat a giant bowl of pasta with cheese and butter and olives.  And read Samuel Menashe.

Old wounds leave good hollows
Where one who goes can hold
Himself in ghostly embraces
Of former powers and graces
Whose domain no strife mars --
I am made whole by my scars
For whatever now displaces
Follows all that once was
And without loss stows
Me into my own spaces
- Cargo, Samuel Menashe

processing & stereotypes.

I haven't been writing a lot lately. I have no excuses. When life is slow, no problem: I write. When life is fast, everything else feels more important. But all day, I have been telling myself, The things you spend your time on are the things you care about. So if I care about writing, I spend the time. It's important to me. So make the choice.

It's the old love-hate relationship with writing which means, usually, even when I want to write I don't really want to write. There's always some coercion that involves talking in my head and saying things like, Please just shut up and do it. And like anything, the longer I let it slip the harder it is to get back.

So I am catching up today. I will do freewriting tonight. I will devote at least half an hour to working on the essay I've drafted. But I will say this: even when my fingers get hung up, I keep on with the inspiration and the thoughts and my mind is still writing, even when my body isn't. I tell myself, over and over, that this is how I know I need to write. I can't turn any of it off: imagining stories about the people I see, absorbing every weird detail, sitting for stretches and thinking about big things, little things, anything. Getting wild and giddy and frantic over a beautiful word or a beautiful sentence. Reading a story out loud and getting tears in the corners of my eyes, not because I'm emotional, just because I'm overwhelmed with the language.

well, wellfleet.

Something about Wellfleet and love.  Check it out.

an octopus mind.

Here's what I'm doing in my quiet moments, when I walk home from work, ride the bus, eat dinner.  I am thinking still about truth, among other things.  I am thinking thoughts along the lines of

• What about realism, i.e. the idea that reality exists independently of our observation or existence? So reality is truth?
• How do we measure reality?
• What about individual perception, how is this influenced, how does this influence what is real and what is true?
• What is the value of truth - what is it?  What is the value of knowing and understanding what is true?
• Still further, why are we seeking it?  Why do we have the need to understand truth?

Granted, I'm also thinking thoughts like

• What should I have for dinner?
• Why does that baby in the stroller have giant hands?
• Why doesn't the wispy-combover-man just shave it off?
• Why did that spicy soup make my face sweat?

Anyway, the point is that truth and life are big. So let's scale it down to an octopus.

truth and tweets.

I am easily obsessed with thoughts and topics and ideas.  I'm a thinking person, maybe to a fault.  I'm good at being alone and being quiet.

I'm currently obsessed with truth.  I've been asking people, not so subtly, what they think of truth. Good friends, casual acquaintances. How do you define truth? What do you think it is? Do you think it's important? I am reading too much philosophy, the kind that twists your brain in a knot until your left eye twitches and your stomach drops out. I am hounding truth or it is hounding me. I am beating my head against the table, against the wall, against the questions, one after another.  I am forming some thoughts.  You know what truth is?  Please tell me what you think.

Listen, it comes down to this: I made the choice to write here and write often because I wanted to write about difficult things. I want to take all of the notebooks that I have torn apart and thrown away, take those crackling words, and spill them out all over the place and let people run around in them. I want to split myself wide open and lift up my eyes and make awkward eye contact that lasts too long before I say Hi.

some exercises.

Lately my itch to write is violent, uncontrollable, distracting. It feels like love, when you are powerless to harness your thoughts or do anything but be in love. Forcing myself to write regularly is working some magic on my brain or my fingers or something. I am learning to have grace and patience to ride the ebb and flow of creativity and motivation.

In the midst of all this violent-writing-love, I've encountered a new obstacle. I have too many things in various stages of being made. I've started writing in depth on a handful of ideas, I've written briefly on some other things and I also have The List (my writing prompts, exercises, ideas to pursue).

Writing exercises are my favorite way to regain some perspective, even if I don't know what I want to be working on. I do writing exercises to push through paralysis. I make lists. I bring the limp fingers to life again. I have slept on my arm all night long and now a stranger's hand is cradling my head.

encouragement & discontent.

I haven't done any freewriting in 4 days. Apathy and discontent have a strange way of paralyzing a person.  The cold air is numbing my fingers. I have a headache. The world is full of bad things. Excuses, all.

I have been thinking today on goals set and goals achieved, on the path we are walking and what comes at the end. There are too many things to make sense of tonight. Too much hurt in the world, confusion in my own life and others. Too many questions that I don't have the power to answer. Too many people being born, too many people dying, too much suffering, too much greed.

I am searching hard for something lately. I am here. I am creating the life that I want to lead and every day it is the life I want and every day I am grateful, grateful, grateful. It's a story that lots of people have lived and lots of people have heard, it's not original or unique, but it's mine and that's why I care.

I have to remind myself of things often, the things that I believe and don't believe. That I am committed and capable.

The answer is to write, it is always to write. Just reminding myself.

I read an interesting piece by Langston Hughes yesterday - I hadn't seen it before. It's worth reading.  Salvation - Langston Hughes

flash fiction and another list.

I've been reading the literary journal Brevity since college.  I've always been attracted to saying things sparsely, fewer words, less telling and more feeling. Spurred on by my love for brief nonfiction, I've lately been reading flash fiction. It's cool. Obviously some things need to be said in a longer form, but there are some things that are really said best in the so-called flash.

I wrote this in my head last night, dreamed about it, wrote it in the notebook this morning, and typed it here now. It is fiction, which I've already explained is something I don't do. Go easy on me - I'm trying to be brave.

Every morning at 10:00am, Susan climbed the 13 rungs of an aluminum extension ladder to the roof of her house. Her husband sat in his office; her three children were numb at their desks in school. She cautiously lifted one foot over the gutter before scrambling onto the rough shingles and plastering her body face down against the roof. After a few seconds, she flattened herself and rolled over towards the sky.

Some things are true and some things aren’t. When you’re lying on a roof it’s hard to see the difference. It’s hard to see anything but the big sky full of weather and sun and clouds and rain and birds and stars. Every morning at 10:00am, Susan took it all in and then pushed it back out. You can’t live an everyday life when you’re filled up with light and space inside.

Every morning sometime after 10:00am, Susan began to shimmy her weight towards the edge of the roof, bending her knees until she was more or less crouched on the gutter at a 45 degree angle. Always in one single motion, with breath held in, she let her feet drop over the edge and dangle before swinging them around to catch the ladder’s rung. It wasn’t that high – a fall would only mean tumbling in the bushes with a sprained ankle or wrist, maybe a broken leg if the angle was wrong. But with her eyes closed and her back pressed tight against the gritty roof, the distance was infinite.

And she knew it would happen one day, when she was dizzy from climbing and the sun was shining bright. The world would turn itself on its head and she would fall into the sky.

***

I'm down to the last two pages of my notebook. To celebrate, here are 15 sentences from the notebook, selected at random, representing (in no linear order) words I've written over the last 10 months of my life.

1. The buzzing of the baggage carousel is matching time to the eerie Christmas music playing over the loudspeaker.
2. I listened to that song for hours in my lonely attic bedroom in the house in South Mankato.
3. She would always be worse, every time I came home.
4. I flew to Boston and bought a pack of cigarettes.
5. There was a crazy lady at the end of the bar who was talking to herself.
6. I have decided to move on from this place, whatever that might mean.
7. I want to call you back, again and again and again, until I feel safe - an old feeling from another time.
8. So let's bring it back to here.
9. I could write about the blue of the tables and the afternoon I varnished them, but I really want to write about sitting at the blue tables and listening to the song, crying so hard the tears ran off my chin and fell onto the floor.
10. I could show you the fields stretching far and how life can be so sad and slow sometimes.
11. I had a dream you moved to Alaska and wore a comb over and I was never surprised.
12. His long hair hasn't been brushed and I think that's good and his face is ugly.
13. Maybe she works nights somewhere and she spends her mornings buying coffees at Starbucks.
14. He wrote back that things were pretty bad and it was my fault.
15. I am looking up every few minutes to be blinded by the drifted snow and sunlight outside the big front window and as soon as the spots in my eyes fade I look up again.

big things.

I long to create something big.  I don't mean momentous or earth-shattering - I mean physically big.  For some reason, I love things that make me feel small.  I want to stand in the shadows of giant trees and mountains, wade knee-deep into an ocean that stretches for eternity beyond me, scream into a canyon while I'm toeing the line before the fall.

I want to make sculptures like these:

Patrick Dougherty

Or these:

Theo Jansen

I made a to do list in my notebook today:
-freewriting, one hour
-expand the essay, one hour
-think about a novel, one hour

Instead, I thought about a novel (or fiction in general) for three hours. I have always resisted it. I have always told myself that I can't do fiction and, honestly, I haven't really tried. I focused on nonfiction in college, so there was never a need. I vaguely remember writing a flash experimental play during a final exam for a creative writing class, but I don't think it was good. I'd remember if it was.

I've just been mulling it over lately -- the idea of fiction as a way to tell some hard truths without having to say, This is the truth of my life. Some of what I've been reading lately has spurred me on. And November is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo).  I signed up with the website awhile ago, but I didn't try it last year. I still don't know if I'll try it this year, but I'm thinking about it. Thinking it might be a way to dive hard into fiction and try it out. No pressure to be good, only to produce something. I do well with a goal to work towards.

I have one particular idea that I've been thinking and thinking over, researching, reading. Slowly, very slowly, it's turning into a character (maybe). I struggle with character development and I don't know why. But it would be good for me to practice. I have the time. I am particularly lucky there. I don't know when I will ever be able to say that again. So maybe. I might start an outline (just in case). I might do some freewriting on this character. Who knows where it will lead? Maybe it's just more essay material. But maybe writing some fiction will eventually give me the material for a better essay.

We'll see.

#cnftweet.

I signed up for Twitter awhile ago with the intention of using it for writing nuggets.  Sentences that stand alone, that I want to hold onto.

I'm finally getting around to it.

The heavyweight journal Creative Nonfiction has a running contest for tweets.  But mostly it's just another good practice.  Write one or two solid, clear sentences.  Put them out there.

Check them out on the right!  (omg).

the notebook (not the movie).

This week I'm finishing a notebook. I've never finished one before.

It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is.  Every notebook I've written in has either been abandoned or thrown away.  I've never written from the first page to the last.  But I'm finishing a notebook this week, it's happening, and I'm not throwing it away.  The urge to keep things hidden is still strong. I have often been unable to stand the vulnerability of sharing what I write. It's a habit and a way of thinking that I'm trying very hard to shake.

I've been writing in this particular notebook since last December.  I bought it in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport when I was stranded after Christmas.  It's not a big notebook, so really, it should have been finished months ago.  But I have a hard time keeping my writing all in one place.  I have three different notebooks right now, all in different stages of being written in.  I also write on scraps of paper and hide the scraps in books I'm reading, in my purse, in my pockets.  I write into Gmail drafts.  I write into Word documents.  I write here.

It used to drive me crazy that I couldn't just write in one place, back when I thought the only purpose of writing was producing.  But it's just as much the process as the product, and I've come to terms with the fact that I write randomly.  It's ok -- it's my process.  And there's some magic in discovering a random note on scrap of paper, hidden in a coat pocket months ago, that you can't even remember writing down.

I haven't been terribly productive the last few days.  I tell myself that I'm letting some things rest and letting myself think.  I guess I am, but let's get real: I am just that good at distracting myself from the work I know I want to do.  As a compromise, I made a deal with myself.  Finish the notebook.  There are 7 pages left.  So finish it.

Pick up the pen.

***

This is what today feels like. 

Check out these paintings by Philipp Haager.

there is time.

For the past two weeks I've been working on something.  Yesterday I crossed the start line. I'm not sure what a finish line even looks like, but I know the feeling of starting. Moving past an idea and randomness in the brain to something real, words sentences paragraphs pages.

I don't even care what happens to it. I don't care if I file it away forever. It's been a very long time since I've worked on something that I can actually call a piece. More than rambling, journaling, freewriting, etc. I needed to remember how to do it.

I've been writing on dark things. Back to the light. People, laughing, cold air, cribbage, hot drinks, oysters. Just life really. Just living hard is all.

I've been reading through some of the collected letters of Anton Chekhov thanks to a recommendation from this blog. I'm feeling startled by how much his words are resonating with me right now. I am reminded again -- yes, sometimes writing hurts. But even now, even still, there is time.

I am writing and wondering how many times tonight my whole body will be racked with pain for my presumption in daring to be a writer. - Anton Chekhov, letter to Alexander Chekhov, 8 November 1882

Some days I stare at the page or the screen and type word after word about nothing. I write about the color of the sky and the way the concrete feels beneath my bare feet and feeling sleepy and hot. Some days I sit down with the weight of the world right behind me. Yesterday:

I am going to write today about religion and feeling alone and feeling lonely and speaking up and remembering and making peace with your thoughts and being healed. And sin and guilt and fear.

I still don't understand the process, I don't know how or when or why or if I can create something. I just keep on.

All my hopes are on the future. I am still only twenty-six. It may be that one day I shall manage to achieve something, although time is rushing by quickly. - Anton Chekhov, letter to Dmitry Grigorovich, 28 March 1886

re: the gap.

I heard this yesterday and it was so much what I needed to hear.  It's important to be reminded that we are capable.  Remind yourself.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one story. It's only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through.

- Ira Glass

hurricane dreams.

I have been writing. I have not been posting. Sometimes it just gets too wild to share, or too wild for me to share. Or something.

I dreamt last night of a hurricane, but I was in the house I lived in when I was 13 years old in Elmore, Minn. I was herding people into the basement, we were packing up food, I stole a sandwich and wrapped it in foil and tucked it into my shirt. And suddenly I realized: we're overreacting. It won't be that bad. Then I lost my sandwich and went out into the rain.

Dreaming of a hurricane: This dream is considered to be a warning, because it alludes to an impending crisis when all old opinions, ideals, values and beliefs are being shaken. The dream suggests that you need to start shaping something new within yourself to cope with this personal crisis.  (http://www.dream-land.info/)

I wrote for 5 hours on Friday, mostly straight through, with breaks for tea. At the end of it, 10 pages of Microsoft Word single-spaced madness, I felt like something other than human. Here is one piece:

I am very deep now. It is a dream and I am being chased, I am in danger, and I can’t cry out. I open my mouth and strain with every muscle in my chest and neck, but still no sound. I am pursued and still no sound. I keep pushing until *pop* I am awake and tangled in sweaty sheets and screaming in an empty black room, screaming alone, screaming for someone to save me.

Any writing, anything real, even anything shallow, means you must confront the blackest parts of humanity. This is art: even the most beautiful work has the deepest evil of the world in it. They exist together, as one. All it is the lighting. See: look behind the bushes in the sparkling sunlight and there a spider is consuming its prey alive, slowly, deliberately. Listen: ten bars after the song ends, there is war and death. You know they’re coming. Don’t look away. I know you want to and so do I – but there is nowhere else to look.

The feeling is this: much writing and suddenly I am in a very dark state. I am thinking too much, too hard about evil in the world and evil in myself. I am swimming in circles, swimming in the thoughts and as I type I feel my face scrunch up in fear and disgust, my nose wrinkles, my eyes shut. And so I pause for a moment, take a breath, make some tea. When I sit back down and raise my fingers to the keys, the feeling is pure revulsion. I don’t want to go back in it, I don’t want to go deeper and I don’t want to find more. It is too heavy and hot and dark inside – I want to stay out in the clean air. I wonder sometimes if this is me or if this is the writing.

At the end of 10 pages and 5 hours, I wrote the following:

I don’t want to write anymore. Only 30 more minutes. I hate it. I hate writing. I hate these words and my fingers that are typing them. I hate this brain that thinks writing is good and I hate the dull fluorescent lights and the computer humming and the hot sunlight blasting in through my window.  30 minutes. I can do it I can do it I can do it blankblankblankblankblankblankblankblankblankblankb

But there is still this: "Every day, I give myself the same encouragement, and every day, I need it again."

***

I read back through some of last week's writing today.  Yes, some of it is dark.  Ok, a lot of it.  Yes, I need to get it out of my brain and onto the page.  But I also need to come back out of it and remember the beautiful moments that make up my days.

For example, today:

-I walked briskly to work this morning and was not too hot, not too cold.  Amazing fall, I love you.

-At work I made an individual cup of coffee with my brand-new, bright-red, individual-coffee-cup-maker.  Awesome and happy.

-I sat at my desk in the afternoon and thought in my brain, Man-oh-man I wish I had a snack.  Not 30 seconds later, my co-worker walked in with a bag of cheesy-popcorn she didn't want.  Do you want the popcorn?  Yes.

-Still hungry this afternoon, I thought about pie and realized that my life's purpose might honestly be: Make pie.  Or: Eat butter.  It's a tough one.  I resolved to make more pies and eat more butter.

-I finally have money (so to speak) to go grocery shopping.  So I made a grocery list tonight that included more than: peanut butter, can of beans.  It included: expensive olives, expensive cheese.  Cool.

-After a leisurely walk home, I enjoyed a hot boozy apple cider and a roasted tomato, caramelized onion, balsamic quinoa salad for dinner alone in my quiet apartment.

-Then I watched the moonrise in Medford through some haze and low clouds. Over the scary wires and oversized spotlit American flag and above the din of cats fighting. But it was beautiful.

The point is just that life is good.  There is always good love, good people, good food -- and for that I am grateful.

don't lie.

The year I was twelve, I walked to school. When I was nine, I was scared of everything; when I was twelve, I was scared of nothing. Round the corner, take off the boots. I always preferred soggy jeans and frozen toes to being seen with boots on. Maybe I still do. My clothes were never cool. I didn't know it until then.

I walked to school that year. Even in the cold, I walked to school. Heather came after me one day. She was bigger, taller, eighth grade, big-mouthed, bossy. I looked over my shoulder and saw her barreling down the road on her bike. It was overcast and it was fall. When the sky feels sharp and gray and heavy and your eyes tear up in the electric air.

Very early in my life, I started to pray in the middle of the night when I woke in fear. The blankets were hot, but I couldn't peel them off of my face for fear of what would be revealed. The pounding in my chest echoed into my ears. I couldn't tell if it was the sound of strangers in the dark (kidnappers, murderers, ghosts) or the sounds of my own body. In those moments, I would close my eyes and recite a prayer, over and over. Sometimes the Lord's Prayer, sometimes something I made up. Those prayers were usually short and simple, something like: Please keep me safe please keep me safe please keep me safe thank you.

I was walking home and I can't tell you how I felt. It's someone else's life. All I remember is the cool air and loneliness and putting one foot in front of the other. Who knows the thoughts that occupy the mind of a 12-year-old on her ten minute walk home? Heather came after me on her bike. She was standing on the pedals, coasting, weaving back and forth across the abandoned street. She swung in front of me and cut a wide circle around me. I remember her eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and thick, greasy bangs. Squinting, dark. Are you too cool for us now? She was yelling. I can't remember what I said. I can't remember if I said anything at all.

Especially when I was very young, I thought I could feel the embrace of protection in the dark, a wave of comfort washing over me. I always knew it was the presence of the divine answering my prayers.

The instinct is strong. In fear, distress, anger at the circumstances of this life and this world, I have an instinct to plead with some greater thing to keep me safe. I catch myself doing it sometimes still. Almost always, it is in fear. Please heal her. Maybe I still have the power to shake the cosmos with my own desperate thoughts.

So tell the truth. Don't lie. Or don't tell the truth. But don't lie.

snacking.

I have been deep in my own head a lot these days. It feels full and alive, but also disconnected from my body, from my hands, from my feet walking back and forth. In awareness, I'm trying to make an effort to keep myself connected to the physical things of life. Here's a list of ways to keep myself grounded and awake to the world:

-go for a run/walk to work without my iPod
-cook/bake for 30 minutes or more
-eat a meal and focus on the food
-write letters
-sit on the deck
-practice physical creation (painting, drawing, sewing, knitting)
-laugh out loud at funny things

Those things that connect us to the present moment and to the world around us, the world in our hands - those things make the writing and our minds better. They give depth to the world that exists inside the walls of my brain.

I went through some sort of Buddhist phase about a year ago. I spent a lot of time thinking about presence, mindfulness, connection to the moment. I have been reminded lately how difficult it is to stay grounded in the present moment. So much is defined by looking forward to the next thing, but you get there and......what? It is so difficult to just appreciate the richness of the time and space I am in now. The gifts that are here. There will always be absence of some sort or another. There will always be something to look forward to, more to hope for. It is hard to stay here. But it's good to practice.

It's also good to snack, especially when you write.

freewriting on friday, #2.

For the last two days I have been thinking and writing about the year I turned twelve.  It's strange to write your way into memories - things you have forgotten that keep rising up from the well.  There's a lot to say: understanding of self-awareness, social hierarchies, perceptions of the world.  And there is more writing before it can be anything.

I realized today that I was trying too hard.  I was trying to find a theme in what I had written, some underlying message, maybe even a loose moral lesson.  I have killed a great many things by over thinking them, so as soon as I realized what I was doing, I stopped.

To make a break in my mind and catch my creativity again, I did some freewriting on other topics.  The piece of freewriting that I am going to copy here is the real thing.  I just let it go.  When I freewrite with a computer, I have a hard time keeping up with my thoughts by typing.  Hence the (many, many) typos.  I have to work hard to get to the place where I can just let words come out of me without any rules.  Every bone in my body wants to correct the mistakes and delete the things that are uncomfortable to say or to read.  But I'm just going to lay it out there and let it be.

The prompt: Write about a time you felt spiritual.

I felt spiritual during the church choir in Brewster. I can't remember what the song was or when the choir sang it, but it was beautiful and big inside and I fell right into it and felt something of god all around me. I had goosebumps across my arms and tears in the corner of my eyes. I was playing the organ and I felt so full inside, like something was flowing in me, like the waterfall that is so big and loud you can't hear the person speaking right next to you and I didn't have the power to even listen, just to take it in through my ears (almost wrote eyes, music in through the eyes, I like it). I think it's so interesting to reflect on the spiritual experiences I have had in church and what that means for me, someone who is struggling very hard to figure out where I land. I don't believe in god, but...? The question is big and hard. I have had spiritual experiences in church, moments were I felt surrounded by something larger than myself. I have felt it in the familiar hymns during Christmas eve. I have felt it in familiar Bible verses being read, hearing united voices reciting a creed or prayer. And I felt it in the song that the choir sang. I don't understand spiritual or what it means. I know what it used to mean to me and it was actually something to be fought I think. I was raised to elieve we aren't supposed to feel things about our faith, it's just given to us and just shut up and take it. It's so weird: Luther rejects logic and reason (as the Devil's whore) but demands this cold, emotionless faith from us. Well he understood (I guess) and so do I that emotions and feelings are fickle and sometimes perplexing - not always available to guide us to the truth. I understand that. I have feelings that I don't understand every single day. Spiritual in church spiritual in church I completely lost my train of thought can't rememb erwhere I was going Ok right I remember thinking about what SPIRITUAL means I guess I always think ofit as being something very large or something that makes me feel very small. I get the exact same feeling from a susnet and the ocean. Especialy the ocean. Looking out onto something so big so much bigger than myself I look out and I'm in it and I cant type fast enough to connect workds to my thoughts I am making typos left and right and even backspacing a lot still so the ocean and bigness and I'm swallowed up and somehow that makes us feel safe and maybe that's a place every human being is longing for and hoping to understand. we get the same thing from love, love of people, love of family, we get that feeling from what what else? maybe people who seek adventure, mountain climbing, rock climbing, sea kayaking, skydiving, all of those things make us feel small and somehow that feels good. Or maybe it isn't at all to do with bigness and smallness but being surrounded. You are surrounded by the sky at the top of a mountain. You are surrounded by the light in a sunset and the w aves catch your feet again again again. And in church, you are surrounded by people who are supposed to be your people. But more and more I realize that church and faith, well that's a gathering place for people looking for the thing we want and need as human beings. i don't know what that thing is but the church It's a place for looking, you can't find anything there. It's just a lot of people who are all desperately looking looking looking. It's ag ethering place for the the looking people. They have to amek things for themselves to find.  I have too much baggage and too much to sort through in my mind, too much influence from those around me. I just need people to talk to me about it, I need to talk about it. I need to sit down with every person I know and say, Tell me what you think about god. even people i don't know, every person I see I just want to ask them, TELL me how you do this how do you figure out god and life tell me how you do it we're all people in this together and i need to know how everyone else is doing it I need to understand how we as human beings make these choices (10 minutes).

Finally, a thought for this weekend.

Love me when I least deserve it because that is when I really need it. - Swedish Proverb

that barbie feeling.

Do you remember the pure excitement of playing? For me, it was the Barbies. I can still vividly remember that feeling: waking up on a rainy Saturday and knowing I could play with my Barbies all day. Maybe it was Legos, maybe it was a treehouse in the backyard, whatever. You know what I mean. It was a simple and consuming love for what you were doing. That feeling is hard to hold onto.

I have been thinking too much lately; about love, loss, relationships, family, faith, hope. I am forever baffled by the craziness of this life. We are these individual creatures, all alone inside our own brains. And everything, it seems, is about forging connections. Crossing the distances that separate us as human beings.

That balance is elusive. Cultivate and discover yourself; meanwhile, let others in and connect yourself to them. It's hard to get it right. I have been talking with someone lately about times in the past when we have allowed ourselves to be defined by other people. It's so hard to see someone else do it, but so easy to do it yourself. And one day, when that person is gone, suddenly you can't remember what life means without them.

I'm ready to crack the whip and just write. I have spent the past two days thinking about writing something substantial. I don't want to spend the rest of my days freewriting and collecting my mundane thoughts on life (as great as that is). I'm ready to actually lay the bricks down one by one and write something that you can really read.

I am afraid to do it. Whenever I try, I'm strangely evasive. (So I have a collection of posts here on writing about writing about writing...I think). But yesterday, I stared at the notebook on my desk for 10 solid minutes. I just stared at the blank page. I finally wrote in block letters: I KNOW I SHOULD DO IT. There's my answer.

I am always giving advice to people on making life decisions and it usually comes down to this: Do what you want. We all make our own choices. So do what you want.

I am very much lost in my own head these days. It's hard for me to bring people in and to shed light on my own reflection. There's a lot going on, very quietly.

I can't stop thinking about the Barbie feeling. This past weekend, I remarked that I wished we could have that feeling as adults. What a ridiculous thing to say. I know what gives me that feeling. Looking at a wall stacked high with books. Turning pages late into the night. A new pen. Writing nonsense and more nonsense and then suddenly -- there's something real and hard and electrifying. Losing myself in these thoughts and then slowly figuring out how to capture them on the page. I've got the Barbie feeling. So take your own advice and do it.

Every now and then, I am hooked on a thought or an idea. Just after I write it down, I stumble on a writer, a friend, someone who is having the same thought. At the end of the day, that's the best reason I know of to write. Connection.

Yesterday, I wrote:

A good relationship (of any kind) makes you a better version of yourself. It opens you, it gives witness to your passion and life. It lights up who you already are. But it doesn't replace any of that. Life is never, never, never just one thing. It is everything fitting together. I have had to learn this lesson the hard way, over and over. I didn't realize until today, just now, right now, that I think I actually have.

Today, I read on this blog:

It's important to understand that independence is key in preserving the relationships that matter most. [...] People are like puzzles, and there are a multitude of pieces that make us complete.

So I continue: love, write, connect, grow, learn, understand.

fall is here.





strangers.

I read this book once about quitting smoking. The only thing I remember is the chapter about how we talk about quitting. You should never say, I’m trying to quit or I’m quitting smoking. You should say, I quit. The idea is that language has the power to create something in us. Say it like it’s true. I think this applies to other things in life, not least of all writing. At least it’s something I’ve been practicing on myself, to what end I’m not sure. I write every day and I feel it someplace deep inside of me, so I don’t say, I want to write. Simply, I am a writer. Whether it’s garbage or not, whatever role it plays, it’s something I do and it is part of who I am. So I just say it quietly, in my own head.

A list of good things to do:
-observe
-note details
-remember

I have always been overwhelmed by cities for one reason: the people. There are so many people, people you don’t know, strangers. I take strangers into myself and digest them. I observe. I stare. I drown in the details - a shirt corner untucked, chipped toe nail polish, sad eyes. I imagine stories about people. They live lives in my own head, they go to work, they come home at the end of the day. I can’t help it. I can’t turn it off. I am obsessed with the lives of strangers.

Living in a city now, I find myself getting friendly with strangers in my mind. I see the same people on the streets each day. I’ve woven elaborate lives for them and they’ve become like characters in some novel that I walk back and forth through. The sweaty man with the labored run. The old woman wearing the fanny pack. The girl with long legs and bad posture. They’ve become part of the fabric of my day.

I also empathize with strangers, mostly people I imagine to be sad or alone. Sometimes the feelings in me are so powerful I have to hold myself back from acting out. I want to stop that man on the street, the one with the big headphones, close-trimmed beard, thin wire glasses, legs too short for his body - I want to stop him and say, Are you alright? Are you lonely? Are you walking back to an empty house tonight? Maybe we’ll drink a cup of coffee together and I’ll ask him what he believes about god, what he thinks about human nature. And he’ll go home that night and maybe, maybe he’s felt bitterly isolated and disconnected from humanity and I can remind him what it feels like to have a witness to your life and to your thoughts.

Maybe he isn’t lonely. Maybe I am projecting my own fears and emotional dysfunction onto him (it’s possible).

I want to remember the man at the street market in New Orleans. This is what I mean: people get into my brain, right into the folds of it, and they’re burned in there. The eyes, the expressions, the way the shoulders droop. It was June in New Orleans and the humidity made it impossible to walk quickly, to breathe deeply. I walked through a large, tented street market - cheap clothes, jewelry, New Orleans souvenirs. I only went in because I wanted to be in the shade. I walked through each aisle, glancing over tiny plastic alligators and Mardi Gras beads. And then I saw a man hunched over, seated behind a table. He was turned away from market perusers while eating his lunch. I caught sight of him through the back curtain of his booth. His eyes were low and he was slowly, deliberately cutting a hard boiled egg into slices with a plastic spoon. I stared hard while he thought he was alone. All day I couldn't stop asking, Who boiled that egg?

We’ve got to wonder at people’s lives. I hope someone, somewhere is wondering at mine. It is the most honest witness to life.  Not living, just pure human life.

tomorrow.

Tomorrow I'll turn twenty-six.  What do I want to do with my next year on this planet?  Live hard.

1-knit a sweater
2-make cheese
3-go camping
4-conquer the F-chord on my guitar
5-run a 5K
6-be more honest
7-love
8-start cooking dried beans
9-make one new friend
10-write more letters
11-drink more loose leaf tea
12-open up to people
13-read one new author from the list of nobel laureates
14-visit Canada
15-start making my own bread again
16-less dairy
17-buy clothes with color
18-write often
19-tell jokes
20-make pizza in my cast iron skillet
21-apologize less
22-sew curtains
23-ride my bike in the city
24-bake a layer cake
25-paint the big canvas
26-yoga

be inspired.

Let me tell you how I wrote today. It wasn't pretty. I did some freewriting this morning about nothing really. Writing all over the surface, writing crap.  Later I tried to make some lists (which usually calms me down and orders my mind). Later this afternoon and evening, I did some more freewriting that got wild and dark in a major way. Untimed, chaotic, unsettling.

All day, I have been circling around something and haven't been able to hit it. Finally, I said to myself, Girl stop what you are doing. Just write what you have to say. Just say it. And that's how I arrived at this:

For the entire day, I have been trying to say something. It's unsettling. I have stared out the window and let my mind wander. Everything I write is abstract.

So I'm just going to nail it down, right now, right here. What I want to say is this: I am overwhelmed by a major change in my life, one that is fundamentally altering my relationship with my family. I feel lost, scared, alone. I am disappointed in myself and what feels like a lack of ambition and direction in life. But in the midst of these feelings, I am struck by the goodness of life. I am inspired by the things I am hearing, reading, seeing. I am inspired in a way I haven't felt in a long time. All I want is to capture this sharp tug of emotion and my own battle to let goodness and inspiration win out at the end of the day.

There are things that help. People who listen to me with open hearts and minds. Remembering to laugh. Taking the time to sit quietly and reflect. Eating peanut butter brownies.

So I am writing to inspire, and to inspire myself. The world is very big with possibility, full of hurt but also full of love. I hope the people I love know it; I hope I say it often enough.

I was reminded today of the importance of noting things, appreciating them, marking how they inspire you. Keeping a light heart in the heavy moments. I make lists of these things (in disturbingly organized Gmail drafts - am I the only one who uses email drafts as a personal filing system?) Here are some to share for today.

Inspired List, 21sep2011.
-anything from this shop, but especially this mason jar chandelier.
-this post about being happy.
-this pinterest board and my food-loving friends.
-these knitted cowls -- first fall project?
-these words: What about giving more. Flexing more. Letting more go. Leaving a comment instead of reading and clicking away. Saying hi. Sending unexpected mail. Not worrying about the fact that other people are also doing amazing work (some of which might even, by unfortunate design or kind of cool coincidence, resemble yours). What about making time to ask how someone is. What about making space for someone whose work you don’t think gets enough attention. What about being a little braver, just a little. What about integrity. What about not joining in if you don’t like something, or speaking your piece if you do. What about that. I’m not saying you have to do these things. Just asking what might happen if you did.


Be inspired.  Trust people.  Share love.  Live deeply.

prison dreams.

I have a problem writing anything with teeth in it. I tend to be abstract, loose, warm. There isn't a lot you can hold on to: concrete images, descriptions, words that have an edge to them. I think this is a reflection of the way my brain works. I am very easily lost in my own mind and find meaning in ideas more than physical things. But you can only read that sort of writing for so long.

So that is the way I write. I'm aware of it and I'm always telling myself to reign it in, to bring more details and images and specifics into what I'm saying. But when I let it rip, without any censoring, it comes out introspective and mushy. This is frustrating; I know there is more to what I'm saying, but I can't capture it.

Over the past few months, I've had several episodes of what I've been told are anxiety dreams. Several nights in a row I'll have dreams that leave me unsettled. They aren't nightmares exactly, but they're close. Who knows what combination of life factors induce these anxiety dreams (I can take a guess) but this week, I've had another stretch of them. My dream two nights ago: I dreamt that I was wrongly convicted of a crime and was sent to prison.

I've always had a strange fascination with dream symbols. I think it's so interesting that there are dream symbols that are universal, across cultures, across time. For example: dreaming that your teeth fall out. There's no reason for me to have that concept in my consciousness, but one very specific time, when I felt overwhelmed by life, I dreamt that all my teeth fell out. I know other people who have had the same dream under similar circumstances. What causes humans to have universally understood dreams?

So I looked up prison dreams.

Imprisonment To dream that you are imprisoned suggests that you are feeling trapped or unable to move beyond a certain point.

Prison To dream that you are in prison indicates that you are being censored in some area of your life. You feel that your creativity is being limited and that you are not allowed to express yourself.

Take it or leave it.

Lately I've been trying to make use of a few writing exercises to help me stay open to stronger images and details. One of my favorites right now comes from Natalie Goldberg (Wild Mind, pp167-168).

Bite into a piece of celery. Write down a strong word. Not like tasty, salty, good. Sit still and wait for a concrete word to come: tiger, muscle, glass. The strong word does not have to be logical. It should not be an ordinary, conditioned response. [...] Be patient. You don't immediately or always hit home with terrific, strong concrete words. Often it takes a little warm-up time to feel you blasted through to something alive and on the mark. Jump in.

Here's how I do it: I take a look around and make a list of words. For each word, I write down several strong word associations. When something hits the mark, I write a sentence using that comparison.

Words: notebook, peanut butter, brick wall, fan.

notebook - concrete
notebook - sand
notebook - elephant
notebook - rubber spatula
peanut butter - lava
peanut butter - ocean
peanut butter - bowling ball
peanut butter - razor
brick wall - raincoat
brick wall - bullet
brick wall - tissue
brick wall - cedar
fan - cloud
fan - silk
fan - crunch
fan - antelope

My pen sunk into the notebook's wet concrete.
The brick wall was worn with age like a crumpled tissue.
The fan's silky blades whirred through the thick heat.

You get the idea. It's ok if it's weird or doesn't make sense. Even if you write something cliche or some of your strong words aren't all that strong. The point (for me) is to practice opening my mind to new images and details. It's hard to look at an object, think about it, taste it, and then find an association that isn't a conditioned response. That's good. Test your limits.

crazybrain.

I have been turning my brain over and again, trying to sort things out, trying to make some sense. I have things to say, but when I start to type, my eyes glaze over a bit, maybe I black out for awhile - then I look up and see nonsense all over the screen. Probably because today I have crazybrain. Do you know the feeling?

My mind is full, but almost violently, like thoughts are ricocheting against the inside of my skull too fast and hard for me to hold onto them. It happens. Sometimes life overwhelms us, sometimes for no apparent reason. It happens.

I used to feel the desperate urge to write at these times, but I was completely paralyzed by the chaos, by my inability to organize the thoughts and make sense of them. I have begun to understand that I can let myself ramble sometimes. There doesn't have to be an order, there doesn't have to be an end-product. So it's weird and you sound crazy in the head - so what? The process of writing, even if it's a bit wild and frantic, can be it's own sort of therapy. I read this book about a year ago. The lesson I took from it: be kind to yourself and let the act of writing your story be a way to heal.

It also has taken me some growing and learning to understand that exploring the depth of human feeling means sometimes you are afraid. Sometimes you don't understand where your thoughts come from, sometimes the brain doesn't make sense for a day. Just let it be. There's nothing wrong with you. If you're a thinking person, you'll have questions you can't answer and feelings you don't understand. Just let it be. Keep thinking; plumb the depths. A human being is a piece of work that doesn't always make sense. Just let it be.

I won't share all of my wild and frantic freewriting, but here's a piece from today. No prompt, untimed.

I have crazybrain today. Why am I scared of losing people? It takes over my head some days. I don't like it. I hope I'm not the only one out there who gets crazybrain and who calls it crazybrain. I mean, I started crying at my office. At my office. Do people really do that? I know that if I want to go anywhere with my writing I have to take the leap and cut the veins open and just put it all out there but I am afraid to do it, being so vulnerable, afraid people won't love me and yes, I'll admit it, sometimes I want to write because I want people to love me and acknowledge me and acknowledge my experience. That is something to say. Get it together. Get it together. There are hard things in life. We all know this - some dwell on it more than others. I am obsessed with loss, in particular the loss of people. I know it's weird. I'm especially obsessed with thinking about how people deal with the loss of other people. The feelings that they have. What are those feelings like? What do those feelings look like when you close your eyes? What do those feelings taste like? What color are they? I feel like a zombie my eyes are glazed over don't know how to get the words out days so long days long days long blankblankblankblankblank. Ok, here's what I really need to say. It's fear. It hurts to lose the people you love. You'll survive because people do, but it would hurt. But the more you let yourself love someone, the more it will hurt when one day they're gone. That is a terribly morbid and depressing way to think and I don't believe I'm doing it consciously. But it's there. I'm living for what-comes-next instead of now and I don't mean to and I don't like it. Ah man, I am crazy in the head today. What the hell. Loss loss loss. That woman's blog, the one who lost her husband suddenly. The woman at church who's husband died in a sudden accident. The sign on the door of the hair salon, "Closed: death in the family." Seeing the face of a woman who has just lost her husband. Those feelings must be the most acute form of loneliness. To be known by others is a very deep human desire and to have it fulfilled and then destroyed, to know that everything you shared with a person is now only known to you, man that is human suffering. And here's where I get hung up: it happens all the time, everywhere, every day. People lose spouses, fiances, girlfriends, boyfriends, parents, grandparents, children, friends. It happens and people pick themselves up and carry on. They get out of bed in the morning, they walk the dog, they go to work, they come home and make dinner. And yes, some people have that great holy thing in the dark that they can reach out to in fear, and maybe that helps and maybe that's the point and maybe that's why we have it. It happens all the time. What the hell. Write it out.

Yes, I am scared to show the crazy thoughts. But it's good to know we aren't alone. It's good to talk and to talk about hard things. It's good to be with other people and to let them inspire you.

There are bad things in the world. There are also good people. It's important to be reminded of this often.

for now.

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That's why we wake
and look out -- no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
- William Stafford, Yes

freewriting on friday.

Freewriting is like a slap in the face. No matter how often I do it, I am still surprised by the feelings it evokes. And it's sort of like running. I think to myself, I don't want to run. I want to get into bed and eat ice cream. But then I run and I feel good and happy.* Same thing with freewriting. I think to myself, I don't want to write. I want to read a book and check the weather and go to sleep. But then I write and I feel cracked open inside. Which is good, even if it isn't always happy.

And it doesn't matter how often you do it. You will be surprised by the words you write down. Freewriting takes you to "first thoughts" (as Natalie Goldberg calls them), uncensored and somehow almost separate from yourself. I promise, there are things in your brain that you don't even know about.

I have been in love with the idea of freewriting for a long time; only recently have I actually experienced the real thing. First, let me tell you how I do it.

1. I find a spot. At a table in a coffee shop, in my bedroom with the door shut, at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, on a bench in the park.
2. I set a timer. I'm a fan of 10-minute intervals. Usually I'll do a whole string of 10-minute intervals, but I haven't reached the point where I feel ready to set the timer for longer. 20 minutes? 30 minutes? Scarytime.
3. I start the timer and go. I just write, sometimes starting with a prompt or some idea that's been floating through my brain. Very often I get stuck and I write the word "blank" over and over.
4. When the timer rings, I stop. I immediately write (10 minutes) even mid-sentence and then decide if I want to go for another 10.

That's it. It's really not hard. The only rule is keep going. Don't stop and think, don't check for grammar and spelling, don't erase or delete - just go.  For a long time I thought it was hard and didn't really try. I'd freewrite here and there without a lot of commitment and didn't produce much of anything. But when you set the timer and stick to it, you'd be surprised. You get over the first blank hump and then something breaks loose a little bit. And you keep going. I always know when I've really broken through because my handwriting gets crazy and loopy and not at all like myself. In controlled situations my writing is very elegant and tidy. When I get into the freewriting groove, it gets wild.

So let me tell you about my first, real, honest freewriting experience. I tried it in college and afterwards, but never lost control (which is the whole point). This past holiday season, I lost control and ohmygod it was something else. My flight was cancelled (as often happens when you're trying to fly in or out of Minnesota in December). A friend offered to pick me up and let me stay with her for the few days in St. Paul (yes days) until the next flight. Unfortunately, this meant sitting at the airport and waiting for 6 hours. And then sitting at the apartment for 2 quiet days while she was at work. Obviously, I could have entertained myself with TV and trashy magazines, but instead I told myself I would write. It started at the airport. I just said, Ok girl - write for 10 minutes. I started to write about the man outside waiting for a ride, writing about who he might be waiting for.  I did it and the words just came and so I did another 10 minutes. And another and another. All said and done, I filled 40 pages of a notebook in less than 3 days. A lot of it was garbage, but the floodgates just opened.

Since that experience, I have become a firm believer in the timed freewriting practice. I have been awakened to my own ability to create and surprised by the words I have to say.

Try it.

And now for some freewriting. The prompt I started with, Write about being cold.

It was the first day of fall today the first real fall day. I've been looking forward to it the whole summer. I can't understand why, but lately I hate the heat more than anything. So I was walking to work this morning and it was chilly and I had been so happy that it wasn't hot and then my toes got cold. I was walking in flip-flops and my toes were cold. And I got to the office and had to sit cross-legged in my chair to warm up my feet. And so I was thinking about discontent. You know, how I can spend an entire summer complaining about being hot, and then the very first day I'm not hot, there I am complaining about cold toes. My lord, that is discontent if I ever saw it. Blank blank blank blank I was also thinking about cold faces. I'm just having one of those days where I feel a little out of it, who knows why. Maybe I didn't sleep too well, maybe I shouldn't have had cheese and beer right before bed, but I feel tired and groggy and headachy and wishing I was wearing my glasses and not my contacts. So I was staring at my computer this morning just staring at a spreadsheet and I realized I was making the lemon face. The lemon face. I can explain the lemon face. It's when your resting face looks angry and your mouth gets all twisted up and you don't even realize it. Your resting face isn't peaceful and happy it's sour. I used to say that to my mom all the time. Mom, you're making the lemon face. I guess maybe it runs in the family. I just read something not too long ago, a list of good things you should do and one of the things on the list was "work on your resting face." The face where you're just reading a book, walking to work, staring at a spreadsheet. Make it peaceful and happy. It makes me think of blank-face disease, which I have. Also a family trait. I often think that I look happy and smiley when my face is really looking blank. No one's mentioned it lately, but I had a friend once who would make a face at me every time I was making blankface - just to let me know that I had absolutely no expression. So I had cold toes this morning and I had a lemon face and it's true, it's true: all I'm thinking about is laying out in the warm sun. I'm looking out the window and thinking about a Cape Cod summer day at Newcomb Hollow and laying out in the sun, drifting in and out of sleep, reading a book, splashing in the ocean. Man I miss the Cape and I've only been gone for a month. Well it's time to embrace fall because it's here. I'll get in the groove - I'll bust out my scarf and my mittens and some knitting needles and I won't wear flip-flops to work again and I do love fall. Eating squash and apples and drinking hot drinks and being chilly and sleeping under a big comforter. I do love all of those things. Blankblankblankblank this makes me think of how, by accident, I've stopped drinking coffee. Lately I cannot seem to get up early enough to make it, can't walk to work carrying it, can't afford to buy it and so I've just stopped drinking it. It's surprising but I feel (10 minutes).

Of course, I want to delete not 10 seconds after I finish. Believe me, I know it's just rambling. It is nothing special. You probably don't care. But it's just some proof that I'm working the muscle. I can also tell you that this is nothing compared to my real freewriting - the stuff no one sees. My real freewriting is weird and nonsensical and scarycrazy. I'm still not brave enough to put it out there, even if only friendly eyes will see it. So we've got some self-censored unimportant rambling on our hands here, but per our agreement, I will not delete.

Remember: to be brave, sometimes you have to start small.

*Ok, one time I went running and I didn't feel happy.  There were some unwise lunch decisions before the run and I'll say no more.  Except: think twice before eating a plate of stuffed quahogs right before you run.

on porches and idea hoarding.

I wrote a bit today about porches. It's not very serious and not very deep. I was thinking of hoarding it away into the writing land-of-no-return. The place where things I've written will wait until they're ready (never). I imagine that I'll tweak them now and again and someday I'll find the right place for them. Just gotta wait for the time to come.

This idea hoarding is something I do often. Maybe you do it too? I'm not much of a physical hoarder (actually, I get a strange satisfaction out of throwing things away, which is another story). But I hoard special things and ideas. Do you know what I mean?

The beautiful handmade paper I got as a birthday present? Still carefully wrapped and stored. The canvas I picked up a year ago? Still blank. The hand spun yarn a friend passed on to me? Still bundled. It's not that I'm unmotivated or incapable of being creative. Give me some cheap yarn and I'll knit you a mile of scarves. But I hoard special things for the right occasion or perfect moment. Well, I do the same thing with ideas. I get it started and then think, This idea could be really great, but it's not ready yet. I'll save it for later.

Wrong. I am only just beginning to understand that if you want to write, there is no saving it. The writing and the ideas are for now. You just have to put them out there, put them on the paper, use them up. Why? More will come. I have this on fairly good authority

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. - Annie Dillard

but I still have a hard time making myself believe it. I guess there's only one way to find out.

Lately I've been having fits of intense gratefulness.  In these fits, I say things (to myself) like, Holy moly girl look at your life. It is good. And I find myself thinking: What is the point of life if all we do is save the good things for later? I don't just mean handmade stationery and writing whims. I mean the good things that make life good. I mean not taking yourself too seriously, I mean spending a lazy Sunday with someone you love, I mean eating butter (and lots of it). Let yourself enjoy the good things now - maybe now is as much later as you'll get.

I don't mean to be gloomy and morbid, only to encourage living now rather than later. Also to encourage writing now rather than later. But mostly to get my own butt in gear so that I can put some words on the page with a little faith that more words will come along next time.

***

I want to tell you about the glory of a porch. I can't tell you why exactly, but a porch is good. Honestly, I'm a little obsessed. A porch is the sole feature of my dream house. I don't even need a house really, just a porch. Ok, I guess I might also need a bedroom/bathroom/kitchen. But I mostly dream of sitting on a porch and doing porchy things.

A porch is the perfect place to be alone but not quite. You're still home, but you're outside enough to smile and nod at folks on the sidewalk or across the fence, to hear the sounds of traffic, to watch the world go by (as a friend once put it). I also know it's the perfect place to sit on a swing, to read and write, to drink some coffee, to hold hands, to be content. It's the perfect place to be quiet with other people, to sit still, to be alone but not lonely.

Right now I have a deck which overlooks a fluorescent lit street. And bunch of scary wires. And a disturbingly large American flag in the neighbor's backyard. Seating includes a broken beach chair and a musty stool. So if you are somewhere with a couple trees, a handful of rocking chairs and (obviously) a porch - sit on it for me tonight.

some rules & other things.

I knew it, lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, fan blowing in my face. I knew that I would wake up this morning, read last night's words, and I would hate them (every last one). And I knew I'd get the itch to hit delete, to edit, my god do I really say the word "thing" so often, etc.

Yes, good writing is more often than not the product of editing and more editing. But my purpose here is just to write, to get that muscle cranking again, and to worry about editing some other day. So let me just tell you now that I wanted to delete, oh how I wanted to. But I've got some little devil in my head telling me to keep on.

My internal conflict lead me to this: a few ground rules for myself.

1. I will not delete. Once I put it out there, it's out there. Yes, I am afraid that I'll sound stupid, silly or wrong. Well sometimes I am stupid, silly and wrong. I apologize now for being any of those things, but even still - I'm not going to delete it.
2. I will write often. I'm not going to give myself the "everyday" rule because I know how well that won't work on me. Anyway, stuff happens in life. So my aim is going to be at least 3 posts a week.
3. I will push a little. By that I mean that I will test my limits every now and then. Maybe a somewhat diluted version (for now) of Hemingway's, "Write hard and clear about what hurts."

For today, just a list (because lists are always good).

I appreciate...
-a seared tofu caesar salad from Blue Shirt Cafe (ask for the wrap as a salad).
-knowing that if I leave 10 minutes late for work, I will pass the old woman at Tufts in the long skirt, gray bun, big glasses and fanny pack.
-a little box of technology that lets me see the faces of people I love who are far away.
-listening to all of my backlogged podcasts of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! as I walk to and from work (and laughing out loud).
-a small farmer's market in the parking lot behind my office; lots of tomatoes.
-farmer's market tomatoes + olive oil + brie + kalmata olives + one hearty loaf.
-looking forward to things.
-settling in.

I read this post today and it felt an awful lot like fate. "Nine days remain until my 26th birthday. That is so much closer to 30 than 25. I’ve got to get busy living."

Amen sister.

on beginnings.

Just start.

Beginning is hard. I will never understand why my brain feels near bursting with inspiration but completely frozen in terror at putting the pen to the paper, or in this case, fingers to the keys. I long for freedom, but structured freedom. I long for schedules but often want to break them. I demand plans but crave spontaneity. What is this? An old friend put it once, "You are a freaking paradox."

So maybe I am.

I am always waiting for a beginning to happen to me. Couldn't it just happen? Couldn't my genius suddenly begin to flow? Couldn't life suddenly start?

So maybe it will. Or maybe it already has. In the meantime, here's my attempt to hold myself accountable and confront the demons in my own mind. I know, in the deepest part of my being, that there are things I need to write. I know what some of those things are, others I am waiting to discover. For much of my adult life, I've attempted to write around these things. There are things I have beaten to death in my writing, but these things are still very much the surface. Add to this evasion my strange and neurotic urges to destroy everything I write. I don't mean hide it - I mean destroy it. I have started a number of blogs in my day and they have all been deleted, entire contents deleted. I have known myself to tear entire pages out of my notebooks and throw them away. Ok. I actually do that a lot. Writing makes us vulnerable and it's hard to just let it be.*

Natalie Goldberg says to write through the crap. (She puts it somewhat more delicately). There is no beginning. Just write and maybe the beginning is a couple of paragraphs after you start, maybe a couple of pages, maybe a couple of chapters. It doesn't matter, you'll find it eventually. Just write your way there. I believe her, but it doesn't come easy.

There is much in this world that I love, much that inspires me, much that urges me onward. There is much that hurts, much that has changed me, much that has destroyed me and brought me back again. I have long-standing love/hate relationships with a number of things, not limited to: people, cheese and words. But I read something recently that rekindled my inspiration and made me think, Maybe I'm ok. I might have something to say still. Maybe I can make myself say it.

My goal is small.  Really, only this: I intend to hold myself accountable. I will write or I will go mad. So I will choose to write. I will write. I will write now. I will write here. After all:

"In my experience, art is not to be awaited; it is to be chased down, cornered, and beaten into submission with a stick." - Michael Perry

I find myself in a new chapter of life, with a startling number of changes, a newly distinct separation of work and life and what seems to me ungodly amounts of free time. So the topics here may vary as widely as you can imagine, from philosophy to food. I tend to be overly introspective, but frankly, some days my deepest thoughts involve new ways I can eat a can of beans. But the point, the sharp pointy point, is the words. I hope that I can at least see that through. I just want to write and I've got to find my way to do it. Here I am.

*I also have the skill of finding a dozen other satisfying things to do when writing presents itself to me. So I'll mention here that, in anticipation of sitting down to write this, I promptly took a nap, hung up some pictures and cleaned the kitchen. Two hours of productive procrastination later...