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.