first step.

Every weekend, we go down to Jimmy T’s for breakfast. This morning we rode our bikes. We wait at the door until two seats open up at the bar or in a booth. We’re handed our coffee in a random pair of mugs (today: a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. on one, “Happy Birthday” to a Wal-mart in Las Vegas on another). The food is mediocre at best. I usually get the french toast with a side of sausage. Jacob gets the huevos rancheros with the spicy salsa. Sometimes we talk; sometimes we eat quietly. The weekend now feels strange without this.

My life has had more change in it than some. Lots of moving and people and new towns and new houses and new jobs. Many lost connections. This is one of the reasons (I think) that I crave routines and familiarity and rituals.

So much has changed lately. I drove over the bridge today and saw the monument and thought: Holy geez, when did I move to DC? My attempts at mindfulness have fallen short, which means I’ve lost some of the awareness of where I am and how I got here. But here I am nonetheless.

There are good, familiar, comfortable things, and I’m grateful for them.

I wrote a lot of things I meant to put up here, but I didn’t put them up. You know the drill though. Just take the step. Just take the first one. Just take it again. Even if you fail until the day you die, don’t stop trying.

all the time.

The light falls early now and it is suddenly cold. I am walking home from work in the dark and going out for long runs under the glow of streetlights. The gray light and short days bring a sort of melancholy, but I will always love the slow walk home, the tip of my nose cold, the stamp of my boots on the sidewalk. The houses all have big windows filled with big lights and shelves of books. There's no window at my house, but the light is just as warm.

The thing about a city that always gnaws at me is how easy it is to become cold. Not physically cold, emotionally cold. It is easy to keep people at a distance. I know there are plenty of small towns deep inside big cities, but also there are so many people around all the time that you can't survive without ignoring a few. I am on the quiet and shy side and tend toward fearfulness, so it's easy for me to be suspicious of the stranger who strikes up a conversation in the grocery line. He asked, Are you a vegetarian? You buy healthy food. I said, No, but my boyfriend is. Then I took a long step forward to end the conversation.

But he crept right up behind me and asked, Which one of you cooks? I answered, We both do. And then he told me how he used to cook when he was young, before he met his wife. I did it out of necessity. You know, I had to eat something. But then he met his wife, who was the best cook he had ever known, and he didn't need to cook anymore. I looked at his groceries spread on the belt: cans of Hormel chili, bottles of Pellegrino, one loaf of white bread. I blinked, I understood, I smiled. He smiled back. I picked up my bag and said, Have a good one, and then I left.

freewriting: recommit.

Hey my friends. Can I tell you something true? I've been staring at this screen for 30 minutes and feeling more and more like smacking my head into it. My writing comes in waves but my habits really have died. I've lost hold of the rituals that used to keep my writing engine oiled up so that, when the time came, I had something to say here. I know that, more than anything, I need to start freewriting again. I know it's the thing I need because, at this exact moment, I'm thinking up excuses for why I can't freewrite tonight. What can I say? My brain is a weird person. I am perfectly capable of forming new habits, it just takes a bit of devotion.

In the meantime, I always have things to share:

I love this letter from Harper Lee about reading as a child.

I wrote up another review for The Lit Pub on Seth Fried's, The Great Frustration. Have a look over here: Don't let your reason get the best of you today.

You'll also find one of my tweets in the latest issue of Creative Nonfiction! That's pretty cool. You can order it over here (if you like).

I heard Langhorne Slim play at the Rock & Roll Hotel last night. Give him a big old listen. He's got a new album that's a rocking good time.

And I'll tell you what I'm doing this fine evening. I'm going to close this screen, make myself some toast, and freewrite for fifteen minutes. Just fifteen! It's nothing, I can do it. You hold me accountable.

just one.

I pass a pair of sunflowers each day on my walk home. The petals are still barely yellow, but the heavy heads hang low and sad. They've been planted on a bit of sloped yard, so they tower over me as I walk by. I look up into their faces and nod. They sway and droop a bit lower.

There's enough in the world to get you down, there's no doubt.

There are enough things to do that wading through and choosing sometimes seems an impossible task.

I get these bursts, wild wild bursts of excitement, moments of complete certainty that I am meant to be writing and I have so much to say that there isn't one moment to lose. The excitement holds me for a bit, then I get a little dizzy and overwhelmed, then I try to block it all out in my head and get things organized, and then I give up. Suddenly it's 10pm and I'm sitting on the couch and someone is asking me, Have you written anything? Most likely I am snarling back in self-defense and laziness.

It's some cousin of that despair I know well, the kind that looks all around at the world, sees so much suffering and need, and feels that nothing can be done about it all. The solution is always, must always be, to break it down into what I can manage. I have no choice. If I contemplate the great suffering of the world all at once, I'll never sleep at night.

It should apply also to writing. I need to remember to carve out the bit I can manage for now and let the rest be. I must remember that just because I'm not doing everything doesn't mean I'm doing nothing. It might be one word, one sentence, one person who connects and is motivated, inspired, renewed, understood, revealed, and so on. Just one is enough, isn't it? Just one.

another one.

I turned 27 this past weekend. Some while ago, I picked up the habit of setting resolutions on my birthday, one for each year. A bit cheesy, perhaps, but I like it. I like to think about what I will do with my next year of living. 

The wonderful thing about this blog, which has been kicking around for more than a year now, is that I have a record of what I resolved to do last year. I like a list that mixes tangible resolutions with broader goals for living. And I like a list that mixes very small tasks with very large ones. It makes it less easy to measure when some have been done, but I think I've written here before about my philosophy on goals and resolutions. I love them for their way of making me consider my priorities and strive towards new things. I don't mind if they're not all checked off in a row. I just think it's lovely to think about all the things I could do, all the things I have done, and all things I still want to do. But anyway, I ramble on.

from September 22, 2011
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

just here.

Something I love about the essay is the way that it can wind through a million different seemingly unrelated topics, then you get to the end and there's a click in your head and it all connects into one big picture. I love that. I think it's very relevant to way we live our lives. I think it's an important way to stir up observation, which is critical to empathy, which is critical to creating the world we want to live in. But sometimes I try hard to contrive it. I try to jam the thread through the needle and the organic unfolding is lost. In fact, sometimes it paralyzes me. I lose sight of the fact that I can write about just one thing and that can be enough.

So let me tell you something about myself: I have a never-ending need for control. This causes some good things in my life: I don't miss deadlines, I pay my bills on time, I never lose my keys or my wallet. It also causes some bad things: I forget how to relax, I demand that others meet my standards and do things my way, I feel stress over things that shouldn't really matter. I have been thinking about it a lot lately. My control tendencies fire up when my life feels most overwhelming, when there are lots of changes, when I am sometimes at the mercy of others' decisions or actions. The fact is that I've been been grabbing for control left and right lately, and my controlling tendencies have gotten....out of control.

Please tell me that made you chuckle.

I'm always swimming in resolutions, too many, which is a surefire way to fail at every one of them. But I believe this one is worth some effort, because I think my hunger for control is at the root of other things I may wish to change in my life. I often take myself too seriously and lose sight of the things that matter most. This isn't confession-time, or I don't mean it to be. This is just the thing on my mind, and it's just one thing, and it's about life, and I'm writing about it.

yes, me too.

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one." - C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

I was thinking about that quotation today, but in my memory, it was about reading. Funny how another person's words take on their own life in our own heads. But anyway, I suppose the reader and the writer are friends of a sort, so it still holds true.

I remember several moments. They are the basis of that enduring love of an author that you cling to for life.

It was there when I first read Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and understood that the monkey in my head that kept me from writing really meant that I should be writing. It was the moment I realized that real writers do the same battle in their own heads.

It was there when I first read Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, when Jayber was content to pack up all his belongings in one box and start walking, when he was content to sit in the back of an empty church to hear the silence, and when he was kept up all night to contemplate the darkness of the world. Well, I loved him for it.

And I'll never forget Annie Dillard's desire in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek to sit still for hours on end to watch the insects or animals around her. I called it my sitting-quietly-time and she was doing it too.

happy birthday and so on.

Three years ago, in the fall, I bought a quilted vest at the Goodwill in Hyannis. It’s faded blue and the shoulders are too big. If I remember right, I paid $5 for it. One of the seams busted open after I bought it, but I sewed it back together. It isn’t flattering and honestly, I don’t think it’s even hipster cool. It’s just a big old vest that I bought at Goodwill and that I love dearly.

I was looking out the window on the bus yesterday morning and saw a man driving what must have been an expensive car. He looked like he felt powerful and attractive and happy with himself. It set me to thinking about the material possessions we derive happiness or pride from. I was actually thinking of it as an equation.

My happiness from ugly too-big vest = his happiness from expensive car.

Or is my happiness > his happiness?

That’s what I was wondering.

Last weekend I saw Searching for Sugar Man at a sweet little independent theater in the West End of DC. I won’t tell you the whole story, but I will say go see it. Especially if you’re wondering about being an artist in the world, or if you’re wondering about finding contentment and living with integrity. It’s a mind-blowing story and told beautifully.

After a dark storm blew threw on Saturday night last weekend, the air turned cool here. It just turned with one snap. I went for a run on Sunday and felt chilly. When fall is ushered in, each year, my body sheds a layer. That doesn’t seem right - I suppose most layers are shed in the spring? But this season turns and my soul feels clean. I can’t overstate it and I’m not being dramatic. I am reborn in the clean rush of autumn.

sharing.

Last weekend, I started moving things into our new apartment. We won't be in it full-time for a few more weeks, so I can take my time shuttling over loads and slowly unpacking boxes. This has a been a strange summer of living half-packed up and ready to go. Some of my things have been packed up since May.

As I was unpacking a box of books yesterday, I found a folder filled with recipes that my grandmother had saved for me. She gave me the folder last Christmas, some recipes cut out of magazines, some hand-written on note cards.

It seems I come from a long line of sharers. We are always clipping articles or writing down quotations or forwarding blog posts to the people we care about. For whatever reason, it feels like the greatest expression of love to me. It is one thing to casually think of the people you care about, but another to think about what might interest or intrigue them. Sharing those clippings or recipes or what-have-you's is my way of saying that I'm always thinking of you. No matter what I'm watching or reading, I'm thinking of you and wondering if you'd like it too.

My grandma did this for me. My father is always scanning in newspaper clippings and emailing them to me. And I do it for others. Poor, poor Jacob undoubtedly has thousands of archived (or deleted) emails from me linking to news articles and blog posts. My dearest friends get emails from me with recipes that I wish we could make together. And I have a thick file of hand-clipped recipes from my grandma.

My grandma passed away unexpectedly this summer, after I had already packed the recipes up in a box of books. I had forgotten about them until they were uncovered last weekend.

restless.

I wrote something to post here last week. It was long and rambly and personal and I just couldn't manage to post it. It sat in a draft all week and I tweaked a word every now and then. I thought that maybe it wasn't good. (But who am I kidding? I always think it isn't good.) I thought that it was too personal or revealed something a little too honest about me. And then today, I realized it isn't any of that. It's just that I've lost the nerve I had built up. You have to be nervy to write something down, wiggle yourself out of it, pop it off your head like a too-tight sweater, and then put into the world before other eyes and minds. You really have to be brave. Creating art is both the most liberating and terrifying thing I know.

Well it feels mighty stale to me now because it's been sitting in my computer/brain for many days. But sometimes the point of my being here, at this rinky-dink blog, is not to write beautifully or perfectly or even well. Sometimes it is just to steel my nerves and toughen up my weak heart.

My thoughts lately have been on the artist's life. I have been feeling old lately (and getting older still). But the drumbeat in my ears grows louder and it is this: if you're going to do it, then do it.

There is nothing I want more. There is nothing that scares me more. There is nothing else for it but to do it. How many times must I say it before it sticks in my own ears? I'm not sure. But I'll keep saying it until it does.

one night.

We are always walking when we don’t know what to do. I am always walking when I have nowhere to go. To sit still somewhere is too painful in loneliness or boredom, and so the walking. And so we were walking.

I like to take things in. I look and look and look and think. He likes to poke his head inside places. I would never go in alone. I would just look and think.

Last night, we decided we both needed to go to the Gap. New shirt, new pants. We rode the train up to that part of town where nothing is open on the weekend, and when we got off we realized - nothing is open here on the weekend. The Gap was closed. And that is when we started walking. We walked by a Thai restaurant. He asked, Remember the time we ate there? And I answered, We’ve never eaten there. One of us was confused, but no one gave in and no one was wrong. We walked by an art gallery with a small sign and a big wood and glass door. He tried the doorknob and it was locked. He held a finger over a doorbell and looked to me. A woman appeared and swung the door open. She told us the gallery had just closed, but she was there and we might as well look. So we did.

The gallery was showing the work of Lukman Ahmad. Some of it was gray and yellow and dramatic. Some of it was bright blocks of color and horses. I liked the colors, Jake liked the drama. The woman asked us what art we were drawn to and I didn’t answer. I smiled because I don’t know how to talk about art. Jake told her that he worked in theater and I was a writer. She asked if we were new in town. He told her I had just moved from Boston. She told me she had moved from Boston thirty years ago and she was still here. We laughed and we left.

don't apologize.

I'm living in a place right now that, by a few blocks, is removed from city noises. I knew, but didn't realize, in fact until this very moment, how much I missed the quiet. The sun fell slowly tonight and I didn't realize it was getting dark until I caught myself squinting at the screen. The lamp nearby is on a timer - it should switch on soon. In the meantime, I am sitting in the dark, squinting and waiting. I'm listening to a cricket here and a cricket there, soft rise and fall chorus chirping in the dusk.

The moment feels very holy to me, by which I mean sacred, by which I mean full of life and the awareness of its movement and passing. It also feels holy because it reminds me of many other similar moments, and these are the moments that make up my life, and as Sugar says, my becoming.

I have said before, I think, that I find it much easier to write abstractly about life rather than my life. The details and specifics and all that nonsense are too jarringly real sometimes to put into words. It is a handy way to protect myself and a handy way to be a bit lazy about the way I write. I've said it before but may as well remind myself: less mushy abstract, more tangible and real.

People of the Midwest have a nasty habit of apologizing often, all the time, for everything. I know because I come from the Midwest and I saw it all the time growing up. I do it myself and so does Jacob and we both come from the Midwest.

shining moment of life.

I remember, nearly one year ago, telling myself to just begin. Just begin. Hard words to heed. Just begin. It’s time to begin again? It’s time to begin again.

Stopping me are these things:
Fear, Embarrassment, Disappointment, Distraction, Powerlessness.

Those are things but they are only things.

Bear with me on this one. It might be messy. When you tear out your second beating heart, as Sugar so wisely advises, and slap it all over the page, it’s going to be messy. And the first cranks of the rusty gears are awkward. The first steps when your foot has gone to sleep. Saying I love you when your mouth hasn’t formed those words in a long time. You just do it however you can. It gets better.

I am thinking a lot of things these days. Quite a lot. I feel the rush of wind coming up from the canyon. You feel it on the edge. You feel it when you’re about to jump. Not the jump to fall, but the jump to see.

Ask me anything. I’m thinking too much lately. I might have the answers. I might not. I probably don’t. But I can fake it.

Who might I be letting down? Do you wonder that sometimes? Probably, most likely, usually, always, there is someone. But best to soldier on anyway.

clearly.

I can't seem to find the right frame of mind lately. When you're the sort of person who lives by routine and familiarity, and when that gets all thrown out, I guess the wires get crossed for awhile.

So tonight, I only want to tell you this one thing: there are a lot of different forms to beauty in this world. It isn't only a thing you see, it doesn't always make you catch your breath. Sometimes it's a group of women who are struggling with things you can't even imagine, but they care about each other and they love each other and they form a community. Sometimes that community is very beautiful. Sometimes it's looking down at the rug by the door and seeing one large pair of shoes next to one small pair of shoes. Sometimes seeing those shoes at home together is very beautiful. Sometimes loss and absence is beautiful because, in the loss, you are able to see what goodness and blessing you've had. And still have.

I saw a man in an important looking suit on Capitol Hill today. He was was sitting in the park. All of the benches were full, so he was sitting on the thick, low-hanging branch of a tree. Shiny shoes and jacket slung aside. He was rolling a cigarette. It was hot, but not in the shade where he sat.

And that was beautiful too.

more writing.

I'm always terrible at marking change in my life. My childhood journals are full of page after page of monotony, but the significant moments are curiously absent. On through my teenage years and college. I am inspired to write about the color of the leaves but incapable of writing when I move or fall in love or suffer a broken heart.

There is distant thunder tonight, the kind that sounds vaguely reminiscent of footsteps upstairs. The kind that makes you say in your head, over and over, Oh it's just the thunder. And it is mixing with some pre-holiday fireworks. And those are mixing with a small bit of rain. And that is mixing with cats racing up and down the stairs after me, tiny claws and feet on wood, skittering.

I moved last weekend to a new city. I started a new job. I took up with a good man who loves me. It was a big weekend.

I don't want to write about it because, in my old way, I can't conjure up the words. It's too much, or it means too much, or something. But I bargained with myself tonight: You can eat that second piece of cheese, but then you must writing something.

So I have done my part.

I'm sorry for another absence, but it couldn't be helped. I will be back again. Nearly one year ago, I resolved to write on this blog. I'm working on a goal list for this year. Bigger and better but mostly just more. More writing. More.

the grotesque hints at its own cure.

"But the grotesque hints at its own cure, the speculative creation otherwise known as 'hope.' We hope when the odds, no matter how good, are still that: odds, chance, a gamble in which the rules may change at any time, for any reason, with or without our acquiescence. We hope when we understand that circumstances are beyond our control, when will is not equal to effect, when we are not the subjects of a story but its objects. Hope isn't optimistic; it's the face of despair. My grandmother taught me that, not long before she died. 'Despair,' she said, was her favorite word. 'It's not a bad thing. It's a gift. A recognition.' It's the opposite of dread. Perception, not speculation. You accept the facts of your fate rather than reading them as evidence of a judgment or a moral. Some people might call that quitting."

- Jeff Sharlet (Born, Again)

broad arms.

There are times when there seems to be little to say. I know there's nothing to say, you reassure everyone. The path is long and you don't always know where it will lead you. The path is long and sometimes you must go it alone. The path is long and it is also very short.

I don't know terribly much about Natasha Trethewey, but that she is the new poet laureaute, comparatively young, and has something beautiful to say about patience and art.

"I turned to poetry to make sense of what had happened and started writing what I knew, even then, were really bad poems. It took me nearly 20 years to find the right language, to write poems that were successful enough to explain my own feelings to me and that might also be meaningful to others."

Love is good and compassion makes the broad arms that hold us all. I am quite guilty of forgetting that. Sometimes we need to be those arms and sometimes we need to let them hold us. Say I love you. Say it again, again, again, again, again. Never stop.

other home.

Over the course of one week, the course of my life has changed significantly. I knew it was coming, more or less, but it has taken a good few days to get my head around it. In three weeks, I'm moving to a new city. I'm going for a new job I'm thrilled about and a new life with someone I love. I will be leaving behind four years of friendship and good life in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts was my first other home. It was the first time I set out on my own and made a place in the world for myself, where the good grace of love and community found me and a family of people chose me. That is something beautiful and precious and difficult to let go of. But there is more of it out there and, after a lifetime of moving, I have at least learned the valuable lesson that you never really leave behind the people and places you've known. They are always a part of you. And the ones that matter, the ones that inspire you and make you stronger and better, those ones last.

For three years, I lived in a big house full of people, in the woods of Wellfleet, where there are also beaches and ponds and tourists and long, quiet winters. For those three years, once a week, 14 people sat around a table and had a meal together, cooked by two of us. Sometimes the meal was late and everyone sat in the living room, crabby, waiting, and watching Jeopardy. Sometimes the nights were warm and we sat outside at the long picnic table until the mosquitoes drove us in. Some of the meals were terrible - soggy grilled cheese sandwiches and giant pots of plain white noodles. Some of the meals were epic. There was always the threat of scarcity. When you cook for 14 people, there is always the danger of not making quite enough. Some weeks, I'd had a long day and I could barely tolerate the chatter and noise and press of bodies around the table. Other weeks, I sat down, looked around the table and saw family. I think I will carry forever the beauty of this group meal. The urgency of being together, on good days and bad, the necessity of connecting with the people in your life. The love of food and the gratitude for a gift.

birds & escalator.

I am always cringing over my way of writing so abstractly. It is the safest and easiest way to write - it is also far removed from what is real.

I wrote a very long post tonight, in a word document, and it was crazy and about absolutely nothing. It was very pure stream-of-conscious nonsense. I had the feeling, which I get sometimes, that there is something something SOMETHING that I need to be writing about, but I can't seem to hit it. My hands shake, my arms clench, my shoulders get hot from all the muscles working. My heart races at the desperate need to create, though I hardly know what.

I deleted it all. It wasn't writing for the sake of a product, it was writing because my fingers just needed to move. But I bargained with myself, agreed that I could only delete it all if I wrote something else, here, for people to see.

But I'm not sure quite what to tell you.

I'm finding my voice and it feels right.
I'm noting stories that need to be told and I'm getting ready to tell them.
I am looking for my tribe, a lovely thought someone shared. My people are out there.
I am learning how to live through change and make the life I want.

death shudders.

There are some places that I live my life in. There are a couple of offices, the kind with humming fluorescent lights and fans and refrigerators. There are trains, the cars on the red line and the orange line and the green line. There's the bus home at night. There are low-lit rooms, a bedroom, a kitchen. And for the time being, these are the places that I am living out my days. There will be new places, different places, other places, coming days. I will carry some things along with me and others I will lose.

The clouds broke just now, just outside my window, and it has lightened my mood. The clouds have been very dark here, for days it seems. I saw a pink sunset over a church and I felt a little peace seep into my bones.

I have always had a strange relationship with place. I have always been desperate for it, but I'm never able to quite own it. If that doesn't make sense, I'm afraid I can't explain it any better. If it does, then our souls have the same longing and that makes me feel a bit less alone. And hopefully you the same.

What is strange is the goodbye. When I leave a place, I feel the same deep sadness each time. It is a sadness fueled by knowing that the next time I see those features, the landmarks, their light will have changed. I know well the feeling of looking at place where you were and knowing that you won't be there again. When my own sense of loss is so fierce, I often wonder how anyone can say goodbye to a childhood home or a place where they have lived for years. Perhaps it's only because I can't imagine it.

tell me about the good things.

Here's a task for you: lean back, wherever you are, and tell me about the good things. You have them and so do I. We should talk about it for awhile because there is quite a lot to be grateful for, here and now, and I don't know what else to make of life but to sit back and be grateful for it. My life is very good right now, but it always has been so.

I have been young and lonely and without purpose. In their own ways, love and passion and purpose have found me. That's what I'm talking about. Tell me about the good things.

A lot of people suffer in this world in ways that I cannot measure or understand. My very keen sense of justice makes me feel guilty at the great love and friendship and passion that have filled up my life. I feel guilty at my paycheck and comfortable bed and good food. This is a struggle for life, I believe. I will find my own ways to make peace with the evil in the world and the human suffering. In the meantime, the best thing I know to do is to be grateful.

My family has taught me to be curious and generous and to work hard. Good friends have stood in a kitchen with me over wine and food and talked about hurt and love and struggle and life. A good man has believed in me, sometimes more than I have believed in myself.

I wish I could conjure up something more eloquent or artful to say to you tonight, but I can only muster this: my life is good. And I am grateful.

some good talk.

What do you want to talk about tonight? There are days I get hungry for good talk. I don't want to talk about my day, what I ate, what I did, where I went. I don't want to talk about the weather and public transportation and paying rent and making money and I don't want to ask or answer the question, How are you?

You know what I mean when I say good talk. The stuff that makes up living: belief, love, hope, suffering, compassion, service, purpose, death, loss, religion, government, good, evil, and on it goes.

I would be in a happy world if I could ask every stranger I met if they believed in a god and why or why not. I suppose survival dictates that we can't bare our souls to everyone we meet, and I'm certainly not the soul-baring type. But I would like to know people.

Back in October, I joined Twitter because, for years, I've been following the journal Creative Nonfiction. They have a running contest for tweets - Tiny Truths, as they're called. I would get the newsletters and see the winning tweets and think, Man, how cool. I wish that was me.

So I joined and I've been tweeting every so often and a lot of my tweets have been picked as winners in this contest. But the big prize is that a few are selected for each quarterly journal. And it is May and Creative Nonfiction: Issue #44 is out in the world now, and one of my tweets is in it.

always fears, you know.

Yesterday, in my empty kitchen, staring at I-don't-remember-what on my computer, I felt it with a rush: something I need to write about. I postponed for a few moments, made an omelette, dusted my bedroom, cleaned the toilet. And it was lost. Even now, more than twenty-four hours later, I can't remember what I was so longing to write about. There was a time I would have mourned such a loss, but not so much these days. I lost hold of an idea, but the brain that thought it up is still in my head. That idea or something like it or something better will come along again. It's much like Annie Dillard says, we shouldn't be afraid to use up good ideas as they come. We don't need to save them up, because more will come.

Stories build empathy and empathy build connection. Do you realize this? Do you know the power of a story? It isn't a luxury.

I have been thinking about stories quite a bit lately, thinking about the ways they weave all through our lives. Not just in a book or on a stage or flashing through a TV screen. But we live our lives as stories, we organize our thoughts and feelings as such, and our very way of thinking is driven by it. Why? I am ticking off books-to-read on the subject, and so longer grows my books-to-read list, as it has been doing since forever.

I am a writer tonight. A few good things have come along to remind me. Good words.

I feel sad sometimes that writing is less the form of common communication that it used to be. It's a sort of default for me, and often so much easier than talking straight from my mouth. I have been known to hang up a phone without saying anything I meant to, followed by an email or letter that says all the rest.

expect.

I have come to believe in knowing what you love. What I mean is that each of us knows, deep down, the things that bring us happiness. These are things we read or eat or talk about or do. And we know them.

We are here and alive now, are we not?

I have just finished reading An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler and it is one of the most beautiful books I've read in awhile. It's the kind of beautiful that makes your heart feel a little swollen, a little fuller. The kind that makes you think I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive. It is full of the simplest pleasures and the reality we find deep inside our survival, in the food we grow, prepare, and put inside our bodies. But the pleasure runs beyond survival, and so it is precious.

You know the things that make you happy, I think. You know the things that you love. You know the moments when you're alive. It has taken me some poverty and heartbreak and hard work to realize that I know these things too. This might be very silly advice for me to give, but there it is: take, live, do these things now. Do them now. Find the things, especially the small and simple things, and fill your life up with them.

I'm reading The Gift right now, by Lewis Hyde, and he has a thoughtful section devoted to gift economies and the ways that scarcity and market systems breed constant, ever-growing discontent. There's an old tradition of deep satisfaction and happiness to be found among people who live with very little and who have a generous spirit.

My point is only that life has a way of getting very full of things that don't mean much. Some of it is necessary. Jobs to pay the rent and obligations to be met. But it's worthwhile to combat some of the empty things with the things that make you happy.

It's worth remembering.

It's also worth remembering that you will only be capable of what you expect of yourself, so expect a great deal. I am saying this to myself quite a bit lately. I expect something big will come of it.

quite right.

I know, it's been awhile. Actually, it's been awhile for awhile. I would like to apologize, but I would also like to say that it's been necessary, or at least I think so. Things here were feeling stale to me. I've grown tired of saying the same thing same thing same thing. It's started feeling a bit whiny, at least in my own ears.

So for these two weeks, I have been running my brain over and over the whole lot and searching for something - a new direction, a new sense of purpose, a new "why" as in why I am writing here and why you might be reading here. No matter the gaps and the absences, I came here as a way to hold myself accountable. And for the most part, it has worked. It would be quite a shame to give up now. I believe, somewhere in me, that I have reached the giving-up-moment, that is the moment when everyone wants to quit. And I believe that the difference between success and failure is getting through this moment and to the other side.

I still don't know quite where to take things, but can I ask you to stick it out?

I have been writing this post for days because I don't know what to say. I don't think anything has resolved itself in my head. I think I might be a fool sometimes for hoping to resolve my thoughts and my purpose and myself. In fact, that might be the thing that paralyzes me most.

Have you ever had a big, stretching, yawning weekend with nothing to do but make a pot of soup and write and somehow all you did was make the pot of soup and didn't write, not one single word? I have. But enough of that.

think about things.

Last week, I heard John D'Agata and Jim Fingal read from their book, The Lifespan of a Fact. I have been thinking ever since of what I could say about it or even how I felt. The honest truth is that it's a little difficult for me to separate my intellectual thoughts from my starstruck awe. I know it might be just me, but John D'Agata is a major literary celebrity in my life. As I've mentioned before, his collection The Next American Essay single-handedly turned me on to writing that I didn't only love, but writing I wanted to create. Which I think would be the moment I became a writer.

At any rate, the reading was entertaining and thought-provoking, but not as whipped up as I'd hoped. John D'Agata mock-rolled his eyes every time Fingal read one of his sections pointing out D'Agata's accuracy errors. Or maybe it was for real. There was a major element of performance in the reading, which I think must also be read into the book. It is an exaggeration for the sake of a point.

What has stuck with me, however, is a moment towards the end of the Q&A that followed the reading. I can't for the life of me remember what the question was, but I do remember D'Agata's intensely thoughtful answer as he explained what he believed the essay to be. The largeness of it, in my opinion, defies any simple understanding. Or simple explanation.

I think too hard about things. Life things. Philosophy things. Science things. Religion things. Decision things. I carve out a lot of thinking time for myself so that I can just sit and think about all these things. I take myself a bit too seriously sometimes, but I think we all do. Things that have to do with why and things that have to do with rules aren't always worth thinking about. Sometimes thinking about those things only screws you up. Do I make sense? I hope not. That is, after all, the point of philosophizing: confuse everyone and act smart. Isn't it?

plugging in.

This night, I have cleaned the kitchen, done two loads of laundry, made a large pot of curry split pea soup, killed time looking at apartment listings, and eaten an embarrassing dinner of crackers, spreadable cheese and pickles. But I have managed to fight through anyway and get down to work. Other things seem more important. Suddenly I suspect I should make a loaf of bread. I feel the need to clean out my closet.

You might be tired of hearing about this procrastinating and putting off and distracting myself. Trust me, you're not as sick of it as I am. But I mention it only to give proof that I'm continuing to slog through it and make progress in the way that I do.

There are many reasons I know I should write. One is this: sometimes I read a book, a page, even a sentence, and while I'm thinking of its beauty and appreciating it and reveling in it, I'm also thinking: I wish I had written that. So I keep on taking things in, out in the creative world, and these things mash around my head and I hope for the best. I hope that my own style will come out of it. You keep taking it in and taking it in and taking it in and something will come out. That's physics, I think. Action and reaction.

I read a chapter of a book today. I sat very still and got tingly feelings in my fingers. Shallow breath and eyes that blurred around the rims from intense focus, from lack of blinking. These things happened. I got the restless-leg-syndrome feeling in my arms and clenched my fists over and over to soothe it. This is what my creative impulse feels like. It is the highest high I know. Seeing something brilliant and wanting to make something else while wishing you had made this awesome thing you're looking at now. It is this single moment when I forget fear, inhibition, failure, rejection, propriety, even life itself. The world is suddenly so big, so full of things for me to see and write and tell and I realize I am staring at this screen with my eyes jacked wide open like it's all unfolding before me now. I'll open them wide enough to take it all in.

the rumpus: readers report.

A short piece I wrote was selected in the latest Readers Report at The Rumpus. Scroll down to the fifth selection to read it. Cool!

http://therumpus.net/2012/04/readers-report-back-from-friends-with-benefits/

satisfied mind.

I am feeling very stubborn. I don't want to write and I definitely don't want to write anything particularly beautiful or inspiring. I want my fingers to do their thing, somewhat removed from my brain and beating heart. I want some words to spill out of me and be cut off. I want to cast them out.

For my sake, I've told myself that I can write anything tonight. I can write anything as long as it's something. No order no structure no meaning no censor just write write write. My pride resists being told what to do, it resists criticism and even encouragement. But someone very wise said to me last night, "Write about it, write about it, write about it." I dropped my eyes and mumbled, "Ok. But maybe I don't want to write about it, maybe I just want to talk about it."

But he knew that really, I wanted to write about it. Or needed to. Whatever.

I feel angry sometimes. Angry over injustice in the world, over the suffering that is ignored, over the hurt and pain caused in the name of money or religion. I feel sad sometimes. Sad because people die and life is sometimes dull and we can never accomplish all that we hope. I feel discouraged sometimes. I cry when I shouldn't, I procrastinate when I should work, I read books by writers who are not very good but seem to be making a lot of money. People that I love dearly are unhappy sometimes, they work too hard, they don't have the things that they want, they feel dissatisfied and incomplete. There are other people that I want to love, but I don't try hard enough. The man at the corner rattling the cup for change. The neighbor who never says hello. And others, just the people all around. We should be loving them all. I don't always do it.

doing.

Just about one month ago, I wrote about urge to stop and why you shouldn't. I ended with the reasons why I write, which are all changing and always different.

Two days ago, I had a conversation in a very loud Tex-Mex restaurant. It was a conversation about art, the reasons for art, the meaning to be found in life, the definition of truth. And how the rice was sort of bad.

These are things I think about often, perhaps even too much.

I was spurred on this last weekend because I read a comment somewhere, of course I don't remember where, arguing that the end goal of any piece of writing is to get at truth. In nonfiction, this is clear. And even fiction, or poetry, or any other writing - they are all trying to get at truth in their own ways. This is actually a way of thinking that, in the past, I very much ascribed to. Lately, I'm having some trouble getting myself there.

I have been hung up on this for sometime, but I'll say it yet again: I don't think I know what truth is. There is reality. As someone put it to me recently, there is the location and action of each atom at each moment. But perspective, human memory, awareness, imagination, all of it creates a world that is lots of gray and not much black and white. So what is this thing that we are trying to get at?

I question my motivations for writing. I don't mean that I question their validity, only that I question what they are. With each day, even each slow ticking hour, they change.

creative energy.

For the first time that I can remember, I have insomnia. I can't sleep. I don't just mean tonight, this night that I'm scribbling away at 3am. For the past few weeks, maybe even a month, I find myself hitting the lights and staring up at the black ceiling.

If you know me at all, you understand that this is strange. If you don't know me, let me tell you something about myself: I love to sleep. I wait until the last humanly possible moment to get out of bed in the morning. My roommates are well acquainted with my 10-minute morning dash from bathroomtokitchentofrontdoor. I'm also the person who unabashedly suggests that we go out at 6pm Friday night so that we can have dinner and some drinks and still be in bed by 11pm. I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't do sleep.

I can guess at the causes of this insomnia. One reason might be anxiety, usually in the form of What if I don't have a job? or What if I don't have enough money?

Another reason might be that, at certain points in life, you become very aware of changes as they happen. You can feel the rush of life passing. It isn't sadness or loss, just an acute sensation of yourself living your life. I get that sensation sometimes. Such moments I usually start narrating my own life in my head, which I think a character in one of Wendell Berry's novels also does, though I can't remember which one. She walked down the sidewalk. It had been another long day at work. She stepped on a leaf. You get the idea.

what you need.

Hello blog reader friends. Can I call you that?

When you're writing for a blog, or writing in general, it can be lonely. You're writing for other people to read, but you aren't there when they read it, so it feels very far away. There's a large disconnect in this grasping attempt at connection.

I can't give you something whole tonight. Can I give you the fragments I have?

I was thinking this weekend, I haven't written on the blog in awhile. Then I opened it to discover I haven't written in over two weeks. I am sorry, but my brain had to be devoted to other things. And you'll be happy to know I was writing, just not here.

Don't stop to think now. Don't stop to think about your failures or shortcomings. Don't stop to think. The moment I roll back on my haunches and raise my eyes to the ceiling, the moment I say to myself: What should I write next? then it's too late.

I have been thinking lately about the urge to structure and control time. I suffer at the mercy of this urge often, although I'm getting better at letting myself relax. Still, it takes a conscious effort. On a late Sunday afternoon, I'll start to feel a bit frantic and stressed and then I'll remind myself: You don't have to do anything.

and listening.

almost, but not quite. from lisamarigold on 8tracks.

a man.

This man is so pale, his hair so dark, that he's translucent. I look and see straight through him. I see the red bricks of the church and the unnameable damp color of the sidewalk. I look under his feet and see no footprint, no footstep, no sound.

He walks slowly. Not the slowness demanded by age or injury, a slowness marked by some deliberation. Each foot lifts, quickly, rises to the height of the step, and then hesitates. It is brief, but if you stare like I do, you'll see it. And so he walks just above the sidewalk. His steps dig into the air, catch, and hold there.

Something makes his image crawl through my brain. Something makes it impossible for me to forget.

Both times I saw him, he carried a package. Both times, I forgot to look closely to see what it was. In my mind's picture, he is carrying an indistinguishable brown box. Both times I saw him, he carried it with both hands, held firmly, squarely in front of his body.

I hope I see him again. One more look, I suppose, and all my questions will be answered. I won't tell you the answers though. You might wish to decide for yourself. You might know, already, what pain he has felt and what keeps him up at night, still, so many years later. You might know, already, what he carries and who he's taking it to. You might know, already.

You might wish to look for him yourself. He might be walking just behind you on another damp sidewalk. You might be looking straight through him without even noticing. Now that you know, maybe you'll see.

real.

For dinner tonight, I put my entire face into a mixing bowl and licked out brownie batter. I mean, my entire face was in the bowl. There was also a pot of soup growing cold on the stove. But after putting my face into the brownie batter bowl, I wasn't hungry for the soup. I think the soup was good and I meant to eat it for dinner. But then I ate brownie batter.

Real life is not perfect. It isn't always beautiful either. My brownie batter face was not beautiful. But I'm an independent lady and sometimes that's how we eat dinner.

I have a few things I want to write about tonight and I'm not going to write about any of them. I have typed a sentence here, in this very spot, and erased it. I've done that a dozen times in a row. A different sentence each time. A different thought each time. When this happens, when I get the edit trigger that I can't stop, then I know it's too late. I need to forget about it and just tell the honest stuff.

I want to write my thoughts on the ways we trick ourselves into writing.

I want to write about the goals we set and accomplish.

I want to write about why some things are easy and some things are hard.

I want to write about the man who gets off the bus at Powderhouse Square to open the laundromat at 8am every morning.

at the beach.

Three years ago, I parked my car at Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown and stared out over the water. I was taking my lunch break. I was writing in a notebook. It was February. At that time, things in my life had taken a sharp turn. A plan had been shattered. Trust had been broken hard. Everything felt, in a word, bleak.

I sat at the steering wheel of my parked car. I gripped the wheel, shivered a bit, let the sound of waves fill my head. I remember looking out over the expanse of the bay and thinking, The ocean and the sky are the same color. I don’t know why, but it felt very profound. It was everything I felt. Life was covered with a thick gray blanket.

The ocean always has a way of pushing my thoughts out of my brain, in whatever form they’ll take. Something about the waves, something about repetition, something about the rhythm of introspection. Maybe this is why I couldn’t really be a writer until I came to know the ocean. And sometimes it is bleak. Sometimes it’s stormy. But peace doesn’t come from feeling peaceful, it comes from feeling everything as each thing passes.

This past weekend, I drove out to the Cape for a day. I just had such a craving. I needed to be hit in the face with salt air. I needed to see the familiar things that trigger the home feeling inside of me. Saturday morning, I picked up a croissant at the Boulangerie and drove to White Crest Beach. I parked and sat in my car. The sun was very bright and the wind was blowing hard. I saw a handful of whales surface - just the spouts blending with rolling waves. I wrote there for two hours in my notebook. Sand was pelting the windows of my car and it was rocking a bit in the gusts of wind. I wrote until it hurt my hand to grip the pen. I mean, I was gripping it hard. I drank an espresso out of a Dixie cup.

lessons.

Many years ago, I read Wendell Berry's novel, Hannah Coulter. There was a lot to the story and a lot I don't remember. I do remember the title character reflecting on some lesson that someone in her life had taught her. And from there on, I began to note what lessons there were in my life, who was teaching them to me and whether or not I was hanging on to them.

Write about that.

Someone who loves me has been saying those words to me, and often. I have resisted them. I have resisted. I mean, I'm resisting them right now. I can't tell you why, or maybe I can. There are a lot of things that can make you freeze. Fear and doubt are two things.

And what is there to be afraid of? Someone asks me. And I answer, but the answer said out loud is much less believable. So maybe there is nothing at all. Nothing to be afraid of. No reason to resist. No more excuses. No more.

forget.

Just start. I say it in my head often.

You think it’s no big deal. Just taking a break, just waiting a bit longer, you’ll do it later, and later, and later. And then you’re staring at the paper, staring at the screen and your fingers won’t move. They just won’t. You’re trying to form some thoughts in your head, but the attempt at awareness destroys every thought that was there.

A good practice is to write things and then forget about them. Just write it, write something, and don’t read it again. Save it in a file, in an email draft, in Google docs, in a notebook hidden on a shelf. Don’t read it again for a week, a month, a year. I think I learned this from Natalie Goldberg. It takes some of the pressure off. You might write something horrible, but you know what? You don’t even have to read it. You just write it down and tuck it away for some other time.

The beautiful thing that happens is sometimes you discover some magic in what you’ve written that, at first glance, you didn’t know was there. It might be sort of better than you first thought. You might sound a bit more inspired than you felt. But most beautiful of all is when you read something your hands wrote, but you don’t remember writing it. Suddenly you can look at your writing with some objective criticism, but also objective compassion. The words exist separate from yourself.

thank you, john d'agata.

I was more or less born a reader, if one can say such a thing. What I mean is that, from the moment I learned to read, I did it voraciously. I read quickly and eagerly. I always loved language. I was not likewise born a writer. I mean, I understood grammar. I could write clear sentences and well-organized paragraphs. But the idea of writing creatively never crossed my mind.

My final year of college, I decided to turn my English minor into a major and, subsequently, I crammed a lot of credits into two semesters. I had more or less covered the literature courses I needed, but not the writing. So I took what was my first real creative writing class. I'm going to risk one great big cliche by saying: it changed my life. I read Brenda Miller's A Braided Heart in the anthology Writing Creative Nonfiction. I heard the term "lyric essay" and I instantly fell in love. I can't tell you why exactly, but it made my heart pound. So, in a wave of impulse, instead of using my senior thesis to analyze a literary work, I used it to study the lyric essay and create my own.

I'm having all this nostalgic reflection because, during this past week, John D'Agata has ignited some controversy surrounding his forthcoming book, The Lifespan of a Fact. Those many years ago when I began to explore creative writing, John D'Agata was something of an idol to me. Not because I knew him, or really anything about him. I had his collection, The Next American Essay, which I thought was very cool. And I had the original issue of the Seneca Review that began to advertise and publish what was called the lyric essay.

on coming out.

Check out my latest post at the Friendly Atheist:

It Took a While, but She’s Finally Coming Out

leaps.

This is what it's like to be an independent lady.

I got to work this morning, wearing one of my four hipster-cool professional outfits. I wore a belt over my shirt in another attempt to make it look like I have more than four hipster-cool professional outfits. Got to work, looked in the mirror, belt looked dumb, took it off. And then I realized my shirt had a hole in it. Not a hole in the armpit or the seam or a tiny hole no one will see. It's a big ass hole right on my stomach where a tiny patch of stomach skin is shining through. It's the kind of hole you get when you wear a shirt over and over and over because you're an independent lady who is out in the world making not-much-money.

The beautiful thing about this day is that I don't care.

Some people love to plan life out. They imagine a big picture and the various twists and turns they hope their lives will take. While I'm a planner to my very core, I hate the big plans. Hate isn't even exactly the right word - I am incapable of planning my life in this way. I have no desire.

You want me to plan a vacation? A grocery list? An independent ladies' dinner? Done.
You want me to plan my life? Not gonna happen.

writing down the bones.

Head over to The Lit Pub, a fantastic site promoting literary community and independent publishing, to see my piece on Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones.

I highly recommend reading the posts at this site. They're beautifully collected and written and often open my eyes to books I'd never find on my own. And you can buy books through the site! A great way to support literary artists.

there is still this.

In January, instead of averaging three posts a week, I barely averaged one. I don't have a particularly good excuse for this. I've been around, mostly. I have time. I have been writing, although rather loosely. Actually, I've even written several posts that just never made their way out here. I certainly have plenty of good emotion to work with, which is oftentimes the only spark I need to get moving.

Well, whatever it is, it happened and that's that. I am inclined to hate myself for my failure and to be paralyzed by what I perceive as lack of talent, ability, commitment, and the like. If you do this sort of thing, you know exactly what I mean. If you don't...well, you lucky bastard. You're probably much more at peace with yourself than I am.

It's happened often in the past, especially in my journals and notebooks. One week without writing will stretch into two weeks, then a month, then suddenly I'm looking at writing that is months ago and I don't even know where to begin.

I hate this fear, this feeling of being frozen in some mess of personal standards and emotions I don't understand. So listen, I'll try to be better, as I always do. But this time I'm not going to berate myself for mistakes made and failing to live up to my own expectations. I will just start again.

listen.

The noise in your head is so loud that you can't listen to music, you can't listen to the radio, you can barely listen to the sounds of cars on the street and the wet thud of your boot heel. There is too much in your head and you are tired, so tired, of noticing everything and feeling everything and swallowing it up until you can't find yourself. Where will you find peace? What will you do when you walk in the door and tears form in the corners of your eyes? How will you understand?

Sit down and write. Sit down and read. Sit down and meditate.

Remember this: sometimes there's no great meaning to the world and each passing emotion. They exist. Let them.

Now, listen.

I mean, listen.

LISTEN!

Listen to your own thoughts and feelings and every other sound in this world around you. Just listen! Stop asking, thinking, making, excusing, explaining. Just listen.

When you are done listening and you feel full, then pick up your pen to write again. Have something to eat. And write again.

a writer.

I am often giving advice and encouraging people here (and in life). If I believed in a calling, I might say that was mine. Friends have told me that I am like a compass always pointed in the right direction. I've been told that I have my head on straight. When I was a supervisor, my evaluations often told of my calm and confident personality.

I am going to tell you that I offer up advice, I write here and I encourage everyone else because I need to hear it myself. I write here about my method and my commitment because I need to believe it's possible and I need to believe it's real. I need to believe I can do it. One thing I have learned over time is that you should never ever ever question a creative spirit, even a creative urge. Don't ask for motivation and don't ask for a product. Foster it and nurture it and believe in it. And just wait.

I read this post last week and, while I can appreciate the overall idea, I was still horrified by what I read.

If you consistently find ways to avoid writing then perhaps you need to ask yourself if you really want to be a writer. You can’t really call yourself a writer if you don’t actually write, and if you’re not doing it then maybe your heart just isn’t in it. [...] If you’re doing it for fame, or money, then forcing yourself is never going to work. If you’re doing it because you love writing, then you probably don’t need to read this post.

security in the sky.

Yesterday the inside of my head lit up when someone told me that the only real suffering is discontent. And I said to myself, This is how I live my life. I cling to what has been, I try to fight the change, I grasp for what is not here yet. Listen, I do this because I'm a human being. You do it too. We all do it. But the new awareness I've had is that I live my life with fear of suffering. And perhaps that fear is the real suffering.

It makes sense to me. Do you see what I mean?

Let me tell you about security. Here is the honest truth. Over the course of several years, I lost what was once a very devout Christian faith. It was the very core and center of my life. And the years passed and it slipped away from me and suddenly I saw it with new eyes and I let it go. Then, one morning, a sunny summer morning on some wooden steps with a plate of eggs in my lap, I was saying the words: I don't think I believe in God. I can tell you that it was relief and freedom because it was. I can also tell you that it was a new fear and loneliness that I had never known.

everything you know.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the courtyard writing and thinking about the ways a city makes us ignore people. And how the activists and campaigners outside my building play on the guilt that ignoring induces. There is a real living person there talking to you and you're just going to ignore them? I do. Across the street, in the alcove in front of the drugstore, there is usually someone begging. Head down, cardboard sign. They've written out the story of being sick and homeless, trying to make it West, trying to eat. I walk by someone there almost every day. I read their sign out of the corner of my eye and feel so wrong for ignoring them. Ignoring a human being. Everything I believe about myself, humanity, love - it is all caught up in that one moment. I never even hesitate. I keep walking.

For several weeks there was a man outside the drugstore collecting signatures for a petition to legalize marijuana. I passed him every evening as I left work and every evening he asked me to stop. Sometimes I'd mumble something, I'm running late, I'm in a hurry, I can't stop today. Other times I'd just walk on by.

This is all a good source of constant guilt for me. And I need some guilt if I'm ever to think hard about life and what we will make of it.

***

Yesterday, I sat down and told myself to write down everything I knew about guilt. That is how I started. It's good to think about things that make us cringe sometimes. Emotions are emotions and they are running our lives and our world. Are they? Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones. If there is such a thing.

the well isn't dry.

I read your pages and I lingered. Fingers tracing words from top to bottom.
You laughed. I smiled. It hurt a little bit.

Sometimes the tedium of looking at my life, over and over again, looking at the details the sounds the light the people....... Sometimes it gets annoying. The sound of my own voice is grating and somewhere inside my head, my brain is saying Shut up shut up shut up.

I have very little to say because I can't nail my thoughts down anywhere. I can write until I get that weird little cramp in my palm, somewhere under my knuckles, but nothing is really coming out. The old fight will never end, will never be won in any sense. Some days inspiration will come rushing out of you and spill out everywhere before you can hold it in. Some days the well runs dry.

This well isn't dry. It's confused about whether or not it's a well. It has the echo.

It helps to believe in something or someone. It's good to hope for something that is bigger than yourself. I practice awe like religion, each day staring at the sun as it rises and sets, filling my lungs up with the sky, cracking my chest open with the wind and a song. Feel it and appreciate it.

reading & writing.

I read a lot of things. I read science blogs and get awe-struck over the weird minutiae of this world. I read blogs on writing and culture, book reviews, interviews with authors, glimpses into the literary world. I read about food and try to understand it's role in human life and it's role in my own life, how we get it, what we do with it. I read about religion and the place it has in our society. I read short stories, I read poems, I read novels, I read essays.

I do all of this in the name of personal and intellectual growth (and because I like it). I want to feed my own creativity and to participate in the great human conversation.

But sometimes I spend an hour or an afternoon reading and I tell myself that it's part of my writing time. It is certainly part of my writing life (an essential part) but the real, honest fact is that sometimes it's an excuse. It's just another thing, another way that I can put off writing. It makes me think of Natalie Goldberg in Wild Mind. At one point in her life, she found herself sitting down to write and instead gazing out the window, feeling very peaceful and zen. She thought that she was maybe reaching enlightenment. She asked her spiritual mentor about it and he told her, "No, that's just laziness. Get back to work."