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.

Do you feel like you know me here, you readers, whomever you are? Am I being revealed, piece by piece, in these words, words somewhat sporadically unraveled? Am I?

I suppose that isn't the real question. The question is more like: do you want to know me?

No, that isn't the question still. The question is actually this: do I know myself?

I'll answer. No, I don't know myself. Here is a secret: I write to discover it. I write, in this moment, to know who I am. That is very deep-sounding, philosophical and introspective. It also sounds a little bull-shitty, but I swear it isn't. Writing is the only way I know how to answer questions and to peel back the self layers until I get down to the dark dirt and the hard pit in the middle.

I have made some progress in these years and have gotten somewhere, I think. I have written through it, in waves, again and again, and have come closer and closer to the mark, closer to the fuel that makes this engine burn.

I distract myself often, but I want to say that sometimes it's right. I don't always know when, but sometimes I do.

I spent the entire day feeling very inspired, grabbing my notebook every few minutes to scratch something down. I kept thinking, When I get home I'm going to write about all of this. And then I came home and it started to rain. The apartment was empty and cold. I started in on the crackers and spreadable cheese and pickles and felt suddenly uninspired. I gave myself the age-old slight, I just don't feel like it.

So I folded some laundry and let the shirts and socks warm up my hands. I stood over a pot of soup, stirred and stirred and breathed in the coconut milk and green curry and earthy peas. And with all of that, I plugged back in. I came back to myself. And I sat down to write.