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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

***

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.

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.