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.

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.

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.

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.

memories of a gorilla suit.

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

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

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

mapmakers.

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

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

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

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

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.

some exercises.

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

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

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

prison dreams.

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

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

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

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

So I looked up prison dreams.

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

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

Take it or leave it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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