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.

flash fiction and another list.

I've been reading the literary journal Brevity since college.  I've always been attracted to saying things sparsely, fewer words, less telling and more feeling. Spurred on by my love for brief nonfiction, I've lately been reading flash fiction. It's cool. Obviously some things need to be said in a longer form, but there are some things that are really said best in the so-called flash.

I wrote this in my head last night, dreamed about it, wrote it in the notebook this morning, and typed it here now. It is fiction, which I've already explained is something I don't do. Go easy on me - I'm trying to be brave.

Every morning at 10:00am, Susan climbed the 13 rungs of an aluminum extension ladder to the roof of her house. Her husband sat in his office; her three children were numb at their desks in school. She cautiously lifted one foot over the gutter before scrambling onto the rough shingles and plastering her body face down against the roof. After a few seconds, she flattened herself and rolled over towards the sky.

Some things are true and some things aren’t. When you’re lying on a roof it’s hard to see the difference. It’s hard to see anything but the big sky full of weather and sun and clouds and rain and birds and stars. Every morning at 10:00am, Susan took it all in and then pushed it back out. You can’t live an everyday life when you’re filled up with light and space inside.

Every morning sometime after 10:00am, Susan began to shimmy her weight towards the edge of the roof, bending her knees until she was more or less crouched on the gutter at a 45 degree angle. Always in one single motion, with breath held in, she let her feet drop over the edge and dangle before swinging them around to catch the ladder’s rung. It wasn’t that high – a fall would only mean tumbling in the bushes with a sprained ankle or wrist, maybe a broken leg if the angle was wrong. But with her eyes closed and her back pressed tight against the gritty roof, the distance was infinite.

And she knew it would happen one day, when she was dizzy from climbing and the sun was shining bright. The world would turn itself on its head and she would fall into the sky.

***

I'm down to the last two pages of my notebook. To celebrate, here are 15 sentences from the notebook, selected at random, representing (in no linear order) words I've written over the last 10 months of my life.

1. The buzzing of the baggage carousel is matching time to the eerie Christmas music playing over the loudspeaker.
2. I listened to that song for hours in my lonely attic bedroom in the house in South Mankato.
3. She would always be worse, every time I came home.
4. I flew to Boston and bought a pack of cigarettes.
5. There was a crazy lady at the end of the bar who was talking to herself.
6. I have decided to move on from this place, whatever that might mean.
7. I want to call you back, again and again and again, until I feel safe - an old feeling from another time.
8. So let's bring it back to here.
9. I could write about the blue of the tables and the afternoon I varnished them, but I really want to write about sitting at the blue tables and listening to the song, crying so hard the tears ran off my chin and fell onto the floor.
10. I could show you the fields stretching far and how life can be so sad and slow sometimes.
11. I had a dream you moved to Alaska and wore a comb over and I was never surprised.
12. His long hair hasn't been brushed and I think that's good and his face is ugly.
13. Maybe she works nights somewhere and she spends her mornings buying coffees at Starbucks.
14. He wrote back that things were pretty bad and it was my fault.
15. I am looking up every few minutes to be blinded by the drifted snow and sunlight outside the big front window and as soon as the spots in my eyes fade I look up again.

hurricane dreams.

I have been writing. I have not been posting. Sometimes it just gets too wild to share, or too wild for me to share. Or something.

I dreamt last night of a hurricane, but I was in the house I lived in when I was 13 years old in Elmore, Minn. I was herding people into the basement, we were packing up food, I stole a sandwich and wrapped it in foil and tucked it into my shirt. And suddenly I realized: we're overreacting. It won't be that bad. Then I lost my sandwich and went out into the rain.

Dreaming of a hurricane: This dream is considered to be a warning, because it alludes to an impending crisis when all old opinions, ideals, values and beliefs are being shaken. The dream suggests that you need to start shaping something new within yourself to cope with this personal crisis.  (http://www.dream-land.info/)

I wrote for 5 hours on Friday, mostly straight through, with breaks for tea. At the end of it, 10 pages of Microsoft Word single-spaced madness, I felt like something other than human. Here is one piece:

I am very deep now. It is a dream and I am being chased, I am in danger, and I can’t cry out. I open my mouth and strain with every muscle in my chest and neck, but still no sound. I am pursued and still no sound. I keep pushing until *pop* I am awake and tangled in sweaty sheets and screaming in an empty black room, screaming alone, screaming for someone to save me.

Any writing, anything real, even anything shallow, means you must confront the blackest parts of humanity. This is art: even the most beautiful work has the deepest evil of the world in it. They exist together, as one. All it is the lighting. See: look behind the bushes in the sparkling sunlight and there a spider is consuming its prey alive, slowly, deliberately. Listen: ten bars after the song ends, there is war and death. You know they’re coming. Don’t look away. I know you want to and so do I – but there is nowhere else to look.

The feeling is this: much writing and suddenly I am in a very dark state. I am thinking too much, too hard about evil in the world and evil in myself. I am swimming in circles, swimming in the thoughts and as I type I feel my face scrunch up in fear and disgust, my nose wrinkles, my eyes shut. And so I pause for a moment, take a breath, make some tea. When I sit back down and raise my fingers to the keys, the feeling is pure revulsion. I don’t want to go back in it, I don’t want to go deeper and I don’t want to find more. It is too heavy and hot and dark inside – I want to stay out in the clean air. I wonder sometimes if this is me or if this is the writing.

At the end of 10 pages and 5 hours, I wrote the following:

I don’t want to write anymore. Only 30 more minutes. I hate it. I hate writing. I hate these words and my fingers that are typing them. I hate this brain that thinks writing is good and I hate the dull fluorescent lights and the computer humming and the hot sunlight blasting in through my window.  30 minutes. I can do it I can do it I can do it blankblankblankblankblankblankblankblankblankblankb

But there is still this: "Every day, I give myself the same encouragement, and every day, I need it again."

***

I read back through some of last week's writing today.  Yes, some of it is dark.  Ok, a lot of it.  Yes, I need to get it out of my brain and onto the page.  But I also need to come back out of it and remember the beautiful moments that make up my days.

For example, today:

-I walked briskly to work this morning and was not too hot, not too cold.  Amazing fall, I love you.

-At work I made an individual cup of coffee with my brand-new, bright-red, individual-coffee-cup-maker.  Awesome and happy.

-I sat at my desk in the afternoon and thought in my brain, Man-oh-man I wish I had a snack.  Not 30 seconds later, my co-worker walked in with a bag of cheesy-popcorn she didn't want.  Do you want the popcorn?  Yes.

-Still hungry this afternoon, I thought about pie and realized that my life's purpose might honestly be: Make pie.  Or: Eat butter.  It's a tough one.  I resolved to make more pies and eat more butter.

-I finally have money (so to speak) to go grocery shopping.  So I made a grocery list tonight that included more than: peanut butter, can of beans.  It included: expensive olives, expensive cheese.  Cool.

-After a leisurely walk home, I enjoyed a hot boozy apple cider and a roasted tomato, caramelized onion, balsamic quinoa salad for dinner alone in my quiet apartment.

-Then I watched the moonrise in Medford through some haze and low clouds. Over the scary wires and oversized spotlit American flag and above the din of cats fighting. But it was beautiful.

The point is just that life is good.  There is always good love, good people, good food -- and for that I am grateful.

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.