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.

processing & stereotypes.

I haven't been writing a lot lately. I have no excuses. When life is slow, no problem: I write. When life is fast, everything else feels more important. But all day, I have been telling myself, The things you spend your time on are the things you care about. So if I care about writing, I spend the time. It's important to me. So make the choice.

It's the old love-hate relationship with writing which means, usually, even when I want to write I don't really want to write. There's always some coercion that involves talking in my head and saying things like, Please just shut up and do it. And like anything, the longer I let it slip the harder it is to get back.

So I am catching up today. I will do freewriting tonight. I will devote at least half an hour to working on the essay I've drafted. But I will say this: even when my fingers get hung up, I keep on with the inspiration and the thoughts and my mind is still writing, even when my body isn't. I tell myself, over and over, that this is how I know I need to write. I can't turn any of it off: imagining stories about the people I see, absorbing every weird detail, sitting for stretches and thinking about big things, little things, anything. Getting wild and giddy and frantic over a beautiful word or a beautiful sentence. Reading a story out loud and getting tears in the corners of my eyes, not because I'm emotional, just because I'm overwhelmed with the language.

well, wellfleet.

Something about Wellfleet and love.  Check it out.

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.

big things.

I long to create something big.  I don't mean momentous or earth-shattering - I mean physically big.  For some reason, I love things that make me feel small.  I want to stand in the shadows of giant trees and mountains, wade knee-deep into an ocean that stretches for eternity beyond me, scream into a canyon while I'm toeing the line before the fall.

I want to make sculptures like these:

Patrick Dougherty

Or these:

Theo Jansen

I made a to do list in my notebook today:
-freewriting, one hour
-expand the essay, one hour
-think about a novel, one hour

Instead, I thought about a novel (or fiction in general) for three hours. I have always resisted it. I have always told myself that I can't do fiction and, honestly, I haven't really tried. I focused on nonfiction in college, so there was never a need. I vaguely remember writing a flash experimental play during a final exam for a creative writing class, but I don't think it was good. I'd remember if it was.

I've just been mulling it over lately -- the idea of fiction as a way to tell some hard truths without having to say, This is the truth of my life. Some of what I've been reading lately has spurred me on. And November is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo).  I signed up with the website awhile ago, but I didn't try it last year. I still don't know if I'll try it this year, but I'm thinking about it. Thinking it might be a way to dive hard into fiction and try it out. No pressure to be good, only to produce something. I do well with a goal to work towards.

I have one particular idea that I've been thinking and thinking over, researching, reading. Slowly, very slowly, it's turning into a character (maybe). I struggle with character development and I don't know why. But it would be good for me to practice. I have the time. I am particularly lucky there. I don't know when I will ever be able to say that again. So maybe. I might start an outline (just in case). I might do some freewriting on this character. Who knows where it will lead? Maybe it's just more essay material. But maybe writing some fiction will eventually give me the material for a better essay.

We'll see.

the notebook (not the movie).

This week I'm finishing a notebook. I've never finished one before.

It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is.  Every notebook I've written in has either been abandoned or thrown away.  I've never written from the first page to the last.  But I'm finishing a notebook this week, it's happening, and I'm not throwing it away.  The urge to keep things hidden is still strong. I have often been unable to stand the vulnerability of sharing what I write. It's a habit and a way of thinking that I'm trying very hard to shake.

I've been writing in this particular notebook since last December.  I bought it in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport when I was stranded after Christmas.  It's not a big notebook, so really, it should have been finished months ago.  But I have a hard time keeping my writing all in one place.  I have three different notebooks right now, all in different stages of being written in.  I also write on scraps of paper and hide the scraps in books I'm reading, in my purse, in my pockets.  I write into Gmail drafts.  I write into Word documents.  I write here.

It used to drive me crazy that I couldn't just write in one place, back when I thought the only purpose of writing was producing.  But it's just as much the process as the product, and I've come to terms with the fact that I write randomly.  It's ok -- it's my process.  And there's some magic in discovering a random note on scrap of paper, hidden in a coat pocket months ago, that you can't even remember writing down.

I haven't been terribly productive the last few days.  I tell myself that I'm letting some things rest and letting myself think.  I guess I am, but let's get real: I am just that good at distracting myself from the work I know I want to do.  As a compromise, I made a deal with myself.  Finish the notebook.  There are 7 pages left.  So finish it.

Pick up the pen.

***

This is what today feels like. 

Check out these paintings by Philipp Haager.