there is time.

For the past two weeks I've been working on something.  Yesterday I crossed the start line. I'm not sure what a finish line even looks like, but I know the feeling of starting. Moving past an idea and randomness in the brain to something real, words sentences paragraphs pages.

I don't even care what happens to it. I don't care if I file it away forever. It's been a very long time since I've worked on something that I can actually call a piece. More than rambling, journaling, freewriting, etc. I needed to remember how to do it.

I've been writing on dark things. Back to the light. People, laughing, cold air, cribbage, hot drinks, oysters. Just life really. Just living hard is all.

I've been reading through some of the collected letters of Anton Chekhov thanks to a recommendation from this blog. I'm feeling startled by how much his words are resonating with me right now. I am reminded again -- yes, sometimes writing hurts. But even now, even still, there is time.

I am writing and wondering how many times tonight my whole body will be racked with pain for my presumption in daring to be a writer. - Anton Chekhov, letter to Alexander Chekhov, 8 November 1882

Some days I stare at the page or the screen and type word after word about nothing. I write about the color of the sky and the way the concrete feels beneath my bare feet and feeling sleepy and hot. Some days I sit down with the weight of the world right behind me. Yesterday:

I am going to write today about religion and feeling alone and feeling lonely and speaking up and remembering and making peace with your thoughts and being healed. And sin and guilt and fear.

I still don't understand the process, I don't know how or when or why or if I can create something. I just keep on.

All my hopes are on the future. I am still only twenty-six. It may be that one day I shall manage to achieve something, although time is rushing by quickly. - Anton Chekhov, letter to Dmitry Grigorovich, 28 March 1886

re: the gap.

I heard this yesterday and it was so much what I needed to hear.  It's important to be reminded that we are capable.  Remind yourself.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one story. It's only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through.

- Ira Glass

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.

don't lie.

The year I was twelve, I walked to school. When I was nine, I was scared of everything; when I was twelve, I was scared of nothing. Round the corner, take off the boots. I always preferred soggy jeans and frozen toes to being seen with boots on. Maybe I still do. My clothes were never cool. I didn't know it until then.

I walked to school that year. Even in the cold, I walked to school. Heather came after me one day. She was bigger, taller, eighth grade, big-mouthed, bossy. I looked over my shoulder and saw her barreling down the road on her bike. It was overcast and it was fall. When the sky feels sharp and gray and heavy and your eyes tear up in the electric air.

Very early in my life, I started to pray in the middle of the night when I woke in fear. The blankets were hot, but I couldn't peel them off of my face for fear of what would be revealed. The pounding in my chest echoed into my ears. I couldn't tell if it was the sound of strangers in the dark (kidnappers, murderers, ghosts) or the sounds of my own body. In those moments, I would close my eyes and recite a prayer, over and over. Sometimes the Lord's Prayer, sometimes something I made up. Those prayers were usually short and simple, something like: Please keep me safe please keep me safe please keep me safe thank you.

I was walking home and I can't tell you how I felt. It's someone else's life. All I remember is the cool air and loneliness and putting one foot in front of the other. Who knows the thoughts that occupy the mind of a 12-year-old on her ten minute walk home? Heather came after me on her bike. She was standing on the pedals, coasting, weaving back and forth across the abandoned street. She swung in front of me and cut a wide circle around me. I remember her eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and thick, greasy bangs. Squinting, dark. Are you too cool for us now? She was yelling. I can't remember what I said. I can't remember if I said anything at all.

Especially when I was very young, I thought I could feel the embrace of protection in the dark, a wave of comfort washing over me. I always knew it was the presence of the divine answering my prayers.

The instinct is strong. In fear, distress, anger at the circumstances of this life and this world, I have an instinct to plead with some greater thing to keep me safe. I catch myself doing it sometimes still. Almost always, it is in fear. Please heal her. Maybe I still have the power to shake the cosmos with my own desperate thoughts.

So tell the truth. Don't lie. Or don't tell the truth. But don't lie.

snacking.

I have been deep in my own head a lot these days. It feels full and alive, but also disconnected from my body, from my hands, from my feet walking back and forth. In awareness, I'm trying to make an effort to keep myself connected to the physical things of life. Here's a list of ways to keep myself grounded and awake to the world:

-go for a run/walk to work without my iPod
-cook/bake for 30 minutes or more
-eat a meal and focus on the food
-write letters
-sit on the deck
-practice physical creation (painting, drawing, sewing, knitting)
-laugh out loud at funny things

Those things that connect us to the present moment and to the world around us, the world in our hands - those things make the writing and our minds better. They give depth to the world that exists inside the walls of my brain.

I went through some sort of Buddhist phase about a year ago. I spent a lot of time thinking about presence, mindfulness, connection to the moment. I have been reminded lately how difficult it is to stay grounded in the present moment. So much is defined by looking forward to the next thing, but you get there and......what? It is so difficult to just appreciate the richness of the time and space I am in now. The gifts that are here. There will always be absence of some sort or another. There will always be something to look forward to, more to hope for. It is hard to stay here. But it's good to practice.

It's also good to snack, especially when you write.