sharing.

Last weekend, I started moving things into our new apartment. We won't be in it full-time for a few more weeks, so I can take my time shuttling over loads and slowly unpacking boxes. This has a been a strange summer of living half-packed up and ready to go. Some of my things have been packed up since May.

As I was unpacking a box of books yesterday, I found a folder filled with recipes that my grandmother had saved for me. She gave me the folder last Christmas, some recipes cut out of magazines, some hand-written on note cards.

It seems I come from a long line of sharers. We are always clipping articles or writing down quotations or forwarding blog posts to the people we care about. For whatever reason, it feels like the greatest expression of love to me. It is one thing to casually think of the people you care about, but another to think about what might interest or intrigue them. Sharing those clippings or recipes or what-have-you's is my way of saying that I'm always thinking of you. No matter what I'm watching or reading, I'm thinking of you and wondering if you'd like it too.

My grandma did this for me. My father is always scanning in newspaper clippings and emailing them to me. And I do it for others. Poor, poor Jacob undoubtedly has thousands of archived (or deleted) emails from me linking to news articles and blog posts. My dearest friends get emails from me with recipes that I wish we could make together. And I have a thick file of hand-clipped recipes from my grandma.

My grandma passed away unexpectedly this summer, after I had already packed the recipes up in a box of books. I had forgotten about them until they were uncovered last weekend.

restless.

I wrote something to post here last week. It was long and rambly and personal and I just couldn't manage to post it. It sat in a draft all week and I tweaked a word every now and then. I thought that maybe it wasn't good. (But who am I kidding? I always think it isn't good.) I thought that it was too personal or revealed something a little too honest about me. And then today, I realized it isn't any of that. It's just that I've lost the nerve I had built up. You have to be nervy to write something down, wiggle yourself out of it, pop it off your head like a too-tight sweater, and then put into the world before other eyes and minds. You really have to be brave. Creating art is both the most liberating and terrifying thing I know.

Well it feels mighty stale to me now because it's been sitting in my computer/brain for many days. But sometimes the point of my being here, at this rinky-dink blog, is not to write beautifully or perfectly or even well. Sometimes it is just to steel my nerves and toughen up my weak heart.

My thoughts lately have been on the artist's life. I have been feeling old lately (and getting older still). But the drumbeat in my ears grows louder and it is this: if you're going to do it, then do it.

There is nothing I want more. There is nothing that scares me more. There is nothing else for it but to do it. How many times must I say it before it sticks in my own ears? I'm not sure. But I'll keep saying it until it does.

one night.

We are always walking when we don’t know what to do. I am always walking when I have nowhere to go. To sit still somewhere is too painful in loneliness or boredom, and so the walking. And so we were walking.

I like to take things in. I look and look and look and think. He likes to poke his head inside places. I would never go in alone. I would just look and think.

Last night, we decided we both needed to go to the Gap. New shirt, new pants. We rode the train up to that part of town where nothing is open on the weekend, and when we got off we realized - nothing is open here on the weekend. The Gap was closed. And that is when we started walking. We walked by a Thai restaurant. He asked, Remember the time we ate there? And I answered, We’ve never eaten there. One of us was confused, but no one gave in and no one was wrong. We walked by an art gallery with a small sign and a big wood and glass door. He tried the doorknob and it was locked. He held a finger over a doorbell and looked to me. A woman appeared and swung the door open. She told us the gallery had just closed, but she was there and we might as well look. So we did.

The gallery was showing the work of Lukman Ahmad. Some of it was gray and yellow and dramatic. Some of it was bright blocks of color and horses. I liked the colors, Jake liked the drama. The woman asked us what art we were drawn to and I didn’t answer. I smiled because I don’t know how to talk about art. Jake told her that he worked in theater and I was a writer. She asked if we were new in town. He told her I had just moved from Boston. She told me she had moved from Boston thirty years ago and she was still here. We laughed and we left.

don't apologize.

I'm living in a place right now that, by a few blocks, is removed from city noises. I knew, but didn't realize, in fact until this very moment, how much I missed the quiet. The sun fell slowly tonight and I didn't realize it was getting dark until I caught myself squinting at the screen. The lamp nearby is on a timer - it should switch on soon. In the meantime, I am sitting in the dark, squinting and waiting. I'm listening to a cricket here and a cricket there, soft rise and fall chorus chirping in the dusk.

The moment feels very holy to me, by which I mean sacred, by which I mean full of life and the awareness of its movement and passing. It also feels holy because it reminds me of many other similar moments, and these are the moments that make up my life, and as Sugar says, my becoming.

I have said before, I think, that I find it much easier to write abstractly about life rather than my life. The details and specifics and all that nonsense are too jarringly real sometimes to put into words. It is a handy way to protect myself and a handy way to be a bit lazy about the way I write. I've said it before but may as well remind myself: less mushy abstract, more tangible and real.

People of the Midwest have a nasty habit of apologizing often, all the time, for everything. I know because I come from the Midwest and I saw it all the time growing up. I do it myself and so does Jacob and we both come from the Midwest.

shining moment of life.

I remember, nearly one year ago, telling myself to just begin. Just begin. Hard words to heed. Just begin. It’s time to begin again? It’s time to begin again.

Stopping me are these things:
Fear, Embarrassment, Disappointment, Distraction, Powerlessness.

Those are things but they are only things.

Bear with me on this one. It might be messy. When you tear out your second beating heart, as Sugar so wisely advises, and slap it all over the page, it’s going to be messy. And the first cranks of the rusty gears are awkward. The first steps when your foot has gone to sleep. Saying I love you when your mouth hasn’t formed those words in a long time. You just do it however you can. It gets better.

I am thinking a lot of things these days. Quite a lot. I feel the rush of wind coming up from the canyon. You feel it on the edge. You feel it when you’re about to jump. Not the jump to fall, but the jump to see.

Ask me anything. I’m thinking too much lately. I might have the answers. I might not. I probably don’t. But I can fake it.

Who might I be letting down? Do you wonder that sometimes? Probably, most likely, usually, always, there is someone. But best to soldier on anyway.