spontaneous.

Last month went by in a blink. I’ve been barely reading and writing, save a two-hour late bus to Durham that got me halfway through this book. I’ve been overwhelmed and busy, and I’m not the sort of person who wears that life well. I stay up too late, I have anxious dreams, I start drinking Diet Coke even though I gave up on that toxic stuff years ago. Balance and peace in my life are sacred, and when I can’t protect them, I don’t always cope very well. But here we are.

Last month I powered through some very long work weeks, a major work event, two weekend trips, my re-entrance into bike commuting, and last but not least, a spontaneous move. Jacob and I found an apartment that is a) on a park, b) cheaper than our current place, and c) not a basement. For the last two years, we’ve been living DC-style in an English basement apartment. It’s cozy and it’s been a good home to us, but there are no windows and…...there are no windows. We couldn’t pass on the chance for cheaper rent + windows, even if it meant moving at literally the busiest work time for both of us.

Our basement apartment came furnished, which means we’ve been on the market for most things. It’s turned into a joint late night craigslist addiction, which is tiresome, but also thrilling when you manage to nab an awesome wood dresser for $30 (among other things).

After moving the last of the boxes and running one million errands last weekend, it’s done. Everything’s been unpacked or temporarily hidden from sight, so now I can chip away little by little at a) finding places for everything b) buying a few more pieces of furniture and c) getting some stuff up on these soaring white walls. I’m scratching odds and ends off my list and making lists on top of lists, because that’s how I do.

two.

I wasn’t planning to write here today (although I was planning to write in the way that I always do, the planning and failing way). But so far this year, I’ve only pulled off one blog post a month. I want more. Today is the last day of April and by god I’ll put up more than one post this month.

I’ve been listening to hard rain all day. Leaves have collected at our front door, which is at the bottom of some steps, so the drain is blocked and the rain is flooding the steps. There’s a bird out back that I can’t see, but he’s been chirping away. I don’t know many birdsongs, but Jacob said this morning that it was a chickadee because it’s saying “dee-dee-dee.”

I was listening to some spring pop, then some Beethoven, and now good old Langhorne.

Most blogs that I read these days are full of beautiful pictures. It’s such a thing. It’s a thing that makes me think this will never be a blog blog (athough I’m not sure I care) because a) I don’t take beautiful pictures, although I try sometimes and b) most of the time I forget to take pictures anyway.

Jacob and I had a blitz day in Philly last weekend. I finished a work meeting at noon, and we hopped in the car with sandwiches and made the two and a half hour drive north. There was traffic and it was sunny and beautiful outside. By the time we got to Philly, the sky grayed and it rained. We parked in the scariest parking garage I’ve ever seen, but not because there was a shortage of parking garages. We joked the entire afternoon about how we managed to find the scariest parking garage in the city. There were two elevators, one was broken. A sign was taped to the wall that said 4 person max. It was because the elevator was the size of a roomy coffin. But these are the things you remember.

stories of people.

Meet me where I am. I spent the evening wandering, walking further than my tired feet wanted to go. I came home and put on a long, flowy skirt, because the wind was blowing and it was warm and blooming and spring. And I walked some more.

I had chip-dinner, which is a real and valid thing. It involves walking to the corner store and buying a bag of chips, fully knowing that I will eat most or all of it for dinner tonight. I walked in the door and felt guilty that my splurge-y, single lady dinner wasn’t vegetables! or fruit! or whole grains! I eat all those things all the time and sometimes, sometimes I need chip-dinner.

All of the stories in my head tonight are stories of guilt. I’m not sure why. They are stories of people I saw on the street today, but they are cut through with my own emotion. Those people have stories that exist in the world, but I only know them through the lens of me.

The man this morning, clearly mentally ill, who kept wandering off the sidewalk and into traffic. The man with the small grocery cart, sitting on a bench, a weathered white beard down to his belt, smoking a stub of a cigarette. The other man who dropped his cigarette and picked it up, put it right back in his mouth. The man in the wheelchair, still and stark, head hanging low. The woman on the bicycle and the car that honked at her even though she had the right of way. That other woman who left the doctor’s office after me, and I held the door for her. She put her sunglasses on as she walked through. I see these people in the context of suffering, brokenness, loss. Why?

eavesdropping.

There are so many other things to be doing right now. There always are.

I give advice freely, party because people ask, but partly because I have a grand delusion that I know the right way to do things (all things). I give advice, but I don’t often follow it. Last night, in some conversation with Jacob about something that I don’t remember, as we were walking down K Street after hours, when it was quiet, when he was pushing his bicycle and I was carrying a bag of cat food, I told him, There’s no such thing as: I don’t have enough time. There’s only: I choose to spend my time on something else. I was trying to say something important about priorities, I think, but I am struck now with how rarely I own the hours I have.

Sometimes I think I’m not really a writer, because sometimes I go a long time without doing it. But then, on days like today, when I know I’ve waited too long, when it is literally blasting, beating and bloody out of my chest, then I know.

I've been saving up snips of things, things I’ve read and seen and overheard and felt. They are a wave, an army, a storm on the horizon. They are nothing more than my observation, but keen observation is worth something.

I read this piece on eavesdropping last week, and I’ve been thinking of it since. Not only do I eavesdrop every chance I get, but I write down the things I hear. I can’t help it. These strings of conversation feel so precious to me. I want to preserve the wild, grotesque, common, hilarious, and human things that people say. I want to acknowledge them. I don’t want them to go unheard.

fears.

I’m reading Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit right now. It’s beating me over the head with the thing I know, THE THING I KNOW, the thing I have always known: creativity is fueled by practice, by doing, by making your art a habit. For me, by making writing a habit.

I know it.
I KNOW IT!

Early in the book, Tharp poses the question: what are your fears?

Everyone has them, and everyone who is creating and making has them. Fear makes you feel alone, but it is one of the few things that is common among us.

I tried to make a list. It looked like this:

List of fears in writing

1. I don’t know where to start.
2. I’m not any good.
3. Things I want to write will hurt or offend my family and friends.
4. People won’t like me.
5. I don’t have the energy (alternatively: I don’t feel like it. But is this a fear?)