screen time.

I’ve always struggled with writing under circumstances that feel less than ideal (to me). I have a hard time writing in coffee shops and restaurants, on the bus or the train, when I have a few minutes in between meetings or projects. And of course, when I feel zapped of energy (creative or otherwise), it seems impossible. But the fact that these words are on the page right now means that, It’s impossible, is a lie.

I finally listened my way through the Invisibilia podcasts last week/end, and I really loved them. But I particularly can’t stop thinking about the episode about computers and whether they are changing our human-ness. I can’t even remember the context of the line, but at some point, one of the producers acknowledges that in the times we live in, the reality is that most of us spend the majority of our days in front of computers or other screens. And suddenly I realized (with a little horror) that I spend the majority of MY day starting at a computer. My job requires it. And when I’m done with that, I write or do other work on the computer. I’m doing it right now. I don’t know that I feel unequivocally terrible about this, but I feel sort of shocked that it’s only just now dawning on me that most of my waking hours are spent staring into the void of a screen.

Most of my books got packed into a cube and shipped across the country last month, but I brought a small stack with me to Wellfleet, intending to read each one. They were carefully chosen. In the two weeks since we arrived here, I’ve read at best 10 pages, which isn’t really the pace I was aiming for. If I substituted even one hour of screen time each day with one of those books, I would be blowing through that stack. Meanwhile, I have the nerve to think I’m somehow different than the rest of the masses, looking at their computers and tablets and phones.

But oh well. It's Monday, it's rainy, and I'm tired from staring at my screen all day. Every day is the same matter: making the best of the circumstances we're in. And awareness counts for something.

your local library.

A few days ago I dropped J off at work in the evening and then drove up the road to the local library, the first time I've been there since we got back. When I lived here years ago, I would be at the library multiple times a week. I lived in a crowded house full of people, and the library was a quiet, peaceful escape. This particular library has amazing books, and always an incredible selection of new books. There’s a wall of great movies. Back then, before I had an iPhone or iPod or any device, I would still check out a pile of CDs every week to listen to in the car while I drove around the Cape. And there’s a small performance space at the library - an airy room with a grand piano and art hanging on the walls. I would practice and play the piano back then, and the librarians kindly allowed me to come in and play that beautiful piano when the room wasn’t being used for something else.

But my clearest and most profound memory at this library is one particular aisle in the stacks, towards the back of the library, against a wall. There are three shelves of poetry (where I first read Mary Oliver - a local here, so well represented). There’s a shelf of essays and a shelf of literary criticism. There’s a shelf of athletic guidebooks - I once checked out a marathon-running guide from that shelf. And finally, there are two shelves of writing guidebooks - nonfiction, fiction, children’s literature, poetry, and so on. I can distinctly remember standing in front of that shelf, back when I had only the inclination that maybe I wanted to write, and picking up Writing Down the Bones. You know by now that this book is basically one of the great love stories of my life (thus far). I checked it out, and not long after, I went to Newcomb Hollow with a black and white composition notebook I had bought at the Staples in Orleans.

walking, unnerved.

I hadn’t realized how much I’ve come to take for granted my ability (in a city) to walk everywhere. It feels natural and obvious, and there aren’t many obstacles. Even when we traveled last February to Prague and Istanbul, we never really questioned each other - we would walk everywhere. Three or four miles was nothing. If I could see my way there on the map, I was fairly sure my legs could get me there.

There isn’t a highway in Wellfleet, exactly, but there is a main highway-like road. Route 6, the path through the center of the entire Cape. In Wellfleet, the speed limit is 45 MPH (although cars certainly drive faster). The house we are staying at is perched right on this car-filled non-highway. To get into town or to the post office, I have to walk a short distance on the sandy/grassy shoulder, all the while listening to the near constant hum of cars passing me. It’s surprising to me how it unnerves me. The difference between 30 MPH on the city streets of DC and 45 (really 50, or 55) MPH on Route 6 is great. The cars are fast and inhuman. I feel like an alien or an ant or some other creature trapped where I don’t belong, looking out of place and small.

It’s hard to ease into the rhythm of walking with that constant rush of traffic at my shoulder. I walked to the post office today in the beautiful sunshine and salty air, but I felt unsure. What ordinarily would have given me a burst of energy, gratitude, and life, instead gave me a burst of uncomfortableness.

work.

All my life I have moved away from places and never returned. Houses and schools and streets become faded, blurry, then mythic and dreamlike. I don’t know that I even want to go back to disturb their perfection. Once I got the idea to pull up the street view on Google Maps for a street I lived in on when I was 11 years old. There was a corner with a shady hotel and a man who sat out front and sang, and there was a sour-smelling Chinese restaurant that we never ate at. I pulled up the street view and everything looked so small and artificial - not at all how I remembered.

But Wellfleet is something different. I lived here for three years, and I left, but somehow this place has got inside of me. The mythic and the dreamlike mix with the reality. I leave and come back, and leave and come back. I’m not blind to its imperfections, and I know why I left. But I can’t stop coming back. Right now it feels like I’m here, and I’m not here, and I’m on vacation, and I’ve never left. I can’t even attach a word to the feeling, some complicated mixture of homesickness and loneliness and familiarity and relief. I have the space I need here, space inside my own head.

I have been writing, though not as much as I mean to, and not here. Last month was emotional and heavy. I spent my time being anxious about work and moving, or trying not to be anxious about work and moving. As always, my worries accomplished nothing, and I’m on the other side, and everything seems so clear and simple now. And now I’m in Wellfleet, and I have work to do.

chaos.

I’m awake right now, and writing here, because I can’t fall asleep. I can’t fall asleep because I found a cockroach in the kitchen, and although it isn’t my first, I am still wildly afraid of them. So I’m waiting for J to come home and inspect all the cupboards for me so that I can fall asleep and not dream of cockroaches marching into my bed.

Our apartment was broken into last week, and while I know rationally that it won’t happen again, that the reasons it was possible for someone to get in have been fixed, it just occurred to me that I haven’t tried to fall asleep here alone since that happened.

Our schedules (really, J’s schedule) can be wacky. I wake up early. Rehearsals and shows and meetings tend to happen late at the theatre, so J often works late. When I first moved here, it took some adjusting - being alone often at night, eating dinner alone, sometimes going a week or more only seeing each other for a few minutes. It isn’t ideal, but also plenty of people manage worse. There are people who work actual night shifts, or people who are deployed, or are on call. We manage.