truth and tweets.

I am easily obsessed with thoughts and topics and ideas.  I'm a thinking person, maybe to a fault.  I'm good at being alone and being quiet.

I'm currently obsessed with truth.  I've been asking people, not so subtly, what they think of truth. Good friends, casual acquaintances. How do you define truth? What do you think it is? Do you think it's important? I am reading too much philosophy, the kind that twists your brain in a knot until your left eye twitches and your stomach drops out. I am hounding truth or it is hounding me. I am beating my head against the table, against the wall, against the questions, one after another.  I am forming some thoughts.  You know what truth is?  Please tell me what you think.

Listen, it comes down to this: I made the choice to write here and write often because I wanted to write about difficult things. I want to take all of the notebooks that I have torn apart and thrown away, take those crackling words, and spill them out all over the place and let people run around in them. I want to split myself wide open and lift up my eyes and make awkward eye contact that lasts too long before I say Hi.

some exercises.

Lately my itch to write is violent, uncontrollable, distracting. It feels like love, when you are powerless to harness your thoughts or do anything but be in love. Forcing myself to write regularly is working some magic on my brain or my fingers or something. I am learning to have grace and patience to ride the ebb and flow of creativity and motivation.

In the midst of all this violent-writing-love, I've encountered a new obstacle. I have too many things in various stages of being made. I've started writing in depth on a handful of ideas, I've written briefly on some other things and I also have The List (my writing prompts, exercises, ideas to pursue).

Writing exercises are my favorite way to regain some perspective, even if I don't know what I want to be working on. I do writing exercises to push through paralysis. I make lists. I bring the limp fingers to life again. I have slept on my arm all night long and now a stranger's hand is cradling my head.

encouragement & discontent.

I haven't done any freewriting in 4 days. Apathy and discontent have a strange way of paralyzing a person.  The cold air is numbing my fingers. I have a headache. The world is full of bad things. Excuses, all.

I have been thinking today on goals set and goals achieved, on the path we are walking and what comes at the end. There are too many things to make sense of tonight. Too much hurt in the world, confusion in my own life and others. Too many questions that I don't have the power to answer. Too many people being born, too many people dying, too much suffering, too much greed.

I am searching hard for something lately. I am here. I am creating the life that I want to lead and every day it is the life I want and every day I am grateful, grateful, grateful. It's a story that lots of people have lived and lots of people have heard, it's not original or unique, but it's mine and that's why I care.

I have to remind myself of things often, the things that I believe and don't believe. That I am committed and capable.

The answer is to write, it is always to write. Just reminding myself.

I read an interesting piece by Langston Hughes yesterday - I hadn't seen it before. It's worth reading.  Salvation - Langston Hughes

flash fiction and another list.

I've been reading the literary journal Brevity since college.  I've always been attracted to saying things sparsely, fewer words, less telling and more feeling. Spurred on by my love for brief nonfiction, I've lately been reading flash fiction. It's cool. Obviously some things need to be said in a longer form, but there are some things that are really said best in the so-called flash.

I wrote this in my head last night, dreamed about it, wrote it in the notebook this morning, and typed it here now. It is fiction, which I've already explained is something I don't do. Go easy on me - I'm trying to be brave.

Every morning at 10:00am, Susan climbed the 13 rungs of an aluminum extension ladder to the roof of her house. Her husband sat in his office; her three children were numb at their desks in school. She cautiously lifted one foot over the gutter before scrambling onto the rough shingles and plastering her body face down against the roof. After a few seconds, she flattened herself and rolled over towards the sky.

Some things are true and some things aren’t. When you’re lying on a roof it’s hard to see the difference. It’s hard to see anything but the big sky full of weather and sun and clouds and rain and birds and stars. Every morning at 10:00am, Susan took it all in and then pushed it back out. You can’t live an everyday life when you’re filled up with light and space inside.

Every morning sometime after 10:00am, Susan began to shimmy her weight towards the edge of the roof, bending her knees until she was more or less crouched on the gutter at a 45 degree angle. Always in one single motion, with breath held in, she let her feet drop over the edge and dangle before swinging them around to catch the ladder’s rung. It wasn’t that high – a fall would only mean tumbling in the bushes with a sprained ankle or wrist, maybe a broken leg if the angle was wrong. But with her eyes closed and her back pressed tight against the gritty roof, the distance was infinite.

And she knew it would happen one day, when she was dizzy from climbing and the sun was shining bright. The world would turn itself on its head and she would fall into the sky.

***

I'm down to the last two pages of my notebook. To celebrate, here are 15 sentences from the notebook, selected at random, representing (in no linear order) words I've written over the last 10 months of my life.

1. The buzzing of the baggage carousel is matching time to the eerie Christmas music playing over the loudspeaker.
2. I listened to that song for hours in my lonely attic bedroom in the house in South Mankato.
3. She would always be worse, every time I came home.
4. I flew to Boston and bought a pack of cigarettes.
5. There was a crazy lady at the end of the bar who was talking to herself.
6. I have decided to move on from this place, whatever that might mean.
7. I want to call you back, again and again and again, until I feel safe - an old feeling from another time.
8. So let's bring it back to here.
9. I could write about the blue of the tables and the afternoon I varnished them, but I really want to write about sitting at the blue tables and listening to the song, crying so hard the tears ran off my chin and fell onto the floor.
10. I could show you the fields stretching far and how life can be so sad and slow sometimes.
11. I had a dream you moved to Alaska and wore a comb over and I was never surprised.
12. His long hair hasn't been brushed and I think that's good and his face is ugly.
13. Maybe she works nights somewhere and she spends her mornings buying coffees at Starbucks.
14. He wrote back that things were pretty bad and it was my fault.
15. I am looking up every few minutes to be blinded by the drifted snow and sunlight outside the big front window and as soon as the spots in my eyes fade I look up again.

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.