a sloppy hand.

I have never known if I am ambitious enough to be an artist. Actually, I don’t know what artist means in the context of my life. I am less interested in giving myself over to an art form. I am more interested in giving myself over to life and letting the art-making-process permeate my life.

This is the reason that sometimes I struggle to say, I am a writer. I feel a little more comfortable with, I am a person who writes. The distinctions and minutiae that make sense in my head usually exist only in my head. I need someone to break the spell.

A side-effect of writing less is that everything seems less legitimate and less interesting. If I don’t write much, it seems like I probably don’t have claims to write anything. Writing regularly doesn’t necessarily mean you’re better, it just means you have dulled the nerves that cringe at the ego-centrism of writing. These may be cringing nerves that are mine alone, because I’ve never really liked much attention.

Coasting is easier, it is always easier. It is a good way to lose yourself and to lose the things that anchor you to life, your life, the life that is and will always be yours alone. The one.

In every part of my life, I order things. I tidy up. I make lists. But sometimes I want to write with a sloppy hand. I don’t care very much if it makes sense. This is a practice in...in what? In release of control. In feeling the wildness of the world under my skin. It is a break from myself and my own instincts. Perhaps it doesn’t make for an interesting read. But maybe you know the feeling?

bright shining.

Most of the time I spend writing, I am trying to capture some beauty or hope that I’ve felt, something in a fleeting moment that I want desperately to share. I don’t know if I can even go so far as to call these feelings - they’re something a bit deeper and more instinctive.

It’s all wild and wrapped up in how the bright sun is shining in the alley - the white light and the red bricks and the blue sky.

I just love this blog so much. This lady has got a head like mine. Food is all woven into her observations on life. But most importantly, I don’t know how, but she captures that grain of a moment - the one that is filled up with beauty and longing and hopeful feathers. It’s a clarity of mind, of observation, of reflection. Whatever it is, it sings inside of me. This post reminded me.

Jacob told me the other night that he had been thinking about how important it is for a creative person to have someone behind them. When the work of a creative person lives so much in the head, it’s invaluable to have someone who loves you unconditionally and really believes in you. It’s powerful to have someone believe that you’re capable of making great art. It is one thing to talk all abstract about what it means to be an artist. It is another to really figure out what it means - what it means in life, real life, the life where you pay bills and eat food and forge relationships.

notice.

I’ve been reading Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem slowly. To be honest, I’ve been reading it since last summer. It’s not that I don’t like it, but when you have a large stack of books you’re reading, you have to pick one at a time. This one kept slipping to the bottom of the pile. I’m embarrassed because I feel that I'm exactly the sort of person who's supposed to be very well read in Joan Didion and I should love her.

At any rate, I’m in the last pages now. It turns out this collection makes good bus reading, i.e. I can read it in 10-15 minute chunks without feeling uncomfortable. Also, I’ve been reading it much more quickly since I got to her essay, On Keeping a Notebook. I got excited because she describes what I’ve always felt was a weird habit of mine: I observe things, remember an alarming number of details, and write them down. I don’t know why or for what. I write down pieces of conversation I hear on the bus. I write down that I saw an old man slowly get off his bike yesterday and push it across the street. I write down the color of the pavement outside the window of my office and how the color changes with the rain.

From time to time I think that these pieces will all come together someday into a story? an essay? a poem? But the truth is, they’ll probably just live on indefinitely in my retired notebooks. Didion says that this practice is important not for remembering details, but for remembering who you were when you observed the details. I dig that. My contribution is that I think it’s important because it makes observation a practice. In a world full of distraction and masses of faces glued to phones (soapbox?) it’s useful to remember how much you can hear and see just by looking up and looking around.

people.

I told you awhile ago about how much I love sharing. It always feels so special to me to know that someone else has thought of me. Likewise, it makes me happy to let others know that I thought of them.

I keep lots of files in Evernote of things to watch, things to read, things to listen to. When someone shares something with me, I quickly file it away until I have time to go back and really look at it. So the case with The Underground New York Public Library. My dad forwarded me the link months ago - last summer, I think. I filed it away and somehow it slipped to the bottom of the pile. I was clearing through some of the files last night and found it.

I'm just blown away - it's an incredible visual blog filled with candid pictures of people who are reading on the subway. I couldn't stop looking at it last night.

Here's what I think: people have interesting lives. Every single person. Rich or poor, happy or sad, connected or lonely. There's always something beneath the surface. There's always some history that you don't know. There's always an experience that tells a story.

I love people watching because I crave their stories. We all have stories - that's one thing we have in common.

I've been having a hard time writing lately. Can I make an honest confession? I've been watching TV for an hour most nights. I don't know how I slipped into it, but I've become very aware of the almost drug-like feeling induced by gluing your eyeballs to the screen. It's such an easy way to shut your brain down, especially if you can convince yourself that you deserve it because you've been working hard all day (this is what I convince myself). Well, I'm saying it out loud because I would like it to not become a habit.

let it go.

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.” -Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

I think I may have given you this quote before, but I needed to hear it again, today. This is one of the writing proverbs I keep in my head, along with others. These proverbs guide me on and help me to get over myself. I needed to hear it because I do it all the time. I imagine there are a handful of things that I will write that revolve around certain topics and once they're written, then they'll be done, dead, lost and I will be cleaned out. In those moments, I remember Annie Dillard’s words. I also say something to myself along the lines of, If this brain can write one good thing, it can write another.

I have been on a journey of discovery for...oh, for years. Self-discovery. Along with self-discovery, you discover the nuances of life that you may not have known. I don’t know what I mean, really, but you might. What I mean is that it feels exciting to be alive.

Jacob says that sometimes the appeal of my writing lies in its ambiguity and vagueness. I always assume that the opposite is true - I find this the least interesting part of my writing. Regardless, it’s the sort of writing that floods out of me without any effort or inhibition. It’s how my brain talks to itself inside my head.