Me fail English? Unpossible!

Could it be? Could it possibly be that I am actually enjoying making revisions to an existing project? It’s oddly fulfilling and pleasant…a chance to interact with my story on a way more gentle level than a scratch and rewrite. S&W is my normal mode of ‘revision’ BTW, and I dare say it was killing not only the projects themselves, but my entire desire to write.

Last week, your trusty author was challenged by a Mysterious Outsider ™ to treat my writing as compassionately as I (should be) treat(ing) myself. Trust me, the excessive parentheses are totally necessary. Simultaneously, I coattailed onto Nova Ren’s Twittercation For a Week Challenge. These two things may not be wholly related to the result, but hot damn! Turns out that when you look at something you’ve written, trusting that it is worth it, trusting that it is worth all the effort of those sleepless nights of words flying out of you…When you look at your work like it has value, it kind of does. When you furiously strangle 95% of your inner voices (just the ones who ask awful things like what made you think you could do this?) the other 5% are full of decent ideas.

Now the trick is to do the second through 16th passes in the same manner without becoming discouraged that the fact that those same nasty impulses of mine also do some important things…like establishing tense agreement and winnowing out my awesome Central PA habit of improper infinitive use. &*^%*&^ verbs. But that’s a far easier problem than trying to create something when you keep nervously deleting everything you have after a moment’s hesitation.

I don’t care if I’m fooling myself. I have nothing to lose.

Now I am going to tweet like the wind even while realizing that it’s only really been 6 days. Don’t care about that either.

Running Through the Jungle

As if on cue, the universe is lightening up after my last post. It was strangely hard to talk (even so obliquely) about that in the open.

Today I am back to the work, despite numerous interruptions. I guess it’s to be expected when one finally remembers to pay one’s phone bill. People suddenly call and bawl you out for having worried them. Fine, I guess I deserved that.

I wondered into my corner bar/writing spot only to be descended upon by a group of about 20 Vietnam Veterans and their hangers-on. These are intense people, laughing and drinking while blaring CCR and talking animatedly about the horrors of some forty years ago. Things that sound a bit cliched after a lifetime of absorbing war movies, but these things actually happened to these guys.

Every once and while they all seem to pause in unison. Is it a part of shared memory that they cannot mouth? Is it an old friend long-gone that they miss all at once? Is it some mutual forgetting that spins out like a spell?

I can only imagine. And eavesdrop. And spin war stories in my mind out of their war stories in my thieving ear. And wonder how a person comes back from any of that stuff.

My seriousness only lasted until one of them asked me to dance. At which point I politely refused. I have work to do.

Jeesh.

this will only make sense to about 1 in 100 people.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I don’t update much of late. Or perhaps not. That’s what happens when you don’t update often enough- people stop checking in on you, your name falls off of blog rolls. It’s the nature of the false connectedness of the internet, sure. But it’s exactly the nature of the depressive brain. Seriously. That’s how the depressive brain disconnects slowly from everything around it, and ultimately (unfortunately) from the very soul and body of the person it rides around inside. It’s a slow form of self-annihilation. A far more insidious kind than simply kissing a train. There is no time to reflect back when you’re about to kiss the train. No time to miss what you still might have, no time to wallow in what you have the power, just not the inclination, to correct.

But this isn’t yet another article about my depression. And although it might read as an excuse to some, I don’t mean it to be.

Warning: more talking to follow.

A bit ago, I began a timid course of EMDR (Eye Movement De-sensitivation and Reprocessing) against my better judgment. Nothing else is really helping, what the hell? I was skeptical, and I had good cause to be, for most of the research you can find about EMDR alternately holds it to be a sham or the BEST THING EVER ™.  The truth is, it’s somewhere in the middle. And the middle is a huge place to be.

I am changing. It’s changing me. It’s changing my brain. Even as I realize that I barely know myself, I am beginning to kind of care about myself. Crazy!

Have you ever known the person that undergoes recovery efforts and comes out a Buddhist at the end? They’re practically a cliche. I always wondered if there was some indoctrination going on somewhere that makes them all do that. Some kind of weird Buddhist Proselytizing undercurrent running through whatever therapeutic approach they were all getting. Turns out that it just happens. Not that I am or will ever identify as Buddhist, recovery necessitates integrating behaviors that really, if I were to talk about them here, would sound *exactly* like trying to sell religion to you. On that front, I am not biting at the conversion hook, but I get it now. Mystery solved.

I understand more about myself, what makes me turn on and off. The patterns that I never thought I had control over turn out to be nearly avoidable. Except one big one: The writing. The writing as self talk, as a way to interact with my own thoughts. As a conversation between myself/selves.

This is what I am working on now: making that conversation less of a closed-circle, less of a selfish act and more of a ‘work’. So yes, I am paying someone to help me turn my writing into something I can work at instead of something that I just seem to do to alternately soothe and punish myself. I wonder how many poets never get that corrected? I’ve known many, such as myself, who go for years with their words as combination OD/Warm blanket.

I’ve been writing since age 5 or 6. Secreting wads of paper, note cards, journals, sheets of paper between my brain and the outside world. It turned into just as much of a defensive mechanism as overeating and drug abuse. It’s a pretty superior one too- very portable, legal, and occasionally, someone gives you praise for it. Imagine being asked to come shoot up in front of people at a bookstore. On the one hand, it’s ludicrous (probably) for many to hear me talk about it this way. But I assure you, it’s been real. Real full of meteoric highs and lows with no sense of self-possession about it. Let me repeat that: I have been largely absent in all of my writing for nearly all of my life.

Writing was just something I did to keep safe. To create either a better place to be, or a better more understandable way to understand were I was. It wasn’t art. It wasn’t something that I had a talent at. The urge to write was just something that washed over me, much like a wave of sadness or a panic attack. When it was on, it was turned to 15. Inescapable. Undeniable. Pray to god you have someone to remind you to eat once every 8 hours or so. Conversely, when it was absent, it was like the sun had burnt out. An endless trudge through the mud in the dark with no real destination. Pointless. Equally inescapable. You might as well open a vein.

I’d feel worse about it if I couldn’t also acknowledge the fact that I wasn’t ever encouraged or trained until things had already gotten pathological. Consequently, I couldn’t really hear praise or criticism in any kind of meaningful useful way either.

But I know  I am now 35 and am just now sorting this out. Changing the way I perceive it and hold it in my head. In order to take it seriously.  In order to own it. Improve it. Get better at it. Enjoy it. Share it.

Wish me luck!

Half flu, shouldn’t travel.

They say that flu shots are no longer produced as attenuated vaccines, but let’s just say that about 12 hours after mine I started to wonder if maybe I’d had some old school batch. Don’t feel too bad for me– it’s only about half the flu. Instead of full-on sore throat/headache/body ache/chills/high fevers/lethargy/in your bed helpless for several days it’s only body ache/sniffly/put-on-a-sweater/99-100 fever/miss work for a day flu.

It’s like a warm-up flu to get you ready for the season. Training camp for viruses. Less than ideal day spent not at work.

Ideally, I’d be spending my day off from work downtown, maybe the Lavazza near City Hall, where The Carpenter did  some awesome decor work*. Ideally, I’d be all coffeed up and typing up a storm by now. Or maybe I’d be ensconced in the winter garden at the big library staring up out the glass roof between notions.

But no. I’ve got the half flu. The training flu. The ‘I paid someone to give me this virus now so it doesn’t take me by complete surprise later’ flu. So I will get comfortable on my own porch– in my own sweaters even! And noodle around. My head isn’t clear enough to really get much done.

Here’s to bodily-enforced relaxation, I guess. Let the napping begin!

*I don’t think that the Carpenter knows he was on apartmenttherapy.com. I should probably point that out.

I love this part.

I love this part: the pause. The important mind-blanking part.

I know writers who do this part with seamless grace. They just stop writing and then they stare into the distance. One hums a song. Some just get up for more coffee, maybe a little chore or something.

But others like myself have it a bit weirder. One writer I know puts a scarf over her head (I’ve tried this…it actually helps!) or climbs under the desk. Another I know fidgets and chews her nails. Another reaches for his keyboard (as in musical instrument keyboard) and chases fragments around until something clicks. One guy I know is keen on slamming his head on the table– usually with a huge bang, and staying stock still until you are convinced that he’s knocked himself out cold. Then he pops his head up and starts scribbling maniacally.

Me? I pull faces. Mostly. I rub my eyes, pinch the bridge of my nose, press in on my eyeballs until pastel colors explode and I am nearly blind in something like a Georgia O’Keefe background. I think, even as a write this– that it’s something I picked up from another writer. Anyway, once I’m water-color-blind  I fix on something until the shape comes back. It’s usually a person. Unfortunately, sometimes the person has noticed and is slightly miffed that there’s this crazy woman squinting at them for five minutes straight. However, usually within this time I can see the sentence more clearly in my head. Or the room I’m writing about. Or whatever.

This doesn’t always work, but it usually gets things cracking again. Tell me, what are your pause-strategies?

So if you’re out and you see someone doing any of these seemingly retarded things, feel free to have a chuckle. We’re writers, and our heads get really crowded sometimes. We do strange things in public in order to bring out the most private details. Sometimes I think we need little license plates around our necks. Or maybe some sort of hat. What do you think?

Pretend I’ve been staring at you in a coffee shop with a blank, vaguely troubled look on my face for 5 minutes. It’s got nothing to do with something between your two front teeth. Relax. I’m performing a public service.

this just in

I kind of forgot that I had a blog. And that it didn’t just auto-magically update with deep thoughts and grumpy whining. Turns out, that in Real Life ™ I am also so much of a space cadet that I frequently assume I’ve told someone something when I have only *thought* it.

And yes, sometimes this makes me terribly frustrated with the poor ignorant people (with whom I have mentally gone over and over points and question and *really* why they can’t remember it is TOTALLY BEYOND ME) unlucky enough to experience this. Now as an added bonus, I am doing it to the entire internet!

Awesome!!! Make up your own details of all the exciting things and moving conversations we’ve (not) had lately. They’ll probably outshine reality. Or at least realty, though that’s not hard.

Which comes first?

Life, it has a nasty habit of intervening just when you’d rather toss it all and go write. I don’t have anything specific in mind, either. There is no sweeping idea or whatnot that I want to go pound out furiously on the keys.

What there is, however, is an apartment that’s been fully subsumed in cruft for the past week. The past week of stressful days and whatever-dinner-is-easiest-because-I-am-a zombie-after-work. The past of week full of “I’ll take out the recycling/do some laundry/pick up the books tomorrow.” Tomorrow apparently never came, folks. It’s like a small progression of dorm rooms in here. Mysterious dirty dishes under the coffee table and all.

I never know what comes first here. Is it the urge to spend all day writing and messing around on the page ignoring my messy apartment as an afterthought? Or is there some magical critical mass of gross that my space can twist into that makes me just want to run away and spend all day typing?

It never fails to sadden and amaze me that so much of my general happiness, not even just my ability to go pick up and write, depends on stupid other details being taken care of. That I can’t even think straight about being creative if I *know* that my sink is full of used coffee cups. Sometimes I manage to escape to a separate location, but often that’s ruined by my thoughts returning to what I will find when I go home.

It makes me feel hung-up, slightly stupid, and neurotic. But then I think of writers like Murakami. Who actually spends a great deal of time putting in the quotidian details of housekeeping in some of his work…and I begin to realize that I am probably not the only one.

In any case, I’ll get the writing/go out and sit somewhere writing/pick up these stray thoughts tomorrow. For now? I have to buck up and take out the damn recycling. Like a tool. Where is my monkey butler???

Things I should not see: Study Partner Edition

Someone just asked me who bell hooks is. Note: the someone is studying feminism, cultural studies, and taking contemporary poetry as an elective. Said someone is also considering taking African American Studies in the fall… I know because she said “maybe I can learn more about him in my African American Studies Class in the fall…”

Then my heart fell out onto the table.

I have since picked up my heart, shushed it, and am about to carry it up to my office in my bike helmet.

Things I wish for Annika on her Big Birthday

In handy bullet-point because (seriously) who doesn’t love a list:

-health. For you, for your bun, for your whole family.

-time. To enjoy yourself.

-money to fall out of the sky. I know, but it would seriously contribute to the availabilty of the above.

Eyes closed, fingers flying, lots of typos to follow.

Some of the hardest work of recovery is letting yourself relax after what you’ve just learned. Or accomplished. Or shed. “Relax” is oversimplified perhaps. Here ‘relaxing’ is an odd jumble of forgiving, patience, and keeping an open mind. Oh, and being cautious because you’re in a new raw skin. I won’t go in to the various and sundry ways this keeps popping up in my daily life and personal relationships, because it’s too darn surprising to me in the writing.

I’m blocked most of the time lately, but I am trying to ‘relax’ about it. Forcing creativity right now would be the mental/emotional  equivalent of having to birth a baby through one’s nose on cue. Perhaps on stage and in front of a skeptical audience (Teattro Grottesco anyone?). So I’m forgiving, and open, and (trying my hand at being) patient. Of course it’s immensely frustrating. It always is, no matter your circumstances. I’m used to that. However, it’s kind of something else when you’re all like “everything ELSE in my life is better by leaps but this one essential tiny thing is totally flat in the mud!!!”

Eyes roll, all caps are common. Whinge, flail, stomp…

The one thing I seem able to do is slot time for writing. And the writing is pretty purile, but that’s OK. Mostly SOC and swirling poetry– a reversion to the meandering poetic form of my 20s. I am amused, yes, but just letting it hapen. Mostly I just toss the stuff into a folder and don’t look at it again.

A little shout out here for the folder-tossing noises in OS10.

Yesterday, I was curious to see a pattern. Was there poetry on bad days? Was the SOC actually just poetry in blocky prose form? What is going on in there? I pulled a week’s worth out and kind of sat stunned. 2 poem forms and a handful of SOC blocks. But the poems weren’t the normal fare. They were solid little etudes. Self-contained and not straining or reaching or tasting at words. The prose blocks? More interesting. 4 out of 5 were little vignettes of/with a character that I was working on in the fall–his story never quite gelled and I abandoned him to the hills (His name is Hugo. One person knows why). The thought of Hugo has been following me around this whole entire time, I guess. Though I didn’t consciously know that he was still knocking through my brain even during this excercise.

So yes, I will work with Hugo when t he’s got something interesting to say and do. But not just yet. Or when I lose my job and have nothing else to do. Whichever comes first.

For now, I think this pattern of slotting time and writing with my eyes closed is actually helping. I just have to stay out of the folder for a little longer, just keep adding to it and not looking back. Writers write. I know that, of course. What I didn’t know was that sometimes ‘writing’ is a very complex and shadowy verb. Not simple at all. It’s kind of begging for that old form right about now.