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.

~ by weltschmerz on July 5, 2009.