ARGH.
I so want to write today.
Scratch that.
I need to write today. I've needed
to write for several days, actually, but I haven't done it. And now I've
been sitting and staring at this page and watching the sleet come down for
longer than I care to admit, waiting for brilliance to come gushing over the page.
But brilliance -- like much of the
country right now -- seems to be frozen.
So instead of shooting for
brilliance, I'm starting where I am. Unfortunately, where I am right now
consists primarily of "I'm stuck in writer's no-man's land," and
"now "Let It Go" is going through my head because the word
"frozen" has been forever ruined by Idina Menzel."
Thanks, Idina.
*****
I saw this brilliant little piece
by Brian Andreas yesterday, and I immediately fell in
love with it:
How To Write Something True
1. Forget everything you know &
everything you want to say.
2. Listen to the quiet voices of
the world. Start with your heartbeat.
3. Touch the pen to the paper. Feel
it, the way it is only at one point all the time. This is the place writing
shows up.
4. Write one word at a time. This
will take more effort than you think.
5. This kind of writing doesn’t
care what you know, because you already know it. This kind of writing just
wants to see what happens next.
6. When you can do this easily, go
back to #1 again. This time no pen, no paper.
7. Live. Now you have something
true to write about.
Perhaps this is what I need.
My heart is a little hurt-y
today. In part, there is Stuff. In part, I just hate the month of
March. The whole month. March 1 feels qualitatively different from
February 28th, just as April 1 will feel like a breath of fresh air.
March is my "hold your breath and duck your head and just.get.through
it" month. March tells me that what I need to do is pull in.
Hibernate. Cut open my heart, cover the hurt-y places with bandaids, bury
them in scarves and winter coats, throw an ice pack in to numb the pain, sew up
the incision, and wait. But even just that -- even the cutting, and the
covering, and the bandaging, and the burying -- even that requires looking at
the hurt-y places a little bit. And sometimes, hurt-y places just don't
want to be looked at, you know?
So here's what I'll do: I'll follow
the steps to write something true. Will you do this, too? Let's
write something true together.
*Edited after the fact to add: This
turned out entirely different than I expected. It definitely correlates
to the Brian Andreas piece above -- each of the 7 items served almost as a
prompt for the corresponding stanza of the poem below. I don't pretend to
understand my brain. This is just what happened.*
(Working title...I might change
it...I hate titles. Anyway...)
Truth Between the Lines
1. These things are true:
I wear my fear branded into my skin.
I tuck my insecurities into bed with me,
turn on a nightlight, and give them a kiss goodnight to
assure them,
I will see them again tomorrow.
And it is true
that even when I kick my fears in the ass,
I'll only ever find them crawling back into bed with me.
They bring flowers
and whispered apologies,
so I am forgetting
that I only sleep with my fears because they make me
feel safe.
It is true
that I invite them in.
Call them lover, call them friend, they are
my longest relationship.
In the morning,
In the morning,
I make them pancakes.
We drink coffee together as the sun rises,
and in that morning light,
I forget about the ways that I know better. I insist
that it will be different,
that I am strong enough to fight them.
I am forgetting
about the ways they can crawl inside me.
I am forgetting
the way they know the scent of my blood.
2. The quiet voices are hard to hear
over the cacophony of Importance.
I breathe in and let it still.
My heartbeat roars, unexpectedly:
like a winter thunderstorm, she rolls
into my body, and envelops me
till I take refuge
ever deeper inside.
Start here, she
says.
I breathe out and let myself be washed
in the deluge of thoughts.
I start again.
3. This is the way we learn to be here.
The way we come here, to this place, again and again,
where pen meets page.
Lungs meet air.
Where tears meet face, and broken meets open,
in this pinprick of a moment, line becomes letter,
letter into word, word into sentence, sentence into
voice.
Here is the place where Showing meets Up to scare Giving away from her,
here
is where Running meets Away
and carries her back.
4. Slowly.
This writing is a holy creation of destruction:
one word at a time, we build missiles that destroy our
broken interiors.
Something cannot be created
where no space exists.
I am learning
that truth creation is only ever a process
of deconstruction
taking apart that
which no longer serves us.
5. So we build from the nothing.
Create something that only
exists in our minds,
I look for evidence of me in the spills on the paper:
this holy, fucked-up mirror of truths,
this pen
knows the ways I make breakfast for my fear and
self-doubt.
It has watched me invite them in
despite bruised lips
blackened eyes,
shattered dreams,
this pen
is unforgiving in its truth.
6. These things are true:
I wear my fear branded into my skin.
I tuck my insecurities into bed with me,
turn on a nightlight, and give them a kiss goodnight to
assure them,
I will see them again tomorrow.
I invite Self-doubt to breakfast despite knowing
she's only a jealous lover,
I start over
and over and over as
these facts unfold, here,
where Broken meets Open.
Where Running meets Away
and carries her back
7. These things are true:
I stare into this holy, fucked-up mirror of truths.
I try to drink my coffee alone
before my breakfast guests arrive,
and I live.
I live.
I live
in this place
where Showing meets Up and scares Giving away from her.
I live
finding truth and breathing room
in the destruction between the lines.
This is brilliant. I'm glad you're writing again. I am too. Your March is my February. I'm so glad it's over and I'm alive and I'm not on my way to Iowa for a funeral.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully constructed. Painful and hopeful at the same time. For the full impact I had to read it aloud. Reading it to myself wasn't the same.
ReplyDelete