Writing

I have always said that this upcoming year is the year I was going to write. But it always felt like a precipice that I was standing on the edge of, waiting for the right wind-conditions or mood or equipment.

Yesterday, we had a slam poet come to our professional development session. She challenged us to create a poem in 3 minutes that must include the words applesauce, eavesdrop, is, and rugburn. It also had to make everyone cry.

I thought that writing would be like building carefully with blocks, choosing the right word, being meticulous and slow. In this case, it was like the floodgates opened and a river poured out, and I was grabbing words out of the flow like precious treasures, and batting away others as they passed by.

This is what I wrote:

I stare out the kitchen window at the space where my heart once was.
Where the roots once gripped and fed,
where the trunk stood tall,
where the fruit - tart and sweet like applesauce - ripened,
where the branches reached.
The leaves eavesdropped on my dreams.
Now there is a space. A hole. A vacuum where life once was,
leaving streaks of pain like a rugburn on my soul.

Pretty good for 3 minutes. I was proud of it. And it made me cry.

So I wrote. I broke the seal without really thinking about it. It wasn't a bit moment, or a big production, just born out of necessity in a noisy room in 3 minutes.

So here I am. A writer.

I did realize something as I sobbed, standing and reading the poem out-loud. I think there is something wrong with me, or something that needs expressing. Something unaddressed.  I feel like I am an open person, but whenever it comes time to express something true, it feels like my chest breaks open like an egg and I cry. I wonder if I am more closed than I think I am, tamping down feelings that need expressing until they scream through any crack like steam escaping.

Maybe writing won't be like building a masterpiece, but like letting the words flow out. Unblocking the dam and seeing what happens.

When the truth comes out, I crack open like an egg.
My sternum shatters like shell and scatters
and golden goo, a mess of expression, previously unaddressed,
pours out of me with the viscosity of snot.

My truth needs airholes
a doggy door
a silk road for the soul
I hate to break so easily.

Zebras in the Sky

When I was a little girl, I had a best friend. Her hair was made of golden springs and she glowed like a powerful, reckless, sneaker-clad dandelion. She was fierce and inventive, cruel and loyal, and I would have done anything for her.

She broke my heart twice. One break was small and deep, a shard of glass in the heart, and I didn't notice it until many years later. The other break was wide and shallow.

The second break is the easiest to define. I noticed it right away. We had been a duo. We adventured into imaginary worlds of dragons and witches and spies and scientists. Then, in fifth grade, she stood on top of a hill, white against the trees of the school yard, and shouted "Well maybe I don't want to pretend anymore!" It landed with the thunk of an arrow. Pretending was all that I did. It was all that I was. I thought she was there with me too. But she grew up. She found other friends. I moved on, and turned pretending into my job.

The first break I am only now coming to grips with.

The sky was bright and cloud-speckled as her mother drove us from some errand. Perhaps visiting my friend's grandmother. My heart was singing because it was a beautiful day. The window was open and the breeze was blowing light and warm. I looked up in the sky at the clouds and I saw zebras. A herd of zebras loping across the sky. The clouds had formed themselves just right, and I thought it was such a cool idea. Sky Zebras running across a vast plain of blue. So I said "Look! Zebras!" and I pointed at the sky. At first they didn't understand. I stumbled to backtrack and explain. Then, they laughed. Both she and her mom laughed at me. I remember feeling wrong. Crazy. Like things this strange are not meant to be thought, much less spoken.

It is strange how certain stories from your childhood stick with you while others are completely forgotten. What makes a memory so visceral that it feels like yesterday, when others equally as important evaporate?

The most vivid part of that memory was the wrongness I felt. I was obviously crazy for ever having had those thoughts, for thinking that something was other than it was, or imagining the impossible for no reason whatsoever. I tamped down those impulses for a long time. My weird perspective. I even convinced myself that I had no unique voice, nothing to say that other people weren't already saying. I pushed my crazy dreams, and my "what if" scenarios, and my Picasso thinking to the back closet of my brain and put things in front of the door so they wouldn't sneak out at an inopportune moment and show how crazy I was again.

As I am really starting to move in the direction of writing, I realize how important those tools were. All my odd and crazy thoughts are actually exactly what I need to find inspiration and become a writer, along with my obsessive nature, my need for flow, my love of research to learn cool things (not prove facts), my collection of memory and ephemera, my nostalgia, my empathy, my ability to listen, and my delight in choosing the right words.

I have opened up that closet now and have begun dusting off everything. My dreams are coming back (I think thanks to no meds and better sleep), I am listening to the world rather than hiding from it, I have sworn off TV for Lent so I am getting more done, and I am playing games with myself: "What if a bear wandered through the parking lot right now?" "Those leaves look like potato chips. NO! Papery husks! NO! Skeletons!"

Now all I have to do is have the courage to sit down and write.

"'Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

EDIT: I have been reading Woman Who Runs With the Wolves and recently read the chapter on Bluebeard. It is about how women have Bluebeards of their own, real or internal, that keep them from being curious, from asking the right questions, from listening to their instincts. It often manifests itself in dreams or stories as the scary man. Re-reading this with the metaphor of the closet in my mind, I remembered a meditation we did in voice class that explored our psyche. The teacher said that if we came face to face with a monster, imagine a door and put him behind it. I raised my hand and asked "But what good will that do? The monster is still there, only now you can't see him." The class laughed at my seemingly literal take at this metaphor. When I told the story later to my family, my aunt took it seriously, saying that I should have a knowledgeable guide help me face the monster. This is the aunt who, when I was a child, suggested Woman Who Runs with the Wolves in the first place.

I wonder if the monster all along has been my Bluebeard, this impulse inside me that kept me afraid of listening to myself and my impulses. Well, I am using the key now, opening the closet, and seeing what is inside.