APR
2016 21
2016 21
Let’s try to pull all the strands of my brain together
and focus on the Catbirds for the next hour, earn an x. Feeling a good energy today, perhaps it’s the full moon. Let’s do a huge sweep of the arm on everything else. Mind is jumpy that is fine, just bring it back. Yesterday I was able to state clearly to myself: what we are doing here is rewriting the book and we are on Chapter 1. Clarity is good but I do not want chronology to become a burden. I am not in it for speed, we did speed last time and we ended up with this current draft,…
"You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest?”
“What is it, then?”
“The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness. [...]You are so tired through and through because a good half of what you do here in this organization has nothing to do with your true powers, or the place you have reached in your life. You are only half here, and half here will kill you after a while. You need something to which you can give your full powers. You know what that is; I don’t have to tell you.”
He didn’t have to tell me. Brother David knew I wanted my work to be my poetry.
“Go on,” I said.
“You are like Rilke’s Swan in his awkward waddling across the ground; the swan doesn’t cure his awkwardness by beating himself on the back, by moving faster, or by trying to organize himself better. He does it by moving toward the elemental water where he belongs. It is the simple contact with the water that gives him grace and presence. You only have to touch the elemental waters in your own life, and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself down into those waters from the ground on which you stand, and that can be hard. Particularly if you think you might drown.”
“What is it, then?”
“The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness. [...]You are so tired through and through because a good half of what you do here in this organization has nothing to do with your true powers, or the place you have reached in your life. You are only half here, and half here will kill you after a while. You need something to which you can give your full powers. You know what that is; I don’t have to tell you.”
He didn’t have to tell me. Brother David knew I wanted my work to be my poetry.
“Go on,” I said.
“You are like Rilke’s Swan in his awkward waddling across the ground; the swan doesn’t cure his awkwardness by beating himself on the back, by moving faster, or by trying to organize himself better. He does it by moving toward the elemental water where he belongs. It is the simple contact with the water that gives him grace and presence. You only have to touch the elemental waters in your own life, and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself down into those waters from the ground on which you stand, and that can be hard. Particularly if you think you might drown.”
APR
2016 13
2016 13
I wrote 600 words
despite not going straight in but looking at shoes and buying concert tickets first instead. And despite all the distractions I came back and I picked up the thread of where I was yesterday and I wrote and I got a red x. And I think I would like to try to train myself a little in this. What if I had six hours? How much of it could I spend writing? The time constraint has been helpful in ways but what if I had six hours and also the discipline to use them? That would be amazing. That is…
APR
2016 12
2016 12
Feeling blown about by impulses, succumbing to them.
Feeling like I can’t get anything done. Like even the red x’s aren’t enough. Like some people have published many things and I can’t publish one. (I saw a web ad for a new book by Kate Dicamillo, children’s book author, and my impression is: SHE’S prolific, and about my age, wtf, but I just googled her and she’s 52 and published her first book, by the looks of it, 16 years ago, so she was only three years younger than me when she started. So let’s calm down.) Part of this is because though yes I have accumulated three…
APR
2016 11
2016 11
I said I was going to write but I have not
actually written. True, I sat with the energy of the book for a bit and that is something. What if I actually wrote some words? Let’s do the just-fucking-write thing where we write blindly and fast, it almost always nets something. Going going going in.
APR
2016 09
2016 09
Trying to get myself to do the Catbirds.
Last pomodoro of the morning, then I can be free. It is hard to re-enter. The inertia of all of those blank days with no x’s. Let’s start again. Get out the notes. Write 200 words on anything. One pomodoro earns the x. And then we can go outside.
But why shouldn’t my work be hard? Almost everybody’s work is hard. One is distracted by this notion that there is such a thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I’m not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff, to come up with my payload.
Something about learning to question
the cultural and familial assumption of the supremacy of the left brain. The rational, logical stuff, which I definitely have, I mean that’s the side that’s good at language. But to come to terms with the fact that I might be EVEN MORE right brained. And to allow it. And to stand up for it. And defend it. Permission to be an artist. Still a very big deal.
So, today.
I suppose we can’t let the kids watch ALL DAY, I mean I would probably have it in me to do so, but let’s use the time I have right now wisely. Let’s start with the Catbirds. Let’s work on it as though it is finish-able, just for a fun thought exercise, yes? As though the work on it is finite and there is an end to it and the more work I do right now is less that I have to do later and is all the closer to the end goal, which is to truly finish it. Let’s…