We are snowed in again.

Brett and Boo played in the snow with the neighbors and I painted tiny:

I’m going to spend the afternoon writing and see what comes out.  Things I don’t like to write about?  Shoes. And random objects. But sometimes you have to stretch yourself. And…sometimes a class helps when you are lazy like me when it comes to writing about things you don’t want to write about. I need accountability.

An ode to my Dr. Martens:

Black, round, cord laces wrapped around the ankle falling into the deep creases created from many steps. 8 eyelets on each side but only 6 are ever used. Tongue marked with criss-crossedover-under lacing, wearing down permanent grooves into the leather. The signature yellow stitching above the sole. Broken yellow traffic lines. Passing zone. Morse code, queue lines, mind the gap. The translucent gummy soles. Resistant to: OIL FAT ACID PETROL ALKALI. Raven black buttery calf skin. Soft brushed suede on the inside. Ready for combat. Military style. London, Trainspotting, Guy Ritchie. Rugged, rebellious, battered. Pearl Jam. Idgie Threadgoode. Made in Vietnam. A lifted toe. Spirited. Dark. Wrinkled creases below the toe. Furrowed brows. Grunge. The more imperfect the better. 

If you want to read some amazing writing every Tuesday you should subscribe to my friend Maya Stein’s 10-line Tuesday…I look forward to it each week. She inspires me:

“In June 2005, I began a weekly poetry practice. The goal was simple: to write a 10-line poem every Tuesday. The purpose was to have a manageable deadline to create new work and a dedicated platform to share it. I sent my first 10-line Tuesday poem to about 200 people. More than eight years and almost 4,500 lines later, I continue to write “10-line Tuesday” each week, and these poems now go out to nearly 1,100 people around the world.”  You can read the backlog of her 10-line poems here. 

My day today…writing with my new little buddy Max. It’s wet and cold outside.

What am I writing? Who knows. I’m all over the place. But I write for myself. Writing makes me see things. And maybe one day someone will read it all.  Maybe some of it will end up in a digital landfill.  Maybe I’ll print it all out one day and save it for my daughter.  All the writing and letters my mother saved for me I think are priceless.

I’m branching out more this year. I’m stretching myself to new things and I like the discipline and deadlines they bring. I joined a virtual book club, I am starting Patti Digh’s Verb Tribe this week, and I am in a church small group where we dive deeper into each week’s sermon.  I’ve surrounded myself with people I admire and inspire…who also challenge me to think and write deeper.  And it’s all very interesting, for a reason hard to explain.

I love Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life…except for where she says “write as if you are dying.”  Well, I am dying…we are all dying if you stretch the timeline out long enough. I think I can quote Fight Club here and it’s appropriate: This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time. And that’s not supposed to be depressing, at least I don’t read it that way. I think it’s freedom.

There is a distant goal. It changes along the way. I reserve the right to change my mind about any and all writing projects I’m working on. In the past few years I’ve been asked to write creative books, DIY books but my heart wouldn’t have been in those.  And that in a nutshell is why I blog…to release those things freely as soon as those projects are finished so I can move on quickly to the next.  The creative projects? And the exploring and wandering? I like how Henry Miller described it:

“I turn to painting when I can no longer write. Painting refreshes and restores me. It enables me to forget that I am temporarily unable to write. So I paint while the reservoir replenishes itself.”

Some think I’m crazy for turning down opportunity but it wasn’t hard for me to say no:

Them: But you’ll be published! 
Me: And I won’t enjoy one second of doing it!

I think you have to weed and prune out all which doesn’t speak to your soul.

Holy crap I wish you could listen to what I heard in church yesterday.  I could see people reeling afterwards at the magnitude of it. A church member, Debi,  spoke about how we find ourselves with boundaries we didn’t set for ourselves: sickness, isolation, financial difficulties, but we know that God has only good intended for us:  When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at will change.  

Writing changes the way that I look at things. I make connections and I find strength and redemption in painful things. And I will not live a life of numbness. I did for too long with ro-bo-tic-dis-con-tent. But all of that was so I could get here.  One day life can just open up, it cracks open from the pressure.  Let. it. crack. There is meaning in all of it. And the sun is going to rise again tomorrow no matter who you are, or where you live.  Write about it.

And just so I can say I quoted Fight Club more than once (I haven’t seen the movie in years, but dang it was good, even though I do not condone violence or fighting.):

The things you own end up owning you.

You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your f–king khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.

Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned.

You wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.

Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life.

Inspiration is everywhere, even in Fight Club. I think the Super Pretzel I’m eating right now is pretty darn inspiring, inspiration dipped in mustard.

If you can’t find any inspiration go hang out with a 4-year-old. Yesterday we gave our neighbors a ride to church. 4-year-old Natalie was waiting by the mailbox 10 minutes early for us. As we drove towards church she said cheerfully:

“Look at all the beautiful things outside today! The leaves are blowing, and the trees are growing.”

Her view was of an unkempt hillside on the maintenance side of the hospital. That. is. enthusiasm.

And then today I offered to watch her and her sister for a few hours while their mom went to a doctor’s appointment. And Natalie told me that she’d been to Florida once…and when I said really? She answered: YES. Florida is for REAL. 

You guys: Florida is for REAL!

And Emerson was right:

Good grief, all I was going to share was the Annie Dillard quote and somehow I ended up on Fight Club.

Tick.

Tock.

The deep secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world, and why not finally carry that secret out with our bodies into the living rooms and porches, backyards and grocery stores? Let the whole thing flower: the poem and the person writing the poem. And let us always be kind in this world.

-Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

My friend Sarah lovingly nudged me to read something I’d written in front of the group at LIAV Camp last week. I didn’t plan on it.  I was actually originally adamantly against it. I was there to just absorb and observe and meet the world halfway.  But she picked up the post-it note that I needed to add my name to the list, and then she delivered it for me.  I decided to pick something from the Cancer Chronicles, to make it a tangible ending.  I’d never read any of it aloud before…it would be the first time I’d verbalized it.  And if it wasn’t for her encouragement I never would have gotten up there to read. I said yes. Thank you Sarah.

 photo by Lynn Walsh

Writing is not therapy, though it many have a therapeutic effect. You don’t discover that you write because of lack of love and then quit, as you might in therapy discover that you eat chocolate as a love substitute and, seeing the reason, stop (if you’re lucky) eating Hershey’s chocolate bars and hot fudge. Writing is deeper than therapy. You write through your pain, and even your suffering must be written out and let go of.

In writing class painful things come up – the death of a husband, throwing the ashes of a dead baby into a river, a woman going blind. The students read the pieces they just wrote and I tell them they can cry if they need to but to remember to continue to read. We pause when they are finished and then go on to the next person, not because we ignore their suffering – we acknowledge it – because writing is the aim. It is an opportunity to take the emotions we have felt many times and give them light, color, and a story. We can transform anger into steaming red tulips and sorrow into an old alley full of squirrels in the half light of November.

-Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

The first thing I was handed when I got to camp was a sticker that said “this is a safe place”…and it was.  I barely got through the first paragraph before being unable to talk. And the crowd was clapping and shouting encouragement. And I finished. And it gave my illness light, color and a story.  And then I tore up my paper and let the pieces float gently one by one into the trashcan.

Patti Digh opened camp by saying, “I realize what I do is to create open space for people to show up.” I love that.  I want to create spaces where people can show up too.

That will be my new and forever mission in life.

This is what I read:

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