the dream life

Writing is writing

I was thinking that if I just sat still and didn't say anything you wouldn't notice that my NaNoWriMo word count hasn't gone up. I can't help but notice, however. My big plan for plunging into a free-wheelin' romp with story has led me instead down dimly lit hallway of quiet and my seeming inability to get into this thing and play has forced me to acknowledge that something is going on with my fiction writing self.

I'm not talking about being blocked. I know what it is to be blocked as a writer. When I'm blocked - I'm still attached. I crave to write but my fears and second guesses get the best of me, or I can't find the well of creative energy from which to draw, or I experience confusion about what it is that I'm seeking to do, or I believe in the illusion that there's not enough time. The place I'm in now is not about being blocked.

It's like this: I'm standing here and through a window, I can look into another room as the fiction writing part of myself sitting in a chair doing nothing but I can't get her attention and I'm not linked to her emotionally in any way. She's just sitting there and though it puzzles me that  she has no interest in writing, It doesn't really bother me.

Dethrone yourself; put another person there

Affirm the Charter for Compassion.

Buy pie

Tracy is going to have plenty of pie to eat this Thanksgiving. I just bought an apple and pumpkin pie from Moveable Feast--and that's non-vegan food I can feel good about. Please consider doing the same. I can think of no more worthy a cause. You can get your pies frozen or baked and for each pie sold, Moveable Feast can feed someone for a week. For the work Moveable Feast does in my community, I am truly thankful.

Night light

When it comes to sleeping, Tracy and I have different styles. When I'm ready to sleep, I like it pitch black--the kind of dark that makes you feel funny when you open your eyes because you can't see anything. Tracy likes a little light. I fall asleep within seconds of getting under the covers. Tracy needs some wind down time. We have come to an interesting compromise which is to put in a movie at bedtime. The light of television doesn't bother me as much as the light of...lights, and if the movie is chosen correctly and the volume set just right, it sort mumbles over there in the corner and doesn't interfere with me too much.

Not too long ago, I learned about the pleasure of dollar store DVDs. They're also sold at places like Big Lots and Carolina Pottery, usually up near the check out lane. Sometimes they're movies you've heard of but usually they're actors you've heard of starring in movies that you can't even find out about if you try to look them up on imdb. 

These gems, it turns out, are perfect bedtime movies. They tend to be freaky by nature, often plotless or seemingly filmed without a script. They are screw ball comedies one minute and tragedies the next. Often there is unexpected full frontal nudity or at least one or two the leads walking around in bras and slips with mussed up hair. 

Last night's dollar store movie was a Goldie Hawn flick called Lovers and Liars. If you see this at the Dollar Tree, put it in your basket. You won't be sorry (although you may, at times, feel your sanity slipping.) And beware of strange - not bad - but strange dreams.

Outward

It's the time of the year when social engagements take center stage. I glanced at the calendar today and noticed that my next two weekends are completely booked up. These are all joyous events and I'm looking forward to them but it hasn't always been that I could look at such scheduling and feel good about it.

I've always thought of myself as someone who needs a lot of down time, alone time, time that is controlled by me and does not have to adhere to anyone else's expectation about when I'm supposed to be where, when I have to wake up or when I have to go to sleep.

I've always thought of myself as an introvert and I've always assumed this is just the way I am. Lately, I've felt a slight shift toward a more extroverted personality. I'm still one to cancel plans at the last minute because I need to be by myself, but I'm doing more out in the world these days and responding to a social impulse more than I have in the recent past.

I loved this post at Halfway to Normal and I was struck by a comment made by one of the unravelling participants last week. She defined introversion and extroversion not as inclinations of personality but like this- an introvert draws energy from being alone while and extrovert draws energy from being with others. That makes a lot of sense to me. 

I like the idea that the pendulum of what feeds me is swinging. I like the idea that it can swing. 

While I do sense parts of myself that I think of as essential to my identity, I also know that I'm always changing and evolving. My life responds to my desire and my desire shifts. I'm not locked in to anything.

NaBloPoMo.

Hoop girl

On Sunday morning, we were at my brother and sister in law’s house. We don’t have a fenced in yard so we often take the liberty of setting our dog free in their yard. The girls were out on the porch eating lunch (Woody got in the way of some tomato soup and now has stains on his legs. Yes, our dog is stained) and telling us stories (Emme: Willie was walking around on one foot, one foot. Me: Willie was walking around on one foot? Emme: Uh-huh. Ava: I think what she means is that Willie was walking three paws and holding one paw up. Emme: Uh-huh, because he wanted to go to the vet.) and Ava, who was wearing this rocking cute pair of rhinestone studded jeans, came down into the yard and started spinning her hula hoop.

Now, I was present the first time Ava ever saw a hula hoop; it was last year at a Halloween party. Learning to hoop was frustrating for her. Because she was at a party, in front of a lot of people, she kept her cool pretty well, but I could see that it upset her everytime the hoop hit the ground. She kept trying and kept trying and she, being a child and therefore sort of bendy, was actually pretty good at it by the end of the party, but it was labor for her and she dropped the hoop a lot. This summer, I watched her practice and remarked at how much better she was than the last time I’d seen her. Yesterday morning, she wasn’t even like the same person. The hoop was an extension of her. She appeared to spin it around her waist effortlessly and she could spin it and spin it and spin it on and on. She could do tricky things with her arms, she could make the hoop slow down and speed up. It was really cool to watch.

Poem

blessing the boats

-Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary's)

may the tide 

that is entering even now 

the lip of our understanding 

carry you out 

beyond the face of fear 

may you kiss 

the wind then turn from it 

certain that it will 

love your back    may you 

open your eyes to water 

water waving forever 

and may you in your innocence 

sail through this to that

This day

This day, this day just slipped away.

I went for a walk this morning.

I sat for a while on the front porch with Woody and Tracy while the wind blew dry leaves down the street.

We went to the Co-op for groceries.

I practiced hooping for a bit.

Friday fire, pt. 2

Friday fire

I'm gonna catch up this weekend

This is normally the stage of NaNoWriMo when I decide I am too far behind to catch up and quit, but that's not how it's gonna go this time. No, I didn't write tonight. I went to a girl's night instead it was great and fun and wonderful and I'm so glad I went. Yes, my word count suffered, but I did write some dialogue. Really good dialogue about homemade jelly beans and red light bulbs.

NaBloPoMo.

Writing badly is its own reward

Today, I got stuck. I put my protagonist at a happy hour with her best friend drinking a Manhattan with an extra cherry and I couldn’t think of what to do next. They even talked about the weather – that’s how bad it was. Not knowing what to do next stopped me. Can’t do it, I thought. Crazy to even try. Who writes a novel in a month? Insane.

Then, I gently reminded myself that I had permission to write a bad novel. The worst. My characters could talk about the weather for five pages if need be because no one is ever going to see this thing. (Thank you for the kind offer, Jen, but Kapow would faint if you could see how awful this thing is.)

Twenty years or so ago a well knownish poet (whose name I’ve forgotten) held a stack of my poems in her hand and compared them to the gunk that she wrote every morning before getting down to the task of actual writing. “Just get this sort of stuff out of the way,” she said. I’m not sure I’ve learned yet how to get that sort of stuff out of the way but it occurs to me that writing for NaNoWriMo is like that.

Blessings

Sometimes my clothes make me happy. Today is one of those times. I bought a dress in Louisville a couple of weeks ago and I wore it for the first time today. It’s soft and has these little velvet pockets and I’m really happy with it even thought the sales person who took my money said, “We almost sent these dresses back because they looked nothing like the photo…so I’m glad you like it.” Yeah, well, I do like it.

I also like the floor length 70’s number I bought for five bucks at the same store where the same clerk kept insisting that surely I was purchasing it to serve as my Halloween costume. No, I assured him, I was buying it because it was a sweet five dollar dress that I planned to wear in my normal non-Halloween life.

Speaking of Halloween, I still have glitter on my boots and that makes me happy, too.

This was my massage day. I seriously can’t think of any ill that a good massage can’t put right. Well, except vertigo maybe.

I did take Tracy to the doctor yesterday and found out that his severe vertigo isn’t caused by any other physical condition (good to know). He got some meds that seem to be doing the trick, thankfully. Can you imagine spinning for a week unable to tell up from down? The doc told him the condition would resolve itself in four to six weeks, or he could take a pill and get better faster. Mmmhmmm. We got that pill.

I may have mentioned before that I go through periods of my life thinking that I want to go to nursing school. What I’m specifically interested in is working for hospice, but I’ve always had this weird nagging thing about nursing even though my logical mind knows that I would mostly hate going through the things nurses have to endure and that I would philosophically disagree with much of what I’d be asked to do. Taking Tracy to the doctor’s office nipped my latest bout of nurse-thoughts. As soon as I walked in that place I was flooded with the understanding that nope, this is not for me.

Making characters do stuff

It’s the end of the second day of NaNoWriMo and I'm about 700 words behind my word count goal. I have made a couple of illuminating discoveries, though. It’s clear to me now just how much I restrict myself during the creative process in an attempt to do things “well.” Even having given myself permission to write badly, the only goal being put words on page, I have found that I stop and sputter and reconsider. I fight myself. This alone is great motivation for me to continue, to seek that place of abandon. The creative process must, as some point, be wild and untamed and it troubles me that I’ve moved so far away from that place.

One of my biggest deficits as a writer is my tendency to become obsessed with the inner workings of my characters’ emotions, thoughts and memories at the exclusion of plot. I often forget to have them do things or sometimes even verbally interact with one another.

Writing for NaNoWriMo, with the intention of working quickly, has forced me into a whole new arena where action is the thing. I have to make my characters do stuff and I don’t have time to consider or weigh their actions. This is good for me and surprisingly strange-feeling. I do love, when I relax and let myself enjoy it, the anticipation of truly not knowing what my characters are going to do and say next. I did no prep work for this so it’s just unfolding as I go.

Tracy just asked me, "What's your novel about?"

I have no idea.

The first day of November

This was one of those Halloweens. Chill in the air, swirl of leaves, rich gorgeous sunset, beautiful children in furry feet, surprise visits from friends. So perfect. 

I had plenty of excuses for costuming.

And I got to see this:

Bits; pieces

I was deeply moved by this piece on sacred activism and particularly glad to know about Buddhist Global Relief.

Make a commitment to always have some small change in one of your pockets so you can always give something to one of the growing thousands of homeless in our streets. I learned this habit as a child from my grandmother in India, and over the years it has brought me into contact with some extraordinary people. One in particular I would like to celebrate here. Outside a temple in South India, there was a long line of desolate looking beggars and among them a very old woman, dressed in a ragged and filthy sari with no shoes. I gave her what I had on me, about a dollar. I watched in amazement as she walked unsteadily over to the nearest food-stand, bought herself a handful of chapatis, broke them carefully in two, and shared them with a dog as emaciated as she was. If we all knew what that penniless old beggar knew, the hundreds of children who have died of starvation while you were reading this would still be alive.

I’m trying out this LinkWithin thing. I’m not sure yet if I’ll keep it. For one thing, I don’t know if I care to see all those older posts and many of them with formatting issues to boot (and sometimes it links to deleted posts, which is confusing). For another thing, I kinda hoped the links would be to related content, not just randomly generated (it seems less random now). On the other hand, it looks neat. What do you think?

There’s also a favorites feature now, for when you really, really love something. (I’ll try to write something loveable soon, I promise.)

Tonight Thriller takes over the streets of Lexington and I will be performing as a hoop ghoul with March Madness. It feels extra special to be a part of it this year, in honor of Michael. I’m sad that Tracy won’t be with us (which also means I won’t have pictures).

Saturday night we’re at Busters for the Beaux Arts Fall Ball with Man Man. I’m going to be dressed as a sinister fairy, possibly wingless (but don’t worry, I can teleport.)

Also in Lexington on Halloween night, the Carnegie Center’s Miss Havisham party at the Thomas January House.

The Inner Light Festival is back at Lexington Center this weekend and Tammy is leading a past life regression on Sunday. (She’s so good.)

11:11 sightings are plentiful. I’m seeing those beautiful numbers everywhere I look.

Your mind is a troublemaker.

Love Letter to the Universe.

Don’t you love it when the veil is thin?

I’m still looking for that hat with ears. Leopard print, please.

Remarkable creatures

I was unable to attend Remarkable Creatures author Sean Carroll’s presentation on Wednesday night, but I did get to hear him answer questions during an informal session this afternoon. He’s a terrifically smart man, obviously--a scientist--but I was struck by his ability to speak honestly in a way that was neither lofty nor condescending. As I listened to faculty and students pose questions about gene sequencing and other topics that I can neither spell nor pronounce, I was impressed with Carroll’s ability to discuss these topics in a clear and loving way.

Yes, loving.

We are made of science and live the lives we live because of science and I respect that, but often when I listen to scientists speak, I’m cold. Often I feel they leave out or step around essential life ingredients and those ingredients are so important to me, I just stop listening to whatever it is they’re saying. Not so with Carroll, who seemed passionate about his work not only because of facts and discoveries but also because of mystery and dreams.

Early

Sometimes Woody has to go out early in the morning, hours before we would normally get up. We always take him out before bed but sometimes, we think, he rushes through his business because he knows that the faster he gets back inside, the faster he gets his bedtime Greenie and he really loves that thing.

He is sweet and gentle about waking us up. Usually, he just gets out of bed and sits at the top of the stairs, waiting to be magically transported down to the door. Even though he doesn’t make any noise, we wake up when he does this. We’re on his wavelength or he sends us psychic messages or something.

Usually, it’s Tracy who takes him, but Tracy has been incapacitated by vertigo for the past two days, so this morning, when Woody woke up a little before five, I carried him down and suited him up (that’s what we call putting on his harness and leash) and took him out in my pajamas and bare feet. My shoes were upstairs and it just didn’t seem worth it to me to go and get them.

This is how it is with me early in the morning.

As much as I don’t like losing even one second of precious sleep, I always find there’s something a little bit magical about those early morning trips to the yard. It’s so dark and quiet and the streetlamps are muted amber. Often, there’s the aroma of roasting peanuts from the Smuckers factory. They work around the clock in there, you know.

There’s no traffic, no one moving around, it’s just me and Woody and it’s peaceful and expectant and it feels like the world is a dream except the dream is the reality and what comes next with the getting dressed and scurrying around is actually the unreal thing.

Maybe this is why he does it, because he wants to be out in that place, too, with the crystal air and the glowing leaves and the dew on the grass and everything open and resting.

Words are coming

I’ve never come close to completing a NaNoWriMo project. I tend to start out strong then abandon the whole thing. I’ve decided to embark on this adventure again, however. It feels like a good thing to do, to put words on the page, since I’ve been so out of touch with my fiction writery self lately.

I guess there’s a couple of ways I could go. I could create an outline and map out scenes to be written each day or I could just start writing with daily word count goals (1700 words a day should do it) and let the thing be loose and free-flowing (which means it will probably end up plotless and unreadable, but that’s part of the point of NaNoWriMo, isn’t it?) Knowing me, I’ll go with the second option.

I have considered coming up with a list of qualities that I want the writing to possess, or characters I’d like to develop, or settings I’d like to describe. When I was in high school, I used to do this thing where I’d make lists of people, places and situations on strips of paper then pull a handful out of a hat and write something that included each of the randomly selected items. Maybe I’ll do something like that.

I’m hoping that the crazy goal of writing a novel in a month will free up my head and open the doors to imaginative thinking, which seems to be running a little dry with me lately. Here’s what I’m hoping for: Sparkle. I’m not really looking to make sense or make art with this thing. I just want to feel sparkly.

I’m also considering signing on for NaBloPoMo in November. I figure I almost post here daily anyway and the two projects sort of go hand in hand because I can always post about how the novel writing is going. I’m drawn to the idea because I’m still trying to figure out something about this blog and giving it that sort of attention – telling myself that I’m going to think of something to say every day for a month – might help me get clarity.

Maybe.

Also, I just like to join these things.

If you’re participating in either, please leave a comment and let me know.

Unravelling

I took this picture today as part of Unravelling. I haven't been writing about that project because I don't want to accidentally reveal any of the course's content, but I will say that it's an interesting journey and unravelling a beautiful word that pulls my mind in a variety of directions.

Lately I've been considering the idea of identity. What makes us us?

Lately I've been wondering what it is that lives in my core. What is the light that shines in the most hidden room in my heart? What is essentially me?

I've been wondering what words I would put on a list if I made a list of qualities that described me. 

Is it our desire that makes us who we are or is it what's left when desire is fulfilled?