When I meet new people and have a chance to talk for a while, at a dinner party or a weekend event, it is not uncommon for someone ask me if I write after I've told a few stories. Or they will tell me I should write, sometimes rather insistently. I honestly don't know what makes strangers and new acquaintances jump to this conclusion with alarming consistency and frequency. But why should I give them weight over people who know me better? On the phone with my mom recently she told me something amusing that had happened to her and added "You can use that in a story." She takes it for granted that I should write, often says "Oh, that should be a children's book" or "Well after you write your first one you should do another one about THAT." Ok, mothers often see their children's gifts and perhaps that is more accurate than strangers or perhaps wildly less so, but it should count for something, she's known me a long time.
Before college was over my best friend wrote a list of "Ten Stories You Have to Write," stories I'd told her over the years, some only to her, some that she heard me re-tell many times. I still have that piece of paper she handed me, along with the promise that I'd dedicate a book to her and the burning desire in my whole body that this would come true.
I write the most when I am in love. Or in lust. Or in pursuit. I write best when it is all three of these things at once.
I had a lover who inspired me to fill up her mail box and I wrote so many words to her that I can never have back. I don't want them back, but I want that need to write, to spread ink, to show myself in words and poems, other people's poems and my own.
Of course it has come up in therapy, in other situations where people I trust and love recommend that I journal, blog, spit-it out, Write Down the Bones, all that good stuff. And I know that they are right and I am always always resistant. Even if I make a start it usually dries up quickly. When packing to move across the country I lost count of how many blank journals I found with only a few pages in front filled in. Each start was at a momentous occasion, a watershed, during travel, a really low point or a one so giddy my handwriting seemed to fly off the page. There's even this discarded blog, an old livejournal account somewhere and other attempts to use digital gadgetry to lure me into opening the faucets.
The most persuasive case anybody ever made was my Dominant. Early in our relationship she threatened to "top a book out of me" and it sort of aches that she didn't because that probably would have worked better than anything I've ever tried. But she did give me an amazing gift: a daily writing assignment. Looking back it shames me to think of how I mistreated this assignment, all the ones I missed, especially early on. The way I woefully missed the mark when she asked me to make a gift of a book presentation of them to her - I really only completed that one in time for us to break up and only half of them where there. The assignment was to take a picture of my body in the course of my day and write for ten minutes and send it to her, no edits. Mostly the picture was the challenge. I grew to love looking for a new angle, the right light, an interesting texture for the background. I learned my body all over by seeing it this way, in parts and pieces and at arms length. Sitting down to write for ten minutes was usually not very hard because it was so easy to sit down with my phone or at the keyboard and summon Her presence and just want to spill my words all over Her boots, to type my guts out and show them to Her. Waiting for a response was sometimes easy and sometimes the hardest thing in the world. Trying not to slip into a depressive tone for multiple days on end when I was struggling with The Black Dog was hard, but held up a mirror to my emotional state that often prompted me to shift gears. The biggest challenge was usually stopping at ten minutes. I would often start a story that was bigger than would be properly addressed in ten minutes and think that I should put the bones aside to flesh out later. But I never did.
When the relationship ended it was the assignment I mourned every day almost as much as the loss of Her as my Miss. I guess it was my most tangible, vibrant daily connection with Her so it's too wrapped up to differentiate really. But I still mourn the loss of that ear, that reader, those eyes on my pictures and words, her insightful feedback and knowing remarks. Even as I dreaded the harder critiques, the sometime silences or the misfires I always wanted to hear what she thought, how she saw me, what it sparked in her. And I tried, afterwards, to replace this ritual with another, to find another way to keep gushing out my words and images, to keep my eyes sharp for things to write about. But it didn't work. I really just missed Her too much no matter how I tried to shift it and the words went away and it hurt to be sharply observant when she was the one I wanted to tell. It's been a while now, over a year since it ended, but writing this is making me cry as I type because it has a sharpness to it that has dulled but remains true. I want. I want an ear, a set of eyes I trust and admire, and if it isn't her I need there to be a charge, a need to share myself that up until now I've only found with a lover.
This week something rather amazing and unexpected happened. The content can get set aside for another time but I discovered a friend's beautiful, luminescent blog and it made me ache to write. I wanted to write back to her and I wanted to read everything and yes I'm tipsy with attraction to her but the blog really sent me over the edge. She quotes some of my favorite poems, writers, books and talks about ones I don't know yet. I don't know her very well but reading her blog was like spending thoughtful time with her, in her space, in a way which made me want read more and to write back. So tonight I'm going to try for the alchemy of turning this first blush of longing into a desire to write for myself. Do I want her to read it? Yes. Am I going to send it to her tonight? No. Am I going to be tempted to edit, temper, muddy things so that it fits a courtship I would like to pursue? Yes, and I might even give into that temptation a bit, but I want to write mostly to let this pressure out of my chest, to let these words out of my fingers, to let it go more than to grab hold.
So that's a hell of a post and I know it took longer than ten minutes. But this is my own assignment to myself, to turn the faucets on, to not less these new stories go undocumented, to be gentle with myself when I miss and allow generous make-up policies but to stay with it at least until the year turns and see what it feels like to let these beating wings fly.
