A father passes by slowly on the street outside. He is teaching his young daughter how to ride a bike. No, a trike. She is very young. She is a chubby little sprite with dark hair and dark eyes. The kind of child thing that always makes me think of me as myself when I was a baby. I have a picture of myself as a baby on my fridge. I'm not sure why. It was the one put in my high school senior yearbook next to my "grownup" photo, and I just kept it.

I wonder if I need to remind myself sometimes that I was a baby. My mother said I was a good baby. That she would come into my room in the middle of the night over and over to check my windows and make sure they were locked because I was such a beautiful baby that she was sure someone would come in and steal me. I have seen prettier babies but I am too much like my mother not to understand her and to know that I would check my baby's windows over and over again.

The father and his daughter are stopped in my driveway. She has fallen again. I have seen them pass by  for the past three days, and always she has fallen in my driveway. I wonder if it is dangerous. She does not cry, but it takes her a while to pick herself back up. He smiles at her. I think. She smiles back too, I think. I guess at this because I have taken off my glasses. The world is painted in watercolor and vision strain.

They continue on. I wonder if they will be back tomorrow. I pretend they will, even though I will not be there to see them. She will fall again. She will not cry, and he will help her back up. They will continue on. I try not to think of myself as a baby, myself with a baby. A baby with dark hair who is very serious and does not cry often. A baby who pretends to read to herself.

I have half a dozen tabs on my browser open dedicated to freelance writing. I try not to think of those either. They are reminders of what I have and have not gotten done today. I am not sure anymore what falls into either category. The world blurs. I had gone into my office and opened the window to sit at my typewriter and smoke furiously on my last cigarette. I sat with my fingers at the stanza of a half finished poem and did not type anything. I realized that  with the window open the sound of frantic keys bashing would be loud. Too loud for the neighborhood street at late afternoon, when the leafblowers have finally been laid to rest. I do not want to scare the little girl on her tricycle.

I decide instead that the poem is finished, that I am finished for today. Instead I turn back to my computer, the life of the endless screen. I open up another tab. I start typing again.

It's like pedaling on a stationary bike that has one too many loose bolts. A hesitation, an uncertainty, the drive to move even though I'm not sure where I'm headed. Probably nowhere. Maybe to a sudden halt, or the ground. Maybe unexpectedly forward. I don't have a pitch or a cover letter or even a short bio to attach to today. Or yesterday, or the day before. Perhaps tomorrow, but not likely. Tomorrow is back to the long day with marked hours, the day filled with people and determined small talk and cash and credit changing hands.

There is laughter now, echoing from somewhere down the street. Maybe the little girl. Maybe another family come out to play. They are everywhere and nowhere, leading lives on the other side of my window, in their houses and mortgages. Leading lives on channels I'm not tuned into. I don't even own a TV.

There's another blank page lying in wait just ahead, and I don't know what's at the end of it. I don't even know if there is an end of it. I live in the age of endless scrolling, of infinite browser tabs. Hyperlinks and media, always on to the next best thing. Or at least the next thing. I open up another browser tab. Split the difference between two blank pages.

I check the driveway before I close the front window. Empty. But everywhere everything is superimposed. A trike tumped over. A baby that hasn't existed for twenty odd years. Tomorrow's time card. And again.

I lock the window. I go back and check it again, just in case someone is trying to steal me. No one is.

The Calm of Cleaning // The False Coin of Domesticity

When I must be by myself but I cannot stand to be with myself. An attempt to subdue, to tame my surroundings, as if polishing into line could make them feel more right, more like mine. Slowly I edge things into their rightful places, and try not to think about what rightful place might mean.

I let my mind run feral. I have tried to soothe it, to sink it into mindful dishwashing or sculpting a poem with thought-words. But it growls. It snaps. It threatens to run me over with chaos. So I let the leash go. I cannot make myself consider what this means, to witness almost helplessly the constant fluctuation between tidy and shambles. To be wiping the coffee stains off the counter for the 1,058th time. Two days from now it will be the 1,059th and there's nothing wrong with that.

But I can't shake that for a substantial handful of reasons my time to make this place a home has passed, that I'm just biding it here now. And as this liminal occupation of space stretches bigger and bigger, it mounts into more of a frustration, feels more and more like a waste. Even though I can't remember, or don't know, what it feels like to be on either side of the threshold, I've been sitting here for so long.

I fold another shirt. Put another book back on the shelf, Creative Mythology by Joseph Campbell. What does it mean to want a home. Dishes go in the cabinet. It is everything about the space and nothing. Take also into consideration sharing it with another human being, one who has an entirely different set of feelings and non-feelings for this same place, and the potentiality of a new one. Empty the dustpan.

Cleaning makes me feel better, and also worse. Like I am tricking myself, it's all a big lullaby. One day mabye I will tame my taming, turn procrastination into zen. That day is not today.

I implode a space. Construct. The only thing living inside this space is myself. The human fallacy. Arrogance of environment mutation. A roof, then walls, then airtight gaskets. Perfection. We breed our own bacteria in a closed environment. I exhale my own shit. My taste buds have adapted to attune finely to denial. My tongue still thinks air is empty space. I hold my breath for as long as I can and do not correct it.  Skin is falling apart every second. It's a habit. Not to be wasted, we decant it like fine wine. We plate  it and spear the flakes on the tiniest of toothpicks. I compare the vintages of myself. None is better. I have an infinite supply. You walk around like you invented circles to pace in. I try not to think of the bottom of your shoe. You hoard my skin there.  I have decided to forgive. My heart still thinks forgiveness is empty space. I hold my breath for as long as I can and do not correct it.  Silence. Another human fallacy. I touch my skin with my skin. Can we remember it.

Why We Write

You know, I enjoy browsing the community of creative writers. Well, you know, some parts. I like to hear the stories and worries and successes of writers I like, and even writers I don't, or don't know. Then occasionally I'll read something like this article in the Huffington Post by J.J. Colagrande, "The Agony of Creative Writing". And I just can't help but roll my eyes.

Because it's not that it's not true. A writer's life is more than nine times out of ten not the most profitable one in the world. And yes it can be incredibly difficult to find your audience. But... duh? I feel like I've read this exact article dozens of times before. There are more readers! There are more (way more) writers! But the readers read short easy to consume things!  But I'm confused on the whys and wherefores of this transmission of information.

To what audience is this article directed? Other writers? Because I feel like anyone that's dipped so much as a toe into the field is well aware of any to all of these points. And those who have gone to school for Creative Writing have definitely encountered the blankly enthusiastic / enthusiastically blank stares in response to their answer to "So what do you do? "followed by "Oh so you're going to teach?" possibly having to endure the sniping of more "practical" minded family members about how are they ever going to support themselves writing pah. So they know.

Is it directed at readers, alerting them to the plight of the intrepid yet piteous writer? But are their attention spans even long enough to get through the whole article, much less inspire them to pick up and consume some literary work of several thousand plus words-- not even mentioning things like (gasp) metaphor.

I support bringing attention to the plight of writers, I guess, I'm just not entirely convinced that there is a plight? Am I aiming my writing towards the "masses" or the "choir" of other writers? Maybe I don't know, and is that a problem? (For every article I've seen that's exactly like Colagrande's, though, I've seen at least one and a half more lashing out at how insular and incestuous the writing community is, so I guess it can be considered a problem, at lease in some eyes. Everything can be considered a problem though if you're trying hard enough. So there's that.

"But writers knew this, no? Creative writers [hopefully] understood that they were entering into a life of constant rejection and stiff competition; no money for a really long time; an arduous and lonely process of creation and revision that never gets easy; a lifestyle where no one cares if they ever write again; a world where everything gets in the way of writing, including those who love and support them the most; plus, the wackiest business on the planet -- publishing -- gutted by the digital age, where networking appears more important than creating, where writers exhaust themselves promoting work, if lucky enough to find a publisher and agent. Writers understand a minute fraction of adults who read are tuned into the literary arts, yet they carry on. They've learned firsthand that "luck" and "who you know" often trump talent and effort, but they carry on. And they comprehend that the literary arts are drawing the small stick in the reading revolution, yet so what. Like Charlton Heston with a shotgun, you can yank the keyboard from their cold, dead hands."

Ah, do I detect a hint of snark there, Colagrande?

I just am really not sure what this guy is trying to tell me, or what he's trying to tell other people about what my life is like, or if he's trying to tell me about what my life is like?

Do I appreciate this support? Even if it feels a little underminey? If I'm being mocked, either he's doing it wrong or I'm doing it wrong.

I don't really mourn the fact that people, my peers, who were never going to voluntarily pick up a book anyway are gluttonizing Twitter and various newsfeeds. Yes, it bogs down my own consumption of the wider text-based world sometimes, but I'm not writing for them. I was never writing for them, and I will never aim to. Nor, on the other hand, will I force their faces into my writing as it is, for all of our sakes. My writing, hopefully, does not differ for my audience or lack thereof-- my explanation (if there is one) very well might, but I try to keep original generation as an entirely separate thing. I, for one, am reading other creative writers, some kind of on the far-out end of the branch. They can write for me if they feel like it, or if they don't, or if they don't care. That's fine. I'll be here to read it. And that in turn inspires what I write. Which they may read. Etc. I am absolutely okay with all of this cycle for some reason.

Point is, this really isn't the kind of article about the struggles of the creative writer or what have you that I want to read. I just want more, especially if the writer is a supporter of creative production and consumption. There's no real life being pointed to here but  lack of reception, no personality or vivacity to the so-determined soul of the writer. Except I suppose for the mental image of Charlton Heston with a shotgun. And maybe that then is his buried point? We can fight to stay read or even be relevant, but what do we lose by persisting through such desolate adverse circumstances? Character, face, spirit? Feh.

Or maybe I'm looking an honest if bland kudos too far in the mouth.

No compromise! Viva le genreless symbol of ennui!

Non-Redaction

And, hilariously, I find myself immediately wanting to delete my last post. For shame. For disgust at how manufactured an plodding it feels. At my vulgarity for posting it on the Facebooks.

But I'm not!

For the sake of honesty. Of laziness, perhaps. To keep it up as a reminded of the progress of standing still. If I write about anxiety enough, I will become more eloquent at it, no?

Scribspo

I've been giving a lot of thought (and therefore, of course, a lot of anxiety) to shaping the place where my writing comes from. Not necessarily what I write about, though that could very well end up being part of that, but what drives me to write. Or, to be more specific slash meta about it, what drives me to diving me to write. And also the fear of the lack of said driving.

A podcast I listen to, "Stuff Mom Never Told You", recently did an episode "Is fitspo unhealthy for women?" Fitspo consisting mainly those pictures on Pinterest etc of all of those beautifully lit uber-scuplted lady abdominals dripping in sweat, exhorting you to go workout NOW and push yourself HARDER. Often they're overlaid with some kind of text to this effect. Some of it is pretty regular motivational poster stuff, like the quotation from T. Roosevelt, "Nothing worth having was ever achieved without effort" (Now picturing Teddy ogling some sweaty girls) or "Be Active Get Sweat Feel Great Repeat" mild exercise propaganda. Fine. But then you get into the territory [oh dear god I just accidentally closed my browser window and thought I lost all of this, thank the gods for automatic saves] that's questionable and creepy, the compulsive imagecentric-- "so... you'd rather have a bag of chips than look like this?" "Suck it up now so you don't have to suck it in later" "Would you rather be covered in sweat now or covered in clothes at the beach?"    Um.

Basically this trend fad whatever covers motivations on the spectrum from "Well, I guess I would like my body to feel better and work better and this is something that I overall would like to do and is good for me" to "If you TOUCH that potato chip and also do not do 2,483 crunches every day you are a horrible person and no one will ever love or desire you because you are fat and ugly."  Again, um.  Looking at the Pinterest page for Fitspo is starting to make me anxious and depress me ("Fitspiration" is definitely less than inspiring to this particular gal") so I'm going to close it now.

It's this acute shame end of the spectrum I'm interested in, though. Because it's this kind of psychology, the humiliating personal trainer/drill sergeant manufactured voice inside the head, that I feel is uncomfortably similar to how I goad myself into writing. And that's not ok, for basically all the same reasons I feel squicked out looking at the fitspo pictures. It's the wrong reason, the wrong drive to compulsion. (Is there a right drive to compulsion?) Maybe all of these (predominantly) girls just want to do the right thing by themselves and be healthy, but a lot of it smacks of control and self-image issues and a distortion of the idea of who they are and what they could be.

For me, for my writing (I feel just incredibly self-conscious, by the way, talking so much about "my writing", as if it were a thing of cohesion, a fact) this is how it should be: It's not about the results. Well, okay, it is about the results, but it's not exclusively about the results. If the process isn't done "right" (or "rightish" or "in the realm of rightability"), the results are never, ever going to matter, They are never going to be good enough And yes. Ambition and the drive to succeed and to always be better are good things in their own way; I'm sure everyone can agree on that. Teachers and parents etc nod their heads. But this kind of "Do it Do it better and if you are not doing it right now nothing will ever be okay" leads to a screeching negative feedback loop. If I stop writing, the self-shaming doesn't stop, it just gets stronger. Which, of course, instead of encouraging me to pick the pen/keyboard back up, makes me even more reluctant to do so. And so the shaming gets more intense. And on and on.

This isn't how I want to write.

I want to write because I have something to say, or because I want something good to come out of it. Not because not-writing is hell, and writing is crap but slightly less personally foul. I know it's never going to be vomiting sunshine and rainbows (that sounds awful, actually), but I want it to be an overall positive process in my life.

I know that plenty of "successful" and "good" writers have had horribly unhealthy and negative relationships with their writing and their writing process and it's all compulsion etc. I've seen Naked Lunch too. But that's not me, and I have to accept that. As much as I would love to play the Tortured Writer who just burns to pick up a pen with every breath and can't stop no matter how brutal, that's not my role. If I want to keep writing. I'm going to have to be the one that pushes myself to do that, not some mythical inner fire.

So let's just hope I can get away from this culture of shame I have immersed myself in and find some way to do that without causing some kind of neurotic break.

It never seemed so strange

Hello today! It is the first of the month, which is always a nice time to make a grand and symbolic(ish) gesture. My specialty is to-do/goal lists, so here is the one I've been dreaming about so far today:

July!

• Participate in the 750words One Month Challenge. Also, successfully complete it. This basically means I have to write 750 words a day, every day, all month. And hopefully forever, but let's stick to this month for now.
• Read 2+ poems a day. New poems. Reading Canticle by Yusef Komunyakaa over and over again doesn't count. Doesn't matter where they come from, but probably from one of the online lit journal in my bookmarks.
• Write a blog post a week. That's at least four blog posts, and "Oh I'm so awful at updating again" isn't going to cut it. Maybe a well thought out essay... or maybe another list. Lists (and listicles, which I don't even like pronouncing in my head) are still hip these days I hear.
• Go Running. I mean, at least 3 times. Ever. Hey, it's July in Louisiana; I have to set the bar realistically.

Yeah, so nothing earthshattering or anything on the list (though next month will probably look drastically different-- spoilers!). Not going to set a specific goal for writing a certain number of poems per day / week / month, because I'm honestly not sure which of the occasional scribbles in my notebook count as poems anymore, and I'd hate to cheat my count. Am (mildly) determined to get back in that swing. Even the dead can write again.

UPDATE: One day down, 30 to go.

What I have been doing though:

Playing in the neighborhood (and with new cameraphone filters)

  

Being artsy-fartsy with wine and Mordred

Drinking-- and writing about it for DIG Magazine

And nifty cafes are also within my job description

And checking out some bars for them, too

Finally going on vacation and building my wine bottle bookshelf. Also, laundry.

That's life, for now. One word at a time, one day at a time.