When feeling "flighty," ungrounded, and disconnected from your body, try this*:
Write down the answers to these questions right now:
What do I hear?
What do I smell?
What do I taste, or remember tasting right now?
What are the sensations on my skin?
What do I see?
What does all of this make you remember? think about? wish for?
Write two pages (at least) based on being in the moment are in in right now. What do you discover?
*This exercise is taken from Beth Baruch Joselow's book Writing Without the Muse via Courtney Putnam's blog http://thehealingnest.blogspot.com/
I hear my snuffly nose after another sneeze that seems to be the harbinger of another spring day in the northwest. I hear the cars going by in a wet street and I hear the refrigerator going on louder than before. I think it needs some adjusting. I hear the ringing in my ears, company to everything in my life.
I don't smell much at all. Orange peel is suggested but not a real dominant odor like it will be after I peel the orange to eat. My snuffly nose may be the reason for so little odiferous connection.
I can taste my unbrushed teeth. Milk breath from taking my pills. I want to taste an oreo cookie. I remember the taste of BBQ pork sandwich from last night. Using that slow cooker for the first time was a success.
I don't stop to feel skin sensations very often. Not when alone, anyway. So that takes some real concentration. I think I avoid focusing on my body which so often may feel pain. But let's see, a skin sensation. I feel the tap of my fingers on the computer keys. I feel my cords being pressed into the flesh of my legs where the computer sits on my lap. I feel the soft fleece of my new REI jacket/sweater on the back of my neck. I don't have much skin uncovered. My face, hands, ears and that's about it. That skin feels chilled by the cool air of this spring morning.
I see the words on this text page on the desktop of my computer. It is laid upon another page that has the words of Courtney's blog which also shows her smiling face. Under that is peeking out a page from an email that Lisa sent saying "how about 11..." I see on the desktop a thumbnail of a hummingbird, the Hard Drive icon, a folder icon for auction and pix, a text thumbnail of my facts about Canada. Under all that I see a pink and deep purple starry backdrop for my desktop. And the menus across the top... Apple, TextEdit, File, Edit, Format, Window, Help. Icons for time, network, screen, sound, energy, American Flag, Wed, 11:13 AM , bluetooth off icon and Sherlock. Out the corner of my left eye sits a table with the dishes from my eaten breakfast and a yogurt container of the uneaten Huckleberry Tillamook Yogurt with Flax Borage Oil mixed in it, my other glasses, a phone handset, a dvd remote and a orange hand cream squeezable tube. My favorite thing on this table is the coaster tile that I had made by Cafe Press using one of my rose pictures. What I see is me sitting on the sofa in a happy state of mind typing words and loving it.
What all of this makes me remember is being with Lisa at Yellow Point and playing with our writing and drawing in our little cabin by the sea. The Herring and our love for nature and each other. I love to write but there are very few people who really understand that the writing is just a form of expression. It means I am alive. I don't ever need to share my writing to have it be real. But when I do share it with someone who understands this, it feels like I become even more me than before.
I wish for more moments like that but I don't expect them. When I read a story that someone wrote who mentions a truth beyond our everyday experiences, I feel like I am connected to that author in a way that only another writer can be connected. Then I feel grateful that I am a person who loves words, who loves writing and who loves living in the midst of a place where words often are not enough.
Another sneeze and I am brought back into my body. I wonder if that is one reason I like writing so much. Is it because it takes me out of a body that has so many limitations? In my mind there are no limits at all. I probably enjoy reading and watching movies for the same reason. All of it requires endurance however. The mind and the body have that in common. My mind can only endure so much and then I find I must go back to nature as far as I can. By nature I mean to get as simple as I can. Step away from everything mental or physical. Kind of zen I guess. A walk outside. A sit on the deck watching the American goldfinches coming to the feeder. A hot bath. So it's not getting OUT of my mind so much as limiting what goes IN. After too many movies, books, conversations, radio, cds, dvds, I take a break and veg as much as possible.
I am guessing that I have probably filled a page. "Write two pages based on the moment you are in right now." Pulling myself back to this very moment, I must say that my life might be a bit too easy right now to have much to write about. I read Maupin's book about Michael Tolliver in more recent times and in it he said not to try to write a biography and worry about embellishing too much. Just go ahead and write your story and say it's fiction. There you go. It fixes that whole problem of having to back up your embellished, misremembered life. I am all for this. I will keep writing about what I have experienced but I will write the stories as fiction. Then I don't have to be sweating over getting it all accurate. So where I am right this minute is sitting in Renton, Washington, a place I neither hate nor love. But I am still with the man I want to be with and I still have me and my pen and ink. In the end, that may be all there is I can count on. So even if my memory fails me, and I am pretty sure it will, it will not matter. Just keep writing down the words. One at a time. I think I will now write a poem about climbing up a mountain, like my dear friend, Lisa, does. I climb my own mountains each and every day when I decide to get out of bed, one more time. Just like recovering alcoholics like say, "one day at a time."
1 comment:
Wow.
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