I am writing a book. And it's sort of hard because I spend my days writing, and not sharing it at all. And I have always loved show and tell day at school, and so I thought I'd share a few crumbs here and there. Plus it makes me brave. It will help me get ready for the big and final publishing. The more uncomfortable I can make myself in the face of fear, the stronger I become. What I will be sharing are just tiiiiiiny little snippets from a big book. Because that's how me and courage roll. Little by little. Slow and steady.
Here are my morning pages from today:
I wake up angry. Pissed off at the stories in my skin for not writing themselves. I’ve always been a defiant one, and so the act of sitting down to surrender to sovereign syntax feels sinful. Writing takes obedience. I’m not sure I have a salt grain of that in my skull.
I can feel this baby moving inside, I can feel her legs that will one day walk across the coals of a bitter reality stretching under my ribs, and I know I am running out of time. I keep a shoebox of my mother’s old mix tapes shoved in my trunk. They’re cassettes with things like “Summer with Jeremiah 1990” written in faded ink across peeling labels. I can’t talk to my Mother but when I play these songs I feel like I can listen to her. Like I am curled up on an old wool blanket in a backyard somewhere, hearing her reminisce about long drives to the beach, and the way her salty strands got tangled in someone else’s fingertips. Before the baby, I’d open my apartment window, sit on the sill, smoke a joint and let the music of my Mother’s memories fill my lungs with the inky smoke. When I’d fall asleep those nights, I’d swear I could feel her tucking me in.
I run to the car, the hot gravel burning the soles of my feet, and find the box. Anything to ease the pain of this last chapter. It is impossible to type and dance at the same time, a fact that proves how evil it all truly is. To sit still and solitary when there are mountains in Mongolia to climb seems to be the very definition of soul level suicide. And yet it is only when I free the words that I am ever really alive.
If only I could cut myself and let the pages pour themselves into pools on the sidewalk.
If only this wasn’t the worst kind of torture.