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May 28, 2007That constipation of the mindthey call Writer’s Block.IS THERE REALLY SUCH A THING?No idea what I want to, or will, write about. Don’t stop to think. Don’t question, “what am I going to write about,” just write. Observe the Beat philosophy First Thought, Best Thought and record whatever comes to mind. Right here, right now and don’t pause for the best word. Just let it come. Freewriting, they call it.I recall a guidebook by Peter Elbow named (I’ll be right back) Writing Without Teachers, which advises keeping a freewriting diary, composed by writing ten minutes a day without stopping. This is an interesting tool whether you’re a writer or not. It can be a therapeutic aide as well. Things bubble to the surface, uncensored. “THINK OF THE DIFFERENCEbetween speaking and writing,” says Elbow. “Writing has the advantage of permitting more editing. But that’s it downfall too. Almost everybody interposes a massive and complicated series of editings between the time words start to be born into consciousness and when they finally come of the end of the pencil or typewriter [copyright 1973] onto the page. … But it’s not just ‘mistakes’ or ‘bad writing’ we edit as we write. We also edit unacceptable thoughts and feelings…”I tried this for a week in 1995 (hold on a minute), but lost interest because any forced regime grows tiresome and there were others things to “actually” write. But here’s what I came out with 12 years ago. OCTOBER 22, 1995O magenta pen of screaming mouths, found don’t recall where but found again in airport, Portland, waiting on Philly flight thinking I had no pen, forced to buy ugly glitter-gold tourist pen emblazoned with PORTLAND in black, $2.49, dismayed by inappropriateness of style. Found once again on my bedside table as I embark on P. Elbow’s freewriting exercises. But all that’s beside the point—the pen point—when Brahms accompanies my meandering thoughts, turning them to Brahms. When listening to the Brahms clarinet quintet, the clarinet suddenly becomes one’s favorite instrument. I’ve said that before, and also complained about the $2.49 pen before—in writing, again at the Portland airport waiting for my flight to the disastrous Philly Christmas that was so unsatisfying I redid the trip in April. Want to get it right this time. Why the jumps between Brahms and the pens? Why stop to write about the implement of writing one wants to implement to write about Brahms with? There’s always a supraconsciousness going on for me about the process and act of writing, perhaps more so than the theme of the writing itself—which is made difficult by the pain in my carpel-tunneled wrist as I strive to write without stopping for ten straight minutes, as P. Elbow suggests. This pen, the magenta pen of screaming mouths, I can’t wait to put down, the better to listen to Brahms, about whom I’d wanted to write, with the screaming magenta pen. (240 words) OCTOBER 23, 1995The supraconsciousness of the act of writing—it’s as if the words won’t speak for themselves, as if a voice on high—my own—must narrate to me even as I write them. Why always this obsession with writing, with writing, and not the things writ? Ideas, visions, colors, people, travel, movement, love, grandeur, splendor, hope, pride, passion, are these not the matter, the gray matter, the heart of the matter? What is the matter? As in problem, as in materiel. What is the matter of which I write, and what is the matter about writing it? Simply, simply, discuss things, explore things, discover things, reveal things, delve, dive, drive to the heart of the matter. Gray Matter. How long ago was it that I named and designed the journal for my high school fiction writing class—Gray Matter—featuring a drawing of a brain with medulla oblongata trailing, if the tail to the spinal cord that be called. Can’t recall. I’m not an encyclopedia, just a memory. I will grow old doing things by hand, by heart. I will look up the answer in a book. I will write the answer in a book. I will ask myself, in a book, what is the matter? And somehow, I’ll answer.(I shorted myself two minutes above. Why? Because I felt I had come to the end. I liked the progression to where I led myself. And, I left it at that. As I will leave this at that.) (247 words) OCTOBER 24, 1995Can’t sleep, no can’t sleep—not as in unable to but not allowed to. Can’t sleep, no can’t sleep due to prison sentence of straining my wrist filling this page, or is it can’t sleep ‘cause there’s things on my mind? And what would those things be—leftover feelings, ragged loose ends, fear and anxiety, nail-biting still to accomplish, or what have you. In any event, I am not sleeping, I am writing, writing, killing my hand already, because for one who wants to live a life by hand, it hurts. Writing hurts. And though I am drugged, yes, drugged and will soon have to sleep, I am not sleeping; I am writing, while Helen, lovely Helen heads south on the Coast Starlight—no doubt, at midnight, sleeping. Automatic thinking—free thinking, free writing, automatic writing has brought me to this place—bed—where I intend to and soon will sleep, and I want to. I want to restart my life by sleeping on it and waking on it. Jump-start me, hot-wire me. Get me going, if you please, before it’s too late. And it is late, but before I sleep I press this mess out of myself. Writing, writing, writing, what’s it all about? It’s about having the freedom to do it. Time. Money. Pencils. Paper. Ideas. Vision. Can’t sleep through life lest I miss it. Therefore set the alarm, the idea alarm, the light that goes on over my head, as I turn this light out, for now. (246 words) OCTOBER 25, 1995Don’t bother to review past writings, the past is past and the words are writ. What comes to mind, an open closet of dross and excess that must be flossed from my life. So much cleaning up to do, so much to reject. A fire hose would do the trick. Flush out the mind and the house. Start over! Do over! Simply, simplify. It’s not just a motto but a life-saver. Ask yourself of every object, as the Shakers do—is it necessary; is it useful? But I believe the third leg of the stool is missing from their equation. They purport—do not make it unless it is functional and useful. But if it is both functional and useful, then do not hesitate to make it beautiful. I believe in beauty as the function and use of some items, those we call objects d’art. Beauty is the end in itself. Beauty is the inspiration for beauty. One makes a beautiful object to create beauty and the function and use of the object is beauty. Beauty to satisfy the soul, to nourish the eyes, to delight the senses. A sculptural shape may not have a use, per se, but it is used to beautify. A room and a life. I have a vision of a shape I’d like to create: an elongated pretzel, a pretzel skewed and untwisted and pulled to an elegant shape. Looking something like Brancusi, something like a flame. The function, to house beauty; the use, to fill the need for beauty. The beauty of it—an end in itself. (261 words) OCTOBER 26, 1995Is thought magic? I ask myself, what comes to mind, and I tell myself, astonishment that the words and ideas well up by themselves. Where do we call them out of? They appear like a city shrouded in mist that’s burning off. Better the mist burns off than the synapses burn out. Burning to get to work. Silly clean-up, sweep-up and organize projects occupying me with busy work. That is what I spent so many years doing, regardless of being paid for it. Here—here’s something to occupy your time, as if time were a void to be filled lest we were sucked in. Have eight hours you don’t know how to fill? Or don’t want to call upon yourself to fill? People tell me, in a month or two you’ll be bored, you’ll be looking for work again, you’ll be back. Why do they think a life is so narrow that one mind can’t conspire to make it satisfying? People need support systems—I’m no exception—but simply placing oneself in a milieu, a workplace, where one has a function and a use, goes only so far. Again, there is the human need for beauty and balance that I believe many must suffocate as not practical. It happened to me. So many wrong turns, so many bad decisions while I tried to make it on my own. And now I have no choice. It’s that magic that will be my support system, the magic that brings beauty and substance out of the shadows and into the light. (256 words) OCTOBER 29, 1995I hate these freewriting things, so I skipped a couple of nights out of protest so as to not force myself into an oppressive routine, but I figure at this point, any written word is better than none, so I am back, not with a vengeance, but merely back. Back. The word brings to mind the scar I have on my back from lipoma removal surgery this summer, an intimate detail of my physiognomy that I await having questioned by a man. It’s in view in certain clothes like my Speedo or a tank top, but the situation that would most likely invite comment is a naked encounter with someone who has the right to discuss my body. Men are on my mind again, but should I admit them to my body? I want men in my life, but as soon as I admit to the intimacy of the physical, I must either admit or deny other intimacies. It is there I must really ask myself, do I want to go all the way? I’m not too good at this off-the-top-of-the-head thing. Poised in thought is how I’ve spent much of my life, and the role of men in it really gives me pause. Poised and paused in thought—a free-writing turn of phrase. I do like being looked at by admiring male eyes. It does turn me on. The one that follows with his hands must show some initiative. Make it known he can take a risk by posing a question, or making a statement. A statement/a question. Something as simple as, I’ve noticed you around the gym; what’s your name? If only a man knew how grateful a woman can be for a simple, respectful show of interest! (287 words) OCTOBER 30, 1995If I were mowing a churchyard lawn, I would feel the squish of the damp earth beneath the soles of my shoes, I would perhaps take some in through my shoe leather. I would feel the moisture seep into my socks, I would look behind me for the mushed-in grass of my footprints, I would walk through the brisk November air dappled with sudden sun blazing on the wet leaves shaking on the trees, floating to the ground, clinging to the grass, clogging the curbs. I would breathe in wet, cool air. But I’m not outside. I’m comfy on my couch, my be-slippered feet tucked under my butt, papers books and pens strewn around like I’m some kind of scholar instead of a two-bit wannabe writer staving off anxiety with a yellow legal pad. A lawnmower. I could take that more than sitting at a desk, people wanting things. Isn’t that the crux of what I don’t want? People wanting things of me. (164 words) (Half of the page of this was torn off, unknown why.) FAST-FORWARD TO TODAYMAY 26, 2007: My Living RoomTen-minute countdown: My bare feet with their fashion-black nails and silver toe rings, are getting cold. But Zzyzzy is not inclined to curl up on them; he is perched atop the sofa grooming himself. Cats look so busy, so occupied when they do this. Don’t bother me! I’m at work here. At this overcast windy moment, my bay windows rattle my brain. Piles of pillows that accumulate with the inevitability of dust bunnies are stacked on the floor, including many handmade ones from my clever friend Saand. She has a way with beauty. She can turn something functional and useful into something of beauty. Old buttons become a crocheted-metal necklace. Old ties make an interesting triangular pillow. Used computer elements become earrings. Magazine tear-outs a collaged greeting card. I want to be the alchemist of my own life. I want to create something of beauty out of a laptop keyboard. A work of art fashioned from a liquid crystal screen, a virtual sheet of paper, memory chips, the soft silver key-pads of my PowerBook G4, and gray matter. It is contained in its latency within this silver sliver of a constant companion and I will coax it out into the living world in the form of ideas arranged on a page. The pages will accumulate into a book you can hold in your hand, and if that isn’t magic then I’m no wizard. (234 words) MAY 26, 2007: Later, Afternoon LatteOK, what’s in front of me? Surrounded as usual by the din and distractions of Café International, I observe the spring chickens striding in with their bare midriffs and legs, so confident and proud of their youth and beauty, they wear it like a crown. They bear the cocky smile of those who assert their natural right to be the center of attention. The truly regal attract attention without seeking it, from the force and strength of their core being, not because they’re wearing it on the outside. SOME PEOPLE DON’T KNOWhow to wear their beauty; instead it wears them. It boasts a look-at-me cockiness. How often I have thought as someone struts by, “Your clothes are wearing you.” (I later heard this line uttered by Meg Ryan in the awful “Joe vs. the Volcano.”) My own style of dress I think of as Thrift Store Chic. Ninety percent of my clothes are used (or “recycled” to put the green spin on it). I remember once before seeing a shrink for the first time putting together an outfit that ultimately made me look “put together,” like arranging a mannequin in a chair for presentation. A white silk jacket with no shirt, held together with a wide belt, and narrow black pants. Exactly, held together. Because I want to impress a shrink I am consulting for my problems, how together I am! THE DEEPEST BEAUTYis that which evolves in your own perception as you know someone over a period of time. You perhaps wouldn’t notice it at first, but it comes with knowing someone’s face well, maybe even better than he or she knows it, from observing the moods and habits of that face, the brightening of the eyes, the impish one-sided smile, the laugh lines and thought wrinkles, the subtle movement of the whole, that living entity that can’t be captured in a photograph. Such as the one below. (I wrote all these words while not knowing what I wanted to, or would, write about.)
The author may not look like much, but wait’ll you get a load of her inner beauty ------------------------------------------------------------ A fresh green bouquet
Freewriting: Think of it as ExLax for the mind copyright Alexandra Jones 2007 |
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