I’ve spent a week in a cocoon of perpetual sickness, infected and listening to Lady Gaga on repeat. Reading and cataloging my books on Good Reads. Drinking tea and eating small. Minimal. Trying to keep everything minimal.
I picked up a journal and ripped out it’s insides. They are for taking apart and putting back together. I have piles and piles of paper and I sat between those piles and piles of paper and pulled out the ones that fit just right. I glued my fingertips to the broken signature seams and filled the gaps in on the parts of my life I rather forget. I laid in the white space but I wasn’t sure what to write. What to say.
Evolution.
You are never ready.
Ten years ago I read Nicole Blackman’sBlood Sugar. It changed my life. I don’t believe in idols, but, if I did, she would be mine. I would sew those words into everything I own and push them under my skin. It is an obvious choice. You see it now, don’t you?
In the white space I laid out, the only thing I knew to write was what she once told us, lost in both a song and language. I steadied my hand in my best writing I wrote the words (Clear and more concise here. Clear and easier to read).
And I thought about how much of my life is planning. How much of my life is trying to get things straight to be done right. How much of my life is waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Even when I think I am not waiting, I am still waiting. How much I need a reminder not to wait. Not to be afraid. Not to plan again and again and again.
Under it I wrote my list for my evolution. What do I need next. I breathed on the page and the hidden things I didn’t want to admit to myself about the way I need to be living my life appeared on the page. The tiny steps not written down anywhere else, words drawn in on top of pictures of graffiti-ed buildings and damask patterns.
The truth is, I do not know where I want to go from here, but that needs to be okay. I need to be easier on myself. The truth is, I won’t know how to prepare because I do not know what is coming. None of us do. But everyday, each one of us is going on and on and on and on.
My small goals are small. They fit in my tiny cups of water. It is all I can do for now. This will have to be okay.
Sometimes, I like to take note from my partners in crime. Today this post idea comes from Lorelle of Phoenix Rising, based on her post, “Why I Want to Be a Writer“.
I have never not written.
I will never not write.
I have an obsession with all the places I have yet to be. An obsession with all the places that have yet to exist. It’s a certain obsession I can’t put aside. I can’t forget about. My mind creates places and then creates people to put inside those places. I give them tiny lives and I watch them surround one another, intersecting and falling away from one another. It is pattern play.
I have always had stories, I have always fictionalized myself. There was no part in my lifeline where I decided to be a writer. I tried to shrug it off and push it aside, but it always comes back. It doesn’t haunt, but it’s this perpetual feeling of heaviness in my body. If it is not what I am doing, I feel wrong. Not incomplete, but wrong. Incorrect. As if I am going against the matter inside of me.
I am a writer because I believe I have too much inside of me and it has to get out, out, out. Because when someone else sees it and it makes sense to them, I have a sense of understanding. Of peace. I made a connection. Writing is my connector. Connector, connector. Every story is a connection, every line and word and paragraph. I like the puzzle of it. I like putting it together. There are subtle details and revelations I didn’t know at the beginning that keep me at it. If at the end I put everything together in a tight, neat collection of words then I am pleased. It is how I know I am a writer, because I will keep at it.
Everything, everything goes together. Words, situations, characters, settings. Stories emerge. Everything goes together, me being a writer. Stories will emerge.
Re/Inspiration for a sick day.
Only a few things have been able to pull me out from my bed today,
So I’m keeping it short and quick:
1. Star Trek. Sure, any favourite movie would do, but, it’s been a few months since I’ve last seen it. Pop in that DVD and cuddle up on the couch. Oh, boys and their space adventures, getting my brain all buzzing. Little Spock is giving you the thumbs up because it’s worth it. Now I’m in the mood for shiny-shiny-shiny all over again.
2. My new lamp. A bit of wonder from an Ikea shopping trip this last week. The city streets on this one keep reminding me to sit down and contemplate new bits of this year’s literary project. Cities, cities, cities.
3. Stevie Nicks. As a kid I was told I was going to grow up to be just like her. At least, that’s what my mom said. All those pretty, flowing black outfits. She’s just magical. Even better on a sick but sunny day.
Catcher in the Rye wasn’t my favourite story in high school. That was Shakespeare’s Julius Cesar. No, Catcher in the Rye was my second favourite story in high school. For no real good reason either. Maybe because it was current. It made sense.
To be honest, I can’t remember a thing about it. All I know is that it wasn’t about the end of the world. It wasn’t some techno-thriller. It wasn’t about anything I really cared about. There was no city bigger than life itself, there was only some human depravity. There was nothing more than some young kid’s tendencies, his lies and whatever else was going on. It was good, I’m sure. Worthy of praise, but, I can’t remember a damn thing about it.
Well, except for one thing.
I have that plain white covered copy. The one everyone read in class. I bought that copy because that is how I know the book to look like. No other cover will make sense. It’s white. Catcher in the Rye is the book with the white cover. On page 122 of the white copy, somewhere near the top, Salinger references something that the moment I read it, it clicked. The most mundane thing ever.
Or you’d just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them…
He referenced a gasoline rainbow. It’s the only thing I remember about the story. At fifteen, I thought it was the prettiest image I had ever read in the written word, tucked in there, especially for me to find. Me, the one who didn’t belong, didn’t fit in, the one the idea of the entire book should have probably appealed to. It was the one thing I took away from the 73,404 words in the entire thing. It was mine and I’ve never let it go, as nonsensical and minor as it is.
J.D. Salinger didn’t write about the apocalypse, but even someone like me found something in Catcher in the Rye. For that, he’ll be missed.
Salinger, there’s always been a gasoline rainbow in every cityscape I’ve ever written. Thank you.
The first re/INSPIRATION for this year! Three weeks too late! Please don’t frown, I’ve got some scattered good things here that are inspiring me this week. As usual, for those who don’t come here often, re/INSPIRATION happens (every) Wednesday and is just a small collection of the things that I find inspirational this week. You should know the drill by now.
Jared Lewis drew a nice collection of Snow Crash characters. While I’ve always been partial to Hiro Protagonist, His Y.T. made me want to change my clothes and do something. I have a need for that jacket! With his great attention to detail and totally cool attitude, every time I pass by Jared’s blog I pull my computer out and stare at her. It’s time to make some words.
The Things We Learn Along the Way :: “Maybe I shouldn’t draw my inspiration from Quantum Mechanics and marine biology, or black hole theories and National Geographic documentaries. But I do”. My partner in crime Magen hits a vertebrae on the spine of academia vs. writing.
I’ve been reading through my favourite little guilty pleasure, Junjo Romantica, lately. Three interconnected love stories, each with their own bits of problems and wonder. Sometimes I just need something so simple. Minimal. It’s a reminder to weave love stories back into my writing life.
Lastly, Totally haunting and lovely, Soap&Skin keeps popping up when I least expect it and tossing me around. I feel like a little boat on choppy waters. I don’t want to feel any other way.
How are you feeling lately?
What’s giving you the inspiration shakes?
