Paying Attention

I don't know how a writer can operate without going out as a reporter.  Think of the feast that's out there. ~Tom Wolfe

One of my favorite childhood books was Harriet the Spy.  In addition to her role as a spy, Harriet was a budding writer, and her trademark spy notebook was the means of capturing not only clues, but writing ideas.  Naturally, I got a spy notebook of my own, with Harriet's warning "Do not open on pain of death!" scrawled across the cover.  I religiously copied down all sorts of information about my classmates ("Jennifer Hardy has catsup on her mouth already - did she eat hot dogs for breakfast?") and observations about the life ("People are ridiculously mean to one another - why can't we all get along?")

The world is a feast of writing ideas if you train yourself to look for them.  Get your own version of a "spy notebook" and carry it with you in purse or pocket.  Sit in a coffee shop for an hour on a Saturday morning.  Take note of people and allow yourself to wonder about them.  The young woman in the corner with her stacks of papers and notes - what is she studying? what does she hope to do with her life?  The elderly couple holding hands in a back booth - have they been happily married for 50 years, or is it a new relationship coming to flower unexpectedly at this late stage of life?  Surreptitiously eavesdrop on conversations - borrow a snippet and use it as the opening line for a short sketch, poem, or story.

There are thousands of ideas out there for the writer who knows how to pay attention.

 

The Joy of Snow

We had more snow today - lots more snow, actually, and while you might think that would send me into paroxysms of despair, it was actually a rather nice day. I love snow days.  Always have.  I love being able to stay inside all day, with nobody really expecting me to do anything else but be safe and warm and off the street.  I love the sense of hunkering down and cozying up, love to while away the extra time with books, magazines, hot tea, and warm puppies.

So it might seem odd, in a winter where I've done nothing but complain about cold and snow, to say I wish tomorrow were a snow day too.

But I do.

How about you?  Did you have a snow day today?  Did you love it?

Present and Accounted For

If you've been out there in cyberspace calling my name over the past 10 days, I'm finally raising my hand and saying "Present!" At least partly.

If you've been reading this space very often this winter, you know I've been struggling a bit.  Part of me feels guilty for sharing that struggle here in the open, but then this is my place to talk about life in general and my own in particular.  Lately, I'm working to find the meaning in either one.

Last night I attended a dinner concert and was seated at the table with a couple whose children were members of the high school choir I accompanied years ago.  The mother, a woman in her mid to late 40's, was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer about three years ago.  She's been fighting valiantly to save her own life - she's a hospice nurse, of all the ironies, and has no misconceptions about her chances of longevity.  However, she still has a 13 year old daughter at home, and is doing her best to give that girl a mother for as long as possible.

She speaks frankly and comfortably about death. "If I'm still here next year" she commented matter of factly, referring to her younger daughter's entrance into high school.  I overheard her talking about writing cards and letters to all her children, to be opened at specific times of their lives - weddings, graduations, childbirth.  "At those times when they would need to have their mother around,"  she says.

Looking at her - and she looks perfectly healthy and well, by the way - I was struck dumb by her courage.  I wanted to feel inspired by it, but all I could feel was demoralized.  Because in her place, I felt as if I'd never have that gumption or determination to live.   I just don't think I want it bad enough to fight that hard.

Probably I'm wrong - probably if the doctor told me tomorrow that I'd  be dead within the year, I'd start Googling medical trials all over the world, sign up for the most intensive course of therapy offered, barter my soul for the privilege of staying alive just one more day.  God knows, I have at least half a dozen friends and acquaintances doing that very thing as we speak.

But there's something about my life in particular these days that doesn't seem worth the effort.  In the great roll call of life, I may be accounted for, but I don't feel as if I'm present.

Where am I, then?

Living in a small cottage somewhere on the Atlantic coast, walking the beach every day with my dogs, eating fresh clams for dinner, spending my days writing, reading, listening to the waves lap against the shore.

Driving a convertible down the Pacific Coast Highway, meeting friends for coffee by the bay, playing music, having drinks on the terrace as the sun sets.

Sitting on the front porch of my house in Small Town, USA, drinking iced tea, talking to friends and neighbors as they meander past on their way to the market.

But I'm so far from any of these places, from any of the dreams I once had for my life, that it actually hurts sometimes to be present in this one.

I opened a new book earlier today, and the frontispiece had this line from a Mary Oliver poem as an epigraph~

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

How do I go forward into the next phase of life, the one I'm so very fortunate to have an opportunity to plan?  This time  it has to be what I need - not because someone expects it of me, someone needs me, someone wants me to do it.  I have never in my life made a choice that wasn't largely based on the needs or expectations of someone else.  Perhaps that's why I'm not present in my own life - because it isn't mine. It's my parents, my husbands, my sons - even my friends and my boss'.

It's not mine.

At some point in my wild and precious future, when my name is called  I want to jump out of my seat and shout "Here!"

I don't know how to make that happen.  But I hope I don't have to die trying.

Chaos Theory

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection

and order and meaning, it is also awe

and reverence and mystery and magic.

~Toni Morrison

Sometimes it seems we're bombarded with stimuli from the moment we awake.  Cell phones and internet, texts and instant messages, television and iPods, people's voices and dogs barking - the constant barrage of things calling for our attention can make us feel as if our heads are literally spinning around.

Taking time to write each day forces us to slow down and find a quiet place within ourselves so we can make sense of all the bombastic noise and disturbance around us.  Sometimes that means letting all the chaotic thoughts spill out of our heads onto the page, willy nilly, so we can start to make sense of it.  Because there's usually a nugget of gold, of something pure and meaningful begging to be sifted from the mass confusion that is modern life.

You just have to be still and find it.

Let the chaos of your life spill onto the page.  Then take a moment and look for the nugget of pure gold that helps you make sense of it all.