My mom loved mysteries. She would go to our favorite used book seller, Mrs Beverly Potter at the Title Page back then in a little apartment space behind the main strip of stores, stacked and stuffed with finds. I would go an imagine myself a reader, buying books I did not read, but pretended I would. I am always surprised when I do finish anything, which is more often now (though I still tell myself I won't or don't). The critic in me says, you aren't a reader, or a writer, so why pretend. At this, I go back to Dave Eggers Critic Essay, because I love it! I also want to live in the wake of his initiative towards doing and being and following what feels relevant and alive in anyone's story. I also sit with Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts."
This week, I have instituted a habit or practice in regards to my faith project around my inner critic. I sent him to Florida or Jail, I'm not sure, but either way he will have plenty to judge there, while I give myself the benefit of ideas, dreams, and assume positive intent within myself no matter what. This means when I begin to question if I will write anything good, or be likable to others or frown in the mirror (as it is midday and I have not touched my hair), I decide to laugh about it just being quirky me. I can get dressed if I decide to now, but whatever I do is ok.
The truth I love reading and I am beginning to revisit my writing and what matters to me. I do have stories in this moment that matter. I just finished a novella called "Sorry, Wrong Number," by Lucille Fletcher and Allan Ullman that deals with a couples life and death in its last five hours. The husband, Henry marries Leona, a multi-multimillionaire, but he wants this idea of having much more of his own real money to prove himself to everyone. He deals drugs and makes good money, but keeps gambling it away in hopes of making much more. Then his wife pretends to be deathly ill, as her control over the facade of a happy life crumbles. In the end someone in New York City might be murdered at 11:15 pm. She could put the pieces together and survive it, she could tell someone her husband hired the hit man to get her money, but that would shatter the 10 year dreamy marriage story. In the end she can't move (you are trying to lift her and make her get out of her bed), can't yell out the window (all you want is for her to make a loud noise), so she lets her facade become her end (sorry I guess I told you the ending).
But my choices are quite different. I want to jump out of bed at 6:30 AM and read my bible. I keep going to bed thinking, I can take tomorrow off, but I wait up without an alarm and don't want to keep sleeping. I am running and breathing and relating and feeling possibilities. For today, I am grateful for new habits and am contemplating what other experiments I should add into my life project!!!
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