So I broke my toe a week ago and am still hobbling in my mind trying to figure out what it means. I am disappointed about not Running the Chicago Marathon (I have an entry if anyone wants it). I wonder at the year of effort and the big dream of a 3 hour finish and how I slowly lost sight of its thrill. I struggled with pushing myself harder and longer and then questioned if I truly liked the three hour long runs at 7:30 pace. I am sad, but almost relieved at being off the hook. So strange to say that and it comes with lots of guilt, because I should want to run fast and I do love the feeling of accomplishment, but this year it has felt like an endless mountain I am stuck beginning over and over again.
So without 90 minutes of running each day, I should have time. I am a bit giddy and alternatively listless about the extra. The giddiness comes on the nights I look for guitar classes to take and envision making large sculptures. The listless moments come when I think about how much time I am surfing for the next adventure and not writing.
I have time to write, right? I have hours. I read Carey Wallace's article on writing and love the concept of writing two hours and how it took her a decade to publish, but she kept at it. What amazed me the most, however, was that she committed to an hour of prayer every day. A whole hour. I tried praying in the parking lot of Cosco yesterday afternoon, while my kids sat asleep in back. I usually do the quick, God, fix my toe, or be with my friend whose mom just died and then I go check, check (I do it in a heartfelt way, because I do mean it, its just that I feel like I don't have time to work on it more). Do I have 60 minutes of requests? Of course, I know prayer is not about requests, that you can pray Psalms and praise and all that, but I think I should actually try it. An hour of prayer, journaling, meditating every day.
The Carey piece inspired me and feels simple, yet gets at the core of real creating, which includes sitting down and waiting. So here I go, day 1.
Address for Article: http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/2778/on-discipline/
Friday, September 14, 2012
Monday, September 03, 2012
100 Posts! WOW
I just noticed this is my 100's blog. That is worth something. I keep at it! That is how I am feeling today as I ponder my inner child (see last entry for more details on her).
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats—the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill—The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it—and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.
This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbours’ respect, but he gained—well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.
What is the essence of my work? Why do I write or even read for that matter? I have been thinking about characters who go on an adventure and come back to a more contented self, those who seek out something bigger and those who shrink inside themselves. That is the choice I have for myself in each moment. What is the power of intention that is outlined in author's words, characters experience? In good stories, there is moment outside oneself, like waking from a moving dream. A moment where we glimpse new possibilities.
I have been reading a novel with a reliable and an unreliable character. At the start, I just accepted the narrators' words until he began hinting at hiding and at a game and hoping people would not find out about his affair, his alibi (he says he thought the police would be stupid - and maybe the reader too?). I keep feeling like I am looking inward, all of the sudden finding things I have hidden and that are now written on my forehead.
Along with the novel mentioned above (that I don't want to give away), I am in the middle of several other novels. By my bed are The Count of Monte Christo, one on Genocide, Zetoun, and To the Lighthouse. On my shelves and in piles along my walls are years of others that eye me saying, you don't know how I end (The What is the What, The Return of the King, Tes of the Durbervielles, Harry Potter, Iris, etc.)
Each feel like my own Gandalf is knocking on my door: (so I just have to include the first bits of The Hobbit)
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats—the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill—The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it—and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.
This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbours’ respect, but he gained—well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.
As I work on, I wonder at the adventure of this season. I contemplate the real endings to each story I start. Will my heroin remain alone and angry or hide from the world. Will she jump into something that requires more then she thinks she can manage. Will the result be love, death, or more adventures? What do I tell my readers? Can I say, "well, you know how it ends right? Just add that part in after you get to my last words, or flip to page 84 for happy and page 92 for sad and page 203, if you like surprises."
I really want the struggle, because that is where I sit, but I hope for you to burst up from under water like the Count and gasp for air and then swim miles and miles, knowing you want to find the treasure (and life past past regret?). So for me it is something new, a painting of this inner child, a finished story I might post here or another class that lets me put my trust in the creator.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Believing Bigger
I have spent a few weeks running many miles and each time I fight for 70 to 80 of them in a week, I seem to lose my stories, my 5 hours a week at the coffee shop writing. Without watching characters evolve, my sense of self as a creator or maybe interpreter fly away. I feel like I am walking in a junk yard of bits and images covered in dust. The dark side of a hot August day without routine is that I dwell in the shadows of cluttered closets and unaccomplished tasks, without the will to do anything about them. My notebooks are full of to dos (or said another way, un-dones). I never researched schools for David, found a class for myself, paid taxes, completed community jobs, painted or sculpted something I envisioned in my head, or completed a story to the point of having it ready to submit.
I am finding that the only help for my malaise is in tiny acts. If I can clean one floor, that is something. To call one person or send one check, helps me get out of bed. Some of the weight of guilt lifts. If I determine a meal and make it, I can feel ok enough as a mom. Just like my two year old who claps at himself after banging on the trash can or blowing into his harmonica, I have to stop every few seconds and cheer myself forward. Look, you did it! I ran a slow 10 mile race, but finished. I called three people. I changed Isaac's sheets, diaper, wet shirt, etc. I took out smelly trash. I am so quick to want to write the opposite list of what I did not do, but will fight it. I can't fight it. I did not plant in my front garden or grocery shop or run yet today. My cousin is coming, I am leaving for a cabin tomorrow and I am responsible for the community picking it's jobs for the next four months.
All that aside, the psych challenge for this week is to figure out what the little girl inside me is like, to draw her picture and once visualized, to give her a present. I am just stunned by this idea and maybe terrified to. I sense that there is a person I ignore inside, because I am afraid to hear and then be unable to help her. I am the adult who avoids the basic needs of this little person. I am going to take a step towards listening to her, by just imaging what she looks like. I can't decide if she will be a tattered one eyed doll or some beautiful dimpled creature with long braids and outstretched arms, but I will attempt to see her.
How do I become whole?
And how do I listen to the three sets of neighborhood kids who for the past ten minutes, have kept knocking on my door asking for balloons. I hate that they want them from me and more that I am responsible for either taking care of or deny them their request. I feel like Scrooge, clutching anything of myself to protect it from evaporating into everything around me.
I just keep praying that God will reveal himself in a big way! I need big, like the taking over of Jericho with instruments or hopping in a boat filled with animals while it sits in the desert. I want to believe that God will do the work, if I can just hear him and respond.
I am finding that the only help for my malaise is in tiny acts. If I can clean one floor, that is something. To call one person or send one check, helps me get out of bed. Some of the weight of guilt lifts. If I determine a meal and make it, I can feel ok enough as a mom. Just like my two year old who claps at himself after banging on the trash can or blowing into his harmonica, I have to stop every few seconds and cheer myself forward. Look, you did it! I ran a slow 10 mile race, but finished. I called three people. I changed Isaac's sheets, diaper, wet shirt, etc. I took out smelly trash. I am so quick to want to write the opposite list of what I did not do, but will fight it. I can't fight it. I did not plant in my front garden or grocery shop or run yet today. My cousin is coming, I am leaving for a cabin tomorrow and I am responsible for the community picking it's jobs for the next four months.
All that aside, the psych challenge for this week is to figure out what the little girl inside me is like, to draw her picture and once visualized, to give her a present. I am just stunned by this idea and maybe terrified to. I sense that there is a person I ignore inside, because I am afraid to hear and then be unable to help her. I am the adult who avoids the basic needs of this little person. I am going to take a step towards listening to her, by just imaging what she looks like. I can't decide if she will be a tattered one eyed doll or some beautiful dimpled creature with long braids and outstretched arms, but I will attempt to see her.
How do I become whole?
And how do I listen to the three sets of neighborhood kids who for the past ten minutes, have kept knocking on my door asking for balloons. I hate that they want them from me and more that I am responsible for either taking care of or deny them their request. I feel like Scrooge, clutching anything of myself to protect it from evaporating into everything around me.
I just keep praying that God will reveal himself in a big way! I need big, like the taking over of Jericho with instruments or hopping in a boat filled with animals while it sits in the desert. I want to believe that God will do the work, if I can just hear him and respond.
Thursday, August 02, 2012
Today I Write
Today is another day. Woke up feeling like a bus hit my head. Isaac ran in saying "need new diaper" (and he really did!). David scratched his belly button and needed a lot of pampering, lotions, Band-Aids an special shirts. He even suggested that a bath might help.
My neighbor made us breakfast and we ate it on her back deck watching the corn grow before our eyes (it is over 6 feet tall). A man in a baseball cap walked through her garden with a dog and we had to tell him not to trample her melons.
David's hard thing from yesterday was that I would be leaving all day today. On top of that, he woke in the night because he dreamed that Andrew and I left him. This morning when my neighbor suggested that I go and sit for a few minutes while she watched the kids, David said, "You don't really want to sit alone, do you? You want to be with me." I get emotional thinking about it. I want to want to always be a happy mom, to write, to run to live, but it all feels like either too little or too much. I can't win.
I committed to 12 weeks of writing and completing 4 short stories. The weeks few by and I feel frantic at how much is not edited. I am sitting for 4 hours to finish four stories. As I sit in a working space, there are books on the wall and all I can think of is how I can avoid writing. I could eat lunch, buy coffee, run, or online shop. But the consequences of avoidance are sheer agony. My body is tense thinking about it all.
I am also doing a running plan where I should be at 78 miles this week. It is Thursday and I have 17.5 complete. I was short 8 last week. Each day I struggle to want to take the time, but also can't not run. I am in that incongruent space between action and stagnation, I suppose like a dog chasing it's tale or a swirl of leaves in a corner. So much energy is taken in just thinking about what to do and I know that if all was decided and I just went for it, I would feel major relief. For today its writing, left overs and a long run at twilight.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Living with IT
I wonder about this entire month and feel my voice slipping a bit. I catch my pointer finger crossing perpendicular to my lips while I speak, making people say, "What? I can't hear you."
This morning I spent 2 hours with 2 year olds in the chaos of the church nursery trying to communicate through their bodies. They don't have words beyond screaming and laughing and pushing one another out of the way. The noise of their needs was deafening.
To contrast that, I now sit in communal tables at the strip mall ghetto liberary in our town, where you can be homeless or a billionaire and sit together sharing the front page of the Detriot Free Press. It is all ruffling pages and clicks and the banging of metal carts. Strangers politely asking for what they need with no strings. It is cool and there are windows to a back parking lot. Kids talk normally as they check out. I sit next to thick books of Presidents and famous bigwigs like Steve Jobs who I can nod to from afar, while being about the business of living my own story and sharing that with you.
I made a list of the people who are real in my life. It is a long list. Friends who seek me out and continue to leave messages when I don't pick up. I have two reactions to their love, the better one being that I matter to them. My son saw a friend at the playground on Wednesday and yelled out to him, "Noah, It's me, your best friend." I love his confidence. If you called to me, I would like to yell back something like, thank you for wanting to know me. I am here to listen to you too!
The trouble comes with my next thoughts which are, what do I need to do to make you want to be my friend, or what do I have to give you, to make you happy. Even as a I wrote the list of friends, I felt I should be doing things for them like making meals, watching their kids, calling to inquire about all the important things going on with them. Then, when they talk about their loved one's battle with cancer and their child being solicited by strangers in McDonald's, or the tree that was pruned in the front of their house, that I will want to solve the impossible, by making these things disapear. Assuring them that no one dies and that you can let your child out of your sight and still be a good mom and that I can replace the tree or take the kids for the week.
Exhausting, right? I can barely keep my eyes open while I try to write about one of the most exciting races of my life, when my friend lived through the first hours of her breakup with her boyfriend and we ran faster then ever, without even trying. I rest my head on my arm and close my eyes. I can't remember the temperature outside or what day it is and as I sleep, I dream that I am trying to pick up my kids toys from a parking structure of an apartment complex, that has mean people living inside. No matter how many bags I fill and how close I am to getting everything, I see another bit of legos and trucks just ahead to work into another plastic grocery bag that floats towards me. My friend Kristen offers to help me carry them and I say, "I can't manage. Don't worry about me." Maybe I should claim a week without toys. A week without watching other's kids? A week without commitments to supporting others happiness, so I can just wonder about all of my beautiful friends who are working magic in being who they are right now.
(I wish you could tell me how you live in contentment, service and FREEDOM alongside the chaos that pulls at their legs - Please comment!!!!)
This morning I spent 2 hours with 2 year olds in the chaos of the church nursery trying to communicate through their bodies. They don't have words beyond screaming and laughing and pushing one another out of the way. The noise of their needs was deafening.
To contrast that, I now sit in communal tables at the strip mall ghetto liberary in our town, where you can be homeless or a billionaire and sit together sharing the front page of the Detriot Free Press. It is all ruffling pages and clicks and the banging of metal carts. Strangers politely asking for what they need with no strings. It is cool and there are windows to a back parking lot. Kids talk normally as they check out. I sit next to thick books of Presidents and famous bigwigs like Steve Jobs who I can nod to from afar, while being about the business of living my own story and sharing that with you.
I made a list of the people who are real in my life. It is a long list. Friends who seek me out and continue to leave messages when I don't pick up. I have two reactions to their love, the better one being that I matter to them. My son saw a friend at the playground on Wednesday and yelled out to him, "Noah, It's me, your best friend." I love his confidence. If you called to me, I would like to yell back something like, thank you for wanting to know me. I am here to listen to you too!
The trouble comes with my next thoughts which are, what do I need to do to make you want to be my friend, or what do I have to give you, to make you happy. Even as a I wrote the list of friends, I felt I should be doing things for them like making meals, watching their kids, calling to inquire about all the important things going on with them. Then, when they talk about their loved one's battle with cancer and their child being solicited by strangers in McDonald's, or the tree that was pruned in the front of their house, that I will want to solve the impossible, by making these things disapear. Assuring them that no one dies and that you can let your child out of your sight and still be a good mom and that I can replace the tree or take the kids for the week.
Exhausting, right? I can barely keep my eyes open while I try to write about one of the most exciting races of my life, when my friend lived through the first hours of her breakup with her boyfriend and we ran faster then ever, without even trying. I rest my head on my arm and close my eyes. I can't remember the temperature outside or what day it is and as I sleep, I dream that I am trying to pick up my kids toys from a parking structure of an apartment complex, that has mean people living inside. No matter how many bags I fill and how close I am to getting everything, I see another bit of legos and trucks just ahead to work into another plastic grocery bag that floats towards me. My friend Kristen offers to help me carry them and I say, "I can't manage. Don't worry about me." Maybe I should claim a week without toys. A week without watching other's kids? A week without commitments to supporting others happiness, so I can just wonder about all of my beautiful friends who are working magic in being who they are right now.
(I wish you could tell me how you live in contentment, service and FREEDOM alongside the chaos that pulls at their legs - Please comment!!!!)
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