Scribbler's Cafe

Pleasurable Meanderings

I have felt the urge to write building up within me. The words, the fleeting images, the poetic illusions, tangle with my sensible thoughts, and then fly away with the smallest distraction.

Maybe I should write a story about my daughter handing me the dead spider, I think and then notice the dishes stacked high in the sink and instead busy my hands with suds and sponges.

A soft sigh escapes from my husband’s lips as he reclines on our bed. I notice the way his profile contrasts the dark fabric on the pillows and contemplate poetry, but then he asks me what our plans are for tomorrow and we start to argue about errands and which family to visit.

I stand in the living room, just finished with my last chore. The TV is off, no music plays. Kiomye is at daycare and Matt has driven to Seattle for the day. I am caught in hesitation, in the sudden lack of momentum and direction. I look towards the stairs. Now. Now is the time. I could climb up to my office, turn on the screen and begin to type.

I do not move.

I listen to the strings of words pushing forward to a conscious level of thought, to clamor and raise their voices in the sudden quiet of my mind. The uproar disturbs me. The noise makes promises that I will have something to say when I sit down, something worthy of megabytes and reams of printer paper. What if they lie? What if I sit down and nothing happens, I just stare at the screen. Or, what if I begin to type and I find out The Truth: that all I create is trite and overly sentimental and that I will never be a “real” writer. I fear that realization. I look up towards the second floor landing, to the gaping darkness that leads down to my office. I breathe in and out. My heart races. Then the phone rings and I trip over my feet in a rush to answer it. It’s my best friend. She may never find love. Can we talk?

Saved. Truth deferred.

I liked to tell myself that my fear of writing dissolved during these past two years in college when I wrote pages and pages of prose. I even completed enough passable material to put a book together. I was wrong. The fear has not left me.

Still, here I find myself. Words, words, lines, lines.

It gets painful after a while, the avoidance of my desire. Like holding my breathe in a pool until my lungs hurt; I have to come up for air eventually. I breathe writing. I breathe ideas. The rhythm of my fingers on the keys soothes my heart. I am over-anxious, I am pent up, I am difficult to be around. Then I get two hours alone with a keyboard and I am Buddha. I am ghandi.

I type outside tonight. My laptop rests on the round mosaic table, my body sits stiff in the chairs of woven faux wicker. A small tea light flickers in the glass holder that I bought in Mexico. The neighbor’s furry black cat slinks around my patio, pretending that she is invisible. My cat Picasso follows a few steps behind, crouched low, back straight as a ruler.

My patio is my trick to take the fear of the authority of my office out of the writing equation. My office is beautiful, filled with good art and impressive volumes of literature. Serious work gets done in there. I’m not up for serious work tonight.

There is a thin plywood wall that separates my patio from my neighbor’s. They have company. They can’t hear my typing above their conversations. I hear clicking lighters and deep inhales. I hear “thanks man” and “good stuff.” I hear them compliment the table the girls bought at my garage sale, the one I collaged with old Art Nuevo posters and I smile with pride. That project was painful to liquidate.

Where are you going with this tonight? What is the destination of your typing? Tonight I am wandering, meandering across the page. I am enjoying the act, slipping myself into the pleasure of composing. The journey is the only goal tonight.

Fear not, dear heart, you will write again.

posted by Scribbler @ Wednesday, June 23, 2004