Tonight, I write for me. Maybe I’ll post this and maybe I won’t. I feel like there are two parts of myself at war. One has spent her life striving and reaching, dreaming and writing, having and doing–and the other simply wants to be outside playing in the sun with a breeze on her face. This summer has brought the war to the front of my life.
Spending nearly a month in that little open meadow (our land) and sleeping in our tiny camper with just enough dishes and pots and pans to prepare a nice meal has made me ask big questions. I don’t think I have asked these questions for a long time. What does it mean to be a human being? Is it what we do? Is it a state of being? When we are given a human life are we automatically expected to pay for that life with service and action?
I feel deeply confused. I think back over the many decades of my life, the thousands of hours I have worked to help others realize their greatest potential, and wonder what exactly is my greatest potential? If every day feels like I am just stretching for something just outside of my reach, then am I robbing myself of this moment, this day, this rich experience?
A part of me knows deep within that it is time to let go of all of that striving and reaching, but it scares the hell out of me. I don’t know what it would be like to simply be me, living in my skin, doing each day as if it were my only day. It scares me, but I want it. I am so tired of wanting something that is not here and now. I sense that the here and now is rich beyond compare, but something constantly urges me on.
Today I drove into the hills in search of chokecherries or raspberries. There were a million other things calling out to me: get ready for school, do the laundry, clean the studio, finish clearing up after the yard sale, take care of the beans and apples I picked yesterday.
No. I don’t want to do any of it. I want to be outside on this glorious day swatting mosquitoes and flies, wandering over rocky ground. I left the house at 10:00 and headed up into the hills. I picked raspberries (about a quart). I was gone over three hours and ended my jaunt by dropping into a deep pool along Rapid Creek. Milt joined me and we swam and played. It was so icy cold that my fingers were numb within minutes. When I got home I looked at all that needed to be done and, instead of doing any of it, I dropped into bed and slept for a couple of wonderful hours.
This gypsy self that emerges in my writing, who constantly dumps all that is meaningless in her life, who seeks simple, who loves the earth, she is calling my name right now. What would it be like to ignore the demanding one with her lists and plans, her aspirations and gasping, grasping, reaching out? I think I will not be happy until I find out what that life would be like. Three weeks was not enough—not nearly enough.
So, how does I go about deconstructing a life that took three decades to construct?
I have already begun. I think it is easier than I think, but I can’t get there by pushing my soul aside and working until I drop every day in the hopes that I will “get there”. That sounds way too familiar. It is what I have done. At the same time I can’t simply let the laundry pile up and the “stuff” move in its mysterious migration around my house. It requires a decisive move. It requires choosing it.
I remember the fall when Lisa was conceived. Wayne (my first husband) had gone to treatment and demanded that I go, too. I was scheduled to start my residency as a counselor at a local mental health agency. When Wayne made his demand, it shocked me so much that I went to treatment instead of leaving him behind. That decision changed my life. In treatment I had to come to terms with how I had filled my life up—and what I really wanted. I laugh now when I think about it. I was in school, was mothering a small child, had this residency set up, was teaching aerobic dance in my own business and still had the Red Apple preschool running. I was completely schizophrenic—running in all directions. While I was in treatment, I SAW what I had become. A crazy person. I prayed to my higher power to remove all that did not belong in my life—and leave only what was real behind.
That old adage—be careful what you pray for. Three months later Wayne had lost his job and we were making plans to move to Phoenix, AZ. I quit school, closed my businesses, ended my residency—and discovered I was pregnant. By the turn of the New Year, it had all gone away and I entered a peaceful, quiet time that altered the course of my life once again. We didn’t move—not physically—but everything changed.
Another cycle is ending. I can feel it. I want to be open to what it has to offer me. I want another peaceful, quiet time so that I can see what wants to enter my life now. And what wants to leave it. My urge is to get back in the car and drive north and move back into my $250 camper and wait until the snow flies and I have to do something else to keep warm. It is a powerful urge but instead I am here in Rapid City, SD having just finished a third yard sale for the summer and back on the payroll at school.
While we were up on the land, I had a slight obsession with clearing the many slash piles from the small area around our camper. I hauled wood, flicked off the woodticks, and burned a lot of wood. I guess the obsession has moved back with me, only now it is piles of paper, material goods (too much), and clearing my “land” so that I can get to the simple life I am longing for.
Slash and burn.
As for the fear of what will enter the empty space I am creating—we will have to wait and see what happens. Will I still want to write and teach? Will my garden grow bigger? What will it be?
One thing I know for sure. There is no satisfaction in constantly reaching. My satisfaction is here. There is no one who has been so richly blessed as I have been. Every day I am grateful for the children and grandchildren I have, for my husband, for my abundant brothers and sisters, for the land we bought, for the berries I picked, for the sun and wind and water and earth . . .
Gratitude is a good beginning, I think. Maybe I’ll start there.
Jamie
It is so strange. I started out just wanting to sort my feelings out tonight, but at some point it became a “post”. This blog is the only real writing I’ve done for over three months. I’ve decided not to force myself to write (a part of my deconstruction process) unless my soul agreed. I so love the stories and the mini love affairs that each one brings, and I think I will return to it, but I can’t be sure. I don’t want my writing to be only about whether I find a publisher or not. I’ve even wondered whether I stopped writing because I signed with an agent and became a “real” writer. Tonight Milt and I started watching the odd movie about Bob Dylan (the one where lots of characters play Dylan) and I was wondering what Dylan thinks of this movie. Maybe he was just a guy who wanted to make music, who had a song in his heart and a spirit that demanded he sing it. Maybe he never really wanted to be “Dylan”.
I need to ask myself this question. Am I simply a storyteller who loves to play with creation but finds the aftermath burdensome? It is like playing in water—we never expect playing in water to have an end result. Who the hell cares? We are just playing in water. Creation is like that. Why does what we create have to “do” something like pay the bills, build a readership, form a career? Milt loves playing with the short posts on his video blog. Every time he picks up the camera he is just playing in water.
I think we are both tired of trying to force our creations to pay the bills and buy crap that we don’t even want. We want to play in water. Period. There may be no other solution for us but to cut costs (slash and burn) and go to the lake.
Maybe what I will begin doing is just forget about having a “career” as a writer and start putting more of my stuff here. It is being read—or it is not. Who cares? Never mind that once it goes on the web it is no longer the precious, virgin manuscript that a publisher may want. It does my soul no good to create and then leave it languishing in a computer file or paper file in some migrant pile. It also does my soul no good to feel like I have to devote a decade to a book in the hopes that some east coast god will find it worthy.
It actually feels like I have cut through the first layer of my malaise. If I start dumping hundreds of pages into this “blog”, you will know what happened.