An open palm to the ground

So, I did fail NaNoWriMo, but that failure has been a great learning experience. Shortly after starting, I met a published author who offered their advice. The advice they imparted was: “Don’t write unless you have to.”

When she told me that I nodded, thanked her for taking the time to chat with me, and walked away feeling embarrassed and foolish for stumbling over my words while speaking with her. I found that during our conversation I lost touch with what was being said and instead focused on “Wow, she’s famous and makes enough money to write full-time and is doing exactly what I want to be doing.” I removed myself from the experience and lost myself to envy and desire. It wasn’t until later that night that I began mulling her advice over and seeing if it fit into my writing life. In the true nature of advice, it never seems profound on the surface. It takes time to digest properly. For me it came at an (in)opportune time: mere days after beginning a challenge to write a book in a month. But it made enough sense to me to stop me dead in my tracks. I coupled her advice with things I’ve been thinking and feeling for a long time and made the decision to stop writing. Not forever, of course, just long enough to feel what it is to not write. Instead of forcing myself to write, not accomplishing anything, berating myself for not accomplishing anything, feeling shameful and sad for failing, etc., I decided to stop perpetuating the cycle and began to examine my thoughts and feelings in a related context. I’ve always wanted to write, but have I ever felt that I needed to?

The answer, I’ve discovered, is yes. I absolutely need to write. Making meaning for me is the only will to meaning. The act and process of creation is indecipherable from my sense of self.

Hitting pause for the last month has been difficult, but as with every difficulty it’s brought a lot to light. I’ve discovered how I feel when I don’t create, and that feeling is something I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling. It’s a coldness, maybe a numbness. Either way, I’ve never felt more disconnected from myself than during the last few weeks. But the balm is that I consciously chose to do something and my experience was directly influenced by my actions. I put my metaphorical hand on a metaphorical hot stove and was metaphorically burnt. I smile when I think about this, realizing that I have some type of control over things. Those things are all internal, but perhaps that is enough. I prefer not having control over external things, they have their own chaos to worry about, as do I.

So I’ve taken this time to read more. I’ve finished two books this month, both of which were YA fiction, and I’m halfway through a Non-Fiction title. It has helped to let go of the imagined need to write and allow it to emerge naturally, taking its rightful place without me forcing it to be something it isn’t. The passion is there, the attention and motivation are next on the list.

The title of this post came from a dream I had earlier in the month. I’ve pondered it, letting it make sense on its own, not forcing it to become significant if it isn’t.

What I’ve come up with is:

Catch Yourself

.

“In order to be a writer you have to believe a lot of things that are definitely not true, including, obviously, that you’re going to be able to make a living writing, and you have to believe them with your whole heart, and you have to believe them more than reality. And one day, if you believe them hard enough, and make up stories that people like and write them down, then they may become true.”

- Neil Gaiman

The importance of failing

So tomorrow, the 1st of November, begins something called NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. It’s a program that challenges would-be authors to write a book in 30 days. Last year over 100,000 people attempted the challenge and 12,000 actually accomplished their goal. That may seem like a small number of successes at first glance, but when you consider what it takes to accomplish that goal it really is a staggering number. In order to reach the end of the month and be able to proclaim yourself a “winner” you must have written 50,000 words total, which is around 1,700 words per day for thirty days. For those who rarely write, and when they do write they never glance at the word count at the bottom of the screen, those numbers probably don’t seem like very much. But maybe looking at it this way will help:

Most chapters in an average-sized book contain around 5,000 words. Now, if each chapter were to be 10 pages long, which really isn’t much by today’s standards, you would have about 500 words per page. The other day I wrote about 500 words of a short story I’m working on, and that took me about half an hour, and that was a really good day. Sometimes I can only manage 50 or 100 words, but most days I manage nothing at all, something I’m currently working to change. So, if I were to continue moving at a pace of 500 words per day it would take me about 5 days to write one chapter (which only includes getting words on the page, not necessarily the right words. That’s when editing and revising comes in, which is an entirely different time-taking process). So, if you do the math, it would take me about 50 days to complete the Rough Draft of my novel (and remember, most books go through between 3 – 4 drafts before publication, if they’re even good enough for publication).

Now, this challenge is asking me to write 1,700 words per day, quite a bit more than my previous celebration-inducing 500 words from two days ago. But if I follow their schedule then that drops the days from 50 down to 30, making it a solid month.

And all of this only happens if the ideas come. It is very possible that I could fill pages with nonsense that never sees the light of day, much like the 88,000 participants who failed to reach their goal last year. But what is amazing is that there are now 12,000 more stories in the world written by people dedicated to their passion.

I signed up for the contest because even if I do fail, it will only be considered a failure on a graph charting the correlation of words to days. At least I’m writing. Even if it’s utter, nonsensical gibbering drivel, it’s still writing, and that’s what I want to be doing with my life.

Right?

Here’s what it’s supposed to look like at the end. I’ll most likely post my progress in a few days.

Next time you’re reading and you finish a chapter, think about how long it took you to read it and consider the possibility that it took the author 5 days to write it.

Sidenote: This blog post is only 556 words long but it took me almost an hour to write it. Why? Probably because I think too much and am a perfectionist when it comes to every word sounding “just right.”

He’s not there

Why is it we keep dates with death?

As the day approaches I find myself thinking of visiting. Paying my respects. But who am I visiting? A shell, and probably not even that since time has undoubtedly done its damage. I would be visiting a pile of bones in a box in the ground, hardly the person I knew in life. But in the beginning I used to treat it much like you’d expect, visiting and speaking and pretending that I could be heard. But I realized something. I’ve realized that “paying your respects“, for me at least, is just another way of reminding yourself of a self-imposed responsibility, albeit an unconscious one but nevertheless a very powerful one. You don’t need to do anything. People only do things if they feel it will make them feel better, holding funerals and visiting grave sites are no exclusion to this. I don’t believe the dead are looking down and tallying the number of visitors to their grave on the anniversary of their death day. I think there is a guilt attached to this scenario, a shame we make ourselves feel if we don’t show our love for a person. But who are we really showing that love to? We are showing it to ourselves, reminding ourselves of the love we had/have for that person.  The funeral isn’t for the dead, they’re already gone; the funeral is for everyone left behind. The dead need no closure. We’ve created a formal ceremony to assist us in accepting, and dealing with, death. By way of a social event we create an environment conducive to closure. We’ve outlined a process for grief, stages that provide us with a signal in the storm that let us know whereabouts we are on the path to acceptance. But if these things were created by us, why then must I rely on formalities to find peace?

In direct opposition of what is commonly believed, I find comfort in believing that the dead aren’t watching us. That they can’t hear what we say or think, that death isn’t some kind of “great revealing” of our emotions and intentions to the deceased. How I feel and felt are no longer important to the person that’s no longer here.

We don’t bury our dead. We keep them alive in photographs and home movies, in memories and dreams, in heartaches. They can only ever truly die if we let them. Until that time, we carry them around with us and fall asleep with them in mind, we make appointments with them on their birthday to see how they are and to let them know how we are. Giving a potentially nonexistent thing such power over us can be a burden. But if holding on is something that helps you get through the day, I think you should do what makes you happy. Reliving old lives and imagining ones that can now never be seems fruitless to me, but if they provide some sense of consolation I am in no position to attack that and extend my view as the only answer.

When you believe something it no longer feels like belief, it becomes a “knowing”. So, in knowing that no one’s there I feel better about my life and my ability to let that which is impermanent slip easily through my fingers. Crushing the sand tightly in my hand hasn’t slowed or reversed the hour because there’s nothing tangible to hold onto. And that is a great reminder of how precious a thing life is. But when it’s time for that life to go, there’s no need to hold on because there isn’t anything there to hold onto.

A day like today…

I feel the way the sky looks today

A Murky, white ceiling weighed down by a heaviness as light as clouds

An empty pressure like a quiet song sung at obscure volumes in a low-hanging haze

Today is a day that can only be understood by feeling it

Describing it is like interpreting the sound of soft voices whispering

And creating sentences, structured and beautiful, from the silent spaces between their words

A game of Telephone played in reverse

With no winner to be spoken of

…

I have this pressure in my head that is getting worse as the day goes on. I’m also beginning to sneeze frequently. Maybe it’s a good thing I only ever work two days a week, it diminishes the possibility of needing to calling off.

We’ll, lunch is over. Back to work. I should already be in my car.

Sleepless dreaming

I should be in bed right now, but I feel like fighting sleep tonight. Irresponsible I know, namely due to having work in the morning, but I always feel a little more creative at night, a little more alive. I like the quiet, and there’s no pressure to speak or entertain and I can just enjoy being with myself. The everyday noise outside is something I need time to unwind from; I can’t simply shut it off with the bedroom light, I need to shrug it off slowly in the silence of letting go. I wish I didn’t need the outside world to be silent just for me to focus, I wish I could hold that inside and feel that stillness whenever I needed it. Yet it is only due to other people that I feel this, or perhaps my allowing them to encroach on that stillness is what causes this feeling. To quote one of my favorite authors, Fernando Pessoa, “The presence of another person derails my thoughts.”

Will I be tired tomorrow? Most likely. Will I regret staying up so that I could spend some quiet moments to record my thoughts? Possibly, depending on how the day goes. And at the end of the day tomorrow will either of those things matter? Probably not. But right now I feel like doing nothing more than staying up and enjoying my own company. It creates a space, I think, that allows the kind of thoughts I struggle to think all day surface. It could be likened to the phenomenon of getting all your best ideas when you’re in the shower, which is most likely due to the lack of human interaction associated with the act; no one’s there to derail your thinking or influence where your thoughts will go. This night-mania, this feeling of increased creativity and possibility that accompanies me when the clock inches slowly towards midnight, is of course not unique to me. I’m sure there are others doing the same thing right now, for better or for ill, despite what tomorrow expects from them. It feels necessary, as necessary as it does to eat or to breathe. I have no idea where it comes from or why I feel it, but it’s something that I’ve learned not to ignore and cover with sleep. To quote Mr. Pessoa one more time, “perhaps it’s a weariness that needs a slumber far deeper than sleeping affords.”

A poem for a rainy day that wasn’t written on a rainy day at all.

A poem for those who enjoy such things. It is untitled, so you’re welcome to name it whatever you like. I wrote it during a day I came to Akron with Jessie while she had class. It was difficult to find somewhere quiet enough to work, and as I felt the tugging of words I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to write something, be it story or poem. So I found a lone bench in a secluded area of the campus and made myself comfortable. This is what came out. And it wasn’t raining, as the poem implies, it was actually a very hot, humid day. I find it interesting how our physical experience is sometimes in no way related to the things we create.

Enjoy.

As the clouds grew gray
We rushed toward the silent street
And found our place between lines of yellow and white

We were given water for our thirst
And a renewed passion
For knowing the things that can never be known

We tried our best to catch the rain
Intertwined fingers closing gaps between skin
Water coursed through lines in faces not yet made
Too young in age and mind to not believe in dreams

To each drop we gave a name
That ran like water from our tongues
As we spoke it aloud

And when our hands became full with life
We watched it flow out towards the ground
Falling, landing, but never breaking
Becoming one with the only life there’s ever been

Feeling alive while turning to stone.

Yesterday, I think it was, I watched a short film about a man who creates a sculpture of his late wife. It was a meditation on grief and memory, and how love lost can tear a man apart. Beyond that though it was also a horror film; soon after completing the sculpture the man notices a small hole in the woman’s back that is dripping blood. As the days pass, large chunks of stone begin falling off to reveal flesh beneath the stone surface. At the same time, the man notices that patches of his own skin begin turning to stone. It is unclear to the viewer whether or not the man is simply suffering from delusions caused by the loss of his wife or if the supernatural element is indeed happening to him. But, in the end, it doesn’t matter which it is because either way you understand his sadness and his desire to see his wife again and how grief can kill a man. Perhaps him turning to stone is a metaphor; maybe his heart “turns to stone” and closes off from ever loving someone again, making him dead to the world. Or perhaps it is portraying the immobilizing quality of loss, the inability to “move” on after the death of a loved one, the strange feeling of being cemented to the ground. Also something of interest is the idea of a stone representation of his wife becoming flesh while a mortal man becomes stone, the trading of places. Maybe he feels responsible for her death, that he should have died in her place, but that information is left unclear; I like that it’s left unclear, if it were spelled out in detail there wouldn’t be any room for speculation. Maybe it’s not important, maybe the only important thing is that the man is feeling something. And if something can be felt doesn’t it, in some intangible way, have to be real? And isn’t feeling the most fundamental experience of being alive?

A link to the movie, for those interested: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165297/

Can I be the space for this?

I’ve been thinking about the creative process for the last few days, more deeply than I have in the past, and I’ve come to some strange conclusions regarding how my mind works with ideas and obstacles. Pondering how my artistic attempts habitually lead to a sort of despondency, coupled with an existential “Eureka!” moment that would have made Archimedes proud, and added to both the lyrics to a song that has much more depth than I could grasp, I think I’ve found a way to write that feels fated. Over the years I’ve learned that writing is the hardest thing I am likely to ever engage in, and hours spent creating a fictitious tree does not guarantee it will bear any fruit. To say “hit or miss” would not allow the weight of writing to be fully understood, but it is essentially a matter of trial and error, but a trial and error that can, and usually does, eat away at whatever confidence you may possess.

My tactic has always been to sit down and try to write. This might sound obvious, I’ve thought it obvious for years, but recently I’ve discovered that there is a very specific preparation I require to get even a sentence written. I’ve been reading an assortment of books by author/Creativity Coach Eric Maisel, and I feel that his philosophy is very closely related to that of Viktor Frankl’s, which is existential in nature and one that I greatly admire. Frankl was an amazing individual and reading up on him was, for me, a very emotion and impacting experience. so by all means, click the link.

What Maisel has done is translated the philosophy of Existentialism into a form that applies directly to artists, and by artist I mean anything from writers to tap dancers to being a Living Statue. He asserts that unless an artist is in a process of constant creation, he or she will feel an undeniable absence of meaning in their lives, which often manifests itself as apathy and depression, which in turn can lead to an infinitesimal amount of issues. For people who have that aching urge to create, to make something from nothing, to reach into the ether and return with an idea for a novel or movie or radio play, an absence of meaning is essentially an absence of the will to exist. What purpose is there to life if one can’t create something that is important to themselves and others? The world thrives, and I believe survives, on the process of creation. Every day, people escape to cinemas and concerts, to video games and literature, because if creativity weren’t inherent in our species we would fail in every aspect imaginable beyond simple survival. When one’s livelihood is centered around whether or not they can write 1,000 words everyday, art is revealed for what it truly is: a reason to exist.

So in essence, art is what keeps many of us alive and confident and capable of going out into the world and living and then returning home to our work-space and doing something more important than living: dreaming.

- * -

So, the ramblings above are I suppose a sort of introduction to what I’ve learned. I’ve learned that simply sitting down at a desk and writing isn’t a possibility for me. My “writing” period begins long before I even sit down. What seems to work for me, and by work I mean the only thing that has ever allowed me peace of mind as a writer, is the idea of “Holding the Intention” to write, a phrase coined by Maisel, but also expressed beautifully by Paul Masvidal of Cynic in a song from which this blog entry takes its title. “Being the space for this” simply means to enter with an intention in mind but not holding so tightly to that intention as to sabotage yourself. Just sit and allow yourself to be open to whatever may come, but there must be a strong, driven understanding to let go of anything that isn’t useful at the time. A good example of this, and one you may be familiar with, comes from the sixteenth-century artist Michelangelo, who was given the monumental task/opportunity to sculpt the biblical figure David out of an immense block of marble.  Numerous sculptors before him attempted the feat but failed, often humiliatingly. It took him two years to finish the piece, and in the end it weighed more than six tons. When asked how he managed such an incredible feat, as the monument was impossibly perfect in almost every aspect, he replied that he had chipped away at everything that wasn’t David. According to him, “I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” In a like manner, Michelangelo was “holding the intention” to create and allowed his skill and keen eyes to be a vehicle for what needed to come through. I am beginning to view the art of writing in much the same way: approach the computer/notebook with the intention to create, but allow my hand to be a vehicle for whatever needs to be written. If I’m always forcing an idea, which is often the case, then there’s no room for the story.

In a lot of ways I think that stories, the good and the smart ones, choose the writer. Just as your name feels like the perfect name for you and you couldn’t imagine being called anything else, so too are certain stories made for certain writers. And in the case of Michelangelo, that immense block of marble was excavated and set aside for him, though no one could have told you that at the time. The other sculptors tried and failed because, in my opinion, Mikey was the only one who could have brought that specific masterpiece into existence. And now the David in marble form has come to represent this idea of being open but coupling that openness with the renunciation of control.

Intend to do something, establish one-pointedness of mind to devote your entire being to the act of creation, and then let go of the reins and let whatever needs to come into existence at that particular moment manifest.

The anxiety of creation and the possible Sisyphean nature of human existence

Well, I didn’t follow through with my plan to write a short-story a month; too much has happened lately to find the creative space I feel I need to write. Nothing feels quite as settled as I expected, but then again things never really do. I admit to having not written a story, but I also admit to having written “ideas” for stories. Small, bite-sized sentences depicting moments and scenes, characters and emotion. I’ve learned more about the boy named Albin, and why the light from the old lighthouse shines in his window at night, and about the girl from his class that thinks he’s interesting, but I CAN’T sit still and write out a scene. I spend all day thinking it through, perfecting the placement of sentences, trying to uncover the whole of the story before committing it to paper. But that same art of perfection is what keeps me from writing more than a couple sentences at a time. The mood has to be right, the temperature of the room must be perfect, and when I’m confronted by an empty space in my thought process I freeze; I lose the ability to type, my fingers slinking away from the keyboard in a manner that’s grown far too familiar.

But I can write about how I can’t write. It’s absurd.

- * -

I’ve been asking myself a question for the last month that has me on edge. It stings when I ponder it, and it scares me to no end.

“Do you want to work in retail forever?”

There are, of course, a few different variations, different approaches I take in asking myself this. Sometimes I catch myself glancing at an older person while they’re at work and think about what kind of life they wanted for themselves. What kept them from the stage and made them begin the process of endlessly stocking shelves? What kept their stories from being written while their own story withered away and became nothing more than the dust they sweep from the floor? Where do dreams go when they die? Do the people still carry that dream with them, turning it over and over in their heads while their hands perform their assigned, menial tasks?

I am reminded of the Greek myth of Sisyphus, a king who was condemned to an eternity of endlessly rolling an immense boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again just before he reached the top. He would then retreat back down the hill to begin this monotonous task again. The philosopher Albert Camus saw this as an interpretation of the absurdity of human life, and reached a possible remedy for this apparent lack of meaning by stating that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy, as the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”

So is the struggle to write, but never writing, meaningful in itself? Should I look at that as a success of some kind? Does ambition itself have the same value as achievement? And am I even right to judge those senior employees for not reaching the same level of success I’ve made for myself? Are they ambitious, but in their own way? Are they exactly where they want to be, and doing exactly what they want to be doing?

Where I see no life and no spark there may be worlds impossible to notice, held by a man who endlessly walks the aisles and asks strangers if they have need of his assistance. And when they have no need of him he remains within earshot, waiting for his chance to be valued.

Perhaps one must imagine him happy.

Drowning the earth gently

The rain falls and covers the pavement in countless tiny splotches, like those on old, grainy, black and white films that seem to always play in fast-forward. The water runs off the roof and falls, dancing in the air, unaware of the fall and the impact and the certainty of both. With a dark sky that has promised rain, I sit and watch as the droplets fall by my window, too quickly to see, too small to feel connected to anything but the whole of it all. Strangely, I feel the gray and the rain has brought with them a vividness of color, much more noticeable and intense than when the sun shines unblocked. There is a peace in the rain that is unlike anything else, a calmness unequaled. I think there is much to learn from the rain, the way it falls yet is never broken, the patience it has in its descent, the contentment it has with being born, falling, and passing away. It’s accepting, the rain knows it isn’t anything other than rain. In daily life everyone thinks they have some sort of control over everything, but when water is falling from the sky they have no choice but to let water fall from the sky. They can seek shelter and wait it out, or they can watch it and splash in its puddles and learn something about themselves that they never let themselves learn. I look at rain as a reminder to be present and to accept that some things are completely out of our hands.

“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow