Word After Word

Last year, I stood with the writers on the beach, and we burned our fears and regrets and hatred in a pyre. Some loud unritualized men interrupted us, and mocked us.  Fortunately, we had enough regrets to stay focused—we had a lot to burn.

This year I cleared the week and weekend to devote myself to writing the end of Part Two. I had no party invitations, no rituals, nothing but a grumpy girl to hang out with, that would be me. I can barely stand her. I felt afraid, and scared, and full of regret. I hate the book—who would ever read it? I’m stuck in between difficulties: break-ups and breakdowns, what is right for my father, what to know. And I’m sad as heck—a friend died. A kind, brilliant, generous man, forty-five years old. He loved

I should do something solsticey, I keep thinking. I’m ignoring something important. I’m afraid of something—movement. I love the light, but in a way there’s too much. And this day is a death day: now it just gets darker, little by little, the rest of the year, falling into darkness. It’s not a celebration I’m looking for. I just want to stand somewhere other than where I am standing now: so, take a step. Any step.

This is the parade from Cubby’s point of view.

When the parade had veterans, people clapped and Cubby barked.  Politely, just three times each time. “Very patriotic dog,” a woman said.

He likes applause. He knows a good thing when he sees it and feels it.

I was so happy my friend thought the soup was pretty enough to photograph! This is my Silver Palate Cherry Soup. Organic blueberries, organic cherries. Antioxidant brew.

I made it for a friend, Pea, who is graduating from Creative Writing School. What was the best thing for her? New friends. The seventy plus year old professor from the South, the kid from Kentucky who is in love with Sylvia Plath. Knowing these other writers, that’s what she loved.

And how I love my soup.

So I keep talking about this great class I have, how funny the students are, how stunning it is three hours can go so fast–such great writing, such good company. The best class ever, I keep saying. I go on and on.

Ron said, “It sounds like how you talked about the Pandas. Remember that class?”

I almost forgot. The Pandas! That was a good class. The kind that ends with a themed cake, presents for everyone, mottos and promises and photographs. A secret language, inside references and nicknames. We all had nicknames and dramas and we sat in a basement at Betty’s house and cried on the last day of that class. And longed for bamboo.

Yesterday, I decided not to work on the book—on purpose, with grace and fearlessless. I took a day off in order to play, do reiki on my face, plan a trip, make an elaborate Silver Palate dinner with my friend, plant a garden, brush the dog (I have a whole second corgi, a hair corgi, ghosting around my back yard, silently barking), read The Reivers out loud with the friend in moonlight with just a little light. It was a perfect Saturday evening in May in

Today I am finding it’s not hard to start working again because I wasn’t hiding from the book—I took a day off. I woke up thinking in the book. I am finding it’s okay to take one day of ten for intentional not working. But not more than that. Not one out of seven. I don’t know about you. For me, it’s exactly like any other kind of love, relationship.

Yesterday, even though away, I was kind to the work and to the author. It’s like my yoga teacher says, “Now look down, smile at your feet. Hello feet. Be nice to your feet. Don’t criticize your feet. They can hear you.” I’m thinking it’s good to be kinder to the demons of doubt and fear and distraction.

Today, after missing a day of it, by bloggin, I am easing back into my working. Blogging is my centering cigarette. And the Chicken Marbella is helping. My dear friend

My book of poems The Boys I Borrow is a finalist (along with books by Ron Padgett, Laura Kasicske, Bob Hicok!) for the Balcones Prize. 

More information to come. Happy. I’m just so delighted about this and eager to read the winner’s book and the finalists’ books–I’ll post links to their work here soon.

Hunting for morels is writing. It’s the same. I learned how to look for them–scanning lightly, choosing a slope makes it easier to see. You want to look for something upright on all that flatness. That’s the trick. And with anything you find, you can’t really find it, it has to find you. So you scan, scan, scan, get really bored with scanning for stupid fungus, bored to the point you are thinking who ever thought eating moist dark freaky looking things made any sense at all? who put the first one in his mouth? You have to be that bored, so bored you Look Away. Only then, when you Look Back, without expectation (I’ve written about this a lot) will the mushroom appear. It’s so easy to see him. You can see nothing else.

How is this like writing? You work and walk and worry the work, pushing pushing pushing. Not writing, spewing lots of bad pages, wondering what to write, wondering where to start in again, pushing hard against it. Willing it. I MUST BE WRITING! or I AM WRITING! You have to get past that part of yourself. You have to look away, not try anymore and then when you look back–deep in the trance of the work but not expecting anything good to happen with it, either (it often takes hours to get to this place with shrooms or writing), there it is. You are doing it. Gold. Not the false morel. The real morel.

That’s what I noticed mushroom hunting. When I looked away, and then looked back, concentrating but not on mushrooms exactly, letting what was there be seen, instead of working so hard to see, I found one. It felt exactly like the writing process.

I spent all day walking around the woods and I came home tired and happy just like after a day of writing. Same work. Same process. Same fun.

My perfect Michigan weekend: I found my first morel (by myself). There he was, at my feet, like a little grouchy gnome whispering quit trying. I screamed so loud I shocked the forest, scared many morels away. I saw a loon and a bald eagle. The eagle was standing by the side of the highway in this bold shaft of light looking fake, bold, important, presidential. I was listening to a book on beauty (thanks, Minton!) and the author was talking about how when we die, we don’t just miss a place, that place misses us, and mourns for us. Across from the eagle there were the crosses marking car crashes, death. Sunday afternoon, a terrific portal. Driving home. I wonder where my home really is. I feel like I moved to Michigan significantly this weekend, finding the morel, seeing the loon, watching the moon over larch trees.

My amusing friend Amelia (age 5) is a great metaphor. She’s a muse. She comes by a lot. She’s hard to resist. When I open the front door, she’s beaming, in her little pink pixie coat, hood on. She says, throwing out her arms, “This is the favorite moment of my day.”

She comes by  a lot. I’m always happy to see her. Sometimes I am having a stressful

Monday I had to work late. I knew about the muse, but I was hoping she would forget. She’s five. I had to work! My grade averaging program had a glitch—I was stressing about mathematics. The complexity of my system—why couldn’t it be simple? If a five was an A, what was an F, a 1? Was this right and true and good? What was a Zero? A G? Why couldn’t I be like a normal teacher and give a midterm, a final. I was pecked at by numbers and pecked at by decimals. It took hours, it took assistance. I wept.

When I got home, I poured a glass of wine and started the bath and got the mail. There was only my post-it, stuck to a large yellow sheet of paper, which read, in the hand of a madman or small child, with backwards letters, large red marker letters, the lines listing to the right like planes falling out of the sky:

HEATHER I ALREADY CAME TO YOUR HOUSE LOVE AMELIA

It was yellow like a citation, large as a judgment, pointed as an apology. It was a call to arms, a manifesto, a William Carlos Williams poem, a threat, a break-up, a crack-up, a point, an accusation, and, also, simple and informative and direct, as adults never are. 

It was the “already” that I loved, that broke my heart.

With my note attached!  Come back Monday after 6:35 P M.  

I’d invited her in writing. Because she’s five, I blew her off. 

It was after nine o’clock. When the door bell rang, I was stepping into the tub. It rang again. I knew who it was. I got dressed. And went to her. “Sweetie,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”  

This is what we do. We tell the writing life how much we love it. We tell everyone we love it, love it, love it, want it. We say if we had more time! We make promises. We beg for the muse. Then, when she comes, we blow her off. We think she won’t notice. She’ll forget. She’s busy with her own friends, people her own age. We do this again and again to the muse. Because we convince ourselves so easily we’re not that important, she’s not that important. Because she’s the muse, and like a five year old, but also invisible (who will know?) we blow her off. 

She’s already come to your house.

“Dear Writer, I’ve already come to your house. Love Muse.”