a blankness

Who will teach me to write? A reader wanted to know. The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time's scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch, but touching it nonetheless. Because acting is better than being here in mere opacity. The page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut, the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life's strength; that page will teach you to write.  

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life 

Today, this particular wisdom, that's the only thing getting me through.

after the (physical) storm

Well, the past few days have been more than enough to keep me on my feet, or more accurately, flat on my back. While I have been boasting (sort of) the fact that my body has kept it together since 2009, laying down not one sniffle or sneeze since, the last five immediate days have humbled my health and my record, as I came down with a thing or two that kept me from writing, among all my other regularities.

It feels strange to be out of rhythm, out of my own schedule and timing and agenda. I had many, many things I planned to do, naturally, work-wise and other, having the full weekend off, beautiful weather, ideas to foster. Not so, said my germ-infested system, so amazingly complex yet terrifyingly faulty. Though the thing I want most while sick is to feel the return of my strength, it is profoundly showing, in any moment of weakness, how delicate our humanity can become.

Okay, okay, that being said, I am now much closer to feeling like my normal self, and all the good and bad that comes with that normality. I am up, walking around, eating again (THANK GOD), I can breathe out of both nostrils (sort of), and my temperature is at a blessed and comfortable ninety-eight point six. Possibly with this sudden drop in the weather, even a little lower.

With no huge profundities to reveal, I find that the most I have learned from this five day stint is that the curves never stop, and the reasons to give in to what's wearing on us never run out. I'm not saying I should have been up at my desk, ransacking the sites and putting the finishing touches on my own version of the greatest story ever told. It has a nice romanticism to it, of course, that I could say things like, oh, I had a touch of influenza, but I had no choice but to persevere. Well, sure. Still, in the end, the body knows what it needs, even with the nagging misgivings my brain was apt to feel. But, whatever our plans are, there has to be an ability to bend, to flow, to adapt to the inevitable switches in the system, to go with the changes when they come. To stop, to hurry forward, or in my case, to wait. And rest. And drink a boatload of tea.

As someone who will search for the meaning in everything, from a pageful of poetry to a peanut butter sandwich, I will never cease to uncover the reasons for why things are the way they are, for why we have to learn this or become that. Even if I am only forcing a lesson upon myself, it is that exact sense that both tames and sparks my belief, that speaks to me in lonely quiet, that propels me onward, arms open wide.

one question.

Day by day, I find it easier (and more relentlessly truth-telling) to admit that perspective is everything. It is what keeps us or kills us, it is what changes situations from devastating to asking, what can we do about this? Perspective is, all in all, an opportunity. The choices ranging from one drastic end of the spectrum to another, we have the ability to seek the good in what is otherwise the very worst.

That being said, my perspective lately seems to falling short, which is more than putting it nicely. My original intent was to say that it blows, more or less colorfully.

I'm not blind to the goodness. I see it, often and always. In fact, most days, it is staring me dead in the face, finger pointed towards my chest as if to say, go ahead and deny that I'm here. See what happens.

I am not one to shirk the responsibility of counting my blessings. I do it whenever I have the chance, whenever I am reminded of them, in both small and huge ways. I am always, though often unseen to most, and only occasionally begrudgingly, in a grateful state of mind.

Despite this hopeful gratitude, common life invades. It is too obvious to say that problems will arise in even the most blissful avenues we occupy, and, even more obviously, the same goes for those areas for which we feign tolerance. But, with that opportunity to choose brightly intact, we must constantly guide and re-guide our minds to better things, to what we love, to what we cherish and honor and adore.

It isn't easy. In fact, I find it even more difficult than this fight I've being putting up against the current economy. In my elitist senses, I tend to believe my mind, and its negative influences, are prone to wander more than all others. I constantly find myself redirecting my mentality, over and over, each day I'm here. Like anything that tends to stray, some child following whatever it finds most interesting for the present moment, wonder-enhanced, I have to reach out, gently tugging for attention, and bring myself back.

My deviation is often not so innocent as the description I implied. It's more like running in place, always craning my neck behind me, making sure I keep ahead of myself and everyone else, being caught up in what others have achieved first, where I'm not headed, what I haven't done.

All of this, and I more than ever believe in the perfect timing of all things, that moments come together to surprise us, to equip us, to gently shove us along with even the slightest wince of inspiration, which is almost always more than enough. This particular sign of grace came to me via social media, an industry I have to believe that one day, if it doesn't already, rule the world. A video, retweeted by one of my favorites, Holstee, comes from the creative, honesty-seeking minds at Fifty People, One Question. The theme is, in each city, to seek fifty willing individuals to provide whatever answer first comes to them to the question asked. Simple brilliance; here is the take from Brooklyn, New York.

What I like best about watching this is that it nearly forces you to put whatever you're facing into, ahem, perspective. When we are able to choose the things we hope for, admit the things we've let go by, or realize (oh to realize) how lucky we already are, life feels simple. It doesn't feel perfect, but it makes more sense. And even if we have to fight to focus on such, it seems to me that it's a fight we can win, and a fight from which we can only grow stronger.

what i like to do.

I feel there's been an overflow of fluctuation lately: in the weather, in our moods (HELLO), in the way things are going, splitting off in an unknown direction at the last second, all tangled with that jerky feeling you get on the splintery tracks of some carnival ride, first up, then around, then suddenly you're upside down regretting the decision you made to get on board in the first place.

When things are going this way (and I suppose, in a way, they always-kinda will), deciding what would be most productive of me is an altogether difficult task. Unable to choose, the results are usually this: I scroll through half a dozen pages of job openings, understand less than 4% of them, apply for 1 that seems mildly attainable though not desirable, due to heavily encoded criteria description, the 2.5 hour commute from my high school home, the fact that I imagine the office to have fluorescent lighting, etc. After said train wreck, where I inevitably eat my weight in something like, I don't know, Cheez-its, I start wondering if my time would be better spent invested in something else. That something else always ends up being my own writing, which I assume would have to be more productive than obsessing, or despairing, over the lack of change on my horizon. Not always, of course, or forever. But one more week of silence, one more day when no one ever calls, not even to say, "Thanks, but no thanks," and I think there won't be enough pretzel wraps in the world to console me.

If you have ever spoken to me, even if only once, you would know that pretzel wraps are my comfort food of choice, an addiction that can only be properly explained face-to-face, with no apologies.

Anyway: it's safe to say that frustration can set in only if you let it. Only if you let it ruminate, only if you welcome it every time it comes by, demanding to be recognized and acknowledged and fretted over. All things I have become pro-ish at, these days. It's not constructive, of course, mentally or motivationally. It doesn't help. I suppose it doesn't always hurt, either, for the sake of argument. There have been instances where frustration is the exact push I need to continue the fight. When the frustration is from the fight itself, however. Well, then I'm stumped.

Still, even though I have yet to peruse the current openings today, due to other forms of hard and intentionally distracting work (I have spring-cleaned ALL THINGS), it's rarely an activity that has left me feeling hopeful, at least lately. I can't stop doing it, I know, and I won't, but what I want to believe is that other forms of dedication can remind us of what we're meant for, can inspire us to carry on through the wasteland.

That being said, when there are times I just can't bring myself to focus on what an assistant copywriter does (and no, it is never just "to copy-write" and it is never just plainly stated or explained), I have been doing my best to commit to my own writing. Which, yes, includes these particular blogs, which have saved me in more ways than one, but also my writing in other forms, in poetry, in feeble description of place, of heart, of real characters, of observation. As it turns out, writing this way is monumentally and often terrifyingly introspective. Even just jotting down a few thoughts in the morning, when your mind hasn't fully registered who and what you are today, will knock you back with their honesty, with the pure simplicity of the ways our brains can wander out and spill our guts, even before coffee.

I keep up this kind of writing for many reasons, and among them is so I can (continue) to find out what happens to the people I've made up. They're nowhere near from complete, of course, and it's a nice opposition to that feeling you have when you finish a really great novel, story, letter: you almost wish it didn't have to end, because you've fallen for the characters, for their charm and real voice and outright flaws. You want to know what else happens to them, and you scan the next (blank) page for any clues, you keep an ear out for rumors of a series. Despite knowing this sense several times over, I find the only connection of characters I ever appreciated were Salinger's subtle Glass family ties.

This is different, though, and hugely so. As far as I'm concerned, it can go on forever. I can write the eternal American novel. The only problem: the whole write-what-you-know card is a bit two-sided. Yes, it makes for believable prose and sincere story-telling. It also, however, forces you to tell your truth. And as it turns out, people, my truth doesn't allow me to constantly create sunny fictional characters or situations. It happens that the written life, when done honestly, is a difficult one.

Sometimes I find myself stopping for a break, or for a day, and wanting to walk away from these people, and these places, all of which are a combination of my imagination and my reality. Sometimes, they're really really awful. Sometimes, I see a lot of myself in them, which is really no different than the latter statement. It's hard to see yourself in printed black and white. It's a tough realization that what you know, when all put before you, is a less than perfect gospel. It's an irony, that you write to avoid your other commitments, and it turns out that those commitments and problems and roadblocks have surfaced in your story, have fueled the plot, have invaded your personalities, and here you are, trying to describe the exact feeling you daily fight, trying to find a synonym for yourself. What you put down, whether you like it or not, is a version of your own experience, suffered and joyed through the eyes of the person you've literally bequeathed it upon, this person you've both blessed and cursed all at once.

What. A. Circle. As one of my (current, and perhaps always) favorite songwriters, many of which happen to share the same namesake, Ben [Kweller], drawls: I don't know what to do, but I know what I like to do. So, there you have it. I like to write, and I don't know what to do with it. So I write to escape that predicament, and the stories I concoct end up echoing the way things are. So maybe I'm not writing a story about a girl who wears a visor and systematically hates the way the world works. Maybe I have.

The point is, it's all leaning in the same direction. Whether I write to avoid work, I work to find writing, I find hope and frustration in both. Maybe, in my own writing at least, a little more hope. Not because finding my exact sentiments on a screen in front of me is necessarily comforting. But it has forced me to change my perspective, ever so slightly, it has made me engage from an outside view, from the creator's eye, from the one pulling the puppet strings. So make it all perfect, I want to say. Fix their problems, solve the criminality of it all, tie up the loose ends, make everyone live happily and blissfully. But how then, I have to ask, will they ever learn?

several learned things

The only thing to do, when there is yet to be no sense of news or spark of change, is to keep going anyway. The moment the discouragement prompts you to give up is the exact time to brush it off, and push on. 


This entry is only to briefly outline the few things I have found myself learning this week; pretty tough lessons in all, but ones I will learn to cherish I am sure, some later rather than sooner. 


The first, and one I am oh-so-blessed to daily realize, is the little ways we can be shown support by the people we love. Whether that is the mention of our names, the reminder that they are thinking of us, or the ability they have to make us laugh, even at the cursed hour of 4 am, when we are on our ways to the work we dread: 


A picture message received to me from my cute Colin, of an excerpt from a coffee enthusiast's blog called My Daily Coffee. The blogger, Mike, photo-documents each time he enjoys (or despises) an espresso, from specialty shops to airport terminals. My favorite truth so far being this:

Oh, Mike is funny. And he is right. And though LAX is surely not among the reasons why, I have started to miss Los Angeles. 


Another small lesson comes from the change (or lack of change) we can feel with each passing day, how one minute everything comes rushing back as no different than it was ten years ago, that we are the same people, that we haven't learned a thing, that we haven't grown at all, that the world has turned on its tilt and we have stood still on it. Still, despite everything, despite what feels inflexibly invariable, I came across a funny picture while scanning through old albums. Me, on my sixteenth birthday (the sweetness of it debatable), coming from my very first job (of course, at a coffee shop, the enterprise that seems to have temporarily sealed my fate), wearing the same awful pants that I wore to my current job, up until they were recently deemed anti-dress-code.

Oh, little girl. If you only knew now how much you would now love and now ache. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't recognize this person anymore, any more than she might recognize me. But the irony of it killed me only slightly, and only in the best possible way. 


The last lesson worth mentioning, and probably the biggest, comes from the book I just started reading by Lauren F. Winner called Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. I know, I know. It sounds self-helpy, as it must, but the fact is any and all books are of self-help to me. I can learn almost anything, the most surprising of things, I can find a connection or a truth or meaning in those pages, in any pages: I can be reaffirmed, reminded, challenged, hung to dry, brought to tears. This book in particular, however, was brought to me in a much more mysterious way, in a moment I can't explain, as it practically fell from the shelf to my hands. 


Winner's caustic sense of faith begins to falter, more or less, when she realizes her marriage is failing. It's not a memoir, she states openly. Rather, it is an admittance, it is a struggle penned by honesty, and one she hopes will resonate with others feeling the same sense of loss: loss of self, loss of direction, loss of meaning of it all. Only several chapters in, I find myself constantly thinking, I get that, Lauren. I feel that all the time. I think, in a way, eventually, we all do. 


Still with much farther to go, in numbers of pages and otherwise, so far her words have found their way in and made my heart break, not only with a common sadness but with an understanding, with the relief that someone else has felt this way before. Hearing it (or reading it) has brought me a reassurance in which I had lost belief. 

"Some days I am not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt or whether, graciously, my doubt is riddled with faith. And yet I continue to live in a world the way a religious person lives in the world; I keep living in a world that I know to be enchanted, and not left alone. I doubt; I am uncertain; I am restless, prone to wander. And yet glimmers of holy keep interrupting my gaze." 

I don't know what it means, always, to nurture our faith, to remind ourselves that better things come, to choose perseverance, to stand strong, to think positively, to focus on our blessings rather than our burdens. All in all, I am not the best at any of these things. But I have been grateful for the written reminder to try, and the small joy of yet another book I can't bring myself to put down. 


That being said, all things are as they were a week ago. I am ungratefully employed and I am on the search, today and every day, until I find the door hanging open, just wide enough, to let me in. I have a feeling, a rather strong one, that moments such as these, will be the ones to carry me through.