this morning, my thoughts do not settle on any one subject. instead, my mind flits like a bee from flower to flower, or like a fallen leaf blown and tumbling across the frozen grass. I am quite content. this is the third consecutive morning I’ve gotten to sit and write. that is all. the house is quiet and there would be quite a list of things to do, should I care to seek out things to do, what with the holidays fast approaching; but I’m not doing those things. I’m doing just one thing. I’m sitting and writing (and occasionally, also, drawing). I have been trying to make this possible for a long time, and while it may be possible this week, or for a few days this week, it is not possible most of the time. I’ve been asking myself: what would you do, if you could just sit and write? and I think the answer is: I would sit and write.
what would I write? that could only be discovered upon the writing of it.
I’ve been thinking about how we, as humans, seek fixes and cures from a variety of sources. my own fix and cure is writing, first and foremost, though my list would also include hard-core exercise, meditation, prayer, faith, song, poetry, drawing, and being with people I love. what are we trying to fix and cure? what am I trying to fix and cure? do we need reassurance that our lives matter, that there is a meaning or a solution to pain?
this past weekend, I was feeling resentful, thinking of how everything I’d done had been for someone else — nothing for myself. and then I thought: good grief, that’s life, Carrie! the point of being alive is to do things for others, not just yourself! that is what brings peace, comfort, contentment. and it’s hard. it requires work, maybe even sacrifice. but it’s the best fix, the most reliable cure.
does my struggle to see writing, specifically my own writing, as a fruitful act, relate in large part to this? — that writing feels like a selfish undertaking (because I love it so much), an indulgence, of benefit to me specifically, and to no one else in particular, and I can’t get behind that idea with conviction. so I’m constantly thinking, instead, as I did in church on Sunday, of other uses for my writing skills: I could write and deliver sermons, I thought; I could do the children’s story, I’m good with kids. this fiction-writing business, what’s it for? am I using it a disguised form of personal therapy? and if so, isn’t that the opposite of treating it as art?
(I want to treat my writing as art.)
there is and remains a desire to take my work and to share it, somehow. that’s the missing piece (is that the missing piece?). I crave connection. I am not a child. I want to play, but also to build something lasting. do these two desires fit together — the desire to play and the desire for a stable outcome? a child’s fort gets knocked down. she was kind of bored of it anyway, something she hadn’t even noticed until the blankets had been folded and put away. in the newly empty space, she begins playing again, imagining something new. there is a rigidity to adult systems. we want monuments. we want permanence. by god, we fight against our transitory state of being on this earth. but maybe what’s beneath all of that is not merely the obvious, not just fear of death and extinction, but also a craving to connect, to cement our connections with others over time. a child is content to play with a child she’s never seen before and will never see again; the richness for her is contained entirely in the moment. I am not a child. but I need to play like a child in order to write. and I need to build on my work like an adult in order to keep writing.
what have I accomplished in 2018? I’ve got no publications to point to, no evidence, no proof of achievement. just notebooks full of cartoons and scribbles, a manuscript of worked and reworked stories, and the kind words of students who’ve passed through my classroom this year. enough? perhaps I’m most proud that I’ve kept at the work itself — the play. I can’t point to the monument of publication, but I’ve been constructing something else, less rigid, but perhaps more lasting. I’ve turned the soil (metaphorically, you understand) on a garden patch where my writing can grow and thrive alongside the writing of peers and friends. if writing is my gift as well as my obsession and my fix, my cure, I want to share it, not simply by publishing, but also by playing in the moment (alone; and with others). mentorship stretches in many directions; a system of mentorship is not fixed or rigid and I need both to mentor and to be mentored. these are the structures I’ve sought out, to build and to nurture — my accomplishments in 2018: I’ve given myself this morning, and the promise of many more mornings just like this one.
to sit and write.
xo, Carrie