Diagnosis

I have returned to woods and words.

Scooter and I have started taking evening walks (when there's time before dark) on the trails that start just a block from my house in Duncan Park. It's surprisingly dense and mountain-like once you set in, and the paths are already littered with leaves, the best kind of fall. And I let Scooter off leash to run ahead and veer off into the growth leading down to a small creek. He collects stickers and mud, and returns to me with his tongue hanging, happy with his speed and freedom.

I walk slower, breathing deeply the fresh air, and listen for rustles. I wish for more silence like this, so tomorrow I am going where there's more silence, where there are more trees, where the colors are brighter, where I can climb higher. I need it. I need it before life gets even busier and the world gets colder.

The last two months have been blurs of long days and big projects, short nights and deadlines. Even my journaling has suffered from a lack of energy for words, but I'm back at it, opening files and adding syllables, images, scenes. It's such a relief.

Times like these I recall something my grad school professor Michael L. Johnson said in a workshop. He said he was struggling with anxiety and went to a therapist. The therapist said, "How's your writing?" Johnson replied, "I'm not." "Well, that's your problem."

I hate to equate writing with therapy, but it is a path to well-being. For me, it is a necessity to a healthy mind. It is a need, a desire, a must. It is an occupation I must attend to, return to, live every day.

Finding your place in the world means finding or making a place where your needs work for you.
--from Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life by Adam Phillips

 Tomorrow I hope to inch closer to my place in the world, both as a writer and a lover of nature.

Real answers

You know those times when you feel a certain way and you want more information on that certain feeling, that specific but confusing feeling, and, because the internet has the answer to everything, you google key words from your situation and get results that might pertain to someone but not you because your situation is specific, and you get so frustrated with the internet that you can't just sit down and type out your whole situation in the search bar, send it out into the google mind, and get that one perfect result like the internet is your own personal god, and say okay, now I understand, now I have an answer?

That's the 2012 problem. You get so used to searching the internet to find out your favorite singer's cat's name and the video of that one kid with the squirrel that you expect it to have real answers to real questions of the self. So you try the same keywords in different forms of each word, in different tenses. Something will work. I will push the right button, dial up the lucky lottery numbers, sing the perfect note.

These are all questions you should be asking yourself when you write, and you have, but they keep getting stuck in a wheel. I'm going to get this quote wrong, but "if you're looking for the perfect thing to read and haven't found it, then you have to write it." I'm thinking that's probably right in this situation.

Games we play

Scooter barks. Snickers scratches.

Right now Snickers is pawing at an envelope on the floor, not trying to scratch it into pieces, but scratching me into annoyance so I will feed her. Right now Scooter is barking at her because he wants a shot at tearing up the envelope, but Snickers is sitting on it.

Snickers has learned that scratching paper or books drives me crazy, and the only way to get her to stop temporarily is to feed her. In this way Snickers has trained me.

Scooter barks. Snickers scratches. I revise.

I am playing the same writing game with myself that I've practiced for the last two years. Sit down with the intent to revise essays I believe in, read them, get tired with the thought of that much close work, get scared that I actually have to dig in and write new words, and put it away. Next time I'll write. Next time I'll have the energy. I'm losing this game.

Just now, Scooter gave up barking at Snickers and started chewing on the corner of the rug. I told him to drop it and let's go outside. He obliged, and Snickers followed, but he wouldn't go near the door, so I went back to the office to continue writing. He followed, saw the envelope unattended on the floor, and stole it back to the couch.

Munched, wet paper pieces surround Scooter now as he sleeps. Snickers, temporarily content, lays at the window, where drips still fall from the roof following an earlier thunderstorm. I drink tea and think of sleep, of driving to Atlanta for the first time tomorrow, of Snow Patrol and the spiritual effect of live music, of Kansas basketball and the experience of 2008's championship, of baking and rearranging and decorating because too often the accumulation of words leaves me dizzy and afraid of completion.

The Bearded Men (my friends)

The latest in a string of video projects over the last week...

Entrance

I'll be out walking and start composing my entrance to an essay, write the rhythm of the beginning and know when to pause--white space--and where to begin again. I choreograph the pieces of my experience in relation to steps, the magnitude of birds and toads of the lake. It comes as an external narrator translating movements into sentences, an out-of-body experience. I write word after word in silence and return home to lose every syllable before they become visual, the thought of making something imagined a reality becomes an exhaustion. All those words, stuck, hung like photos on an attic wall.

In patches

I had not mopped or swept the floors in months. I had used paper towels when there was a spill and hoped that eventually the entire apartment floor would get wiped up this way. This method of cleaning the floor, in patches, I imagined was like writing a poem every day until you eventually said everything about the human condition there was to be said. But it didn't really work that way, even in poetry; grimy corners remained while certain floorboards got burnished to a slippery, hellish gleam.

--from A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

Creation

I'm getting back to it again. Writing. But I've been considering what it means to "write" lately. Writing. Is it a mindset, a goal, a verb? Is it creation of new or recreation or re-creation of what has already been written? Is it sitting down with a new mind every time, or is it returning to that which can work and discover? Is it love, surprise, a chore?

When you are no longer in a writing program, when you no longer have thesis, thesis, thesis, dripping down your back, when your MFA diploma is leaned against the wall, still in its mailing envelope, on the top of your dresser, are you now, or still, or finally, a writer? I wondered that all along, whether my writing was real. Whether I was writing and meant to be writing or writing to do it and accomplish and accomplish and succeed. I knew this after would be the test. Would I write when I no longer had to? Would I write by choice? What would I create?

It has been difficult here. I haven't questioned my desire to write--only my ability and discipline. And here, in this whirlwind of a life, set here in the Piedmont of South Carolina, in the distant shadows of the Blue Ridge, in the deep starlessness of a city, amid two jobs and a fractured mind, writing has been a struggle. It has been that thing that scrawled itself on my desk, facing the double windows where I wanted it and needed it, under Snickers exposed belly and the heat of a computer set on Internet. Writing has shown up and hidden itself in notebooks all over--my writing is as scattered as my self. It wants to be writing but is sometimes journal. Journal sometimes becomes writing but more often becomes complaint, list, new deals with myself, with health and love. Writing sometimes becomes something--inspired--but then I walk away from it and start anew, unable to finish, to continue, to work toward a whole. All I have are pieces, and these old pieces--pieces from the thesis that are not what I want them to be--pieces that need put together, found and matched up, fractured and re-membered.

I have been here for nearly four months, and, at last, I am working on a whole. Revisioning a piece. I have merged two pieces and am trying to discover how they work together. They do, but how. Where. What do they mean?

This return to work, though I could see it coming, is a direct response to the fact that I have to read something in front of an entirely new audience one week from today. Spartanburg will hear my voice for the first time, these kind souls who publish and sell and love literature every day and asked me to be a part of it. And my voice, my rhythm, has changed slightly in the last six months since that thesis was turned in, since I really worked. What I read needs to reflect this newness, this fresh tinge of language.

Jedsen tells me I am no longer the nineteen year old he fell in love with. I have changed, he says. He no longer feels like he has to protect me, pity me in my smallness. He thinks I am a woman, a woman he loves. A woman whom he calls every day and talks about teaching, about writing, about loving, and missing, and tennis, and his parents who still make each other blush. I certainly feel different but not old enough. My brain feels stuck in fifteen, my eyes settled on a face of acne and fright. I have been trying to wear my hair differently lately, less straight, to feel less straight. To feel loose and open and alive and wise. Like a woman. Like one who knows. Like one who can.

Tell me, words, can I at least be free with you?

A Lawrence Bucket List

Well, I turned in my thesis. I can now look at the pieces with new eyes and not thesis eyes. Defense will be the week of April 12th. And then I'll have one more month of teaching before my time at KU comes to an end. I think it's a good time to make a Lawrence bucket list. You know, all the things I want to do in Lawrence before I leave this summer. I've spent the last 33 months inside, mostly. The first 24 of which were awful in that awful, tiny, dark apartment. The last 9 have been lovely here in Village Square. Lovely and bright. Lovely and spacious. But I never go out. So, Lawrence, here's what I plan to do with you before July 1 (in absolutely no order but the order they come to mind):

1. Go to the Farmer's Market at 7am on a Saturday.
2. Go into a restaurant Downtown on a Saturday evening.
3. Walk/jog the length of the trail along the Kansas River.
4. Eat at Runza.
5. See a movie at Liberty Hall.
6. Walk a trail at Clinton Lake.
7. Go shopping Downtown.
8. Visit the KU Natural History Museum.
9. Take pictures of myself all around campus.
10. Visit the KU Visitor's Center.
11. Take Jedsen to breakfast at Wheatfield's.
12. Eat at Free State for the first time as a Lawrence resident.
13. Swim in the apartment pool.
14. Go into every building on campus.
15. Watch the sunset from the top of Fraser Hall.
    

Or this

"Every man has within himself the entire human condition." --Michel de Montaigne, the father of the essay

Also of note is an entry from Saturday, March 6, 1999, amid observations like “I’ve been thinkin’ and I’ve decided that Nick, Bri, and AJ are my ideal men,” “As far as I know, nobody likes me—I mean like-likes me,” and “My feet are freezing!” is a little ditty: “Guess I gotta write more often, huh? Ya know this could be really famous someday like The Diary of Anne Frank if I become someone special when I grow up.” 

Ha.

Needless to say, it was painful enough to read my own laborious days in prose, and, especially, those incessant professions of love for unattainable boys, both real and another-dimension-real. I shall never put you through that, world. My hope is that my little piece of life in the form of a collection of essays can reveal pieces of your life: parts & accessories. That's what these pieces are. We are all made of them. 

 "We go to literature--and perhaps especially creative nonfiction--to learn not about the author, but about ourselves; we want to be moved in some way. the emotional resonance happens only through skillful use of artistic techniques. As Salman Rushdie put it, "Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart." --from Tell it Slant by Brenda Miller

good

It's been a good morning, though the nerves are still there. I'm convinced it's from being overwhelmed at what's before me. Two and a half months until my thesis is due. If I think about it that way--which is the only way I'm able to think of it--it's frightening.

I entered the New Letters essay contest this year and lost, rightly so. I read the winning essay today: "Three Hooks" by Robyn Anspach. Beautiful. Broken. Imaginary. Hard. I longed to be broken like her work.

I'm broken in other ways, more local.

I have nineteen pieces in the works. 19. NINETEEN. And they continue to accumulate, unfinished.

Additional

And, just over a week later, here's an article about Great Grandma: Children Cherish 'Dearest' Mother.

Yes, here I am keeping her memory alive. I'm writing about her, too. Writing about that slumber party. Writing about lawn care.

I have so many writings going about so many things...I'm a bit overwhelmed. Where do I begin? Where do I continue? Business cards? The dash? Black hole? I'm a lot overwhelmed.

Actually, I just discovered that my mom has not thrown away my business card collection. I couldn't believe it. I thought they were gone. But now I can go through them at Christmas and write from the real thing--not just what I remember or imagine they were.

I was a strange, organized child. I could give you the number of a Stain Master representative in Hutchinson. And so much more.

Rearranging

Essays begin with something that exists and has meaning before it reaches the page, establishing a different contract between the reader and the writer, a different set of literary obligations. Essays are not arranged by plot, but by anxieties. They don't wonder, "What's next?" with a groan. The anxieties are relieved not so much by the telling, like confession, but by the arranging, the way some of us fix a problem at work by cleaning up the desk. "Getting it right" or an essayist means putting events and details into a revealing--a revelatory--relationship with one another. Strolling through the museum of love and change, the essayist rearranges for all to see the treasures we cannot keep. --"The Art of Translation" by Steven Harvey

 
Rearranging. The art of rearranging for me began when I was quite young. It began in my room, with my furniture. I kept moving things, trying and trying to get it right. I would find a satisfying arrangement, move into it with a new perspective, a new way of looking at the world, and be happy. Until I got bored or realized what it was lacking. Arrangement meant everything to me, especially in a small space. Once I experienced the pleasure of rearranging, I moved onto other rooms in the house. I drew a new floorplan for my brother's room. Then I drew another and another. He only let me implement one. That's all. It left me wanting more. I cleaned and rearranged the basement, which was satisfying, until it was taken over by my mother's recycling and more toys. I suggested new arrangements for my parents' room. They never moved anything. And still haven't. I moved the couch in the living room, the only thing not tied to the wall. It was moved back by my father in a matter of hours. I changed the orientation of the dining room table. This was allowed, on occasion, for a month or two at a time before it reverted back to its origins. 

Rearranging. I've done it in my apartments. Frequently. Those small apartments left me troubled and rearranging was the only way to attempt to relieve the troubles. Knowing that this current apartment, large with defined spaces, would be mind for over six months before I actually moved in, I obsessed over arrangements on an online room planner. I put in the specific dimensions of my furniture and future furniture (yes, I knew that, too) and moved them around in a simulated space. I would go back to it several times a day to make small adjustments, try new arrangements, to get it perfect before moving in. It has worked, so far. I can't envision a better arrrangement for the furniture. I'm happy with the way it is without an itch to try something different. 

That is the hope with essays, that the arrangement will work perfectly, that the pieces will fall where they should in order to equal a whole. Especially with the braided essay that I write--multiple sides or experiences put together in the small space of the essay--the pieces have to be in the perfect location. Otherwise, it's just a narrative. Or just a chronological story without meaning. Or disjointed ideas. How you put them together makes the meaning. If you know how they work in relation to one another, what the purpose of each is, you can lay them out to create cohesion, an understanding. 

I'm beginning to realize that, in a way, by writing essays I'm doing what I originally desired: interior decorating and design. What do you know, it's coming together.

First

I have been harried as of late. No time for blogging, I guess, or no energy. The writing has been coming on more, though still is some starts and fits because of teaching and other things that I can't identify. I think I figured it out the other day: I've been making it too hard.

When I decided upon a collection of essays as my thesis, I went wild with enthusiasm. I created a word document titled "My MFA Thesis." I had grand plans. I started a list of all the essays I would write. It got up to twenty-three, many of them with five or six numbered ideas below them. Some were simple words: ghosts, restaurants, marriage, meteorology, tennis. Others were concepts or ideas: obsession as a coping mechanism, working the press, becoming Maria. Under "ghosts," I listed what I could write about: "Cuddles, Lois" (my ghosts), the ghosts of ourselves (rather vague and lofty), Council Grove's hermit cave that would never give me a clear picture, and a final note: "wind?" I was making the connections I thought I could make before even writing the thing. I was planning it out. I was going to write all of these essays because I had had all of these ideas. They needed to be good, complicated, advanced.

Turns out, it paralyzed me. I took the entire writing out of the writing. All the ideas stood there, waiting to be written, but there was too much to consider. Where to start? I have the ideas, but I don't know how to write them. As I got started, finally, in August, after the summer of starts and unfinished pages, I put together something that I thought all came together. With so much to include, so many ideas, I lost the "heart" of the essay, as Dr. Atkins pointed out. I was writing down the information, the connections, but I wasn't really writing to write. There was no surprise. I was not "essaying." No, the piece already had a goal that I was writing to, and that took all of the journey out of the process. It happened in earnest on the next two pieces that I put together. I didn't like them, knew they weren't mine or finished in any way, but I had them.

With my recent realization of the root of the problem, I'm getting back to basics. I'm trying to get back to just writing. How about that. This one that I'm working on (on meteorology of sorts) is just going. I'm not pushing it but letting it take its course. And you know what? I keep thinking of things I can connect it to, but I'm not writing them down in outline form as a finish line. It will happen how it happens.

This is most evident in an essay that I typed out by Scott Russell Sanders last night and this morning, "Feasting on Mountains." This practice of typing out an essay that I love is inspired by Jedsen's recent adoption of the practice. It's something that I taught my 102 students last year and knew would be good practice for me but never took it on. Now I think I'm addicted. I started yesterday and have already copied three.

What "Feasting on Mountains" does is describes Sanders' ascent to the top of Mount June, his walk. He stops along the way to ponder what he finds, and that's where the meaning comes in. It's not pushed toward one goal, but it all adds up to a larger meaning as it goes, not culminating in one final summation of meaning either. He finds it as he goes in little aha moments rather than one larger goal. It taught me, especially by writing it out and having to notice what was being typed by my fingers and why.

Next, I chose a piece by Ryan Van Meter from the 2009 Best American Essays titled "First." Read it here. It's short, but I can't think of another more timely and perfectly presented narrative about one evening in a child's life. It works on you in bits into an ultimate mass of powerful emotion. Love. What is it? Who is it for? How can you deny it to someone? You can't. If you doubt anyone and how they love and if they should love, read this. Tell me you would deny him.

And you should listen to what I'm listening to. Nothing hits me like essays and songs. Reading and listening reminds me why I want to write. I just read "My Mother's Theories of Child Rearing" by Kathryn Starbuck, and it hurt. Her hurt made me hurt and made me realize a little bit of something about my relationship with my mother.

And with Snickers here on the desk next to my hands, eager to walk across the laptop, I will write today. As I have been. As I want to. As I will do. I will revise, too. Those broken, forced essays of late will be cracked open with revision, new eyes. I can see where the heart is. I can know why it came out and why it was important and what it can say. Revision is best. That is where the words come into meaning. But it needs to be a balance of journey and reflection. Here I go.

like baseball

"And what the great American game of baseball seems to me to demonstrate most obviously is that those who 'have what it takes' must nevertheless work hard at their craft all the time and that many who might have been judged not to 'have what it takes,' through hard work at their craft, can also perform well. Recent years of World Series and league championship games have shown us great hitters and pitchers hitting and pitching badly while players we've never heard of perform beautifully. What veteran baseball players and writers know is that constantly working hard will produce a respectable batting or earned run average, a stack of pages of substantial literary value, an acceptance from a good journal.

"I am not describing a method of achieving happiness. I am describing what seems to me a necessary and healthy way for a few people to carry out their lives; happiness has nothing to do with it. What seems to me the only legitimate goal of any would-be writer is to achieve a circumstance of ongoing work, the serenity to carry out the daily writing and revising of what poems, stories, or novels are given one to write. On those rare occasions when one's serenity seems about to collapse, I recommend that one step out into one's back yard and vigorously spit."

--from "Let's Say You Wrote Badly This Morning" by David Huddle

I don't much care for baseball. I don't know what a batting or earned run average is. I don't really care to know. But Huddle compares athletes and writers here, in this piece anthologized in The Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Essays. It's the having what it takes--the making yourself work to have it. I'm still struggling.

At this point there's a three-way tension. Teach well--write a kick-ass thesis/book--get thyself prepared to get a job (as in a career) next summer. I can't let the teaching down, and I have to figure out what I'm going to do with my 2010 self. I want to write, to shut it all out and write. How do you write in the moment? Live in the moment?

Here's my working list of goals for my work, in content, language, and totality:

Metaphor

Zest

Contradiction

Philosophy

More explanation to come.

where i'll be

I was given a serious dose of reality earlier today, and I appreciated it. Thank you, Joe Harrington.

What kind of academic do you want to be?

I enjoy writing. Ideally, I would write all the time and get really good and make a living at it. I want to be surrounded by writers. I need to be surrounded by writers to inspire me and keep me believing that people do write even in the middle of lives like mine. (Thank you, Bathtub!) Now, does that put me in the academy or someplace else, like book publishing?

I don't know.

That's why I'm going to my first career counseling appointment tomorrow morning. I want to know what I want to do. What I can do. I want to know where I'll be in nine months. Still here in Lawrence? On the job market? Headed for a non-academic job? The career counselor is hopefully going to help me figure out my specific trajectory, and then I will take that knowledge to the job placement adviser, who will help with the actual job-getting, if need be.

But the immediate thing, the thing that will help me get a job in the end, is my thesis. My book. That's the business. I have to get on it, get back to it. Ben Cartwright wrote a pertinent and target-hitting blog this evening, inspired by the same meeting: What kind of habit do you have?. My new habit is writing a blog entry every day because, hey, it's writing. And then that frees up my mind for more writing, more creation. It's a habit I'm starting because other things haven't turned into habits. I need the every day habit that I don't have.

And now I'll quote Michael L. Johnson who reminded us today of his experience in a psychologist's office. "How's the writing going?" the psych. asked. "It's not," he replied. "Well, that's your problem." And he never went back to the psych.

All the anxiety, the stress, the imbalance, could that be because I'm not writing? Because I haven't even been journaling for the last four years like I did for my first twenty when I didn't have anxiety? Could it be that choosing to write has made it less of a necessity for me in everyday life? That's backwards. Let's turn it around, I say. Turn it upside down and write for the need and the want and the have to.

Okay, now I'm going to quote Oprah quoting Gary Zuvak in The Seat of the Soul: "When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose, and meaning... When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment." Is it wrong that Oprah is my spiritual guidance? I'm not aligned. Once I lost my faith, the Methodist faith that I had lived for twenty-one years, not knowing how not to believe, I lost my center. You can be spiritual without believing in God. Spiritual for me is nature, mountains, living Earth. Yoga may be spiritual (I'll find out soon). I feel so disconnected from everything--I give everything to everything else and am left with a not knowing me. I'm left without me when I give all of my time to work and school and not me and being and writing. "Writing is selfish," Johnson reminded us again today. I need to be more selfish in that way. It's too important.

overflowing bathtub

First of all, get this:

http://bathtubcollective.blogspot.com/2009/08/you-know-how-we-do.html

We're presenting at AWP in April 2010 in Denver! Agh!

We're pumped.

for you

Thank you, my friends, for your responses/comments. I'm grateful for your thoughts, encouragements, attention. Sometimes it helps me to write about not being able to write. Like a journal on my own doubts about my path and abilities. It comes around. It is the recognition of the worthwhile in my head.

"People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all. Strange seizures beset us." --Annie Dillard, "The Writing Life"

perfect

I am looking out again. This time, the view is different. In fact, it is a view. It is a new view on life and writing and reading and smiling and health and being. So here I am all moved in to the new place, to this place that really feels like a first home. It's homey. Homey apartment that is not a box. With a room for everything I need. With rooms that flow together, open rooms. With windows, tall windows that cross, diagonal, from one side, one side of one side, to the other. Furniture that belongs, that belongs to me and represents me. Furniture I bought and built. Snickers running through the place, turning corners, sleeping at my feet and on the patio.

Now that I'm settled, my mind is settling. I'm back at it. Things are right. I read "The Writing Life" by Annie Dillard this weekend. It changed things, or reaffirmed things, or made me change or think. I'm reading "At Large and At Small" by Anne Fadiman. She changed things, reaffirmed things. Familiar things. The familiar essay is right, is what I'm doing. I'm working on five essays right now. I'm back at it. I'm at my desk, looking out the window, writing, thinking, believing again. I exercised on my indoor bike in this office watching an episode of "The O.C." online and then sat down to the writing again. I've discovered that there is this one spot at the meeting of two cushions on my couch that is perfect for reading. It feels right.

I turn off my bedroom light at night and open the blinds so I can see the sky. I've done this for as long as I can remember, but I haven't been able to see the sky for three years. My first night sleeping here, I opened the blinds and nearly cried at the sight of the moon through the slats, from my bed. I fell asleep following the moon again. Last night I saw lightning. It flashed through my room. I fell asleep to thunder and the flashes of lightning.

I'm home. And it's changed things. I moved in and felt the immediate dread of leaving. Only a year here, huh? That's sucks. I don't want to apartment search again in six months. I don't want the anxiety of it all again just yet. I want to enjoy it here. It's made me reconsider my urge to leave Lawrence immediately after I graduate in May. I could stay another year or so. I don't have to rush, right? I'm thinking about my possible book (thesis) and the job market and how I already have a job here and a good place and good people. And maybe I could stay here--not forever--but for another year. When the job market unfreezes, when I have a book and publications to my name, when I have a degree and a life outside of classes. I could stay here for a bit. For a little bit. Take it a bit slower. I'm open, more open to it. See? This place has changed things.

looking out

It's a lovely morning here in Lawrence, though quite steamy at 8:30 in the morning. I'm on my patio, sitting at my plastic table and chairs, surrounded by hostas. I got the gardening bug last weekend, did research about container gardening, and then pulled Jedsen through the gardening center at Home Depot as I picked out perennials. I spent too much but justified it with the fact that they were perennials and will last forever. And then Shannon broke my heart this week and told me they're only perennials if they're in the ground. Oh. So it looks like I'll be having lots of houseplants in the cold months...which I wanted, but I also wanted patio plants to just survive all year long. I must wish for too much.

So I'm outside writing while Jedsen's sleeping. We have officially been together for 4.5 years today--we're spannies, as we say. We span time together. He is such an integral part of my life--even though we only see each other for approximately two days a week. I don't like to write about romantic love, but this man is special. He is so smart, so talented, so handsome, so sweet and caring. And he loves like nobody I've ever known. Lucky. That is what I am.

So the writing thing hasn't gotten better. I know what I need to do, have to do. And I will do it. Here's the thing. Sometimes everything feels trapped inside. I can compose in my mind--I know what I want to write about--but the idea of sitting down and writing it paralyzes me sometimes. But I think it's tied to the environment. I have felt trapped in this apartment. So this morning I move outside to the patio (which has been underused these two years), and I'm already more open. There's the sky. Ok, I can write, think. There's a tree. I love trees. I can write. There's the breeze. A real breeze not from the a/c. There's the sun making me squint. Ok, I'm alive. I can write. So here's what's going to happen starting on Wednesday when I move. (Yes, the move is finally here!) The small bedroom will be my office. My desk will be in front of the window, looking out on the patio. Looking out is key. Or I can sit in the kitchen at the breakfast bar (a place to eat again!) and look out on the patio through the sliding glass doors. And if I end up having space for a real table and chairs, I can sit there and do the same. I can look out. Or I can go out onto the patio like I'm doing now and write. And Snickers can stare at me enviously from the window like she's doing now. Open up the space, change the space, feel the breeze, and write. I have written about this before in my first real essay--"Within the Frame." I just didn't take the step outside the window.

The last month with the new furniture has actually helped me not hate this apartment as much, though. Just being surrounded by what is me, and the furniture really is a reflection of me, has made it more of a home. But it didn't change the darkness or the smallness. Wednesday marks the start of something different. My brother Tom is coming up from Hutchinson on Tuesday to help me. We're going to get my cousin Mandy and have a slumber party on that last night in C3. Then I get the keys at 10am on Wednesday, and then we have a Uhaul for the big things in the afternoon. This move will be different in many ways from the others: 1) No parents--just brother. 2) Mandy! 3) Jedsen! (because no parents) 4) Uhaul. 5) a 7 day overlap of apartments for extended moving and cleaning time. 6) I'm moving only 4 blocks away.

Cottonwood floats all around me, settling on my sweaty skin, white fluff ready for seeding. It rises up more than down, horizontal more than succumbing to the slight pull of gravity. It has nowhere to go but with the wind's will. I used to be allergic--back in Hutchinson--but my allergies have mostly gone away in Northeast Kansas. I don't understand the change, but I'm grateful for it. A different altitude? level of allergens? mindset?

not to say

There is so much not to say. What does that even mean? It means, I think, if I understand what just popped out of my mind, that writing is hard. That there's so much to say that it's hard to know what to say. That's not to say that I don't want to. I want to. More than anything. I want to write. I want to. I'm doing it. I'm living this dream that I started nearly three years ago. The Writing Life. Now it's a matter of making the Writing work every day in the Life. It's hard. It's supposed to be. You don't choose this occupation for the ease of sitting down and writing what matters. Don't make it easy. I make it too hard, I think.

Keep it down. I need the quiet to think, to settle, to breathe. But I learned something today. Something that I have to remind myself of too often, remind myself to have human contact. Human contact. Seems simple, but for me it seems to be hard.

"I went broke believing that the simple should be hard." Yes. That's what I'm doing with a lot of my life. My instinct is that things are not simple. That having fun and being myself are hard. That having friends is hard. And that's a quote from the song of the summer that's reminding me that "every day is a start of something beautiful." "All We Are" by Matt Nathanson.