Cobwebs

A mess reconfigured into a list:

• Sometimes you need to quit after 50 words.
• When you tell yourself that, you usually write 100.
• All of them are bad, right up until the very end, when you realize on word number 132 that you’ve run out of time and you’re finally getting somewhere. This is fine, because it means tomorrow will be easier.
• What goes through your head while this is happening, or, more accurately, not happening: acute envy toward people who write every day, anger at yourself for having slacked for two weeks, some sort of vitriol over your total inability to develop a routine, a thought that eventually loops around to become an acknowledgement of how your lack of routine is in itself a routine. Only then do you remind yourself for the ten thousandth time that you’ve done this since you were seventeen and that it will change and only then do you feel better.
• You know that when you hear yourself say, “Maybe I’ll write an essay…,” you’re floundering. It’s like how people know a migraine’s coming on, except there’s no prescription medication for floundering.
• Floundering in itself isn’t bad, but it feels bad. The moment is bad, especially if it’s an hour. Or a week.
• No matter how often you remind yourself it will go away, that it will change, you wander around every day wondering when you’ll sit down and write again. You wonder where the story went. It’s like a friend went on vacation and you can’t remember when they’re supposed to come back. There’s a nervous energy to it that’s not quite anxiety, but a sense that you need to keep reminding yourself that you shouldn’t forget the thing you can’t remember, so that when it comes back, you grab it and hold on. While you’re waiting you give every experience the side-eye, to see if it will help you get back to the place you left. The dairy case becomes loaded with meaning. Unspecified meaning. That later reveals itself to be nothing.
• In the meantime, you’re propelled into people’s lives. You see the “stuff” people write about happening in real life and wonder what kind of sick fool mines the despair and panic of their loved ones for their own creative gain. You vow to wait at least a week before you find a way to insert what you’ve seen into what you’re writing. It’s like wondering how long before you call after the first date.
• You wonder if you’ve talked too much about the fact that you’re writing, what the act of sharing does to your creativity. If secrecy is the key to living a sane life. Then someone asks you what you’re writing about, and you tell them you can’t say and they think you’re weird. You’ve only just met them, and you think they’re nice, but now they think you’re creepy, so you’ve got to rethink this secrecy thing.
• Somewhere between being secretive and sane is a happy medium. Some days you nail it. Most days, it’s like those little mazes with the ball bearings where you want the ball bearings to fall into the little cardboard hole and instead they roll around, speeding past the hole like it’s not there until you throw the little stupid game that your kid received as party favor across the room as if it mattered.
• Next morning, you write 500 words. Piece of cake.

You’re Never Really Lost In New Jersey

There are some days when it’s not happening. Or it feels like it won’t happen. Or I convince myself I’ve had such a good run for two weeks that I’ve used it up and it’s done. I look for a distraction, which usually comes courtesy of someone who has plowed through all the same things I’m worrying about just long enough to write something from start to finish. My jealousy makes me open the file sitting on my computer, go to the end and keep writing from where I left off.

I tried to read it over one day and quickly decided not to do that. Some of this is going to stink. Maybe most of it. Maybe most of it will be thrown out and I’ll start over. I won’t entertain the idea that I’ll get bored or distracted or run out of ideas. Wait, I just did. What I mean is, I have those thoughts. I have them all the time. I’ve done it before, certainly, bailed on an idea, so it could happen again. I’m more afraid of that than the fact that the writing might  be bad. I can fix bad writing, but it has to exist first. It’s the not existing that’s the problem (We all know that, there’s no need to unpack it.).

The other thing I make myself remember is that I wouldn’t be able to abandon so many ideas if I hadn’t started so many to begin with. And I wouldn’t know enough to feel disappointed when I walk away if I hadn’t finished a few things, too.

Right?

This is bigger, though. It’s taken a year just to figure out what the idea is, pages and pages of writing in directions that turn out to be wrong to get to where I am now and not know if this is right either. And now there are more pages. I’ve chosen a path. How long do I hike it without knowing where it goes? I tell myself to think of it like New Jersey: eventually I’ll wind up somewhere. You’re never really lost in New Jersey.

There’s a balance, but the thing about balance is you never know what it is without losing it first.

That’s where I am. Up at six, sometimes five, greeting a real live sense of dread at opening a stupidly named file on my computer. Hoping what I’m saying isn’t as stupid as the name of the file, then just writing it until I run out of time. I’ll get tired eventually. I’ll run out of ideas. I’ll say I was just kidding about writing this. Or I’ll say I mean to get back to it. Or I’ll say I’m giving it a little space. Or I’m writing in my head. Or, I need a life, don’t I? All of that will be true and false at the same time. Right and left, up and down, reading and writing, thinking and not thinking. Balance has its necessary opposite, too. The trick is to remember that.

The Panic Poems

Yesterday, I was sitting in traffic in Queens, dreading what I had to look forward to as I approached the George Washington Bridge at rush hour, and I  found myself trying to write a limerick in my head about stress. (This was long after I had blasphemed “O, Tannenbaum”.) Something about having to figure out two other words that rhyme with “furious kindergartener” was fun.

I’m a terrible poet. The fact that I would even use that word ironically to describe myself is a crime against poetry. I’m sorry to Homer and everyone who came after him for saying that. This is not me kicking myself, this is an honest assessment of my skills. I have a lot of skills, but poetry is not one of them. It helps my ego that I don’t particularly like poetry, or feel like I “get” it–it’s only those rare poets who make their way past my artistic side-eye–so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

That said, while I was sitting there, surrounded by giant trucks, creeping along, I started to think that a little structure might be good for me, so this morning I wrote a sonnet about stress. I never could quite get a solid grip on the whole iambic pentameter thing in high school and was glad to be rid of it, so I’m not sure I did it right, but I got the rhyme scheme down okay.

The thing is, I’m not nearly as wound up as I make myself out to be, it’s just that in the last week I’ve become painfully aware of the ways my mind can spin off like a top. No, I’ve known that for a while, but I see its little seeds sprouting much earlier. I’m already sick of thinking about it, but it’s there a lot of the time, so I might as well sit down with it and look it in the eye, and we might as well have a little fun while we’re stuck with each other.

You’re thinking I’m about to post the poem here, aren’t you? Nope. Just know it exists. I’m not that brave. Besides, it’s an exercise. A way to break something down into meaningless parts and rearrange them into something else. That in itself is kind of a revelation–just play with the thing, work at it. It feels more like a machine than an expression of something. It needs to operate properly before anything bigger can rise up out of it. I can’t get all worked up about whether it’s any good or not when I’m just trying to follow instructions. And believe me, when I back away and just read it, I can see it’s clunky and I blush right here at my computer all by myself. But then I remind myself I’m not doing it for “art” or to be praised for it. I’m doing it to practice. I’m not even sure what I’m practicing. Vocabulary? Meter? Simple math? Or is it something else, like humility, or detachment, or the ability to see how one practice feeds into the other? Is it about how the work is the thing, how the simple act of fitting a bunch of words into a structure can get me out of my own way? The point isn’t to singlehandedly revive the form, to become a Poet (God help us if it is), the point is to relieve myself of the dread that comes over me when I start asking myself how I’m doing all the other times I sit here and start typing.

So, the Panic Poems. It’s a No Free Verse Zone, full of sestinas and sonnets and haiku. Who knows what might happen in there? Or what might happen beyond its orderly little borders.

On Totally Flipping Out

Bringing you more romance of the season. Read, or sing, to the tune of “O, Christmas Tree”. Feel free to add a verse.

Oh cortisol, oh cortisol
How potent are thy cancers!
Oh cortisol, oh cortisol
How potent are thy cancers!
Whenever you rise up in me,
my insulin spikes greedily.
Oh cortisol, oh cortisol
How potent are thy cancers!

Lean In

When you’re at a yoga retreat, you meet a lot of people who “journal.” I am not one of these people and I always alternate between relief and mild discomfort when I’m confronted with someone who does. I realize that some people have untangled enormous puzzles by writing in a journal, that the journal has probably saved marriages and ushered people through losses I can’t even fathom, or allowed them to record and appreciate boundless joys. I still don’t want to do it.

That said, the other day I started a file on my computer called Things Not to Talk About. I haven’t looked at it, but I think it was a bit of a screed. Yesterday, I saved something I called Things Not to Talk About 2, and wrote 1000 words. These weren’t angry–or maybe some of them were–but they felt weird, but not…bad. I wrote 500 more in there this morning.

I also brought a bright yellow notebook to Kripalu so I could take notes and remember stuff like the tarot card reader. I literally took notes, line after line of short phrases to remind me of what was going on. I haven’t looked back on it yet, and I forgot to do it half the time, but while I wonder what I said, I don’t really care that much either.

Someone might say this place is a journal and you’d be right, except that I leave a ton out of here and the whole point of a journal is not to edit.

The one person I spoke to at length up there suggested I write about something I have no interest in writing, even though some of the stories are up in my head fully formed. She told me the two things that make me cringe–that it might help someone else, and it might help me. I’ve heard this before and there’s really no faster way to get me to turn on my heel and walk out the door (even if it’s just in my mind) than to suggest that to me. (There is one faster way, that’s for someone to congratulate me for considering it. Just ignore it, and we’ll all get along fine.) Then again, wrap the message up in all the other stuff I was thinking about and absorbing, and maybe there’s a way to take her advice. I heard a couple of people say they couldn’t write anything until they wrote the one story that’s stuck in their heads and I wondered if that was true for me. I decided no, but I also wondered if I’m short-changing myself by resisting. The resisting is a whole practice in itself, a habit, a pastime. Maybe all I need to do is take a breath, lean in, see how it feels. If it’s bearable, take another breath, lean in a bit more, see how it feels. Then move in the other direction, just to balance it all out again. Maybe that’s all there is to it. In fact, that is all there is to it. That’s the thing about those days up there, I reminded myself that it’s all easier than I make it out to be. What if I didn’t react or analyze it? What if I just did it without editorializing?

But back to the journal. On a walk Christmas Day I picked up two rocks from a path I was walking on. There was absolutely nothing special about this path–it was crowded with runners and walkers and dogs.  When I came home I found a silver ink pen I had lying around, wrote the date on them, and put them on a table in my living room.  Christmas was a good day, full of happy people and good food. Still deep in the throes of the retreat I spent most of my time at my sister-in-law’s house doing stuff like exclaiming about the amazing color of the sauce, or trying to put their dog in a trance. People noticed. I noticed. I’m a pretty cheery person, but this was a little different. I wanted to remember it, whatever it was. I probably won’t. Someday I’ll look at those rocks and wonder what the hell I was thinking, but sometimes you can write down directions and remember them without actually using them. Maybe it’ll be like that. Maybe something will sink in.

I wondered too what would happen if I made a habit out of that–picking up random things that catch my eye. That would be a record in itself, wouldn’t it? Maybe the way to come at this whole question is to do it from a few different directions, see what sits right.

Here’s where you wonder, if I don’t want to do these things in the first place, why do them? Because in the last week the question has become, why not?  What’s the big deal? What’s the harm in spending twenty minutes a day clearing my mind out a little? What’s so bad about taking someone else’s suggestion and trying something that’s objectively harmless? Because wrinkling my nose at it feels a little false, or defensive. I’m working too hard at doing nothing. I mean, I hula hooped, for god sake. I stood in a room full of strangers and worried that I couldn’t find my hips with a map and a compass, and as soon as I stopped telling myself how foolish it was, I pulled it off. The minute I stopped saying no, everything got easier. I still flung the thing about fifteen times in the face of the guy beside me, but there was progress nonetheless, not just with the hoop itself but with the ego of the hooper.

If there’s one thing I’ve figured out recently it’s that there’s a lot of noise in my head. Most of it sounds like, “You’re not gonna do/eat/wear/say/think that, are you?” With it comes a whole conference-load of people who I’m afraid will have opinions about what I’m thinking or doing: my mother, my spouse, my friends, people I’ve never met.  The beauty in talking to this one person last week was that she really didn’t care if I ever wrote again or ate nothing but Fritos for the rest of my life, she just suspected there might be something to learn from the experience of trying something else. That was a weirdly liberating realization–I could make my own decision. I thought I knew this, I thought I already did it, but as I walked around and chose what to eat and which sessions to attend and what to do with my spare time, I found myself telling the little chorus in my head to shut the hell up. I was shocked by how often it had an opinion, how often I had to gently push it out of the way to get to what I really wanted to think about. Once I did that a few times, a thread developed, and a strange quiet, calm stepped forward, as if to say, “Dude, I’ve been here the whole time, back in the corner. Thanks for getting all those other fools out of the way. Now, can we get to work?”

Um, yeah. Let’s.

Earth Invades the Retreat

Look, it’s not all deep breathing and placid smiles on a retreat. The following is a very long (very long–pay attention to that note), incomplete list of nothing in particular:

1. On my way to Massachusetts I passed through a town my husband and I used to run to when we wanted a little shot of New England and noticed that the inn where we used to have lunch is for sale. We used to eat in the bar, near the fireplace, maybe. They had great fries (I’m the woman who loves french fries.) I’m sad, but only distantly, since we hadn’t been there in five years. Even the sign is gone, which seems harsh. It takes driving another five miles to remember the name of the place. When I text husband about this, he replies, “Sad, but I’m about the future.” Carry on, then.
2. After taking the easiest, prettiest drive I’ve done in a while–marveling at how excited I was to see pine trees along the way–I met my friend in some cute little restaurant in Lenox. It’s so cute and sunny that I decide it’s the kind of place you see in a magazine advertising how cool you’d feel if you ate breakfast at this place. We drink fancy tea and eat eggy things, then contemplate cookies for a long time. Afterwards, we walk around town in the bitter cold; we brave a toy store, which I quickly leave, claiming I’m watching our tea that’s cooling on the front porch. We take one turn around the block, then a second. A trip to the cheese shop where we spend time looking at chocolate. Then it starts to set in. Me: “You….need anything else?” Her: “Nope. I should go. So should you.” Me: “Yeah..Yes…I’m…I have relaxation anxiety.”   Her: “Yes.” Me: “Really.” Her: “I know.” After a round of jokes and stories about the earthly perils of retreats, we hug and I go back to my car. I resume my very loud appreciation for Darkness On The Edge of Town.
3. Rather than take a wild guess and drive down the road that would get me to Kripalu in three minutes on one road, I backtrack all the way to Stockbridge. Past Edith Wharton’s estate, past Canyon Ranch Spa, miles and miles of road I’ll later learn I didn’t need to travel. I turn onto what I think is the road that Kripalu is on, drive about a mile, see nothing promising and turn around to try something else. I’ll do this a couple more times before reluctantly stopping at the volunteer fire house and asking directions. The words “I’m trying to get to Kripalu” place me in a stereotype that makes me roll my eyes. The gray-haired guy who greets me at the door sends me down the road I’ve now traveled three times, but further (the metaphor is not lost on me). This is the first time it will occur to me that I’m a ditherer.
4. The woman who greets me at the door to Kripalu tells me I can go get my bags and bring them to my room. I point out that I have my bag and she marvels at the tiny duffel on my shoulder, as does the woman standing behind me. “You’re good,” they say. This disappoints me. There must be someplace on earth I’m not the most efficient packer, and if this isn’t one of them, the world’s in worse shape than I thought.
5. I nearly fall asleep at the end of my first yoga class. It feels like I’m falling–six times–and I jerk myself awake.
6. At dinner, because I don’t really believe I’m not the only person who will eat alone, I earnestly study the little cards on the table explaining how they do food at Kripalu. I learn they get salt from very far away–Nepal? That memory seems too cliche, but I think it’s right. They claim it’s pink and I’ll spend the rest of my time there trying to see the pink without ever touching a salt shaker.
7. The first night, or maybe the second, I panicked and told a little white lie. The details aren’t important besides that I’m not proud, not about the fact that I lied or why I did it. I take it as a marker of my rookie status. Please note that I don’t really expect to emerge from that status, but maybe I can do it differently.
8. I have that same falling feeling in meditation that first night and when I make this comment to the woman leading it, she tells me I need more sleep. She also tells us the first meditation was ten minutes, but I don’t believe I sat for that long. She has us do a walking meditation where we walk around the room in circles, which feels silly–a roomful of grownups walking in circles. The women in front of me whisper and gesture to each other as they settle in. I decide they will be the people who bug me throughout my time there. This will turn out to be wrong. I turn my attention to my feet. Feet. Feet. Feet. Feet.  It’s surprisingly hard to keep your balance when you’re walking that slowly.
9. On my first morning I learn that silent breakfast is a perfect time to develop opinions on how other people eat, feel superior, then ashamed–an emotion that allows you to turn your awareness back to your own oatmeal, which is delicious.
10. Later that morning, I will be staring at the sign advertising Aura Photography and turn away, only to be confronted by the tarot card reading behind me.  My body makes a vague note to itself and from then on hurries through that space.
11. I will develop massive, hourlong crushes on the hula hoop teacher and the drum circle guy. I want to be the hula hoop teacher–she can dance and hoop at the same time–but I realize I need to quit sticking my ass out so much first. It’s not until I manage concentrate on the feeling of the hoop at every spot on my hips that I finally keep the thing off the ground. Incidentally, both she and the drum guy will both say, “You can’t think and ____ at the same time.” They have become my remote mentors. There will be another teacher who tells us that yogis (yoginis?) are “passionate lovers of the present moment.” I tell you these things in case you need to know how I talk to myself since I left.
12. The size of the hula hoop will create in my mind an imaginary barrier that I come to picture as one of those black rubber inner tubes that will keep invaders at bay while I decide whether to engage whatever common madness comes my way. Not pretty, and even though I try to find a more appealing image, none of them work. Sometimes I imagine slapping it and listen to the twang it makes. I’ve already made jokes about having to patch it and pump it up again. It works beautifully, ugly as it is.
13. One morning, in some session, someone asks us to call out what we think of when we hear the word “story.” The first word that pops into my mind is “burden.”
14. On another morning someone else will ask us to listen to someone tell a story without responding at all; we can’t even make eye contact. While I have about six questions for the person I’m listening to, when we get to the end, I feel distinctly calmer than I would have had I asked questions. I never get to ask the questions.
15. The dithering issue comes to a head one day as I wonder if I need to bring my water bottle, jacket and notebook all at the same time so I don’t need to come back to my room. Also, what about that pear? I pick them all up, head to the door, go back to unload the pear. Back to the door. Stop and think, I can get tea. Go back to put the water bottle on  the shelf. To the door again. I don’t have a pen (the place is littered with pens). Get the pen, decide to get the water bottle–I have been quite thirsty…I do this like six times in an 8 by 12 foot room. I have now wasted five minutes I didn’t think I had to spare.
16. On the third day I’ve packed my afternoon schedule. I decide that I have to be in the dining hall by 11:45 to make it all run smoothly, but I have a few minutes to go outside. I walk down to the labyrinth at 11:15. I don’t have my phone, so I don’t know how much time I have left. I start to walk, doing the thing you’re supposed to do. In my mind it sounds like feet, feet, feet, feet. I’m okay until I get to the little buddha in the middle and start to walk back. I have no idea what time it is. I’m hungry and I don’t want to rush. I walk a little more quickly, but not quickly. It seemed smaller from the entrance. Feet, feet, feet. Someone else has arrived and she seems far more serious about this than I do. At one point we walk on parallel paths, me slightly behind her, but right next to her, and I think this is cool, especially when we when we pass each other on the same path later. I try to figure out how that worked, but I have lunch on my mind. I wonder several times what the karmic punishment is for jumping the path. Feet, feet, lunch. What? When I finally reach the end of labyrinth I feel like a bull that’s been let out of his pen at a rodeo. I arrive at lunch at 11:42.
17. It slowly dawns on me that talking feels weird. Not all the time, and only to some people. It’s awkward, or depressing. I can feel it when people resist an idea or say something that feels overplayed. Words like “wonderful” feel too big, but “bullshit” in the right context is refreshing. I become aware of the moments when I’m talking and suddenly don’t feel like it, so I politely stop, but in the stopping I realize how long I’ve kept talking in the effort to get the conversation to go more smoothly. It’s actually a physical strain. I’m happier being silent, or at least sparing with my conversation. As a reasonably chatty person, this is kind of a revelation and I’ve had less to say since I came home.
18. In a moment of “who cares about my credit card bill” I signed up for a massage. At the end, the therapist gently held on to my toes–first the big toe, then the second. “What’s that you’re doing?” “Balancing your energy.” She tells me the effects are subtle. Respectfully, I can only attest to their subtlety.
19. Picturing random friends at a yoga retreat is a good way to laugh at unexpected times.
20. Warm olives are like a nice long hug inside your mouth. They also cool. The moment must be seized early.
21. In what was certainly my most aggressive act at Kripalu, right before my last walk to the lake and my little love affair with the olives, I loaded my thrillingly tiny bag into the trunk of my rental car. As the key released the lock, I was reminded of how I don’t understand car alarms and how you’re supposed to open the driver’s side door first. No one, not the staff or any of the guests, commented or thanked me for the reminder the alarm may have provided them of the world beyond the gates.
22. For three days, I looked fantastic.
23. As I walked back from the lake that last time I noticed how I could breathe all the way past my waist and how before I’d arrived I could only breathe into my shoulders. When I sit first thing in the morning now, I remind myself that that’s the goal: How deep can you breathe?
24. On my way out, I turned left out of the driveway and took the short route back to Lenox, not the ten-mile roundabout route I’d done before. I go to the toy store and still find it annoyingly loud and far too crowded. I go to the bookstore (called The Bookstore…or maybe The Book Store?) and love it, but notice how antsy I am looking at all those books. When I leave, I say, “Thanks, this was fun.” I find my way to the library, which is the most beautiful little library I’ve ever seen. I want to live there. In the women’s bathroom, there are old photographs of stern-looking women on the wall, which seems like a poor choice, even if it’s meant ironically. I decide the women who work there are modern incarnations of those old New England women and the library becomes just a building again.
25. I’m still thinking about those warm olives and the hula hoop.