trusting the process

Sixteen years ago, at the end of a relationship, I started doing a little creative writing. It’s important to note that I had never done anything of the sort, outside of the odd English class assignment. There was no room at the inn within any of my high school or college creative writing classes; they always filled up before I could scrawl my name on the roster. If you stacked up everything I wrote to earn my lit degree, you’d have a pile of research papers about as tall as a llama.

So this was kind of out of nowhere. In 2010, I was a commercial copywriter, paid to make companies money. This does not typically lend itself to whimsy. (When, in 2011, I thought it might be fun to write for a food magazine, I had precisely nothing to send the editor as a work sample. All I had were fundraising appeals, and we all know what a juicy thrill ride those are. But I forwarded a few and she gave me a shot.)

The incoherent little fits of creativity that bubbled up came in between resume revising and teaching by day, and vivid wedding-dress dreams by night. Writing them kept all of my zig-zagging emotions from hemorrhaging. Better out than in. And loosening up those muscles led to writing more for food magazines … and soon afterward, to meeting you all, right here.

Rereading the below, I’m struck by how much the emotion resonates with me today. Of course, the circumstances aren’t the same. But I feel like I’m in another liminal stage now, where there’s a lot of tension between what I am and what I want to be. And it’s spooky, and it’s unsettling. I’m long past the silver veil. But like then, I’m trying to make the best of it all. There was more good to come then, and there will be more tomorrow.

Hope you dig this.
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May 17, 2010
liminal stream of consciousness

crazy-quilt multi-colored keyboard tapping days/why hangs loose and ragged/smiles more precious when laced with grey/nursery school leg-hugs and warm friends/sunny day at a cemetery smirks and comforts/so long empty filled and left hollow/questions flung into silence twist into cinders/night dreaming wide-eyed in lushness and flying/loss and recovery/destruction and always always redemption/what will be looms calling/scary/enthralling/calling/pulling me/past the silver veil/fear and glory/uncertainty and passion/pressure and peace/feeling out loud/pandora’s box left behind hope

In 2010, I lived in the woodsy little borough where I grew up. One day, I came upon this little guy, trying to maneuver the curb in front of my house. He didn’t seem bothered, one way or another. He had made it across the street, after all. He could make it up a curb. As Lao Tzu said, or maybe I just made this up, a person can learn a lot from a box turtle.