The silence

My silence has been filled with words.

The words that I have been painstakingly repeating, working with Madam everyday, watching her face light up as she achieves some sort of mastery.

TEG's exasperated “Just WRITE already!” after too many days of watching me sit on the couch jangling and jonesing for a better metaphor than that one about the junkies. I've lived a sheltered life; never met a junkie.

The long list of DO NOTs—as in “DO NOT complain, or write something embarrassing, or write about loneliness, or write something depressing or ugly, or write yet ANOTHER post that is just a “middle” without much of a beginning or an end.” I like posts that sum up something true, but lately, as I tunnel through a middle I just get to...more middle.

I am embarrassed to admit how childishly happy I was when I decided to take a break. I felt the satisfaction of the toddler tantrum. If words were going to be so hard, then to hell with words! I didn't need them! I would just...stop! Hurray!

It didn't take long before I started missing this place, but by then the gulf between writing and me had grown so much that I couldn't remember what good writing even looked like, sounded like, felt like. I could vaguely remember that every sentence had a subject and a...something that begins with V. And every word seemed linked, inexorably, to a chain of events that led to another writing mess I couldn't fix. It was enough to lead me back to the television.

So I did the next best thing to writing. I started reading, with a desperate desire to stuff the silence with other people's words. You know. Good words. Unfortunately, with the exception of one amazing book, all of the others tended to run together. I couldn't concentrate. My eyes skimmed over the same sentences again, and again, willing an inspiration that never came. I stitched together comfort from pieces of other blogs, other books. It was like standing alongside my own thoughts.

It was better than nothing.

My silence is littered with the detritus of stories that emerged half-born, during odd twilight hours of nursing and putting Madam to sleep. Characters that seemed like they were really going somewhere, with something to say, only to sputter into a sullen quiet as soon as I got near the page. There was a window, and I had missed it.

In all of this notwriting, I discovered that I spend all of my writing time clenched, waiting to be interrupted. Deciding NOT to write until I could guarantee that it wouldn't happen AGAIN.

I have a two year old. Like THAT'S gonna happen.

My silence told me that waiting for the perfect uninterrupted time and being furious that it never came, for me, was a bit like being angry that the in breath was inevitably followed by the out breath. (I've been reading some Buddhism during this break. It's been sinking in.).

This is not the post I wanted to write on my return. I wanted to have something to bring back to the tribe—a summing up full of lush, beautiful language. But that post was light years away. I have to let go of the shimmering promise that if I just wait...a little...longer, I will be able to write beautifully and render the ideal stories in my head PERFECTLY. Think my way out of the block.

But I have learned (again...) that notwriting begets notwriting.

Let's hope the opposite is true.