tugs
I feel the tugs from different direction, even me who complains of not enough connection. It is almost impossible to spend as much time as necessary on the novel. I wade in the waters of revision only to postpone for meals and sleep and time with dear ones and just plain fooling around. Either I am not disciplined enough or other writers are miracle makers. I made myself a firm deadline of december to finish and I am not going to make it. How long? How long? I can't go on to ask if it is all worth it. Who knows and I should not guess.
There is a gray sky today. Nor rain yet, but a promise. I sit at home working.
And I signed up to look at more waiting children. Am I just creating more tugs? But do I have to give up the idea of adopting for artistic leanings? If so, it is a very hard choice.
just more
Getting to know AAA Chicago! Another visit to jump start the car this morning. While I waited I watched my neighborhood in the morning. People going to work; people looking for parking spaces; plus a few oldsters on bikes. I could hear birds.
Last night I got down to it and worked the chapters I brought up. It was the best work I've done since the new job. Whew. Wondering when it was going to kick in. Sat at the table (for the first time?) and laid out the work. Lit candles, burned incense, made soup and tomato salad, and kept up the mantra of focus, focus, focus. Two hours later, I had gotten through a chapter and a half. And I was tired enough to sleep by 11. Transition cannot be completely controlled.
Trying to find a weekend when L, R, and I can get together out west. We are up to November already. R comments that we do this so rarely why is it so hard. Making time, even when absolutely necessary is challenge.
I think about a 4 year old.
monkey mind plus
Not a big focus day. Monkey mind plus. After letting the writing goals tick by without any attempt at reaching any, I am very unhappy. I don't need to work on the novel for about four days before I begin to crumble inward. And so, back to work tonight. I have no choice. If this one can't be sold, I am promising myself to stop with fiction and take on some non-fiction projects that I can get published. I have no idea if I am crossing my fingers behind my back as I make this promise. I have no idea.
On another front, Dear One said today, "Okay, find a child." I will not hold him to it, but it is a beginning. I will start looking and researching for the child that I know is out there. Crazy? Yes, but all part of following my heart.
pig-good mud puddle
Gray and cool today. And I love that. But my soul is very low, very aware that that by stretching myself between two homes, neither is my home. Neither belongs to me and I belong in neither. Objectively, rationally, I see this is only another step in this transition and understand that I will be building a new relationship with both places that I now live in; however, emotionally, today, I am a wreck. I want back everything that I have given up, even though I couldn't wait to give it up!
I walked the dog late last night after the drive back to the Very Middle and wound up staring at the long pine needles of a tree that I have walked by oblivious to for years now. I took in the length and texture of each needle, their connection to the tree. And my thought was that this was no longer my tree to walk past. Well, of course, it is not "my" tree, but I no longer belong to this neighborhood, this place, as I did. I no longer can assume that I will walk past this tree everyday. What if, one day, I can only observe such a thing in a gated park, in a public space.
Well, I've obsessed about home, about place for a long time. I've said that the Very Middle is not my home, not at all the place that calls to me. And now. Now, I am nostaligic about the very needle on a neighbor's tree. I've procured or have been gifted with what I think is the best of both worlds -- time in my lovely house and time in the Great City. So now, I have pain attached to both. Oh, how I am wallowing, like a pig-good mud puddle, in whch could not even be a blip on the scale of suffering. But then, it is my blip. And I come back around the circle.
moderation and dirt
Moderation sucks. I just can't get the hang of it. Dilemna: Do I baricade myself into the Chicago apartment and again at home and just write, write, write, with the possiblity of meeting my self imposed deadline to finish the damned novel? Or, do I enjoy Chicago on my few nights here and enjoy what I can at home? Of course, the answer is moderation.
Last night it rained. I was unconscious, but it was a deep, drenching rain, and this morning all of outside is richly wet. It smells of a green house; city as great glass house. I remember working in Belmont, MA, at the florist there. I was new in town at that time too. I applied to work in the florist shop, but they offered me a job in the green house. It was the first really big retail green house that I had ever seen. This was years before plants were cool -- no, plants were just becoming very much the thing to decorate with. I worked with three really wonderful women who knew plants well. I knew only what it took to take care of the few plants I owned. They were not bothered; they taught me what I needed to know. I grew to really love the mornings, watering big tree ferns and hundreds of baskets with a pole of a hose. I learned talking to plants there, singing to them if you will. Weekdays when few customers came in, there was time to trim, clean, and pamper the plants. Re-pot and take care of a small group of sick plants good customers brought in. Talk some, but mostly be a part of the life of the glass house.
Working in florists and green houses was a time of very hard physical work, but there was some peace in it. Some sort of a meditation. A quieting of a busy mind. I remember moderation coming naturally. Maybe that is part of the fascination with gardening which had become difficult these days as I travel from house to house, but also difficult because I do not want to take time away from the smaller time I have at home.
On the other hand, I am stilled and slowed and slip into some other mindspace when I knee in the dirt. It will be interesting if we ever totally move to a city again. Then, will we?
And what of Seattle?
No breeze, green leaves, sun.
Our Pearl Harbor. A day of no breeze, green leaves, sun. And Indianapolis was very far away from my dearest city. And the guards at the magnatomitor in the court house told me about the first plane as I came into work. I did not believe them. I said -- oh, a mistake, a little plane. No chills, no fears. Then the news and the pictures and the lives television coverage. After the second tower was hit, we stood in JT's chambers watching it all happen. "The building is going to come down," JT said. "No," I said. "No." And then it did. And then for awhile while it was all digested, everyone was a New Yorker. No easy cliche here. After living the middle since 1989, and never feeling accepted because of my roots, I was emotionally embraced by everyone. And now, still, I scan the skyline in every movie, tv show, and documentary, looking to see if the towers are standing, are they missing. In my mind, I see the city scape as it is on the bus from Jersey going into the Lincoln Tunnel. I see it both ways, each as real as the other.
Like naked on a nude beach
I am catching up. It's all I seem to be doing this year. Okay, not all, but a lot of it. Last week, an ipod, today, a blog. I feel a little silly writing this, writing anything here. I find it hard to believe that anyone would bother reading it, but then again this feels like a chancy place. I place very unlike a journal. I feel like I am taking my clothes off in public, but is it like going naked on a nude beach? Who notices, who cares?
Bottom line is that I need a place to dump stuff, my shit. I need a place to go instead of playing spider solitair when I should be writing. A place to take a break from the novel, when I should be doing something. A place that does not demand an answer.
Frankly, I have nothing important to say.
I need focus and discipline. I want to finish the damned novel by the end of the year -- by the solstice but I don't think I'll make that. I want to talk about having two place to call home. My little discoveries about the new neighborhood and the old house. I place to be a little crazy. Yes, and maybe go naked on the nude beach.
Ah, the dear one is home. Time to leave the virtual nude beach.
