Word. Words?

The Cave

The most difficult thing is to communicate, to explain anything as I am recovering from the removal of my benign meningioma (the brain tumor that was diagnosed in October of 2011). While I may seem to be myself, I really do not feel myself yet...over four months out from surgery. I enjoy being alive and I am experiencing a creative surge that my productivity can barely keep up with, and most of all I am grateful surgery went well and I can still be available to my kids and my husband in the most important and general ways. Yet, there are disconnections and missteps and losses that pop up into my day-to-day existence that cause me to ponder how to really get to recovery that feels 100% beyond the general and that is specifically me, the person I know myself to be.

Moonsight

Writing from the heart is, perhaps, my greatest challenge. I write something over and over again now, that, before this adventure, may have seemed acceptable after one or two tries. My heart feels disconnected from words mostly. I do not know currently if it is because I was blinded to the confusion in my structure and connection before, or whether it is because I will run into a word that I have an idea for but cannot locate in reality, and this is part of recovering. I’m quick to replace those words but often my replacements lead me down another road than I’d intended. This happens in conversation as well, a constant reaching for words that match my ideas and thoughts. I used to have a vocabulary.

Further developing this word replacement in a “benign” way, a way that is constantly entertaining to my kids, my brain seems to work a lot like a smartphone type screen - in that it offers a slew of words that are somewhat similar in spelling and often chooses that word arbitrarily. Spelling or phonetic choice having a higher priority than meaning everytime. I try to catch these words and replace them correctly as soon as I can, but, if you’ve used a smartphone at all, you know that it is a frequent problem to have commented in a way you never intended. Bring that to a conversation. Add another person to the conversation, or a roomful of conversations, or a radio or a television in the background and imagine the brain reaches out and grabs any number of words and spews them into the conversation you’re having with complete disregard to what you’re actually talking about. Yes. I’m a lot of fun. My daughter says with an awesome smile on her face, “Mom, you said that with so much confidence!”



I’m wondering if I’m writing any of this in a way that you can understand, but I’m going ahead and posting it just to see what the response is because maybe I’m the only one that is frustrated. Because this is the other thing, when I try to read this stuff, it is difficult to decipher. It is difficult to decipher an article, a chapter, anything longer than 144 characters. I feel like I should hold my hand and get serious about sitting for an hour reading, but after 10 minutes, I’m lost sometimes. Not always, but sometimes I am simply unable to read. Sometimes a person hands me a business card or an appointment card and I look at it as if it is a picture, waiting for comprehension.

Nature's Balance

All of this word stuff would be driving me even more crazy except for the fact that I feel free, in a way, of the obligation to know everything for once. I have become aware of the weight of my expectations around words. I would like to skip the know-it-all need sometimes. Sometimes I would like to turn my back on the old way, and accept that I’m now primarily a visual person, someone who communicates with icons and symbols. Sometimes.

Then I have an idea for a story, or a letter, a good conversation or a speech and I’m revived in the battle to win my brain back.


2012 (c) Amanda Morris Johnson

Dealing with Discouragement

First Crack at Serious Self-Portrait

There is nothing to be overly discouraged about brain surgery. Honestly, it is a beautiful thing to be able to take care of a tumor, benign or malignant, in one’s head in 21st century America. There’s been vast improvement in the last couple of decades. Since I started talking and writing about the experience I have sensed the need to be open about everything that has happened, if for no other reason than to point to this truth. That statistics point to survival of this surgery at 98% should make this obvious, but the responses ran the gamut from hand-wringing despair to joyful prayer. It is simply hard to imagine opening up the skull and having a decent experience without those prayers, but the techniques and technology are pretty impressive.

This is not to say that discouragement doesn’t exist. Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows well that I have had some real downer moments. It wasn’t so much the surgery itself, but my body’s reaction to some of the preparation, and my mind’s genuine impatience and control freakishness with everything. Now that I’m five weeks out and clearly doing well, I can talk about some of the setbacks I’ve had in recovery without jumping up and down hysterically over them.

An obvious one, to me, is that I’m having a time with writing. I know what I want to write, but getting it out coherently is a real challenge. It’s not the big things. I think that the big, overall ideas are coming out okay, but, sentence-by-sentence, I am recently shocked by how difficult some of them are to read. What I’m used to taking for granted, words flowing out of my brain, I now have to take a step back from and wait for some clarity. It is as if everything I’m writing comes out a bit convoluted, and it horrifies me. I’m sorry about that because in social media, blogging, and poetry I’m used to shooting from the hip.  When I go back and read some response or even a blog, and realize I used the wrong word, or forgot grammar altogether so that the meaning had drained out of the words I got right, or just used to many redundancies, it is discouraging. The time it took to write seemed so blasted long before, that now I am a bit intimidated to start the projects I have in mind until this settles down.

I hope it settles down.

Additionally, I’ll tell you, I’m wondering if this has always been the case (convolution in my writing), in fact. Is it possible that it only just now that I’m becoming aware of it because the obstruction has been taken away? That’s possible. That would explain a lot about my career. That makes my hands sweat, just considering it.

That may be why I'm so happy to be doing visual art instead, and that's not too bad a trade at the moment.

While Cottonwoods Sleep

Then there are the issues of swelling around nerves, facial and tongue numbness paired with pain zapping and dry eye (only one dry eye). They don’t really tell you that in any surgery they’re likely to strike some nerves and push them out of balance one way or another. It happens, and mostly it simply takes some time to heal.

How do nerves heal, you may wonder. Well, I wondered, too, because I figured if I had an idea of how the nerves reset, or heal then I might be able to support the process and feel less worried about it. My research led me in many directions as usual. Perhaps, more importantly, I have cause to simply pay attention to the process unfolding, because some days it really bothers me and some days I forget about it.

So, guess, what? I’m writing about nerves and emotional turns, and it’s going to take me at least a week to put it down straight enough to post comfortably. In the meantime, enjoy the burst of spring this weekend, if it is happening near you, and be truly thankful for your face and tears and even runny allergic noses.

People Who Need People

This thing with my brain is dragging on and on. I’ve described it as a holding pattern, and that indeed is exactly how it feels. I’m just circling, unable to land this puppy and get my baggage in hand to deal with, and unable to go anywhere else. Now, that I’m not on any medication I feel pretty good physically, barring the come-and-go headaches. The only thing is that the fear of possible seizure has barred me from driving, and that little detail has changed my life.

I am blessed by people who would so love to help me, but I am stubbornly holding onto my non-existent independence that I’m afraid I will alienate them before I really need their help. I mean if I felt worse, or was recovering from surgery now, I wonder if I would be so blatant in my rejection of assistance. Honestly, I cringe that I appear to be so helpless when I feel so okay. If it weren’t for the outside possibility that I might have a seizure, I would just carry on with my life as it was before this all happened…sort of...

My mom visited us for a week over Thanksgiving, and I tried that business of carrying on as if in normal condition, with the non-chalant ability to run errands because she was driving. Har.  Three hours a day of grocery shopping and errand running over the course of three days sent me to bed for two days. I have been taking three hour naps and going to bed early for nearly a week now since she departed. I’m not complaining. I have the ability to do this because of everyone’s support, but it is astounding to me.

I read in Julia Cameron’s (The Artist’s Way) Facebook feed, “Tell yourself you need to relax instead of create. Tell yourself you’ll write later. #how2avoidmakingart” and if I hadn’t been sitting down, I think I would have fallen over. I actually wrote a comment, “Wait…what?”  That’s when I realized that I’m a driven person. “Relax” is the comment I’ve received the most on my posts about this affair I’m having with a benign meningioma. And, I have to be frank; the front of “I’m okay” is beginning to break down because I do not know how to relax. I don’t know how to escape without running away. That’s when I realized that writing projects often serve to keep me on edge, running mentally away, rather than deeply sinking into self-knowledge as I would wish for them.

So, let me just say what I know: It’s not the brain tumor, fear of surgery, medication problems. It’s the fall out. One thing that is part of the fall out is the desire/need dichotomy. In a story the hero needs to recognize and accept, or change something about herself in order to have her desire(s). Well, I just want this whole thing to be behind me, and so I have been avoiding “need” like the plague. What? I really don’t want to accept that I need anything except for this thing to be over and done. Har.

That’s not how “need” works. A funny thing happens when one recognizes a level of need in her life; the desire narrows in focus. I recognized several parts of need that I’ve been avoiding in the last two months. One is that I need some assistance, even if it is as simple as asking my god-daughter to pick up my kids from school and deliver them to me after she’s finished classes at the local university (thank you Madeleine King!). I have to accept that there are some things that I cannot do for myself or my family right now. Then also I realized that I need to rest more than I am accustomed to resting. Somehow accepting the need to rest, I am allowing myself to feel my exhaustion and slow down my ambitions. I’m not relaxed yet, but I’ve reached the point in the journey when I can’t actually argue that I must finish anything or produce anything except the bare minimum. I understand that all I need to do is accept today including how I feel, where my energy is, and where my real commitments are going to land. I’ve been incredibly supported by one of my favorite author’s, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, and the words of her first book “The Invitation,” that remind me that accepting necessary changes does not mean giving up.

The very general desire of wanting this to be over has become more refined. The aperture of my want has settled today on wanting to understand why accepting help is so hard for me, and wanting to maintain the independence I have left by minimizing how much I depend on others. I want to recognize that the reason I cry now on a daily basis has very little to do with an anomaly that has invaded my brain, but because the parts of me that I most value – the take care of business, stiff upper lip gal, has no way to maintain. I have to set aside some of my joking and sarcasm to be kind to myself and that is such a challenge.  Sucking it up, rather than self-acceptance, is not working.

I admit that my resistance is wearing down through shear necessity, and wouldn’t it be so much easier if I could just put it away in a drawer until a sunnier day? It would, but it forces me to confront the fact that I feel I am a valuable person because I take care of things, of people. I feel worthy of love or admiration because I give or instruct. Now I find that I simply don’t have that much to give because I’m sleeping half the day away, because I can’t get anywhere on my own time, because getting anywhere means that someone else has to be the giver, because I don’t know where I’m headed. Argh! I do not want to be pathetic, and I’m frustrated by my self-concept.  I completely understand why the elders who lose their mobility and abilities are so damned ornery or depressed. I really get it now, and I had no idea before. My grandmother's favorite saying in her last years was, "Getting old is not for sissies."

The last thing in the world I want to become is a pet, taken care of, directed by other’s abilities to meet my needs and to feel vulnerable to delays and constraints of scheduling and other obligations. I want to be fully independent, but I understand that this is foolishness because none of us is fully independent without paying the price of isolation. Therefore, my desire’s narrowed aperture has framed something poignantly important: I want to know that I am valuable and worthy of love even if I need…need anything at all…I want to know that needing others in my life is good and as the song goes, “lucky,” and I want to know that I won’t fall apart, and the world and all it offers won’t fall apart if I take a break.

People who need people are the luckiest people in the world? I want to know that.

Paint the D&*(#$ Corner!

            I have been having an argument with myself about writing for the past few weeks. Maybe you noticed. I’ve been thinking about what I’m willing to sacrifice for the right to write. I have hit my bottom line, I am happy to report. I thought my bottom line was self-imposed poverty, but it turns out that was a bounce point. I went there mentally, emotionally and physically and tried it out, but found that I need to be up a little higher or I simply flat-line. This all has to do with my beliefs about writers that are somewhat messed up: I have cultured and curried the belief in a little jar called “Writer,” that writers need to be reclusive and be willing to sacrifice abundance, if, perhaps, only for a while until their hunger and suffering drive them to write, finally, that insanely commercial story of a lifetime. There was always supposed to be that eventual exit from isolation. I pursued this belief as far as I could pursue it by painting myself into a veritable corner. I walked away from almost everything to try to be this writer, so starving on so many levels that I would finally write. I forced myself to believe that my only ticket out could be writing that perfect story.

            All that rye grass in my field on the right hill, with the somewhat compromised Western light, and drainage problems, has been sitting frozen, un-harvested because it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t a peach orchard, fully developed and producing succulent heirloom peaches grown from peach pits. It was rye grass. Pfft. I forgot what I put it there for so consumed with digging holes in frozen soil was I, and living my frustrated pit-iful dream of writing something important someday. To mix metaphors, I thought that the only way out of this corner I’ve painted myself into was to produce those peaches.

            Something happened last weekend to change my point of view. A concerned friend read my last post about sacrifice, and stepped out on a limb by suggesting that “until grocery stores accept prayers” I might want to accept my own need, and the needs of my family, to make a living even as I’m writing and transitioning out of the corner. Oriah, thank you! It was a meaningful exchange that helped me to receive support from various sources that I’ve been rejecting out of pride for quite some time. Just that little bit of accepted flow last Saturday, turned into a sustainable trickle by week’s end. That trickle has helped me to feel not so pinched, not so trapped into the corner I painted myself.

            Low-and-behold somehow the paint I used to trap myself in this corner has dried, and I cannot actually pretend anymore that I’m not allowed to cross the floor now.  Right now.  Upon the realization that I can’t live in the corner and write the story I dreamt of, everything shifted.

It is funny how things change in a quick moment. The Universe immediately takes notice and begins to shift the whole world around us – just like The Fool who in a moment of ecstasy doesn’t notice he’s about to walk off a cliff and so God moves the mountain to meet his feet – unexpected paths appear right underneath our feet that we missed seeing with our eyes.  I’ve been reminded of lessons I learned so long ago, and tucked in the shed by the future orchard, like rusty old tools. Can you imagine realizing that I don’t have to dig the holes with my hands? You may laugh at the concept of that silliness, but really, that’s what I was trying to do metaphorically. I remembered just last week that I own a shovel, and a plow and even a funky looking screw thing to get the holes started. What’s more, the ground is thawing.

Let me put this is plain language: I reached out to the world last week, and it reached back.  My shed of tools is quite extensive. I have lots of experience to share with some lucky people…if only I’ll let them know that I’ve taken the pad-lock off.  I decided this absolute isolation thing is for the … not the birds …it’s for some other creature. Therefore, I’m volunteering for a full day in a co-working space in the town next door. I’m hoping I’ll meet some like-minded, forward thinkers who have a twinkle in their eye about whatever they’re passionate. I re-did my resume again and started to send it out into the void just to see if the economy really has turned a corner. People started calling me again, as if they knew I’d actually pick up the phone fearlessly. The birds have returned even, red-winged black birds twirling their songs so casually in spite of the chill air, as if they know it will pass soon.

My plan is to return to writing as I always have written before, squeezing it into a full life, because I found out, after a year in the corner, that my misery doesn’t produce the whole truth I look for in my work. Partial truths of anxiety, alienation and sad stories may work for some writers, but not me. In order to plant this orchard, I have to be able to afford the peaches, and yes, it may take even longer, and I’m late already, but the vision isn’t gone, just shifted a little towards my heart. So I’m walking out on my freshly painted floor, and I’m turning around, and painting over that corner so I can live my life.

            

What is this Sacrifice-Thing?

In case you missed what I was getting at, by sitting in my frozen fallow field, and in case I missed it (which is more than entirely likely) it is this: My writing vocation cannot come without grave sacrifice. Geez. This is not what I want to hear from my unconscious mind. I want my ease and effortless now! I didn't know that this is what "sacrifice" meant. Can I give my calling back now? No? Shoot.

This is what it is like: My daughter wants extra money for a field trip, and I have to say, "No, sorry, honeybee. Mommy is a writer."  My son wants some new food treat at the store as I am frugally buying groceries, and I have to say, "No, sorry, little peach. Mommy is a writer." I would like to buy a new winter coat, and I have to say to myself, "Get real. There is no extra money while you are developing this writing. No, you can't buy a bottle of wine. No, there is no vacation yet. No, don't expect little goose-bump treats and surprises while you are laboring in the field of writing." It is either, "No," or it is giving up on my calling. It is agonizing to understand this fully now, late in the game, and to look at the big picture of my life and to comprehend that nothing will change until I fully accept this bill.

So when someone excitedly announces to the world that they've been "called" to do something, I am not likely to be the one who cheerfully high fives them. I'm the sober one in the corner, thinking, "uh oh." I know it is possible that had I answered this call, made these sacrifices when I was much younger and less obligated to be responsible that it might have felt differently. All I can say, is that I was doing the best I could under the circumstances, and this is the first moment in my life when I felt that, "Now, it is possible to focus on that calling." That may be the way it is happening for you, or maybe your calling is buoyed by a different kind of angel-winged support. At any rate, I do believe that old saying that "nothing good comes without a sacrifice." It is just unpredictable what will be demanded of us.

I know that I am lucky beyond measure to find myself in a supportive relationship. Even my children will back down from their age-appropriate demands when I say, "I'm writing." I have friends who are equally good writers working nearly full-time to support themselves while they write. They may not have children at home, but they have bills to pay. The sacrifice is always there.

There are no guarantees. I may write into this void until my dying days, but it is somehow a requirement of my soul. Freeing myself from the fantasy, that I can serve everyone else’s needs and desires instead of writing, or still writing, is terrible. I have spent the better part of a year second-guessing this lesson that’s been poking around my heart. While I have made easy money before in my life, it was strange and dehumanizing to me. This experience, even sitting in the frozen, fallow field of my dreams is very human feeling, and, for even this truth alone, I am grateful for the sacrifice and my good fortune to follow it to its end. I hope by setting this example that my children will have the grace to follow their dreams early and ruthlessly, but I know that every person has her own journey on the spiral staircase. I hope that my orchard of peaches, my writings, will one day bring pleasure to those who stumble upon them. I feel like these are not fantasies. I hope I’m right.

Ability equals vulnerability

It is a great ability to be able to conceal one's ability.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld


This has been my mode of operation for as long as I can remember. I used to think that it was because of fear of success or fear of failure. I used to think it was cool to get out of daunting and overwhelming tasks by taking on less than what I was capable of in truth so that I could write privately. However,since I rebooted my life, I've been thinking a lot about why I haven't made greater strides as a writer within and beyond copy writing and consumer products, game scripts and teaching. Sure all of those things have kept me going but have never felt like "me". I always felt more like they were a perfect expression of that quote up there -- concealing my ability.

"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0"

I don't know if the above link will work for you because I am still figuring out how blogs work, but I hope that it will. I loved this video by TEDxHouston with Brene Brown. So, if you can see it and keep it in mind as you read the rest of this post, you'll really get the full picture of what I'm writing about. If it directs you away from this blog, please come back...

Daily, when I sit down to write and am frozen in a paralytic conundrum, I feel that fear thing. Now, go a bit deeper. Why feel fear? What is there to fear? Something that comes up in Brene's talk is the concept of excruciating vulnerability. The kind of vulnerability when you dream you're taking a test and everything is going well, until you realize you're the only one in class who has no clothes on. Shame and blushing are overwhelming at times. The question goes from "why can't I write what I want to write?" to "why would I want to write???"

I just read a pot boiler mystery written by two women in the style of a Dan Brown occult mystery. As I read, even while I couldn't stop turning the pages, I had a running commentary going about how I knew what was going to happen, and that I felt it unworthy of my time. I was up until 3 am reading it to the last page this morning,mind you, but but but it was a pot boiler. What is that a sample of in my fear pool? That is feeling vulnerable, I suppose, followed by a numbing out to the joy of a book that kept me going nearly all night long.

Another example is "Eat, Pray, Love" which I've written about before with some disgust in these archives. A friend asked me to share my thoughts about the book, and again encouraged me to write about the difference in my own divorce experience. I phoo-phooed that as quickly as I could. Frankly, I don't care to expose myself. The feeling that comes up for me about writing extensively about my post-divorce life is nausea and pain, and post-divorce isn't all that bad. It is not that I'm unhappy with the outcome at all. It is that feeling vulnerable that I've been resisting.

So, I like this concept of authenticity being married to vulnerability. I believe it. I know that in my intimate relationships now, this is what truly makes them work. I am not uncomfortable with a friend who "unzips their arms and shows me their veins," as one put it a while ago. I am not afraid to show my ugly and beautiful parts. I know that is why I found such a good partner in my second go-round at marriage. In this at least I feel safe in my vulnerability finally. I don't feel like I'm burying some secret now.

Beginning my "big" project has been a fits and starts process already. Since only in the past few weeks have I started feeling normal physically, I've forgiven myself and have not given up. But, what I can tell you is that what I've been writing about here in the blog - point of view, voice, preparedness, practice, and commitment all have their roots in AUTHENTICITY. I am unable to move along in a story until it feels authentic. Unfortunately, when it feels authentic, my joy in the POV, voice, preparedness, practice and commitment is very temporary because then I feel vulnerable, and this on any given day is about a twenty minute process from start to finish.

My attention span is pretty short, I realize. My first inclination is to numb out. I reach for dark chocolate, a cup of coffee, or a stupid TV show. Then I am miserable because I haven't done anything. So then I start cleaning the house, cooking or worse yet FACEBOOKING. This pattern is so terribly predictable that I worry that I am not up to overcoming it. I don't know how to overcome my general feeling of unworthiness as a writer. Cringe! But day by day I'm trying to add minutes to my acceptance of vulnerability because I believe minute by minute I can become more comfortable somehow, as if by magic.

One of my writer friends suggests that was there a paycheck attached to writing these speculative scripts and novels, then of course, that would motivate us to get work done and get past the emotional namby-pamby fear and shame factors. I know that this is not true always. I have made a great deal of money in the past for copy writing and sometimes have nearly had to nail myself to a chair to finish the product.

The shame goes spiraling deeper into my psyche the more authentically I write, and yet only when I write authentically can I stay interested and intrigued. This tension of avoiding vulnerability and yet understanding that it is really the only reason to keep going has made my career field of choice a minefield...of opportunity. My first question is always, "how can I make this a blessing?"

Chapter Six - Part One - Top Soil

Yesterday winds clocked over 70 miles an hour in my area, and so I looked up the Dust Bowl of the 1930s to understand how wind affects fields. It turns out that farmers lost 5 inches of top soil over most of the arable farmland in America during those terrible dry times. It takes 1,000 years to build one inch of top soil naturally. We know so much about soil composition now because of the hard times of the past, and so of course, we've built up the top soil once again in record time. There are farms. There are growing things.

Sometimes I feel like my adult life has been like a dust bowl. It blew away a lot of the natural goodness and now I am spending a lot of time painstakingly rebuilding the top soil of my life. It opens me up to criticism from some work-a-day people that I'm not doing enough. That hurts my heart because I generally put in a full 18 hours a day of constant work. I rarely sit with my family to play a game. I haven't had a vacation in five years. The pressure to produce is quite something to deal with when I know that I am still unprepared, and so I work to ready the soil by daily work.

Some of my work is housework. Some of my work is taking care of sick kids. Some of my work is cooking dinner for my exhausted husband. Some of my work is volunteering for the schools because I can't give them money right now. All of that work does double duty as a practice of consciousness, and I am in constant gratitude for the moments when I am fully occupied with tasks to be done. But, a hell of a lot of my work is dealing with waste inside my brain and turning it into fertilizer and compost for the top soil of my writing field.

Those empty moments when I deal with nothing but the memories of disappointment, and turning them into the gifts they are, by conscious shifts in perspective is the harder work. As a writer, I do this because my goal is to write about the process of life. It sometimes looks like I'm just walking the dog, or just putting quotes up on Facebook, but I assure you at the end of the day I've contemplated my work and know that only I can judge it as worthy or not. The work is not paid work, but it is work nevertheless. It causes great discomfort for many people close to me to watch me do this without any tangible results. I know that to write what I truly want to write, I must write daily, and for long periods of time, but right now I don't have the top soil for that, and so I'm amending the soil every day with exercises like this blog, like planting little annual flowers of poetry to keep my connection to my intuitive writer's mind, and I pray that my grand idea (and actually I do have one) will finally find a place to be planted that can support its growth. I am learning everyday to trust my process and see that I am supported to do this work, and I am grateful.

Divorce

Hope had become
A thin and brittle branch
Upon which she perched her life.
Without talons, gripping
That view of the world,
She looked unsteady, unsure, and felt it.
Still she insisted on clutching,
Half out of the fear of having to return
The weight of her life to
A trunk she could no longer perceive,
And half out of the pride
That she’d managed so far.

Inevitably, the branch would break
Because wisdom was not in that roost.
Time does not run backwards, and this is
The thing about tree-climbing:
Inching back feels more dangerous
Than falling.
So hope became a fantasy.
Clinging to the unwise choice, she
Dared not
Move.

Refusing to recognize the conditions
She found herself in, kept that false
Security something like a nest,
But left her immobile,
And quickly becoming petrified,
Like ancient rock buried in living tissue.
The slightest disagreement in the balance
Of her needs and desires
Splintered hope further and no duct tape
Encouraged new growth on that branch.

Until she could desire
No more than she needed
And even that was too much
Until there was nothing to do but breathe
Into the SNAP that would,
Finally, plunge her to the ground.



The fall seemed long.
The wind rushed against her.
She wished for wings, for the branch
That had once held her so erratically.
Other branches grabbed at her
Tempting her with promises, but
She kept on falling until the falling
Seemed like all there was to life.
Giddiness took over, laughter spilled
Out of the thrill and she wondered
At how high she’d gone on
Pure fancy,
And if she’d ever have a vision again.

Rock bottom seemed more
Vague than she’d expected.
In fact, she was never sure if
She’d actually hit it, but rather
Had been caught by the twisted roots
Of her vast tree,
Like a net for a trapeze artist,
A welcome surprise.
Oddly, she lay prone, looking up at the
Peculiar path of her fall and wondered at
The Light that now shone through the
Thick of leaves and sticks.

Her hands,
Feeling the gnarled firmness beneath her, stung,
No longer numb to her situation.
Her lungs lurched towards oxygen.
Her face,
Wet with sap and tears,
Did not smile for once, and
For the first time in a long while,
Allowed instead the truth
Of her concern to reveal itself,
As she reached for the bits and pieces
She thought were important.
And, she found her illusory collection
Had been reduced to
Only what she loved,
Her children,
Her body
And her mind.

Chapter Five - Part Three - Field of Poppies

One of the hardest things about writing for me is staying awake. Is that a bad thing? I start out very excited about whatever I'm writing but there comes a time when I hit the "field of poppies," as Dorothy did in "The Wizard of Oz." Of course, as in that wonderful book, my sleepiness is well-timed to my nearing an important moment or realization. I have been journaling for long enough to know that when you want to go to sleep on yourself then that's the moment to force yourself to stay awake and find out where your thoughts are going on the yellow brick road.



Ironically, in the field of poppies only two parts of Dorothy's mind are able to stay awake, and one part is quite on the verge of rusting solid. The body goes to sleep, the inner child goes to sleep, the courage goes to sleep, but the heart and the mind force themselves to pull it together and stay awake until a change in the weather. With the Emerald City just on the horizon, and the end of the yellow brick road nearing, the thing that undoes a writer is sleep. This is where that old-fashioned notion of self-discipline comes into play, but finally it may be that a writer has to seek out some help.

Now, I hate asking for help more than just about anything in the world. I want to do it myself by now. I want my writing to be my own voice. I want to finally be through with writers groups and classes and how-to books. But, when I am overwhelmed by sleep it begins to occur to me that it may be time to ask for some feedback. Even if that feedback is cold as snow to wake me from a spell and get me back on the road, it may just be time to do the terrible, terrible thing of opening myself up to the world and crying, "Help! Help! Help!"

Chapter Two - Part Three - Clod Building or Busting?

The resistance of this clod is indeed insanely stronger than I am, and I have considered many other options. I feel like David next to this Goliath clod of resistance. It is so outsized to my strength that I don't know that there is any way to bust it up, but dang it, I'm going to try. It isn't even like when I was a kid I would lay on the lawn dreaming of one day being a screenwriter. I stumbled into screenwriting because my ex-husband wanted to direct movies, and I thought it would be neat to be partners at some level (the fact that we're divorced ought to be a clue about that logic).

I have always wanted to write. Why? Because I like to read, of course. I love to read stories that transport me to other worlds. I love plays that bring to life episodes of change in a few lives. I love to read essays and articles that make me think. I love to read poems that make me see this world in a new way. Loving to read, led me to want to write. Lots of people love to read and don't want to write, and so I can't really explain why I thought to make the leap, but I remember reading some books when I was my son's age, or my daughter's age and praying that someday I could write that way. That way was for me defined by one thing: the story changed and deepened the way I thought and felt about the world.

A great movie can do that for me, too. Can't it do that for you?

In fact, my other childhood dream was to act in movies because I felt like a great performance did that one thing: changed and deepened the way I thought and felt about the world. My father convinced me that it was the writing, not the acting that did that for me, but I didn't completely believe him until I met up with my ex-husband and stumbled into screenwriting. Once I had just the slightest understanding of the screenwriting craft, I was hooked by the notion that a great script could do that one thing: change and deepen the way people thought and felt about the world. I've never been about subtlety. I had stars in my eyes because I also saw a world that was becoming less and less literate, and thought to write screenplays would be to reach the most people. Har.

Back to reality. Hardly anyone reads a screenplay even if it is an Oscar-winning screenplay. As I worked in the industry longer, I understood that the screenwriter is the low-man on the totem pole, because literally, no one but the cast and crew reads the work. Maybe other screenwriters will read a successfully produced script because they want to see how a writer did it, but your average kid in the library is not going to pick up a screenplay, or now, rent it for their Kendal. Screenwriting is the first basic part of a huge collaboration with dozens, if not hundreds of collaborators. Just like most people who admire a building never look at its blueprint, so is it that most people who watch and love a movie never read the screenplay. The best a screenwriter can hope for is 1.) They'll direct their own scripts, or 2.) Their screenplay will attract top-notch talent and 3.) That top-notch talent will interpret the screenplay as it was intended.

Argh. It feels like the clod is growing in resistance as fast as I bust it up. Where are those inevitable points of weakness in this clod? Can it be that even after 20 years of consideration I haven't yet found out how to make this clod into fertile soil I can plant a seed idea into? It is possible that I am finally reaching a turning point in my life where I look at this clod and toss it out of the field instead of breaking it up because, God, I am sick and tired of pounding away at its resistance. Of course, I understand that the resistance, the clod, is in my heart not out there somewhere. So, now, I believe I will simply sit down and contemplate this clod and wonder for a while.

The Episode Review

This is the beginning of a new phase of my life.

I am honest, honorable, and act with integrity. LIFE LOVES ME.

I bless the gift of disappointment.

Any mistakes I make are merely stepping stones on my pathway.

I allow myself to think big dreams.

Giving service is my highest priority.

Patience is my spiritual practice.

All my work is of the highest quality.

I have faith in myself and the process I am going through.

I am finding my own voice.

I teach only what I have learned for myself.

I am becoming an expert in my field.

I am incredibly successful.

Today I create a new life, with new rules that totally support me.

It is easy for me to walk through new doors and I am always welcome.

With these declarations, and my approach to them, I hope to make a difference with my writing. Writing requires practice. Like any muscle in the body that hasn't worked that much for a while, a gentle routine is required to build up endurance, and strength. These episodes are like walking on the treadmill for fifteen minutes when you've been sitting on your butt for more than a year or two.

It takes courage for me to make the first step towards greater commitment, and I'm summoning all of mine to make this step. I have let go of nearly everything, but writing, so that I can see it is the one door I've been avoiding opening seriously for years. I may have peaked in, or even stuck my toes through, but truly I have avoided walking in through this door for a long time. Now the time has come and I am afraid of failing, or of being mediocre even. It is a visceral fear because I have eliminated all of the Plan Bs and Cs and Ds. There is nothing to fall back on anymore. I can say that even as I write this, my mind is making lists of alternative routes around the door. ("I could just get a job at Starbucks," "I could start teaching classes at the Y," "I could try to get into a teaching certificate program," etc.), but today I'm resisting that voice of reason and I'm risking it all to write.