My New Year's aspiration

Gosh!  It's been a while.  I have been somewhat - somnolent, I guess, over the past months.  Living at less than full-speed, full-scale, full-consciousness.  Some dragging from health issues, some fuzzy-headedness from sleep issues, some overload from teaching on top of a full-time job.  But also some uncertainty about What I Want To Be When I Grow Up - which, having just turned 62, seems a bit late in the game to worry about.  The question shifts to: what do I want to do after compulsory paid employment?  (Though the end may be years away, given the economy.)

I always wanted my paid employment to coincide with something I was passionate about -- teaching, scholarship, creative writing -- but couldn't muster the inner power to make it happen, or circumstances didn't line up.  Not that many years ago, I thought I could still switch to something more core and creative to make a living, but now I don't expect that.

Not complaining!  I've had a good run of things, good people around me, work that adds some value to the world, no significant financial or health concerns, no tragedies among those close to me.  Yet.

A good friend, whose significant health impairment led to his death a few years ago (muscular dystrophy), quipped that the world is made up of folks with disabilities and folks who are temporarily able-bodied.  He started a second career in higher education when his first globe-trotting career in fashion buying was curtailed from the disease, and he went through his graduate education and his years of being an academic adviser in a wheelchair, gradually losing his abilities (driving was a big loss).  Yet he kept showing up, finding new efficiencies, and purchasing the latest electronic gadgets to stretch his abilities and find new sources of entertainment.

In contrast, I have found myself tempted to shut down, feeling that I'm heading in a downhill direction when I experience physical challenges.  I wonder: who am I now?  I feel like a stranger in my life.

So my challenge today, heading into the new year, is to reconnect with the vital channel of my life, that deep current that has been flowing beneath the trivial and no-so-trivial events, that has shaped my choices as well as the unlooked-for opportunities that come my way.  May I be aligned to it, may I be attuned to it.  May I stop moping around and let it tug me from the shallows, full of sticks and mud, out into clear, open water.

Write Hard / Die Free

I am just now catching my breath from the Christmas part of the holidays.  Last-minute shopping, wrapping, delivering, unwrapping, and feeding has taken place. My son Tim, living in NYC, has come and gone for a quick visit (dropped off at the airport at 6:00 a.m. this morning). The University made the decision to be closed over this whole week, though faculty and academic staff have ostensibly been working from home. I have done some email, and have some other projects I'll try to get to tomorrow, but I'm likely not to have much to show for myself work-wise for this week. There is still some smoked salmon left over for tonight in the refrigerator, and I'm feeling no urgency.

My favorite present came early, perhaps intended partly as a birthday present, from my youngest brother in Alaska.  Here it is:

Actual size less than an inch wide - with a hook to use it as a zipper pull.  It's a riff on a Hells Angels motto, and I'm delighted to have it.

I'm never quite as much alive as when I am writing, though meditation is good to do as well. Writing brings me back to a sense of being myself, irreducible, unchanging at the core.  It helps me dive below the flotsam and jetsam at the surface to what lies below.  I think I've been waiting for things to clear on their own, instead of pushing aside the surface distractions to reconnect with what is important. 

I've been spending the last couple of days, in between things, catching up on some blogs, and being inspired once again to clear my throat and and find voice for my thoughts and observations. 

Let this be my New Year's endeavor to Write Free, to write freely, to be free to write, to free up the writing.

Addendum:  if any of you are particularly interested in an online writing community (fiction, poetry, and more) particularly oriented to young adults (or writers with young adult readers in mind), check out Figment.  I've recently spent a couple of late evenings browsing among the posted writings, some by published authors trying out new material, and some by unpublished young writers looking for feedback.

Now, in the new year

(Sound track today: Graceland, by Anonymous 4. Sorry - I don't know how to post sound files, but there are samples at the link.)


I've just spent an hour or two rereading a series of writing exercises I did a bit more than a year ago. This was a process outlined in a book I found in a church basement sale (where I also got four little matching bone-china plates with vines etched around their rims): Writing the Mind Alive: The Propriaceptive Method for Finding Your Authentic Voice.

In brief, the method involves a 30-minute span of time, writing while listening to music by Bach, a candle flame burning nearby, employing an approach of writing-while-listening to the thin trail of the most authentic possible inner voice, asking (and answering) from time to time the question, "What do I mean by . . . ".

What I wrote about, over and over (through the four months that Peter and I did this exercise sporadically together, often late in the evening, at the dining room table) was my long-standing question of life purpose, or purposes, I guess. I reflected on the core tension of my life, haunted by a yearning to be a writer but instead plunged into the more public/pragmatic work of raising a family, working with students and student services administrative apparatus, along with part-time teaching. Throughout has been the quest for a spiritual path and commitment to my Quaker community - which is another way of saying, a search for the Divine.

In the wavering but faithful light of these months of reflective, candlelit writing, it became clear that the compartments of my life were still one life, and at the core was the question of attention - of being aware, of being wholly present, in whichever activity I engage in.

Today, I made the decision to stay home from Meeting or shopping or other errands that would require me to drive, as the pump that supports the power steering in the car is beginning to fail. I'll take the car in to be fixed as soon as I can. I had a fearful fantasy of having the power steering fail and trying to wrestle the un-powered steering wheel on my way to or from activities today, and decided to let the car sit.

Perhaps what I really needed, this last weekend before the spring semester starts at the University, is to finally take some concentrated time reflecting on this year's turning from the deepest dark to the slowly strengthening light of a infant spring. Now that I am really "pushing 60" - or at least willing to accept it - what might change? Is it time to let go of the tensions that held me for so many years: the pull between creative introversion and competent outward activity? What's next?

Part of me, inevitably, feels this reflection is self-indulgent - well-known voices from childhood onward, no doubt, pushing me to productive activity, instead of wallowing in whatever feeling or fantasy has captured my attention. But long years of the inner-outer dance have taught me of the importance of pulling myself out of the usual round of activities, of taking some time to gather the threads together, to recognize patterns, to discern the next steps.

Writing does seem to be part of the enduring pattern. It is one way I have of celebrating the gifts of my life - the weak but growing sunlight on the tired snowbanks outside; my family of origin (some now down in Baja, Mexico, basking in the stronger sun); my tawny, curly, inadequately trained little pooch; my life companion upstairs napping. Both the inward quest and the outward bustle are gifts to me, in their faithful constancy. Music is a gift. Friendship - a gift I don't reach for enough. The gift of sleep. The gift of reasonable health and strength. All of it - given over and over, changing and slipping away, renewed past hope. The life I am carried along by, more than orchestrating. I do create within this life, but I am also more a witness to its flow, its unexpected or long-predicted turns and tumbles. So let me let go of fears to flow most joyfully, most open-heartedly, in this cascade of time and turning years.

Here's something from Gloryland - sums it up: "SAINT’S DELIGHT" (lyrics Isaac Watts.

When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I’ll bid farewell to ev’ry fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes.

I feel like, I feel like I’m on my journey home,
I feel like, I feel like I’m on my journey home.

Should earth against my soul engage,
And fiery darts be hurled,
Then I can smile at Satan’s rage
And face a frowning world.

I feel like, I feel like I’m on my journey home,
I feel like, I feel like I’m on my journey home.

There I shall bathe my weary soul
In seas of heav’nly rest,
And not a wave of trouble roll,
Across my peaceful breast.

I feel like, I feel like I’m on my journey home,
I feel like, I feel like I’m on my journey home.