Friday, April 16, 2010

April 16: Morning Pages

A leftover question from yesterday starts my writing. What do I need to change about me? I need to change my fear, my unabated worry which morphs into shackles of not-doing. These shackles sometimes look like soft quilts to refresh myself upon, sometimes, and I need to learn to distinguish between what works and what isn’t quite salvageable.

Effluence: I see it in the dictionary. Outflow, emanation, issue. I remember the Italian man, passionate – at the poetry reading. He loved “The Old Book” and my words, the experience I created, splashed there on the page in bunches and out across the room in my voice and my inflections. “You got it, you captured it – so well, the moment of bliss, finding that word and allowing that word’s perfume to envelop you, its effluence ~ a poem, a seduction, a mortar board slightly off kilter and then, you know. You know what happens. I read those same words, that same poem, that same quilt, that same symphony of sound at Borders later along with “Ode to the Morning Page Police” – writers like these ditties of self effacement, gently gracing the pages. Do I? Do I?

Yes, I do, too.

The page is my alarm, a call to write. The aroma of it bursts through my skin and into my blood, “HEAR ME!” is its command. Slightly dense, the shout of it but not too much to overtake my energy with its bossy demeanor which will cause me to quit, every time. It is the peal of a bell, the page. A peal of laughter.

I think my family won’t approve of my poetry, I stay silent, I turn my head away from my suitor. Decades of oil from fingers, turning the pages, beyond middle age print just slightly decomposing, giving itself up to the air, the page itself, yellowing from want and yellowing, like teeth, large and wanting just one more cup of coffee, just one more cigarette.

I remember that man who longed for connection and wanted so to connect with me, specifically but he ironically refused Dagny’s where he would be swept away, he thought by other ardent admirers surrounding me and my focus. We met at Borders, instead, where I was swept away by so many books nearby and the inadvertently solid to the ground his old book smelled of mentholatum, disinfectant, hospital wards with the humanity left out. His eyes, wanting me to be delighted, my mouth, curled up in a smile attempting to look authentic. Don’t know if I hit the mark but I tried, oh, how I tried.

White wall tires, trug chug blub tic toc squared. How many pages of this dictionary have remained untouched for all these years? This light, it is too good to pass up. I feel itchy to take a photo.

What do I wish to change?

What? What is uncaught?

I need to rebuild. I need to allow the me I am to shine forth. I need to be proud of my gifts/my talents/my offerings and return to how I was using them back, oh, ten years ago or so. I need to forgive, myself – primarily

I need to stop asking new questions and live well the ones which stand before me. I need to check in and remember to not let my love go unspent.

What form of hartshorn lives in these pages?

Volatility, gaseous and invisible change agent. Catalyst, it moves into the nose but irresistably transcribes sleepy, inconsequential words into thundering insights in the snap of a finger. What is that about?

Bellows of Shakespearean voices send high velocity substance out of orbit.

It is 8:21. My written morning pages ended here, but in the 750 Words word, I am still about 150 short.
Grace/Forgiveness/Receiving. My watch words, along with tangible soul. I want to make my soul tangible, so people can understand it more than ethereal rants which no one understands. Forgiveness, of myself – of the need to be attached to things. I don’t need to be attached to things. I don’t need to worry.

I can choose to be open, to receive, to accept love, whole-heartedly.

I need to be with whether or not I want to continue to do theater. I am not committed and need to see when/if I am coming from a lack space and when/if I am coming from “I want to do this as a way to grow artistically.” What I am doing right now does not fit my goals. I can’t throw away my time if projects don’t fit my goals.

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