Last night I posted poem that I just wasn’t feeling and it frustrated me. The prompt was the word “knot” and I love that prompt. It has potential, possibility, promise! But I could not get into the zone, the happy place – the place where it all goes away and the words fall out and sing for me, where I go away.
Right now work has me tied up in knots because the problems come so fast that I don’t have time to stop and think about what I’m doing and I’m brain tired at the end of the day. I’m left feeling like last night. There was no zone and things do not have that thing that Robert Pirsig tried to define in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” – that quality. Not the kind of Quality that is defined by others perception though I am a comment junkie with the best of them; I mean a quality where you feel complete with something, anything you have done and you can hold it and look at it and turn it over and yes, there – right there – I am in that and the feeling is good.
Life is a series of those things, moments, relationships with the places inbetween just moments waiting for the quality, zone, REAL ones to be. Approval from others is nice, it is validating, but if approval from others comes and I don’t have that feeling in myself there is a feeling of cheating – of being a sham.
Sometimes there needs to be a challenge that I can beat. It doesn’t have to be something huge. Just one thing to focus on, dive into, complete. To be able to look back and say something is finished. That is another source of frustration for me right now. I am in a season of constant challenge with zero feeling of completion, just moving from one task to another knowing that the line is stretching on beyond any horizon I can see (being a bit melodramatic here) so there is no time to stop and puzzle over the answer. I have to duct tape it when I prefer to use finer stitches.
I have tried to be in that zone at night, to write something that lets me go THERE and maybe for right now, I need to let it be what it is and just post some thoughts until it comes naturally. Trying to force it just seems to make the knot tighter and it chafes, makes sparks fly.
Then again, maybe it is just waking up at four in the morning. It’s Friday and there will be time to ease the strands loose this weekend and the Sunday Scribbling prompt is up – tattoo. That makes me smile. Maybe when the knot is untied I can braid it into a story. For now, I’ll finish my coffee on the back porch and get ready for one more day.
I was telling a friend yesterday that it feels like we’ve hit one of the many doldrums that come in the school year, where all the initial giddiness and excitement having lapsed, we realize (once again) that we’re in for the long marathon. We feel it, the kids feel it: it’s a long run, lots of scenery (and non-scenery) along the way. I can certainly appreciate your ongoing sense of exhaustion and lack of completion – and the beauty and grace of your back porch.
It’s important to write what may feel like crap – it moves the crap out, frees up the knottedness to allow for other things to flow. As John Dufresne has said, we’re always writing for something that’s coming farther down the pike. But, it’s also possible that some things that feel like crap feel that way because we’re too tired to feel what quality may have come through anyway, zonelessness notwithstanding.
I feel like a bit of a rock hound at this time of the year: there are still plenty of treasures out there in the kids’ writings, in the discussions (more often than not, the side discussions), what have you.
Your push to write these free fall poems of yours is exciting to me – lapidary treats inside what may look like just another day.
Have a great day and a great weekend.
Professor – I will try to look at it like that – plowing the road so to speak. Moving from crap to lapidary treats is well, just a cool way to think about it. Dale worked a pipeline job some years ago and I discovered amethysts. We were in Ehrenberg, a tiny town in Arizona where rockhounds gather. In the little store there was a huge ugly rock that was opened up on one side and the inside was nothing but purple crystal beauty. I fell in love with these gray, plain rocks that held a pretty secret inside. Now I have to go google John Dufresne…
Waking up at 4 a.m. is always hard. As is being pulled in lots of different directions, never able to bring anything to completion. Maybe, though, this is the stretch indicates a period of growth, never easy. Like paschal, I sure have enjoyed your free fall poems of late. Hope the weekend brings the chance to find some peace, tend to all those overextended ligaments, find the beauty inside a gray, plain rock.
Anno, those kind words ARE the beauty in the gray, plain rock 🙂
I know this is light-years behind the curve, but that’s how I live. I’ve got so much going on that by the time I get somewhere, whatever was going on isn’t anymore! But I just had to comment on this post. I’ve had every thought that was in it. The main thing, the zone business, of course I identified with. I often have trouble getting into the writing zone, so to see you put it like it is…well, it’s always good to see we’re not alone in a thing. In your zero feeling of completion and duct tape paragraph, you described what nearly every day of my corporate life felt like. There was so much to be done and layoffs out the wazoo, which made that “so much to do†impossible to do, so we had to do everything half-assed. And during those years of being married to my job, I wasn’t able to settle down to do much that was creative. At least now, I have far less responsibility and can make a little progress toward my writing goals. And whew! I see you’ve busted loose from the knot and into the zone! Hallelujah!
Anno and MissA, the biggest bestest part of writing is well, writing. The next biggest, bestest thing is the people I “meet”. The two of you, the professor, Quin – and so many more…not just the comments and the encouragement which I could eat huge spoonfuls of, don’t get me wrong…
I have, however, this secret library. I get to read things that make me laugh out loud, occasionally stop breathing for a moment, or do a virtual bow to greatness LOL.
I am a very lucky, well fed, fat hummingbird with amethyst nectar showing up in my reader by the gallon.
Sooo, I will keep “playing” because I am addicted and learning, and even if I have nothing to write but crap, I will write it and hopefully be aware enough to know when it is crap and if I am not I pray one of you will give me a smack and tell me…
Thanks, and MissA – you can show up whenever you like. It was worth the wait 🙂