In March 2013, I began this writing exercise with the usual parameters: write unceasingly for 20 minutes without self-editing, without taking the hands off the keyboard or pausing to find the exact phrase. In this case, I think, the phrases found me. It’s unedited, because I like how the pilings of my thought are uncovered. The whole point of these exercises, proved to me unceasingly over the years, is that well-formed thoughts arise unbidden. All I have to do is channel them. … Usually these are morning exercises, but in this case I had a few minutes before I was interrupted by my husband. Just 11 minutes in the writing this is shorter than m ost.
March 17, 2013 6:15 PM
Due to walk out for dinner at Hot Pot City at 6:30; see how far I get before that.
Things are going well even when they aren’t. In church today, a realization about all that stuff about being new, starting anew. I thought it odd that the message is that, not continuing to become but becoming again. But now I see the Universe is always changing, always creating, always becoming, churning, turning over new earth. The earthworms of the Universe are unceasing; the fires of the Phoenix are lit and the bird consumed time after time in an eternity in a nanosecond. It’s always ever-new. Each story is new, each word, each thought, each breath.
And in each newness, possibility. In the new moment, I can walk. I can breathe. I can be different—I am different. Each moment builds on the past but each is at the same time new. A paradox that is at the center of the Universe. I seldom know what’s going to happen from one moment to the next. I walk into a room with one intent, see something, smell something, sense something, and the intent changes in an instant. I used to think this was inconstancy, inconsistency, dilettantism, hopping from one thought, one deed, to another like a bird on a branch. Which will it be, the branch or the fence? The fence or the ground? Can you hear the earthworm turn? Writing is like that, too. So many times I sit down to write with a notion in my head only to have the words come out quite differently. Or, even better, more profound, sitting down with no notion and having the Universe guide my hand and my thoughts into totally uncharted territory.
Compass rose. Spin the compass. Which direction shall I go? The Universe doesn’t care, it twists and shifts beneath me, above me and around me, the eternal dance of reality and fantasy, of this instant and its counterpart. Nothing is fixed, no thought is for more than an instant. When I am falling asleep and I see landscapes on the inside of my eyelids, the parallax changes so fast. The roads and rivers bend and widen. The scenery whizzes by. Nothing is there that I have ever seen before, and it is constantly replaced with new images. I am typing too fast. Run out of images, things to say.
Jump back in. The dance won’t wait. You have to insert yourself, assert yourself, join in. Separate two hands and become part of the circle. Clap and stamp. Twirl. There is no direction, no up or down, not safe harbor. Just the endless sailing, the endless ocean, the ocean of ideas and possibilities and things to become. Endless but never monotonous. Never boring. Here comes Robert. Time is up early.
6:26 PM