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I began my Silicon Valley Musings this month; tiny haiku-inspired poems that are a vignette of observations and images from my current home. These tiny moments are grabbed on the go, Silicon Valley-style. I feel like they are little snapshots, pieces of photojournalism I capture while running errands and commuting. (Two words, I might add, that I would once have fiercely contested could have nothing to do with poetry). I was initially repulsed by the affluenza, congestion, lack of open space, and lack of work/life balance in the valley and had a hard time grooving with life here (unlike other homes in Michigan, Oregon, Vermont). I am now finding ways to look at this region differently. I don’t love it, and I only sometimes like it. But at least I want to see it clearly and document what I see.

Girl in a Burberry scarf,
You look weary of expensive things.
Not even cashmere in timeless plaid
Hides you from the stark November morning wind.

Of prose and poetry

Oh, NaNo, you pulled a bait and switch. I haven’t given up on you, but you’re getting on my nerves. It’s like giving palak paneer to the girl who ordered a steak, medium rare. And giving the mushroom-feta puff pastry to the person with food allergies. But if the table is big enough, and there are enough people breaking bread together, everyone is going to leave the table with a full and happy belly.

That’s kind of how the creative life is sometimes. I went to write a novel, and instead jump-started my poetry writing which has been dormant for some time. There are so many ways of being creative. I feel like as long as I am creating, I am doing right – whether it is the project I intended or not. When the poems go, I let them go. When they come back, they have changed in shape, style, and form. They go underground and come back up in what is to me, a beautiful expression of the Tao. I’ve never tried to control my poems; maybe that’s a failure. But it’s the one thing in life I don’t wrangle to control, so I let it be. I know I haven’t developed the requisite discipline of the craft, but at least I’m creating for the first time in a while.

Of all the acts of writing, poetry for me is the most intimate. It’s the most earth-shattering. It’s the most instantly healing. Poetry for me, glows like E.T.’s finger. It probably looks like nothing magical is happening, but when I write a poem, it’s like there’s an electrical storm arcing through my body. Regardless of what you think of my poetry in particular, and regardless of what you think of poetry in general – you have to respect the impulses and the act itself. It’s pretty cool. And I reckon that this sensation is what anyone fees like when they’re in their bliss station.

How does poetry heal? Many ways. For example, there’s a relationship in my life that I’ve been struggling with for more than a few years. No matter what angle I approached it from, and no matter how I tried to coach myself through it, nothing ‘worked’. This morning, a poem was ready to come from it. It’s a simple poem. Somehow, there was a click, and I was ready to surrender something that had once been vital in my life. I was finally, through the working of this poem, ready to let this person go. Maybe I was ready all along. Maybe the poem was just a culmination of that readiness; but somehow, the process of honoring all of us crazy humans and my moving on didn’t feel blessed until I’d ‘written it out of my body.’ Yeah, the catharsis is real. Here’s an excerpt from what ended up being a ’round’ of tiny poems:

I can’t remember the last time
And today, that is what hurts.
Was it better when I was
Expectant and placid
Ready as a silent March pond
To receive the skidding feet of Geese?

Skating & Digging

I’m not the kind of girl who is likely to mistake the golden crust of an apple pie for the whole pie – I know there is gooey, cinnamony goodness below. And even though I know that the hard, glittering layer of ice glazed over fresh powdery snow after an ice storm covers something soft and light, I sometimes hesitate to disturb it with my Bugabootoos. It’s so beautiful and intact, before the dogs come along and pee on it, before the kids tear it up for snowball fights. I don’t mistake the perfect surface of anything for the whole thing – but still, I have to be persuaded to go below. And it’s not because I’m scared of what I’ll find there. And it’s not because what’s there isn’t also very tempting.

The truth is that it takes work to access the good stuff. It’s tedious. It’s annoying. It’s not always the kind of work that yields something valuable right away. You can be compelled to write, and then write a bunch of crap. You can sit down intending to write one thing, and then wonder why something entirely different is coming from your fingertips. Often, I write, get frustrated, leave my desk, come back again. I must have done that at least seven times yesterday morning. If it wasn’t for NaNoWriMo, I would have given up to organize the spices in my cupboard. Finally, the eighth time, I broke into the deep nourishment and exploration, untethered. That feeling is the reason why I write. That feeling is incredibly nutritious for the soul. It’s so profoundly spiritual; who “I” am completely dissolves away and it’s just this awesome flow.

When it comes to anything which needs to be done deeply and done right, it’s tempting to skate over it, or give it a “lick and a promise”, as my Mom would say. If we want it to be worth our efforts, we need to grab the fork, take off the mittens, and dig in. I think this is one thing NaNo is after – with the focus on quantity, we dig and dig and dig, and we aren’t allowed to give up. Eventually, if only out of sheer persistence, we actually write something we like. And hopefully it’s something we need to write, and ideally it’s something others need to read.

I think in some ways this ties into the “triggering subject” Alice LaPlante writes about in The Making of a Story. The thing that prompts us to initially sit to write is often not the thing we really want to write. Otherwise, writing would be merely an act of transcription. Rather, LaPlante says that writing is ‘a process of discovery’.

NaNoWriMo 2009

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Happy Halloween - NaNo Begins! Not the most flattering visage of Mr. Leo, but it makes me laugh all the same.

Samhain approaches and brings a lot of goodies with it. I went to the store and bought Halloween candy, and I’m wearing my jingling pumpkin earrings. We’re carving jack o lanterns. As far as Halloween goes, I’m golden. but at midnight, that’s when the real spooks and goblins come out. Nanowrimo 2009 will be here when the clock strikes twelve, and I am ill-prepared. I want to win this year. I’m not psyched out, I’m more just kind of calm and wondering if I can do it.

A lot of my fellow Nanoers have created hefty plot outlines, full backstories on characters, have created soundtracks, have researched all types of methodologies to best craft their work. Me? I kind of just want to see what the baby who shows up on my doorstep is going to look like. I got married last week, so haven’t had the focus to get all Nano’d up. Partially I think this is a good thing. In another way, I’m kind of freaked out.

Still, a couple characters I’ve played around with in the past are stepping forward. I’ve never had to wrangle a character through the duration of a novel, but I reckon this year will be the year to learn. Usually, I just let them do what they want. As far as being a Novel Mommy goes, I guess I’m the kind that lets her characters smear chocolate all over her white suede couch just because they look so darn cute doing it. The thing is if you keep going at that rate, you’re getting a phone call at 2 AM to bail them out of jail.

When Sun was having one of his many 2-hour rebandaging sessions, a nurse said to him that he used to ride motorcycles and then moved over into photography. Mr. Nurse said a lot riders talk more about riding than actually doing it. The gear is just so cool. The road is exhilarating but can be dangerous. The same can easily be said about writers and writing. For myself and a lot of other writers, it can be so tempting and easy to talk about writing in workshops and forums, think about writing, and plan to write that the actual writing never occurs. I mean, I can get so absorbed in preparing the chai to set the mood for writing that I’ll actually prefer to grind my cardamom with a mortar and pestle than actually sit down in a chair and face the page. Hand ground? Pre-ground? Pre-ground & mixed? Procrastinators can appreciate the murky territory of even attempting to make a cuppa when there’s fiction to be written.

chai fixins

The Procrastinatory Writer's Dilemma

That’s my relationship with fiction. Poetry comes like a lightning bolt, essays and creative nonfiction come with thoughtful reflection, journals entries are like taking out the trash or getting my eyebrows waxed (a necessary maintenance), and morning pages are like drinking water each morning. But fiction? Fiction I struggle with. I think one of the biggest problems is I take it too damn seriously.

Enter NaNoWriMo, a month where the focus is on output and not quality. My goal for Nano this year is really just to have fun and loosen up. I intend to think of it as a month of intense play rather than a frenzied month trying to do something great. Whenever I try to do something great, it’s usually mediocre at best. So, I’m going to have fun. I’m not going to write the great American novel, but I am going to play. This should feel like coasting downhill in the snow more than trudging up hill with sled in tow.

So Happy Halloween, and Happy Trails, to my fellow Nanoers, procrastinators, witches, bibliophiles, and lovers of Reese’s pumpkin eggs. This is our night! This is our month!

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Essentials: Chocolate. Candle. Elements of Style, No Plot No Problem, Making of a Story. Antics of something furry.

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