If I haven't called or written lately, here's why:
Whenever I sit down to write, whether privately to friends or in a more public forum such as this one, where, who knows? maybe tens of readers will see it, I feel myself shrugging off the frame of mind and the interior monologue — No. Let’s call it like it really is: I carry on a running dialogue with myselves. — the interior dialogue that keeps me company all day every day; and I shrug myself into my Company Manners: Posture, Mindset, Discourse. Today, I have tried to come to the keyboard “just as I am” — Does anybody else remember that dirge we used to sing during the altar call at the end of a church service? I tried to come in here and sit down and just write without too much reflection what’s on my heart, but as soon as my fingers started to skate over the keyboard, I began to cry and the crying doesn’t want to stop. It’s not loud. Not even that snotty. Just wet all down my face. And I’m not sure what it is that I’m crying about, except that feels like a release.
I’ll be the first to admit that it doesn’t take much to convince me that the sky is falling. In the tradition of my people, I am quick to entertain conspiracy theories. Good thing I living with someone whose mantra is “It should be fine.” He infuriates me with that attitude. But I know he’s right. Everything always has worked out, even better than I ever hoped or imagined. I look out my office window at these ENORMOUS trees, and feel overwhelmed to be living smack in the middle of an enchanted forest, a Hundred Aker Wood right outside the front back, and side doors. I am healthy. So are my family and all my friends. I want for nothing. So I’m curious — what’s with these tears?
Crying doesn’t scare me. It doesn’t always mean I’m hurt or broken. But there sure is something going on that’s bigger than me and deeper than I can fathom.
When I was first getting used to the idea of isolating in place I had visions of Getting Shit Done! Maybe I’d finally read The Idiot. Or I’d watch, in chronological order, all the films of the French New Wave. I would emulate Samuel Pepys and journal about The Pandemic. I’d learn chip carving. I would figure out what I had to do to make a decent storytelling video where the sound didn’t suck and where I didn’t look like a sun-burnt ghoul. And I would write letters. Tons and tons of letters. I would organize my kids’ baby photos from 40 years ago. And I would find recipes for kale that I actually looked forward to consuming.
Well, I sent out a few postcards in late March/early April. Dusted off my sewing machine. Put some plants in the ground in the front yard, and I have spent hours just watching them grow. That’s about it.
This is not a time of business as usual. Or ambition. Or output. I hope maybe before too long I’ll see a road sign that points “This Way.” And I hope that my way is paved and landscaped and populated with words. Spoken. Written. Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I make them true. Unvarnished. No shrugging off. No putting on.
For now, I am strangely at peace not knowing what these tears are about.
