Chasms

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I'm sitting here with the wind coming and going and the boys going about their business and shot of bourbon next to the computer and the weight of a frustrating week behind me and I feel the need to write, the urgency to get words into print but (for a few days now) when I sit down thoughts evade me.  My weeks work is a series of near starts and abrupt stops accomplishing nothing but a growing sense of despair digging a deep chasm between myself and my writing.  I have over come this chasm before, my writing history is a maze of bridges slowly zig-zagging forward in very tight turns bringing me to yet another chasm and another bridge to build.

It is all well and good but sometimes I am weary of the effort it takes to pick up, drive forward, and lay words onto paper.  Some writers talk about the seemingly effortless process of writing, how the work produces itself while others compare a good days writing to letting blood.  For me it is a combination of each, the chances I get to write are marred by early morning exhaustion or the sound of my children in the background and words come slowly if at all.

Today I feel like I should be reflecting on Christmas but I haven't the energy to dedicate to the day in writing just now--perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the next day, perhaps not at all.  As a husband, father, carpenter, and general man of the working class I welcome the brake from the mundane, the daily grind, a chance to retreat into my family and let it all slide away for a day, or two, or three.  As a writer I long to capture it all in words, preserve it, explore it, contain it forever.  But usually I find myself standing on the edge of a chasm with not way across and no sight of the ground below.

Slowly and painfully I begin building that bridge, one drop of blood at a time.

Christmas: Changing Anticipations

It is a week and a half until Christmas.  The atmosphere around stores and shopping areas is thick with anticipation and anxiety.  At Costco the other night people were walking around with vacant, hollow expressions in there eyes as they mindlessly loaded packages of things into their carts.  Multi-packs of utility knives and gloves and vitamins and candy and toys and movies and cinema tickets and stuff and stuff and stuff.  Haggen, our local grocery store, has had Christmas candy out since thanksgiving day.  There is Christmas music on the radio, trees in windows, lights on houses, and a growing collage of Christmas cards taped to a wall in the kitchen.  All of the elements of the season that I look forward to are in place yet I feel strangely subdued this year.

I am looking forward to Christmas, I always do.  For my six year old, this is the first year there has been a nearly unbearable anticipation as things have started to come together, a month of slow preparation has wired him to volatile tension.  For my 20 month old, the anticipation is not there, he is happily oblivious to the plans, excited by the lights, but for him it is a day like the one before and everything is still a grand discovery to be made.  He will be no less excited than his brother on Christmas morning.  This year, I think, beyond all else, I am looking forward to the excitement of the boys.  After all, we celebrate the incarnation of Christ, a gift to all, but the day, the season, is for children.

Perhaps this is the first year I've truly realized that, maybe I'm grieving just a little bit as I accept adulthood.  Not that I won't enjoy it or that I don't look forward to Christmas morning, but the day itself has magic for children in a way it can not have for adults--adults whose minds are torn between giving in fully to celebration and always keeping half a thought on life in the world of tomorrow.  The day after.

I remember, with vivid clarity, my dad going to work the day after Christmas.  We would wake up and there was a dull emptiness that follows catharsis.  My brothers and sister and I would go through our gifts stacked under the window that had been unloaded from the car in haste on our return from my grandparents house and my mom would be occupied with something that needed done around the house, the house having the air of Sunday about it and we all expected my dad to be around but he was at work. 

Life rolls on as normal through the holiday season--breaking for thanksgiving, Christmas, and new year and picking up immediately where it left off.  We are changed with each passing year, affected some how, because we approach Christmas different each year:  older.  But I can't help thinking it would be better to remain children lost in the anticipation of Christmas morning rather than adults weighed down with burdens of the world.

In the Absence of Inspiration

Writing in the absence of inspiration, motivation, urgency, or expectation is one of the hardest things I am having to overcome.  I don't write because I lack the desire but desire counts for very little in the context of my day, minutes ticking on towards different things, other expectations, and pressing priorities displace writing as a necessity and presently it is left undone.  I must learn to write in spite of it all.

I am trying to rebuild my morning routine, clinging to those moments before I have to get ready for work in earnest.  It is a generally peaceful time of the day.  In this season the Christmas tree is up and the soft glow of the white lights on our modest tree offers a measure of comfort.  Today I am joined by my 18 month old, snacking on bread and wandering around the house, checking in with me periodically to grab at the computer or reach for my coffee or pull himself into my lap.  Little distractions that are hard to tune out but happen in the course of a day, week, month...

It has occurred to me that inspiration comes at different times within the process of writing.  It comes of its own accord, out of the blue, and strikes a deep chord of thought and energy or it transpires within the process itself, as a result of discipline and mental exercise, a writer (or any disciplined artist) conjures inspiration as a result of dedication and discipline to their craft.  I think that inspiration is best served in the context of the disciplined artist, for my part, when I am inspired in a dry season of writing, I have no way of channeling the inspiration into a days work, there is no foundation upon which I can apply it.  But within a discipline/dedication to the craft of writing, when inspiration comes, it is a great release.  There is a sense  that every word is pre-written and I am simply a liaison between the story and the page and as it runs its course writing is easy and effortless and fulfilling.  In the absence of inspiration writing is a like trying to let your own blood--painful and seemingly useless.

I am on the road to create a new discipline of writing, if I sound like a skipping record it is because I am focused on this task of writing daily in spite of life's distractions.  In the absence of inspiration or not, I am committed to writing.

Seasons: A Belated Reflection on the End of Summer.

This has been an interesting season for me (and my family).  The transition into a new job in August had brought a reserved acceptance to life as a carpenter.  All the promise and hope I had laid on being laid-off--a chance to re-define my occupation and hopefully bring it in line with my passions and the things I longed to do (vocation)--seem to dwindle, rapidly, as I became desperate for work.  This blog was started in the excitement of that promise, the light of a new beginning, the anticipation of following a passion, whatever it be, into a new career.  But whether it was fear, circumstance, ignorance, blindness, or a combination of them all, I am back to where I have always been, working as best I can, and staving off complacency and despair as I cling desperately to dreams and must up inspiration in sporadic measures.

I began writing in this medium for an outlet, a chance to release the thoughts surrounding my process and as the process crumbled, my desire and discipline to write crumbled as well, hence the complete lack of anything representing consistent writing in my blog.  But the blog was an important part of my day when it started, it was a disciplined (in the sense that it was consistent) approach to writing, it was the beginnings of a foundation to build upon.  When I resigned to being a carpenter, again, I let go of my desire to write/create, the longing to let this be the way I make a living was too painful and dark in the context of work for which I have skill and pride but no burning desire.

Lately I have been reading--Pearl Buck, Pat Conroy, Charles Bukowski, Sebastian Faulks, David Mitchell, and others--and re-discovering the magic woven into the craft of excellent writers.  Writers speaking truth and experience through their prose, shedding light on realities most people would otherwise never know.  I realize that my passions lie within the pages of books and though I have many other interests I am truly excited by a good session of writing or a well crafted novel or composed poem or candid memoir.  My attempts, in my season of unemployment, do define my passions and discover a new career fell flat as I turned my back on literature and writing.

For now I work as a carpenter, I apply myself to the trade as best I can, but I recognize and acknowledge that my true passions are in words and my working heart will always be there.