Just Show up and Write
08/20/2006 08:33 p.m.
(written in Borders, today)

Often times, our greatest feelings, experiences, lie in a land of paradox. I was in denial about my mother's mortality, yet I could feel the pain of her eventual passing. I told myself I wanted to take things slow in love relationships, but I'd end up kissing them that first night. I seemed to be in a rush to feel the end result of things. Get through the pain of grief and skip to the end. Skip the awkward in-between land of relationships (but also skipping the blissful beginning steps) and go straight to writing his last name after my own. Note: I no longer do the latter.

But I wasn't being in the present. I was experiencing two extremes of emotion at one time. Presently, my hand is shaking and my handwriting looks jagged and stacatto-like because, I think, of my medication. I notice my shirt fitting me better. The warm raspberry latte slides down my throat. Beyond the Celtic music I hear through my headphones, I hear a symphony of voices. My heels rest on the chair in front of me, here at Borders. This is my present.

I have two books on the table: Natalie Goldberg's "The Great Failure" and Thich Nhat Hanh's "No Death, No Fear."

I picked up Natalie Goldberg because I seem to be following her lately, following her and the pinon (pronounced pinyon), Taos, Katagiri Roshi, her repetative: "Shut up and write" that I remember from all the way in 1997 at the Antioch Writers' Workshop. Her Brooklyn, brash accent has stayed with me, especially yesterday as I drove from Chicago to Madison listening to her on audiotape telling me about her life, her questions, her answers.

I picked up Thich Nhat Hanh because the title of the book, "No Death, No Fear" finally spoke to me. I had seen the book before, but didn't think I had any reason to read it. Now, as my paradoxical thoughts near each other and finally combine into one explosive thought, I feel closer to that book.

What is going on in my head? I want to apply my understanding of death and life after death to my mother. In the same way I know I have nothing to fear from my own death or Person A on the street, I want to feel that way about my mother.

And amidst all the death thought strands exists the strand of wanting to write. Not necessarily poetry, but nonfiction. Something I've shyed away from all my life (except in the privacy of my own hand-written journal). It's always been fiction or poetry. But one concept that's been the same throughout the years is autobiography: the personal. I've always written about the personal. Now I want to write personal nonfiction. I feel ready. I do not know where to do this, if I should find a class, a teacher...but I hear Natalie in my head saying, "you know where to go, what to do. Just show up and write."

And that's what I'm doing now. I felt called to go out to get Natalie's book so I brought my notebook and here I am, excavating my own mind. I don't know if I will copy this into my regular journal (it's hard because I hate to hand write these days, though I'm learning to read this hyroglyphics I call my botched handwriting) or if I will type it up as a blog and if then, which blog? My journal blog or my memoir blog? For now, until I make that decision, it stays in this notebook.
I am currently Creative
I am listening to Celtic Requiem