Weaving the Threads Together to Make Something Beautiful

The table looms in the weaving room came in different sizes. If in doubt of what to do, you could always whip one of those out in a day or two. My mom has a framed small weaving I made in 3rd grade. It's about two inches wide and three inches tall. I thought I'd "go fancy" and include a PLASTIC BEAD in one of the threads. I have no idea what happened to any of the countless weavings I made on all those afternoons.

I have so many memories in that weaving room. I was lucky that I went to a school that had a weaving room, along with a clay room, wood shop, art room, and science room that we were REQUIRED to go to in the afternoons. I went to all of them. I made lots of clay figures with spaghetti hair made of clay pressed through a garlic press. I also made what I called "a stuffed animal carrier" in wood shop, which was probably one of the most useless things ever made. It was a giant box made out of plywood, with a handle, and a small door. It weighed about FORTY POUNDS empty and was so cumbersome, I never touched it after I brought it home.

In the science room, there were pickled creatures in jars, and metal dust you could collect with magnets. Once I came upon a box that said, "Open Me" and I opened it to find another, smaller box with the same message. So I opened that one and it had a message of "Almost there..." and so I opened it and there was a small box with a last message on it. When I opened the last box it had a dead, ruby breasted hummingbird. The dead bird scared me so much, that I dropped the box and ran out of the classroom and DIDN'T STOP until I got back to the classroom. I never told anyone why I was back early. It haunted me for years.

I am still drawing these fliers. I am still amazed by what comes up. They are such a good practice for memory, writing, and for drawing. I never in a million years thought about drawing those small table looms, but when I did, something in me WOKE UP.

The Little Fascist

my desk

This weekend was glorious in both weather and activity. The temperature shot up literally FIFTY degrees, and it felt like, well, SPRINGTIME. I sat in Bryant Park and wrote in my journal, while big men smoked fat cigars and women in purple coats walked by. Then Graham and I went and saw a fantastic, but scary as hell movie, that was so surprisingly satisfying I STILL can't stop thinking about it. Yesterday I went for a sunny walk in the village with my friend Nate, and we drank delicious coffee, and sat on the curb of a playground and had one of those conversations where you talk about the meaning of art and leading a creative life, with the sun on our faces.

Good days. Except for one pesky part of each day: the part of the day where I write. I feel like lately I have a little fascist that sits at my desk. I call him Doktar Perfektion. He sits there and says very calmly, "Vhat is dees? Vhat do you think you are doink? Where is dees goink?" Then when he blows out the match he just lit his cigarette with he says, "I am not amused."

Of course, the little fascist is me. Does it make it any easier? HELL NO. At the end of my 1000 words, I feel beat up and tired.

On Saturday a small miracle occured. I was getting ready to write, to grit my teeth and CREATE, when Graham said from the bedroom, "Are you listening to the radio? I think you might want to hear this." I came in, and it was a piece on the soon to be published journals of the writer Tennessee Williams. Nearly every section that they read seemed to begin with something akin to "The jig is up, it's OVER. Finally the world will know that I am a fraud." At TWENTY-FIVE he thought it was over. He also thought it was over at 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, etc. etc. This is a man who wrote over 60 plays, 8 collections of short stories, and three novels. Some of his plays will be performed for centuries to come--they changed the landscape of both theater and American literature. Yet, the man still sat at a table and wrote pages of pages of why he was TOTALLY SCREWED.

I don't know why I believe the voices of failure, doom, disaster, and doubt swirling my head are the only UNIQUE thing about me. No matter how many examples I have (Tennessee Williams is one of SO MANY) of artists who had moments of real doubt, I think I am the only person who it's true about--it really IS over for me. I don't know why such amnesia is so ENTICING and EASY, but it is.

When I sat down to write, I opened up a book I had with Williams' picture in it, and propped it on my desk. I wrote with a picture of his smiling face, dipping to smell a rose. If only for a day, I'll take a rose smelling playwright over a smoking fascist any day. Let me tell you, it helped.

A Bird at My Table

I'm working on a book right now and really struggling, so I've been getting out all the tools, sacrificial virgins, incense, prayer books, candles to help me in this journey that is actually attempting something that is important to me. One of the things I did recently was to re-read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. I have had this book for ten years and had read it, thought it good, but also I had this little eety-beety gripe about it. The gripe is what I have with a lot of professional creative gurus, which is when they say, "The important thing is not to get published, the important thing is to enjoy the creative process." While, this is an absolutely true and wonderful sentiment, it also BUGS me, because I want to say EASY FOR YOU TO SAY, OH PUBLISHED AUTHOR. I want to experience the beauty that is doing the creative act AND get published--so SUE me!

Anyway, maybe my anger was fueled because I actually wasn't doing ANYTHING about writing in one direction, so I felt (ahem) a wee bit DEFENSIVE and (cough) JEALOUS. Now that I am actually sitting my ass down and WRITING in a very concrete manor, on a daily basis, I think I was more receptive to Lamott's book--and dare I say it?--GRATEFUL for this funny and cranky book about the very REAL way you can feel when you are actually writing--which is to say, bored, grumpy, and totally OUT OF YOUR MIND. Yes, you can also feel excited, inspired, and all those other things, but once again, I am faced with the REALITY vs. the FANTASY.

I asked a PUBLISHED writer friend recently, "I feel nuts is this normal?" and she said, "Oh, honey, it's totally NORMAL. My friend [who is writing a novel] is having a TOTAL NERVOUS BREAKDOWN." While, in theory, I don't enjoy other people's misery, dare I say, my belt felt a little looser, as I breathed a SIGH OF RELIEF?

One of my favorite movies, An Angel at My Table, about the New Zealand writer Janet Frame, totally fed (like many other sources) my fantasy of what being a writer was about. Sure, she had crippling shyness, family deaths, and an 8 year wrongful institutionalization, which almost led to her getting a lobotomy, but she ended up WRITING several amazing books and going to EUROPE on a fellowship and she wore GORGEOUS 1950's sweater sets, and went down in HISTORY. You see what my focus was? Not on the very REAL and INTIMATE and EMPTY parts of her life--or the part in her that thought, how in the hell am I going to do this? I was focused on the PRODUCT. I think this is what Anne Lamott was trying to say when she said, "The point is not the publishing, the point is the writing." The writing might as well be called "the process of your life." Don't worry about how your life will look at the end, pay attention to how you are LIVING IT.

It's really EASY to judge or get ideas about FINISHED projects. The sheer fact that Janet Frame wanted to kill herself, that she lived in poverty, and could barely hold a conversation with anyone outside her family tells me more about her process than her STORY does. The fact that she triumphed at all is somehow beside the point. She struggled, like any human being, with very large doubts.

It sounds so sexy writing a book, but I assure you it's really unremarkable. Like anyone else, or like EVERYONE else, eventually you sit down with all the imperfection and write. As a wise woman once said, something is better than nothing. So I am living my life and noticing how it is lived and it's sometimes great and sometimes really frickn' hard. I'm lucky, my story isn't finished yet. This means I still have time.