Revisiting process

A few weeks ago a friend asked me, "What is your blog's goal?" The question stumped me, even though I began with the intent of promoting my forthcoming book, ODE. But, the thing about blogging (at least for me) is that my entries veer into day-to-day life, and too, "promoting" has never been an activity I'm comfortable with.

And so, I wonder, do I need a "goal?" The mere word keeps me from writing here (note, last entry, April 21). Since this blog is about me, maybe my goal is to do so in a way that doesn't sound me me me. Maybe my goal is to dig beneath my concerns, dreams, conflicts, joys in a way that reaches my reader, so that I'm also writing about us.

Sounds good. Not always easy to pull off. Especially since this minute, I sit here, wanting to write about my blog to book process; I'm doubtful this is an "us" topic, but I'll try.

After getting back my copyedited manuscript, I was overjoyed...this blog to book (blook?) project is getting close. So I thought. Accepting Elizabeth's fixes was easy--just click "accept all" in track changes, and voila, a grammatically correct blook. But, there was also a lengthy letter from her, with feedback on the overall story, the themes, the end (my biggest concern), and how these elements weren't always clear. I needed that critique and was grateful for her good honest response. It also sent me back to work, back to my girl-cave, aka, inside myself.

One issue explored in ODE is my ambivalence about completing a memoir. I discovered through this current revision, that deepening personal work naturally turns it into memoir. And so, while I write in the blook, I'm putting the memoir under my bed forever, I'm simultaneously calling it up.

As a blog, the work was intended to touch lightly on the personal, more heavily on my teaching and writing lives. I had naively thought turning it into a book, was only a copyedit away from putting it between two covers. I discovered, I'm not ready for the covers...the revised manuscript, with 35 pages edited out, remaining 150 pages deeper, is now with an editor.

As the work inches closer to the covers, I'm grateful for the hard work. A book should not be easy. A labor of love, yes. The harder I work on the manuscript, the more I love it. Although ODE is an acronym for Obsessions, Digressions, and Epiphanies, this project is an ODE to something; perhaps that wonderful flow I'm in, when totally immersed in the work.

Moving on

Yesterday a.m. I stayed away from the news and all things that would bring the events in Boston into my space. The difference of knowing it's there--the violence, fear--and focusing on it, is huge.

Luckily, when I clicked into email, my copyedited manuscript was in my in-box--the best gift this girl could have received. I wanted to get to work, and I wanted something powerful to fill the space in my mind that didn't want to go to Boston.

I filled my favorite mug with coffee, opened the blinds, went to work. The present moment sucked me in, one millisecond at a time. My morning was productive, joyful, filled with the promise of the book at the end of the journey, my project I've grown to  love. When I looked up, an hour, then two hours later, I considered the day. Would I make it to NIA class and all my Saturday etceteras? It was then I thought about Boston--the people who carry the weight and those who don't. I wondered how that was fair, yet knew that when some are falling, many more must stay up, to keep the world on its axis.

I'm reading The Brain That Changes Itself by Dr. Norman Doidge. One premise is that we can "rewire" our brains by changing our thoughts. For me, this is all about, where do I want to be now? In the negativity that often fills my mind, or in a more wholesome and happy state? If I keep stretching for wholesome and happy, will my brain one day hit that note on its own?

Life goes on as it must. Last night, a baseball game in Boston. Today, a marathon in New York. People show up. They're brave. They reach for the good. Last week is just that, last week. And, too, last week informs and changes each new moment.

Wanting

Obsessions Digressions and Epiphanies (hereafter known as ODE) is still with the copyeditor. She and I talked last week; she said she may need to push the deadline back; I said,  OK, of course, no problem and every variation I could come up with to be adaptable, easy; this morning I suppress an urge to send an email: about that deadline...

I halt. Take a few breaths. Go out the door, walk up four flights of stairs, return. All good things; but still, I want my manuscript. On time. My present moment is murky. I have a job interview in less than two hours. Being down two courses means free time, in addition to practical concerns. I'm not good with free time. My mind goes here and there..here meaning current needs, like a job; there means every single thing that has irked me since 1964.

I water my plants, fiddle with my blog. In this moment I'm untethered--or at least, feel this way--and I need to root to a project, a thing. The other day Deepak Chopra was on Katie Couric's TV show. He led a gratitude meditation. I followed along, touched my heart, reflected on the view outside my window, when Chopra said, "What are you grateful for?"

I love my home, my view, the sun this very second as it reflects on a high rise across my way. Garbage trucks' engines rev up. A larger truck tries to pass. I don't see this but hear it in the hiss of air, the horn's frustration.

I want to fill my present moment with creativity and action! Hire a book designer. Get busy with edits (not in that order). Send the manuscript out for blurbs. Tell people, my book is in process, which it is, but not my process this morning.

I must put on makeup, gather my stuff, walk the mile to the interview, get into it.

What is important?

I'm sitting at Argo Tea in Chelsea, having my usual café au lait, skim, extra hot, and pondering what to write about. What I'm really pondering is what is important: Important enough to tune out the chatter, to shut out the sights and become so absorbed by an idea I lose all sense of time? I come up empty and so, I change the channel, skim through The NYTimes; fortunately, someone else's thoughts grab and enlighten me.

In "My Life. My College Choice" Leobardo Espinoza Jr. writes about his decision making process; his friends want him to accept a college that they are going to. It's a good choice and Espinoza wants to please them; but, he's mature enough to own the distinction between pleasing his friends versus himself.

This catches me today, although I'm on the heels of a completely different sort of choice--but that doesn't matter, for it is choice itself that bogs me down. When an opportunity is offered I ask this one and that one, or, at the very least, wonder how this one and that one will feel about my choice. I forget that it is me, alone, who lives within my skin, inside my body and mind.

Alas, I am getting around to the Costa Rica trip that didn't come to pass; I feel the disappointment not once but twice, three times, eight times, when I think of others' reactions. Why should I care? Like Espinoza says in his smart essay, it's his life.

In My life, today, I feel the discomfort of too much time and not enough to do; I'm in between writing projects. I know myself by the feel of my fingers on the keyboard, by my seat here at Argo, tapping away on something or thumbing through manuscript pages. I'm also down two courses; another way I know myself is by my complaints about so many papers.

Today I meet myself away from the keyboard and papers and all things familiar; I hope I can avoid distraction and see what is on my other side.

Travelling

Things I learned during my trip to Costa Rica:
Never again leave my computer home
Eight day trips are my max
Digital cameras are addictive
Always prepare for gorgeous weather
I have trouble living in the present moment
   (FYI..I kind of knew this)

Leaving home brings out my demons; I have never been an easy rider...the first time I left my parents, I was eight and woke up in the middle of the night cramped in a twin bed beside my cousin Sylvia and screamed bloody murder. Nothing to do with Sylvia--except for the fact that she was in my sleep space, and her presence was evidence of the fact that I was Not at home.

The ability to explore the world is a wondrous gift, especially when present for that journey. When panic attacks come along for the ride--one which they have not paid for--the present moment is not pretty. (Or, do I have that all mixed up; is the panic an intrusion upon the present? And...is needing my computer an escape from...)

I awoke this morning yearning to hear the ocean outside my window, to say Guan-a-cast-e slowly, to feel the syllables roll through my teeth, to breath the air out as the word fell to the sand. But, alas, I am far from any oceans; the only sound outside is the garbage truck, conducting its morning ritual.

There was something significant about rounding this corner, and so I snapped it.

 

What I carried

Today I visited a coffee plantation. I didn't exactly go inside (shouldn't it have been outside?) to view a video on the history of coffee. Instead, I sat on a bench outside, with a few others who, like me, preferred the tropical humidity, the outdoors, the everything that went with an afternoon in Costa Rica.

Surrounded by beauty, we were occupied by our travel handicaps: dizziness from the high altitude, nausea from the long bus ride, claustrophobia from same bus ride, anxiety from all but the altitude.

When planning a trip, it's hard to know the realities. My months of anticipation were eaten up by shopping; rain parka for the rain forest, walking shoes that could sustain mud, nonslip shoes for the rocks, shoes just for walking (fyi--I am a low-maintenance shoe person), windbreaker for cool nights, flashlight for no electricity, umbrella, because it rained every day my friend Stephanie was there. I barely prepped for sun.

In an interview a few months ago on NPR, Jon Kabat-Zinn (founder of Mindfulness Meditation) said, "Nobody teaches us how to think." That idea struck me as profound. I thought of it when I realized my thoughts had been a jumble of mixed realities, foreigners to the language of beauty. I wanted to lasso my brain, hold it in place. Instead I snapped photos, knowing later I would see what I couldn't then.

On the coffee plantation

Here and there

I fish around for what to write, not wanting to write the thoughts that pushed their way through, awakening me at 3:50. Students--yes. While lying in my warm bed, on a damp, coolish morning (mid-night?), I heard my class parade through my brain. It was time to get up, make coffee, begin.

I love the very early hours; the start of my day without 'shoulds' or 'what ifs' or 'have to's' is priceless. This stolen time when the world sleeps, cars drive by on dark silent streets; I align with the outer world.

My brain fights me; it wants to talk of yesterday when I realized I am without a writing project. I went here and there, felt aimless. A half-crocheted thing and balls of yarn spread over my sofa. I realized how much of my life is directed by projects. 

But, that was yesterday; now, I reflect on right here right now and idle into the moment. Appliances hum; radiators quietly whoosh, and then they rest, pause. In the pause I recall a dream about my mother, buying her a new television, a building in need of renovation. Too early to connect the dots.