365 days of being a writer: day 322

I finished (?) the birding essay. It isn't done but it has some kind of ending. And I started writing about the bus.

I seem to have some kind of knee-jerk hangup to writing memoir. Like, I can't just write about ME and the bus, that isn't enough (for me). I don't know if that's because I devalue my own experiences or because I feel that I should be reaching for a larger theme. Whatever it is, as soon as I start writing about "what happened to me" I start going into writerly rigor/malaise. I get hung up on Why does this matter? Who cares about the people on the bus? (No one, clearly. Have you SEEN the people on the bus? Talk about an invisible class.)

So then, an ode to the people on the bus. But then I think, who the hell am I to be an authority on bus people? What kind of privileged poser who CHOOSES to ride a bus could possibly say anything real about the people who are stuck there? Like Arbus and her freaks: the One Who Looks vs the Seen. But if I could write something as lovely as an Arbus folio, I'd fall over from gratitude. It seems like there is a way to do it so it isn't lame, and it's JUST on the tip of my fingers. A litany? Of passengers, maybe? I don't know.

Here are some things that have happened on the bus:

• When I was in the 5th grade, a man flashed me via a convenient hole in his jeans while I waited on the bus mall for the number #17 (formerly the #24, later the #10) to deep Southeast Portland. I didn't actually realize what I had seen until a few years later. In college a friend told me he watched a couple having sex at a bus stop in front of his house late one night. I was inexperienced at the time, and couldn't really picture how that would have worked: the bench too narrow to lie down on, the seat too shallow for two. I never thought of buses as sexy, but since then, I've made out at plenty of bus stops.
• My best friend and I would get scolded regularly in the sixth grade for being too loud on the #14 headed up Hawthorne. We would race to catch it, after cutting our last class of the day and getting $0.25 soft serve ice cream cones from a nearby McDonalds. We would cling to the poles in the articulated center, twirling around them, dancing, singing, getting shushed. The #14 was not quite a "fun" bus until a few years later, when Hawthorne blew up into a counter-culture haven.
• I rode a bus in New Orleans that cut through the Garden District before traveling down Broad Street (which stretched further northeast, on into the heart of the less famous Seventh Ward) toward Mid-City. Sometimes, I was the only white girl on the bus and the seat next to mine would be the last one filled. We passed three churches along the way, and at least one passenger would make the sign of the cross as we did. On Ash Wednesday the seats would be full of subdued smudged foreheads.
• In Rome my parents and I would take a bus from the guest room we were renting in the suburbs to the closest Metro station, and then take the subway into the city. We did this every day for over a week--out and back--but I don't remember a single bus ride. Only waiting at the stops at the beginning and end of each day. I remember the Metro, and the train ride to Florence, but I can't remember anything about sitting on the bus there at all.

365 days of being a writer: day 321

Last night, a haboub engulfed the city. A wall of dust over 5,000 feet high crashed over us like a wave. Here on the ground, all I could see was dark. I never watch the news, so I had no idea what was happening, only that it was very windy.

When it got dark so fast, I was hoping for rain and opened the door to see how wet the air felt. It felt damp and cool but the air wasn't actually wet: the dust was cold and so fine it was more of a smell than a sensation. I was worried about my new eyes, so I ducked back in and didn't think anymore about it until I saw the aftermath salted all over everything in the morning.

All this to say that most of my writing time tonight was spent trying to clean all the dust out of the pool. There was a lot of it.

I also got my pedagogy textbook in the mail today.



It is much more diminutive than every one of my undergrad textbooks (except for one about poetry that was equally tee-tiny). I'm glad.

365 days of being a writer: day 320

If this were August instead of July I would have spent the morning packing up a moving truck and then I would have hit the road with an old friend, heading N.

ONE MONTH LEFT!

I am going to spend some of this month trying to compile a 30-50pp manuscript for the Fall writer-in-residence at UWyo: Colson Whitehead. He's agreed to read and consult with two nonfiction students. They drew names, and one was me! Fifty pages is daunting, so I'm shooting for 30, but right now I'm only at 19. Double spaced. I would like to get two drafts done this month. An experimental piece on science and a short piece on public transportation. Can I do it? I have to turn in what I've got on August 1st or sooner.

Already school is so motivating! And daunting! Did I already mention the daunting part? Oofa.

Also, my contributor's copy of Creative Nonfiction showed up today. It's in my imagination, but it feels more substantial than the one that came as part of my regular subscription.

365 days of being a writer: day 319

Anyone else wondering what happens on day 366?

Today I managed to wrench out 2 more Demand articles. I was pretty cranky and I suspect it's because I got so little done over this long weekend. But, I submitted an essay, wrote 2 articles, and finished an afghan and a scarf. Why I have to beat myself up for all the things I didn't do is beyond me.

365 days of being a writer: day 318

Do you know what motivates you to write (if you write, or sing or sew or whatever it is you must do)? Sometimes, if I am stuck, I like to take prompts that are out there in the world, and work on them. Or at least, I like to think about doing that. Sometimes I feel like I enjoy being stuck, as frustrating as it is.

I read a book of essays (that I didn't love) based on the prompt "What album changed your life?" That was a good one, and it stumped me. Plenty of albums have informed chapters of my life and some can serve as powerful reminders of eras--but has a record ever changed the course of my life? I remember listening to Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow during a time in my life that was so full of earnest yearning I am surprised I didn't split right down the middle. If it weren't for the Reverend Horton Heat, I might never have gotten married--even though I met my husband at a Cherry Poppin' Daddies show, but did Full Custom Gospel Sounds... change my life? Or was it simply the soundtrack for a change that was already billowing up like a dust cloud over the desert?

Another prompt I think about is Where I Write by The Rumpus, (which alternates in my mind with Why I Write by George Orwell). Right now, I'm writing at the dining table because my parents are out of town. I thought I would be making much better use of my time alone in the house, while they are on their annual pilgrimage to the Oregon Coast--but instead, I've spent the time doing the things I can't when they're home: namely haunting the house in a nightgown and watching entire days worth of Law and Order. I would be too embarrassed to spend a whole day like that if anyone could see me.

I need quiet an the absence of a TV to write. I need a broad space at a desk or table that doesn't feel too claustrophobic.

But the noise of a busy public place works, too. At those times, I need a spiral notebook at the ready. For example, on the bus, or waiting for it, I sometimes catch myself rolling a phrase or snippet of dialogue over and over in my mind. I have to remind myself to write those things down. Two months ago I wrote, "Her cats were specific kinds of cats; one was a Balinese and one was a Russian Blue. Everyone else I'd ever met just had cats. But she said proudly, 'Emma is a Balinese,' like she'd made the cat that way herself." I have no idea where that came from or what it's for--I don't know anyone like that. In art school, my studio was a wreck of pieces of paper. Some had snatches of poetry on them, some were torn or cut carefully from magazines, some were found objects. I had stacks of small collages-in-progress stuffed into photocopied essays from lit classes. Charcoal drawings mixed with color studies. I would let nothing go, ever--because finding this piece of paper (the grasshopper transfer or the red watercolored rocks) later might trigger a new idea. The possibility of later inspiration was more important than the work ethic of the moment. I'm still like that much of the time.

I would like the discipline to get up early every morning and write for an hour. Instead, I lie in bed and think about all the things I wish were about to happen instead of what really will: driving through the awful traffic to the bus stop in the heat, going to a job that I can barely stand, coming home to my parents house instead of my own. But the things that are about to happen have been so far removed from what I want to happen for so long, I'm afraid it's a rut of thinking that my needle brain keeps skipping into, over and over and over. Everything will be hugely different soon, I'm worried that my same old self will find something else entirely to wish for.

365 days of being a writer: day 317

I submitted something today. It was not on my to-do list.

Why do I always rebel the minute something becomes a "to-do"? The last couple of submissions (aside from the re-worked hummingbirds) were totally off the cuff, not pre-meditated.

All the things I supposedly "want" to write, I have to be dragged to, kicking and screaming. Part of it is fear that what comes out on paper won't be as good as what's in my head--but I worry that part of it, too, is just an unwillingness to do the stuff that's hard sometimes.

I'm all about gratification: instant and delayed. I don't do the hard stuff until the last minute, ever. Maybe because I'm hoping for a last minute reprieve? Sudden inspiration?

I also started reading the text book for English Comp. You know, the class I have to teach? Eeek. Also, it was 115 degrees here today. That surely doesn't help. Only 34 days left!

365 days of being a writer: day 316

I had a long day by the pool today. I drank a lot.

It was a waste of a day (productivity-wise), but it was a free-day from work; I would have felt terrible spending it any other way. I wrote a little before the pool, but only a very little. Tomorrow begins my mini-retreat to Flagstaff. I haven't decided if I'm bringing my computer or a notebook. Probably the latter.