Uncontrolled Rhythm

It's hard work being a writer.  Not the tip-tap of the keys or the worries about grammar and spelling.  The thoughts and memories that get triggered are like emptying suitcases and putting things away.  The items are useful for my journey but have to be sorted through.  Are they useful now?  Will I remember where I put them away when I want to use them again?  The process feels like I am spilling things out to examine.  The personal and emotional parts are jumbled up with the intellectual and philosophical parts.

When I sit down to write I don't always know if it will be a crying session, an anger and regret time, or full of sweet memories.  Reflections fill my mind.  I can sit for hours in my process of writing.  The writing I do when I let it come as it will,  is my best. I have to let myself relax and empty my mind in order for it to fill with what will come.  No, I don't know what will come.  I try not to judge what comes and start with it.  I don't always feel committed to end with what comes initially.  I can write two or three paragraphs in one train of thought and then the following sentence can hit me like a slap across the face.  "Where did that come?"  I often say to myself.  I've learned not to turn away from the slap in the face.  It's there.  Even if I don't stay with a writing it can get up from the chair with me and spend a few days with me. If the thoughts have a strong force with them, I use them as a beginning for another writing time.  But, along with the strong force comes the strong drain it pulls from me.  I just realized I wrote, "If THE thoughts" and not "If MY thoughts".  I know why.  They are not always from me.  They come from a spiritual place I can't label or explain. 

Judging my writing can be the most damaging thing I do.  Thinking about what others think about my writing takes a close second in damage.  I don't mean judging the flow, the clarity, etc.  What I mean by judging is whether my thoughts are even important enough to put in words.  Whether it only opens up myself to criticism and scrutiny. Whether I'm willing to humble myself and admit I'm human, imperfect, ridiculous with impaired vision.  This kind of thinking I do can stop my ability to be open to sitting down and writing…

I try to live my life day by day.  My writing time takes away from my "living in the moment" effort.  Thoughts of the past, along with reflection, become predictions of the future.  It becomes a suspended state of mind that certainly is not "living in the moment".  I am still working on this imbalance.  I know I can do both.  I have to concentrate on when I'm seeing with stain-glass vision and how I turn it off and return to the crystal-clear seeing in the moment.  It takes some meditation and prayer.  It takes effort.  I started out saying, "It's hard work being a writer."  It's worth it.  It is making me more aware of myself and the world around me. 

And with a painful shoulder that is progressing and healing week by week? I still have to limit my writing.  It aggravates and adds to the pain.  Being without my writing has made me appreciate how much I need to write and want to write. I am a writer.   

I turned to writing songs more when my shoulder initially was injured five or six weeks ago.  I started singing the songs into my digital recorder.  I wrote down the names of the songs and what folder they were on in the recorder.  My recorder was damaged in my suitcase.  The songs are gone.  I was upset until I thought about what writing those songs did for me.  They helped heal some wounds and I am different somehow from writing them.  I can't share them with anyone or sing them, but they aren't lost.  They will come again with a different tune, a different rhythm.

This Upright Piano took 13 years to refinish,
re-string, tune and put in the house.  The times
in between when it sat in the garage drove me crazy!

Just like the things we work so hard to make happen.  We feel failure when they don't go off well or develop like we planned.  But beneath the layers there is the spirit of the unknown, the uncontrolled that creates happiness, surprise and love.

 It's those times I want to be open to, a letting go of my control over the outcomes.