May 12, 2003

stay awake, jeneane

I have to stay up for an hour. I need to give Jenna her medicine 24 hours after her shots last night, which means 3 in the morning. So I think, what better thing to do than to catch up on some blogging.

But I'm tired. Really running on empty.

So I'm doing that thing I do when I lean back, close my eyes and write.

Let go, let in, slip down into the place of plaid napkins and orange leisure suits, the place of blue-light basement house parties and disco mirrors. The place where things happen before my sealed eyes. The place where writing finds me.

I can see so much when I let writing come to me, don't force it, don't chase after it, just close my eyes and write what comes. This is where I turn the reins over, submit, admit I am powerless.

Beautiful things always come first, like my father's cemetary in May, the green grass and new leaves marking thousands of graves, I play tricks with my eyes, try to block the headstones and see the green, not the other way around, while under my feet decaying bodies and invisible breath turn into sweet nectar, feeding me, me wringing specks of life out of boxes of bone and dust.

This is what will come if you let it.

Close your eyes, put your fingers on the steering wheel, enjoy the ride.

Round pearl onions float in a bowl of chicken soup, like snowglobes emptied of their fluid and sparkles.

Think of colors and you'll see shadows. Stop thinking altogether and watch the colors come.

You don't have to work so hard. Writing is like that.