What I’m Writing Down

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“The habits of journal writing create a most interesting distance between you and your thoughts. Finding out that your thoughts are not inevitable and discovering that not only your thoughts but also your feelings change when you write your thoughts down, you can shift the emphasis, style, and content of your thinking. Experiencing your own powers of observation, coupled with a greater awareness that you have choices, increases your sense of self-mastery and inner stability. That is no small thing.” –Stephanie Dowrick, Creative Journal Writing, page 32

I’m mad at my husband. He decided a few weeks ago that he should replace all of the interior doors in the upstairs of our house. He hated the old doors, he claimed (we have lived here for 17 years, and that’s the first I’ve heard of it). Now that I look at that statement, it seems interesting psychologically. If he were a character in a novel, I wonder what his back story would be?

When I fight with Bruce, I feel like a child again. I feel helpless and out of control. I feel overwhelmed and besieged. I want to find a place where I can be alone, a defensible fortress of solitude. There was no place like that in my house last night. I also didn’t feel it would be fair to absent myself from my daughters.

For the record, I didn’t want Bruce to take on this project with the doors. I told him, very clearly, that I didn’t want him to. We have a houseful of kids right now, for one thing; this particular weekend is Emma’s big choir concert. Annie is home, and she’s borrowed a friend’s three-year-old.  When I thought I’d help out by making dinner, Bruce announced that he had dinner “under control.” Tarps on the kitchen floor, sawhorses, sawdust, random boards. (It was really no place for a three-year-old, or for a fifty-seven year old, for that matter.)

 

We fought. He won and he cleaned up everything and made dinner. He yelled at the three-year-old when she got underfoot and upset everyone (Annie cried). The wise child said, “Uncle Bruce is sad.”

After dinner I got out Dowrick’s book and my journal. I kept repeating to myself the words, you have choices. I didn’t work all the way through it, I admit, but it helped. My journal, if nothing else, is my defensible fortress of solitude. When I was ready to come out and be part of my family again, I felt stronger.

Scribbling

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fall winter 2012 013“Without restrictions or censorship your mind can race–or slow down. It can step outside boxes or turn them sideways. It can make utterly fresh connections or simply pause, allowing you to see what is familiar with new eyes. It can train you to observe with subtlety all kinds of situations. And it can help you to learn something of value even from the unwelcome ones.” –Stephanie Dowrick, Creative Journal Writing (page 3)

It’s really cold out in my writing cabin this morning. I collected my journal, my laptop, and a couple random books (including Dowrick’s) and came into the house to write.

Listening to Hemingway

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I have been thinking about Ernest Hemingway, largely because of the hilarious scene in The Silver Linings Playbook, which I watched with my girls the other night. This is Pearlie’s favorite movie (currently) so I’ve watched it a few times, once while I was teaching Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms last spring.

Then I came across this quote on Jon Winokaur’s Advice to Writers blog.

When People Talk Listen Completely

When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

This is true not just for writers, by the way. Pay attention. Listen.

It’s also much harder to do than one might think. I’m pretty sure that was as true for Hemingway as it is for the rest of us.

Matthew Quick’s novel, The Silver Linings Playbook, is nothing like the movie, in my humble opinion, but well worth reading on its own merits.

Gravity

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On Friday afternoon all my girls–all four of them (as we have picked up an extra for a couple of months)–were off doing their own thing. My husband had left his carpentry project to watch the Apple Cup, and I decided that I would go see Gravity, a movie whose premise has intrigued me since I first encountered it. I told Bruce where I was off to and, to my surprise, he leapt up and said, “I’ll go with you.” So off we went.

The movie was visually beautiful. As a reviewer had recommended, I insisted on seeing it in Imax and 3D, and I found myself feeling completely aspin and dodging satellite debris, along with Sandra Bullock’s character. I was astounded with the filmmakers’ choice to not visually represent Dr. Ryan Stone’s backstory, and then–a significant shift–this choice felt brilliant. That her father wanted a boy, that she had lost a child, that she had to claim her own power and her own life in order to keep it–all of this compelled me viscerally. I don’t want to give the movie away if you haven’t seen it, but I will say that it–as I had hoped–was a metaphor for every individual’s life, including mine. I don’t think you have to have lost a child to find yourself weeping when George Clooney’s character says, in his understated way, “You lost a kid. It doesn’t get rougher than that.” We’ve all lost something. We’ve lost ourselves. In order to go on, we have to make a choice to go on. 

When I went looking for an image for this post, I found this discussion by astronauts as to whether or not the effects in GRAVITY were realistic.