“I want to write about insidious, cumulative weight…to write about writing about trauma, and the ways it changes the brain…Jumpiness, tension, pessimism, noise sensitivity, sleep disturbances, anxiety, headaches, exhaustion, teeth grinding. Individually, they’re barely troublesome enough to comment on. Viewed as a litany, though, they add up to something of heft; of substance…I want a better vocabulary to describe the ugly cynicism, the fatigue, and the dread that has settled like silt in my blood.” (1)
Story II:
"There are some who might like them"
Why? Why write? Why even do it? Why share it? I can. I can’t. I cannot. I can. I will. I won’t. I shall. I shan’t. Oh, my troubled mind. Into the darkness then back into the light. I don’t lack for confidence in or doubt my creative abilities or desires. They have always been my rock. An anchor. My strength and grace. It’s more like, why would anyone want to hear what I have to say? After all, I have a truly turbulent mind that can be difficult and exhausting to attempt to interpret. Understood only by the esoteric. An uncomfortable place to have a view of to say the least. Why would anyone want to accompany me in doing the hard work that it is to be me? It’s not a beautiful finished piece of art, rather a meandering trail of wandering wonder. I just want to create something beautiful. For my work to proceed uninterrupted. All this talking about myself for myself’s sake. It all just seems so damn self-indulging and reeks of self-importance. It disgusts me. I disgust me. The back and forth. The mis-firing of the synapses. It all makes me so very ill.
I glance up from my desk and my great, great grandmother, Rosetta, catches my eye. She is grinning out of a framed picture, her ink well still sitting before her. I always make sure she has it close, at the ready. I never refill her ink, for now she writes with magic fairy dust. I begin speaking to her, something I often do. Rose always seems have some helpful insight, something beautiful to say. Something nourishing. She communicates across the broad expanse, again and again, strengthening my deeply held belief that love is a bond that knows no bounds.
©broadexpanse
“Rosetta? What am I doing to myself laboring over my writing so? Why? I’m making myself sick! I mean, what’s the point? Seriously. Everybody does it and others have already done it over and over and over again. What do I have to say that the poets, bards, scholars and kings, even the prophets of old, haven’t already said? And in multitudes? With proficiency. Skill and elegance. Tact.”
I pause. I’m quiet. I listen.
“Oh, sweetie,” she replies, gazing to the south from the comfort of her trusty wooden rocking chair, south towards Mount Hood on which her eyes are forever fixed, “I often asked myself those very same questions. I used to think to myself that there’s nothing left that hasn’t been written, so why should I linger about, dreaming and writing? It all seemed such childish flair at the time! I felt so foolish and young and vain,” she laughs and shakes her head at the memory. “I felt I should be studying of lamas and courts and thane. Writing my opinion on why Cesar was slain. Not thinking about myself. Not dreaming. And more, what could a dreamer like me hope to tell anyone with a pen as poor as mine? I used to worry that the, so-called, great and the wise, those old white men in charge, would just laugh at my efforts and scorn my ideals and standards,” she paused before continuing, “I had to remind myself that what I was doing was important. It was important to me. And do you need more of a reason to do something other than that you enjoy it with all of your heart? That’s where it should start. You enjoy it.”
“I knew you could relate Rose. After all, I’ve devoured and internalized all of your writing and poetry. Still though, I ache with terror. I’m terrified of being incorrect. Wrong. Somehow mistaken. Misread. Misinterpreted. Misunderstood. Mishandled. Misplaced. Laughed at. Why do I have this full blown terror instead of the simple, gentle fluttering of butterflies, dancing in my stomach?”
“The answer can be found within your own mind, grandson. Within you. The why you seek is not simple, neither is it one that can be quickly answered. It’s incredibly complex. Break it all down into smaller pieces of thought. Into vignettes. Everything all at once will overwhelm you. It could destroy you. You are on a noble path, young man,” she fixed me with her twinkling eye, “A meaningful journey. And you know better than to think that because your mind is, what you have called, an uncomfortable place, that readers will be turned away! Sounds interesting to me. Fascinating, actually. You just keep on writing. It is a part of you. Share it with others and move on. This is how you must work out the answer that you seek.”
Rose closes her eyes and drifts back into memories of her childhood…
“I remember when I was just a young girl, newly uprooted from my native Kansas, I would stand along the banks of the Clackamas River, which bordered our land, contemplating my doubts and my fears. The dear stream always offered a lesson to me, if I was listening for her voice. One day it occurred to me how my life compared to that dear river. How my joys and struggles, my pains and griefs are like her whirling eddies, swift and treacherous, her deep dark holes and shifting sands, all seeking to drag me down. Down into a vortex of doubts and fears until I’m only human wreckage, drifting on.” Drifting on. Not sinking. Rosetta continues, “But as I’d follow that dear shining stream I’d find the occasional quiet pool, so smooth and clear, a place to sit or to play by without fear. A place to replenish. To catch my breath. A place where my faith would be renewed.”
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“I think this advice is the most important to remember however…When you are doubting yourself and are troubled in your mind, not able to see the why within the what, just politely smile and say aloud to those forces, ‘I am going to write things down, if you’ll pardon, for there are some who might like them.’ Right?! Here you are seventy years later spending, dare I say, a little too much time in my old papers. But you found them. You found my message and you heard me!”
“Remember, grandson, you do not seek the wealth or treasure that others speak of. The material riches that others deem so essential to life and its pleasure. Your treasure and wealth will come from better understanding the wonder that is yourself. All of yourself. Not just the highs and joys, but also the bad fortune that has been your’s since you were born, that which molests you. Write about it. Find in that poverty your golden lyre. Your chariot of flaming fire whose steeds are harnessed to a star. It will take you far.”
“Oh, Rose, I don’t know where I’d be without you. I love you so much.”
“I love you too, and so does everyone here with me. They all send their love to you. We’ll talk again soon sweetie.”
©broadexpanse
So, I’ve thrown the shutters back and ripped the windows off of their hinges, exposing the places inside with which I never thought to trust anyone. No one! The places of my deepest held and most intimate thoughts. It is hard and I am terrified. Terrified that I am going to do, or say, something offensive. Something that hurts or harms. Burns a bridge. Makes a mess. My deepest held doubts float in the flood of fear. My mind of flaming fire, my chariot, is readied for flight. I am not alone. My confidence regained, I trudge forward. I am off to slide down a rainbow, to follow where my mind goes and to dance with the thoughts in my head. To share them. To try to remind myself that “there are some who might like them.” I carry on. I dust off and carefully adjust my photo of Rose. I write. I am harnessed to a star.
The Chariot of Apollo, Odilon Redon
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