Full Moon Dream Board: Peace

So ends my four-day writing marathon. (It was more like four and half really).  I have a word count, but I feel like it is really no way to measure what happened inside me this weekend.

I lived. 

I’ve started my first real piece of fiction (I say “real” because I’ve written fiction before I’m sure, but never seriously.)  Currently my characters are still only giving me the beginning of their stories—their tragic stories.  I am begging them to give me a glimpse of their futures so that I can trust that their story redeems. 

Being the narrator has always frightened me because for so long I was convinced that God had an “ultimate will” for me.  I have come to believe, to much relief, that in fact, the joy of writing my own story is before me.  As the author, I have created these characters with names and faces and fathers and fears.  I’m hovering above somewhere, hiding behind a tree maybe, and I can see the torment they feel.  But I don’t know yet what they will choose tomorrow.  I want to interfere, to control the story.  But I will not.  It is their story, not mine to tell.  I can only plea with them…

                                             Thoughts on Fiction

                                             29 Mar 10

I want to write a redemptive ending,

But I don’t know if my characters will let me.

They’re stuck

Somewhere between the ninth hole, the Baring Sea and delivery day.

And they are running from,

If not paralyzed by,

The fear

Of an ever growing roundness protruding from her belly.

My dear characters, may your joy grow with each day.  We are hoping for you. 

And while I am hoping for my characters, I can only pray that someone is hoping for me.  I was amazed, ashamed and confused by some of the things that crept out of me over the last few days.  Solitude and expression can do that.  Anxiety has been overwhelming me. I’ve spent moments sitting silently; asking the screaming little girl inside what she needs to say. 

She wants to be accepted.  I guess that means           

I want to be accepted. 

Yael Naim - Far, Far

As these and other beautiful and hideous thoughts rage through my being (I swear I can feel them in every joint), I know that there must be somewhere they can be placed where some other power can quiet them and I continue on in peace. 

Because peace is beautiful. 

How convenient that the moon is full and birthing creativity and excitement.  I shall use her offering of energy and offer her back my creativity.  I made a box.  Not just any box—a beautiful box.  The tag on the front reads “everything will be okay in the end…it’s not the end.”  Inside this box I will place my fears, crazies and gremlins.  (I suggest taking a listen to this and embracing the restful breaths it offers to the creative soul.)  I’m sure it will fill fast but that guarantees that I can fill with peace and light. 

And so I end my evening with a cupa, a warm meal and The Science of Sleep.  The rain will sing me to sleep tonight, like she has the past few nights and tomorrow I will wake and write again. 

Live at peace,

Jenn

If you wrote your life story, what would the first line be?

Insomnia has struck again.  The reasons are obvious.  I have been obsessed with writing and have spent most of my time the last few days sitting at my desk moving nothing but my fingers.  I tried to go the gym, but apparently they are open twenty-four hours a day every day but Saturday.  So I did yoga in my room and then wrote some more.  It’s four AM.  I think the neighbors (the ones who live in a van on my street) are having a rock concert. I am wide awake and suddenly obsessed with the first lines of stories.  So, like any sane person I went through every one of my books and recorded the first line of the ones that struck me. 

Please enjoy

“EVERYTHING WITHIN TAKES PLACE AFTER JACK DIED AND BEFORE MY MOM AND I DROWNED IN A BURNING FERRY IN THE COOL TANNIN-TINTED GUAVIARE RIVER IN EAST-CENTRAL COLOMBIA, WITH FORTY-TWO LOCALS WE HADN’T YET MET. “ –Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity

Sometimes, I sleep with Dave’s books.  Now that I saw that out loud, it sounds creepy. This, on the other hand is incredibly intriguing.  

“By the time you finish reading this book, ten thousand children will starve, four thousand will be brutally beaten by their parents, and one thousand will be raped.” – Peter Kreft, Making Sense Out of Suffering

I almost didn’t add this one because well, it’s traumatizing.  But then, maybe that’s why it should be included

“Then there was bad weather.” –Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

            I will read this book once a year until I die.  One day I will read it in Paris. 

“I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods.” –C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

            This is possibly the first book I ever read that truly left me speechless.

“No one ever told me that grief feels so much like fear.” –C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

This book has always come to me at the most needy times. Last year I read it after reading The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the same day a good friend died. It was a pretty hard week. 

“Sometimes I feel as though I were born in a circus, come of my mother’s womb like a man from a cannon, pitched toward the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands, the band going great guns in trombones and drums.” –Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What

            Dear Don, write me letters will you?

“It was one of those nights, one of those lovely nights, dear reader, which can only happen when you are young.” –Frodor Dostoevsky, “White Nights: A Sentimental Love Story”

            Yay for the Russians! Yay for short stories! Yay for Sentimental love stories!

“When Mr. Bilbo Bagins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his elventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobiton.” –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Whenever I read these books I usually spend the first hour on the first line.  It’s magical.  And then I spend the next hour wondering how the hell he got from there to Mount Doom and why he never thought of this…

 
“As a child, I had a number of strong religious beliefs but little faith in God.” –Karen Armstrong, A History of God.

Perhaps the one woman who has helped make more sense out of God than I have been able to find anywhere else, except, of course, for Anne Lamott...

“On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided that all of life was hopeless, and I would eat myself to death.” –Anne Lamott, Plan B

My dear Anne Lamott, in the words of Kelly Clarkson, “My life would suck without you.”  Thank you, Anne, most sincerely, for allowing me to be myself and think all my crazy thoughts and still be sane (mostly).  And mostly, thank you for believing enough in the human race to write about them with truthful aggravation and expansive compassion. 

           

The Lonely Nun

“Broken sticks and broken stones

Will turn to dust just like our bones

It's words that hurt the most now isn't it

Are you sad inside, are you home alone

If I could just pick up the phone

Maybe you could see a better day

And you won't waste away

under my watchful eye

Because I'm your hero and you're my weakness

Who's gonna break my fall

When the spinning starts

The colors bleed together and fade

Was it ever there at all

Or have I lost my way

The path of least resistance

Is catching up with me again today”

-Brandi Carlile “Again Today"

I have a theory about my blood type. I’m an O positive, which means I can give blood to everyone, but can only receive it from fellow O positives. I am a person who feels things very deeply and I expel a fair amount of emotion on the people and things I love. I’ve gone through plenty of seasons when I wondered if anyone realized that no one was giving me life.

I have felt invisible a lot in life, though it has not always been a negative feeling. I’ve been going through a phase the last few weeks of feeling very lonely, honestly very unloved. A few weeks ago a bunch of friends cancelled on me and I ended up doing things by myself that I would have enjoyed sharing. I subconsciously stopped asking friends to hang out. I waited three weeks during which my friends and I were super busy, so when I say I understand I truly mean it.

What I noticed more than anything was the feeling of being unloved. I started to wonder if anyone would really ever understand how I love to be loved? I was wondering if I was missing how people loved me?

How am I blind to how people love me? How am I blind to how to love my friends in a way they love? Instead of being super bummed I decided to sow what I wanted to reap. I was discussing my feelings with a friend and she was telling me she had been feeling the same. How sad is it that we are surrounded by people we consider our friends and we still feel so lonely? Later I gave her some chocolate. Something simple, that I know from experience feels like the world. Shortly after friends started calling and I have had some amazing times with old and new friends the last week.

Love takes energy. Some people are easy to love and some are harder. We all have our own moments of being both. It’s hard to give love when we feel so depleted ourselves. But we love anyway because otherwise we feel like we will die. But I need the love to give back. I need to be hugged. I need flowers. I need random lovely texts. I learned this month I need to love and be loved to survive and survive is what I plan to do.

photo: flickr.com/photos/borkodinus/3803172145/