Dentists and Garbage and Writing: The Final Countdown

My time here is winding down. It is, in fact, ending a little sooner than expected, because a possible writing opportunity popped up back home and I'm hauling back to San Francisco two days early. Two days shouldn't make that much of a difference, but it's kind of a shock--I have what's left of today and Friday to finish my work here, clean up, pack, and motor back to the coast. It's now occurring to me that there are about a billion things I wanted to do still--eat a Hatch Chile Burger at Sparky's... Hold on. It's only like 45 minutes away. I can do that one right now! BRB.

YUM!

Okay that was an experience. The burger was really good. The trip there and back was weird and I don't want to talk about it. Back to what I was saying...

The second half of my residency has not been as productive as the first, I'll admit. I took off for a few days to explore this corner of the world--White Sands National Monument, Marfa, Carlsbad Caverns, Gila Cliff Dwellings. Time well-spent, certainly. And I knew there would be good days and bad days. At times I felt like I just needed to get out of my own way, the writing was coming so easy I had to flee before it like a wave of water bursting through a dam. Those were really good days. There were days that were bad in the sense that the writing was difficult and painful (as it often is for me), but I felt really good afterwards because I had an essay, rough as it might be, to show for it. And then there were the shitty days where I accomplished pretty much nothing, despite staring at the screen for hours, starting and stopping and deleting and starting again and deleting that and then going to lay down on my face. Those days didn't feel so good.

I'm trying not to be too hard on myself about that. I now have five essays that are ready or almost ready to send out and shop around and two more that are complete but basically 12 miles of bad road. Most important of all--they are out of my head.

A few of these essays I wrote, they've been torturing me. For years. I knew I wanted to write them. I knew I had to write them. I thought about it constantly: while I was at work, when I was walking the dog, when I was out with friends, when I was at a movie. I felt guilty for doing anything that wasn't writing. Even going to the gym! I would in fact forego some of these activities on the pretense that I would stay in and write, but I could never get going. I wouldn't go hang out in coffee shops, or try new restaurants, or just go wander around in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I put all of these things aside to work. And instead I just sat at my desk and stared, and probably went on facebook forever, and then took a nap with my dog. I just couldn't do it. Why? Because I was scared.

Writing is hard. It's really, really, really hard. It's often slow-going and painful. I have found that there is a requisite amount of garbage I need to write before I get to the good stuff. Writing garbage sucks. It feels terrible. Already wracked with self-doubt, I think "Is this the best I can do? Oh my God, I'm terrible! Why did I think I could do this?!" and I imagine the authors I admire climbing through my window and beating me with their celebrated books. You ever been whacked with a copy of War and Peace? Well... technically I haven't, either, but I bet it hurts. The garbage in my brain is just like the garbage in your house--day by day, it builds up. So if I skip writing one day, I have twice as much garbage to get through before I find a sentence I can stomach. And on and on and on. Sometimes the bad, early drafts were so disheartening I couldn't even get through them. The longer I put off the writing, the more terrified I was to try and begin again. It was like gaining 100 lbs. after a few years as a semi-pro athlete and then trying to make a comeback. It was a huge task, and it was daunting, and I was just really, really scared.

That was the best thing about having an entire month to work. I had time to spread out. If I spent three hours writing total crap, well, I still had the entire rest of the day to do better. And if I didn't manage to do better that day, I had 29 more days ahead of me. So I did it. I dug in. It was still really awful and disgusting and demoralizing, but I managed to get through the landfill of garbage piled up in my brain and start writing things I didn't totally hate. Some of the stuff was actually pretty good, I think. I wrote the stories I'd been holding onto for years, and a couple that just popped up out of nowhere.

This was actually in a book
in my dentist's waiting room. WTF?!

And that? Feels AMAZING. It's kind of like when I finally went to the dentist after (okay, this is REALLY embarrassing) eleven years. I know. I KNOW. For a while I didn't go because I didn't have dental insurance. And then I got dental insurance and I paid for it year after year and didnI can't do this anymore! I have to call the dentist TOMORROW! But I wouldn't. Maybe my teeth were all rotten, but if I didn't call him, he wouldn't get to pull them out! Right? Right.
't go. I was scared that I would have cavities in each and every one of my teeth because I put it off for so long. Just like the garbage in my brain, the longer I waited, the scarier it became. Oh my God, I haven't been to the dentist in 5 years, I bet I have like 10 cavities. Oh my God, I haven't been to the dentist in 8 years, he is going to pull out all my teeth. Oh my God, I haven't been to the dentist in ELEVEN YEARS and I'm going to need dentures! It was always looming in the back of my mind. I wasn't even conscious of it. I just had this nagging feeling that there was something I needed to be doing. I'd sit bolt upright in bed at night and think
Anyway, I finally went. And guess what? MY TEETH WERE PERFECT. I was so scared for nothing. And now that I've gone, this heavy yolk I didn't even know I was carrying has been lifted off my shoulders. I don't have this little niggling voice in the back of my head at all times.

It seems to be the same with these essays. I feel freed, really. I can work on the comedy script my friend and I have been talking about for 2 years (I kept saying I couldn't do it because I needed to focus on [not] writing my own projects). I can write about ANYTHING I WANT. I can keep moving forward and away from the painful things I felt I needed to write about. I was afraid that if I let those wounds heal I wouldn't be able to access the feelings from that time in my life, and my writing wouldn't have the depth or emotion I wanted. Now that I don't have to hang on to every terrible detail, now that it's all pretty much down on paper, I can let go.

Now, for the first time in years, I truly have a blank page. That's exciting and frightening at the same time, and partly why I haven't written as much. I'm not used to the freedom. It's like when rescued greyhounds are presented with a huge, open property to romp and run, but they just stand still. They've been in a box for most of their lives, and they're not sure what to do with all that open space. I built myself a cold, dark mental box and sat in it for about 8 years. Just because I'm out of the box, it doesn't mean I'm done writing. I'm just done with that stuff, I think. Now I get to think up new projects, and I have most of the garbage cleared away, and maybe I can even sit quietly in a coffee shop or go for a hike and just be happy with that.

Geez, that was a lot longer than I was planning. Well, next time I'd like to talk to you about Artist/Writer In Residence programs and why you should apply for one right freaking now. 

Brave

     Every night on the road I had the same conversation. I'd be checking into my hotel--in Vegas with the smoke and clamor of the Casino at my back, in Springdale with the massive rock formations of Zion looming in the distance--and the woman behind the counter would ask: "Just you?" 

"Just me," I'd say. 

"Wow. That's brave," as they handed me the keycard.

My solo trip wasn't so much a product of bravery as it was bad timing--I was accepted as Artist in Residence in New Mexico for the month of September, with only about a month to plan. It wasn't enough notice for my best friend to get the time off, and I work with most of my other good friends in San Francisco, which meant that if I wasn't in the bakery decorating cakes, they had to be the ones to do it. I didn't feel comfortable asking my friends in other parts of the country to spend their money on air fare so they could be cooped up in a car for five days. I also invited the photographer I'd been dating for about three weeks, but he couldn't come, which was probably a good thing. Yeah, he would have shot some bitchin' film, but he probably would have ended up buried under a cactus somewhere. Travel is not easy on relationships of any kind, and you need to have that solid trust and love so you can bounce back when someone (me) starts using her high-pitched, hysterical voice because someone else (you) didn't mention that 48 was the exit we were looking for until we were upon it and now it's too late to get on the ramp and it's five miles until we can turn around. Or maybe someone in your traveling party refuses to eat at any fast food joint other than Wendy's, which are not as numerous as McDonald's or Burger King, and you end up driving for hours, cranky and starving, all for the sake of a square burger and frostee. 

Anyway, I started thinking about the other times I've been congratulated for my bravery--driving from Chicago to San Francisco by myself, moving more than once to cities where I had one or two acquaintances but little else, sometimes not even a job. Daunting to some. Maybe even most. But for me it was easy. I've always been a solitary person. When I was a kid I preferred to play alone, with my dolls in my room or out in the woods with the creatures of my imagination. I had a hard time maintaining friendships because I would rarely seek out companionship--if someone wanted to hang out with me that was cool, but I was never the one extending the invitation because I was perfectly content to be alone.  Inviting someone to do the things I wanted to do with me didn't even occur to me as a possibility. (To be honest I still have trouble with that.) 

I'm not saying all that to boast about my courage. Quite the opposite. Being alone is comfortable and easy and safe. I control my time and activities. I don't have to compromise (unless it's with something within my own self, like my nemesis fatigue). It doesn't take courage for me to up and start a new life in a new city, or to travel alone for days at a time. What is brave, to me, is staying in one place and working on friendships and a career, making myself vulnerable to rejection or to things not working out just as I wanted. I do a lot of things with one foot out the door, looking ahead to what's next. In fact, I've noticed that I experience the itch to move to a new city precisely when I'm putting down roots in the current one, when I'm starting to have meaningful relationships and my boss starts talking about a promotion. That's the hard stuff for me. That's when I get scared, when I want to run. When staying would be an act of bravery. It's just a matter of perspective, really. 

All that being said, this residency is very frightening to me. It's a month-long commitment to doing the work I want to do, and it's no one's fault but my own if I squander this time. I've always had plenty excuses for not writing--working too hard, too tired, too depressed, not enough time, to obsessed with a relationship, too busy LIVIIINGGGG!!!--and this eliminates all of them. It's just me vs. the word. It's like a final face off, like that time I heard about Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake having a dance off when they ran into each other at a club after they broke up. But am I Brit-Brit or JT? Am I going to be shaving my head and attacking cars with an umbrella or am I going to be golfing with Jay-Z? If I can't do it here and now, I won't ever be able to do it, not for real. I see this as my big shot, and I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself, but I need to. I need to stop fucking around and either make this happen or give up the dream and move on. Man, that's like every Bruce Springsteen song ever. 

Why I Can't Sleep

One Christmas my grandma gave me a clown doll. Wind a key in its back and a music box would play from from its bowels as its head rolled around on its neck. My mom put it on the dresser across from my bed where it could watch me as I lay rigid under the sheets, too fearful to sleep. It had a big red smile and orange yarn hair and loose, long arms that I imagined knotting around my throat like in Poltergeist. Sometimes in the middle of the night it would suddenly start moving, playing just a few notes as its head turned. If every muscle in my body weren't clenched I probably would have wet the bed.

When my parents noticed my fatigue, my dad recorded some soothing music to play at bedtime. He called it "space music," and you can still hear it on NPR late at night. It is weird and lonely sounding. It uses synthesizers to create desolate planetary soundscapes. It's new-agey and probably what you would find playing in a book store in Scottsdale, Arizona. This helped with my fear of the clown doll because it actually scared me more.

Help me Mr. Rogers

When the music played, I imagined myself on an icy planet with a huge, rusty apparatus bolted to my ribs. The machine attached to the poles of the planet and I was forced to walk and walk and walk forever, slowly turning the great frozen rock. The only thing worse than the 90 minutes of creepy music was when it was over. The final song would fade to silence. How long until the tape would run out? I would curl my toes, chest constricting, anticipating the BANG of the play button popping back up, deafening after the quiet of space.

Okay. Just don't listen to it, right? Hide the clown in a box somewhere and pull yourself together, child. Believe me, I tried, but I was too afraid of hurting my grandma or dad's feelings by rejecting these kind things they were doing for me. They didn't know I had a demented imagination. So, despite my efforts, the clown would find its way back onto my dresser, and my dad would tuck me in and suggest I listen to some cosmic tunes. And I would nod and say "Okay."

I understand now that he wouldn't have cared. He would have put on my Mister Rogers tape about being brave, kissed me goodnight, and never given it another thought. A few years ago we were driving and as he scanned through the stations on the satellite radio, I heard the familiar, abyssal drones. "Hey! Space Music! Remember how you guys used to love that?" he said. He lingered on the station, and I thought about confessing my true feelings on space music, but I kept my mouth shut. He remembered it as something nice he did for me, and I didn't want to sully that. And it was nice. How many fathers would stay up and record weird music to help his daughter fall asleep?

But I took that clown into the basement, broke its neck, and hid it behind a box of Christmas ornaments. You can't tell me that thing wasn't possessed.