Today's prompt: I choose, today, to write....
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Listen to the audio and write along with us now:
Special Note: Today's lesson notes were (almost) verbatim from my free writing notebook. They remain unpolished and raw. If this bothers you, simply listen rather than read and focus on my voice rather than the written materials today.
Writers have a power switch 24 hours a day 7 days a week. This power switch is what allows them - allows US to write and write well and write meaningfully and write what matters.
That power switch we share is simple. It is the power of choice, the power of choosing, every day to write. Just like you choose to participate here, with us.
One of my practices is writing into sunrise on my front porch almost every day. It is pure pleasure to sit in the open air, feeling the morning as it opens to me. Sometimes it is warmer, sometimes a chill slices through me. One morning not long ago the sunrise lifted my finger and said "Witness life all around you and report back to the page. Share your reports widely, unabashedly. Really feel this cool almost autumn morning after a blistering hot summer."
I choose, right now, to follow this divine call, to write as life's witness. I choose, today, to write.
Yesterday I was having a challenging time making that simple choice. I was restless and I wasn't feeling so great about what I was doing. I wondered if I had done enough, if I was important enough, if I was being intentional enough. I chose to stop being restless and took myself on a mini-artist's date a la Julia Cameron and the Artist's way. I took myself to a park on the outskirts of Bakersfield, a park with a pond where the ducks play and people fish and I have spent hours with my children laughing and playing. Each of my children have at one time or another fallen into the pond.
I sat at a picnic table and witnessed the park around me. The wind was blowing on this grey morning. I noticed people speak more loudly out here at the park. Either that or because there are not walls to hold their voices in a box they simply sound louder. I saw a gaggle of geese lounging. I noticed there were no more paddle boats, there was no longer an ice cream shack. Each of my children had spent time on those paddle boats. It was a staple of Bianca's childhood. I couldn't remember if a toddler Sam spent much time there. Maybe once. We used to love to feed the ducks from paddle boats and at least once we had a battle with interloper geese while paddling around the pond.
I listened to the wind. It seemed to collect in my ear and my ear holds it a moment, almost as if it is feeling its texture, its strength, and then lets it go. I don't think I have ever felt the wind in my ear so intimately before. I don't think I have ever paid such close attention. Today, I choose to pay attention. Close attention.
A work truck blaring "bright sunny day" interrupted my contemplation of feathers, leaves and the wide variety of churps, rustling leaves and frog sounds. The workman takes out a flashlight on a bright, sunshiney 11 AM Monday mrning and that bothers me. His hammer arrives just when a wood duck swims past me. I think of Robert McCloskey and Make Way for Ducklings and I wonder what joker came up with the song set playing more than slightly too loudly.
"My Girl."
Really? The wind blows gently, bringing me a chill and a reminder that the choice to stay in the moment is mine.
I compose a text to Katherine, knowing it will land on her fancy smart phone almost simultaneously from when I sent it on my cheapest, no frills phone. I write, "I'm sitting here at a table in Hart Park, writing, remembering all the times we have been here together. I'm smiling. I'm grateful."
I had brought two maps on this artist's date. I feel a nudge to at least open it. I do and I touch the names and places from three weeks ago. I miss this place I have never lived.
I realize it has been quiet for a while when the noisey-radio workman reappears. I find myself wondering, inexplicably, about how he makes love. He has no idea I am sitting here watching and listening. Perhaps one of the ducks skittering along the pond considers some of these same things as I do. The noisy radio man adds a drill to his orchestra. I hear a redundant crooning of "boys to men, boys to men, boys to men." A crow caws. My pencil scratches. The hammer pierces. A goose comes of out the lake and flaps her wings not far from where I sit.
Now noisy man is wratcheting something. I remember the choice to stay in the moment is mine. I chose to stay, I chose to write and witness the world, to learn from it, to hear what it has to say to me.
My thoughts about him promptly move from macho man I am curious about to wanting to take his wratchet and through it into the lake. I choose to move my thoughts to a different topic and fantasize about a trip to Cape Cod, a visit to a beloved friend in Connecticut, a visit to New York City.
The wratchet continues and then stops. Other machinery grumbles in a distance which I decide must be my cue.
As I pack up my things a bumble bee takes up residence on my pencil and then on my notebook, begging me to watch it, to take note, to stay calm and centered even in its presence.
I flash back to a meeting long ago, when I was fresh out of college and very lonely and seeking the companionship of wise women. It was from this group of high heeled, well coifed women I learned bumblebees aren't supposed to be able to fly with their particular body shape and the size of their wings. The laws of physics seem to be stacked against them but they fly, anyway - oftentimes frightening humans who are so much larger than they are into circles of shouting fear.
Bumblebees aren't supposed to be able to fly. They do, anyway.
I remember the choice to stay in the moment and the choice to write into this moment is mine.
Today's prompt is valuable if all you do is write it over and over and over again during our five minutes of free writing time.
Today's prompt: I choose, today, to write....
As I was ready to finish this lesson, I rediscovered this quote from poet and author Sage Cohen. She wrote, "Freewriting gives you yourself, unedited." which is what our lesson was today. Simply my words from yesterday, almost directly, verbatim, from my notebook.
I feel compelled to change the prompt just slightly and as always, offer you to scoop it up in the way that serves you and serves your process. You may even try both: one way now and one way later.
Today's prompt: I choose, today, to write....
Today, I choose to write myself, unedited so my words say.....
I choose, today, to write....
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