Writing in the Dark

 It's 5:00 am, the sky is a long way from daylight. The house is quiet, except for me and the running of our new refrigerator. I've been awake for a while, and the morning urge for coffee finally pushed me out of bed. 

I'm writing in the dark literally, and also, having terminated my FB account, few people will ever see what I have written. I have a few followers to whom I send my gratitude. I like to think that I occasionally have something to say, and it is affirming to know that someone reads it. So now I am writing without an audience, and I am sending it to the darkness outside.

I have been reading Ann Patchett's book, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. One of her essays is about her history as a writer. She became a writer because an urge  from the time she was a toddler compelled her to write. All the jobs she had along the way were to keep house and home so that she could work on her real job as a writer. She talks about the work of writing and recommends that us would-be's sit down every day, in a quiet place, and write something. If nothing comes at first, sit there until it does. Then write. Writing is like a muscle. You have to exercise it to do it well. 

I understand this. I have always wanted to write and scribbled things from early on. I think I lacked the discipline to really pursue a writing career, although I have had several jobs for which writing was an essential task. I wrote better during those times, because I wrote every day.

There are times when I don't write. Those are the dry times, when life feels dry, and I have nothing to offer up except journals, filled with woe-is-me, and I won't even send that out to the darkness. Those are my get-a-grip times.

At other times, life fairly hums with poetry, and my head is filled with words and phrases that swirl around competing for their right order. I remember a phrase from an old hymn: All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres. No kidding, I often feel like that. I am most often inspired by some element of nature singing -  morning light when I open the curtains; afternoon sun shining through yellow leaves on a Gingko tree; crisp, cool air on the first day of Autumn. And the deep quietness of night when I can't sleep  - the dark sacred night (from What a Wonderful World). and BTW, Louis Armstrong singing What a Wonderful World.

When I hear these things, when I am inspired to write, I know that I am awake; I am paying attention, and my head is on straight. I am not at these times lost in that other kind of darkness that lurks expectantly for me to give in. Not today,  I say, not today. I hear the beauty of it all inside my head, and I want to put that on paper. 

Today, as the sun comes up, I am going to write something, anything, and send it out to an unknown audience (there is life in outer space, right???), just because I want to do it. Just because I need to. 

 “This is what it means to live in a pluralistic society,” he says. “You are encountered with ideas that you agree with, and ideas that you don’t agree with, and the diversity of a community is something that makes us richer, stronger, more empathetic to one another, and is really necessary for a healthy democratic society.” - Nick Higgins, Chief Librarian at Brooklyn Public Library

Ouchy

When I returned to writing this blog, I attributed my absence from writing to anger. I didn't want to be yet another angry voice ranting on line. It's the middle of the night, and looking over this blog, I see that it is yet again full of anger. It says quite loudly that I am angry, and I've been angry for a while now. 

I used to write about flowers and feeling serene in my garden. Now I rage about aging and pain, and the fact that our country is moving in an insane direction. 

I don't feel serene. I haven't since 2016, and it is getting worse. Four years of a daily overdose of the Monster in Chief, seems to have pushed me over the edge. I have developed an anger flash point with a hair trigger, and it fires every time I listen to the news or hear a conversation from someone who has drunk the internet KoolAid and believes it. 

I thought aging was about finding serenity and equanimity Huh! I found anger. I have a quote hanging over my bathroom sink so that I can read it every day. It says that peace doesn't mean finding a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work (or Donald Trump, Q-Anon, or people who want to ban books). It means finding yourself in the midst of turmoil and knowing that your heart is calm. It is a good thing the plaque hangs where I can see it, because it is going to take some work,

I think I should learn to be calm, because calmness is called for. Anger stirs things up and energizes one to take action when bad things are happening. Calmness and determination are needed to respond and work for change in a meaningful way.

Honestly, I have been consumed by a recent, unsettling move, accompanied by pain, and the death of my dear, little dog, who was a model of calm and a reliable source of centering for me. I am angry about many things, but it is time to move on. I don't want this to keep eating away at me from the inside. My life is too precious. 

I both believe that we are going to hell in a handbasket and that we are capable of great goodness and the ability to stop this madness. We are going to have to get organized and address the issues that disturb us from a place of calmness. 

Anger just incites people. I have read and written understandably angry postings on FB for six years, and I don't believe we have accomplished much. We are preaching to the choir, and I have un-followed most of the people who disagree with me anyway.

I want to be able to speak to the issues that disturb me so that I will be heard, and that means approaching people in a way that will enable them to listen. I want to speak in a way that leaves me feeling better, not exhausted and futile. 

To accomplish this, I am going to have to return to a life that includes a bit of serenity and joy. Moving to a new place has caused such upheaval in my life, but it also brings new opportunities and the possibility of new friends. I have to find and savor those things that nourish my soul and bring me peace. 

Despite my years of murderous anger, I am not a good angry person. It's too destructive. I'm going to try to channel it into something constructive, and find that peace really is still in my heart. 

Writing a blog is not just for others. It informs me about what is really happening in my head and my heart, and I am sometimes surprised by what I find.

So Many Books ...

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. – Frederick Douglass

  

  When I was a very little girl, I had my own set of red-bound story books. My father sat me on his lap at night and read them to me. The opening page was smudged where my fingers traced the footprints leading us into fairy tales, tall tales, and wondrous adventures.

       The day I learned to read a book for myself, I ran all the way home, shouting the news to my waiting mom. "Look, Jane, look. See Spot run."

    I got my first library card in Asheboro, North Carolina. Mom took us to the library every week, and I read their entire collection of biographies for children. The little books were bound in blue, and each opened with a silhouette of the person about whom the biography was written. I know many people who happily remember reading those little blue books.

    When I was in junior high school, I found a racy book at a relative's house that seemed dangerous and exciting to read. I never told anyone. It did not cause me to become pregnant or take up drugs.

    In high school, I read To Kill a Mockingbird and felt ashamed. I read The Razor's Edge, recommended to me by a favorite teacher. It inspired the notion of a personal spiritual quest, and changed my life. My brother, my niece, and I have read it many times and talk about it to this day.

    In college I read late into the night. I loved English Lit. and hated geology. I read books that made me angry and books that made me cry. I trudged my way through books that seemed like a waste of time, but increased in value over the years. I read about people and places that were different from me. I experienced more of the world than my then circumscribed life allowed, and I grew as a person. 

    I am happy to say that I still have a library card, and I have read countless books since college. Books still make me angry and make me cry. They make me feel proud and despairing. I still learn from what I read, and I am capable of calling something "inspired" or "bullshit", as I see fit. 

    Books are my life companions. I would be so much less as a person without them. Whether they take up a well-thumbed residence on my bedside table or are hurried off to Goodwill barely touched, it is my choice, and I like making that choice for myself. I might get into heated discussions about books, but I don't want to prevent you from reading any sort of trifling, trashy book with which you choose to waste your time. 

    I have recently been reading the heartbreaking news that there is a movement throughout our country to remove long lists of books, deemed by some few people to be offensive, not only from school libraries, but from PUBLIC libraries. Law suits have even been attempted against retail vendors to control what can be sold. Librarians have had their lives threatened by bullies and thugs masquerading as concerned citizens. 

    This is no less than an attempt to control what we can read and what we can know and think about.

    Do you imagine that I will sit idly by and allow you to take my books away from me? Over my dead body.