Still Sundays
August 11, 2013
Now I can’t find this very short essay that I was going to share here and pass it off as if it was written today. Something brand new must do even if I don’t have much time. Sunday doesn’t accept counterfeit stillness. If you want to swim in the lake of stillness your Sunday bathing suit must be made of the purest silk of silence, the kind that puts you to sleep and wakes you up simultaneously.
What I was going to type from this essay that can’t be located made a good point about why I am still in California. It offered an explanation; it provided an update. Upon not finding it and just having to dig in the over-sized purse of stillness I discovered explanations are unnecessary anyway. You don’t need one for yourself by the time you offer one to others, and others don’t need one because they have come up with their own by the time you do offer one.
I have been adjusting to my new eyes for the last month. Instead of the California smog, now they see what is before it—since it is really not possible to see beyond the California smog!—an opportunity to understand myself in a new way and explore my writing in an unaccustomed way. I have also been reading a lot when I am not busy being creative at work. Reading beyond the equivalent of an M.F.A. in fact. And I don’t have to write unnecessarily or participate in discussions explaining the why or how for any of my understandings, questions, ‘symbolisms’. I can skip all that and sit with my light hands on a Buddha-belly made of others’ stories, words, essays and my fragmented thoughts which unveil themselves when I take a pen and softly brush it across an empty page. Thoughts like: In order to be truly independent you have to do a lot of work in a mainstream culture. Thoughts like: Los Angeles is a sphincter filled with possibilities through which you must pass in order to get back to New York City. Thoughts like: I wish the impermanent wasn’t so easily possible; some possibilities need to last forever. Thoughts like: There are more shades of surrender than there are of the color blue.
What I was going to originally share had something to do with what my mother said to me…something about learning from pistachio trees and how once planted they don’t give fruit for eight years or something and how dumping more fertilizer on one is not going to make it grow any faster…something about being kind to myself and just going with the flow of some cosmic cycle that will guide me just right….
I shared that free-write entry with the woman leading the writing workshop about how to teach creative writing to younger students. She asked an “authentic question” to model how the students ought to eventually interact and participate in a “writing workshop.” She offered that the imagery of pistachio trees stood out. Her “authentic question,” which needn’t be answered, was, “How do you feel about your mother being so involved in your life despite you being an adult?”
I was taken aback. I didn’t have an answer. I had never felt that way about my mother. Did the anecdotal conversations with my mother come across as such? I considered silently. I replied, “Well, she is a friend whose voice really re-charges me. That’s all.” Or maybe I don’t like the contemporary definitions of being an adult.
Then it was her turn as my partner. She too had written about her mother. It was an account about her last visit with her mother before her mother’s death. It was a beautiful sharing. I was quiet and then said, “I really liked the imagery of scent and perfumes in your writing.” I continued, “My ‘authentic question’—which of course you don’t have to answer and is for what next you want to do with the written piece—is, ‘Do you wish you had spend more time with your mother before she passed on?’” She looked at me and said, “Yes. Yes, I do. But I was living in another state for so long and…”
She didn’t have to finish the ‘and’; I understood. Our ‘sharing time’ was up anyway. The ‘and’ of course is how two plus life equals twenty years passing too quickly.
Before walking out I told her, “Thank you for your ‘authentic question’ that made me uncomfortable. I have a better answer now.”
I am in California to enjoy the small moments with my mother as our schedules allow although we visited sporadically throughout every year when I lived in New York City. So, no, I don’t think she is too involved at all. Every moment with her I am grateful and cognizant that life is a short gift through which we can glimpse what matters eternally. Love.”
Some question the point of teaching creative writing to young children who are still struggling with spelling. Some question writing in general because not everyone is meant to be an author so why polish a craft that will lead neither to fame, nor glory, nor money.
There is something about holding words through our very own hands that makes us honest. We need more people who are at peace with their choices in this very broken world no matter what their vocations. We need more people to visit stillness so we always know what’s real when we interact with one another.
