Freewriting: Letter to Myself

transcribed from dense scribbles on the back of 2 sheets of paper - slightly after 5:00pm, Sunday Oct 8th.
the numbers are columns of folded paper

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1

I'm waiting for Abe in the Pool Hall. The Jukebox is playing Otherside by the Red Hot Chili Peppers at a volume that makes me consider the chest of a massive purring cat. A massive purring cat with base lines and a sense of rhythm.

I feel like writing, which is great. Maybe the music helps. You won't be able to feel it when you read it, but the base line is really moving my hand along like it was the soundtrack to some anxious roadtrip at night. With streetlights flashing overhead as you pass beneath them.

The song has changed
It's not a road trip, but I still feel like I'm playing some role as a writer, tasting images out of the air like an Epicurean while everyone else contents themselves with visual observations.

Perhaps this is what it is to freewrite. I haven't done this in so long. So long, and it's oddly freeing, like skiing again for the first time. If you let it go, the ride is smooth, fast, and exciting, but you don't actually know what's coming up and secretly wonder if you can handle it.

I'm writing on the back of an article that my Grandma sent me. I haven't even read it yet. I'm starting to write this small and dense like her, packing in words, writing like my life depended on whatever I manage to preserve in this tiny scrap so that maybe my lost child will find them one by one and collect them in a plastic bag. I hope it will seep love. I hope

2

I write like the heartbeat of a hiding rabbit. At any moment, I could be interrupted & the thin blue lifeline of this story will be cut.

My Grandma many years ago told me I had very nice writing for my age (she meant the shapes of my letters). Cursive I guess, is what they were trying to teach us. For extra credit, we could write a story (2nd grade) about a picture of a little pilgrim boy and girl holding a pumpkin and a turkey or something. I wrote several pages. I would've done it anyway. I don't know if I even got extra credit, because I don't think I finished the story. It was a very detailed story of their Thanksgiving day. I finish very few stories. Maybe that's the nature of a story. And every final page anticipates a sequel. But yes. Like many of my stories, this one did not end. I was used to long stories. I rarely started out with an ending in sight. I just started writing or, more commonly, drawing. My Dad used to bring home printing paper from his job & I would just draw. forever. Every detailed change [in the story] went on another page. I think I had, like, 12 pages of kittens walking into a room in order once. I wrote my first book (a close resemblence to the Frog & Toad stories) when I was 4,.. or maybe 3? I'll have to ask my grandmother. It's interesting to consider that I did not confine the storyline or captions to horizontal rows or to the bottom of the page. The story just swam around the pictures, as did the characters' speech bubbles. I must have been at least 4. I could read and write. There's no way my parents or grandmother would have made the text look that way if I hadn't written it. [Though, I think they did help]

3

I've come to a lull.

The other stories I wrote came within a few years. These ones were actually original. You can tell because thehy have titles like "The Dove Who got Safe from the Rain." and "The Cat Who got Ready for Christmas." Clearly, I wasn't copying with titles like that. And some rather aconventional storylines develop within the main plot. weird. I can almost remember how they made sense to me at the time. I wish I'd kept up with it. Darn school. They taught my to write but not to draw. Don't get me wrong. I worry myself sometimes, but I can still draw.

But, I want to draw comics. I'm pretty fluent in words and shapes, but not in their combination. It doesn't come naturally to me how to lay out images & text in a sort of .. visual art poetry. Or maybe that's because I'm trying to understand how other people do it. I shouldn't think like that. I should just start. I generally have high enough expectations that if I can make myself happy with something, other people seem to take it pretty well. I'm working back into that now. I was just thinking earlier that it's about time I take myself back up on some of my expectations. Running, thinking, developing my own skills as far I as I want them to go. Not waiting for others, not waiting for something else to happen first. I should feel better about trusting myself with myself and taking responsibility as my own caretaker.
I don't need permission.
I need will power.
It's been growing back.

4

I was doubtful for a while, but from a tiny grain of intent and an environment for which I'm grateful, I think I've been gaining enough energy, motivation, and determination to unclip and drive myself internally. I need to be more suspended.

I mean, unclip from horizontal webbing. My suspension shall be vertical. I will hang like the crystal-shaped faceted glass [or plastic, probably] bead [that I found and put up] on my wall from God. And I will not need the sun to shine on me to remind me of how it breaks and scatters within. I will not need my friends to pull me along or to bounce off of - to refuel me - I will become self sufficient again.

I entered school this way.
And now I've nearly built back to my former motivations, aspirations, goals, initiatives
[I may be so bold as to say that I have, but I've yet to take more action based on it]

And I don't want to go on in this vein, because I've begun to think that this could be a good blog entry & there might be some things around this narrative corner that I don't want to post. I was listening to a lecture given by Gordon Atkinson - Real Live Preacher - at Cornell. His introducer said that it had been said that writing - good writing - is like opening up a vein and letting the blood pour out onto the page (something like that). And, though I feel pretty compact at the moment, I'm still somewhat careful for my veins. I've had too much blood spilt on paper and the wrong vein might drain a bit too much at the moment. I'd rather spare you the sight of blood for the time being until I have enough to keep back for myself.

But that's another thing.
How much is enough for yourself?

5

I remember a short story about two brothers, one with a heart condition. They would race each other out to the open sea, swimming out as far as they could. The younger brother, the one with the heart condition, always won.

Years later, a conflict arose between them & in righteous indignant anger, they go at it again, the elder determined to beat the younger. But still, the younger brother goes out the farthest, even rescuing his older brother from an attack of cramps. How did he do it? the older asked. How did he always win? [the older brother] barely had enough energy to get back. The younger brother replies that he won because he never saved anything for the trip back.

Then there's the Nightingale of Oscar Wilde who poured her blood out for a rose, and into an ungrateful situation.

And there's God, who seems in everything I reed & most I feel, to ask my life poured out for many. As in the Jubilee year that never happened, the end of humanity is to give ourselves back to one another in restoration and there will be enough for all. But we have become discrete entities and refuse to exist in a continuous spreading of overlapping [Is it too math-nerdy that I want to make a comment about open subcovers? ].

Lord, how can I forgiveall the debts of my brother when my sister has not forgiven me? I cannot rescind his debt with money I don't have. Please, let me keep enough for myself.

But I feel that God says No,my grace is sufficient, and the greatest debt I owe has already been paid. I am without excuse except to pour out my life to others & to keep nothing in reserve for myself. The important

6

things remain, no matter how thinly spread. At least, that is my hope. Though I've been good at stalling, delaying, and finding excuses for the meantime, eventually, I feel I can do no other.

My life is not my own. It has been bought at a price, as has that of my brother. If God can buy each of us back for himself, who am I to deny payment? To hold back what doesn't belong to me?

It is meaningless - dust in the wind in the grand scheme of things. But as most things are when you're close to them, it seems like a bigger deal right now. I suppose that's another way that that the cure for passion is eternity. If you spread over a large enough interval, in preserving volume, the thickness comes within epsilon of zero [math reference]. But, I was also thinking that it is not a bad thing to be insignificant - to realize that despite so much teaching, my life counts for very little [it's actually a rather freeing thought]. And despite this, I have a God who chooses to preserve it for His purposes. And it's true, that he who has been forgiven much loves much. Where there is gratitude, there is love. I have observed this. And if it is the truth, then it is not wrong to be insignificant, & in many respects, worthless. But still, there is something vital. I think its like the grain that [one of my friends] is looking for. In some dimension, with respect to some axis, I exist - to the extent that we can speak of it. I am here & now, or depending on the time, was. And that is truth. And there's something about a life that is not negligible no matter how much its actions are. And perhaps that thought is the seed that the rest of my is crystalizing from. On my own, without permission, collecting up my own pieces to arrange them to my own expectations. Cindy just asked if this was a letter to Josh. I said no, it's for me. It's a letter for myself to find.
So left with no time or space,
...to be continued