Sick Days

I'm on day 2 of being sick, after spending a day with a sick O, and I am fighting terrible feelings of self-doubt and lurking failure. This is a normal way to be when sick, I suppose, but it comes at a time when I was already struggling against despair.

Why despair?

Because I am genetically predisposed? Because I am working too much and I'm worn out? Hormones?

Yes. Yes. Probably.

Because the BiP is more a fantasy than a reality at this point? (For those keeping track, NaNoWriMo feels to me more like NoNeGoWriMo ~ Not Never Gonna Write More.)

The last is probably the clincher. Whenever I lose track of my writing I get desperate. This is an ongoing dance I do with myself. Commit to the writing ~ do the writing ~ neglect the writing ~ hear the writing whispering recriminations ~ avoid the writing ~ loathe self and others ~ eventually get back to the writing (repeat). Wouldn't it be nice if we could lose steps 3, 4, & 5?

Hope in a Prison of Despair, pre-raphaelite painting by Evelyn De Morgan

My friend Paula has taken recently to calling this sort of reflexive negativity "lazy," and to a certain extent I think she is right. For someone like me the pose of despair is an easy, familiar place to land, but is it real or even in any way useful? How do I get back to committing to the writing, and to myself?

When I am avoiding my writing, I also lose the ability to focus in a lot of other ways. My mind is too antsy to settle down to read. If there isn't a task directly in front of me, I don't know what to do with myself.

O has recently developed a habit of asking plaintively, "Mama, what can I do-oo?"

It's really like he is voicing my internal state. What can I do? I have to DO something! Heavens forfend that I sit here and just be with myself. Thus, I have made myself so busy I am on the edge of exhaustion.

What am I avoiding? Is it something in the writing or is it something in me and the writing is just a casualty?

A week and a half ago I went to NYC to see a rock concert (my "Girlie for the Modfather" post has been in the works far too long ... another casualty of my current funk, I guess.) and I visited the World Trade Center site for the first time since 9/11. 

I went to "ground zero" because one of my characters, Lee, works in the financial district and the daily  presence of that place must mean something to him. Plus, and, my book is of a world populated by ghosts ... and there must be ghosts down there, right?

I finally got to see, and touch, the eerie eye mosaics in the Chambers Street station, which I had written about but not witnessed. They were installed in the late 90s, but take on more resonance in the wake of the towers falling.

Read more about the Chambers Street "Oculus" here.

Coming up to street level, I joined the crowds of tourists and gawked at the hole in the ground (the ever-present sounds of construction make a paradoxical soundtrack), I walked around, I took notes, I had a hot dog on Wall Street and watch a Dutch tour guide cracking up his tour group, I heard a chamber orchestra rehearsal in Trinity Church, and I concluded the St. Paul's churchyard is still the most haunted place down there. 

  

St. Paul's: maybe this is where all the WTC ghosts hang out?

I should write about it ... for real, not just in blogland. But just putting down these notes feels better. So, in the interest of admitting Hope into the prison of Despair, I commit to two things:

1. To make time, real quality time for the BiP.

2. To use this blog to catch shiny things, in other words to stop for a moment, to stop DOing and to sort, capture, and focus on my daily life and observations. 

Dear reader, help keep me honest.

I need more tea ...