Mike’s Musings

So today I wrote 11 pages longhand.  The reading room was being used for a luncheon so I found a conference room off to the side and spread out there.  The words just came out with very little help from me.  A few of my transitions feel bumpy, but regardless, Nathan came back to visit me today and that’s a good thing.

One thing I’m quickly realizing is that I can tell five years have gone by.  Not because it’s too difficult getting back into Nathan’s voice and experience, but because I’m going into deeper detail in these chapters and slowing the pace down just a bit.  The chapters are still relatively short, but I feel like they’re richer.  I suppose that’s because I’m a bit richer, too.  It’ll be interesting to see how these new chapters flow with the rest I wrote five years ago, and if there’s much difference.  I purposely haven’t reread _Skinny Boy_ because I wanted to meet Nathan where he and I are at now, not where we were then.

Time to stop writing today.  I’ve got tofu in this skull of mine.

Namaste… MS

So today was the first day of the Saginaw Bay Writing Project Summer Institute, and wow!  I wrote a lot today.  But I’m not complaining at all; it was wonderful!

Right after lunch, we have what’s called Sacred Writing Time for an hour and fifteen minutes.  I cut my lunch short by a few minutes then made my way to the top floor of SVSU’s library to stake a claim in the beautiful reading room that overlooks the entire campus.  It’s nothing but glass and views.  Incredible.  I used to grade essays there when I taught as an adjunct for SVSU a few years back.  It’s where I’ll write every day of the institute, if I’m able to.

So, I sat down at one of the tables, pulled my notebook out of my bag, and got down to business.  I really wasn’t sure where my creativity was going to take me, but I never expected to end up where I did.  For the first time in over five years, five years after my thesis was finished and bound, I heard Nathan’s voice in my head and my pen started flying.  Nathan is the main character in my Masters thesis, called _Skinny Boy_, and he has eating disorders.  It ended up being a novella and it charted his journey from developing the eating disorders to his hospitalization.  At any rate, I thought I was done with Skinny Boy and have been making notes about the next book about Nathan, so imagine my surprise when Nathan took me back to his hospitalization again today.  I wrote six pages (handwritten) in 45 minutes, plus two pages of “Oh my God, what just happened?” journal-like pages.  He’s let me know there’s at least two more chapters he’ll be contacting me about.  I’ll follow where he leads, no problem.

After all that writing, my brain is tired.  And here I am, writing more.  Time to stop for today.

Namaste… MS

So, today was a bit of an odd stew.  For a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with my family’s penchant for turning happy holidays in dramafests, Josh and I decided to not go visit (yes, I split that infinitive) my father and grandfather today, and instead, go visit Dan’s father for the barbeque they were having in Clare.  Mind you, my father is pretty low-maintenance about Father’s Day, and the one thing he most craves for as a gift is space.  I can dig that vibe, so it’s fine with me.  My grandfather, though, is still grieving my grandmother’s death in January, and I’m not making any value judgments about his grieving for her; we all have our timelines and they were together sixty-plus years, so I think he’s quite earned the right to grieve as long as he needs to.  One thing I do not what to be a part of is how he will verbally lash out when he’s in the throes of his grief; it brings back too many unpleasant memories.  Images of him pointing a shotgun at his brother’s chest and my mother in the middle of them, begging him to not shoot.  Him yelling at my mother one Christmas and going to attack her with a chair, and my sister getting in between them, taking the hit of the chair.  I took her to the hospital and tried to get her to press charges, but she wouldn’t.  I didn’t see, or talk to, my grandfather for two years after that; I simply refused.  

All of that paints a horrible picture of him, and in the past, he was abusive.  He still has moments in his grief where he lashes out, like I said, but he’s nothing at all like what he was.  I love that man with all my heart.  In an essay I wrote about the days before my grandmother’s death, he is a whale and I am a guppy.  But I am 35 years old, and I can choose to avoid potential danger zones.  Now that I’ve got my nephew to think about, I’m finding I’m a very protective papa bear.

I wish I had had adults in my life who were able to protect me from that verbal and physical violence the way I can for Josh.  That didn’t happen, since both my parents grew up with that as a model, and they practiced that model on each other and us.  Every holiday was a time for big volcanic blowups to happen, and I hated it.  Actually, any day was a time for that to happen; we never knew when Mom (especially) and Dad would blow up.  Josh grew up with a mother and father and step-father who couldn’t rise above that sort of thing, so I know what it’s like.  I refuse to have him go through that.  Even though there was a small chance for a dramatic blowup, I still didn’t want to take that risk.  So we went to Clare instead.  And had a wonderful time with Dan’s parents, who love and respect one another.  It’s a totally different environment with them.  

I will not put Joshua at risk like that.  Not if I see hints of a storm on the horizon.  I love that kid so much, and he will always know he has a home with me and Dan where he is loved unconditionally and where problems are resolved with calm, yet stern, voices, and logic, not screaming and out-of-control emotions.  My cycle ends, and I will show him how to end his.  That is the gift I want to give him.

On a more upbeat note, I start the Saginaw Bay Writing Project Summer Institute tomorrow.  I’m really looking forward to it; I want to see how I reconnect with myself through my writing, and what I can learn from my co-fellows.  This is going to be great!  I’ll keep you all posted as things develop.

To all you uncle daddies out there, Happy Father’s Day!

Namaste… MS

So, I’m at a loss.  My teenager is becoming a man whore and I don’t like it.  OK, maybe I did at first; it was nice to know he wasn’t planning on getting married to any of the girls he was interested in (he’s 16), and he was being honest with the ladies in question about what he wanted and what he was after.  

Then came the cell phone.

That’s right, folks.  Good ol’ Uncle Mike decided to get his nephew (the teenager in question) a cell phone and what an interesting treasure trove of information my partner and I discovered in his text message archive.  Talk of breasts and hot bodies and girls who are using other people’s cell phones to text him (all complete with atrocious spelling from all parties — T9 is single-handedly encouraging the end of proper spelling as we know it) and overly made up tarts hanging out in my driveway, future baby mamas who are calculating ways to separate him from his sperm and thus trap him because, themselves, “need to feel loved”.  

Sounds harsh, doesn’t it?  It is, but I also grew up with girls just like those girls.  They’re no different, and nothing changes.  Loneliness is loneliness.  Bad parents are bad parents.  Wanting to feel loved unconditionally when the adults and world around you only give it conditionally is a powerful force.  It’s easy to see; it’s naked and searching in its ambition and desires.  And it’s right there at the end of my driveway, wearing too much eye liner, jeans that are way too tight and a shirt that shows way too much cleavage.  When you look like a grown prostitute, but you’re a good three years away from driver’s training, something is very, very wrong.

And when your name is in my nephew’s cell phone, this uncle gets angry and protective.  

In the meantime, I’m at a loss as to how to handle this with him.  He’s not stupid, by any means, but I do think the excessive blood flow to his crotch is diverting precious oxygen from his brain, and could perhaps be causing irretrievable damage.  When Mr. Johnson starts thinking, all common sense goes out the window.  

This little teenage man whore needs to reigned in.  

Namaste… MS

So I wrote this today, in the hardcover journal I was given at the Saginaw Bay Writing Project Summer Institute orientation this past Tuesday.  Everything — phrasing and bad paragraphing included — is exactly as I wrote it.

So here goes!

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     Somewhere along the way, I allowed myself to get adrift from my core, without the anchor anywhere to be found.  Somehow I decided to run from exactly where I needed to point myself.  When I stop and think, “Who is Mike?”, no ready answer comes to mind.  No answer other than, “Well, he used to be a writer.”

     Notice the verb tense.  I haven’t been writing, not until last week at the Writing Project orientation, and I realized how rusty my entry was compared to those who read theirs out loud.  What you see in the first pages of this book is what I produced, and it was hard to even get that down.  I’m out of practice.  Writing what I did, I felt winded.  I felt sore and out of shape.  I felt lazy.  It felt awful.  It felt embarrassing.  I can’t be ashamed of what I produced because it captured who I was in that moment, but who I was on that page gave me pause.  I saw someone I didn’t want to be:  A person who used to be a writer but is no longer one.  I don’t even write daily practice.  In a month, I’ve been completely lazy.  I haven’t wanted to go near the page; it’s been the last place I’ve wanted to be.

     And maybe I just needed that time away and I’m being unfair to myself.  So much happened to me since January, and I really put it out there for people to consume.  I used my life as an instructional tool.  The private and personal was treated as public, and I don’t think it helped me in the end.  But then school was over and I could just hide out.  I could be Mike without processing events; I just let it all flow around me.  I was tired.  I wanted to collapse.  But I didn’t.

     I put myself on the couch with my yarn and knitting needles and I just made loop after loop after loop.  I flexed other creative muscles that are just as important as writing.  I was still making something, but it wasn’t words.  It was experience going into each loop.  Solitude.  Stretching.  Integrating.  Vacating.  Creating something in nothingness.  I’ve learned to knit in the round and it’s invigorated me, and now, I feel like it’s time to get on the page every day again.  Since I have this book from the Institute, I’m going to use it now, use it before I start.  I have a chance to reconnect as a writer and I cannot wait.

     So I reclaim that space for myself now.  Here.  On my patio in the sun and warm breeze, Phineas and Danger sleeping on the steps.  Surrounded by the planter boxes Dan made for me with the table saw I bought him, filled with flowers and plants we bought together.  Surrounded by all I’ve gained and I am now, I reclaim who I was.

     It is no longer past tense.

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Typing those words back to myself was good.  As I was typing, I found myself wanting to add detail, add clarification — pretty it up, basically.  But I didn’t.  I let the words stand.

Namaste… MS