Mike’s Musings

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