Paralytic Hiatus

Stick with me, pals.

I've been smacked upside the head with the moody blues. Glum, foggy-headed funk.  Hot, humid, lethargic word-cement.

Inspired by Christy of Juvenescence and Lithia Writers' Collective, I'm going to attack the block from a different direction and attempt to put together a room of my own, physically and emotionally. One with a door I can close.  Click here for some excellent examples.

I may post a meme or two in the next few days, just to keep my fingers busy.  If you need things to read, do check out my blog links, as I've added a couple. Her Other Evil Twin is a true mystery woman. While I've never met the author of RedMolly Picayune-Democrat face-to-face, I figure -  in the blogosphere - one degree of separation qualifies. I attended public school with Old Roman Symbol from second through twelfth grade, but haven't seen him since 1977 (same with  What I Saw Today....maybe a reunion would shake things up?).

I think this is probably Texas' version of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  I once read an article about summer sufferers, including one woman who went to bed each night with two-liter Pepsi-bottles full of water she'd frozen to keep the night sweats at bay.  Not a bad plan at all.

Shhhh.....Don't Tell!

Last Sunday night, I went to dinner with three old girlfriends and a new one. Before, during, and after our fabulous food we laughed our heads off and most likely appeared to have consumed many more cocktails than we had (that’s not to say cocktails weren’t consumed).

At one point, someone suggested that we each tell something about ourself that other people in the group didn’t know, something that the others might find surprising. Luckily, I was early in the lineup and was able to get away with a fairly safe fact rather than a true confession. Even so, Oregon Writer spewed her g&t when I revealed that, for five years, I played the French horn; who knew? I learned some fascinating things: it is possible to live to age 30 without a driver’s license, Bill Gates at one point had a serious dandruff problem, and – no matter how hard you might work up your stripper persona/gimmick – you need only show up at a strip club to get a job and you can walk away after stripping one night without ever flaunting your geographically-themed outfit.

We all shared what we thought were safe things, nothing that risked much. Even so, I came away from the evening feeling that I knew the women much better thanks to their revelations.

So how much intimacy do we miss out on by withholding seemingly unimportant details? We think, “Oh, that can’t possibly be of interest to anyone but me” and keep our lips sealed. Two years ago I took a few vaguely autobiographical pages to my writing group, although I was hesitant to read because I always fear that my work will veer into the maudlin or the merely therapeutic (a la the "Fuzzy Hat” story that someone once read in a workshop, pointless to everyone but the author and the source of great amusement in our writing group). When I finished, Oregon Writer said she wanted more, wanted to know what books were on my nightstand at the time and what kind of candles might have been burning and what was hanging on the walls. I’d excluded those details, exactly the things that help a reader inhabit a text, because I thought they were somehow narcissistic. But by withholding what I thought didn’t matter, I’d prevented the very communication that was my goal.

And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the topic of real secrets, things we keep from people we love and the things we keep from ourselves. How much of the risk we perceive is real and how much is based in needless fear?

I’d love to be more courageous these days, as I approach my fifth decade. I’ve always been prone to spill the beans, but with every year I see how much of that tendency is, ironically, a clever defense mechanism. If people think you’re an open book, they don’t dig for the real information, the stuff hidden in the footnotes or kept in note cards on the desk and never included for publication. I want to be clear. I’m not talking about a disinformation campaign, nor am I advocating deceit. I refer to sins of omission. But we sin against ourselves, not those to whom we don’t disclose.

I hope, in the months ahead, to speak less but say more. Better to risk the loss of a relationship than to insure a half-relationship by withholding my self.

I thank my friends for their Sunday night revelations. Especially “Logger Girl”… cheers for taking it all off.

Nostalgia-rama

A couple of months ago, I escaped from my life for the weekend. Room service, cocktails and people watching in the lobby bar, sleeping in, general solo hedonism...a perfect weekend for the closet introvert. But can you ever really escape?

I ran into an old friend (OF) from college days, and we settled in to chat over some yummy Chilean Merlot. Amid the usual catch up talk, a few BlackBerries to offices and such, some veritas bubbled up in the vino; OF posed a question about an incident that, while never entirely out of my consciousness, had certainly not been in the forefront for a good long while. Though caught off guard, I answered it frankly. We weathered a moment of awkwardness and plowed ahead, parting pleasantly.

Later that evening, after I’d returned to my room, I realized that I wanted to answer OF more fully. After all, OF was apparently curious, even after all these years. But did OF want to know or did I just want to tell? And that, my reader, is always what it comes down to, isn’t it? Those among you who wonder why I stopped writing need look no further than that question and the anxiety lurking behind it. But I’m tossing that anxiety a cyber-Xanax and forging ahead.

Long story short, I spent several February days swimming in a big old pool of introspection, and the water was very murky. It was one of those periods when I found myself wishing I were less self-aware, and maybe even a little less sturdy.

The details of the incident are unimportant to anyone but those involved (and, perhaps, only to me) but the question involved a letter. After the conversation I was, as we say around here, whopped upside the head by the memory of writing the missive to which OF referred. I was weighing graduate study options at the time, and layered into the text – woven around the sentences about the matter in question - were hesitant feelers toward some kind of relationship. I think it is telling that I can't remember much about OF’s reply other than its tenor. In fact, the other day I looked through a box of old letters and found none from OF. Perhaps there wasn't one. Perhaps it is elsewhere. Perhaps I’ve repressed much of the episode. But I did make an important decision in my life based, in part, on the correspondence. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that the whole thing was fairly complicated. I'd forgotten what a pivotal point that interlude was, how clean and rational the decisions seemed at the time, and how emotional repercussions can still be felt when someone decides to ask a simple question.

We live with the decisions we make, live in the decisions we make. Sometimes we make new ones, if we’re brave enough. Sometimes the courage lies in stasis. I alternately marvel at and disdain those who proclaim certainty at the wisdom of their decisions. What I can say I’ve learned since those angst-filled days, long ago, is that we waste so much energy in fear and worry that we forget (cliche’ alert) to live in the moment. We feel intense pressure to decide at a given point in time and, yes, much can rest on such decisions. But unless you’re deciding to kill yourself (and let’s hope that’s not the case), the Big Decision before you is only one of the innumerable ones ahead. Just do the best you can.

And save your letters.