People frequently say to me that they couldn’t write for a living (for a given value of “a living;” this little boat wouldn’t float sans Tech Boy) – that they lack the discipline and focus and “how do you get yourself to sit down every day and try?” What’s funny is that sometimes… I don’t know. I don’t. There’s an ambiguity to the process, an opacity to the ritual. It’s a lot like cooking or drawing — sometimes you tweak a little here, smudge a little there, that’s enough to make a standout presentation, other times you scrape away the pigment from the canvas and slap on new gesso and flush the contents of the pot down the toilet. I don’t know how I do this. And, when I have those weeks of doubt when I finish a project and am scrambling about for the next (not that I don’t have tons of ideas, but at times, none of them seem worthy of time or birth into a world crowded with short attention spans and a plethora of worthier thoughts), and when I am rolling around with an abscessed brain, plummeting through the earth, scrabbling with blunted nails for a hold on anything so I can pull myself up again — then I realize that in more ways than you’d think, it comes down to the simplest thing: choosing.
One of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, What I Have Learned So Far concludes with the line, “be ignited, or be gone.” Choose to light up the night, or go out. Choose to lock eyes with your fear and stare it down, or blink – but nothing hovers in between.
fingers on keyboard
butt-in-chair. heart poised, alight —
we have ignition