November 12, 2020
I’ve missed the blog. I still don’t understand the purpose of writing here, but it holds something in me steady when I feel adrift. I’m glad I found it in the initial days of the pandemic where it helped me examine the degree of ‘un-normalness’ I felt, which in turn helped me live the best I could with it.
I’ve been sprint writing for nano on weekdays, but I am already 4500 words behind. I am questioning my commitment to continuing. The first week was perfect. I managed 11,600 of my 12,500 goal. It was heady to rediscover, after the too long dry spell, that I could sit at a desk and the words would appear on the page. The week one sprint served its purpose to get back into the flow of writing and also have a story arc magically reveal itself. Characters were added from the initial central three to five more friends and I realised that one of the threads I wanted to explore was friendship. But once the story arc was there, I felt a need to step back, to examine the parts and see what really wanted to be said. I started asking myself if quantity was the goal or quality. That wasn’t it better now to try to shape up some scenes and locations and dig deeper into the feeling life of the characters and the world they lived in. I wondered if just trying to get the words out would fulfil those things.
I suppose with those questions in mind week 2 has been slower. I’ve started a new file to explore feeling states and my own enduring friendships. I found that there were two friendships that I have stayed connected to, or re-connected to after a break, no matter where in the world I or the others were. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the first time I met both was in a dream group. I say not surprisingly because most of us in the dream group were there to seriously understand ourselves, to dig and drill and find the essence of us. Most of us were willing to sit in that fish bowl with mirrors on all sides and accept all facets of ourselves. Remembering the details of how I met them brought a smile and a feeling of warmth, and I called the one I had not been in contact with for a while, immediately. I found her in a state of lostness for someone in her family, an elderly and so high risk person, had been diagnosed with covid. It was good to be with her in that moment of vulnerability. This friendship had grown through the most painful and vulnerable part of both our lives.
The other I maintain a regular email connection with. She is someone who I became friends with because of working together on a shared passion, that of trying to create a world that accepts all its diversity, but the personal connection only grew because of the need of seeing ‘the other’ within ourselves. One of the criteria of an enduring friendship definitely is this desire to have friends who will show me the parts of me I cannot see, and in turn have a need to see those parts in themselves. Another is to take whatever the friendship throws up and be curious about what it is saying about ourselves.
Exploring these connections may be a distraction or may be a necessary part of understanding the book that wants to be written. Meanwhile another distraction also appeared. A friend told me about Velaquez’s painting Las Meninas. I looked at the painting and I couldn’t stop looking, It's a painting that still mystifies, which many have written about. I googled and read some of what has been written but it was not enough to explain the feelings and questions it evoked in me. I still am exploring those, but the feeling, the desire to create something like this painting pulls me into facing my deepest fears that I am not adequate.
I may indeed be inadequate. I may indeed fail, but giving up on trying is not an option.
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