This is a long read. Self-indulgent. I couldn’t help it. Some footnotes to keep the reader interested. Hopefully.
In 2019 I attended a writing workshop at Omega in Rhinebeck, New York (I write about that here). Several workshops ran in parallel, taking the better part of each day. The week I was there, an inordinate number of white women wore flowing, white, loose, muslin tunics with all their hair tucked up and disappeared beneath white turbans: the Kundalini yoga uniform. No one used the words “cultural appropriation”. I didn’t either.[1] Out loud. In the evenings, round robin sessions were offered where people might try other workshop topics. Yes, I tried the Kundalini session. It’s not for me[2]. But one must remain open to new ideas, stretch the mind, (and the body), and so it was I found myself one evening in a session with a celebrity psychic medium. It was an interesting session[3], but something the facilitator said really stuck with me: “Everyone can do this [be a spirit communicator – really?], it just demands a lot of practice, and the practice is paying attention, first, of course, but also trying NOT to make meaning out of the images and senses you are receiving, just report them as you receive them”. Like, if you’re a celebrity psychic medium, don’t puzzle the images together – that’s for the detectives looking to solve cold cases or the families who are trying to communicate with deceased loved ones. Huh. Okay.
But for writing, we need to make meaning of the images and the words and phrases that flow from them. The trick is not to solve the puzzle too soon.
With writing, I practice letting the images and even the silly ideas make it to the page. The result is that I now have a lot of blousy first drafts and half formed ideas lying around waiting for revision at some point (which feels like some distant sunrise cresting a dark horizon)[4].
It occurred to me[5], riffing off of last month’s post about writing and energy (slaps forehead), that what I need to practice more intentionally is READING the energy in my own writing. My own writings are trying to tell me something. The story is communicating through me (just as the energy to split wood effortlessly using an axe must travel through the body)…maybe I’m just the filter the story moves through to be born. I’m sure I’ve read this before…it’s only now I’m understanding it pragmatically.
So, with a spirit of nakedness, I’m using a recent response to a writing prompt[6] as a way to work through how I’m trying to read the energy in my own writing….while remaining sufficiently loose in interpretation and open to other ideas (before locking the story meaning down, aka, solving the puzzle). This is a first stab at explaining this process…
I wrote the piece in a quick, mostly relaxed, twenty-five-minute burst before I had to go to work. I have retained all the spelling mistakes, the lazy repetitions, the character name of Jo spelled two different ways, as well as the story’s devolution into stream of consciousness writing. I thought I would have time that week to fix it up before posting it to my workshop group. I didn’t. I posted it as is with the caveat about its devolution into imagery and all else.
And here’s the interesting thing—and why I’m choosing to write about this process here—when people responded to the piece in the workshop, each one indicated they had connected [more? best?] with the stream of consciousness sections: the writings that arrived subconsciously, those aspects of my shadow self, frolicking forth from dream territory. Hmmm. A sign like that can’t be ignored.
This post will necessarily be long to show my process. First, the piece unmarked, followed by the piece again with my thoughts and interjections marked in BLUE about what the writing might be trying to communicate through me.
The Red River swelled beyond its banks again, as it did every year. This year it attained new waterline records, bursting the city’s levies, its fluid tongue flicking the sand bags right and left like a prize fighter spitting chicklets in a fight to champion the world.
Mary and Joe arrived in separate vehicles, she a canoe, he a kayak. Mary tied the canoe to a lilac; Jo roped the kayak to iron railing leading up the front steps, now submerged. Each used their own spare key, twisting the front door lock a foot above the waterline. Each shouldered the door against the heavy water to enter their daughter’s split level. The house in the chichi neighbourhood had promised a view of the river. In this respect, it had overdelivered.
“She picked the wrong week to travel to Los Angeles.”
Mary sighed. She hadn’t wanted to start clean-up efforts with an argument. She stood in a foot of cold water that pressed against her knee-high rubber boots. Sloshing across the kitchen, her rubber pants rustled loudly as she fought to stay upright. The linoleum was slippery wavering beneath so much grey water, dotted here and there with soggy receipts and plastic bags ballooned into jelly fish. She and Jo rarely saw each other. They confined their spite to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables. Without grandchildren, and now without their son-in-law (sandbagger), or their snooty daughters-in-law (good riddance), those dinners sunk before any plates graced the table.
Jo continued, “I thought she was in California.”
Not unusual, such misinterpretations. For too many years Mary excused these oversights, chalking them up to hearing loss. Too many rock concerts. Too many engines revved to screaming in the garage. After the divorce, she’d faced, brutally, what she hadn’t wanted to: he just didn’t give a shit. Content if given a hot meal every evening, if potato chips were snack ready, if clean underwear stacked in the dresser drawer, Jo cruised life. He erupted a stormy passion when things didn’t go his way. The family vibrated his tensions, always on the Joe program. And his own children just hadn’t been interesting enough for him.
“No, she’s in France, Anjou. Ville-sous-Anjou, like the pear.”
Mary’s heart sunk then realising the fridge, out of power now for three days, the vegetable crisper beneath the water line, would have to be dealt with. A rotten job (inwards she laughed, bitterly). She scanned the kitchen trying to remember where Lizzie kept the box of garbage bags, spray containers of cleaners, a mop bucket Mary might use to bail water. Where the hell could she bail the water to when the waterline lapped the window ledges, the river kept swelling? It was hopeless.
“This is hopeless,” said Jo. “Didn’t I warn her not to buy waterfront?”
Mary let his question hang, snuffing the old argument before it ignited. Doomsday prophecies, climate change, the water rising to take us all, tidbits he scraped from the internet, scrubbed, polished and hurled at listeners as if they were his own. Millionaires blasted the skin of the earth, their arcs of triumph going limp when they descended, backwards. In the end the laws of gravity, of inevitability, drown us all.
“I mean these days?” he pushed, “what the hell was she thinking?”
“Hell” said Mary.
She watched the look of confusion cloud Jo’s face. Honestly, he was so slow sometimes, she was glad she’d chosen not to see the end of the world with him. Yet here they were, sporting galoshes and yellow rain pants, knee deep in water wavering and rolling optical illusions.
Insert distraction that momentarily reconnects this couple – Saxophone – a boy playing their favourite song perched on the roof next door – the song they danced to at the engineering formal in fourth year – blue moon
Things floating: paper receipts, plastic bags, loose photographs (wedding?) – flood of pressure water build up – breaking banks – crashing shores, people waiting to be recused in the crooks of trees. Cars and boats and whole tree trunks, chesterfield, the deer, it’s snout bobbing above the waterline, antlers rotating with the spinning current, it’s bony legs and knees hoofing helplessly the fluidity, as if were running, running, pulling the belief of Santa’s sleigh, soaring the cold milky way vacuum, light years ahead, or behind.
From its path, the river would always find a way, seeping up through the layers of sedimentary rock, cracking the limestone shelves, eroding the granite walls salt shaker – grains of salt, crystals messenger feels like a warning shouldn’t ignore.
Deer swept along in it torrent, spinning, the antlers whirlpool, their legs kicking, trying to find a purchase as the reindeer of santas sleigh try to paw at the stars. Muddy – silt that when this all drained away they would excavate the kitchen tiles as one might an archeological dig, looking for the mystery they believed buried there, but only finding shards of animal bones, and indeterminate rock.
Here it is again, with my own thought interjections in BLUE and peer feedback noted in ORANGE (with permission). I’ve focused peer attention to the subconscious elements they honed in on (they provided lots of fantastic grammar, spelling and rearrangement suggestions; I have not supplied those here).
The Red River
[I was thinking of the Red River in Manitoba which, I discovered, had a flood warning in early January…but the word “red” kind of vibrates here (shimmers? it’s like my body shimmers) when I read it, so I know there’s something else there to be discovered. I don’t know what that something else is in this case (sometimes it takes me ages to figure these things out[7]). Red is my favourite colour…also the colour of blood and poppies…so, noted, and left to sit. For now.]
swelled beyond its banks again, as it did every year. This year it attained new waterline records, bursting the city’s levies, its fluid tongue
[I liked this combination of words to depict that imagery]
flicking the sand bags right and left like a prize fighter spitting chicklets in a fight to champion the world.
[here, the river is personified…and it’s fighting to “champion the world”…this resonates with the phrase later in the story re: the end of the world, and words such as “inevitable” and “drowning”]
Mary and Joe
[usually when drafting I just choose the first names that come to me as placeholders…the story, in later development, when I understand what it is trying to tell me, will warrant research for specific names that fit and shape the story on multiple levels. Another little puzzle I love. But, can’t help but notice the completely unintentional biblical reference to Jesus’s parents here.]
arrived in separate vehicles, she a canoe, he a kayak. Mary tied the canoe to a lilac; Jo roped the kayak to iron railing leading up the front steps, now submerged.
[Just seeing this now, as I work through this exercise – Mary’s boat is tied to a flower while Joe’s boat is tied to an iron railing, sunk cement steps – something living versus something non-living and immovable – a good comparison of opposites to exploit maybe…and as I reread this reflection again, deeper darker personal feelings]
Each used their own spare key, twisting the front door lock a foot above the waterline. Each shouldered
[“shouldered” vibrates for me, I don’t know why]
the door against the heavy water to enter their daughter’s split level. The house in the chichi neighbourhood had promised a view of the river. In this respect, it had overdelivered.
[noted: humour that twists, subtly, the house into kind of a character…weird].
“She picked the wrong week to travel to Los Angeles.”
Mary sighed. She hadn’t wanted to start clean-up efforts with an argument. She stood in a foot of cold water that pressed against her knee-high rubber boots. Sloshing across the kitchen, her rubber pants rustled loudly as she fought to stay upright. The linoleum was slippery wavering beneath so much grey water, dotted here and there with soggy receipts and plastic bags ballooned into jelly fish. She and Jo rarely saw each other. They confined their spite to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables. Without grandchildren, and now without their son-in-law (sandbagger)
[this word, sandbagger, is an example of trying too hard to make meaning in the story too soon; I feel this as a niggling annoyance, one I too often bypass, thinking I know better than the story does],
or their snooty daughters-in-law (good riddance), those dinners sunk before any plates graced the table.
[ugh all this has to go]
Jo continued, “I thought she was in California.”
Not unusual, such misinterpretations. For too many years Mary excused these oversights, chalking them up to hearing loss. Too many rock concerts. Too many engines revved to screaming in the garage. After the divorce, she’d faced, brutally, what she hadn’t wanted to: he just didn’t give a shit
[uh, there’s more here – and a strong feeling of avoidance, even disgust? – need to crack this open – put my head into the jaws of this lion].
Content if given a hot meal every evening, if potato chips were snack ready, if clean underwear stacked in the dresser drawer, Jo cruised life
[interesting word choice, “cruised” in the context of a flood – pay attention].
He erupted a stormy passion when things didn’t go his way. The family vibrated his tensions, always on the Joe program. And his own children just hadn’t been interesting enough for him.
“No, she’s in France, Anjou. Ville-sous-Anjou, like the pear.”
Mary’s heart sunk then realising the fridge, out of power now for three days, the vegetable crisper beneath the water line, would have to be dealt with. A rotten job (inwards she laughed, bitterly)
[there’s me inserting myself – and I might be quick to hit the delete button here but must reflect my own behavioural patterns before I do: I often make a joke when I’m uncomfortable – an effective avoidance or distraction technique – so, what am I avoiding here? I do know, in this case, and it has nothing to do with this story, so it will be chucked in revision – probably the whole fridge bit. Not all my jokes are avoidance driven].
She scanned the kitchen trying to remember where Lizzie kept the box of garbage bags, spray containers of cleaners, a mop bucket Mary might use to bail water. Where the hell could she bail the water to when the waterline lapped the window ledges, the river kept swelling? It was hopeless.
“This is hopeless,” said Jo. “Didn’t I warn her not to buy waterfront?”
[the repetition of thought between these two characters, one internal, one external, and the way they follow one after another, illuminates a connection between them, even if they don’t want to see it].
Mary let his question hang, snuffing the old argument before it ignited.
[fire references noted – may be a good counterpoint to flood – fire and flood – disasters, apocalypse, possibly another biblical reference].
Doomsday prophecies, climate change, the water rising to take us all, tidbits he scraped from the internet, scrubbed, polished and hurled at listeners as if they were his own. Millionaires blasted the skin of the earth
[wound, violence, heat],
their arcs of triumph going limp when they descended, backwards. In the end the laws of gravity, of inevitability, drown us all.
“I mean these days?” he pushed, “what the hell was she thinking?”
“Hell” said Mary.
[Hell used twice, no, three times – another biblical reference? WTF?! When I was drafting, it was at this point I understood I had no idea where this story was heading, and I wouldn’t be able to wrestle it into a story shape before work]
She watched the look of confusion cloud Jo’s face
[maybe this is my story’s way of letting me know I’m confused. I don’t need the story to tell me that, I know already].
Honestly, he was so slow sometimes, she was glad she’d chosen not to see the end of the world with him. Yet here they were, sporting galoshes and yellow rain pants, knee deep in water wavering and rolling optical illusions.
[I’m drawn to the words “cloud” and “end of the world” and “water wavering optical illusions” – it feels like the natural world asserting itself …not just background, not invisible, but a living, breathing character in this story… a largesse the couple remain oblivious to, even when they attend to the deluge of information (note: deluge is another word for flood) they miss seeing the world for what it is, even when they’re knee deep in it]
[I was struck by this…Is this marking a change in Mary?]
[here is where I allow myself to record the images that arise, without trying to puzzle them in place]
Insert distraction that momentarily reconnects this couple – Saxophone
[Weird. Specific. Can’t be ignored. No idea what it means. Yet. But I like the image and opportunity to introduce sound]
– a boy playing their favourite song perched on the roof next door – the song they danced to at the engineering formal in fourth year – blue moon
[again that niggling feeling that blue moon is a cheap first attempt at something deeper….at the very least a different song (first impulse), but still, don’t dismiss too quickly because blue moon is synonymous with “rare” and should not ignore the connotations of sadness with “blue” and the moon, well, the moon…what can I say? There’s too much…].
Things floating: paper receipts, plastic bags, loose photographs (wedding?)
[interesting that level of specificity inserted here, a wedding photo…feels important…but maybe not for this specific story…my own feelings bleeding in here. Note, instead, an opportunity to place a subtle symbol of the meaning of this story (once I figure it out) as an image floating by the couple’s rubber boots. But maybe a wedding photo does fit…remain open!]
– flood of pressure
[feel a heat with the word pressure]
water build up – breaking banks
[note the double meaning of banks – river and money – and how these two meanings rhyme, conceptually – capitalism and destroying the earth to support it]
– crashing shores, people waiting to be recused
[love this inadvertent spelling mistake of “rescued” – a Freudian slip perhaps that warrants attention and questioning, especially in a context of climate change and an earth battling to be acknowledged and restored, perhaps once humans have been purged from its skin (as referenced earlier with millionaires) makes me think of excusing oneself from apocalyptic judgement…biblical reference again…so weird]
in the crooks of trees
[crooks – connotation with thieves but also I love how it describes the elbows of trees…that’s not quite right, I’m tired, but I kinda like the thought of trees having elbows].
Cars and boats and whole tree trunks, chesterfield
[I just love the word chesterfield],
the deer, it’s snout bobbing above the waterline, antlers rotating with the spinning current, it’s bony legs and knees hoofing helplessly the fluidity, as if were running, running,
[ah, the deer. The deer motif shows up for me along multiple planes: the page, over and over, in dreams, and at least once a week I see them out the window, often in a cluster of three. Of course I looked this up.]
pulling the belief of Santa’s sleigh, soaring the cold milky way vacuum, light years ahead, or behind.
[Santa’s sleigh?! good grief …flying deer …more like silly beliefs, suspension of disbelief….why light years ahead or behind…I don’t know].
From its path, the river would always find a way, seeping up through the layers of sedimentary rock, cracking the limestone shelves, eroding the granite walls
[river as character again]
salt shaker – grains of salt, crystals messenger feels like a warning shouldn’t ignore.
[something …probably not salt related…maybe just trying too hard …superstition of throwing salt over left shoulder…again, don’t know].
Deer swept along in it torrent, spinning, the antlers whirlpool, their legs kicking, trying to find a purchase as the reindeer of santas sleigh try to paw at the stars. Muddy – silt that when this all drained away they would excavate the kitchen tiles as one might an archeological dig, looking for the mystery they believed buried there, but only finding shards of animal bones, and indeterminate rock.
[like the imagery here of the deer spinning and swimming legs not being able to touch the ground, feels disorienting.]
[…really uncomfortable with the deer running helplessly in the water so I think there is some pay dirt there–not sure about Santa–but perhaps there is something there in the connection between a childhood belief and the beliefs (in marrying Jo)]
[ there is some real magic in the stream of consciousness paragraphs towards the end and the imagery is unsettling and just fits the situation so well that I wonder if it makes sense to sew some of that in as part of Mary’s observations of the problem.]
[As I read this, i had a sense of Jo floating by the main character in their marriage and never seeing her let alone becoming invested in her emotions or feelings. I think this is the heart of this flash.]
[Whoooooaaaaaaa!!!!]
[1] I was captivated by this and couldn’t help but wonder how many might be pocketing jade eggs up their yahoos. Yeah, it’s a thing.
[2] I nearly fucking died trying to do all that rapid breathing while pulling “my foundation” tightly into my core. I worked up a sweat doing it too! I was far more fascinated by the English woman on stage facilitating the session (white muslin tunic, no hair, white turban). She had the poshest English accent I’d heard outside an Oxford quadrangle and she was looking daggers at her partner as her staccatoed breaths pumped the mic clipped at her breast. He was a much younger, absolutely gorgeous (and shirtless) Caribbean man with shining dark skin and dreadlocks, and he was racing after their daughter, probably six or seven years old (small white muslin tunic, wild hair, white turban an unravelling ribbon), trying to catch her as she screamed her way round all the seated hyperventilators (us) and literally crawled up the walls to run along the windowsills. This delighted me no end.
[3] We were put in small groups and sat cross legged on the floor. We stared for a few minutes at a photograph of a well-dressed woman with haunting eyes seated on a white couch, then “reported” what we received. Having spent the whole wonderful week drawing and writing, I was feeling pretty relaxed, so I started, “I dunno, I see a baby’s rattle, a red sports car and an empty cradle.” The curly blond-haired woman sitting across from me, wearing an I-love-NY cropped t-shirt with its neck scissored wide so that it slipped to expose one of her pudgy shoulders and a purple bra strap, goggled at me and said “Whoooooaaaaaaa!!!!” I laughed hysterically by how easily I’d convinced her of something from my imagination. Though, it transpired the photo was of a wealthy woman whose husband had kidnapped their infant daughter, the pair never to be seen again. I didn’t think much of this at the time, more interested in getting an ice cream before the shop closed for the night.
[4] I am terribly undisciplined when it comes to revision…if I’m honest it’s because I have been afraid of the demons I’ll see there. I’m working on this.
[5] I am a slow learner.
[6] spin three different digital “wheels of fortune”, one for setting, one for characters and one for narrative point of view, then spit out a story <800 words. I got: a flooded kitchen, a divorced couple, and close third person. I resisted drafting a story given my recent separation and walking away from a kitchen I designed and adored and fed so many wonderful people in. I’m trying not to be materialistic, but I can’t help grieving the kitchen loss. Of course, this comes through in the writing, the marriage breakdown, and it feels…shitty. And I kind of feel like an asshole. I’m working on this, greeting my shadow self. Next month, I’m moving to an apartment downtown Kingston, a block behind the central library and walking distance to the university libraries. Despite this fantastic access to knowledge, I’ve prioritised packing boxes and boxes of books, tearily packaging them up these February Sunday afternoons at the farm. A dreadful process. I don’t know how I’ll fit all the books in the apartment. Maybe I’ll sleep on them, hoping to absorb their wisdom through my skin.
[7] I’ve noticed a pattern in my own thinking when I’m trying to read the vibrating word energy I feel there, and I’m wrestling with this discovery too: first, I read and respond through a “heart break” lens (unfortunately) – my interpretation is clouded by past hurts and sorrows. It usually takes me a day to work through this. Next, I’m able to flip 180 degrees on the initial interpretation and consider its opposing possibilities. Finally, after pleasurable reflection time, I settle into the relief and wonder and gratitude of multiple puzzle pieces dropping into place.
Thank you for reading.
Process Peace 