THISPRESENTSOJOURN

If appearance is a means to anything, I know little how to compose a piece without a few stripes, some grain and a gaudy gradient. I’ve spent the last six months without the capacity to write like I liked if only for a quite short time of my life. But like I’ve admitted reluctantly in some past post I know it was probably amenable to the types of experiences I was or or had passed through. This is that same admission in a dilly dally way, frivolous, and with some hope, buoyant.

But again now better paired with the color and variety and movement in my late life are the little knickknacks and ornaments and sparkly, glittery toys I hang with a hook to each blog post, tie a little ribbon of a Title to the top (with a little purple Permalink), Categorize and Publish the piece. It’s not called Wordpress for a reason. It’s not called reason for a Wordpress.

Is this the same “I’m sorry I haven’t written!” or “Excuse my silence” that you’ve read (and from which you’ve subsequently unsubscribed) on every other Starbucks-sipping quaint little Monday morning blog at least once a month? I guess. Is it to tell you I’ve lost the creativity that before made it possible to pen and prod and proliferate with all-too-awful (awesome?) attempts at alliteration? Not as much. In fact when I’ve heard people say something similar to, “I just don’t have a creative mind” I mostly hear is “I need an excuse for the work I’m not willing to put in” and “I just don’t feel creative” means “I’m feeling lazy.”

I am coming to understand better if only in personal rhythm that Creativity is not the result of some monsoon or heavy rain of inspiration, but rather a synthesis of the Rain, the Soil into which it sinks, and the dedicated farmer who bloodies his hands to cultivate it. It is far less a gift freely given and freely received than it is fruit of discipline.

So I’m sucking in my gut, throwing out an obnoxiously loud expletive at myself, rolling out of the figurative bed, ironing my proverbial pleated black chinos, and getting to work by banging the keys so loud my grandma in Victoria calls to complain.

Suddenly I’m sitting in the aisle seat in the Emergency Row Exit next to a man named Barron. He repeatedly calls me a Tall Drink of Water with an aggressive snarl and wink, not stopping with the comment on my jawline.

He orders me a vodka tonic and I drink it down without coming up for air. It is my oasis in the middle of a wilderness with an undesirable companion. Barron leans his head on my shoulder, and fastens his sleep with a snore or more.

A good thing for the Wendy Worriers is that the emergency row (while in some ways building on the paranoia of the possible plane malfunction or air attack or whatever way you want to direct your anxiety) is that the flight attendant during the early-flight-emergency-directions is clearly heard and loudly so through the intercom, directly overhead.

Add or subtract a few rows and, well, who knows. Maybe you’ll miss out on the details of how to use your seat as a flotation device in case you crash into the Bermuda Triangle or your oxygen mask if you exceed the atmosphere and end up somewhere out there.

Intercoms are not evenly dispersed among the passengers, unless you’re on one of those fancier international versions with the headphones and Robin Williams films. No, not everyone gets their own personal pan pizza! But each does get a slice of the whole — even if it’s not evenly cut portions.

In the airplane ceiling, each intercom is placed in seat increments — usually something like 1 for every 6 passengers. What makes it work so that all passengers hear what’s coming from the distant or not-too-distant speaker is cranking the volume in one intercom so that sound waves carry the distance to the passenger furthest.

Seat 3 of 6 of course has the best position because the stereo effect is least lopsided, considering they are sitting just behind and just before a speaker. The person furthest away might have a difficult time hearing while the person closest might have a hard time not covering their ears.

In some ways, the realities which I have been forced to believe or accept (as one whose experiences accumulate and gain or lose meaning) have been much like placement near or far from the intercom, and the ways in which I choose my seat assignment ahead of time for ease and laze — if I could keep the most painful things at a distance by sitting a few rows back from the speaker, the content of what was said might be heard enough for awareness, but, also enough for detachment.  And somewhere around row 4-6 is where I’ve been for the last year.

In the cycles it is the way it must be — when tickets are claimed on the flight for everything but the emergency exit row, and the red signs surround and flash, and the voice from the intercom is surly and gregarious and prudent. And suddenly it is all heard more clearly than before — the warnings and the instructions. And just as suddenly I know what I’ve failed to hear in the past (read: what I have ignored), and that it must be time to do something about it.

The rain alone doesn’t give me a thing to reap. I need the soil, the sow of the seed, the rake & hoe, the patience, the humility, consistency, and the confidence that That toward which I am working will yield gain, even if the process itself feels mostly about what’s being lost. It’s time to bloody my hands.