The Introvert's Party

I had the privilege of spending some time this weekend with this lovely lady, who popped into the States for one of her brief, bi-annual visits.  She is the last of a dying breed, at least a dying breed between peers.  She imbibes in her sense of wanderlust; I have found my taste buds changed.  The best of us, this small circle of friends I have collected, we found each other in a dusty place that was dark and small but safe and warmed by the yellow glow of kinship.   It is a traveling space, you see, because we have all spent our days on the lam.  Some of us, quite literally. 

I used to mock the easy comfort of home, that is to say a conventional image of home.  I considered being still, being stuck or trapped.  I guess it seems that way when you feel like something is trying to catch up with you.  There is freedom on the open road, in a large city, on a set of wings that turn the world into a Monet masterpiece. 

Stillness is a cultivated thing.  To me, it is still a terrifying thing.  Perhaps, that's why I still run in my on way.  What's coming for me?

My past?  What a hackneyed plot.  Is my story not a dramedy (as I have always imagined) but a sci-fi thriller.  Is my life Looper?  Or is my life The Kid?  Will I suddenly confront my child self and try to defend my poor life choices?   ("So, I'm forty, I'm not married, I don't fly jets, and I don't have a dog? I grow up to be a loser.")

I justify my need for movement:  It's natural.  Steinbeck says so.  I can function as a human on the lam, but as a writer, I need to cultivate stillness or my writing will never puncture the surface.

Writing about what I know, I have often interpreted to mean; write what is now.  How I've come through an experience wiser and smarter and better, which is not always the case but I write it so.  Writing what you know means standing still and letting all those life moments, awful, beautiful, otherwise, wash over you.  Hell, drown you probably, but the view from the bottom of the ocean is a valuable perspective.  The roadside vista is beautiful and healing but captured and readily consumed.  Write from a dark place, a trapped place, a place without air and human contact.

That's what stillness feels like when you're on the lam.  

So you transform, adapt.  You learn to find oxygen in ocean water, create your own light, you find love in the creatures of the deep.  It may not feel safe, but you can still thrive.

Check out Alix's blog.  Remember her name; she will do great things in this lifetime.  Look for me at the bottom of a deep, deep...

...bathtub.  Easy does it, sometimes.  Happy Sabbath, enjoy a three day weekend if you have it.
Kris