Last spring, on a visit to my Dad in Gravenhurst, I dropped my phone face-down on the cement as I stepped out of the car. The glass screen splintered into an intricate spider web pattern. The phone still worked, but for a few days afterwards, I had bloody fingertips as tiny shards of glass loosened and fell away each time I touched the screen. There was no question of a replacement; my contract runs for another year and a half. Instead, I wrote a poem called Broken Glass:
The spider web of broken glass
Intrigues
A reminder of Sparrow Lake,
Dad,
A good visit
If I were a painter
I might
draw this
Words weave ’round the fractured
edges of time,
Memory splinters
And pricks
Sometimes drawing blood, red
Drop
What do we see as we gaze
upon the changed landscape? Our
visions different, as they must be,
for no two minds see as one.
Technical crises I can handle. A week before the first blog post was due, my laptop stopped working. I thought it was the battery; it wasn’t. I did a decent job of keeping the panic at bay. I write by hand, in notebooks; I like the package of 4 exercise books you can buy at the dollar store. I do a first draft, revisions, and a final piece all long hand. Then I put the document on my computer, doing some last editing as I type. The laptop just represents the technical gate that my writing must pass through. Still, it’s a critical link in the communication process. The good thing is I have data on my cell phone. I can send and receive emails and connect to the internet. So even though my phone is less than perfect, it still works as a means of communicating. As my laptop sat unresponsive on my desk, I painstakingly typed the first two blogs into word documents on the phone, peering through that half-shattered screen, hoping I was catching all the typos. We’ve all had machines break down. It’s frustrating, but we either repair them or replace them and then tell each other funny stories and commiserate about our reliance on technology.
But what happens when it’s a crisis of confidence that looms over us? When the wires get crossed inside ourselves and we go black and blank creatively? It can feel overwhelming. When I was packaged out of my corporate job in late 2012 I was relieved. I needed to go in a different direction. I’d known this for a long time. I wanted to write; to see where writing could take me. Things didn’t go quite the way I had expected. There was more change coming. My long-term relationship imploded at the same time.
Without a job, moving out on my own was going to be a problem. And what about the dogs? My ex and I came to an agreement. We would continue to live in the same apartment but each in our own rooms, sharing the kitchen and bath. It was messy and awkward and there were many angry flare-ups those first few months. I had lots to write about but it was hard and it hurt. I questioned my writing dreams. Many days I just wanted to run away. I went out all the time and kept so busy I was never standing still. I avoided organizing a comfortable place for writing in my living space. I had yearned for years for a break from full-time work and had pictured myself writing every day, content and calm at my desk, but for the first few months this was impossible. My inner critic gleefully suggested that I was not cut out to be a writer.
Somehow I made it through the minefield of that first Christmas, and things began to settle into a more peaceful routine. I carved out a writing nook right by the window with a view of the lake and my confidence crept back. Reading poetry helped. And I started filling pages in my notebooks again. I went to that first evening writing workshop at the Bloor/Gladstone library and began to see a way to make my new life work.
When I look back now, it is clear that events unfolded as they were meant to. The years on the job and the much longer time in the relationship have left their mark on me. I have learned that the only way forward is through the tangled brush of our past experiences. Writing helps to clear the way.
When I stopped running and stilled myself, it became easier.
Til next time, keep writing.