Do-land

I tapped a note on my phone and sent it to myself.

"feb21"

My next writing group meeting.

I don't know if I can write anymore or even what I could write about.

I stopped writing a year ago.

Writing in the sense of writing essays, narratives, stories....things that might be submitted for publication.

I put my children's book manuscript, the one I wrote about Africa, in a plastic bag and hid it under a skirted table in my bedroom.

I deleted a file of erotic fiction.

I went back to the safety of not creating.

I do now.

I do the bills. I do my work. I do my job. I do the house. I do what I'm supposed to do.

Writing and art never come from "do."

They come from a different place.... a place that needs passion and light.

To write well you have to turn on a spotlight and shine it in your head and heart and guts.

You have to shine it in dark places and hope exposing something...a feeling ....an event...an idea ...creates something new.

It's a strange land..... because you're constantly absorbing....a piece of dialogue in a restaurant, the way something looks in the sunlight, the way you feel when you hear certain words or see the ordinary acts of life play in front of you.

It's a land that's also not totally in this dimension. If you're writing well....you flow out of yourself and flow in something else....something universal....which rises above the normal barriers of culture and language.

For reasons too personal to explain here, I woke up one morning, shut off the light.....and walked into "do" land.

The only times I leave do-land is during religious services....when I watch a man sway and sing and close his eyes in prayer at the podium. I sense he's in that universal and I try, briefly, to hitch a ride.

I can't decide if I want to leave do-land or even if I can.

I don't have any stories.....I don't have perceptions begging to be released.... I don't have anything to say.

I'm a mute in do-land and now I have a date to speak.

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