Day 85
approaching
This is it, just fifteen days to go. The cleaning business is going off and Corey and I are both working long days. I am also still assisting at the office job, and now working on a new retreat center with my family. Work here in the tourist economy is like a wave that overtakes you, and you must learn to surf it or it will literally crush you.
The daily writing has become every other day, or in this case, three pieces on the third day (because if I wait one more, I’m not sure I’ll still feel any integrity about the project whose purpose must be at least partially to create a disciplined daily practice.) Somehow, almost magically it seems to me, I am not too worried about it though. I feel the effects of eighty-five days of writing in my bones now. Throughout my day, I feel my imagination working in the background, telling stories, building metaphors, writing poetry. I just let her do her thing and I know that when I sit down she will tell me what to say.
This morning I woke at 5 AM, unable to sleep another minute, feeling the need to get the words out. It is very nearly like needing to pee or being so thirsty that you will stumble to the sink in the gray hours of dawn. Not very glamorous…but, to respond to the urge to write as if it were a bodily function that must be attended to…well, it is nothing short of a miracle for me. We are not slaves to these urges, they are simply the mechanisms of life, they are how we process and keep alive. I am grateful for my thirst, for my ability to empty myself, for the insistence of the body.
The end of the project is near. With all the work in my life, I know that day 100 is right there. Somewhere in my mind, all fifteen of the words and their stories are already taking shape. I trust this.
