02/12/2004

What is a good beginning?

Excerpts from the little red notebook, circa 199?.
Note: As soon as I committed myself to this project I found I had many important things to do; spray fixative on some photos I'm turning into refrigerator magnets, re-feed the birds. They have already consumed large quantities of seed this morning, but hey, it's cold out. Prepare a new, bigger and better incense bowl. Light more incense. Eat some nuts. Drink more coffee. Throw left over Thanksgiving salad away. It's garbage day. Eat some tofu. Write this note.
"I'm sitting in the Deli at Rick's grocery store in Talent as the woman I'm working for shops. It's 6am. She's a nice, eccentric old lady who likes to have the store to herself and pays me $10 an hour to drive her there. I forgot my book, too groggy, so I bought this notebook and these words are the outcome.

What is a good beginning? Who is it for? Do I want to tell a story or do I care about that? I want to create an other. I need to see the myth of my life.

I've been reading Moore's Care of the Soul lately. He suggests welcoming one's questions and problems as messages from the soul; a tapping on the shoulder, a calling to notice, embrace, enter the mystery of imperfection. I've been trying that lately and it's (of course) REALLY uncomfortable. I have been feeling enormous anger, like a hand inside a glove, as though it were a body within my body, with a life of its own. It seems this anger is the primary feeling I used to, unconsciously, consider the native me. This books traffic in answers but they are merely seeds, quick planting but slow growing. I feel embarrassed for expecting so much from the obvious. One thing is certain. I am touching my limits. Feeling my limits. I have become a peculiar, hydra-headed bird, confused by looking in too many directions at once, but there is an end to everything. There's a last time for everything.

Life turning under, into memories, as though it is my only purpose
to create and distill stories.

Right now Barbara is at the cash register, so I've got to go and get the truck."

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