Notes from December 20, 2023
In an effort for transparency, for being a voice listening to a voice, I am typing out my notes from ten days ago. If you, reader, are interested in reading where a novel might come from…I offer you this:
This novel is an expression of grief. I didn’t realize it, and it is true. This novel is about grief.
I began writing it as my last novel was being finished for publication. As often happens in a life, particularly in a writer’s life, what reveals itself on the page can frighten the writer, send the writer running from the page, into a space of being distanced, or blocked, or dissociated from the story which wants to be told.
The writer may immerse themselves in the task of becoming for a long period of time; resting in the being helps them to remember they are a writer. Being is the moment of surrender. The moment where the gap in becoming is noticed and a column of light connects the earth and the sky. And the writer is the gap– is the being. Light-filled and aware. Surely, this is the cause of the pursuit of the writer. Parts of the writer, it appears, experience this moment of being and are able to stay with it, even when they are not able to recognize fully, yet, what they are experiencing.
The writer’s experiences add up to an understanding: the being experiences, the listening experiences, the grief experiences, the joy experiences. The desire to “have become” already is familiar. The imagination of publication, of speaking to a room full of readers, of being heard, of being understood (finally, and, dare-fully, completely). Of course the writer, without understanding their own journey, is seeing visions of home. Home, where the welcome mat is a heart, where the kitchen is filled with music and delight, where the food is soothing and soul-filled by the ones who create.
The writer is a human being, often in deep wonderment about what this experience, experiment, is. The writer is an archetype of the whole– searching, searching for a story to express the experience. A story to serve as a pathway forward for themselves, for others. A writer is an explorer, a colonist, an earth being, a mother, a monster, a sage, a child, a betrayer, an innocent, a victim, an outcast, an oracle, an Arbornaut, a predator, a saviour.
The writer in me, the writer persona of this body, this expression of consciousness has been asking for help and feeling at times undeserving of this help, unworthy of this task to write a story to help the humans of this gathering of humans to recognize their being, to connect with love, to recognize the power they hold to create.
This writer is distracted by relationships in the field of connection. This writer is distracted by the ideas of becoming vs. the ideas of being. This writer fears the loss of connection. This writer worries too much time alone or away will sever her relationships with the ones they love.
This writer asks for help. Again. Still. Help from a spirit she has been away from, from a spirit she detached herself from years ago. A spirit who told her, one day we will meet again. She was a young girl then, 9 years old, harmed and betrayed by her protector, ignored and neglected by her protector, told it was time to grow up.
Her spirit has been trying to reach her across the veil for many years, now, when the nightmares escalated, when the darkness began to subsume her. She lost everything in those years. All the security she’d worked so hard to fix and control in her life. She lost it all. It’s hard for her now, even, to witness the waves of grief from those events and she lets them come. A buzzing sensation enters her, a concentration of vibration in her throat. Heal me. Heal me.
At night, her spirit left her. Didn’t leave. It went deep inside her. Deeper, into the deepest part of her, deep within her belly. Just recently, she felt it emerge again. She lived in her own Harry Potter world for nearly 40 years, in the unseen and not-understood battle between good and evil, between two experiences– being and becoming. Real. Unreal. Darkness. Light. She lived between wanting and rejecting. She, as was mentioned earlier, experienced glorious moments of true being. Most recently in nature, this writer began to feel a relationship between this spirit, this soul inside her and the spirit and soul outside her. We all harm. We have all been harmed. What a difficult experience of becoming she has seen, witnessed. The oppressed and the oppressor living inside her. The betrayed and the betrayer. The loved and the unloved. Being is here, now. The becoming will unfold.
Yes, the practical will continue to be a challenge, but less so, less so.