Did you ever wake up in the middle of your life and you're like hot damn this is my life?? How did I ever get this lucky?
Maybe it's because I'm reading Henry Miller in the pool and he's wandering around Greece telling too much about nothing but every now and then he stabs you with a shard of how beautiful the world is the ordinary world, people exploring dirt patches of land that make them happy, the way a stranger can remind you of something you forgot to notice, the luck of being able to sit in your kitchen and drink tea and listen to quiet which is the sound of things unfolding easily.
I decided on my 60th I would finish this script called Subculture which has all the remnants of things I hadn't put into a story, things I held onto because I didn't want to look at them, so I shoved them all into this script about being a sub, being a temporary human, and if that means we are failures at long term or if that means we are just killer at the immediate. Part of the story is having a trenchcoat full of rocks and unloading those rocks into the sea. Evie said maybe you never get rid of your rocks even if you empty your pockets.
But that shit works, bro. I have emptied my pockets. Really my brain would say, I have shifted my focus by an increment, but there are many other paths when you decide to not be burdened by what only you decided to hold onto. It has nothing to do with any other person. It's just the relationship to yourself, and freeing yourself. In the script she is trying to Free Lance, and there is a surfy Lance character, who lives in the tunnels under Subway, and there are old boyfriends that lure her with the past, and there are dead husbands.
A true Shakespeare play of ghosts, folly, comedy, tragedy, the deaths of mothering and daughtering, love and temporary employment. Oh it is a terrible piece of work. But drafts are always easier to fix up later, it's the birthing of them that's hard. But lately I have been thinking as I roll my mom around in her husk, with her still beautiful to me shape and sound and familiar curving skin, I'll take it ALL. I'll take it all AGAIN. Every bit of my explosive tenure on earth, beloved spacehome circling the emptiness, circling itself, circling the yellow star. I'll take all the limping dogs, and the coffehouse theaters and bare feet and ducking under jungle branches in the creek, the shape of horses, the confoundment of love, playing cards, kids wearing tiny elastic pants, the journey
this one immense temporary ride
I vacuum up every crumb and stuff my pockets. Somebody thought to make pockets. There is so much I am seeing and that I need to still see.
So calm down, Jules. I say. Since I emptied the rocks, and I ran out of things to write about because I wasn't mad or sad anymore, I decided hey time to sell my writing again.
I might never get anywhere or maybe I'll already there, but every day now I've been reaching out to some person new or some person who helped me in the past, or some far flung executive who's probably dead, but I'm reaching out to say hey. My stuff is good. Shove aside some other people's stuff for a minute and cram mine in there. There's beloved life in it.
I'm speaking up for my work. The time I usually spent chasing people or love, let's try this, instead. It's addictive, like diving into cliff water far below, you gasp a chest full of water, scramble back up to leap again.
When I get overwhelmed and drowning, I switch back to the other jobs like feeding my mom. Swimming. Taking the horses out. Getting on the new young horse Janey Pickle. Seeing how easy it is to just get on and try it for a few minutes, building a relationship. If I do it gently, I can build a relationship where she will literally carry me, happily, anywhere we want to go. I show her my heart, and if she decides, she matches it with hers. Horses always say yes. If you give them yourself.
Everywhere in life, you are doing the same thing. It looks like different tasks, using different clothes, different email addresses, different foods but it's all the same rope down into your well. You're nurturing your life, you're growing your soul. Nothing is wasted. Nobody's in trouble.
It's good to let go of the rocks. You float up.
