Interesting

I found inspiration in an amazing way.  I'm glad.

So badly

To get rejection after rejection and to keep going is something.  That's what I'm telling myself.

Real

When the computer was stolen from the car, window smashed,I couldn't breathe and wanted a little to die.  Then I didn't. I just wanted to sleep.
I wanted to know why this happened to me 
At some point, we have to be real. What's lost is lost and nothing changes that.  It applies to many parts of my life.  No more zombies in this life.  From now on, forward progress.  Living the alive part of life. 

Control

So there's this inclination: manage the flames if you can't quell the fire.  I don't care about any of it.
I think of driving west in the late afternoon as we slip to winter, and think of the heavy, wet lakes that come so close to the road. I think of the light, the darkness and coolness of the lakes and the sky above them, how I have no home except all homes, life.
This is the mud.  We are made of mud.
My heart remembers songs it never heard.
A person might ask, what have I done?
Nothing.  We've done nothing.  Nothing happens.  It doesn't matter.
The walls and the bridges and the guardrails.  The trees.
Drive past the trees, and remember.  The secret plans, the escape.
I don't remember things I should, because I am full of pretend things.
I see the lakes, I see the light, and I am my own memory.

Love and Peace

Even to witness true love is perfect inspiration.  According to Kapoor:  "the interplay between the phenomenological, the perceptual, and the psychological is the heart of what makes art."  
Is there such a thing as a phenomenological reduction of love?  I dunno.  I doubt it.  
Hemingway said a person can write better in love.  
Does art have a heart?  What does the heart of art love?  
Maybe I should grow my hair even longer and part it in the middle.

Stop Worrying!

I need to gravitate back to the monk like intentions of this.

I'm not writing books about God and Science.  My books are informed by God and Science. 

What Is This Life?

I am so deep now into my work I don't understand it anymore.  I say things about it, but I don't know if what I'm saying is accurate or not.  I almost have forgotten what everything is.  Nothing makes sense now.
I can't wait for these two applications to be done.

Don't know how I know - I just know

I kept this journal thing when I first concieved of the novel I wrote last winter and I am reading through it and wow!  I understand it before I understood it.  This was the very day I thought of it, and I even knew how long it would be, somehow:


So the new project is a novella. It is fast paced, in a compressed sequence. First person. Narration by a character that just doesn't know better yet, and surely doesn't know all she thinks she knows - however she is caught up in beauty of decay. Personally, I love nothing better than an old house with paint peeling and a rotten porch - this is beautiful to me. I like our frailty. So she doesn't know enough to recognize her own frailty or the frailty of those around her, and makes mistakes that are not easy to fix. Like everyone does when, in every phase of our lives. 
But the truth of the novella, I think, is in its details. What life is like for the rest of us. What it is like when we aren't safe in academics, when we don't have the ability to travel, when we are stuck in an ugly life. But we still find joy. It is a hyper-realism thing I am doing lately. I think it really does have a baseball bat to the face feel. 
And that is what I started the project thinking about. The inspiration came when I was awake, late at night, and smelled my neighbor smoking. I knew that late night cigarette quite well. I could at once feel the story take shape. 
So I am banging this project out. Will write on it here and there. Hopefully 500 words a day at least, even on busy days. Slower days will mean more. I average 2000 words a sitting when I have time. The whole project, as I see it, won't need more than 40,000 words. Hoping to have it done by the end of the year. Don't work from an outline or anything. I understand the main idea of where the thing is going, and trust the characters enough to let them write themselves.


I started it on the last day of November, and was done by February, but didn't write consistently.  In fact, cobbled it together.  By January 23, I was depressed, thinking the end of the project would never come.  And then, somehow, it did.  I read a passage of Lispector that changed my life.  On Feb 1, I wrote this:


I got lax in the journal of the novella. It is done. First draft. The edits will take ages. Maybe a year. First I'll shape it all up again, and then each page will be addressed. Each verb. Everything. 
But right now, it is printed and sitting next to me. With its document clips holding it together, and little flags for each chapter. It feels like a new kitten. I'm amazed. I've completed long projects before. But never one that meant to me what this one does. 
So much will need to go into it again. It will take on a different tone in parts, that I know. By the end I figured out a slightly different pitch for the whole thing. 
I don't know quite what to say. I think I used all my words.


This was true, too, all of it.  It has taken so much in terms of edits, and to really give it the right polish, it needs to be edited along with the new project in a fusion edit of solar magnetitude.  I need a residency in zero gravity to acheive what I hope to with these works.  


I'm finishing up the next book length thing I'm writing and I never expected it either, though it is important.  This is an important work for me.  The most important I've ever done.  I don't know how I know it, I do. I got an idea today that was so interesting and sad I was frightened, just by the idea.  It will make the core of the segment of this work that very well might be the best I produce.  Head lice.


I think I've willed this into existence somehow, I've imagined it, and just the thought of it has somehow made it so. The odd fact that many of the things I wrote about began to happen around me confuses me.  It is like watching an interesting movie.  Only, one that makes you wonder if you've lost your mind!  


Interesting fiction comes from the brink.  And also, read today Hemingway thought to work best a person needs to be in love.

Gloria

Had a glorious hour reading the Times and drinking a cup of coffee.  This is a good thing a person can do, to feel happy in life, a little bit.
Want to write in Latin, in dead languages, to understand germs of words.  This is the phrase I read this morning that makes me think interesting things: omnis cellula e cellula. All cells rise from other cells.  I think the front matter of the new book will include that.
Keep reading through the elegy for my friend.  I am not sure that when I read it out I will be able to do it.  I know I will - I can get through it, I think, but it is a loaded work for me.  Grace gives gifts of time that teaches context.  That's what I keep thinking.
I will edit now, and shape.  Like a sculptor.  You think a work is alright, then read it with cold eyes and it needs something.  So that is what I'll do.  Shaping.  Endlessly shaping.  Waiting for the right time to strike with the next one, the next idea, which is right under the surface now, I can feel it.  Sort of makes me feel crazy til it is born.
I've abandoned the plan for this past week, the monastic plan.  I'm no monk.

Devoted

I used to be a shell of a person, because I was afraid to be myself.  I didn't express myself.  Creating makes a person fearless.  I am glad to have that.
As I process the loss of the best friend I had for all the years I was an full time mother, I keep my heart open to new realizations.  Whatever it was to give you the hope to keep going, she lost.  I feel more hopeful than ever.  I am glad for that.
I miss her.  I always will.

No More Doing THIS to YOURSELF

When people say things that hurt my feelings, I never respond appropriately, if there is even an appropriate response.
My mother said things that made me feel very bad yesterday, that hurt my feelings very much.  And I got mad and she knew, but then again - she didn't know.
She didn't know that it takes the smallest bit of confidence in myself that I've struggled to build and it crumples that.  She didn't know that all those dangerous fears and old anxieties that lead me to bad places - boom - she throws me right back into those.
At least she did.  I could not get motivated yesterday and I'm struggling today.  Thoughts of - you aren't good enough, get a better job with health insurance, get married so somebody will take care of your ass - the things she SAID keep running through my mind.
But no.  I can't let myself do this.  I felt sad about it.  It hurts not to have their support.
I am looking in the mirror today - I need nobody's blessing.

Magical Thinking

Tonight, I'm thinking nutty things.
If I subscribed to the New York Times and The New Yorker and maybe The Paris Review, I'd be smarter, right?  I'd be able to talk about things.  You know, things.  Little snippets of things, and then people would ask, well, where did you hear about that?  I'd be all - in the Times.  Clearly.  Because most people that live directly in line with a Boston Market dumpster are the Times leading demographic.
If I lost ten more pounds, I'd be happier.  I've done this before.  I've whittled myself down to nothing and then been shocked to find that while people pay me attention and say, aren't you just the littlest thing, I grow increasingly, hysterically afraid of food and become totally abnormal.
If somebody loves me, then I'm worth more.  I guess people theoretically do love me.  I sometimes hear people say that, the sentiment, I love you.  But I feel like I should be in the cupcake dress with a veil on the head and a diamond on the finger belonging to somebody, the mother of their french speaking twins, and then!  Then I'll be happy.
Or something ultra nuts - if I am ridiculously nice then better things will happen.  Like when this lady wanted to take advantage of me and have me edit for her super cheap and I can't - I had to stick to my guns on price - and then I became so afraid that in telling her that, I was condemning myself to be rejected forever with my own writing.
But I'm trying to be real here - being a super thin and well read person that somebody loves enough to marry who is overly nice sounds great on paper - but being myself has to be enough.  Somehow this eating disordered, manic, friendly, sort of selfish, sometimes vain, under informed, unattached, magical thinker has to just be enough.
So stop your ifs, Rachel, and get back to work.

A "good" rejection

Personal rejections are good and this one is the best of all, so far, that I've gotten.

"Engaging and clever structure, excellent ending prose, however, lacks characterization, narrative arc, and overall strength as a piece.  Try us again!"

That's no acceptance.  But I'll take it.  Engaging and clever, with excellent ending prose.  Excellent, huh?  I'll just ignore all the stuff I don't like about this or disagree with, and enjoy that - excellent prose.

I'm going to send this market more work.  They pay well.

And the rejected piece has wonderful characterization that is subtle, which befits the style of the work overall, and sadly, the reader that rejected this wasn't adept enough to catch how finely it was constructed, on the whole.

The Greatest Days

Today has been one of the greatest days of my life.
It has been quiet.  I woke, read the paper, watch the sunlight on the porch of this place, drank tea, ran errands, drank more tea, then read my new collection in its entirety.  It is the first time I've ever read my work and really and truly loved it.  It isn't perfect yet, but this is the closest I've ever come to what I want to do as a writer.
I read all day.  The work is nearing 200 pages now, and it is dense.  It like the individual parts, but together, the way the thing moves matches the idea of it, in my mind.  This doesn't usually happen.
When the sun started fading in the early evening, I watched a cat come to the porch and sit.  I felt the same as the cat.  For once, I didn't feel like I needed to hunt and pounce.  I was content to sit still and watch as the night came closer to me.
I have a new vision for my life now.  This is the clearest vision I've ever had.  I'm unafraid of the task of moving mountains.  I'm unafraid.
All those moments I felt inadequate?  All those times I felt stupid, ungainly, simple, or crazy?  Those times were teachers in this school of self.
Something inside of me is changing.
Tomorrow night, back at my apartment, back in my normal life, I'm not worried this will all slip away and I'll fall into the same melancholy and anxious doubt.  The new vision I have for my life is coming.  If not now, then soon.
I won't doubt it again.

Clean

Today the goals are sharp and focused. Not worrying about an imaginary life or a future life.  Will transfer that dreamy anxiety to my characters maybe.  Today, will nail down several potential fiction samples, and begin to polish them.  List-making, planning, editing, and maybe a little new writing today.  Will try to accomplish loads!
Will stay clean in eating.  No cheating, not even if somebody else offers me something yummy.  I'm a monk, I have to remember, before I'm swinging for chandeliers again.   

Where do you come from?

Memories are strange.  I think light is part of my memory bank.  Staying in this bungalow so powerfully reminds me of Winter Garden and the tiny bungalow there, my old life.  How many times did I sit and try to cobble something from nothing, sit and write with no hope the writing would ever go anywhere?  How many times did I sit alone as the light faded, and then was dark?
That was a time when I had a "home" that really was a home, with wood floors and creaks and smells and shadows dancing on the plaster walls.  A dog in the yard.  Babies sleeping in my arms.  The smell of bread baking in the kitchen and bowls of soup.  Life. Routine.
I can't remember it that well, what it was like going to bed with my husband, waking up.  It is a rush of memories that stand out because of their horror.  The fights, the unwashed dishes, the tiny space, the piles of laundry, the loneliness.  Only certain moments really stand out, beautiful or terrible, in life's run.
But this is different, too.  What would it be like to have a bungalow of my own?  Tea and a pet.  The writing, of course, mainly.  And even the New York Times delivered daily.  Sweaters and throw blankets and book shelves, built in to the walls.  That might be a nice life.  Something to shoot for, I guess.
Need to summon up something to do some good writing.  It's hard sometimes.

Arachnologists and Anarchists, oh my

Me this morning, at the Kerouac House in Orlando.
Imagine if your life was all about something like studying spiders.  There are tons of spiders to study, and they are complex and elegant things, but this life is so removed from what I do, it is hard for me to imagine it.  I like to imagine a dusty, white haired type in thick glasses and a thicker sweater.  I don't know why I think these arachnologists would live in England, but I do.  Only, they go on expeditions, to, like, Costa Rica.
It's likely good to be an arachnologist.
Now, to be an anarchist has perks, too.  They don't often involve travel to Costa Rica, I think, generally.  But, who knows?
When you are an anarchist there are no rules.
In fiction, there are very few rules to me now.  I have a list of about 5 specific constraints for my work (subject matter I don't care to ever write about, and qualities that I wish to be absent from my work) and that's what I'm doing now.  That's it.  The rest of it constantly evolves, and I love that.  I'm doing things with my fiction now that I wouldn't have dreamed of doing a year ago.  To bring in more experimentation has been rewarding on some levels.  I just hope it doesn't prove tedious to read.
The cleanse continues to move along.  I think it is opening up my mental channels.  I ate very little yesterday.  Pretty much just teas, though they were sweetened with agave.  I feel extra clear headed this morning.

Quiet

This is what my mornings look like, when I sit to write.
I love mornings, before the sunrise, on a rainy day, when the light is so dim it seems that it won't come again, ever.  I remember so many mornings in Virginia, writing through the most agonizing heartbreak of my adult life, staring at the bare limbs of the trees and the near absence of light.  And every morning it was the same: dim winter light, a mug or two of coffee, and me typing away at it.  I remember the feeling that I was doing work that would change my life, and I was, in a way.  That act of sitting down each morning gave me something, made me keep going.  I'd relive memories I wouldn't wish on anyone, and I'd cry sometimes writing the project.  I became very sick, because the project hurt so much to write.  To write that work, I had to keep myself in that pain, and at one point, nearly starving to death and going absolutely mad, I stopped.  I told myself that someday, when I was well, I'd go back to it.  I don't know how I knew that things would get better, but they did.  I guess.  I still have the work I did, printed and clipped.  I wrote a scene under a bare light bulb that still gives me chills to read.  That book is the last book I'll write, I already know.  I know the plot,  and the characters, but it is the last book. The light, though, dim light, makes me think of it.
Today, I'll try to keep adding in the layers to the new story I'm working on.  This new story isn't as dense as the two I've just written (those two are DENSE) and I'll be happy to have another working draft of something.  If I'm very careful with my time, I might be able to both write a new story this weekend and do a tremendous amount of editing.
As far as the cleanse is going, I've got great energy again.  I'm sleeping quite deeply, and that feels good.  For the first week I needed an unusual amount of sleep and it made me nervous, because I hate wasting time sleeping.  But now, the sleep need is coming back to my favorite, the six hour range.  I feel good in the days.  The sugar cravings have abated.  I have some hunger but not much.  I feel pretty good now, in general.  Also, the terrible sadness I had the first week is lessening.  I was almost afraid I was sliding into a depression.  It was just the adjustment to clean living.  An interesting thing, I feel less congested with mucous, throughout the body.  My body feels more optimized already.

Do Your Work

In a picture of a person sitting in front of the sea with a sun nearing the horizon, it isn't evident, unless you know where they are, if it is sunrise or sunset.  I like the thought of that.
I wish I could sit by the sea for any part of today.  Instead, I need to get caught up on day job stuff.  It will be a long one.  It should be okay, though. I'm not worried.  I'll drink tons of tea and have time to think, and have time where I'm too busy to think.  I like those times well enough.
I'm editing a little bit this morning, and then thinking about what needs to happen next on the application process.  I have two full days off and need to be productive this weekend.  I have two "big" applications to do in the next two or so weeks.  They both require long samples of my work.  I'm not sure what to send, though I'm leaning to the newest work.  It is likely the strongest.  So this weekend will be an analysis of where I am, with that project, up to this point, and how to best sharpen the work. Then I'll apply, heart in throat, as always.  I should also hear back from one residency by late November.  It's driving me mad, the waiting.
A cold front is coming and I am glad.  I am hoping the cold air and the change of season feel helps me to concentrate.
There are so many wishes I have right now for my life.  But what can I do?
Do your work, kid.  Do you work.

Process as Life/Life as Process

I love November light.  It makes me think of Merton or Ginsberg.  Holy. Holy. Everything is Holy.
Yesterday, I was completely inspired by a friend.  An concept that seemed impossible for so long and loomed large and impossible was solved so simply that it floors me.  Absolutely floors me.
But that is the strange thing about connections, how they can drive a person forward.
My process for the writing has changed in the last few years.  Now I think more before I ever write, write, then shape, then edit, then refine.  It works for me, it seems.  I don't think of the plot of anything, no specific writing elements - I think of theme.
In this new work I've written about love in different ways.  Sometimes it is gentle, sometimes it is based in mutual need, sometimes it is one-sided and obsessive.  The romantic relationships (so easy for readers to identify with) aren't what this work is about.  Romantic love is what it is (and how great it can be) but those relationships are just bridging/climbing elements.  Deep, less changeable love is like side rails of a ladder, giving it the height, lifting you off the ground.  The rungs of the ladder (the romantic entanglements) are simply what we use in the climb.  I'd love for "romantic love" to be the side rails.  Maybe I'm too much of a realist.  Maybe I've seen too many things.  Maybe I'm not hopeful enough.  I wish I were like Cinderella or something, waiting for a Prince.  I wait, but I know a little too much to think the glass slipper fits.
I am not done with my thoughts on it, but that's where I'm starting.
It makes me think interesting things about what people do to each other.

Beautiful

November makes sense to me this year.  The way that the days shorten makes sense this year.  My own increasing fatigue going into the end of the year is mounting, as well.  I'm exhausted, but feel quite alive.  This weekend I needed to ruminate, I think, in feelings.  I have a glut of feelings.
I talked to a friend and realized that these feelings will resolve.  It is hard, of course, this new state I'm in - where everything is suspended.  I don't know what will happen next.  I don't think I'm going to be in the same place next year at this time.  Wherever I am, I know everything will be okay.  This is a full out rally of the heart I'm engaging in, with help from the brain.  This life is the proof of my will.  I am strong willed.
I finished the initial draft of another part of the whole of the project today.  That makes 40K words now.  That number is shocking to me.  Two thirds done, in five of the most tumultuous months of my adult life.  I have two more months and am coaxing the rest of it.  I have all thirteen working titles.  I have the framework.  I understand much more about the project.  The remainder takes shape.
I hold my breath sometimes, afraid to hope, but more afraid not to hope.
November, what do you bring to me?

Other

Everyone OTHER than me.  That is how I feel right now.  Like everyone else is doing something I'm not, or knows some kind of secret for happiness.  I don't know. It's really a silly thought.  But that's how I feel today.
Like a step-cousin at a family reunion.  Or a clearance candy after a holiday.
I like purposefully removing myself from the dominant culture.  I don't like sitting around wondering what happens next.
I guess the appropriate step would be to make a good decision and make something happen.

Moment of Profound Clarity

I hoped that in this physical and life detox that in the quiet that came out of it, my thoughts would begin to line up again, and I'd start making some forward progress.
This just happened!
I am meditating on a new story.  The title came to me the other night, when I was sleeping in a room that was once Jack Kerouac's.  To write that sounds somewhat strange, but it is true.  I was lucky enough to be invited to do this and the memories of the night will stay with me.
This new story is very pivotal to my new work. And this work is so vastly complex that to manage it, sometimes I feel so overwhelmed.  I break it into pieces for the time being.  For this story, which is a nice departure from some of what I've lately written, this story explores something beautiful that happens between two people.  It ties into the idea of the periodic table - which elements might bond with others, and the building blocks for everything lined up into rows.  It also deals with the chemistry of a favorite drink.  I am trying now to understand the process of the story, the way it needs to move, and how best to tell what needs to be told about these two people.  It is fun to brainstorm this out.
But I just had a moment where I felt like I was able to explain something about all the body of my work - taking for instance the stance of The Scientist and putting it in conflict with The Poet and as they endeavor to explain everything and nothing, what comes next?
There are so many things that I wonder about, and sometimes I feel like I stare into the very center of all things, and nothing.  This is a strange, wonderful thing. In the center of all of this - life is different than I'd imagined and I am glad to know it.  My work right now is deliberate and I understand a good deal about it, but at best, I stand and hold strings and I know instinctively the strings connect to helium balloons, but the specifics of the balloons I don't yet know.  And I'm glad not to know.

Incrementally Better

The first days of any detox are hard.  I've been drinking and eating sugar and unhealthy food for a few months, hence the physical part of the detox.  My body is trying hard to adjust.  The first two days I was very down.  Without coffee and energy drinks, I actually felt depressed.  It was like the sparkle in life was gone.  Wednesday was better, and yesterday better still.  I didn't find myself so down, and so dragged out.  The sugar cravings are still there for sure! I looked at a recipe for quiona/coconut/agave rice pudding that I have the ingredients on hand for, and then reminded myself, this is not about that.  This is not about replacing one vice for another.  Agave coconut concoctions can be just as bad when overdone.  When eating because we want something sweet so we don't think about what is bothering us, or feel something that hurts.
I'm big on that - not feeling things that hurt.  I don't like it.  I've got a strong protective streak in me, for others as well as myself. I usually guard carefully against things that hurt.  Unless I'm really down, then I go into very negative thought patterns that make everything hurt worse for while.  Maturity gives deliverance from that, to a certain extent.
I have some time to myself this weekend.  I'm going to watch the sunset.  I'm going to study the periodic table of the elements.  And I'm going to walk - really, really far.  I'm going to let go of some of the swirling thoughts I carry.  It should be good.

Ready for Something

I've been quiet the past few days.  It's been a partly jarring and partly calming these last few days.  I made the soup that I hope sustains me for a couple of months, a giant batch.  It tastes good.  I've been drinking my tea, burning my incense, sleeping eight hours, staying very focused, and being gentle on myself.
I've had this fantasy of what my life could be like, theoretically at least, for years.  It would be just me, soup making, tea, and a window to see a beautiful place.  Sometimes I want the view to be a forest, and sometimes I want it to be the ocean.  In this particular version of my life, it is always late fall, bleeding into winter.  I like bare limbed trees.  I also like the Northern Atlantic in winter. I don't want to be alone forever, but maybe mornings into the early afternoon.  My ideal evening is another story.
When I think about it, I start to contrast it to the way life is now.  I am mainly alone, except for work and the various functions I'm going to for writing.  But there isn't the sense of peace I'm looking for.  I'm not sure why that is.  It could be the pile in the corner of the room marked "unresolved" and me trying to ignore the pile.
But this thing i'm doing, not buying things, not eating much, increasing my focus - all of it is to the end of figuring things out.  
What is in the pile? The pile is full of feelings I don't understand.  Or if I do understand, I'm troubled by them.  I've done loads of therapy and I've learned all kinds of techniques for these things - avoidance of uncomfortable things is one thing I know I do.  Internalization is the other.  I don't want to thing about things so I ignore them, then in ignoring them, I make myself angry, and I don't express that anger.  I turn it on myself.
At some juncture in your life, you want to stop making the same type of mistake you've made over and over again.  In the quiet of these upcoming months, when I'm not going to engage in any distraction techniques, I want to get to the root of this.  Why is it better for me to direct my anger inward, why is better for me to avoid things, why is it better to even sabotage myself, rather than risk trying hard to succeed.
I know part of the answer already.  Because to succeed with what I want to do, and to be the person I want to be is so important to me, that to risk trying and failing is devastating.
Today I will meditate on a fear of failure.    

Changes and then more changes

Everything is falling into place.  Woke this morning, burned incense, and listened to chanting, then to Bach.  By Wednesday I think I will be in full tilt with this plan.  Ready to do the work I need to do, and ready to move ahead with life.
Early this morning I walked outside in my bare feet, to the sidewalk.  Fallen leaves were yellow, and blowing a little - a rare deciduous tree in Florida.  I smelled the leaves going back to dirt, decomposing, and I felt glad.  It is a season of farewell.
Will remained focused on listening to the universe, instead of talking.  

New and Old

So these are the last days, before everything changes, and my new monasticism goes full force.  I'm planning.  Researching even.  Maybe binging a little - why yes, I will have the grilled cheese at the diner because come Monday, no more diners. . and that's how I'm thinking.
But, everything is changing.  I've had constant company for weeks, and that is going away.  On Monday.  I've been living and enjoying it, but the time for that is passing.  I don't know an apt metaphor.  All I think of come up short.
I'm trying to imagine how my life will be, come Monday.  I already know, partly at least. I know it will be quiet here, very quiet.
I'll have everything I need in, so I won't have to buy anything, or go anywhere.  Think of the time that a person spends running errands of that sort.  I'm also doing little things, like making sure I have financial stuff planned for, like bills added to the online banking site I use.  I want to be able to track all of that.  But I don't want to spend any energy on it during this new phase.  I want all my available energy for this concentration and purification.  I'm making lists again today, and a calendar.
I'm hoping that by the end of the year, that mentally and physically I'm in a new place by Jan 1, 2011.
Components to work on, upcoming meditations about new, virtue-driven life:
Concentration
Cleanliness
Transcendence
Obligation
Organization
Slowness/Peace
Spiritual components of philosophical studies

Meditation: "Authentic"

I don't find monasticism that compelling, but I guess sometimes it is necessary. I suppose I need to figure things out for myself, because I'm a little lost.
What are we trying for, here?  To be a real person, doing real things?
Last week I had this conversation, and everything lit up, "And show her what she's won . . ." -game show Technicolor blinking illumination.  I felt like a fraud.  It was the first time in a very long time.
I try to be "authentic" as in, accurate in the representation of the facts.  It isn't even hard for me.  I am honest to a stupid degree.  I share too much.
But last week, this conversation has lingered for me.  The person I talked to seemed to think I had a very high level of dissatisfaction with my life. Also, that I wasn't doing my work in the best possible way.  Maybe even, that I hinder my own progress.  Maybe even, inauthentic.
Really?
I was mad for a few days.
Then thought about it more.
Then a little more.
I know how I feel about my creative pursuits, and my life to that end.  I know what I put into it.  The outward expression of that has to be real.  Maybe the disappointments I have had on this quite long road of trying to be better at what I do have made me seem, I don't know, less exuberant about the prospects.  Who knows?
All I know is I try.  I try and try and keep trying.
Then I got this idea - what if I stripped away everything in my life that wasn't part of the process of my creative life?  What if I subtracted everything?  What if I committed myself fully, completely to my work until the end of 2010?  What if I worked every second of the day that I wasn't working my day job?  What if I secluded myself, took away all distractions, rejected purposefully the dominant culture all around me?
What if I didn't go into a store from now until the end of the year?  What if I didn't buy anything except the gas to get me back and forth to work?  What if I instead of worrying about turkey and gravy and Christmas lights I kept myself on the path?
What if I didn't really drink? Or dance?  What if I didn't worry about anything or anybody extraneous?
I can do these things, you know.
I made a list of all the supplies I need to take me into the New Year.  I thought about being the change I seek.  I thought about being myself.  I thought about being real.  
What is my aim?  I know that.  To craft work that resonates, that provokes, and that endures.  That's what I am trying to do.
For the foreseeable future, everything I do will be for that purpose.  Nothing else.  The well lit moment of seeing myself as somebody else did, as a person that sabotaged, that was more talk than action - it disgusted me.
And from this point on, unless it is for reasons of development, I am not talking about what I do, I'm not making a point of conversation.
I'm making myself into a kind of monk.  I'm taking a vow of silence.  This will be my forum to explore the process, and to see myself change.
From now forward, the work and the living are inseparable. The work isn't a python that is squeezing me.  It isn't the weight of gravity pressing into me.  It is now my bones, my skeleton.  It is holding this whole pile of flesh up, and goddammit, that's that.    
Slipping on the robes.