movement

Got together with a friend and colleague yesterday to talk about our current writing goals, and yes, consume some whiskey. She tells me that she hopes to finish her current chapter by the end of the semester, and I tell her that I hope to do aerobic exercise three times a week, yoga twice a week, and to write something, even a few sentences, everyday. Sentences unrelated to my dissertation. Just to get my fingers moving. Just to get my body moving, to clear my mind, to begin creating a calm and vibrant space in which I can begin to trace the contours of This Stupid Project (title in progress). My friend understands and approves of these as appropriate writing goals.

I am nearly, nearly ABD, so naturally my real goal is to just forfuckssake write a draft of my proposal, finally. I am so close, you see, I just need to figure out the whole shape of my project and write it up to the different likings of three or five different faculty members and in the process continue. reading. so much shit. But I am also so very stuck. I have been stuck for so long that it is hard to even imagine the way to becoming unstuck.

I wrote these words down yesterday:

I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to think about it . . . We do not write in order to be understood, we write in order to understand. - C. Day Lewis

To remind myself that I don't need to have everything figured out when I sit down to write. To remind myself that in the act of writing I will discover the areas that need more thought and exploration, to remind myself that I am not yet meant to be An Expert.

missing

In a journal, newly purchased, I write that I need to start writing again, that I need to get back into the habit of observing in words. I read this phrase in Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway. I am on page four of this book. I am on page four or ten or fifteen of so many books, discarded in stacks on tables and shelves and floors around my apartment.

I have an afternoon free. I do not write my dissertation. I do not read more on x and y and c topics in philosophy. I do not even read about how to write a dissertation, or how to find the motivation to write a dissertation. I read a book on narrative craft in hopes of finding some motivation or inspiration to write anything at all today. I stop reading on page four. I write down that I need to get back into the habit of observing in words, that I need to start writing again. I open this page. I type that I need to get back into the habit of observing in words.

There was a time when I thought in prose, in narrative language, and poetry. When I was a storyteller. When my inner voice was at heart that of a writer.

She is gone, but before I can write that the question is there, Where did she go?

I hear this question in v's voice because it is a question that she asks me all the time: If you are not fully here, if you are not in your body, where are you? Where do you go?

I never have an answer to this question; it is always nowhere or I don't know.