When I start writing about writing, it is time to go to Walmart. I do not need dishwasher pods. I need to get back in front of the fire hydrant.
When I write about writing, it means I have curled too tight. I flatter myself that I am a nautilus, but I am a salad shrimp. I return to the larval state.
Remain here, and I will become a fist. All I’m holding is my own space. I roll dried lentils between my fingers and assure myself they are diamonds. I fancy myself clever. I need to be washed in the world.
A trembling man once stood outside a funeral home and asked me how anyone can be “a writer.” I regretted answering his first question honestly. “What do you do for a living?” Talk is safest when it’s smallest. No one needs to get naked when everyone is dressed in black.
I had given him the true answer. Now I had to give the only answer.
“You stand in front of the fire hose.”
He knew more than I did, as proven by his trembling. I forget to quiver. I wake in the night, giddy to capture comets. I scribble them fast. I wake in the morning and read them, just terrible tidbits breaded in ego. I clench my fists and crumple my scrawl.
I hide, and I dry like jerky. All my aloe plants have shriveled. The keyboard hisses like a manhole cover. I have no access. All I can write about is writing. Remain here long enough, and I cannot even write about writing. Semicolons slander me. I apply exclamation points like tourniquets. I sound like I am trying to talk myself out of being terrified, which is accurate.
I am not the creator. This is equally astonishing every time I read the headline, which confirms that I am the simpleton. This means there may be hope. This means I am still foolish enough to believe the world is wet and large. I can go spelunking in suburbia.
The first step is leaving the desk, rising from the chair whose buttons have all fallen off. I skulk the kitchen. I make the list of what I lack, the most honest words of the day. It is bullet points about iodized salt and speckled beans. It is my permission slip for a trip to the sea.
I summon the long-suffering hatchback with its stickers. Fins Up. Love God, Love People. The neon moon and the yellow troll would not peel off the bumper if I tried.
I ride and wonder how I have ever written. Where do full pages come from, stories that swim faster than I can keep up? How have I ever done it? I have never done it. I have never believed I control the flow, but I am child enough to trust that it will keep lapping me up. When I am reduced to writing about writing, I remember I am dust. There is no guarantee. There is only the appointment with the buttonless chair.
There is a time to break the appointment and my cross-eyed gaze. I ride and squint into the spray. Uncurling is no assurance of inspiration, but minnows laugh around my ankles. I put on the radio and wonder if the Beastie Boys safely avoided becoming Beastie Men. I drive past “Dunkard Church Road” and daydream about places holy enough to welcome dry bones and “dunkards.”
I amuse myself, which means I am not out of danger. I hurl myself between humans, and there is hope.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Walmart or a basilica, as long as they are here. They are coming from funerals and softball games. They are jaunty in plaid or astringent with excess, earrings stretching to their shoulders. They are stacking boxes of White Castle Sliders and reading their fortunes on the price tags of plastic pearls.
They are so sacred, I stagger. I remember I can breathe underwater.
If I am brave, I talk. I uncurl. I tell the prophet in jeggings that her earrings give me courage. She doesn’t know how to respond, so she laughs, and I laugh. I ask the revelation in the frozen aisle if Jimmy Buffett was scientifically accurate. He gulps my bait. “Is it worth every damn bit of sacrifice to get a cheeseburger in paradise?” He laughs. He confirms.
If I am unfurled, I stop talking. I watch a woman kiss her daughter’s head many times in rapid succession. I lean closer to the mystery pushing a mop. He is singing. I think it is “Thunder Road.” He is extending a love offering. He is not looking at me, and he is not looking at himself. He is not waiting to be received.
A man in the cereal aisle woke this morning and determined to make his entire body a testament. He has even surrendered his pants to the Philadelphia Eagles. He is green and polyester and knit into a fellowship. He has something that makes him glad and angry every autumn. Today he is walking his two children – I assume they are his and not rentals of some sort – on telescoping elastic leashes. They are wearing hats with pom poms. I nearly fall to my knees.
I steady myself against an endcap of Honey Buns and Krimpets. They are sticky and steadfast. Treats are two for a dollar, one price for the just and the unjust. I do a flip turn for a world where all can taste the sweet. Shame has not conquered.
There are a hundred ways to dab sparkles on your eyelids. I can buy a blanket that hides my legs in a tail. I can assemble a congress of neon cats with splendorous eyes. They cost six dollars. A boardroom of people decreed that they should be called Booda Boos.
Two women are discussing Fancy Feasts, their carts co-conspiratorial at a right angle. The tiny shrimps smell like sewage, but nothing else can coax old cats out of hunger strike. The women talk of dotage and the long goodbye. I want to tell them they are holy. I want to listen more.
It has so little to do with me, which means there may be hope. The desert monks claimed that sin is always incurvatus in se, turned in on oneself. When I hobble, gnarled and greedy, to a place where everything is affordable, perhaps I am reaching for the glory of God.
I am not the creator, but I am the simpleton, and I am soaked through my skin. I came selfish and dry. The waters are indulgent anyway. My hands are open as starfish. I cannot get back to the buttonless chair fast enough.
I want to go back to the funeral home and apologize for inaccurate reporting. It is not a fire hose. It is not mine. It’s the ocean, and the only option is to peel off your shoes and walk in. You can’t turn back to look at yourself. There are no guarantees. You are not the creator.
