Learning in Circles

During the spring of 2004 I listened primarily to two albums: a collection of Eydie Gorme y Trio Los Panchos followed by one of Patsy Cline's greatest hits. I would hole up with my laptop in a corner of my bedroom and write until my back was sore, cocooned by songs warm and bellowing as church bells.  I gave voice to every little nagging thought, every undeveloped idea, each suggestion given to me by a professor or fellow student.  I was fearless and eager.  It was my first semester at Columbia, and I was serious about becoming a "good writer."  Convinced that if I was impressive enough to someone influential, I could definitely publish a novel before I graduated.

Well, that is obviously not what happened.  Instead, thankfully, I have a lot more life in my pockets than documented "accomplishments."  But, regrettably, I feel that I write with less ease and passion.  My blinders are not as big now.  These days when I write I am more careful with my words, more deliberate about developing my characters' intent, less experimental, and ultimately more hesitant. I am listening to these albums again today and working on grant proposals for my job, wherein I will convince some invisible, power-wielding folks that my agency needs money to prevent the spread of HIV more than someone else's.  Wanting, more than anything, to discuss real-life issues in the way I feel most adept, by stringing them together with hues and timbres that only I can sense.  To return to a place where I can play with language as determinedly as I did that spring.

And I guess what I've come to is that today is a new version of some yesterday 7 or 6 or even 1 year ago, when I was less capable of meeting the grandest expectations I have for myself in this life.  I was way further down my mountain.  I was not as strong.  Not as dexterous, happy, compassionate, in tune with momentousness.  I was overly-concerned with controlling the future, rather I was obsessed with this time that I am currently living.  This now that I could never have anticipated or mapped out the way I believed was possible if only I was organized and ambitious enough.

My friends are completely different people, even if they are in fact the same individuals in many cases.  My relationship with my family has evolved into something I am still not quite in touch with, yet have a growing appreciation and understanding for.  My home is more mine than any other home I've ever lived in.  The love and compassion I am cultivating is bigger than I know how to hold.  And I have never felt so freed by an inability to control what is bigger than myself (though I still struggle with it from time to time).  My dreams are framed by a pulsing and brilliant hope that was always under the surface of my skin, but bogged down with my attraction to severity and worry.

Just yesterday I said that I felt as if I was watching a movie.  That my eyes were simultaneously watching and creating, composing perfect frames of the moments passing in poignant succession.  Sometimes I feel like I should want more and harder, but only because I have never been so at peace before.  I didn't know that spring that working against complacency doesn't have to diminish the ability for contentment.  That, in fact, finding joy in the present moment is the truest measure of success.  That this momentousness I adore so much is exactly what will enable me to write the stories I have never read and always wanted to hear aloud.

There is nothing to run from or towards.  I am only climbing, stretching my muscles, bending my joints, expanding and contracting my lungs and heart valves with the repetitive precision of a windmill or an ant.