This still makes me chuckle.
So here I am in Missouri for my usual interregnum between annual migrations.
You may have noticed that I haven't yet announced where I'll be living in 2015.
I can announce that my original plan was to move to Oaxaca (city),
Mexico. That was my plan all the way up to, maybe, September, and then I
surprised the hell out of myself and decided instead to
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| Shirt on a fence. Mobile, Alabama. August 2023. Credit: Mzuriana. |
Below is what I wrote last year at this time about the word of the year thing. I'm still on the fence about it, but here I am again, nevertheless.
Some years back, I instituted a Word of the Year thing.
Not sure I will continue.
Maybe I'm just over it. Maybe it feels is too contrived. Maybe it was just a way to add content in a lazy-ass way, albeit with sincerity.
While I think about whether to continue the pattern, below are past words of the year:
2018: Courage
2019: Action
2020: Build
2021: Joy
2022: Disciplines
2023: Fear
2024: Migration
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| Coffee, a book, a notebook, and phone. Lalileba, Ethiopia. January 2011. Credit: Mzuriana. |
Ten years later, my struggle is no less.
I enjoy bursts of output, and then sink again into the pillowy softness of input from other people's creativity, to the exclusion of my own.
Available time is not the problem. My available time is no less than it has ever been, but the acquisition of my very first smart phone back in Lafayette, Louisiana, and subsequent off-and-on-again subscriptions to streaming services, opened my door to that thief of time: screen stupor.
I've come to believe that another variable is that somewhere along the way I forgot how much time it takes to write a piece and to process photos, something I did not begrudge, or even think about, in the past, but for some reason - unrealistically - I seemed to have come to believe was too much; that somehow I was too slow. Or something.
So recently I've re-learned this: Writing takes time. The time it takes is intrinsic to the process.
Another recent development: I've subscribed to a couple of podcasts on how writers write, for inspiration. (Yeah, I know. Ironic.)
When out in public, I've also begun to mindfully practice the old art of just sitting in a place and looking around me instead of reaching for my phone. I used to be a good observer. I always liked the title of Peter Drucker's memoir: Adventures of a Bystander.
I have hope.
P.S. After years of boycotting The Atlantic for its intellectual pretensions during the Christopher Hitchens era, while it simultaneously juggled Vanity Fair-like fluffery, I re-upped a few months ago.
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| Mmmm, brains a-sizzlin'. Kutaisi, Caucasus Georgia. Credit: Mzuriana |
Years ago, the Atlantic Monthly (before it devolved into the pseudo-intellectual organ it is now) ran a riveting article
about how religious faith and ethics are two entirely different
biological operations. An individual might have both in spades, or
neither, or be rich in one and poor in the other.
I bring this up because the same idea is probably apt for the creative
process. That is, a person's vision is separate from the discipline one
needs to give light to the vision - to give birth to it.
There is a lot of raw creative material in my head or, in the case of
photos, in my hard drive awaiting distillation. I'm not at all happy
that 2014, especially the second half, saw so little creative output, notwithstanding tremendous amounts of input.
It seems that my brain can focus on only so many things at once. My year
in South Louisiana was filled with new things - both good and
not-so-good - that sucked great swaths of brain energy. Learning to
dance! Starting a new job! Car troubles! A wretched bout with backache.
And more, some of which is none of your beeswax.
If I now know that I can only barely chew gum and walk at the same time, what does this mean to me and my creative life?
What it means is that if I want to push stuff out, then I have to set up the physical time and the brain space
to produce. To effect the latter, I've got to divert my brain-energy
flow to creative thinking from distracted thinking. Otherwise my
creativity is just the snap and crackle without the pop.
In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America.
Some women and men deported from the US also passed through the guesthouse. I've given them pseudonyms.
Some new folks arrived today.
A married couple came up with the first caravan from Guatemala. They'd been deported from Austin, Texas. They believed it best for their two young children, ages three and five, to leave them in safe hands in Austin.
Another man, Juan, originally from Chiapas, arrived. He'd been living in Chicago for a number of years, working for a landscaping company. Deported just last week. Instead of returning to Chiapas, he plans to stay in Mexico City for now, as there are more opportunities here.
A third man, Guillermo, who'd lived in Nevada for more than 20 years, was visiting New York when tapped. He's lived in Mexico City for almost a year now, and plans to move to his own place here in January. Originally from Jalapa in Vera Cruz, he says, smiling: "Yo soy jalapeño." Chuckles.
An ad hoc poem I wrote in some time in some where? An exercise with the Tumblewords Project? No idea. But here it is, about a real-life experience at some dance function, in which I was trying to learn how to dance something. My guess is that it was a contra dance thing.
Two clothespins in his hair.
What am I to make of this?
An eccentricity?
A clever hack?
A genius' forgivable befuddlement?
I can't concentrate on the dance instructions
Which are befuddling enough, like a confounding algebraic word problem about orbiting, colliding bodies on a wooden floor.
I burst into laughter ...
... at the clothespins in that man's hair ... or the Alice-in-Wonderland instructions for the dance?
I don't know.
I wonder ... Can I escape?
Just leave the floor?
Abandon my dance partner? (What's his name again?)
Those clothespins.
In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America.
One of the asylum-seekers became ill, and I wrote this:
So when you are vomiting blood and have no money, what do you do?
In the case of one of my housemates, you go to a pharmacy for a consult - in some pharmacies free and in others, for a nominal fee (but even this is inaccessible if you have no money, so one of your housemates pays the consulting fee for you - about 35 pesos).
The pharmacist takes your vitals (blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and throat check), but no blood, stool, or urine tests.
The pharmacist takes a history from you, considers the possibilities, rules some out, and recommends an endoscopy. Which, of course, is outside your financial reach.
The pharmacist suggests there is an irritation in your esophagus or at another milepost along the gastrointestinal boulevard, and to eat fruits and vegetables, and avoid spicy foods. If still producing blood in two days, do what you can to get that endoscopy.
What could be the cause?
The violent blows to your torso, delivered 10 days ago by fellow caravanners from a different country than yours, who maybe took umbrage at your membership in the caravan's LGBTQI group? Or the cocaine you ingested yesterday evening, even though you've never had such a reaction before? Or stress? Or malnutrition? Or an ulcer? Or a pulmonary issue? Deadly? Or a passing health incident, self-repairing?
Does an affliction care if you are kind and amiable, that you sometimes engage in risky behaviors, are poor, have left all that is familiar to you, and your access to food, shelter, and employment is insecure? No, it does not; it is impersonal.
Maybe there's a biological tipping-point algorithm at play: stress+malnutrition+uncertainty+a beating+cocaine+compromised immune system from the cold virus that's been visiting the house = a crocodile crack on a corporeal byway = vomiting blood.
A truism: Time will tell.
