Stripping to Aerosmith

My whole point in writing this blog is to make myself write. I write a lot, but not every day. I want to change that.  The more I write, the better I get. The better I get, the faster the book gets done. The faster the book gets done, the sooner I get to move on to the next adventure in my life which will probably be another book and then this starts all over again.  

  

This morning I ran into trouble. I didn’t know what to write. Correction. I knew what I wanted to write. I just was afraid to write it. I wanted to write about why I haven’t had a drink in almost a month, except for a free margarita two weeks ago. I already had a fancy title for the piece and everything: In support of discipline. But in order to write the piece, I needed to get to the heart of some pretty personal things. I’m not sure I want to go there. It’s a pretty black area. 

All margaritas should be free and delicious.

Plus, honest to God it’s an awful title. Plus, it’s a humongous lie.  I’m not that disciplined. Evidence: The two-pound empty Nutella jar in the recycling bin. I opened it on Monday. You know, just to take a spoonful. It was gone by Wednesday. Evidence: My living room sofa. You could stuff a pillow with all the cat fur glued to it.  If I’m so disciplined, why did I eat Nutella for breakfast three days straight? Why is my house such a pit? 

Hello lover.

Now I'm itching to vacuum the furniture. That’s a terrible way to spend a gorgeous summer day.  I needed to get out of the house before I did something stupid. I headed to the rail trail, three miles of shaded packed dirt.  

  

It was already 89 degrees by the time I started running, so I took it even easier than I usually do. I turned up my shuffle, turned off my brain and let the thoughts cascade in.  

Four songs in to my run, Aerosmith’s “Take Me to the Other Side” arrived. I’m just passing the mill on the Holden side of the trail, and I’m breathing well and my legs are strong.  I’m moving at a nice clip despite the steady uphill from West Boylston to Holden. Plus, I’m loving this song’s brassy strip club beat.

Loving you has got to be

like the devil and the deep blue sea.

 Yup. That’s you, running. Sometimes you are so irritating. Other times I love you so much. You make me crazy.  I wish I could quit you. I chuckle at my own stupid joke, only it sounds like a grunt. 

It hits me that I have the same relationship with writing: classic love-hate. If you want to be a good writer, you have to be honest. Right now, honest is not where I want to be. Honest is an awful place to be right now. I hit replay when the song ends.   

My mama told me there’d be days like these

And man she wasn’t fooling.

The memoirist Dani Shapiro spoke at a conference I attended a few weeks back in Taos, NM. She talked about that tenuous tightrope walk between respecting privacy and getting your story out there. What do you tell? What do you hold close? She had her mother’s therapist review her last manuscript because she wanted to make sure she didn’t offend her mom. The therapist said she’d written quite generously and beautifully. She assured Dani that her mother would love it. The book came out and this is what Dani’s mother said:  “You have ruined my life.”  

You blinded me with love and yeah it opened up my eyes.

Loving you has got to be like the devil and the deep blue sea.

Running is like that. You can be on a roll for days. You can have a whole perfect training season.  And on race day you go out there confident and ready and just knowing you’re going to get yourself a personal record and you get cut down at the knees instead.

Or maybe one day you go for a routine checkup and your blood test is off.

My conscious has got to be my guide.

Take me to the other side.

I see the silver gate  on the Holden side. It  marks the end of mile three, my turnaround point. And that’s when the realization hits me too. The big catharsis? At the turnaround point? Is this the universe calling to me?

The reason I’ve been avoiding my book is because I need to expand upon one of the characters. I need to write more about how this beloved character gets very ill. That’s one of the things we talked about in Taos at my novel workshop. When John Dufresne, a novelist I admire mightily, said I should consider doing this, I knew in my heart that he was right, because I'd been writing around the illness for a long time. Facing the truth is hard.  

I rest my forehead against the cool metal barrier and I can’t help it. The sides of my mouth start pulling down.

“It’s not always easy, is it?”  It’s a man’s voice.

I raise my head and pretend I’m wiping sweat off my face.  It’s an elderly man and his wife slowly strolling down River Road.

I nod in agreement, then turn and head for home.