Campfire Writing: Summer Session 12:30 Campfire

I offer you two related writings of the same and different vein.

One of starting and stopping and critiquing and starting and oh-so vulnerable to stopping-and-thank-goodness-I-didn’t.
 
Please read along.

I have the privilege of leading the Summer Session of WritingCamp right now – and oftentimes when I have such a blessing I land in a funk – it is the oddest phenomenon.

I feel completely pumped up and then, c-r-a-s-h… and something I wouldn’t have admitted in the past.

I write, though, always, and from mid-day writing camp session camp session prompt I got this:
 

When I touch this treasure from the Earth I understand how tokens of love offer themselves up for love’s sake alone. They offer themselves up, shouting a silent, “Here – here I am!” and those who are aware lift them up and out of their homes.

Sometimes a photo is taken, sometimes a poem is written and the token is returned.

 Other times, like this time, the token is plucked from its home and brought in Coryn’s baby-faced purse across the dry desert to Dagny’s and set on an outdoor table to my purse to the lip of this potted plant, another treasure from earth that I, unfortunately, neglected.

Does the earth know, when she offers up her treasures, that someday I will write her gift into an entirely different life?

 I witness creation: I write it down. I would tell people I lead that is enough, more than enough, but what I tell myself is different. Is it enough? Is it?

 Later today I wrote a poem that started its life to be about the plant.
 
WITHERED

Today I have failed

I wipe away the ethereal spider webs

I pull away the withered leaves that

Once thrived and held their greenness high

My work is to love the world and

I failed at loving a plant

How on Earth can I love

The world when I forget

To water a plant, how did

God dare trust me with a child

A dog a home a lawn a poem?

 


 

Last night I got almost through the entire day without writing my 750words. I freaked out at nearly 11:00.  I rambled on spewing words such as “I haven’t written my 750words! I need to write them, oh my gosh! I am on an 86 day streak, I can’t miss a day now, oh my gosh”.

 

Cameron looked at me and said, “Why do you have to write. For bragging rights?”

 

The NO burst from my mouth before I even thought about it. I sat at the keyboard and wrote like a tornado of language.

“I can't believe I almost forgot about 750words. That is almost crazy but my mind was so fried, I am half way not surprised.

And Cameron doesn't get it. Bragging rights, he said, you want bragging rights. No, its a matter of discipline. I have done this for 86 consecutive days because I am disciplined and love to write. Period.

Enough said except for when it isn't.”

It is interesting. Cameron's bragging rights comment last night almost stopped me from writing today as I questioned myself, "Why do I write on 750words? Is it to brag about how consistently I write? Is it to compare and come out favorably?"

 

Is it to feel shitty about myself because I declare to be recovering from competitiveness but lo and behold, I am the queen of competition?

 

I am lost and I think about taking an aspirin, even as I am trying to minimize my aspirin or tylenol intake and cure my aches with exercise and diet. It is so interesting to watch my spirit tumble, kind of like when I was suffering (I almost said wallowing!) in depression and I would go to appointments with blow by blow clinical accounts of my own symptomology, interested in self study.

 

Am I a self-indulgent twit or interested in life self observer?

 

I get up from the keyboard to consider.

 

I putter about and no brilliant answer shows up on my page. No pithy phrase or interesting poetic aside appears.

 

I write because I write. Having goals to step into with my writing help me show up at the page, not because I will make money from writing those 750words, but because I know consistency and discipline continue to hone my skills.

 

To me it is like saying, “Do you breathe for bragging rights?” I write because I write. Period. And I love challenging myself. It feels good to challenge myself and then reach to the challenge.

Cameron knew as soon as he said those words he had struck a chord. I don’t think either of us knew how deep the strike went.

I can feel, though, the power of such a critique. Words like this are words that stop the fragile among us from continuing to write or sing or dance or sew or think in a “different than most others” sort of way.