llbwritesto.me

You can say that now. Because I felt like writing to you. And you decided you felt like reading.

Writing to You

Writing Love, Energy, and Empty Sandboxes

By

Dear      ,

You might remember this. There are people who do.

Five years and four months ago, I quit blogging. I wrote about that at Jane’s. The departure was, to a great degree, about energy—energy I no longer had. And the years have gone by since then, and so much has changed, and so much has not.

What has changed? Read about that, too, at Jane’s.

What has not changed…

I love to write to you. If that’s all I could do, I would probably be quite satisfied. Writers have their ways.

Today I am tired, and all the things I’ve been thinking to share with you are folded into their sleepy little beds in inaccessible parts of my brain. My sandbox is quiet and empty. I think it’s important to go with that. So I’m respecting the absence of energy and sharing someone else’s words with you instead.

She wrote it for me, when she heard I was blogging again. I like to call this “friendship writing.” It’s one of my favorite kinds. Thank you, Maureen, my friend.

Energy is more than E=MC2.

Picture it: the yogi displaying
not one whiff of sweat as she
mind-bends her way to Nirvana;

or the green-eyed poet stringing
i ams among six stanzas she will
later commit to mime and memory;

or the race-walker powering up,
post-workout, on granola bars
created with all-natural ingredients

harvested from her garden of greens
denied such chemical transformations
as might be recalled from the sixties;

or the scientist springing the door
to her media lab, announcing
the antithesis to the synthesis that’s

just come clear; or the once-full-time
blogger envied by all who know
that to read her is to love her both

in and outside the virtual world
that she codes in 1s and 2s before
translating her HTML into terabytes

of prose and poems her fans will
twitter and tweet so long as they
get to play in her sandbox too.

—Maureen Doallas

For you who have come to my sandbox today and found it quieter than you expected it to be, I wish you the ability to listen to your own rhythms and go with them. I wish you, too, a little friendship writing.

As Always,

L.L.

Survivors, Salmon, and Energy

By

Dear      ,

Did you know I’m a survivor? I am.

It’s a long story. No need to go into that here. It’s been written about elsewhere, and so maybe you already know.

To survive, you need to know how to fight. There is a place for resistance. The salmon know this! Oh, how they fight their way upstream, for the sake of survival. They would rather die fighting than die floating in a frictionless place.

You could say I am a very good salmon. I would rather die fighting than floating. (You make the T-shirt, I’ll wear it. Deal?)

What has come less naturally to me is learning to move with the currents. To discern what calls for resistance and persistence, and what calls for letting go.

Yesterday, I saw a body at the side of the road.

In all my years (and at this point, they haven’t been few), I have never seen a body at the side of the road. In fact, besides at the occasional funeral, I have not seen a body anywhere at all. Not on a beach. Not on a woodland trail. Not in my back yard. Nowhere.

Remember the thundersnow? Just a few days after the windstorm, the thundersnow took down even more trees. Many of the roads around here are unpassable. Visibility is less than it could be. Pavements are slippery. People feel out of sorts.

Is that what happened? Did a driver, lost and confused and out of sorts due to one more detour, come whipping around that curve and, in the low visibility, hit a person, who became a body on the side of the road?

I don’t know.

There were a few cars ahead of mine, approaching that bend where the body lay. Likewise, there were a few cars sitting at the rise of the hill, coming from the opposite direction. People were out of their vehicles. The sun was setting, the shadows were long, the world of pines and snow and winding roads was hushed.

I saw someone reach down to touch the body. Maybe to see if life still pulsed. I saw several people gently placing coats, one coat after another, over the motionless form. One person seemed to be on his phone. The look on his face was “911.”

Part of me, the curious part, the horrified part, the I-must-know-if-he-(she? they?)-survive part wanted to stay and continue to watch the story unfold. Part of me wanted to console. But there were many people already on the scene.

I turned the car around. In my rear-view mirror, I saw red lights. Sirens called: life is at stake, life is at stake, life is at stake!

Then my daughter, who was sitting in the passenger seat in a deep silence, and I made our way home, with many detours along the way. We went three towns over, being lost on the winding back roads. We followed the setting sun. We moved with the currents, feeling our way. We were each, I know, hoping the body would be more than a body as darkness came. We were hoping for a survivor.

Though our talk was muted, I noted that it was so remarkable that the people at the side of the road had not tried to move the person. (You can hurt a person irreversibly if you move him when he’s badly injured. Well-meaning people trying to help someone who is physically broken have caused more harm than good by the force of movement at the wrong moment. I’m sure you know this. But I’m not sure my daughter did. I wanted to find the smallest way to console her: smart people had been discerning.)

When to fight? When to float? When to resist? When to move with the currents, and when to move against them?

This is the work of wisdom.

Sitting here, looking out the windows towards a sky filled with quiet sun, after a week of detours and traveling unknown roads, I know what I want more than ever: I want you to survive. And thrive.

So, if you are floating, and that is not going to help you survive, I wish you the option of a necessary fight. Or, if you are fighting, and that is causing you or others more harm than good, I wish you the will to move with the currents. Whatever physics you need today, I want it to be yours.

As Always,

L.L.

Thundersnow, Energy, and Creativity

By

Dear      ,

Today the world is magical.

Yesterday it was thundersnow.

Today it looks like Walt Disney sent his team of animators to transform the maples, the pines, the mountains beyond the river, anything that sits on the ground or rises up into the air—white, and white, and white, thick-painted, delicious white. The sky is the barest blue. The soft, amorphous clouds are fleece blankets spread across the heavens.

I have never been in a thundersnow storm. Only 6.4 (how do you get half a storm?) thundersnows are reported each year in the U.S. My eldest daughter looked that up last night, after, for the first time ever, we saw lightning in the dark and driving snow.

Lightning!

I wish you could have seen it.

There was no audible thunder. The snow is a buffer. So you would have seen the lightning, but you would not have heard the thunder. It was there, though.

Have you read the book The Geography of Genius? I love that book. It helps explain thundersnow and it helps explain the wind storm that destroyed my windshield (via the beautiful maple who now stands transformed in this magical today-world). It helps explain why someone just my height (tiny lady) can reach the top of the Rose of Sharon tree, which is otherwise inaccessible to me. (She is bent so low in the layers of snow that are leaning her towards the little rock garden.)

Of course, Eric Weiner speaks of none of these things directly. He talks about wars, famine, plague, and, surprisingly, the genius that came of them. It’s complicated. Athens, Rome, Edinburgh. Conditions had to be right. But part of these conditions were a few very unwelcome elements that upended “the way things are.”

When I saw the galaxy of glass-stars inside my car, I knew that at least one part of my life had been upended. For some reason, as much as shattered glass troubles me, it also attracts me. It looks like so many millions of diamond boats upon a silver-blue sea. I asked my younger daughter to please take a picture. The next day, I started this blog. I felt such an unexpected surge of creativity. I can’t explain it.

Thundersnow is so rare because of the way the air currents need to organize themselves. You need a certain kind of void, a certain kind of cold and colder air collision, a certain kind of physics. Then the energy exchange begins, and—lightning!

If thundersnow were a city, we’d have to call it Athens, Rome, Edinburgh. Nature’s rare and beautiful genius.

But back to you and me.

If you are feeling a certain kind of void today, or cold and colder air colliding, if lightning is striking and upending “the way things are,” I wish you a galaxy of stars in return—creativity and genius that otherwise would not have been yours.

I know it doesn’t always work that way, and I also know that we still have to deal with the destruction. But I can wish upon a glass-star for you. And so I am.

As Always,

L.L.

No Email and the Energy of Envy

By

Dear      ,

Have I told you I don’t work on Wednesdays? It’s true, in the sense that I don’t do any of my ordinary work on Wednesdays. And I don’t do email, except on the rare occasion. I adapted the no email idea from someone I admire a great deal—someone I have occasionally been envious of, who has (mildly, or maybe differently) come back to email in the way I have come back to blogging. (You thought I was immune to envy? Not possible—remember our discussion of my humanity yesterday. And not preferable, either.)

There are times I’ve been envious of my dear Jane Friedman as well—someone who has been so marvelously good to me. I think she would find this amusing (the envy part, not that she’s been good to me).

I believe these realities are quite telling. Because there are people I am definitely never envious of. Like, I’d have to say, I am not envious of the dentists, shopkeepers, and academics who Neil Gaiman met in refugee camps—people who just want to go home, to reclaim lives that are lost forever and places that are destroyed. From what he said, I think he’ll write about their plight in his next Neverwhere book, when he gets to it. At the moment, Neil is envious of writers who are not show runners, because they can write their next Neverwhere’s in quiet settings where their wives are not getting grumpy about (still) being in South Africa with a writer who is grumpy because he is show running for the BBC’s version of Good Omens, instead of writing.

I was not envious of Neil. I sat in that room of 200+ people and I felt so grateful that I was not the one on stage, talking about the death of my very best friend, because someone publicly asked me to do this, and that’s what famous writers get to do—sit onstage and answer questions that are often too personal—because when you are a famous writer, people can get to feeling they own you and have the rights to your heart and soul. In fact, you don’t even have to be a famous writer to experience this. You could be one of the brightest people living in poverty, who, because of your brilliance, becomes almost a kind of “commons” and brings on the kind of devotion (especially because you are poor) that ultimately tries to take you away from you.

There are a lot of other people I’ve occasionally been envious of (and this has led to things like jealous poem stacks), and there are a lot of other people I have never once been envious of.

The envy is a form of Energy. I wouldn’t give it up.

But here’s the thing. Energy goes somewhere, always—or at least it wants to (think of all that energy bound up in atoms, just waiting to explode). I know I should have paid better attention in Chemistry class (I envy those who did), but I was a bit bored and didn’t realize I might need to be able to understand the concept of energy exchange someday, so I could write more intelligently to you about the green-eyed monster. I really dislike that phrase, and I don’t know the history of it, which suggests I should have paid more attention in Metaphor Class too, but it’s a useful phrase. And I think it can be parsed without the aid of history.

Green = plants (often) = life = energy.

Eyed = seeing = wanting = energy.

Monster = unbridled physical power = energy.

If the green-eyed monster were in a test tube, it could have been much more interesting in Chemistry class. All that energy in a little glass tube, just waiting for our brilliant ideas about what to mix with it or where to pour it!

There are things I do when I experience the energy of envy. First I get irritated. Sometimes I even get angry. Occasionally, I’ve thrown myself an indulgent little pity party.

But, since I am a scientist at heart, it doesn’t take long before I start making hypotheses about my envy, as experienced in relation to any given person or group. The hypotheses spring from simple questions. (Why her? Or him? Or them? Why now? Is it logical? Of course it is, in the sense that everything has a logic! So. What’s the logic? Does it hold up? What is it asking of me? Or, what am I asking of it? What should I do with this energy besides squander it by simply pouring out the test tube—and hurting myself or someone else in the process?)

As I write to you today, I am not sure what to wish you. I believe it was Julia Cameron who taught me the tremendous revelatory power of envy. She didn’t discuss plant life, per se. Or test tubes. She may have mentioned monsters. Should I wish you any of these?

Maybe I’ll just wish you the power of questions (and the hypotheses that can spring from them, and the positive actions that can then follow), the next time envy comes your way.

As Always,

L.L.

P.S. I’m sorry I never got back to telling you about why I don’t email on Wednesdays. It wasn’t very writerly of me to not come back ’round to that. Another time, yes? Or maybe we can discuss it somewhere, sometime, over tea.

P.P.S. I quit Physics class even though I had an A+ in it, because the teacher was so mean to a girl I didn’t like (she was mean, too) but who I was envious of because she was so beautiful and popular and had nice clothes, so I understand that I should have probably placed Energy in Physics class rather than Chemistry class, but I wasn’t in Physics. And, anyway, Chemistry and Physics have a good deal of overlap. And I’ve always liked test tubes.

On Neil Gaiman, The Huffington Post, and Energy

By

Dear      ,

I wanted to tell you…I do not regret writing for The Huffington Post.

Some writers, when they move on to new places in their writing (or when those places move on to new writers), regret what came before. I understand that. I’ve written books with things in them that are no longer quite “who I am” and “how I am.” I’ve written for places whose visions and practices change, leaving me in an odd place for having been a writer there. But they’re a part of my journey as a person. And they’re a record of my writing—my style, my explorations, my approach at a given time. They remind me (and you) that I’m just an ordinary person, who has embarked on the sometimes extraordinary task of setting it all down in a way that entertains you (and me).

To be a writer for the long haul, I think you have to be able to live without regrets. Regrets are always dragging you backwards, instead of releasing you towards what could be.

(I meant to say, btw, that I can be tangential. This might happen when I write to you. I mean, when I write for places like HuffPo, I’m not really allowed to be tangential, which is why it’s not nearly as fun as writing to you.)

As for fun, that’s where Neil Gaiman comes in.

I went to see him yesterday. Me and about 200 other people. (And I did get to meet him, and he did have some never-before-heard-by-his-best-friend advice (for writers) which I will share in an “exclusive” over on Patreon. At Patreon, I might also share a story about Neil’s shoes next to mine. Soon.)

Anyway. Neil Gaiman. And fun.

That’s where the topic of Energy comes in—a topic I just committed to explore for 30 days, over at Joshua Spodek’s place. (Well, I will explore the topic here, where I’m writing to you. But I made the commitment over at Joshua’s. You might like to make one too, if you’re in the mood. And then we can be committed together. Or. Hmm. Something like that.)

For the past few months, I’ve been listening to Neil Gaiman read his stories on CD. So I’ve gotten his voice pretty well into my soul. This was a nice prep for hearing him on-stage! It made me extra attuned to his energy levels, as he answered questions and shared about strange events like the switching out of Mexican food for marriage.

If I’m going to think about the topic of Energy (which I am), I really want to think about more than solar power. I want to think about human power. And the things that power our hearts. And the things that break them, or, at the very least, slow them to a snail’s pace.

Neil’s heart, I’m pretty sure, has suffered from the project he’s been working on. I mean, he said that he’s not really into being a show runner. And he said why he did it anyway. And I can tell you about that elsewhere.

But right here, right now, what I want to say to you is that Energy is not just solar and wind and waves and and and. No, it’s something you and I deal with right within our own selves.

Which is one reason that while I don’t regret writing for The Huffington Post, I probably won’t try to write there again, at least not any time soon.

Because…

You weren’t there. Or, if you were, it was so noisy I couldn’t sense your presence (and they kept popping up other stories between you and me—stuff that I would regret if I’d been the one writing it).

Anyway, I’d rather be writing to you. It gives me a whole lot more energy than it takes away.

I hope that for you, today. Something that gives you more than it takes away.

As Always,

L.L.

A Year of Listening

By

Dear       ,

I have a lot of things on my mind, always. Last night I was awake for about three hours in the middle of the night, because I was dreaming of writing to you.

What I wanted to tell you is that I’m going to embark on a journey of listening. I don’t have a sense of where this will go—only that in our society where it seems that listening is a lost art, I’d like to be a person who listens, and I’d like to see where it takes me (and maybe, by extension, you).

I’m not entirely sure where this idea started—maybe in the car, where I spend quite a few hours per week with nothing to do, and I’d started listening to YA stories and then to Neil Gaiman, thanks to Megan Willome.

It is really something to listen to stories delivered by the human voice. I noticed how some stories were made more interesting, based on the voice of the reader, and some (like a Pulitzer prize winner I’d hoped to “read” by listening) were made absolutely uninteresting. Voice matters. The embodiment of a story matters. It’s the difference between speaking at someone, I think, and just being the story through your voice. This is probably true for writers, too.

Anyway, listening to stories aloud may have led me to the idea of listening to podcasts. (If you have any to recommend, let me know.) Listening to podcasts led me to Joshua Spodek. Listening to Joshua led me to consider listening more intently. So, starting with his material, I’m going to listen consistently to at least one podcaster a month, for a year.

While I lay awake last night, alternately thinking about the ruin of my car by nature’s ways and the potential development of a new friendship-themed effort through Tweetspeak, this listening thing was on my mind.

Wherever you are today, I wish you a lovely listening moment.

As Always,
L.L.

I Like to Change My Mind, When the Time Is Right

By

Dear       ,

A long time ago, I started blogging. Over time, it grew to three blogs. Then it grew into books. Then it grew into a whole website that now serves teachers, students, readers, writers, and people who just want to live deeply and beautifully. That website makes me very, very happy. It makes others happy, too. If you’ve never visited there, I suspect you could also find joy in its colorful pages.

But back to the story at hand.

Years after I started blogging, I stopped. Three blogs was just too much. And my direction had changed.

Now you could say I’ve started again. Blogging, that is.

Except.

This isn’t a blog, exactly. It’s me writing to you in my journal. Sometimes it’s me showing you things I wrote a long time ago and forgot about, that I found intriguing enough to rescue from obscurity. It’s also me sharing the whereabouts of my professional writing, should you find that of interest.

I’ve always said I write for love (not to be loved, but for the love of others). Here, that’s still true. As I write to you.

As Always,
L.L.