The loneliness of the present moment

I have talked a lot recently about journal keeping, but I've never actually shared anything from my journal in this blog. What's the difference between a blog post and a journal entry? The journal entry isn't written for public consumption, but, at least during the moments it is written, for the pleasure of writing. Later, maybe, with editing, it becomes something else.

The paragraphs below are from my journal entry dated 4/12/2010. (These are unedited; I've only excised a few paragraphs in-between where I wrote more at length about having tendinitis in my thumb and the difficulty it creates for writing by hand).

I've explored the theme of writing out of loneliness before, in my October 1, 2009 blog post. Perhaps the other difference in writing for public consumption and writing in a journal is that you can indulge in a repetition of topics (like my perpetual prose on loneliness) without care that you are boring anyone; you are your own rapt audience (or not).

I realize now that when I was young, my writing came from unwanted solitude. Therefore, the reason I hardly write these days is from lack of solitude. It's ridiculous how many things take me away from writing when writing used to be my main identity/pursuit.

Even when I'm around lots of people, though, there's still that persistent loneliness, which only writing seems to appease. Saying something—putting an idea into words—feels like an accomplishment; it takes me away from the loneliness of the present moment. There's the possibility of touching the infinite, however momentary or fleeting.

I used to love the sensation of writing with a pen, but how it hurts and the pain detracts from what I want to say. How can an aching hand freely speak of joy?

It's nearly 11 p.m. I am sitting up in bed alone. I am not writing now because I am especially lonely but because I started to get that yearning that means it's time to say something, which I can only say with written words. I'd be tongue-tied if I tried to say any of this aloud. The paper is such an absorbent, steady listener—one couldn't ask for better.

Scenes from the recent snows

While I was inside last week, working at the computer and typing occasional posts on Facebook, outside my window snow was howling down, forming into hills of white powder that were so tall we could hardly tromp through them, even days later.

Icicles formed on every edge of our roof, some reaching nearly four feet to the ground. (Since yesterday the ice on the roof has begun to melt and is now seeping through our windows, trickling down our walls. We are trying to catch the dribbles with towels, sponges and plastic cups lined along our windows sills).

Chickadees ate thistle at the goldfinch feeder, diving in for a quick peck before heading back out into the glistening white blankness.

(All photos Copyright 2010, Beth Blevins)

An unintended vacation

I haven't updated this blog in nearly two weeks, mostly because I was on vacation and, prior to that, hurriedly getting ready for Christmas. During vacation I had limited access to a computer—there were eight of us in one house vying for time on the computer. When my turn came it was always with interruptions as people walked into the bedroom/study, or usually with the feeling that someone was hovering nearby, ready to pounce on the keyboard if I even left for the bathroom.

I am sorry that we have become so tied to our computers, but I realized something important about myself: I only like to write when no one is around. Not just in an empty room but in an empty house, if possible. If that's not possible, I want to have time/room to myself with boundaries clearly demarcated. (However, I have been able to write in coffee shops, sitting by myself and intent on my work because there is no one there to interrupt me or ask me to do something for them.)

I wrote half a blog post but then couldn't finish it because the ending required that I slide into deep thought to gather my thoughts in a circular way. With people talking around me, my thoughts just kept skidding and going in obvious and superficial directions, so I gave up. I surrendered to the holiday or the idea of holiday, knowing I could make up for it later. I wrote part of a short story in my head, while trying to go to sleep at night, ready to dictate it through my willing fingers in a few days.

This recent experience has made me admire Jane Austen even more. The biography, Jane Austen, by Carol Shields, which I skimmed through last year, said that Jane would write while others conversed around her, and was quick to hide her work if anyone came into her room. She had little time for solitude. (For more, see Jane Austen paragraph in QACW). Of course, Jane Austen didn't have children and there were servants around to clean and cook. But it makes me a little sad for her that she hid her writing from her family, that it was just something she did on the side, as a hobby, and probably wasn't taken seriously at first. If she had been a man, I imagine he might have asked for and gotten time and space to himself even from the beginning. And he wouldn't have been considered an asshole for making such demands, even if he turned out to be a lousy writer.

I know this last paragraph should come to some kind of conclusion, but I have a kid here tap-dancing and talking to me about one of her Christmas presents, so I'll just have to end it where it is.

Talking to myself

I usually write more when I am alone. That's when I need it more.

I crave some kind of a dialogue, no matter what circumstance I am in. And I have those dialogues on a daily basis—with my daughter as she gets ready for school, with my family at the dinner table as we share the events of our days, with my husband whispering at night when we are going to sleep.

But when I lived alone or with housemates in and out, I had only my notebook at night. And so I spoke there. I took time to write down my dreams or to explain my romantic preoccupations, trying to figure out all possible outcomes, even with men who hardly noticed me. I luxuriously wrote friends long letters by hand.

When I was even younger, living at home, I wrote towards my projected future, to my future self. I spoke to myself as my own confidant since no one around me seemed like me. I thought I had deeper thoughts than anyone else because I wrote them down—or that I had to write because my thoughts were so deep they couldn’t stay buried within me. It was a sacred sharing, which also kept me from feeling so alone and scared.

My writing now is less from immediate loneliness. I have the luxury of having a place in the world, even if my belonging is confined to the half-acre of our home. In cities and even out in this neighborhood, I’m not so sure that I really belong there, though it’s not as important to me now as it was when I was young and unanchored.

So, the question emerges, why do I still need to write? Do all writers have a soul loneliness that only writing, for some reason, can appease? Is ego always a factor, as it was when I was a teenager sitting in my room writing crappy poetry I thought the world needed to hear?

Perhaps my writing cannot evolve into fiction or publishable non-fiction until I get over the idea that I am sitting here talking to myself, until I can go beyond recording my immediate preoccupations and actions (she wrote, in her journal, an entry I'm now putting on my blog a day later). I'm not sure when something needs to be shown, when I am writing for something or someone beyond myself past, present, or future.

If I feel pressed to show this here, now, it's only because it's been a week since I've put something on this blog. The difference between a blog post and an entry in my journal, though, is that the journal entry can stop whenever—whenever the tea kettle whistles or the phone rings or someone knocks at the door. [The original journal entry ended with the paragraph above, left on an open laptop when the phone rang.] I need an ending here, and an ending is not making itself apparent. The cat is meowing to be let out and I'm starting to crave breakfast. Is that enough?

(Photograph: Self portrait, Santa Cruz, 1983. Copyright Beth Blevins)

Why I blog

After I published my Popularity post (in which I lamented that stupid videos on YouTube can claim a million viewers in a matter of days while this blog had only had 1,200 hits in a year), a Facebook friend wrote me, saying: "Charles Bukowski wrote an entire poem about how you should only write because you HAVE to - I think that is probably a good enough reason, whether or not anyone else reads or likes it." [I think the poem he referenced is So You Want to Be a Writer.] Perhaps my FB friend was trying to console me, but I found his message a little depressing since Bukowski's poem about writing for the pleasure of writing had obviously been published and was enough-known for someone to reference it.

I knew from the outset that a blog about creativity and writing was not going to garner as many hits as blogs about vacuous celebrities (e.g., TMZ, Perez Hilton, et al). And, to be truthful, I’ve never wanted it to be that popular—if I knew that thousands would read each posting it would probably leave me tongue-tied, frightened of a voracious public appetite.

But since I received his message a few weeks ago, I've been thinking about why I write this blog when I could be doing something else with my time. I've come to realize that the blog serves several purposes for me:

• It’s an electronic journal, of sorts, much like my Facebook status lines.


• If it didn’t exist, I might not write at all, for days at a time. There is an artificial deadline hovering over me each week; if I haven’t published a new post by Friday I start feeling an antsy obligation to put up something new.


• It’s easier for me to justify making time for a blog post than it is for more personal kinds of writing. I would never tell someone that I am going to go and write something in my journal—it’s private and, for some people perhaps, the act of journal writing (rather than mowing one’s lawn or cleaning one’s house, when both obviously need to be done) verges on narcissism or a waste of time. But tell that same person you’re writing for a blog and it seems more concrete, justifiable, with an edge of glamour even. And it’s something I can talk about since it’s public: my blog has a URL (which I sometimes put on my business cards); my journal doesn't.


• It has given me a compilation of essays (or essay embryos) that I otherwise wouldn’t have. There are 80 posts on this blog right now that would not be here if I'd never created the blog. Having to write something every week often gives me a chance to start riffing on whatever is on my mind at a particular time, capturing thoughts that might have evaporated or evolved differently if I hadn’t put them down when I did.


• And, it often gives me a respite from my otherwise overly to-do-listed weeks. I found this entry in my journal today, written late summer, which is what prompted me to write this post today:

"How simple it is for me, then, to sit down for an hour a week and write a blog post, then to take a few moments to look for a photo I might use for it, convert it to sepia, and load it up on Blogger. It is a moment of solace and peace. I wish I could have it for more than an hour a week."

(Photograph by Beth Blevins)

Solitude vs. the beautiful, chaotic hum

I’ve just returned from being out of the country for two weeks. During that time, I didn’t write anything but a postcard to my mom, assuring her that I was still alive. I attempted to write a couple of short emails to business contacts, when I had a few stolen moments on someone’s computer, but the French keyboard was so frustrating to use that I gave up (or, rather, gqvé up) after a couple of sentences. [A blog post appeared here last week through the miracle of Blogger’s post-dating feature—I’d written it before I left on my trip and it automatically uploaded while I was gone.]

The weird thing was that I didn’t feel a desire or need to write. This is an unusual feeling for me. Since I have known how to use a pencil to shape letters and words, I’ve had a persistent urge to write my thoughts down, though in recent years that urge has been satisfied by writing weekly essays rather than the daily journal updates of my youth.

I wasn’t experiencing any kind of creative constipation, but felt like some other, more visual/experiential part of my brain had been activated. I only wanted to take photos and make short movies of Parisian scenes, and to walk and take it all in—to eat luxurious meals, feel the breeze on my face, listen to street music, smell the pastries and chocolates—without attempting to describe any of it.

Perhaps in order to write about something, a writer must step back, set herself apart from things in order to filter and describe them. But in France, especially on the streets of Paris, I wanted to be a part of the beautiful, chaotic hum. Maybe if I’d spent a few weeks there I would have grown tired of it, or would feel a need to step back and return to the deep solitude I seem to only achieve during the writing process.

Now I am back in my quieter neighborhood, looking out to a narrow forest of oak trees from my bedroom window. My cat purrs on my bed, birds are speaking urgently to their kin outside. It is calm and maybe a little dull, but somehow it is stimulating for me—or is stimulating another part of my brain that was inactive during my European adventure. Thoughts and ideas for essays I could write began pouring out of me the day after I got home, especially after this morning’s walk on the sleepy streets around my house. I am suddenly a homebody, wanting to hang around the house, eat simple salads, pull weeds in my yard, and write. I am no longer yearning for pastries and people-watching on the Metro. I want to belong right now to a large but invisible community that is quiet and shaped by words, to seek immersion in ideas not crowds. I need both things—noise/conversation and quiet/thoughts. Finding the balance is an ongoing event in this writer’s life.

(Photos by Beth Blevins)