The Web Remains

On Writing and The Weight of Expectation

Like an obsessed lover, the thoughts of writing are spinning webs in my brain. Webs. Like the webs in the corners of the rooms of my home that build and expand while the rest of the world that lives outside the unnoticed corners moves on at rapid speed. Only every so often do I look into the corner to notice how large the mansion has grown in my neglect. Honestly, it’s really only when I am looking through the eyes of someone else, someone on their way, someone who doesn’t live here in the midst of all my busyness but might come and judge my entire existence based on the webs in the corners. But this is so with my writing, too, maybe. Something I’ve not considered til now, as is often the case with the way the deep thoughts of my psyche aren’t ever allowed to be released until given the time to rumble to the surface (through the very writing that I neglect). How exhausted my brain must be that it can spin these elaborate works inside the space of my brain, all the while managing all of the other overwhelming, prioritized “fluff” of my daily existence. I mean no harm with my words, but priorities sometimes can be quite absurd. I sweep the webs with no thought of the time or the energy that was put into the elaborate homes of these spiders, merely wanting them gone so that I can remove the shame and the evidence that I don’t have the time to adequately manage all the realities of my existence, but are the webs also evidence that I am prioritizing better things? And if so, what does that say about my writing?

I think it more so says what I think others may think or say about the creative musings of a “lazy girl that gets lost in her head with the idea of writing words on a page all day rather than being out laboriously giving to society in better ways the time and energy of her existence.” I don’t want to be a starving artist, and my children need to eat, but if I really wanted it, I would have it, ALL. What? This is the confusing bullshit that also bogs down the creative process. The bipolar worlds that live in my head play tug of war while my webs are spun away in rooms I will long forget about, or the muse herself may come clean house before I ever choose the thing that makes my soul come alive. But I’m doing it now, and I’m breathing, and maybe this is all it’s for. Not for making a living, but just to maintain breathing, and these spinning webs inside my brain give me hope, of a someday when I can freely choose at my leisure whenever I want to sit and write whatever I feel, for as long as it takes for the worlds to collide, that what I desire to write and say merges with what another may need or want to read, at my leisure still of course, for once there is a demand doesn’t that take all the fun any way? I don’t want to ever be a writer writing for expectation and demand, but of anticipation and yearning. You never know what you will get from me, because I never know what is going to pour out, but together we wait eagerly for the next great words, no longer webs but now golden magical silk woven from a loom into a miraculous tapestry. Aha.

There are the descriptors, and what I really set out to write about, and that is the padlocked rooms of my brain that house that language, the words, to describe all I have to say. Another hindrance to this writing practice I have chosen to put on display. I refuse to ask (at least in this season) for words to describe what I am trying to say. I know they are there, I’ve read them in other books and am determined to keep searching them out and storing them, though I’ve just discussed with a friend how dim the light of our vocabulary has gotten. What’s the key to expansion? To read, read, read, of course. But the books with the words worth finding and storing have long been removed from the libraries, for they did nothing but sit and gather cobwebs, and we must not irritate our patrons’ allergies. Is that all we are allergic to? Or is it the discomfort of how much more we must know to understand each other truly, and it takes a large vocabulary and lots of colorful language, dialect, and syntax to really convey the meaning of what’s going on inside the head and heart of another? AND time to learn the language, and then learn the language of another, and find the bridge to join them together. Unless we can create a smaller space for thoughts to exist, and then we don’t have as much spinning, no webs in the corners of these brain spaces, just tiny little spaces lit up to hold exactly what is needed for the quick moment of go, go, go. So it’s easier that way, without all these words, to figure out what we mean, and what’s being felt, and what’s being conveyed with fewer words that get us to the point faster. Lightening speed.

I already talk too much and can’t tell a short story, and the practical application of all these words means they must be used frequently in order to retain them, and then draw them out at the appropriate opportunity in my writing. These are the dilemmas I grapple with, and what is the use of expanding the language if there is no one left who is willing to take the time to listen and understand? Someone asked me many years ago, when I was maybe 10 or 12, if I used “big words” to try to sound smart. I didn’t at the time, and they were adults, and I made the assumption back then that all adults knew the words I used, and therefore it was a shameful thing to use the words I read. I know now that this person projected their feelings of inferiority and inadequacy on me by condemning me in their jealousy. But these were the little things that I used to shame myself and tell myself that all the words must belong in books. What good is a message if your reader or listener doesn’t understand? What do we say to professionals? “Dumb it down for me.” “Layman’s terms, please.” When did the whole of the English language, word diversity, become jargon? I keep going far, far back in time. The time I never cared about before. The time that is now is such a precious commodity. I wonder when they will start charging us for time, like they do the water, and the land, which never belonged to them, but they acquired it all the same. Will they do that with air, too? Haven’t our stories warned of these worries, but we ignore them for greater pleasures that require no words, just blank stares at stimulating screens, where we all desire to be displayed and seen, on them? Don’t we? Well, we all desire to be seen anyway. Unless you are one who lies to yourself and then lies to the world about how you would just rather play in the background. But those in the background still love to watch, because then they don’t have to take ownership or the blame when the acting and the performing go awry.

But what was I saying? The time. The time that is more precious than gold that I say I keep hoping and waiting on, so I will have enough of it left for writing, while it just keeps spinning and spinning on. When I’m really rebellious, I say WHY NOT NOW, we don’t want to squander that time we were given here, and if this is what you were put here to do, then by golly, you should do it (I tell myself). Yet is this so, when there are so many other directions in which I could go? So many other things I should be doing here with the time I’ve been given? And they all have so much expectation of me and what I should be doing with my time, because before I got here, there was already a very well-oiled beautifully broken system waiting for me to fall in line. I flip those fucking tables, remembering that I didn’t ask to be here, and I don’t have to comply with rules created by a “they” that are meant to keep me in a cage and prevent me from writing because I’m too busy just surviving. And these “they’s” think I owe them a thank you that they created a system where, rather than worry so much about daily surviving, I can be off keeping their machine going and thriving (in order to survive of course), so much so I will long for those screens, and so I sit to write, because I won’t be fooled into this machine. And if it comes down to eating vs writing, well, if I’m passionate enough about it and it really is the key to my existence (unlocking the door to truly living), then I guess I will write and trust somehow I won’t starve.