When you've finished a first draft... the months that it's taken, when things were rolling, or not, but moving, and then it's over. There's a lull. A let-down. An emptiness. I'm not sure what it is, perhaps like a mini-grieving? One should be happy that the end has come and the rewriting can begin, and yet, the high is gone. I don't know what that is.
It's like there is sand or something in my eye. So I'm typing with my eyes shut. Blindly groping in the darkness behind my lids, talking to you, my readers, whoever you are...
There are changes in my life, and more coming. I really can't explain what they are. Movement, but also settling in. Establishing directions for the near and far future. Odd, obverse things that we intuit but find it hard to speak of.
An image of myself spinning slowly while my life unwinds through time...
I'm here, touching the keys, staying connected.
But I feel as if I'm floating on the other side of the star system.
Yesterday I took my dog on a very long walk to Mountain Co-op and there is a small blister in the very centre of my foot, in front of the arch. And when I stand and press down I can feel the little dome and it's like a homing signal reminding me to touch down, to feel the ground.
My life operates on trust.
Sometimes I'm winging it somewhere across the galaxies though.
Why not float in space for a bit?
I was watching, The Lover, the movie of Marguerite Duras' novel, and while it's beautifully rendered somehow it lacks the poetry of her writing even though there is a voice-over (in an English accent, which doesn't work for me, but ah well). She wrote that book, it's autobiographial, when she was 70!
There was a lot of lovemaking and my daughter came in and so I turned it off. Now that she's in her room writing in her journal and drawing (oh, we are so alike!) I wonder if it's worth watching to the end? It's like, okay, look at the scenery, feel the heat, and there was no more to add. The book is beautiful. Her writing is stunning, as it always is. No-one like Duras.
But I am babbling!
I knew my posts were going to change, but I didn't know how to come back to them.
xo
Sheath of feeling. Words groping to touch air.
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It is a bit like what I imagine post-partum depression to be. Yes, the rewriting helps the piece "mature", but the gestation, labor, and birth have occurred.
ReplyDeleteI remember sitting with a group of people after we'd done the Boston-New York AIDS Ride in '95. We were all feeling a little blue. We'd done all that training and fund-raising, we'd gone through the three days on the road and the celebratory aftermath -- and now, post-obsession, we had the rest of our lives to live.
Biologically, in both cases, I suspect it's from the endorphin tide being on the wane....
Sand in your eye, typing with your eyes shut -- a wonderful metaphor not just for post-draft letdown but for so many other experiences in life. It's a pleasure to anticipate witnessing your next changes, Brenda.
ReplyDeletee_journey's, that's a good metaphor for it... there definitely is a lull, and even if we know about it, it's always surprising how lack-lustre this time is. Not quite like the feelings I had after giving birth, though! The book recedes into the background; whereas the baby takes over. :-)
ReplyDeleteRichard, writing with the eyes shut is something I've been moving towards for a few years. Perhaps the critical faculty integrates with the dreamself in that space of not-seeing to see?
Thanks for dropping by!