This past weekend I spent a day going through a file box of old writing. When I say old I mean pre-computer: before I owned a typewriter up to when I finally owned a typewriter. The earliest thing I found with a date was in mid-1973. I married in January 1974 at age 17.
It is always interesting to look back at things you've written. Usually, I'm encouraged by how much my writing has improved over the years. I'm not sure it helped much this time. You see, I've been feeling very down about my writing. The last year has been a disaster and even saying it makes me feel guilty. I should have been writing. I shouldn't have been sick! I shouldn't have ruptured a disk in my back. I shouldn't have had to have surgery. I shouldn't have rheumatoid arthritis, or fibromyalgia, or chronic pain, or nerve damage. I. Should. Be. Writing! But I didn't. Hardly any.
This isn't news. I've written about it ad nauseam, and for more than 10 years the cycle has repeated. I get started and am pumping out the words and boom, and two weeks in I'm hit with a flare. Joint pain, muscle pain, migraine headaches, back pain, fatigue take turns. These days the fatigue is scary. After my surgery, I was excited at my improvement. By the end of December, my severe neck and back pain were gone. I made up my mind I could learn to live with the nerve damage in my hand. It hurt, but I could use it and I would not let it hinder me. The New Year seemed promising.
It wasn't until the first part of April that I recovered from two colds, but I was still tired. In fact, my fatigue has been so bad that some days I sleep 12 hours.
I've been so bummed over all this that I decided to toss in the towel. Yes. I said give up writing. Forget it. Pack up all the junk and either put it in a trunk in the attic, which I don't have or burn it in the next cookout. I'm tired of trying. I'm tired of getting up with a plan only to find I'm knocked out by 9 a.m. until noon.
I can't tell you if the pain of my illness is worse than the pain of never writing again. I can take a pill to numb one of them. The other, not so much. Then, I opened that box and started pulling out files. For several hours, I read over each page. The first thing I discovered was that my handwriting is as bad today as it was when I was 15.
However, the words were familiar and I could remember the days I wrote the earliest poems. I remember the spiral notebook I wrote them in. The cover had a pretty mountain scene I loved. I'm still a sap for pretty notebooks. Here's one right out of that notebook. I've kept the format and errors.
I Love You
I love you more than I can tell,
I love you more than water in a well.
I love you more than mountains high,
I love you more than stars in the sky.
I love you more than the ocean deep,
I love you more than I love sleep.
I love you more than the valley low,
I love you more than you'll ever know.
I love you more than the sun and moon,
I love you more than Sunday afternoon.
I love you more than the birds and bees,
I love you more than flowers and trees.
I love you more than a clock can time,
And I'll love you beyond the end of time.
By Cynthia Patch
(written about 1973)
Yeah, I know. Corny. I was barely 16 and back then things were a lot more innocent. You'll notice this was before my marriage. I didn't even have a boyfriend at this point.
In those days I wrote with a Bic school bus yellow, AF-59 accountant pen. If you remember those, you're old. I loved those pens. You could get them in red, blue, or black. I used the blue, and the pen wrote such a nice clean line. I don't know when I stopped using them, but I doubt they make them anymore. That could be when I stopped using them. When I read the early poems, I could see the pen and remember the feel of it in my hand. These days, I can't hold a pen that slender and the ink has to be either liquid or a gel to limit the need for pressure.
Jump ahead 20+ years, to February 28, 1995, my last year of college. I was taking Creative Writing with Patti Aakhus. I was sorry to hear she passed away a few years ago from cancer. I loved her class. Here's a poem I wrote in that class.
Outcast
She smiled, she laughed, she chatted
Stepped close to the wall of backs
Slipped into the circle
Breaking the bond with strange words and strange clothes.
Faces with slide away looks
Turn away laughing, silencing.
She cried broken tears that covered her sharpness
And sealed the approaches.
When I read this I was brought up short. Did I write that? Wow. I know, not earth-shaking poetry but I really like that. I lived that!
Untitled
Look into my palm
tell me what you see
Tell me if the broken lines
are things that happen to me
Broken dreams, broken hearts,
and broken toys, you see?
Broken by these hands of mine
with all its broken lines.
That is another in-class poem, and I love it. I don't remember if I liked either when I wrote them. I have lived a bit longer and now, I understand them. They mean something to me. Honestly, I wrote more poetry in that class than I had since I was 15. And you can see the difference. I "feel" the difference.
The trip down memory lane gave me some encouragement but it also disappointed me. I've wasted too much time and allowed things to get in the way of the writing. I read in this month's Writers' Forum something that resonated with me. In his article, Tales from My Guru, Hugh Scott said:
"Disappointment comes because you are focused on being published, whereas your focus should be on creating. That is getting on with the writing, enjoying the jigsaw-placing of word into word, the genius of dropping one idea on to another, the excitement of finding a phrase that expresses, oh, precisely what you want to express, and the discovery of rhythms that no one in the world has ever put on paper, and the silent beat of drums arising from the page, and the rocking laughter at the lunatic jokes that demand to dance on your keyboard. Oh, and a thousand other things that are nothing to do with being published but everything to do with creating!"
And that's the truth. Just write and stop worrying about blogs, platforms, social media, and publishing. Write.
I'll finish it here. I think I need to address the constant focus on my illness and instead, focus on the thing that makes me feel like I'm alive. Maybe I'll feel better then.
Here's one final find for this post. I have no idea when I wrote it but I suspect it was in the 80's. I don't know what it was going to be. I only know that now, it feels finished.
I thought of you this morning
When I stood at the window, yawning,
And I smiled.
Good night.
