What gives me direction in life?

Daily writing prompt

What gives you direction in life?

Motivation needs direction, or else people waste their energy. There are several things that give me direction in life, honestly. Some are lofty; some mundane. I need to talk about both.

One thing that gives me direction is love. Love of people becomes an evident focus in my relationships, and it’s the answer people expect when I say “love”. But what loving what I do? That’s at least as strong a guide for direction in my life. I think about two activities I term as “flow” activities in my life, moulage (casualty simulation, otherwise known as making victims for emergency training) and writing. The love of the activity and the stimulation they give me gives me direction.

Another thing is striving to be better. This points me toward improvement activities, such as reading about my writing craft and practice, practice, practice. Related to this is the desire for recognition. Although I don’t like to talk about my need for external validation, it’s there. It’s definitely there.

Sometimes, it’s duty that gives me direction. That I get up in the morning on days when I’m depressed, and go to work even when I am hypomanic, is the power of duty. Duty to myself and to my husband and cats. The need to provide food, clothing, and shelter; safety and security, and emotional support. I also do these things because I love all of them, but the daily things fall under the category of duty.

This list is pretty prosaic, more of an essay answer for my positive psychology class than a creative piece. But these are the places and the reasons I focus my energy.

“… surreal, but not very impressionistic …”

I wish I was better at poetry, lacking the impressionistic bent I need to write the type of poetry that is in fashion right now. I am too involved in telling stories in a more straightforward fashion, even when I am writing dreams:

Last night, I dreamed I was walking after dark, late at night, armed with a pair of scissors. Someone approached me and put his hands on me, and I flipped him over my shoulder and then held my scissors at his jugular^*. He apologized and ran away. I walked and walked till daylight, and I found myself at my old alma mater^** wearing a white blazer and a skirt too tight for me. I ran into a couple of colleagues from my current job as a professor, who were going to a lecture together at a conference. I didn’t get the impression that they wanted me there, and I felt self-conscious because of the clothing and my weight anyhow. I walked out of the conference, which was held in the student union where I went to college. I walked to where my office used to be when I was in graduate school, which ended up being the mailboxes in my former department here where I currently teach. The mailboxes were no longer there, but I walked down the hall to find where they were located back at my alma mater.

This is surreal, but not very impressionistic. I could make it impressionistic, but it would aggravate me. What is happening? What happens next? I love poetry, but I can’t make it happen. My poetry is too concrete.

^* By jugular, I meant where I think the jugular is. I’m really not sure where it is.

^** for non-English speakers, “alma mater” is a Latin phrase that we use to describe the school we graduated from, usually college.

The Lost is Not So Lost


I have never learned to speak
the language of these slate-edged hills; 
silence speaking eloquently
things I almost understand

I think I have heard you walking
softly, barefoot and daydreaming;
wonder if you've heard me calling
out my name, an owl's whisper.
In the Catskills,
do the sleepy towns tell tales?
In the Catskills,
do the sleepy towns tell tales?

**********

This is all I remember of the song. I wrote it 30 years or so ago, and I really haven’t visited it since I wrote it. I couldn’t even remember this much earlier this morning. I wrote the words down somewhere, but I don’t remember where I put them.

I looked on my computer and I found it! I found it!

I have never learned to speak
The language of these slate-edged hills –
Silence speaking eloquently
Things I almost understand

CHORUS:
I think I have seen you walking
Softly, barefoot and daydreaming
Wonder if you hear me calling
Out your name, an owl’s whisper
In the Catskills,
Do the sleepy towns tell tales?
In the Catskills,
Do the sleepy towns tell tales?

Looking in the deep blue patience
Of your eyes, I falter, losing
All my words of consequence
Everything I meant to say

CHORUS

In the wind that blows around
The hills, I thought I felt your smile
Gather up my words again
And try to ask what you were thinking

CHORUS

I used to be a singer-songwriter until I divorced my guitarist. I had an okay voice; my guitarist played a semi-finger-picking style and wasn’t very disciplined. We were never going to be anything but those folksingers who attended open mic occasionally. But I loved the words.

Most of what I wrote was about crushes I got while spending my daily life in a small town in the foothills of the Catskills. I had lots of crushes; I have lots of songs to reclaim.

I can’t sing now; I’ve lost my voice in all but my talking range. I suppose I could get it back with practice, but it’s hard having the heart to practice when reminded of how much I’ve lost.

I started to sing this, and I could sing without obstruction to my voice, although it was not as strong as before. The lost is not so lost anymore.

Heat Wave in Rural Missouri

The sun burns sagging porches,
bleaching petunias and salvia.
The afternoon gasps its last.
From my window, nothing stirs –
I alone live, breathe.

Swooning,
I spy you strolling through a deluge of rain,
bearing me pansies and muguet,
your bowler and grey linen suit still crisp,
the last mirage before I fade – 

Knowing I exaggerate, and my demise
is not imminent in this air-cooled room
does not detract from my reverie.

If a tree doesn’t fall

If a writer sits in a forest

And the tree doesn’t fall,

Does anybody hear?

Too late, skip that,

Hey there, nice hat,

How you been, good day,

Wish I had more to say.

If the bird sits in the forest,

Keeps his song to himself –

Does anybody know?

No time, too rushed,

Gotta go catch my bus,

Still don’t know why

I don’t have any time.

If a forest lives

In the heart of a writer

And nobody finds it,

Does anybody care?

Aside — my writing lately

A poem of mine, “Deep Touch”, will be published soon in Tempered Runes Press’ inaugural issue of

Bluing the Blade. I’m really proud of this accomplishment, which reminds me: I haven’t been submitting short stories and poems lately.

I’m not sure why; probably because I haven’t written any lately, and I’m running out of good poems to submit. I have a lot of poems I’m not that enthused with. As for stories, I have a couple I’m in love with, but they haven’t caught traction.

Time to think about writing short stuff again, even though one selection of serialized short stories is arguing that it should be a novel. Then again, given the space opera premise of the stories, serialized may be the best use of the material.

Muse, where are you? I need some inspiration!

My Feelings and Creativity

According to my horoscope, my feelings today are not going to be mild or even moderate! I’m supposed to let my feelings out through creativity. Good thing I already do that, eh?

That’s why I started writing — to let out a surplus of feelings. As a child, my feelings weren’t mild or moderate and tended to bewilder people. I wrote to keep my feelings manageable.

Now that my bipolar medicine keeps my feelings more manageable, I write a greater range of emotions, varied plots, different poems. I still, however, write my feelings into my work, shaping the words to my feelings.

Back to the horoscope. What will my feelings be like today? If the past two days are an indication, I will be impatient and frustrated. Great feelings for a poem.

A small triumph and some thoughts on improving

I got two pieces accepted for publication yesterday! One was a flash fiction piece named “Literally” and the poem “Deep Touch”, which is one of my more favorite poems. (The poem above is neither; it’s just an illustration of what I write.)

I anticipate the journal didn’t get too many entries, because this is an inaugural issue of a journal and it’s not a high prestige literary journal. I’ll take it — I don’t write lofty enough for a high prestige literary journal. I also don’t use the modern convention of longer poems. My heroes are Emily Dickinson and ee cummings — they didn’t need more than about 24 lines.

To be honest, though, I wish I could write longer poems. I wish I understood what people are doing in longer poems so I could at least see how they work.

That’s something I wouldn’t have done when I was younger — try to improve. I now have this burning desire to improve everything I write, and I think I have improved to the level of my instruction, which is why I need more instruction.

I will always need more instruction.

I wish I could write modern poetry

I wish I was better at poetry.

If I believe the critiques I get, I quit writing before things get good. That’s not my feeling at all. I don’t want things to drag on; I don’t want to put words in just to put words in. I’m writing moments more than histories.

I cut my teeth on Emily Dickinson, who didn’t even end her poems except with a dash. But that’s not fashionable anymore; poems wander for pages now, and I don’t know how to do that.

I wonder how I can learn to write modern poetry without shelling out a lot of money for a master class or, worse, having to take a real college course.

Poetry, ironically, is what I thought myself the best at, and it’s now what I write the least.

Interrogating a dream and finding a poem (Literary Work)

Ethereal boy,
you would kill me with a feather
fine-sharpened to a point,
intended for my heart,
and you would call it art.

Dreams as Fertile Fields of Meaning
This poem, like many of my writings, came from a dream. In the dream, an artist acquaintance from overseas comes to visit me, spending only a brief time with me in O’Hare airport. Then he wanders off. I later read an interview with him in a snippet of newspaper that says that he planned to approach me for a film, which explained the brief interlude. It also said he considered, for the same movie, throwing a feather, quill sharpened into a dart, at my back, and if it killed me, it would be art.

Dreams are symbolic, so I woke up doubting that said acquaintance had any desire to kill me, nor could he kill me with a quill pen. As that was what he described the murder weapon as.

Gestalt Dream Analysis
Because I found the dream poetically compelling, I interrogated it using Gestalt methods, which basically instruct the dreamer to tell the story from the viewpoint of all the major people and objects:

Me: You know my part.
The artist: I play with images, I play with image. I play this scene with you, and I will not tell you why. I could stab you with this feather; fear not, it’s all illusion.
The feather: I am a pen; from me ideas flow. I am an arrow; Cupid does not miss.
The paper: There are no secrets. I announce success
The airport: I am the place where people cross, where people greet and part, the resting place between journeys.

What Does It Mean?

This dream is too complex to define linearly, so maybe I can put in place themes that don’t necessarily contradict each other:

The journey: my journey of being a writer
The artist: my inspiration/an established artist/personification of mischief/Cupid
Cupid: ludus (crush energy) as vehicle for inspiration
Brief interlude: a surprise
The newspaper: He’s arrived; I have not. Also, an implication that I have importance, but as a abstract concept
Feather pen as weapon: Cupid’s arrow, creativity, ludicrousness (see ludus); vague sexual reference but lazily so

In conclusion:

That was fun! If I had to guess, I’d say this poem is about the nature of inspiration and our muses. Ludus, sex, death are all tools of the writer, and of the artist.

Have you ever used a dream as inspiration for one of your works? Let me know in the comments or at lleachie@gmail.com