March 11, 2011

• Open Heart Searchery

  And so I wonder if maybe this is to be where my guts spill out onto the floor, onto the keyboard, onto the screen, my fleshing out of a million thoughts swirling at once with no rhyme or reason, not yet something sweet and edifying to go on Write, Pray, Love or a decent response to One Thousand Gifts, but just me, Lisa Easterling dot com, my raw heart open and beating out loud for the world to see.

  Baked potatoes are placed piping hot on little white diner-style plates for lunch. Vitamin C and protein in the form of cheese and butter and sour cream to complete the healing of respiratory illness that thankfully usually only lurks once a year. My potato, cut, falls open in the perfect shape of an elongated heart. Gift. I eat it slowly, skin and all, grateful that something so healthy tastes so wonderful.

  Back at my desk with my little diner plate off to my left, I find myself frequently returning to my contemplative posture, head in hands and quiet, thinking. Sometimes there’s just too much at once. Too much sickness, too much loss, too much to do, too much clutter, too many schedules, too many worries, too many expectations, too many steps to do something simple. I have an invitation to submit writing for a company I’ve loved for years, and I look at the necessary steps and feel like the walls are closing in. Maybe another time, I think. Again. Deep down I wonder if it will ever happen, and a too-big part of me opines that it probably won’t. I’m too tired to argue.

  I cut the tops off my potato heart and chew without tasting, my mind engaged elsewhere. This must be what Natalie Goldberg meant when she said artists are moody, depressive people. Only I don’t want to go down the road many of the more famous ones have traveled. I would love to keep living for a good long time yet.

  I’ve been writing verse and sentiments for myself and others for as long as I can remember. I’ve been told that I am one of the best at wording the thoughts of others so perfectly it’s like I am walking around in their heads and hearts. Will I ever do these things on a higher professional level? I don’t know. But can I do it? I know I can. I have, many times and in many situations. It’s one of a small handful of things about which I actually feel confident in stating, “Yes. I am good at that!”

  When on the rare occasion I ask if anyone is listening (reading), the responses are somewhat predictable though varied. There’s the placating, the preachy, and the philosophical. And then there’s the occasional genuine straight-shot from the heart, the truly helpful ones that I ponder for a while and carry around with me.

  I think somewhere along the line I will have to separate myself from my writing more, not become wounded when people I know and love–people who know and love me back–don’t seem interested in reading what I write. That’s easy to theorize about but not so easy to put into practice, not when my writing feels like such a personal part of who I am. What flows from my heart and mind through my fingers is a part of me, something birthed from the artistic parts of my being, something I dare to hold out to a waiting world. It’s hard to hold out an offering and feel the weight of it sitting long in the hand untouched. It gets heavier and heavier and I admit sometimes I am tempted to toss it on the ground and walk away.

  • 2:26 pm
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