Wednesday, August 17, 2016

On Practice



It’s 6:37 am and I’m sitting in the semi-dark living room of someone else’s house. It’s windy outside, which is supposed to give way to sun, which is what we’ll wait for before carrying chairs and towels and $1 bin sand toys down to the beach. Where we’ll set up for maximum sun time, for maximum water time.

I sit down to write every day now. I’m making a practice of it, the way someone would with yoga or running or painting. I love when they say that in yoga class: your practice.

If it fits into your practice.

Thank you for sharing your practice with me.

It always make me feel like the teacher has invited themselves into my kitchen for a coffee and whatever cake we might have on the counter. Thank you for sharing your practice with me; thank you for sharing your time with me.

And that’s what I’m learning now—the practice of it. The constantly trying. The using muscles I haven’t used in so long. The showing up.

And that shit is hard.

I do this thing—I’ve done it for years, even in college, before I would write an article or an essay or a paper for class—where, when I don’t know what to say or where to start, I open a new document and just start writing. Words after words after words. Most of it doesn’t make sense, and it’s really just my own version of stretching, of putting on my sneakers, of gearing myself up.

I just opened 10 documents to do the same. I started 10 different versions of posts I might write, of things I want to say, of sentences that won’t go anywhere. One by one, I closed them.

It’s where I am right now. I’m half-finished paragraphs and a collection of words and sentences in my mind that aren’t making their way to paper, not yet. I’m up too early and am the parent of a toddler who wakes up at 60 miles an hour, talking about “big trucks” and “blocks” and “sit here please,” which actually sounds like “bee trucks” and “bocks” and “seet here pease.”   

I’m a million different versions of the same sentence.  

But I guess it doesn’t always come out right anyway. Bee means big, sometimes. And practice becomes a practice. And maybe that’s all it can be, anyway.

1 comment:

  1. It generally cause to feel like the instructor has welcomed. need help with research proposal themselves into kitchen for espresso and whatever cake we may have on the counter. sharing your training. much obliged to you for sharing your time.

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