Write Words, Make Marks

Working with intentions (without the pressure)

Delete delete delete.

Nearly 17 years after writing my first blog post, I still stare at the blinking cursor sometimes, my fingers resting on the keyboard, with absolutely no idea where to begin. I write a sentence or two and delete them. I think of

Woz Flint

and her new book, The Distraction-Free First Draft, which includes brilliant advice about writing on a typewriter for the very reason that you cannot delete as you go! (Handwriting is great, too.)

I look over at my pink typewriter, a birthday gift from M.J. from many years ago, and whisper an apology to it. Sorry, friend. I decide right here and now to dust it off in the new year.¹

If you’ve read the footnote, I will tell you that I really did intend to dust it off. That’s the thing with intentions. I make them and then often, forget about them… And oy, as I write this, I realize we are cusping on the new year with its dreaded resolutions and a thousand and one posts about why one is not making resolutions, or alternatives to resolutions, and I don’t want to do any of that here.

What is the difference between intentions and what’s on your to-do list and commitments and hopes and dreams and resolutions, anyway? It reminds me of the perennial discussions when I worked in non-profits about the differences between vision and mission, goals and objectives.

What I know is that working with intentions is a lot like meditating. Just like the mind, they tend to drift off. And just as in meditation, that is to be expected, and the important part is in the coming back. Come back to the breath. Come back to the noticing. Come back to the thing you intended to do, explore, embody, inhabit, make time for, or shift – whatever the case may be.

*

One of my intentions, since I launched my first blog on January 7, 2007, has been to treat this writing as a practice in showing up, throwing some arrows, and seeing where they land. In all these years, that part hasn’t fundamentally changed. There are times when I have a thing I know I want to write about or towards. But just as often, I have no idea what to say, only that vague impulse and quiet desire to try to put something into words.

I love the conversations M.J. and I have, and Aviva and I have, about that impulse, that desire, that need, that drive. It is so personal, so different for every person who writes as part of their life, their being, their existence. I remember Aviva describing it once as being kind of like a limb, an extension of the body that is a given, that thinking about it at all is sort of odd. “That’s just my need to write,” one might say, in the same way one might say, “That’s just my leg.”

One of my intentions these days is to make time for art-making. The impetus behind this is the two-year creative facilitator training fellowship I’m doing with the Jewish Studio Project.² Carving out time on a regular basis for a personal practice is a core part of the training, so that by the second year when we begin our practicum, we have the experience of “making art about it” in our bones.

*

This morning, with undeniable cold (or flu?) symptoms, Aviva and I canceled our long-awaited two-night graduation celebration trip to NYC. From a be-a-good-human standpoint, it was the right and responsible choice. From a heart perspective, it was nothing short of sucky, and I spent a chunk of the day nursing my disappointment.

After sleeping a chunk of the morning away, I brought a sketchbook and markers into bed and began to draw. Not unlike sitting down to write, sitting down to make art can be intimidating, which is why Pat Allen, author of Art Is a Way of Knowing, writes about “making marks” instead. Making marks, like writing words, I can do. Writing or creating something amazing and beautiful and meaningful creates unnecessarily high stakes, and puts all of the focus on the outcome.

Sure enough, today's mark-making/art-making was very much about the process. I began with a mix of anxiety, self-pity, guilt, and disappointment – and a bed frame. For some reason, a tree wanted to grow right up through the middle of it, perhaps asking me to see the life that was happening right in the midst of all of those unwanted feelings. The mark-making took on a life of its own and I simply followed the shapes and colors.

It was up to me to decide when it was “done.” It is up to me to appreciate that it helped carry me through a tough moment today, and not to burden it with the need to be anything special. Maybe in this drawing, I see some meaning. Maybe I don’t. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. None of that really matters; the point is the process, the practice, the experience of being present with oneself.

*

I’ve realized something in the last few weeks. Much of my writing over the years has woven the personal and political, the creative and the spiritual. How could it not? My life, like yours, is an amalgam of all of these. The question then arises for me – in times when I am in a more internal place, or during periods such as this one when I am deeply sorting my relationships to systems, activist spaces, Judaism and Israel, and my work in the world, all while moving towards a milestone birthday – of what to write and what to share.

I have felt almost mute lately. My initial reaction to this is to find it totally disconcerting. There is an “oh, shit” quality to not knowing what I want to say or do just yet. I recognize this as an old (young) place in myself. A pressure to figure things out, to pin things down, to take a stand, and from there to be out front with my voice.

That is simply not happening at the moment. Fighting it, resisting it, struggling with it – these are the old ways.

*

Last night, an unexpected wave of emotion hit me about turning 50. I really didn’t see it coming. There I was, sitting on the couch watching Season 6 of The Crown, when suddenly I was crying, I will be 70 in 20 years… What? Wait! How did this happen? I just turned 30, with my delicious 15-month-old baby on my breast, my baby who just graduated from college!

I know it’s natural to be thinking about the beginning of a whole new decade. The old ways would have me starting with a splash. Say, an exciting announcement. I mean, who doesn’t love a big reveal?

But I have a feeling what’s happening is something else entirely. At the moment, it’s quieter. I don’t need to lay out a whole series of intentions for my 50s. I can just write words, make marks, and see how things go. I can know that the work is neither mine to desist from nor mine to complete, that I hold two slips of paper in two pockets³, and that the more I listen, the more capable I’ll be of holding space for myself when I don’t know what to say or do, and holding space for others who are similarly intent on listening, amidst a world at war, for the wisdom of the still small voice.

1

Here is where I tell you that I’m chagrined to acknowledge my blurb for Woz’s book: "Thanks to this delightful, practical, and inviting guide, I have dusted off my long-neglected pink typewriter. First drafts await!" — Jena Schwartz, writing coach and author of Why I Was Late for Our Meeting

2

I highly recommend JSP’s public programs, which are free and open to all. You do not have to be Jewish and you do not have to be an artist to participate.

3

The teaching is that we all carry two slips of paper in this lifetime. One reads, "I am but dust and ashes." The other, “The world was created for me."

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