There is a bit of music in the background – easy listening, as they call it, that is very easy to not listen to, or at least to pay no attention to. A few families around eating and some kids over across the way, but the sound is somehow muted. The foam ceiling tiles, maybe?

There is nothing very pretty about this place. The mall itself is old and only half filled with stores. It lost one of its two “anchor” stores last year, a company that had been in business for 116 years or something, but couldn’t ride out this recession. I don’t know if it had anything to do with their demise, but their website was atrocious. They were sort of like a Macy’s store, but all you could buy on their website were mattresses. And maybe coffee pots.

I would people watch … I always read about writers doing that. Only, I take my glasses off in order to see the screen better, but without my glasses I can’t see the people unless they are standing right in front of me, so… fuzzy blob watching, maybe.

Anyway, I think I like it here. Free wifi. Not quiet, but noise that is not for me, which makes a very big difference. A block from my house. it’s my first day trying this out, but… I think I just may have found my writing space.

 
Yeah, that’s not me. I so want it to be but I am not, I have discovered, an early morning writer. This realization has been a shock to me, because I really love mornings, particularly that time just before dawn. Even if I am not watching it arrive I know the light is on its way, the birds are twittering their greetings, all else is city silent – this is my favorite time of day. But it turns out it’s my favorite time to be – not to do.

And really, I should have known. Instead of trying to fit myself into some writerly writer mental image that I have, it would have been a good idea to remember that, unless there is an emergency that requires me to get it together RIGHT NOW, I tend to wake up somewhat incomplete. Parts of my psyche, it would appear, take off as soon as I go to sleep and I spend the first couple of hours after I wake puttering around, coaxing them back into place. I still get flashes of inspiration before I am completely reassembled, mind you – those whispers of the dawn breeze – but my transcription of these undoubtedly brilliant insights does not soar; it plods along, staggers a bit and then flops. Kinda like trying to launch a turkey into an eagle’s nest.

So, what to do? Go with what you know, sure – but also go with who you are, seems the best idea. I can still make those early mornings work for me, as a writer, but only if I change things a bit. Throw out all my writerly writer preconceptions (and misconceptions) and work with my mornings, instead of against them. How to do that?

Let them be. Let the dawn evolve, allow my mind to wander at will over anything and nothing. If a thought occurs, there is no need to rush to get it into a blog post or something. Maybe that thought is only a teaser. Perhaps if I instead take the time to examine it, turn it over and peer into its depths, and scrape away any excess I’ll find that what I was really looking for (or what was really looking for me) lay just underneath.

If it’s shy or coy, it may take more than one morning, or one week so take notes along the way, but let things develop as they will. And when ready, write.

[photo of typewriter keys by Laineys Repertoire via Essential Prose – which looks like a good blog to bookmark itself.]

This morning, though, while I was concentrating on work – any work – to avoid major irritants in my life, ideas began to stroll through my mind, so far politely refraining from the mad, tumbled rush that is their normal behavior. Nothing earth shattering – thank the gods or geniuses or whatever – but at least something I can – just maybe – build on.

By writing about it here I thought I’d just go ahead and embrace the jinx – because “no, no, you’ll jinx it!” is the thought that ran through my head at the thought of saying/writing anything out loud about it. Not writing about it hasn’t helped much, and besides – if I can have stranger black cats – different ones -  hanging out on my patio no matter where I live, and think of Friday the 13th as my lucky day, I might as well embrace the jinx, too. 

No writing genius/muse has made an appearance, though, so actually crafting posts about the idea that make sense, instead of just galuph along like this one does, will have to wait till another time – though I will say that the first thing I know I need to do is change the name of the site from Human Beams.

[Image: By  Energie in Motion via BLDG BLOG].

It’s funny – when I first clicked over to the post from the rss feed, I thought I’d already read it yesterday, so moved on. Then I realized that, no, those were OTHER lizards I read about yesterday, but it’s so rare that I read about lizards – of any sort – that it just didn’t seem likely they would show up two days in a row.

They did sneak in, though, as lizards are wont to do.

To top that, the lizards of yesterday were written about by Murr Brewster, whose site I was wandering though after following a link to it (she’s pretty funny).

But beyond the coincidence of the lizards, how often do you come across someone named “Murr”? If you’re me… never, until about a month ago. And since then, three! Well, one (also a writer/podcaster) spells it Mur, but still. The third I read about in one of the UK papers because he did something or other, or something happened to him, but I do not believe it had anything to do with writing. I could be wrong.

Sometimes (like this morning!) when visiting someone’s professional site – usually people I don’t know at all – I have to stop myself leaving little suggestions… “If you put this there, and then that over there, and have THIS as your focal point, it’ll be more effective and draw the reader in” or some such thing. For one thing, I’m not in that business anymore – marketing, branding, design, so on – so probably I wouldn’t know what I was talking about anyway. But also, well who wants to hear from perfect strangers.

I’m fairly certain that my color blast here likely will offend the sensibilities (not to mention the eyeballs) of at least a random visitor or two, but oh well! This suits me here. On the other hand Book of Louis, my history/whatever site, is bland as can be. And that suits me there.

So, unless people ask (and why would they?), I refrain. Most times.

… if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up. Anne Lamott

I should have found this quote the other day but it will do just as well for today. Dawn is sometimes a long time breaking.

I had other options for quotes; after all, there are zillions of people who have said quotable things, but what caught my eye about this one was the word “stubborn”.

Stubborn. So often that is a negative. A stubborn child (I was said to be one). A stubborn stain. A stubborn man or woman, who won’t budge from a wrong path. Bad things that won’t go away everywhere are said to be stubborn.

But some things should be, must be stubborn.

Hope. Without that, life would be unendurable for a good portion of the world.

Generosity. I had never thought of a stubborn generosity – of spirit, of time, of money – until I read a future friend’s work that mentioned it. But after that, I’ve seen an abundance of examples of it in many places past and present.

Friendship. Lasting through the good and the bad, pursued despite time and distance, nourished and propped up when it flags, greeted anew after time away – I’d say that many lasting friendships are of the stubborn variety.

Belief. In one’s self or in someone else (or, if you are so inclined, in spiritual matters). For all the pop culture hoopla over believing in yourself, I am not sure all that many do. Even some of the more successful people. They may believe in their abilities, to great monetary or professional success, but in themselves? I’m not so sure, for many. To me that is something much different and separate from just what is conventionally considered success.

And you can hardly do a more stubborn thing than trust. In yourself, surely. That’s a lifelong lesson to be learned, for some. Trusting in someone else is, at times, easier – though still the height of stubbornness.

I think I like this.

Here’s to living a stubborn life today. And all the tomorrows.

Lately I’ve been remembering a short story I read a few years ago in one of those little Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock magazines. I think it was by Bill Pronzoni. It went something like this:

A series of letters between a woman and her husband, who was in prison for stealing a large amount of money or something – which had never been found. The prison authorities read every incoming and outgoing letter.

In one exchange the woman mentions how she is having trouble getting someone to plow the fields so that she could plant whatever for the next harvest, because she has no money. Husband writes back, telling her to look on the south field, where she will find something to help her out.

Well, of course in the next letter she says that she was unable to do that as the authorities had been out there since dawn, digging up the entire field and if anything was there to be found they would have found it, because they’d turned over every inch of ground. And he writes back two words: Now plant.

I thought that was just a great, funny end to the story. By hook or by crook someone’s plowed the field and prepared the ground, even if they didn’t know they were doing it. Now plant.

Those words run through my mind lately whenever I see/hear someone crying out “Where’s my hope? Where’s my change? Where are my rainbows and ponies I was promised? I’m going home!”. Thus removing their shallow roots from the field.

Or when, as I’ve seen in a couple of places recently, someone says “Where did the Movement go? I’ve been sitting here waiting for it to continue, I was on such a high after the election but now I am tired of waiting. I’m disappointed and giving up”. Some cannot grab hold of the trellis to grow upward.

Or “I haven’t gotten everything I wanted when I wanted it or in the form I wanted it, so I hate you and I’m done!”. Bindweed is a killer, I understand.

I don’t begrudge anyone their feelings or their disappointments – but movements are not formed on the mountaintops, or in continuous sunshine, or on pathways strewn with roses.

They grow up out of the sometimes very dark valleys, the paths strewn with sharp rocks and slippery pebbles. Like pearls they come from an irritant, and in all shapes, colors and sizes – sometimes smooth and round and perfect; other times lumpy and haphazard but still containing its own beauty.

That’s because Movement, change, hope, progress… is never about a single person and never a result of a single person’s efforts, nor should it be based on a single person’s personality or abilities.

Effective, long-term, continuous, sustainable change comes when many make one, when batons are picked up by one person (or a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand) then passed to the next to take it as far as they can go.

Hope is not a panacea, a destination, a resting place. It’s a journey – often through the dark with no torch or GPS, through the smelly alleys and bug infested dwellings; through the swelled bellies and dead eyes; through the lost homes and vanished jobs; through the injustices and descriminations; through the trials and tribulations, hope is the belief you’ll make out the other side.

Hope is what keeps you working to make that happen.

So, no, I don’t begrudge anyone their feelings or disappointment. I do, however, gaze at those packing up and going home with something less than sorrow.

I’ve never been interested in politicians and political shenanigans, but when I look at the cleared plot marked “hope and change”, at those still standing holding their seeds, at those who look around at a field that may not be pretty and perfect, may be full of rocks and hazards and that needs a lot of work still – and see those who have figured out “Hey! WE are the ones we’ve been waiting for”, I smile and think -

NOW plant.