On the first day of the National Writing Project institute, we were asked to think about our favorite moments as writers and explain those experiences as narratives. I wrote about my experiences keeping a personal journal in college. Here's my response:
Unnerved. At a time when I was wounded and out of place, there was no sense of security in being around other people, calling home, or asking for advice. There was no relieve in the things I was raised to believe in. I felt like such a fool, and I needed to bring myself out of desparation. And so, I fell back on a practice that I ad truned to since I was twelve. I needed to write. I used to just go through the motions - writing down someone else's words, like lyrics to a song or copying out of a book, and sometimes still do. But I had experienced the writing-out of feelings now and was compelled to allow myself another self-indulgent session.
Out in the woods on a nearly vacant trail, only another jogger every ten minutes or so. I'd gone for a run and stopped in the middle. I sat on a rock. I breathed and let the trees soak into me. I closed my eyes to feel the spots of sun blinking through the leaves like whispers to my soul. Then a jumble thoughts would flow through me and right out the top of my head, most of them unclear - that scattered uncertainty of unrequited love and wishfulness. And then one thought would come, and I'd know it was brilliant. Before I forgot it, I'd scribble it down as quickly as I could on a piece of paper I had folded into quarters and tucked into my waistband. It was as if I was watching myself from a distance yet could not me any more in the moment as myself: the slowness of writing not keeping up with what I wanted to say, that slowness shaping my next thought into somehting more clear and poignant than my original idea. Such release and feeling of being real and knowing who I was. Ending when I was exhausted or it just felt like I'd reached the perfect concluding line. I'd read what had spewed out of me and be so pleased with myself. Feeling centered and proud and like someone ought to be there to see me like this, all figured out.
It is those moments of writing which make it important to me, which inspire me to want to ensure that the ability to ground yourself is available to everyone: the young, the underprivileged, the forgotten. The self-serving, the bullying, the greedy. For better than any prayer with a thousand meaningless "Oh Lords", writing can help you see through the clouds of life. It helps you define values, see situations from broader perspectives, calms and draws conclusions. It is that communication with yourself that I learned to cherish. It is because writing has the abilityto search and affirm. And also to preserve, so that when you need to, you can read over again that moment of clarity to reconnect with the self you intended to be.
My Little Jane,
