Hola friends.
So, while I have tried in the past to write morning pages here instead of my yellow notepads (I now have SO MANY FILLED YELLOW LEGAL PADS!)
I’ve realized that doing the actual morning pages practice I write every morning won’t work here. Those pages are a place I write knowing that there is no audience, knowing that what I write is throw-away and won’t be seen. When I first started them, I agreed I wouldn’t look at or share them for at least a year. So doing them in the moment here goes against that agreement.
However, I found my very first notebook of morning pages the other day (which was started in May of 2021) and noticed several important things. First, I noticed that it was written in pencil and that the top page was already getting smudged away by the passage of time. And second, I noticed—and you math whizzes out there can back me up on this—that May of 2021 was well passed my internally derived statute of limitations of one year, while also being recent enough to still be basically about things very related to the current events of my life.
So, I’ve decided to start sharing them sometimes here.
In fitting with the theme of this Substack, these can be viewed perhaps as letters I wrote years ago to my future self, or perhaps letters I unknowingly was writing to you. Either way, I’m excited to share them here, and I’m excited to make sure they are preserved digitally. (Pencil scribbles do not last long in the house of a bunch of ADHDers, as it so happenss.)
Without further ado:
Morning Pages—5-19-21
The girls are coming. I have 15 minutes before they get here. Will be interesting to see if that is enough for my pages. Pages have been interesting. I can’t explain it, and I admit I am highly suggestible, but there does seem to be some effect—a certain calm that has taken over or been added to my creative or artistic self. These pages appear to open something up? They let my brain express all it needs to express or something? Or maybe it’s the strict, dedicated attention, the sense that I am giving this part of me a gift, or time, or space; there is an adherence; there is a “getting something done”-ness, and that something is writing. Writing for no purpose, or rather for no project. Writing that will never be seen, scrutinized, judged, assessed, found wanting, criticized, analyzed, by myself (at least for a long while) or anybody else. There is a freedom in this, a beauty. Room to be, room to use the silly phrase, room to say the catty thing, room to “be bad.” To be “wrong.” to do it wrong. To be experimental and playful but also no obligation to do anything. This train of thought got really boring. Almost annoying. I guess I could have switched mid-sentence. I guess I have no need for grammar here for punctuation or care or commas or speling it feels odd to bend rules I have other fish to fritar
Supongo que está bien usar Castellano, tambièn. Y no tengo que preocuparme con reglas gramaticas tampoco.
It all feels odd and freeing. Expansive.
Who will I become?
What writing will emerge from this brain when full permission is granted? When the gates are raised & the prison doors unlocked? What gifts reside inside me—or what cosmic fish can be caught by the net of my mind? And what of the catching—what of the preparing? I feel that I have caught great beautiful unique fish—but what about the gutting, the de-scaling, the putting butter in a pan and frying to perfection?
Do I have that in me as well? It’s like my artistry is so able & willing to go to the waters, to fish for hours, and I have a real knack at catching huge gorgeous trout and other rare, beautiful fishes and even sometimes ugly creatures like giant angler fishes—but then after the reel-in, after the de-netting, I rush to slap them on a plate, still breathing, still writhing w/ independent life-force, slippery & wet & smelly with big, creepy eyes—dragonflies still lodged in the gullet—and then I try to serve them as such saying “can you see this beautiful fish? Can you believe what I caught? Eat it! It’s such a great catch! It will nourish you so! It will have such interesting flavor! It’s so beuatiful! Aren’t I a great fisherman? Can’t you see my diligence?”
And then when I realize nobody craves an uncooked fish, nobody wants to see her dinner’s eyes staring back—I then panic and do a messy, cruel, chop-shop preparation. I sever tender meats and mutilate the eyes and sear scales and burn the thing’s flesh and use too much garnish, so hasty, so desperate to make it consumable, so inexperienced in preparation.
Can I learn to serve my catches?
Poems are fish
Novels are elk or
deer or moose. Bloodletting
and cuts from jaw to navel
and gutting and getting elbows-
deep in viscera required.
Will I ever serve a proper
plate of venison? So good at
the hunt, so inexperienced and
scared of the art required in
prepping my kill so that its
life-force can be consumed
and digested.
___________
Well, that was it, and this is something I have wanted to try doing for a long time, so I’m glad I did it. And I’m really, really glad that I have followed through today. It has been much, much more difficult to do this than I expected, but I am doing it.
Thanks for being with me as I do.
Affectionately,
Joshua