Morning Pages: A River Of Words

Wednesday morning I wrote three Morning Pages like always. Wednesday night I typed them, omitting one section, reshaping the syntax of each line I typed. Then I read it, counting each word I cut. There's magic in writing and no magic at all. Magic in that the thoughts didn't exist until I wrote them, no magic because I crafted it through a simple process.

Magic and craft. Art and effort. Feeling and thinking. Morning and night.

I'd go on, but the rhythm leads me straight to, "pressure and time; that and a big goddamn poster," and only Morgan Freeman should say such things. I'll just get on with this morning's pages:

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It is a mornings when I resist the pen and open space of the three blank Morning Pages. I have no doubt I'll fill them — I've already filled the first three lines — but it seems too much trouble. Sometimes beginnings are like that for me (maybe for you too), but then I see I've filled this much of the page just because I started. It's that much easier once I begin. I'm not even a third through the first page, but already the feelings of impossibility or even difficulty have melted away. Doing is the way out of feeling overwhelmed.

I'm helped by the steady flow of 1,964 days of Morning Pages. This 1,965^th day in a row is nearly inevitable as I'm carried along on the river of finished pages, 5,892 of them so far, 5,895 by the time I'm done today. The flood of all that pushes through any dam trying to hold me back. The routine of awakening with a pen and filling three pages every day for over five years gets me through most hesitation and barriers. The fatigue of last week, the sickness this past weekend, and all my feelings of being overwhelmed give way to the habit of Morning Pages which, so far, has proven an unstoppable surge.

It's not just a matter of my obligation to the streak. Writing Morning Pages turns out to be the best way I can start the day. All this week good has come from them — good pieces, good thinking, good realizations, and good feelings. Even as sluggish as I felt this morning, I began the writing in a small hand, ten to twelve words per line, some hidden part of me wanting room to write long, some big idea springing through the movement of my pen. I'm on track for a thousand words in three pages and have lost care for the time enough not have even looked at the clock. I'm happy to let the words lead me to whatever it is I need, however long it takes to get there.

I woke tired, needing something. More sleep? A warmer house? Light in the dark sky? I turned to another comfort, my thoughts springing mysteriously and trickling out one word at a time onto the dry plain of the blank page. Sometimes the thoughts come out well, other times they spill out ugly. Mostly it's not any one good thought or moment of enlightenment I'm after so much as the rhythm of following the flow of the thinking. I've filled two-thirds of this morning's pages and still I happily don't know into what other thoughts these will flow or how today's last line today will end.

I've now been carried onto the third line of page three by the steady current of a deep river. I'm in no hurry to reach the end nor do I imagine what the last line will have to say. These words simply flow between the boundaries of the margins of these pages and I follow.

I can't recommend this enough but know how difficult it can be to create such a torrent of habit. The first morning, July 5, 2014, I wasn't pulled along by any river. I sat at my desk in a dry wash and tangle of dead brush. I hacked at that brush for three quarters of an hour and made just enough room to stand. Sweat enough to leave a damp spot. I wondered if I'd ever do another day's pages. I couldn't imagine that dry, barren ground as the bed of a river, couldn't imagine a source, not even a trickle.

In the beginning, one stroke of the pen follows another and there is a letter on the page, followed by others which become a word that lived until then only in my mind. The word leads to another and another, forming a thought that began within me but finished out in the world and led to the next idea until half a page became a page and a half, two, and then three pages. The next day another three followed and the next day after that.

Drops of water, enough of them over time, become the river.

Too soon each morning I arrive at this last blank line. It's not nearly long enough for all I have left to say. More pages tomorrow. More words all day long. The river rolls on and on.

The Day Gets Away

I had plans for today to get up, write Morning Pages, then see what I could accomplish. I especially wanted to clean the mess on and around my desk. Typing this now, at nearly four in the afternoon, a book, phone, planner, portfolio, and pack of post-it notes still litter my desk. I don't want to even describe the stacks on the windowsill and shelf or the footstool atop which I've piled papers that surely I'll get to later. (Probably not. And stop calling me Shirley.)

After sleeping past eight, I came down for coffee and Morning Pages but made the mistake of checking email. A notice from Google said some accounts of an organization I used to help manage are sending spam. Those addresses are abandoned by all but a few people. Even the program director and I stopped using them.

Okay, I thought, before I start Morning Pages, I'll just log in and fix things quickly. But I couldn't remember or find my password. I tried one thing, another, and some others. Ten minutes turned to thirty and then an hour. I requested help from Google, closed the computer, and went back to making coffee. Google, a leader in technology and efficiency, won't get back to me for at least a week.

I made coffee but the filter ripped and filled the cup with grounds. I started writing, but only the top half of the cup was drinkable after which I was easily sidetracked from the half page of writing I'd done by a possible way to get into the account. A minute turned into forty-five, but I recalled (lucked into) the correct password then lost another three-quarters of an hour monkeying with settings, reading and deleting old mail, alerting the few users that I'm shutting things down when the domain runs out.

Back to writing. I filled page one and was midway through page two when I remembered that the domain renews and charges my card automatically. I logged into the account again, drilled through menus, and fifteen minutes turned to forty.

Done with that, I made another cup of coffee thinking, I need to order a new chamber for my Aeropress. But I resisted that urge. Focus, I told myself, setting the kettle on the burner, placing a new filter, filling the chamber (which I really do need to replace), rinsing the mug, pressing the coffee. The whole time thinking, there's something I'm forgetting.

The clocked ticked just past noon. I sipped coffee and wrote into the first lines of page three. I finished the coffee and (maybe it was written in the bottom of the cup) remembered my one o'clock therapy appointment. The clock read 12:20. I still had two-thirds of a page to go.

I went up and dressed, told my daughter I was off to therapy, gathered the unfinished pages, and drove to the office. There I finished the last page and breathed a literal sigh of relief. I looked at my watch: 12:57 PM.

Where, I wondered, had the morning gone?

Brooding, Past and Future

Like another writer I enjoy and you should read, I've been brooding.

I looked back at last year's Morning Pages for October 30 to see where I have come from. I've been listening to Bruce Springsteen's first album Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. and thinking he couldn't have known Born To Run was in him. He was likely anxious just getting started let alone becoming one of the biggest acts in rock and roll. That led to me thinking about how I can't know where I'll be next year and that sent me to my October 30, 2018 Morning Pages where I found this:

I'm cracking up little by little. This is the phrased I used in a letter to Jerry: cracking up. I remember a special ed. teacher at F-M who was brilliant but every few years cracked up and went out on medical leave for months or a year. I feel as if I'm on the road to a crack up. It worries me....

I have my department meeting Thursday and am reminding myself to shut up. There's no winning at these things and so many ways to lose. I imagine the obligatory "celebrations" icebreaker, each of us having to say something wonderful about school. At my turn, I imagine trying to pass but being pressed by the admin until I say, "I celebrate that we're done with two months of the year and I haven't killed myself yet." I smile thinking of the reaction that would get....

I am listing all the things I need to do next. My hand is clenching the pen again. I take a deep breath and try again to relax. Let it go. Move a sixteenth of an inch away from cracking up. I won't crack up. I just can't.

No way could I have known then that this morning I'll walk to work at a new job that isn't teaching, at which I'm appreciated by all my colleagues including the people in charge. I couldn't have known I would make it through that last school year by deciding in January that I would quit in June.

There also no real way of knowing what next October 30 will look like. I don't even know what the rest of today will be but, I'm closer to Born To Run than Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J..

And get this: since Born To Run in 1975 Springsteen hit the peak of popularity with 1984's Born In The U.S.A., the peak of artistry with Tunnel Of Love in 1987, and the peak of mastery with Western Stars this year. Even he doesn't know what his October 30, 2019 will be. He just keeps writing and recording.

Me, I'll keep writing and posting and we'll see where we get to, Bruce and me.

Life Is A Pile Of Papers

Doing Morning Pages at the living room desk I was troubled by piles of paper on the shelves to either side. Mail, drafts essays, reminders, notes, a magazine, two folders, and whatever was at the bottoms of the piles. I kept writing my pages, knowing I’m best served by doing one thing at a time, but those piles nagged at me.

Soon as I finished writing, I consolidated the piles into one and cleared one shelf. I breathed a little easier. Hoarding works up my anxiety. Clarity lowers it. That clear shelf had me feeling better. Not fully healed but a smidge calmer.

The tough thing about a pile of papers is that some of it can’t be cleared easily. The essay drafts, one that’s twelve pages long, need revision that will take hours. More troubling, I don’t know what to do when they’re done. I’d like to think they could be published, but I would need to figure out where and how to do that. Piled papers are daunting, but just the thought of finding somewhere to publish exhausts me so that I don’t want to even begin.

As I worked into the pile, I thought of this Fitzgerald quote: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.” I’ll argue it’s not the past into which I have to let myself be pulled. I beat on against the current to be in the moment. Sure, I’m often dragged back and waste too much energy trying to peer into the future, but I’m trying to be in this moment. That pile of papers is an affront to this moment. It is to me. It represents what I should do or should have already done. How can I be in this moment when I’m embarrassed by the things I haven’t done and wishing for a future in which I am a better man?

Morning Pages served as the first draft of this. I’m done with them now and typing this last thought. Soon I’ll walk those pages downstairs and file them. That much will be done and cleared away. I’ll check if there’s time to dig in more, clear away even one more piece of paper. I’m rowing hard against the current, stubbornly working at being in this moment with a clear mind if not a clear desk, ready for what is happening and whatever comes next.