A Sentence A Day

I had an idea I wanted to try, to take my most recent journal and choose one sentence per entry to record. Here's how it came out:

4.13
It reminds him of days when he would swim in deep cold water with his monkey friends.
4.16
All one’s senses are in the body.
4.20
Today I remembered how to breathe.
5.17
A strange and unfulfilling sandwich.
5.20
The way the steely morning light hits the buildings at odd angles- Market St. in a gray haze, but the tops of skyscrapers blazing.
5.28
After some waiting, an Australian nurse pulled out the rest of the tick with a scalpel, then flushed it out, bandaged it, then gave him a tetanus shot.
5.29
Had a dream that Michael Jackson (while dancing) gave me career advice.
5.30
I felt it when I tuned my banjo and slipped on the finger picks.
6.2
It was crowded in the museum, crowded in the streets, people approaching us for change or to donate to Greenpeace, sun in my eyes, I soon got cranky but felt better in the Mission.
6.6
At the counter she says, “I have eight boxes to pick up,” in a clear, strong, womanly voice.
6.7
Sunburned arms from riding along the Bay Trail with Amy, and to a beach in Alameda where the water was pretty but not quite right for swimming.
6.8
I lingered over In Defense of Food, the Sherlock Holmes series, the biography of Cat Power, the Autobiography of Bigfoot, and a Hemingway novel that was written in his later years, which I shunned because he was living in Key West at the time and I have bad memories of Key West.
6.9
I feel like the more time I work there the less I like it and the more I feel more like an outsider, wooden and strange, zombified, solemn faced.
8.13
But I am quickly losing all the air in my lungs and my vision is narrowing down to a pinpoint, surrounded by black.
8.21
It means you can bear the tiny anguishes of everyday life, but one day wake up and wonder why you’re miserable.
8.23
Don’t worry, Self. We’ll get out of here. Go North!
9.13
I keep picking up mediocre books that are embarassing in their constraint- “Get in touch with your hunger!” I want to yell.
9.27
And moving back to Chico would be like crawling back into bed after breakfast.
10.12
I’m eating “vanana” flavored yogurt out of a coffee mug and I have to go to work soon.
10.13
At Mama’s Royal Café we eat breakfast and draw, watch the gray wet outside rivers rivulets in the gutters; fried green tomatoes, sweet hot coffee, out pants moist, a bucket of umbrellas by the door.
10.15
I learn to do bird calls and develop the richness and diversity of my singing.
10.17
(You got to be careful or your childhood home could just burn down.)
10.28
The wind blows through the world today, slamming doors and tearing leaves from branches.
11.5
“I know that we’ll last,” I thought.
11.7
I feel sparkly, alive, nervous, bewildered…
11.16
The other day I saw a pile of gleaming persimmons in the grocery store and almost fell over with longing for that time in my life, persimmons being a pervasive and ubiquitous thing throughout my years in Chico- not so much their taste as their smooth plasticy skin, their incredible glowing orange color, their exotic strangeness, just the way they looked hanging from huge trees all over town, the leaves long gone but those pointed fiery jewels still hanging heavily on the bare branches, like treasure.
12.2
I get angry now, plenty- sometimes I deal with it, sometimes not.
12.4
It’s funny the way a city can really let you in or shut you out, depending on your attitude and willingness to explore.
12.7
Me: “Wow, those pigeons have big shoulders!”
Benny: “I think those are wings.”
12.16
We ate enormous amounts of sushi at Get-A and drank big beers, then played Rabbids Go Home on the Wii.
1.8
I can already feel my roots starting to spread, and ready to take this on as Home.
1.9
It illuminates each fork in the road and makes me want to just go limp and surrender.
1.10
Benny and I eat victory pie in Random Order.
1.11
On the 15th we’ll head back to Oakland and start the packing process!
1.12
Huge crazy old theater, cavernous, covered with murals and dimly lit by yellow chandaliers, offering beer and pizza along with the usual theater fare- and only $2 for a matinee ticket!
1.14
We were up early this morning, and saw the sunrise as we drove downtown- gleaming misty pink and lavendar, gorgeous with all the lights around, street lights and head lights.
1.17
Sitting on the back of the bike was fun, watching the spidery trees go by with their bare branches and twisting vines, the river full and flowing.
1.21
Onward and upward!

A Writer's Journey

Natalie Goldberg's "Long Quiet Highway" awoke something in me. Her writing generally has this effect on me. I have read a few of her books on writing: "Writing Down the Bones" and "Wild Mind" which somehow make writing seem like the easiest thing in the world. Just put down one word after another. Don't stop to read it over or revise. Let images and senses and memories come to you. Something about her writing relaxes me, makes me stop and look around, and breathe. This book was more like a novel, detailing her journey from childhood to adulthood and struggling with finding her meaning, through writing, love, and through Buddhism and meditation.

Her writing is simple. Why do I like it so much? Because it is simple. Because of all the NOUNS. I love nouns. I love how a noun can evoke so much, and yet bring your mind back to the solid world of things. A white mug of black tea sat on the table by the stack of books. You see it. It brings you back to the moment.

One morning my husband and I had breakfast at a nearby coffee shop, then he drew in his sketchbook while I read "Long Quiet Highway". As we were walking back to our apartment down Piedmont Avenue holding hands, I saw everything around me and and noticed the way the leaves of trees trembled with the wind and how a dog scratched himself and bicyclists speeding past and the way the sunlight hit store front windows. At the corner I stopped and exclaimed, "I'm glad to be alive!" And it was her book that had reminded me.

There was another time I got angry at Natalie. She talks about trying out different jobs, one as a dessert chef at a cafe in Taos, New Mexico, where she was living. After two months there, she was tired of it. "When I returned home, I quit working at The Haven; I quit everything else I was doing. I wrote seven days a week for seven weeks, rarely leaving that little adobe on Don Cubero. I moved through the book. No resistance, no thought; I just kept writing."
As an artist, writer, and musician who has worked stressful food service jobs for almost ten years and wants nothing more than the freedom to pursue my art, you can bet that pissed me off. I threw the book across the room. How does she do it? She teaches workshops and she has published books, I guess that's how. It doesn't seem like it would be enough but it is. After I was finished being angry, I was inspired. I could do that, right?