I Write You, I Write You Not

I was thinking about not-writing, which is a special collection of behaviors called Really Uncomfortable Avoidance To Silence The Singing Muse, or RUTS for short. It is practiced by word gatherers of all kinds; novelists, playwrights, essayists, poets. Correction: actually, it’s the creative writers who engage in this behavior. Journalists and reporters have such a direct relationship with the words they use. Their cupboards are all organized and clean, with appropriate words just sitting there obediently on the shelves, waiting to be pulled down and used.

I was earnestly practicing not-writing behaviors, and when Poetry came around with her seductions, wearing her best evening wear and very unsensible shoes, I rebuffed her. “ Come out to play,” she purred, and I could smell her flowery breath, feel the temperature of her neck, her hair. “No,” I replied, “I’m much too busy doing laundry and running errands, answering emails and cleaning the tiny spots on the long striped carpet in front of the kitchen sink.” RUTS type stuff. “But you know this is The Way for you,” she said, “The path through the haze and towards the place where intentions meet commitment, where water flows clean and equanimity rides in on cool breezes to clarify the mental muck.”

“ Poetry,” I sighed, “ I am busy worrying about my daughter, who has had a very rough four months. I am researching novel ways to help her, calling and Internetting and looking at books. She is my heart, and when her rhythm is off, I forget how to dance.”

Poetry leaned against the wall and just watched, listened. Her benign expression irked me. My defenses threw another brick or two onto the wall I imagined between us.

“ Besides, Po, I’ve begun my summer Yoga and Yogabilities™ classes, the latter in a new space on a new day. This takes planning, you know. I don’t have huge chunks of time lying around just waiting to be poemed upon.” I pushed out the last few lines in a gently accusatory manner. Poetry seemed impervious, letting my words bounce off her shimmery gown, which I then noticed was purple. My words got confused right out of their sentences. Some fell to the floor a few feet away from her, other made for the window and smacked into the glass, hard. Stunned, they joined their sad sentence family on the floor.

Poetry shifted a little and kicked off her fantastical shoes, which were just the sort of thing I never wear. She wiggled her toes and arched her back away from the wall and did a few gentle half-neck rolls. (I taught her to do those in lieu of the full rolls, which are simply not good for most people.) Her eyes met mine, and she waited. I knew this game. She’d stand there, or sometimes sit, eyes full of compassionate, irrefutable truth. And she’d wait. And I’d avoid her. And she’d wait some more.

Eventually, if I practice my RUTS hard enough, she leaves. It used to upset me greatly when she finally spun on her heels and left, often slamming the door behind her. (Poetry can be so damn dramatic.) I used to worry that she’d never return, she’d give up on me for good. I know better now. My blood type is Poet, and I can only deny it to a point before it becomes, well, unhealthy for my soul.

So, I was thinking about not-writing, which I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. There have been Very Good Reasons. (See above.) I was sitting and making To Do lists, doing my RUTS exercises and creatively coming up with Even More Reasons.

Poetry came, she spoke, she went silent and waited. This time, she refused to leave. She sat in the corner in her purple, sparkly gown and watched me not-write. She followed me from room to room and even out to the car. She lay down in the backseat as I drove around, took Bink here and there and filled the gas tank. I ignored her, knowing nobody else in my immediate sphere can see her. At one point, after I dropped Bink at her day program, I turned around and addressed her as she lounged across the back seat, seemingly oblivious to the bags of Savers donations and Yoga straps and Bink’s soft pink car blanket. . “Po, don’t you have somewhere else you need to be?”

“Nope,” she said.“ I’ve cleared my calendar. I’m not going to leave until you pick up a pen and write something that isn’t a To Do list or a birthday card. I’m going to follow you like your shadow until you start a poem and nurture it ‘til its natural end. Until you let the words that need to be joined, come together and fly freely through the Earth’s atmosphere. I know you know the world needs poetry more than ever right now and I can’t do it on my own. Rejoin the brave ones who are making their art and writing their songs and poems and reminding people that there is more, much more than Fox and CNN and Facebook and endless division, anger, and greed.”

She said all that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Poetry say so much at one time. You gotta respect that kind of speech, so full of passion and care and certainty.

I consider my ass gently kicked.

 

-Melinda Coppola