75 and Sunny

Feb 9, 2011

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It’s 75 degrees today. Hot almost. Maybe hotter walking down the street with my brother. Me wearing black pants and my poet boots and a newly used jacket I bought yesterday at Buffalo Exchange in Belmont Shore.
We got a late lunch of real tacos. Tacos I haven’t eaten in years. Not Tex-mex or Eastern excuses for tacos, but real tacos with corn tortillas, highly seasoned chicken, avocado fresh and green, home made salsa, good salsa, pico, beans, mexican rice. It all sounds so normal when I list it here and it’s normal for the people who live here, god I wish it was normal for where I lived. And a Mexican coca-cola with that real sweet sugar.

I’m not sure where I stand with writing lately. I’ll come back to it when I get home I suppose. I’ve been feeling terribly insecure with it the past two weeks. When you take a week off you feel like you aren’t doing what you should be doing, that you need to be doing more, that your life as an artist isn’t a life as an artist at all – and that it won’t ever be.

I’m supposed to be writing down what I think I need/seek from other people. Being here, back in the midst of things, of old things, makes me see maybe what it is I really do seek in other people. What I don’t like. What I’m not ready to deal with. It’s uncomfortable and I’m exhausted by it all. And I’m supposed to be on vacation and so today I’m hanging out with my brother and going out with him tonight and sitting in the sun with a tank top on digesting my sweet coke and real deal mexican food and trying not to worry so much about what I was, what I am, what I want (us) to be, what I know we are.

Comments

8 responses to “75 and Sunny”

Melissa Green

February 9, 2011

Darling, you ‘job’ for the next little while is to sit in the sun, enjoy your brother’s company, and tacos and whatever else–just soak it all in. Just observe. You don’t have to write your magnum opus while you’re on vacation. Just relax. Rest. Let your anxieties about being a writer go for now. You ARE a writer, you will BE a writer. But sometimes any writer–all writers–have to stop and refill the coffers with new observations, new thoughts, new environments, and just sitting in the sun doing absolutely nothing at all. That your job now, Rachel. Just relax and enjoy yourself and soak it all up with the sunshine! xo

Reply
1. rachvb
  
  February 9, 2011
  
  You know, I never thought I would have any issues relaxing, but it’s been rather more difficult than I would have thought. Extraneous, embedded, odd insecurities have popped up in places I felt I had left behind. But you’re right – it is time for me to listen and relax and be still in the sun and try to refill and just enjoy where I am.
  Thank you thank you. I need some of my California chill back…I am in the right place for that 😉
  xo
  Rachel
  
  Reply
Rebecca

February 10, 2011

Rachel, you are writring. All you are observing and feeling and letting sink beneath your sking and into your poet boots are what you are writing. You have time to put it on paper. Most of writing is observing and considering and thinking and being. I completely believe that your worry over this means you are in the right place.
love from 11 degrees,
Rebecca

Reply
1. rachvb
  
  February 10, 2011
  
  Yes, I suspect I am. Thank you for reminding me. It’s been a while since I let something soak in. I wasn’t expecting to feel discomfort in coming here, but then the things we expect are almost always wrong, aren’t they? But there is something there. That I do know.
  I’m headed back to 11 degrees on sat so I’m hoping with your poet powers you can warm it up a little bit.
  Xoxo
  
  Reply
Claire Beynon

February 11, 2011

When things (words, images, songs. . .) seem to want to stay tucked away inside; when they exercise their will over mine, I try to think of them as being the wise and knowing one, to trust they understand better than I about timing and alchemy and the importance of incubation time. Incubation is definitely not passive or non-work time. . . the exact opposite, really? We’re just more used to seeing graspable, measurable evidence. ‘It’ – creativity – is happening all the time; it’s not just in you; it’s who you are. All will be well, dear Rachel. Hang in there. Love, Claire xo

Reply
1. rachvb
  
  February 13, 2011
  
  Thanks, Claire. I will let them hibernate. It seems that’s what they’d like to do and for the moment what I’d like to do as well now that I’m back in the cold. I like your idea of alchemy – yet there is no standard recipe ever for what we do. We don’t know until it’s complete what steps we might have to take, what ingredients we have to substitute, add. There is no process really – each journey is different.
  xo
  Rachel
  
  Reply
Marylinn Kelly

February 13, 2011

Though we think of our work as writing, that solitary act, it has another solitary aspect, which is being. Being in the moment, being in the place, wherever, whatever it is…standing at the (do you love it?) sushi burrito truck, recognizing a real taco by its unique smell, sinking into the taste of the sugar Coke. There are not seams between who we are and what we create; the two flow together. I think if it feels gentle or easy we assume we’re not trying hard enough, not putting our shoulder to it. Words gather themselves into writing like the birds turn threads, twigs and leavings into nests. You are in the collecting phase. Carry a roomy basket.

Reply
1. rachvb
  
  February 13, 2011
  
  how lovely. Being is a hard state to BE in. To not think of other things or places or states of being, but to simply enjoy the one we are in. That takes practice and a lot of deep breaths. I love that – there are no seams between who we are and what we create – they run along the same vein together.
  I hope I took my open self. I felt things coming in at least. A taste here, a moment there. Time will tell what sized basket I carried with me.
  Thank you, Marilynn.
  xoxo
  
  Reply

75 and Sunny

Comments

8 responses to “75 and Sunny”

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