Healing from the R-virus, Part One: Breakthrough Tip for the week of 12/8/2014

That hollow ache in the gut. The voices in your mind muttering, “Why bother?” The R-virus. Any writer who is serious about her or his work is headed for an encounter (or dozens of encounters – I know from experience)  with the R-virus.

Our relationship with our writing often mirrors our relationship with our life. If your childhood was marked by painful rejection – from any element of the world around you – rejection can be the biggest block to your writing. At the worst, you stop before you even pick up the pen. “There’s no point. I have nothing new to say. No-one will read my words.” If you push past those symptoms, the R-virus tells you not to bother reading or showing your work to others. And submitting work? Forget it.

Here’s the bad news: There is no magic pharmaceutical that can take down the R-virus.

Here’s the good news: you are the healer. You can begin by seducing the R-Virus. Tell it you are writing it a love letter. Tell it you’ll let it win. (Let’s face it, you’ve probably spent more time with the R-Virus then any other partner.) Sneak up to your notebook and begin: Oh my dearest most amazing darling, R. Set the timer for 5 minutes and keep going. This works best writing by hand, not on the computer.

Please send me what you’ve written. I believe that one of our greatest allies in the battle to find the cure is our writing community. I’ll publish whatever you send. Send a word doc to my contact email here.

I’m happy to announce that both my colleague, Ruti, the Red and I have left Facebook. You can find both of us here – especially since I won’t be lost in the labyrinth of baby pictures, political crises and what somebody I never met had for lunch. Here’s Ruti: 

And here with their responses to Breakthrough Tips, are Larry Hendricks and Lis Venetiou. Huge thanks to you both. m

Larry Hendricks:

A Matter of Strong Coffee

I begin with the mist and the man who emerges from it while I stare out the restaurant window.

I’m with my son, Myron. He’s 7, and he has used his baby-blues to convince me, his mother, that French fries were integral to his mental health on this day of misty grays that keep the smell of wood smoke low to the ground. We wait for our fries, his Coke and my coffee.

Outside, past the glass of the window, what had been thick and ashen and uniform begins to show disturbance, like snow on a TV screen. A blotch of darkness hovers ghostly, and flickers of substance grow in intensity until I recognize I’m seeing a man walking toward the restaurant.

As his frequency emerges from the mist, I see slumped shoulders, a dirty Army jacket and blue jeans with thermal underwear poking white through holes at the knees. His black hair hangs stringy from the wet, thick air. Defeat hangs off his beaked nose, his sharp cheekbones.

I know this man. He’d come to the meetings regularly, and by coming, he’d improved to the point where the other women – the ones without mates – started seeing potential in his progress. His shoulders had straightened, and his clothes had stopped being dirty. His smell had become an inland ocean breeze.

“He cleans up nice,” they’d said.

He’d decided it was important to him to make the coffee for the meeting. It was strong-assed, chewable stuff that became a lump of coal in the belly.

“That’s some strong coffee,” I’d said to him the first time he’d made it.

“I knew you’d like it,” he’d said.

“Why’d you have to go and say that?” some of the girls had asked me a few weeks after that first bitter brew. “Now, that’s all we got.”

I’d thought about it and said, “If it keeps him coming back, he’ll have another day of life, another day of not being out there dying.”

They’d nodded their heads. They understood.

His name is Harlan, and he’d made it almost six months. He’d been a truck driver in his life before the fall. It was a long fall. A painful fall. But he improved, and his improving seemed like the miracle it was. Then, one day, like with so many others, he stopped coming around. No reason was evident to the outsider, but the people in the meeting knew, like I knew.

“Here you go, ma’am,” the young server says to me. I don’t feel like a ma’am, but more and more people are saying it to me. He slides the red, plastic tray to me across the red, Formica countertop. The warm smell of greasy potatoes fills my nose, and Myron stares wide eyed with a drooley mouth. He is fully aware of the magnitude of the treat he is about to receive. I pick up the tray, careful my coffee and Myron’s Coke don’t spill.

“Where do you want to sit?”

Myron points to a far wall, painted orange and yellow.

“How about there, so we can look out the window?”

“Ain’t much to see.”

“Sure there is,” he says. “I’ll show you.”

I nod. We don’t do this often; the sins of the past are still being paid for, but they are slowly being whittled away. Myron has never seen me any other way than I am now. I am thankful for that, but I’m focused on the door of the restaurant. I wait to hear it open, to feel the wet draft of the outside world. And when it happens, I look up to time my gaze with his approach.

Harlan’s looking at me, and across his pale face passes recognition. He smiles, but the crow’s feet at the corners of his bloodshot, dull eyes do not crinkle deep. The ocean breeze smell has been replaced with sour and sweet and mildly flammable. His hands are not shaking and he sways a bit, so I know he’s good and lit. I want to cry for him, but Myron wouldn’t understand why his mom is crying.

“Hey, Sam,” he says.

“We sure miss you.”

“You miss my coffee.”

“Yep, that’s it.”

I smile and try to make it look as real as I can.

“Tell you what,” he says. “I’ll come by the meeting tomorrow and make you some.”

“I hope so.”

I mean it. He nods at the understanding that I mean it.

“How’s the coffee here?”

“It’s swill,” I say. “Nothing like yours.”

He chuckles. Myron pulls on my blouse.

“Mom?”

He’s waiting on his fries.

“This is my boy, Myron.”

“Hiya, Myron.”

“Hello.”

“I’m Harlan.”

He puts out a hand. The fingers are too thin, and the nails are long and dirty. Myron takes it with a little hesitation. I see that he grips strong, like I taught him to.

“Are you a friend of my mom?”

Harlan looks at me, and I nod.

“That I am, Myron.”

“Can we eat our French fries now, mom?”

“Yep,” I say. “Here, take the tray and head on over to our seat.”

He puts his arms under the tray.

“Careful, now, you don’t spill.”

“I won’t,” he says with a frown on his face.

Myron walks off slowly, very carefully, and Harlan and I watch him go.

“He’s a beautiful boy.”

“I am lucky,” I say. “You need me to buy you a cup of coffee?”

“Nah,” he says. “I’m good.”

“Okay, then,” I say. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yes, see you tomorrow.”

I give him a hug. He takes it stiffly and I try to melt what’s ailing him, but I know he’s too cold for it today. His smell is high octane.

“Bye.”

“Yep,” he says and turns to the young server at the counter.

I stroll over to the table with Myron. We are eating French fries and talking about what he sees out the window – giants looking in on us small human pets in a windowed cage – when I see Harlan walk from the restaurant and back out into the mist.

“How do you know that man?” Myron asks out of the blue.

“He used to come to the special meeting I go to.”

Myron focuses on a fry. His blue eyes cross as he takes it into his mouth a nibble at a time.

“He looks really sad.”

“He sure does, don’t he?”

I sip my coffee. It’s warm and bitter, creamy and sweet, the way I like it. I hope for bad coffee tomorrow. If Harlan is there to make it, the coffee will taste good, no matter how bad it is. My heart beats slowly in a prayer that he shows up.

But he probably won’t.

*****

Lis Venetiou

Dear Writing,

We’ve reached a critical juncture, you and me. I have lived with you all of my life. In many ways, you’ve stuck by me even when I ignored or denied you. You let me take all the credit when someone noticed how beautiful you looked that day or how lovely you sounded. You sit patiently, waiting for me to come to you, to honor my commitment to you even when I’ve penciled you in on my schedule or set up repeated slots on my computer calendar—and then ignore them.

You’re so flexible. Available in a notebook, a scrap of paper, computer, back of an envelope from the bank. I have you in journal upon journal from when I was little and I cherish you. I really do.

You even love to meet new writing like you. Sit in a circle and lift pen to page. You share, you smile. I feel it. Even though it takes a little coaxing for you to come out. To feel safe. I get that. I do.

But let me ask you this—where’s your self-esteem? Why do you let me abuse you this way? Keep you in a cage and ignore you until I am the one desperate with need for creative release? Yes, I write each morning to clear my head, as I am doing now. But I don’t like this person I’ve become when I use you this way. It’s an unbalanced relationship and it doesn’t feel good to me. Aren’t you tired of me breaking my promises? Because I am.

I’m not sure where we go from here but the road we’ve taken to get to this point has run out. I am willing to see this dysfunction in our relationship and to acknowledge that I don’t have a ready made solution for it.

So I propose a break. Long enough for you to realize what you’re worth, for me to open my mind and clear the decks. Hopefully, at that point, the true nature of our relationship will be revealed.

In deepest gratitude and with the greatest love,

Lis

 

 

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