Writing to Process
For someone like me, writing can be a direct channel to my feelings. Often that channel gets clogged — with distractions of the city, with obligations real and imagined, with that persistent inner voice that says: who do you think you are?During those times when feelings and emotions and somatic experience are out of reach I can (occasionally) experience a respite from the weight of being a human in this often confused and painful place, Earth. More often, when I want to know: how do I feel? that clogged channel to my emotions is awful. It can be a desperate scramble, trying every trick and shortcut I’ve accumulated for shushing that terrible inner critic.
Writing and reading you all is tremendously helpful because it forces me to move through whatever is on my mind for the week. Whoever I’m missing and how it feels, looks, sounds…writing helps me capture it in these images we share.
As I write this, I am sharing some ripe peaches with my wife. An August yellow peach is the essence of Summer 1996 when I stayed up late watching the US Women’s Gymnastics team win gold in Atlanta. Dad sliced peaches while I rattled off the stats of Dominique Dawes and Kerri Strug; he feigned interest as Dads are often challenged to do. Sweet juicy peaches that spent the day slumbering in a brown paper bag on a sunny sill, turn into the delight of short-lived summer rituals together. Each one, gently handled fuzzy rich red-orange: the night's main event.
Writing is what helps me appreciate a peach’s time travel capabilities.
