Floating

It’s cliché to say hope floats.  Inspiration, hope, possibility – I’m filled with it daily as I read about writing, write about writing, and in the end – write.  What is it that makes you float like this?

Out of the blue I began to hum songs from a musical I started some 30 years ago.  So much of the music was solid, but artistic and personal differences between my collaborator and myself ultimately made me abandon the project.  It seemed impossible to finish. 

A musical about Jack London’s Martin Eden was an epic idea to begin with.  We started it when we were bright-eyed artists – much like Eden in the novel. As the pressures of making a living, and different philosophies began to gnaw at our working relationship, we found ourselves wanting different things from the piece. We couldn’t cut things the other had written and making the argument for it just made it worse.  I grew jaded – much like Eden in the novel.  Waking Eden has been sitting in a file for 30 years. 

The other day an old lyric haunted me. Then I found a printed copy of the manuscript in my library (where I never write.)  I read through it.  I felt a lifting, a pull, competing forces all at once. Suddenly everything seemed possible.  The things that had been precious before weren’t serving the momentum of the piece.  The songs worked, but the book was unruly.  God help me, I’ve begun editing again.  On the crumpled (and I mean mangled) folder, I wrote “you can do this.”

I lay in bed and couldn’t escape the story – waiting there.  Adrenaline didn’t exactly course through my veins, but it made my whole body float.  That feeling has been with me for some time now – since hitting “submit” on Beth’s manuscript.  Floating – it starts in the chest.  Inexplicably it wants…tears.

Too much possibility: cutting both Buffalo Talks to the Moon and next year’s play for CCM;  a possum pawing at the door; an astronaut wanting off a park bench; inspirational photos to be hung in the library; books to be read (so many books); classes to learn from; a bear waiting in a dumpster in my mid-grade book. And now this sailor singing in my ear.  All of this – so filling – almost too much. 

I may never be published.  Not traditionally. But just writing – having things to work on – dreaming and getting the words and images down, out of my soaring mind – for now that’s enough.  Now that I think about it, it’s an extension of the same feeling from my first blog from the porch, about a vision of my life.  It doesn’t seem to be fleeting. It only grows. 

Time – I’m looking forward to writing more in November.  A personal goal.  There’s certainly enough to play with.  Lucky and lifted by hope – floating is an all together inadequate word.  Giddy?  Suspended?  Achingly Buoyant.  God, I need a poet—