pause

Today is deadline day and I need to finish this short story and my cover letter and send off this packet to be critiqued. But I read something that made me pause. And I thought, I should put this on my blog. Because once upon a time I planned on this blog being a place to pause: a place for me to put the things that made me think, a place to write out what I was thinking about. Life goes on and on and on, but what I write about stays, like a program from a play that never gets tossed out. I need to pause more because if I don’t, I won’t be so changed as I could have been.

So today, here is what made me pause and nod and smile:

I ONCE DATED A WRITER AND
Writers are forgetful,
but they remember everything. 
They forget appointments and anniversaries, 
but remember what you wore,
how you smelled, 
on your first date…
They remember every story you’ve ever told them
like ever,
but forget what you’ve just said.
They don’t remember to water the plants
or take out the trash,
but they don’t forget how
to make you laugh. 

Writers are forgetful
because 
they’re busy
remembering
the important things.

So maybe some of what I wrote about being anxious is just a part of being a writer. And the rest of it is because I’m neurotic, no doubt.

And also, while I’m writing about pauses and writing as a pause, a preservation, I’m going to add something I read from Kelly Corrigan, one of my favorite writers:

I heard once that the average person barely knows ten stories from childhood and those are based more on photographs and retellings than memory. So even with all the videos we take, the two boxes of snapshots under my desk, and the 1,276 photos in folders on the computer, you’ll be lucky to end up with a dozen stories. You won’t remember how it started with us, the things that I know about you that you don’t even know about yourselves. We won’t come back here. 

You’ll remember middle school and high school, but you’ll have changed by then. You changing will make me change. That means you won’t ever know me as I am right now–the mother I am tonight and tomorrow, the mother I’ve been for the last eight years, every bath and book and birthday party, gone. It won’t hit you that you’re missing this chapter of our story until you see me push your child on a swing or untangle his jump rope or wave a bee away from his head and think, is this what she was like with me? (from her book, “Lift”)

So pause. That’s what I’ll do. And then, like now, I’ll resume what I was doing, where I was going, my to do list, my reading list, my chores. I will gather and gather and then I will sit down and pause again, to write about what I’ve picked up along my way.