In the midst of my dark month, I escaped for a bit. On Matt's
birthday, we biked out to Hamilton Pool, then tried to find our way
down into Pedernales Falls State Park biking on private ranchland
roads. We never got to Pedernales Falls, but we did meet some very
strange little donkeys.
I've been missing. From this blog, from my writing, from my own head.
Sometimes our lives get very difficult. We all cope in different ways. I tend to go missing. But I eventually have to find my way back. I get lost a lot.
So I'm not here yet. I'm stumbling around, though.
Today I am (trying to be) writing on the book proposal -- again. It's much better, thanks to the sharp insights of my writing group, which is now just one person. But a good person. I'm about to finish up this draft of the proposal. Then I head into the chapter that I managed to reconceive -- just before I went missing. At some point I will have to send out this proposal, but I'm too muddled right now to figure out when that should be. I thought it would be this past March. Now, maybe September? October? I need goals, but right now I'll settle for simply getting out of the woods.
In spite of it all, somehow, last Sunday night I magically wrote a complete draft of a little story. Sitting on my bed, with a yellow legal pad, writing in pale pencil by the dim light of my bed lamp. Add it to the pile of little stories about Amarillo I've been creating. This one is better than the others. I have no idea what to do with these little stories. I like their format, but they aren't quite full short stories, and they aren't really designed to be linked together into a longer piece of creative nonfiction. And they aren't anything great. Solid, I think, but not art. Maybe I'll do nothing with them. Maybe I'll use them to paper my office walls--a trail of words encircling me as I work, reminding me of who I am.
Here's to finding our ways home after we go missing.
