Writing Between Paradigms

In trying to coalesce a theme for this blog post—with my focus careening all over tarnation looking for an appropriate track on which to travel—I realized I had already left the station.  No turning back.  It’s about the power of change, the biggest change of my life, and it’s affecting everything.  I’ve got one foot in the old paradigm and one foot in the new, and I’m moving through a fluid chaos, a transitional period, and it’s been showing me things: about writing, about music, relationships, passion, and about my connection to All Things.  Realizations fall like a surprise summer rain, each drop another pearl of destiny being absorbed by my future.

Inside this seemingly unreal abyss, the unknown has become where I live.  Yet, I’ve glimpsed what’s coming, and I feel the changes going on inside me as definitive as the nightly serenades from the coyotes just beyond my apartment balcony.  It gives me an exhilarating thrill.  (One particular coyote also likes to return during the day and go rollicking through bushes looking for conejos.)

Okay, the truth is, I’m scared out of my wits half the time, walking around with this leveled fog of dread hovering around my chest, a new and unrecognizable dread.  But I know it’s the key for me, so I try to stay open and not suppress it, not shut myself down, nor give in to the old addictions, emotional or otherwise.  You see, the fear is telling me I’m moving in the right direction, showing me the realness of what’s happening and where I’m going.  And I can’t go back—I won’t—not after glimpsing that pinpoint of light, a hint of something out there,  even as I walk through the narrows.

Along the path, here in the dark, there come these surpirses, little ecstatic moments that reveal things to me.  AND, none of this would’ve been possible had it not been my husband and I of fifteen years—soul mates and eternal friends—jumping off the precipice of our established safety and making the choice to leave our cocoon of marriage and set each other free.

I hear the voices of bemused blog readers: “Could you please give it to us in concrete terms.  What the hell’s going on?  And since you’re a writer, how is this affecting your work?”

I’m not going to detail the personal process of our dissolving marriage, but I will say this:  It’s a divorce without betrayal, without abandonment, a divorce that manifested from love and the idea of personal freedom.  We’ve been working over the years to dismantle the control that seems to permeate the institution of marriage, where you have to mold yourself into a particular form in order to make yourself fit comfortably, and that you can never be yourself completely, that you must hide parts of yourself in order to make it work, in order to make the marriage safe.  Sacrifice.

I’m feeling the sadness, and grief, but it’s not at the level you might expect in such a circumstance.  In fact, it has come clear to me that once we have separated and moved into our individual lives, there will be a deeper, more profound level of grief that will come, and it will be wrapped in gratitude for the gift we have given each other. 

No, it doesn’t make sense, because there’s no road map for it, no prescribed formula, no Wayne Dyer book on the subject.  There’s only a society that freaks out when people make too many choices on their own—upsetting the status quo and stirring up anarchy.  Got to have control so people will behave, obey the rules.  It’s why the idea of gay marriage ignites such volatility.  Societal and religious dogma is supposed to hold the key to your happiness.  You can’t unlock those doors on your own.  That’s heresy.

Down the line, I may perhaps do another radio show about this subject, a similar show to the one I did in April on LA Talk Radio, where I shared my process about dealing with growing older as a women in this society, something I also touched upon in my last blog post (May 2010) – The Intimate Life of a Writer.  I was facing all that I needed to in order to find my way through to the resonance I wanted to feel, to the sensuousness, living a sensuous life, a luscious life, full of juice.  Society’s image of 50-something women be frickin’ damned.  That process of change in April was perhaps instrumental in getting me to the decision in June to separate from my husband, not because he sees me a certain way, but because I need to see me a certain way, to reveal me to myself without the underlying chauvinism of inequality that happens in relationships on so many levels, in both women and men.  (How many blog posts would it take to go into that subject?)

Okay, what about my novel?  How’s that going?

My novel is also in transition, appropriately so.  It’s quite serendipitous how I’ve ostensibly completed ACT I and II, including the “all is lost” moment for my main character, just prior to my monumental life decision.  What remains to be written is a series of mystical events that culminate at the moment of totality during the Montana solar eclipse of 1979, where everything comes together for a moment and changes the future.  I don’t think I would’ve been able to write these final chapters without this change in my life.

Right now, the writing is slow.  There are a lot of personal activities: sifting through the physical remnants of living life as a couple, and discarding what cannot move forward into the life of single womanhood.  I think one of the reasons the writing has stalled is because I’m having trouble conjoining the past, the present, and the future in my story, because, conversely, my personal life is immersed in the in-between.  My characters wait in limbo right now, and yet, while I ride this fast-moving train into the unknown, I’m making sure to use Einstein’s light beam to keep my characters lassoed at the speed of light.  So when I disembark at the next station (which will most likely be Santa Barbara), they’ll be ready to give me what I need to finish the novel, without missing a beat.

Wild Nature Girl Photography

For now, I keep myself open for the story insights of the in-between, and jot them down while I think of them.  All that has been written up till now, some 250 pages, is as it should be, written in the moments of the before.  And now my characters’ transformations are hinging on my own.  Like I said in my previous post, I am inextricably linked to my characters.  NOT because they’re ME, but because we’re that close.  So, you can imagine how much chaos they might be experiencing while they wait for my pen to start flowing ink again, and they can tell me what’s happening on their side of the universe.  I will never let them go.  As long as it takes, they’re going to make it to the end of their story.  It is my promise to them.