I am trying to figure out what the story is I want to tell since my hours were significantly reduced off on June 30, 2009. So much has happened since then and so many learnings have been revealed to me that I find it difficult to find a way to express myself. All the hard work and long hours from March to June 2009 have taken away from me my communication center. I can't find the words of my personal narrative.
They, the words that is, are with me as I gently stroll through Golden Gate Park's AIDS Memorial or lay on my bed waiting for a nap or stay up with the youth on the last night of the Adobe Youth Voices Summit or wander the Des Moines Art Museum, but the moment I sit down with pen to paper they are gone. It is as if I am in a field of fireflies and my words are the tiny lights sparkling among the grasses. The moment I capture them in my glass Mason jar, they no longer carry with them the same brilliance or luster or magic. Sure, I can shake the jar and they spark for a moment, but they are not the same as their free and unrestrained brethren. They are not spontaneous or rhythmical or organic.
I am even having difficulties finding what comes next; what this paragraph should even be about. Should I write about the power of story to express complexity and voice? Should I write about the shift to more authentic and true shared leadership within the Youth Worker: Collective? Should I write about finally finding my fictional world maybe at the expense of personal narrative? Should I write about the slowing of my life and my resistence to quickening its pace? Should I...? The list is so long and overwhelming that I cannot choose, nor can I find a means to narrow.
In the past, this would have led me to not picking up a pen or opening a notebook. I would have let the overwhelmingness whiddle awy at my identity as a writer. I would have stared at the page and hoped words would write themselves. I would have turned on the television and watched
People's Court.
Now, I find myself pushing through and not worrying about what actually comes out. I start with recording my wanderings and opening up to observations. I take my thoughts and fictionalize them into parables. I let my distractions guide me to the page. I still worry about cohesion and flow and grammar and spelling, but I do not let that interfere with the process of creating because I know a story is still waiting to be told.
Maybe the story here is that regularity and a slowing of the pace and the release of control to flow can and does bring change. Maybe it is that I no longer worry about a preconceived notion of a writer, adn therefore can claim it even when nothing makes sense. Maybe it is that I have many stories to tell and yet not all will be told. Maybe it is is nothing at all. All and more are possibilities.
As I sit here on a bench among the many dirt paths of Golden Gate Park, I smell the musty, humid forest air; I hear the whistling of a passerby mix with the panting of dog, the dongs of birds, the buzzing of insects, and the shuffling of feet against the sandy dirt and fallen leaves; I see the shifting of light as the sun passes in and out of the marine fog; I feel the rubber ridges of the pen in my hand and the dull itch of old mosquito bites. And I know that i am more present and aware then I have been in a long time. This brings me calm and peace. And maybe, just maybe that is the story that has just been told.
Labels: adobe youth voices, golden gate park, jason wyman, narrative, questions, wandering, writer, writing, youth worker collective
