I walk around all day with a voice in my head – apparently my very good friend Paulina does as well. This year it’s been especially chatty, something I assume has to do with the end-of-days vibe CNN so joyfully puts to music from dawn until, well, dawn. I’ve also spent more time alone this year than ever before. I’m not sure if isolation has led to more moments of introspection or my brain really does have a weekly word quota, but it’s been frustrating to have these grand soliloquys occurring daily with no mechanism to replay them. If only there was something to record my dog-dump-adjacent silent theses, these moments of clarity walking Hudson seem important but dissipate as quickly as they come.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that life didn’t actually stop when the pandemic hit. In a year that’s forced more dull moments on us than ever before, it actually hasn’t been that dull. In fact, this year has been full, and I mean real fucking full of the same drama, highs and lows, loves and losses. With less things to do and no social calendar dotted with events rolled out before me, maybe the new normal of doing less has bred a level of mindfulness out of necessity. Maybe without the distraction of a social life and trips and parties and weddings I’ve been forced to actually think about life more, dissecting the catalogue of what’s behind me and what’s ahead. As we round the last corner of 2020, I more acutely feel each moment and each day passing.
In an attempt to catch these fleeting thoughts and potentially write something meaningful someday, I have sought out the wisdom of actual writers. An email exchange about essays with my favorite writer at the New Yorker – whose muse is coincidentally her 80 lb. dog as well. I’ve been devouring memoirs by writers, hoping to find any nuggets of wisdom buried in the pages about their life. I’ve spoken to teachers and friends about it, soliciting feedback and help far and wide. Last night I was knee deep in one of David Sedaris’s MasterClass lessons and woke up in the middle of the night with my keyboard imprinted on my cheek and forehead. I’ve even taken a few writing classes. On memoir. On writing fiction. On creative writing. On and on and on and on.
I wrote a story about a girl who gets attacked while jogging. I wrote another story about my old boss. I’ve written countless pages about moving to New York City after college, and even more about growing up in Chevy Chase. One night back in my childhood, I could feel the vibrations of my mother’s sewing machine in my bones as I wrote about nights on Thornapple Street. With a needle between her teeth and her foot on the machine’s pedal, my mother’s ability to create with just one instrument was mesmerizing. In went fabric and tassels and out came curtains and costumes and pillows and clothes. She’d replace a spool of thread as quickly as I’d say good night, the even punch of the needle whirring behind me as I climbed upstairs.
If only my keystrokes, in all their uniform sounding glory, yielded such beauty. If only I could feed my thoughts and worries and ideas and rhymes into this computer and pull out something truly profound. Maybe a novel or memoir, at this point I’d even take a poem or two. Alas, there’s no engine here but me. I, alone, can turn the days happenings into words, my experiences into paragraphs. And, if one day I’m lucky enough to watch my daughter climb off to bed while I work, I hope she doesn’t forget it. The art of creation is a beautiful thing, but it’s never finished. Not that I would know, I’m just getting started.
The Dog Hair Diaries 