I woke up in the dark this morning. The house was quiet. I felt the water calling me–calling me to untwist, stretch and glide. I went in faith. The cold pool was almost baptismal in how it shocked me into waking. As I swam, the smallest and deepest of knots undid themselves. My mind started to wash clean, and I felt like I could breathe. It’s funny how I remembered how to breathe underwater this morning. Now it was time to write.

I wanted to share this piece below with you. I thought it might be fun. In the morning, I try to write 3 pages (some mornings I miss it, but the mornings I make it are ever worth it). I come to the paper and pen with a desire to clear my slate. I’m always amazed with how much is on my mind first thing in the morning. Did I realize I was going to bed with so many thoughts?

My morning pages often become exercises where I dump all the things that are weighing heavy on me–so I can get to the writing and creative work I love most. But this time, I decided to try something different. I decided to write whatever images came to mind, as fast as they came to mind, and see where the trail of my subconscious would lead. It was my own exercise in loosing the holds that tie me down. This is what came out. (little note: This was a free write–Writing as fast as I could without editing along the way–always a bit scary to share. ;))

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Write your love and voice and feel it come up through your throat, a throaty spew of words that come from a place below your bowels. Write like that and feel all this madness untangle and drift in front of you before heading down river. Write and watch the words explode like popcorn, fuller and livelier, consumable. Write and feel yourself wake up, that back room of your brain that the editor keeps padlocked.

The lock is undone, the back door is open. You are wondering how to get out, but your already out–running as fast as the starlings soar. Write and feel your pen run across the tops of your words–leaping, flying and then landing only for a fraction of a second to gain momentum to leap again. Write and feel your insides calm.

Feel your left brain start to fall asleep and your right brain flip the switch to the carnival lights. Go round the carousel as many times as you want, as many times as you can before you get sick. Jump. Leap. Free fall before you let the sickness catch you. Then run again through a long wherehouse of ribbons, ribbons of every color, rolled out, suspended, stretched, hanging like noodles over your head. Run through the colors and feel their textures, feel their vibrance, feel their movement, feel their darkness. Take a smudge of the dark and define the light’s shape to find a doorway from the wherehouse of ribbons to the jungles of Thailand.

Swing with the monkeys, call out before sunrise with the Gibbons. Call louder the 2nd and 3rd time, awakening the jungle inside you–your creative mind. Remember the padlock to the back door is gone, and your creative is already free.

Time to find her. Hide and seek never felt so necessary. Seeking her out in the night, surrounded by the tall evergreens, unable to hear her footsteps because the river’s song keeps washing the sound away. But keep looking. Look in the obscure places to find her in the obvious place–by the campfire, warming herself, dethawing, and hoping to spend the next few hours drawing horses with the stars shapes. Hoping to do it with you.

There she is by the fire. You sit for the first time, unable to catch a deep breath, but time is moving still and she takes your hand and asks you to stretch the imagination–stretch as far as you can–sweat begins to bead on your forehead. You are straining to stretch, the padlock is coming back. The more you strain, the louder the lock clangs against the cement floor.

Up she takes you. Up into the stars. Up where the sky is endless. The stars are moving, burning and inviting as you find yourself transfixed by their light. There are no limits that you can fathom or understand here. A big laugh starts to gurgle inside you and falls out of you, throwing you here and there like a balloon losing its air.

And you find yourself deflated on the cold concrete. Smaller in size than you ever knew. And just as you begin to fear the newfound truth, you here your creative giggle. She is here. Waving to you. Inviting you to run with her again. To fill yourself up again. To fall in love with the filling and emptying and soaring and deflating and filling all over again. Run. Catch her. This is the most alive you know how to be!

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Thanks for reading along–for being a safe community to share free writes with. Free writes are scary to share, if ever shared.

I hope you catch your creative self today, if only for minutes. And whether you feel full, empty, soaring or deflated–you would take comfort in the fact that you are alive in the process–the creative process.

xoxoxo,

Me Ra

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