This morning began with Sadie's first encounter with wild turkeys. She dashed out at them all full of machismo, barking to beat the band. They headed unhurried, up the hill into the woods behind the house. They hardly seemed phased but Sadie dashed back to me and the safety of the back porch, shaking. Hard to tell if the turkeys scared her or if it was her own bravado that sent her reeling back for love and comfort. I recognized myself in that moment. Sometimes I just dash something off and hit the send button or the publish button in the flush of the moment and then experience the heebeejeebees...a form of writers remorse. But I am also that person who writes for years in the closet and carefully stacks up spiral notebooks in the cabinet knowing that most of what I write will never be read. I guess I'm kind of glad about that because in order to practice writing wild and free, you have to get out of your head and just let the writing rip...unexamined and uncensored. Some of my very best writing comes out of those dashed off pages...and yet some of my worst does too. I'm a kinesthetic learner. I learn best in motion and was never too good at school because of being required to sit and listen endlessly to information that didn't seem too relevant. If I can't be in motion, I need to keep my pen moving...spirals and lines, angles and dangles...doodling was my way to stay in motion without getting the teacher angry with me. I'm also the kind of person who digests information by creating associations, metaphors and comparisons. So it seems like I'm going off on tangents but what I'm really doing is relating what I'm learning to what I already know. This self awareness has been a very long time coming.
Today was race day at Sunday River. The Budweiser Locals challenge race is a community race opportunity for all age and ability folks to get out and ski gates and then to meet and compare times at a local pub party. It's fun. Now....anyway. Last year, not so much. Last year was my first year participating in the race and this is what I've discovered. Skiing is my zen meditation. It teaches me how to live my life better. I'm a thinker. I spend way too much time and energy thinking about what might happen...what could happen...what I don't want to happen. I'm all jammed up in my head. Skiing forces me into my whole body. I can't do it in my head. And funnily enough, its been my writing teacher. Thanks to racing, I discovered that my thinking is not my friend. I positon myself in the starting gate and a maelstrom of fears swirl in my head...what if I fall? What if I screw up? What if there's ice...what if I hit a rut? What will folks think? Blah Blah Blah. I hear that all happening in my head and the starter says Racers ready? Go. And there...right at that moment, I push myself through the timing wire and drop into the course. Freaked out and scared shitless, I go. I go anyway. All I know is, I'm going to do the best I can to cross the finish line. If it means snowplowing the whole way, so be it. And no one is watching me to critisize. That's been a very freeing awareness. So how does that teach me to write?
I sit before a white page with my pen in hand...my head starts telling me I'm a lousy writer, I don't have anything worthwhile to say, people aren't going to understand me, what if I say something stupid? I get all jammed up and end up tripping over my own negative thoughts. Thanks to ski racing and the practice of JUST DO IT...I'm now familiar with my brain in fear and I am free to choose not to listen. Now I see that every moment that requires me to listen to my fear and choose to move past it, is a teaching moment and an opportunity to move past my limitations. I tell my fearful thoughts to beat it and I start writing anyway...I just drop into the writing...and somehow I go somewhere with it. I never know where I'm going to begin with, but I do go somewhere and the flow is always best if I can let it rip. The writing takes me to new terrain and the only way I get there is to JUST DO IT.
Sadie moves on her animal instincts. She rushes forward to greet whatever is on the path and she turns bits of nothing into toys that she tosses and chases. She is wholly in her body and her intelligence is instinctive. She doesn't always think before she acts. Yes. That can be dangerous. Yes...she might regret getting involved in something. But she engages her world with her full body/mind and allows herself to play with it all...turkeys included.
Who is that wild woman dancing on top of my asparagus bed? Who's voice is that beneath the boring repetitive thoughts of a timid non-doer? Who's that big and courageous watch dog beneath that young puppy body? Who am I underneath the holding back?
It's just my wild free self ...stretching and breathing, running... unleashed.
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