“The wound is where the light enters you.” - Rumi
Some thoughts I had while writing a few Mondays ago:
I had a call with my mom this morning and we were talking again—as we have many times—about how the continual act of processing is something she wants to always choose. To never suppress, but to move towards fear and all that is messy with an open heart. I am now writing a complex scene about the symbolism in a dream her character has. Complex not in terms of my ability to architect literary texture, complex in terms of my inability (if anything) to wrangle said scene, to translate its opacity into shit someone would (hopefully) want to read and (bonus points) resonate with, or at the very least, understand.
Usually when I write, I have to clean my space, light a candle, listen to rain sounds, pretend as if we aren’t on model sixteen of the iPhone because what is an iPhone? I don’t know because—in this made-up writing dojo I often feverishly create in my two-by-two foot living room on Grove Street—apparently I don’t have one. Have never even heard of the thing. Nope, phones don’t exist. I am cut off from the world and all forms of distraction. Ahh, I exhale, now I can write. Yes, it is absolutely ridiculous, and yes, considering that real life isn’t a kindergartener you can quiet by clapping your hands, these efforts are entirely futile. “Real life” (from what I’m gathering) is a lot more like the kindergartener in its natural state—always one degree away from injury, boiling with questions, pundit of stains—and likely, purposefully so.
Nonetheless, this morning—as I have many times—I humored this prerequisite compulsion for writing in a perfected environment. One of my roommates bravely moved to Paris at the beginning of the year and so, in her empty room, we (my third roommate and I) have shoved a bunch of our shit. It’s chaos in there. When I have clean laundry I don’t want to fold, or don’t have time to deal with yet, I throw it on Josephine’s bed and close the door. Right now, in the living room, there is a suitcase on the ground because I just got back from a trip for book research (that sounds all serious, but I guess it was). Anyway, I wanted to zip it up and put it in that room. I have to write all day because I am submitting pages on Wednesday for class and I’m stressed. I need to stop trying to curate the perfect environment when I write because it isn’t sustainable, I thought to myself. But it will help me focus, I also entertained. And then my mom called, interrupting my OCD.
I’m learning there is a more profound irony to that internal bartering as I sit here now, after hanging up the phone with her. I sit here writing, and I look to my right and the door to Josephine’s room is open, and I can see the big mess, and again I think for a second to get up and shut it. But then I pause and laugh to myself a little, because if my mom is leaving the door open to the messy room that is her childhood and young adult life, I can leave the door open to the harmless mess of this room. They are not a fair comparison, but it is an interesting lesson that hopefully will bleed into the rest of my life. The messy room in my apartment makes me uncomfortable, but there is something freeing about leaving the door open, about not pretending like there is no mess at all just because I can’t see it. Closing the door doesn’t clean the mess, and if I can’t clean it right now, maybe the better option is at least to acknowledge it and make peace with it, invite it into my life so that maybe it feels more tame.
And then I have another thought. The way our apartment is configured, the living room doesn’t get much light on its own because the windows in it face an alleyway. It does get some light, just not an abundance of it, it gets okay light. However, the windows in my and Josephine’s rooms face the street, and above the trees on Grove, the light that comes through them is not blocked. It is abundant and bright, and when you open the doors to our rooms, you allow a flood of light into the living room. I have always known this, and so when I am in here, I keep at least my door open for this reason. What I didn’t realize, is that closing the door to the mess in Josephine’s room, closes the door to letting in more light; it actually physically makes it darker in here. By opening the door, exposing the mess, the light pours in and the living room is brighter. Ah, the symmetry of the universe mocks us on all of its levels. Life’s not all beautiful metaphors, but I think this one is, and it made me laugh a little, which is always good for the ego. I do think that these patterns are a kind of encoded intelligence trying to show us something, but maybe more on that later.
In short: I’m going to leave the door open, my mom gives me bravery to face messier messes than the one to my right, and now I’m going to go back to trying to write about those. This scene about the dream feels messy, but I think that’s because there’s something real here. There’s some heat.
And thank you, Rumi.