When I sent Paco that email about my experience at Tully's and what I called the first line of a story prompted by the fragments of the different contextual reality I saw there, I ended it with "to be continued...or not." I had no expectation of how Paco would respond, and no investment in my near joke of that first line. But Paco responded with a full-on continuation (which is available in Episode One). I was struck by the memory of an old newspaper article I wrote about in the Dream Network Journal telling of two women painters who exchanged their canvases as a prompt to what next to paint, round and round that way. No talk, no discussion, just painting in response to painting. I always liked that idea. And here Paco and I seemed on the verge of doing it, not with painting, but with words of story. So I eagerly took up the idea of continuing the story.
I am not a plotter. Never have been. I've never outlined anything I've published. I've never "planned." What happens is that my intention falls out of sight, out of focus, out of mind. It does not disappear. It becomes something of an egg that becomes the object of brooding as a chicken broods on her eggs. My earliest memory as a child of two or so, was dropping eggs out of my parents car window onto the sidewalk while they were in the market. When my parents came out and saw what I had done, they laughed. That became the theme of my childhood and my love of eggs. So, I let my intention to carry on the story that Paco had continued drop into the brooding place—a place I still have no direct knowledge of. But I trust what comes from that place. I trust the process.
After a time, I feel an urge, a spark, a bit of desire.
So, I open up a new Word file and stare at the blank screen. I wait. I know to wait. Waiting in this way when I am about to write something has become a ritual. To wait for something to come. Sometimes, it's a word, sometimes a sound, sometimes a melody, sometimes a full expression, sometimes a visual image. There is no predicting. But whatever occurs, it is the spark that sets me going. What happens then is something akin to a flood of words. Sometimes it is hard to keep up with the flow. I experience this as the opening of the eggs brooded upon outside my awareness; by what? An inner chicken?
The image that came to me was the image of Sal sitting on Owl Man's coat coupled with the word "intimacy." This hint formed itself into the line: “Since you have sat on my coat, we have achieved a certain level of intimacy." This "forming" is both a mix of what comes and what I make of it. For me writing in this way is what is meant by poesis: to bring something into being that has not existed before. With that line as an opening, everything next followed almost without effort. The difficult part is keeping up with the flow of words that "presented" themselves to me as I try to make the actual lines. This is why I sometimes refer to my sense of "me" in these infusions as a scribe. I do not feel I can rightly claim authorship. It is always an us.
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