Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.
I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about the nature of the Universe. You see, just when I think I've got things figured out, something happens that makes me recalculate my whole life. It can be a daughter graduating from high school. The death of someone with whom I went to high school. The loss of a job. The election of a man completely unfit to be President of the United States. Mental illness. Addiction. The Universe simply has a way of throwing monkey wrenches into the gears of the life. Just ask a bowl of petunias.
In the last month or so--actually, it's been since I left my job at the surgery center where I worked for over 20 years--I've had a really difficult time writing anything coherent or beautiful. That's a pretty difficult thing for me to admit. I have two writing projects that I committed to finish back around mid-May, and I haven't been able to get anything down on paper. I struggle with even the tiniest request--a letter of recommendation or a short bio of my daughter for the church bulletin.
Take this post, for instance. I started it yesterday afternoon. I typed the first two paragraphs, and then I sat staring at the screen of my laptop for about an hour, not knowing how to continue. That is something that I'm not used to, considering that I've been writing daily blog posts for going on ten years now. Good or bad, I written these virtual letters to my readers and sent them out into the ether to be loved, hated, or ignored. Yet, yesterday I couldn't seem to find a center.
That's how I write blog posts. I find some central thought or idea that's monopolizing my intellectual energy. It may be my daughter's graduation or trouble at work or some international news event. And that's what I write about for the day. Doing this, I've found that I'm able to process a lot of my life struggles. There are times when I just can't write directly about problems that I'm having. They're either too personal for myself or someone I love. Then I write around the subject.
I learned this technique from a great writer friend of mine, Matt Gavin Frank. What he does with big, hairy, elusive topics is write about everything that surrounds the topic. For example, if he's trying to write about the death of his grandfather, he writes about jazz music and giant squids and ice cream and the Great Depression. By doing this, he creates a space in his words that is a silhouette of his grandfather. Like those silhouettes of heads you create in elementary school art class. So, by not writing about his grandfather, he creates a picture of his grandfather.
I probably did not explain that very well. However, when I'm trying to deal with a subject that I can't tackle head-on, that is what I do. I silhouette it with words. Create a hole in its shape.
It is now over 14 hours since I typed that last paragraph. I have spent the day mowing my lawn, stacking firewood, having dinner, playing games with my family around a campfire, and saying bedtime prayers with my son. I feel as though I haven't accomplished anything this weekend, which is the way that I've felt for almost three months now.
There. I have created a silhouette. Written around something that I just can't look in the face tonight. It has to do with feeling really tired and adrift. Unsure of where my life is heading. My daughter is upstairs in her bedroom with friends, laughing and watching Netflix. My son is asleep in bed, and my wife is lying down with him. And I'm sitting in my kitchen, alone with all my self-doubt, feeling like a bowl of petunias falling to its death through a planet's atmosphere.
And Saint Marty is thinking, Oh no, not again.
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