Writing is a socially accepted form of schizophrenia

At least that's what Doctorow said. Have you read his story in the April 26 New Yorker yet? It's called "Edgemont Drive." It's about how difficult it is to leave a house that you've lived in all your life--how you really never leave it emotionally even though you might have physically. How the architecture becomes a part of you...the way you interpret your environment is defined by the footprint of your house.

Doctorow calls it a "distributed consciousness." The way your body remembers, kinesthetically, the motion it tracked hundreds of times a day to walk from the kitchen to the bathroom to the front door. The economy of motion that can happen simply because you know where you are in relation to everything. The rest that can happen because of the loaded meaning of home. The feeling one has that life began and so must end in this place. It's that unsettling feeling of waking up in the night and feeling sure you're back in your childhood bed.

This blog was supposed to be about how I'm writing again. I'm supposed to tell you that "book" the second, has begun and I'm being visited in the night by my new friends. This one is hard for me because it's untidy. It's veering a little too close to home (pardon the cliche). I won't say much except that I know what Doctorow was saying to us in "Edgemont Drive" and I am heartbroken because I understand it. What would a coming-home story or even a coming-of-age story be without a broken heart, a nagging sense of betrayal, an understanding of how cruel we can be to those we know best? How we allow ourselves to buy into the world's labels instead of taking the time to pursue truth?

Technology allows us to make rapid judgements and paint over whole groups of people, imprecisely, like flinging paint from a bucket. We close down and use words loosely that show our inability to look deeply anymore. We think we're connecting but we're really just missing each other. We're underestimating each other.

It's difficult to write this time of year...the little ones are back to running in circles around me and singing. I'll get there, though.

Hope everyone is having a great week!