A Street Called Bliss

Bush Gnomes in Low Light in Ridley Creek Park, August ‘08







My Literature Professor assigned us the first reading of the Villanova Literary Festival. Ethan Canin read from his new novel, America America, and provided witty answers to questions about his process of writing. He was articulate, his reading was engaging, and he made me wonder what I had been doing with the hours of my life.

See, I have been writing since before I could write. When I was three, I wanted to write so badly that I would draw strange cartoons with bubbles for the dialogue, and would beg my Mother (truthfully, it didn’t take much begging) to painstakingly spell out the words I put in my characters’ mouths. I wrote poetry in 4th grade, plays in 6th grade, strange stories in 10th grade and in college. And, writing was like air. It was right there in my head, but required little attention.

Yet, life flowed, slowed, and flowed on. And I wrote, and didn’t write, with abandon. Left to my own devices, I would doodle, and write, and write about my doodles, and stare at the sky, the forest, the ocean, or at nothing at all. I would write in the silence. I would write in my head. I would pour out my mind in the noisy hubbub that filled the bars where I read poetry to the inebriated. Nervous, unsure and knees knocking was I at the podium with a cloth-covered journal of my heart rendered.

Life definitely interrupted, and I let it. Twenty years later, I have a bunch poetry, stories, and plays in my pocket, and a large grey blob of uncertainty about what to actually do with them. Silly me. I really do know.

And, at this moment (lucky me!), I just happened to be drawn to a crossroads. This road that meets an other unfamiliar road at the cross, that continues on to the visible, predictable horizon, is no longer as mildly attractive, fulfilling, certain, comfortable or dear. But, that street that crosses my path, that path that has erupted from the brush and disappears into the wild-land? That road that seemed too … gossamer, incongruous, uncertain, disconnected from the present? That road looks really like home. It vibrates, actually thrumming with a rhythm like something forgotten, almost recalled. Like my heart.

Imagine that.

So. What to do? What to do? What to do?

God, why is this so hard? I’ve been straying from the path all of my life. Wouldn’t it be interesting to do so with intent? Slip off the well-beaten path, sidestep the brambles that always present as the second choice, and forge my own path?

OK.

But enough about me. Where is your bliss?