When I started writing my memoir, I made this whole elaborate ritual for getting in and out of it. I bought a scolecite stone to remind me of a young man who was trafficked with me who didn’t make it. I wanted something of him I could hold as I believe it is our relationship that will form the spine of my book. The scolecite stone is milky white and oval, like a bar of Dove soap. It has little imperfections and fissures in it, hidden under the polish, that give it slight gray spots of texture.
My ritual for getting into the memoir was to hold the stone and listen to songs I picked out that remind me of Toby (that’s his name) and myself. “Sailor or Siren,” “Falling Slowly,” and “The Atheist Christmas Carol.” “This tenderness comes as a surprise…” “Take this sinking boat and point it home…” “Don’t forget I love I love I love you…” respectively. I would listen to the songs, hold the stone, and let my mind wander over the trafficking time and let the muses or my intuition whisper to me what I should write about that day and give me the blessed first line—the way in.
Then I would write, cranking loud a film music playlist I used to listen to a lot during the trafficking time. I would write by hand in a wide ruled spiral notebook with a purple cover. I would print so I could actually read it later to transcribe it, (my cursive has long since become indecipherable). I would listen, not write… listen… and record the next word and the next. If ever I found my mind asking, “What comes next?” I would pause, sink into the music, let go and recommit to listening. Listen, I would remind myself. Don’t WRITE.
Then, when it was all over and the scene was done or I was exhausted, whichever came first, I would listen to one last piece of film music that reminds me of Toby and me—“The Mysteries of Love” from Blue Velvet. I would cry a little and hold the stone. My benediction. I would get up and try to go on about the rest of my day.
I produced some really remarkable writing that way, however…
Writing that way could also wreck me. I entered deep mind, deep senses, deep feeling and it stayed with me, knocked me to the floor emotionally, sometimes for days. I had to find another way.
The last couple of days, I’ve experimented with little to no ceremony. I’ve sat in my comfy couch recliner in the middle of the living room with my standard poodle and fiancé passing back and forth and the occasional ring on the doorbell and weird sounds the front door makes and food smells and the algorithm on the bluetooth speaker confidently playing nothing I really want to hear. And I was more comfortable. I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel wrecked after. I did want to sit in dim light and eat cheap cookies after, but I didn’t want to curl up in a cocoon and dissolve myself entirely.
The problem is, the writing is for shit. Maybe that’s too harsh. Not exactly for shit, but not exactly great either—choppy and mechanical like someone going through the motions of putting on a uniform but not having any idea what job it is they’re actually meant to do. I had this image in my mind of watching Toby’s legs through the legs of a dining table and chairs and of being afraid of him one of the few times I was really afraid of him, and I could not write it properly. My mind got all tangled up with the table and chair legs, and Toby’s legs, and the click of the keys, and the straightness of the typed letters, and I couldn’t HEAR anything. I was writing, but my soul was deaf.
There had to be a better way.
Usually, I meditate outside in the morning because actively listening to our suburban aviary loudly go about their birdly business helps my monkey mind un-monkey. Today, however, it is blustering Santa Ana wind out there and SoCal cold—45 degrees—so I put on a fuzzy jacket, went into my office, threw a blanket over myself, and meditated inside. I had no intention of connecting with the memoir or Toby or any of it. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t even touch that material today, so put out was I at the failure of the table leg trial in type. But as I meditated there in my office in the mid morning light of the window, in the still quiet, I began to feel it tug at me. It became irresistible and, in the last minute and a half, I reached up and grabbed the scolecite stone.
I had this idea:
I have a lovely little spiral notebook, a fancy notebook, I bought to record notes about my meditation sessions this year. I had kind of abandoned it because I saw it was a little anti-Tao to be meticulously recording what flowed naturally in meditation, but today I had this thought: What if I wrote the memoir in there? What if I wrote notes to Toby in that book? The paper is cream, not stark white. The lines are bold, not faint. The pages are small—undemanding. There is an index section so I can find what I wrote later. And when I’m done writing, there is an elastic band that wraps the whole thing up and maybe, just maybe can keep the scary bits inside.
So that’s what I did. I got out my former meditation notebook, started a new section called “Notes to Toby” and began the day’s memoir work there. I listened. I heard. I recorded. I did not WRITE. It was wonderful. I got to the meat of the table legs. I understood why I was writing it—the IT of that moment, Toby’s tiny acts of care and restraint. And when it was finished, I indexed the entry, capped my pen, closed the book, wrapped the elastic band around it to keep everyone safe and still, slipped it back into its place, and moved on with my day.
I feel a little tired now, but not wrecked. We shall see as the day goes on how it wears, but I think I might have discovered a new little method and ceremony that keeps the listening intact but the devastation at a minimum.
I’ll keep you posted.
Until then, I wish you all the best in word-liness.
-M. Ashley
M. N. Ashley 