Today, instead of doing laundry or paying bills… I went for a walk by the Mississippi River. On a whim I took the spiral note book we use to record mileage from the glove box. My fifteen minute walk turned into a two hour, outdoor writing session. The sunshine… the wind… the river flowing by… combined with all the stories in my head, and I became lost to time. I became nothing but the voice that narrates my journey. Today… a journey down to the river and back.
When I got back to the car, and realized how much time had passed. And how many pages I had filled… I couldn’t help the feelings of guilt. All the responsible things I had left undone… all the chores that had piled up during my many trips into creative bingeing. I was barely capable of driving home… I had skipped breakfast and now it was lunch time… I had also forgotten to take care of myself. Over and over again the thoughts in my head said, “God, I hope that someday my insanity will be worth something! Someday my compulsive need to create will feed my children, and keep a roof over our heads. And how am I going to do that?”
Almost two years ago I started a project called “A Year of Nonsense”… I realize now that it has been more like a lifetime of nonsense… maybe even an insanity of sorts. I am like two people… no… one person with layers. An outer layer that is fun, pragmatic and fairly ordinary… and an inner layer that is whirlpool of ideas, dreams, feelings and creative contradictions… The pragmatist says I have to do this, this and this… and she gets things done. But the whirlpool layer underneath eventually… always… surfaces and drowns out the pragmatist. Overwhelming the “real world” with a need to create… to express what ever the soul has to say. Regardless of “worldly” expectations and common sense. If the pragmatist fights it… nothing gets done on either front. And I lose… and society frowns.
And so, that is where I am today… contemplating a lifetime of nonsense and praying that it means something more. That it is not just an insane whimsy that I cannot control…
Tell me that someday, my nonsense will really be worth something….
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Words & Photography by Cicely Robin Laing © 2011 All Rights Reserved
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