Snow

I love snow. I know there's a lot to hate about it, especially if you live in Boston right now and have to use a bucket and a hockey stick stuck in a drift for a mailbox. I've also seen snow turn a typical rush hour commute into an exclusive sneak preview of Armageddon, but I still love it.

Snow purifies. It freezes the dirt on your car and melts it away in the sun. The best part is when it first starts to fall, when it cloaks the world with whiteness only nature can seem to achieve--there's a reason the old hymn goes "make me white as snow." With only the softest sound, it loosens the grip of everyday stress and pain for just a moment. Last week, I had to park my car a mile from my house and walk home just as the latest snowfall began, and something loosened in me as I trudged through the woods. The air thick with flakes, and tree limbs like the white legs of ancient spiders, revealed the holiness in everything. It was like watching manna fall from heaven, and it forced us all to slow down and take a breath. 

This purifying weather perfectly symbolized the events of last week. I've finally moved into my new apartment, where the lights come on and the water runs because I earn the money that helps pay for them. It brings a wonderful sense of pride, despite the fact that I now see little dollar signs floating away every time I turn on a light. I feel like the master of my own tiny world and all its elements. It is tiny, indeed--perhaps, instead of the master of a small universe, I'm more like a monk in his cell. My mattress won't arrive for another two weeks, and I haven't had time to shop for a desk, so I've abandoned these vain delights and taken to sleeping and writing on the floor. This room really has its own kind of zen, which might be due to my roommates burning incense downstairs. However, it also has the feeling of a secluded tower, with its shape and upper story location. It's a humble, yet artistic space, where the only creature comfort currently allowed is that of self-expression. As the English saying goes, a change is as good as a rest, and hopefully this change will only improve my writing and musical pursuits further; I'm already halfway through writing my very first song, and currently beginning another short story. Maybe, now that I've untethered the balloon of my adult life from my childhood home, I can finally fill it with enough hot words to get it off the ground.     

In Love with Everything

“To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories—science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”--Ray Bradbury

I've been thinking about this quote a lot this Valentine's season, and about love itself. Last week, I wrote about regret as a major motivation for my writing, specifically regret over miscommunication. It's become so clear over the past couple years that this is true. Almost everything I want to do with my life, from directing films to loving someone, requires being an exceptional communicator. So far, I've made incredible improvements in my ability to lead and interact with people effectively, making my thoughts known in a clear, firm manner while also respecting theirs--last year, I managed to produce a documentary that was broadcast to millions of homes, and this year my freelance career is quickly taking off. However, I've also made painful mistakes along the way, some of which have already cost me at least one relationship. 

But Ray Bradbury's blessing for writers, blazing with his usual vitality, reminds me of an even more powerful motivation for making art: being in love with everything, all the time. For a perfect description of this feeling, read Billy Collins' poem "Aimless Love." I know I've felt it before, and I wonder how many other writers and artists have too. It's a blessing to be so easily enamored with everyday things in that you seldom run out of creative material, but it can also be a curse in a number of ways. One is constant distraction--I've lost track of conversations because I was busy observing the movements of a person's eyes, the interesting shape of their nose, or a striking cloud formation behind them. Last night, I sat in a sports bar with over a dozen glaring TV screens, but the pretty swooping motion of car lights through the windows behind them was enough to distract me from whatever game was happening.

Perhaps another problem with being constantly in love with everything is that it makes finding romantic love more difficult. With your love spread over so many things, it makes sense that a person would have to be exceedingly incredible in order to stand out enough to catch your wayward attention. It's harder to find someone who shares what C.S. Lewis called "the same secret road" when your road is narrow and twists in all different directions.

This Valentine's Day, I spent the evening with friends and had a good time, but toward the end of the night, I couldn't help but notice the visual bitterness of my surroundings. I felt like I'd been dropped into a scene from a story someone had written after a breakup. I sat with my companions at an outdoor table with a bulging ash tray (the "butt table," as we fittingly called it), drinking whiskey and pulling my hood up against the cold and wind. Couples walked hand-in-hand to the steakhouse next door, men wearing sport coats and women balancing on spiky heels, the antithesis of my muddy sneakers.

Fortunately, life is starting to look a lot better than a pair of muddy sneakers, slowly but surely. I'm moving into a lovely, quiet new home next weekend with roommates who like Jefferson Airplane and seem to get upset only when they miss King of the Hill. I also just wrapped shooting on my first independently produced NC Weekend feature at the wonderful Fair Game Beverage Company, though much of the credit goes to a great videographer and production assistant. But perhaps most importantly, I'm writing more than I have in months. It feels like pushing a crank wheel on an old machine and watching the rust and dirt flake off. I still haven't had any new publications yet, but for now, it just feels good to be pushing.            

        
        

February: When Bergman Eats Soggy Corn Flakes

I've never seen the point of February. It just feels like a filler month between January and March, a drunk Old Man Winter swinging his fists and cursing the coming spring. Maybe he regrets not quite conjuring enough blizzards this season; North Carolina has yet to see one. Or maybe he's depressed about global warming. Either way, there's an edge of sadness to February wind that leaves me feeling, as Leonard Cohen put it, "cold as a new razor blade."

For me, it's often around late January when things start to go wrong in the new year. It's the month my grandfather passed away, and when my childhood guinea pig went to the great bell pepper patch in the sky. However, at least January has a point; the year has to start somewhere. But by the time February arrives, I'm done with winter, ready for things to warm up and bloom and be hopeful again. I'm also not partial to Valentine's Day, though now that it seems cool to hate it, the contrarian in me almost wishes I liked it. I realized last Friday evening that the only thing I like about this month is a February sunset. Walking up Weaver Street in Carrboro, I saw rose and purple spilling through cracked clouds and spindly trees. It made the sky look raw and honest, and the buildings blush.

I looked down and saw the buttons on my coat hanging on by their worn threads, ready to drop off one by one like failed New Year's resolutions. The thought of failed resolutions led me to think about regret, and what makes it different from plain sadness. I'm beginning to wonder if regret is the most painful emotion in existence. It's one thing to experience sadness or loss, but also rest assured that you did everything you could to prevent it. For instance, it's easier to be rejected when you know you at least had the courage to tell someone you loved them. However, it's another thing when you're always wondering about what you could've done instead, or constantly replaying your mistakes in your mind. Regret is sadness with teeth. It's Ingmar Bergman and Werner Herzog sitting in their underwear, eating soggy corn flakes in an arctic cabin and listening to Nick Cave (I really, really wanted to make a cartoon of this, but my drawing skills just aren't there yet).

In a way, I think my desire to write is partially born of regret. My regrets often involve miscommunication, things I wish I would've said, not said, or said differently. I have a lot of trouble saying what I mean in person, but writing allows me to always articulate exactly what I think and feel, exactly how I want. It's a window to the real me. In fiction, I can create entire worlds with the sole purpose of expressing what I'm trying to say, every scenic detail and character gesture shining a light on my ideas. It makes writing a wonderfully freeing medium, this ability to reveal what so often gets lost in translation between thought and speech. In face-to-face communication, it's so easy for simple statements like "I love you," "I'm angry with you," "You're beautiful," "I appreciate you," or "Help me understand you" to get tangled in missed chances, misunderstandings, and poorly chosen words.

As I finish this post, I notice the world outside has thawed just a little, and small, green promises dot the branches of a few trees in my yard--change is coming. I'm listening to the song "Severance" by Dead Can Dance, and there's a great line in it that goes: "When all the leaves have fallen and turned to dust, will we remain entrenched within our ways?" I pray that, at the end of this new year, the answer is "no."