So, I’ve been watching Dickinson on Apple TV
I know I am late and the world has likely moved on, however, the show is a whirlwind of historical fiction and poetry and love and comedy and I love it so much. Picture a young Emily Dickinson desperately craving for one thing – to write. She refuses to live a life that ends with her being some mediocre man’s wife who’s values rests upon her raising their children. She’s seen as a radical thinker. A dangerous woman that threatens patriarchy just because she wants a name for herself. Her world revolves around writing and thinking and grappling with ideas of being published, or rather, being known. The idea of being forgotten haunts her.
I found myself wondering how similar I may be to her. I’m a 33-year-old unmarried woman with no children, no man and a career. Nearly 150 years later, society still finds ways to scream at me “WHEN?” When will I settle down? When will I take having children more seriously? When will I stop trying to be independent and step into the “soft” girl era so someone will want to marry me? We’re a century apart and somehow existing as a single woman today carries the same undertones.
My mother usually works that kind of conversation in monthly. Reminding me how she had two children by the age of 22. I know she means well but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t spark the biological ticking clock in the back of my mind. Why can’t I just want to write and have a career while the role of motherhood simmers on the back burner?
Like Dickinson, ideas being forced upon me make me cringe compulsively. I want that journey to be on my own terms. I want my story to revolve around something just as romantically as Dickinson and her poetry. Surely she floats between love interests as we all do. But her purpose in life is to write and write and write until she has nothing left to say or quite frankly – dies.
I think about of writing less as a means of practice and more of something to lean on when I’m seeking expression. Do I wish I could be like Dickinson locking myself in my bedroom and write thousands of poetry or essays over the course of my lifetime? Absolutely. I think if we all could lock ourselves somewhere to escape the modern world, we would. But as of lately I have been wondering how having a practice/routine would make my expression even better, even deeper. So this “blog” is that – my practice.
I hope you will find it cheeky, light and entertaining but yet heart wrenching, moving and provoking. I hope it helps you marvel at life with openness and grace.
I leave you with the most recent renderings of a poem I am writing…
And finally..
the wind stopped whispering your name
between my favorite things
stillness rests where anxiety once fluttered
when the last leaf falls for the winter
it crinkles without second thoughts
of a future.
