Last night while I slept, a miracle occurred: a new room was added to my house! I know this sounds unlikely, but the painters and carpenters who’ve been crawling all over my house are apparently using some pretty good amphetamines.
OK, maybe it was a dream. Only it wasn’t. It’s the WordPress Daily Prompt: An extra room has magically been added to your home overnight. The catch: if you add more than three items to it, it disappears. How do you use it?
This prompt is so obvious, I can’t pass it up. My three items would be my journal, a pen, and a chair. I’m hoping that my tea mug doesn’t count, but if it does, I’ll choose that and lose the chair.
My Clutter
In my home, there’s barely room to get dressed in the morning and little floor visible to vacuum. Let alone space on the couch to have a friend over. Every potential sitting spot is stacked with papers and books and piles of folded t-shirts, jeans, and socks. There’s no longer room in the bookshelves or dresser drawers to put stuff away.
My Morning Room
But enough of my woes! I have a new room – a breathing room. I will call it my morning room, and I will sit and journal for hours, undistracted by the guilt, shame, and despair I feel when I’m sitting amidst my clutter. Lots of light will pour through the latticed windows, outside of which flowerboxes will overflow with red geraniums. A hummingbird feeder will be hanging above the geraniums.
Am I cheating by filling up the area outside the window? I think not. There are still just three things in my room. My journal, my pen, and my chair, which will be a wing-backed chair of the deepest royal blue – maybe even velvet! Or perhaps it will be a recliner with a foot rest, still blue velvet. The walls of the room will be various shades of purple and blue, and since it’s a magical room, I can change the wall colors just by imagining.
My Journal
My journaling will remain the same, a combination of here’s-what-I-did-and-here’s-what-I’m-going-to-do and an outpouring of anxieties and prayers and lists of things I need to work on – emotionally, spiritually, and in the material world. I’m sure if were to read back over the years I’d see helpful patterns, but the lack of progress might be depressing, so I don’t.
My blog readers tell me they like it when I share random journal entries, and this seems as good a place as any to include a few recent rambles.
- May 23, on grief:
Five months. A few minutes ago, the phone rang twice and then stopped. His secret ring. Then I found a sheet of paper I’d been writing on the day he died. Notes about nursing homes and insurance coverage, and in the upper right-hand corner I had scrawled the room number he told me he was moving to after the test, except that the test proved fatal. Room 43461, it says. I had a wild thought to go visit it.
That’s all I want to say. It will be years and years before this penetrates. Those little reminders can slay you. Today I am able to choose whether or not to be slayed by the grief. I think I will not. My plan is to spend the day submitting my writing.
- May 24, on meeting a stranger:
Got in a convo today with a guy named James. Interesting old fellow, actually only sixty-seven, but guzzling booze and living on the railroad tracks have left their mark. He talked of liberation and miracles. His turning point came when he was in his twenties, he said.
He was sitting on the railroad tracks with “another wino,” and the other guy started crying. “What’s the matter, Pokey?” James asked. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure out a way to get more wine before we go to sleep.”
“It’s not that,” Pokey said. “It’s you I’m worried about – you’re not going to make it.”
“That was the low point,” James said. “I thought about it all night, and after that I had a miracle and God took away my desire for alcohol.” Pokey died of alcoholism in his forties, but he saved James’s life. {Stories of James fill three more pages.}
- May 28, on the morning:
Such a pretty morning here on my porch. It’s humid – we had a big storm last night. The birds are calming down a bit, settling in to the work of raising babies. Not so much boisterous ecstasy at dawn. A hummingbird is at the feeder, and a cardinal serenades from the big pine. The honeysuckle fills the air with sweet. God is so, so crazy gracious. Well, I have a ton to do before I head for New Hampshire.
- June 3, on eavesdropping in NH:
I don’t have much privacy with these painters just outside all the windows, but for a writer, this material is priceless. They come around the corner and I hear, “That happens every time I get arrested.” How can I not tune in to their chatter?
“I got major heartburn. Downed fourteen beers last night.”
“Oh man, me too. I got that every day. I’m embarrassed to look my mom in the eye. What do you drink?”
“Budweiser.”
“I used to drink that, but I can’t afford it anymore.”
“So Ernie’s dead now, huh? Last time I saw him he wailed on me. Punched me right in the jaw for no reason. Guess he was just too drunk . . . Yeah, I lost my brother to heroin.”
“I don’t touch that stuff. I did coke once. Took a hit of acid once. Walked around town with a box of elbow macaroni and an Elmo doll, burning bugs on the sidewalk. It was a bad night.”
Writing with Spirit 
Jun 05, 2014 @ 16:18:40
Journal, pen, chair. Me, too!
Jun 05, 2014 @ 16:56:03
And where are you on the question of chair vs. tea? That’s the real crux of the matter 🙂
Jun 05, 2014 @ 12:20:13
Blogging is my form of journaling. I do have a leather journal, but I don’t write in it everyday. However, I do blog everyday about writing and things I may be feeling. I like this post it’s honest, fair, and to the point. I have a clutter of things in my writing space which is my bed. I have a notebook, earrings, my journal, a book I should be reading, a driver’s manual. I like to say I have organized clutter.
Jun 05, 2014 @ 16:55:24
Oh man – if I inflicted my pure journaling on my blog, I wouldn’t have many followers, that’s for sure! I ramble way too much.
I like that – organized clutter. I wish! Thanks for reading and commenting.
Jun 05, 2014 @ 18:29:36
No problem.
Jun 05, 2014 @ 11:06:48
well, i understand you better now. and i understand better why you are writing and i am not. i procrastinate over my lists of things to do and the undone projects that surround me; then i do a thing or two, pretending to keep up, but i can’t write until i attack my list and get things in order.
i really like your blog posts, i like that you WRITE your blog posts and share them. i KNOW i will get there. you are inspiring.
i, too, wrote down what i heard the plumbers say while they were rambling around here with their pipes and wrenches, but i have never shared any of it. but i will. i will.
Jun 05, 2014 @ 11:16:18
I’m telling you, Jane, blogging is the thing to do. You can write as short or as long as you like, it doesn’t have to be polished and polished and perfect – you can just share whatever you want. And you don’t have to have the house in perfect order to do it!
Sadly, the rest of my writing looks like my house: half-done bits and scraps here and there, all out of order. But the blog = freedom.
My neighbor told me the other day that she really admired the way I could write amidst the chaos and clutter. “I could never get anything done in this,” she said. I know she meant it as a compliment, so I’m taking it that way. Write. Today. Just bits and scraps – write, Jane! You have so much to share.