I have been kind of depressed on and off for a little while. It has to do with my work, my writing, not feeling connected to a writing community. Feeling under-utilized, ineffective.
Last Friday I biked to my prayer place on River Road. I straddled my bike and looked across the river and asked, Why did I have to do everything kicking-and-screaming? Everything. Becoming a woman. Getting a job. Writing.
I saw how I had to open a new file and start the memoir again.
These past few years I kept thinking I was on-track, I show up at my desk every single morning. Still, I get in my own way. Perhaps I’ve lost another year doing this. I know it’s learning, and you can’t just pole-vault over the crappy first drafts. Still. I am so frustrated with myself for being afraid. I am terrified to make a big leap; I don’t actually know how. I push myself, but I haven’t thrown myself off the cliff.
My wise friend and brilliant reader said, “Maybe when it’s all down you will feel the freedom to go back in and tell the real story, in that [adult] voice, instead of the chronicle.”
I keep thinking well, that’s what I’m doing, telling the story! My friend said my writing was “SO solid.” Why isn’t it working, though? I strongly suspect it is because I haven’t identified the core of the issue.
A few weeks ago my horoscope said something about taking my rightful place. That went right in. You can interpret a horoscope any way you like. I took it to mean it was high-time I took my rightful place as LIZARD GIRL, which is what my memoir is really about.
Lizards and Me 
Hey, Amiga,
I suspect we all feel illegitimate on a most fundamental level–after all, in our hearts we are not who pretty much everyone else thinks we are … from the arbitrary names given to us by our parents to the bodies we inhabit to the characters we create who take on their own independent ways. Anyway, when I’m feeling disconnected, I get remarkable comfort–and courage–from this passage from Siddhartha:
“The world … is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No it is perfect at every moment. Every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people – eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way, the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player, the robber exists in the Brahman. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good – death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding, then all is well with me and nothing can harm me.”
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
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Yes. Thank you, Amigo. Abrazos.
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I loved Blue Iguana. Your love of lizards is a safe place for daring young people needing a place to venture.
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Thank you, I’m so happy that you understand!
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