Green is also the Color of the Ocean

I'm jealous. Today, anyway, of my friend Karen. And Anne Lamott. They're both writers who write during the day and are devoted to it. That's actually a little unfair, since Karen is home schooling children during the day and shouldn't have the energy to write. But they both write anyway.

I think it's painful to write sometimes. Especially when I'm reading Anne Lamott, who not only goes into her past addictions and bad behaviors in general, but brings you into the uncomfortable present. Here she's out of money right near the end of her last book, here her son Sam is telling her how much he hates her, here another parent is worried about her son's school performance. Okay, that last one is hilarious:

"Sam really has a gift for making things out of next to nothing… His last teacher, after expressing some concern about his handwriting, said, "He makes such amazing things out of… of… of," and I said, "Garbage?," and she said, "Yes!"
Sometimes I have a knee-jerk concern that he has so little interest in school. At the end of second grade, on of the mothers said, "Gee he doesn’t go much for homework, does he?," and I wanted to scream, "No, but he makes inventions, you dumb slut, out of garbage. While your kid is an obsequious little Type A suck.
I realize I may be the least bit sensitive."

-- Traveling Mercies

Wendy, my wife, is very shy though startlingly open to those who are open with her. I'm afraid at times to bring my life out into the open, when the open is so horrifyingly scary sometimes. The open, it seems, is Howard Stern and American Idol. It's people who grew up in schools making fun of other people, now spending all their free time to laugh at people on TV. (If you want to know, the people who produce those shows more than likely hate the shows and themselves for making it. They also hate the people watching it. It's a tiny little circle of self-loathing anyone outside of the TV industry cares to talk about. I know, I worked in it for 7 years.)

So I take those moments to the garden. And most times they go away. And I wonder, am I stunting my writing by gardening, or does writing stunt my growth?

I keep thinking of those crazy Zen Buddhist monks telling everyone to shut up and go back to washing dishes. Washing dishes! What the hell can you find there? We should be at revivals, or shopping, or learning new things with our friends, you're telling me I'm going to find peace doing something I wanted to hire a housekeeper to do?

(Those not my personal thoughts at the end there. I can't afford a housekeeper and I do my share of dishes every day.)

The garden brings all those self-loathing, confusing, and horrifying thoughts to soil level. And I don't know how it does it, but it usually can take care of them in an hour or so.

So, I don't know if it's I'm afraid to write because I'm shy or because I'm lazy.

Regardless, lunch hour is over for this day, and I guess I got to spend this time writing at least.

It'll do.