Process journal for “Existential Travelogue”

(This is a bit stream of consciousness, sorry.)

The first week of the Denver Writing Project I didn’t have anything to share because I hadn’t done my homework, so I pulled something out of the basement of my writer’s notebook. It was an imagery activity we had done at the retreat a month earlier. I had to walk outside and write about all these sensory images so I wrote about the light rail and what it sounded like. Later in the first week of the writing project, Jake Adam York came in and gave a poetry demonstration during which we wrote lyrical essays. The prompt was something like “the scene of the crime” and I wrote about a traffic accident. For some reason this activity was a bit difficult – a bit vulnerable for me. He kept talking about tapping into the intuitive part of our brains and letting it take us somewhere. I did that and it was scary, but important.

Later in the week I continued writing about the trains and started including anecdotes about my trip to Italy last summer. I thought about traveling and how empty it was when I traveled alone (to Ireland, for example) because there was no one to share the beauty with. “Platforms” was the first vignette that I really refined. A woman in my writing group read it and said it was “lonely but comfortable.” I was disturbed by that comment all evening, because it was true. It was true about me. I wanted to explore that more.

A fascination with trains, travel, and traveling in the mind led me to write the other two pieces of the train sequence. I wanted to go from a small concept (the model train set) to something large and surreal (the Oceanic Railway). I thought a lot about the ocean and why I’m afraid of it. Then I had a random memory of walking on the treadmill a couple years ago and watching TV news about the tsunami. The reporter said something about how the dead bodies were washing ashore and they were all swollen because they had been dead for several days. My stomach turned. I didn’t watch the news again for three months.

During the process of writing the train sequence I had to research model train sets, ranches in Montana, Italian phrases (with some email help from Danny), oceanic life, tsunamis, underwater volcanoes, and Guatemala. It was really exciting to delve into this new genre of the lyrical essay and try to figure out what it meant – a combination of research, expository writing, poetry and prose. It was a real challenge and I loved it.

After I finished the train sequence I workshopped it again and my writing group was intrigued by the Oceanic Railway and they wanted to know more about the character. As I was walking home from the bus that evening my mind was just brimming. I had been on the “Laboratory of Art and Ideas” web site looking at all their “mixed tastes” lectures, and I tried to think about how I could incorporate that concept into my writing: putting words and ideas together that were seemingly unrelated and finding ways to connect them. That is what led me to the Bone Sequence and the Sleep Sequence.

At this point I got some general ideas about the ending for my piece. I knew I wanted the main character to awaken from some kind of “dream state” but I didn’t want it to be predictable. I remembered how when my Dad had his kidney removed the morphine really messed with his brain. He woke up from surgery and thought all his organs were dead and started to cry. My mother had to get the doctor to come explain things to him. (Actually, his organs were really swollen, causing him a lot of pain – this I connected to the swelling bodies in my tsunami piece.)

My lyrical essay was structured around threes: three sequences, and three levels for each sequence. I knew I wanted to thread together each level between each sequence. I also knew I wanted my character to become injured in some sort of traffic accident (back to my original writing during Jake York’s demo) which guided me through the bone sequence. Then I thought about Inez, the tiny alpaca figurine that Jessica brought back for me from Ecuador. I’m always worried about someone breaking her fragile, little legs.

So at this point all of these layers of thought are churning at the same time and I can’t fall asleep at night. I wonder what would be the most horrifying way to get impaled during a traffic accident. I wonder how many bones are in the human hand. I wonder what e.e. cummings meant by “I carry your heart” and what if he meant that literally? I thought about other parts of his poem (the tree of life), the creation story, Adam’s rib and what role “ribs” would play in a godless universe. Then my mind went back to trains, and I had a tiny recollection of something I taught during my transcendentalist unit about “sleepers” and I knew they had something to do with railroads but I couldn’t remember what, but I figured it would work well in my “sleep” sequence.

Also at this time, I re-potted some of the plants on my patio. One of them was terribly overgrown underneath the soil and when I pulled it out of the pot there was this disgusting, horrifying network of roots that completely freaked me out. That image stayed with me for days. But then I remembered how one of the people in my writing group thought the death scene in “Railways” was morbid but beautiful, and I wondered if I could do the same thing with the image of the roots. In the process of writing the Bone Sequence I had to research cows, cow catchers, archeological digs, more Italian phrases (found the ones I wanted online this time), and the moon.

I brought all three sequences to my writing group and listened to them discuss the connections they saw and where they were confused. It took a while, but I felt like they were understanding what I was after. I also posted some of my drafts online on the DWP “open mic” site, but my online feedback was less positive. People reading it without my explanations and drafts weren’t making the same connections that my writing group was and this was kind of frustrating.

As the revision process continued, I kept thinking about that theme of “lonely but comfortable” and I wondered what that would look like as a life philosophy. So, I revised each part of my lyrical essay to include some or all of the following ideas:

Earlier this year I read something by Neitzsche about how man has no need for God, or faith. I thought about the existentialists and how lonely it would be to live that way. Existentialism has its appeal, I guess, especially for narcissists who think they are powerful enough to go and do whatever they want. (This is especially popular in this country, where “self reliance” is supposedly the American way.)

Granted, there is a Christian school of existentialism (I think) but I was busy thinking about Nietzsche and his godless universe. How lonesome: to be the only proof of your existence, the center of your world, with no relation to other people. To be totally responsible for your actions and your destiny is a terrible burden. Think of the constant work it must take to deny the paths and influences that exist outside yourself and work away like a slave, forging your own, flaw-filled journey all by yourself. Think of the inevitable pain.

I’m not into predestination or anything. I do think we have free will and choices, but that’s not all we have. In my view, the existentialist philosophy forces a person to place limits on the imagination because anything beautiful, divine, or creative has to come out of your limited self-awareness. Life ends up being like one of those movies where, at the end, the main character realizes all the colorful parts were just a dream. How disappointing.