So Many Things

I've been looking at what I was writing last year for the 100-day summer writing project and what I'm writing this year. As I compare them, it strikes me that I need to step back from judgment. Last year I was writing deep and full pieces, and this year I'm doing all I can to show up and write a few good sentences.

There are things to notice, especially around what else has been going on and how my rhythms take shape. How many projects I'm working on -- for example, this summer I'm in the end stage of my poetry book. Truth be told, I was last summer as well. But last summer all the projects were on hold by the publisher because of a merger. This summer everything is active. I'm also working on a short fiction project. All told, I've got seven projects going. They are all juicy and alive for me. And as I think about myself, I imagine myself as a jongleur, moving between roles with deft elegance.

Itinerant entertainers of the Middle Ages in France and Norman England, the repertoire of the jongleurs included dancing, conjuring, acrobatics, juggling, singing and storytelling. Some were skilled at playing musical instruments. Some composed their own material. Many collaborated with troubadours. They had incredible reach. Performing at public holidays in market towns, in abbeys, in the castles of nobles. They held competitions for lyric poets. They sometimes morphed into menestrels (minstrels) if retained by a wealthy patron and focused on literary creation. The role of the jongleur reached its height in the 13th century and began its decline in the 14th, as the various facets of this complex role began to disseminate among other performers who began to specialize. 

Specialization. Single focus. I know these things can be important at times, but I think we lose something if we don't develop our multiplicity of talents. Over a lifetime, we can certainly develop many interests and talents and become quite good at them. I think about my young years when I think about this tendency toward being a multiverse rather than a universe. My favorite badge when I was a girl scout, the first one I earned, was The Dabbler. I was interested in so many things and loved to do so many things. I still do.

My mother tells a story of my earliest years when I was a tiny girl with very early language skills. The way mom tells it is this. Bursting with energy in the morning I would say, "What can we do today, Mommy?"   And she would say, "Well...we can do this and we can do that and we can do this other thing..." She'd start naming things and I would prompt her when she slowed down, "What else, Mommy? What else can we do?" She'd keep going until, finally, I would say, "We can do so many things!" And I'd get so excited about about all the possibilities before us.

That's still my orientation. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.