Why I Love to Write

Postcard photo of "Old Gibbons," houses converted into dorms
for Douglass College women.
The Corwin dorms were similar--houses turned into dorms.

Blogging has crystallized my love of writing. What fun it is to pan for gold, to sift through images--to write, write, write. Let fingers fly, stitch letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into stories. Or lists. Or observations.

Each post is an artifact of who I was on that night [or day] at that time. What demons I was battling [a chocolate cake, a testy teen], what dreams I was chasing, what stress I was pressed under. My favorite posts to read now are the ones from other places, like Cape Cod, or Connecticut, or New York City. When we're back in our home later this month, I bet I'll like reading posts about being here at AVE Clifton luxury living.

Blogging is writing for yourself [and your readers--thank you] but not for a boss or teacher or critic who can and will say a variety of things--good job, good start BUT, love it, please recraft it--or maybe nothing at all. When you blog, you write, rewrite, spell check, find art, add caption, reread, and click PUBLISH POST. I heartily recommend it.

There's such freedom in writing like this, on the open road. Such top-down-in-an-aqua-convertible-on-a-Sunday-drive freedom. Hair in retro silk scarf, hands on big steering wheel, lunch [cold chicken and biscuits] in wicker picnic hamper [along the lines of Grace Kelly in Hitchcock's 1955 film To Catch a Thief.]

But notice--I am alone in the car. Maybe that's why I like writing so much. I do it alone, on my own. Independently. I am really not so good as part of a pair. Sometimes, yes. A team, yes. I worked successfully on editorial teams at all of my jobs, for years and years. Tangling with some tigers, but learning from, and creating with, wise women and men. Still, even at Dumont High School, on the track and cross-country teams, I was a two-miler, a long-distance runner. I preferred to hug the bends in the road alone. To kick up the gravel alone. To cut my path alone.

Dream Weaver
One more note: I woke up with a start at 7 this morning after a vivid, disturbing dream. I was so relieved to be in my bed, not in a college dorm on the first day of freshman year.

I was at Douglass College at Rutgers University, the women's college I attended. I arrived at my dorm room [it was in Corwin, an old house; Douglass has dorms like those] and my roommate was a gorgeous brown, slender sophomore. Her name was Joan. Her boyfriend was there, too. The room was completely decorated--it was Joan's room, not mine. She and I were going to share a double bed. The bed already had slept-in reddish maroon sheets on it. There was also a sweat or body fluid stain on one side of the bed. It was where her boyfriend had slept. My old friends Moey and Debbie were there. I was panicking and it got worse when I realized I had forgotten my pillow and my prescriptions. I was also really worried about my snoring, especially in a shared bed. Soon, we were putting new sheets on. On our way to solving the problems, I guess.

Why was I dreaming this? What brought this on? Seventeen hours later, I can see more clearly. I'm worried about packing up and moving back home. A lot to handle, balance, remember. Moving is stressful. I've never liked leaving things behind, finishing chapters. Also, I was reading my friend Kim's memoir chapters about college, and romantic relationships in college, so maybe that sent me back there, too.

But then I saw something else. Dad was in the dream. Quiet, but there, and reassuring, in his gray tweed sportcoat. He had driven me there. And it occurred to me that his being there, just being there, helped make the problem manageable. As in, I would somehow get my pillow and the sheets would be clean. Things would be okay.

The other thing is that I never lived in Corwin--but I think Sis did. She attended Douglass before me.

Also realized when I woke that back when I was 18, I didn't snore or take medications. That was a strange relief, even though the whole thing was a dream. Maybe I was consoling myself that if it were real, Joan would not have had to worry about me keeping her awake.

Good night.