Writing What Is

I hear a bird chirping. The next door neighbor is mowing. The rumble of the lawn mower makes an occasional crunch and snap. A child screams. It’s not my child.

I hear a bird chirping. The next door neighbor is mowing. The rumble of the lawn mower makes an occasional crunch and snap. A child screams. It’s not my child.

Recently, I’ve been practicing observational writing. The idea is to write only what you pull through your five senses, with no metaphor or meaning. The practice has been equally illuminating and difficult. Perhaps I failed in the line “it’s not my child” but as a parent, it’s impossible not to disconnect these thoughts: “A child is screaming. Is it my child? Yes / no.” In milliseconds, a parent knows.

After I wrote this and posted it to social media, I reread it and discovered the sinister implications of the crunching lawn mower paired with the child’s scream. Despite their proximity in the writing, the lawn mower and the child were physically far from each other. I heard the lawn mower from the house next door and the child from the house that backs up into our yard.

I’m working through Writing in the Dark’s Visceral Self intensive, which teaches not only writing pure sensory details, but also writing from the body. I find both of these things incredibly difficult.

When asked to personify the relationship I have with my body, I thought of an annoying sibling. Always there, as much as I want to be left alone. Reminding me of their existence by prodding me in my upper back or my temple or the ball of my right foot. Having the audacity to age. My brain thinks itself superior to my body; the body is the sausage casing required to keep the thoughts flowing.

Observing things without attaching meaning does not come naturally to me. I’m a space cadet and a daydreamer; my organs and skin and bones maintain themselves in one plane while my brain’s wandering halfway around another imaginary world. I have ADHD, and my brain seeks distractions and makes connections to the distractions. I have an English degree. In school, I learned how to read a piece of literature and pull every bit of meaning not only out of it, but into it: history, feminism, politics, our lives. I cannot learn new karate techniques until I’ve first translated the motions into words. I am a disembodied mind controlling a stubborn marionette from another location. The marionette needs to sit up straight.

Here are a few observational snippets I’ve written in my office after the kids have gone to bed:

A pile of mail spread out on top of the crinkled day bed blanket.

The window is open 1.5 feet and outside a bird says, “Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet.”

The washed glass peanut butter jar cannot fit another paintbrush. Some brushes have fanned out bristles and rainbows of plain splatter. Some are pristine.

The wall calendar reads “May.” The blue notebook has pastel tabs for the months January through April.

A basket shaped like a cat rests on the floor. Parts of it are frayed. It could fit 2, maybe 3, cats inside. The lid is slightly askew.