Soul-Writing: Falling in Love Again

I’ve kept journals all my life.  The  most prolific period of this practice transpired in  my  twenties where journal writing became, for  the most part, my shrink.  Just a few days ago, I  came across an old journal and a story piece.  The first was a  brown hard-bound planner with scribbling -- mostly in pencil -- of my life and times as a twenty-something, single woman. The second was a painstakingly crafted  mini-book chronicling the rise and demise of a fleeting  love affair.  Reading them I marveled  at the person that I was then:  introspective, brooding, eloquent in expression. That person, it appears,  is gone. 

The harder I try to write, these days,  the worse the constraints.  This present reality became even more obvious when I belabored myself crafting my recent piece “Remembering Inday Nilda”, the writing of which  was an exercise in pulling teeth. The finished product lacked fluidity…  the words just did not  flow  seamlessly.

The  words must come  to me of their own, from the depths of my self  where my soul resides.   My most  rewarding pieces  come together   like that. Unlabored. Effortless. They begin as   a phrase, a sentence, a title, much like a fragment of a dream.  I call it soul writing.  Writing this way brings substance into my work  that renders it pleasing, at least, to me ... because my writing, first of all, has to please me.

Yesterday, I went to the library intent to  rekindle  a  love affair.   It is the first step in my search for the missing piece; in my quest to get my  soul back.   As I re-immerse myself in this world;  as I  go back to the works that have inspired me – the poetry of Eudora Welty, Sylvia Plath, Vassar Miller, Gregory Corso, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston; the essays of Gail Sheehy, Joan Didion, George Orwell, Anais Nin; the stories of Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan  and countless others, I hope perhaps, once again, to fall  in love.

Today I decided I need to  see beyond the obvious and the mundane: at my life -- at all  life , spurred by a desire for meaning – the so-called “making sense of it all.” This is what the making of those soul-journals had done for me.  This is something I have determined myself now to  do.

I am determined to rediscover that missing piece. Nothing  can make up for it – to live and breathe the words that I write; to fall in love with the very act; to write like nothing but only my soul can write.