The writing process and a lyrical head trip...

When asked at a party I joked and said,  'I write because my husband won't listen to me.'  It really wasn't true. Nor was it original, as the author who said it had a wife.

Of course, I had no answer so I made people laugh.  I have no idea why I write but I cannot resist.  It is like a juicy lobster with drawn butter, mashed potatoes or a piece of homemade walnut fudge.  It is simply, always alluring, calling me to leave my life of responsibility and I react as naturally as a mother to the sight of her child's beautiful face. 

A yogi would surely judge me undisciplined in my thoughts and when I speak often little whorls of this chaos slip through my lips.  But in the dark hours of early morning, while the rest of the world sleeps, I feel and write and I am not owned.  I steal my time to release whatever has been flopping around inside me like groceries in the trunk or a school of dying fish. 

I write what I imagine, think or feel: vivid impressions of those who suffer quietly, seething political rants to release my fears, earned hostilities, family stories, make-believe re-writes, the loving feelings children find so intense.  

All these things surface like the fat on cold chicken soup.  If I don't get them out, I'll be nothing but smelly goop.

When I jump off it is awkward at first, but I allow myself to fly with tattered wings and kick the global positioning device to the rocks below.  I end up somewhere not always good,  warm or inviting, not worth saving or sharing but it is always, always about release. 

And humans.  I love all our frailties,  selfishness,  bravery, kindness,  the minutiae of our boring, boring lives and everything else.  At first I wrote 'their' not 'our' and sort of freaked myself out.  Perhaps I distance myself too much as the all-knowing, omnipotent creator/narrator.

There is real work I've sloughed off, but I stay up too late and write until I'm empty and my neck aches.  I imagine someone I don't even know yet cares what I write.  And as I slide quietly into bed so as not to disturb him, my husband always says, "Do you know what time it is?" 

There is no recrimination in his voice, but a sense of concern that I'm in some manic state and it surely will turn badly when I land.  Although I never stop being this same person I am, and if I write I stay high on all those creative endorphins.  When I wrote music and lyrics, I felt exactly the same way.

One day he said writing was my favorite hobby, and without thinking I contradicted him.  How can I explain this is not play?  These creative urges cannot be suppressed or they burn themselves right through my very head.   If I believe what others think that only the young could feel this way, there must be something wrong with me.

But my wonderings tonight have uncovered something new once again.  I find myself writing prose but inside I hear it as some sort of poetic rhyming instead.  Like two sets of people talking and each separate conversation pulls out several threads. Has this happened to others who internally hear their words said? 

I resisted the impulse to make everything I wrote lyrically acceptable, as if I needed to rebel againts pleasing someone or something else.  Was it my muse lifting me up to a higher standard or simply God's breath in my ear?

I wonder if this has happened to others or if it is some rite of passage I don't recognize.  When I surrender freely to these bursts of creative passion,  I feel as if I am levitating without benefit of a net.  Maybe my husband should worry, or perhaps I haven't jelled just yet.