Category: blog

Any work I read by Anais Nin, I prepare myself. The house must be quiet, and the chores must be done. I dim the lights. A prefatory setting must be made as though I’m setting out my finest cutlery for her impending visit. I know I’ll spend a great deal of time on the corner section of the sofa, and I’ll have already chewed my fingernails to the point of tenderness.

on writing

I read her essay, “The New Woman,” retreating to the deep reflection of her senses that lured me in the first place. She wrote about why one writes, liking it to breathing. She wrote profusely about how writing allowed her to experience life twice.

Writing can help one become increasingly aware. In moments when a writer feels bound, writing can liberate and create more room.

on artists

Anais Nin lived through other artists, and not just those who draw, compose music or design architecture. In her essay, she broadens this representation to those trapped in the house of the creative spirit — those with ideas and wanting to share them; those who seek to embody their internal world and who still bear their child-like fantasies into adulthood. She believed the creative quality that manifests in one makes an artist. She adds that psychologists often validate what poets have spoken about long ago, following a quote by Freud, “Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me.” Nin aspired to both men and women creatives, particularly Henry Miller, whom she esteemed for the writer he was and the context in which he wrote. “I think I saw Miller very clearly,” she said.

on the new woman

On “The New Woman,” Nin envisions the novel woman blossoming today. This woman is courageous and adventurous and harmonizes with her strength but is quiet about it. She rations sharing her growth and success. This woman is no longer homebound through chores while wearing an apron. Rather, this woman encourages the man to be a partner with her, not a provider, and a sensitive man, at that, not threatened or compromised by this new woman.

Women have served as muses for a long time, and Nin cleaved onto this desire to be this inspiration to avoid having to write herself. For years, women were not asked to be pushed into the direction of a great writer, doctor or philosopher, but to marry and raise children. This new woman, however, faces her trauma and fear, falls in love hopelessly, taps into her sensuality and explores the confusing world of her own neurosis.

Anais Nin and her psyche

In her complex framework, Anais Nin finds poetry as essential as philosophy and psychology — which we lean into to recenter our misaligned selves. An artist rearranges herself to write fiction and dismantles herself to write her diaries, but the division is complementary and integrated. Her intuition sloshes along rationale without blending, like water and oil, and coexists when contained.

If you have read her diaries, you know she has delved into her vulnerabilities and explored her curiosities. Plunging into her psyche, one will come out soaked and disoriented from the depths of her perception. Nin does not highlight the disparity between women and men, femininity and masculinity. She blurs the lines, leading you to where the two converge. Where there is poetry, there is intellectuality. Where there is devastation, you will find creation.

In days when I’m confounded in my reverie, I look to Nin for having dreams and penchants. To assert myself. To have passion and communicate through the channel of emotion. To be moved by impulses and to stand rooted in personal conviction.

If you’ve reflected all your life, then you’re no stranger to finding deep meaning in books, writing and other forms of expression. From simple sentences to an entire symphony, you connect, as though you long to or are already a part of the subject matter. It’s a quirk, a tendency, a hobby you instinctively do. By staring too long at spaces and things, parsing out the unseen, rationalizing with the arrival of feelings while trying to untangle the framework before you, you’re rewarded a profound understanding, a truth, a refreshing outlook or reality.

Seeing isn’t enough; you need to know and believe that there’s substance, a story, a trauma, beyond words and pictures either to disprove your insanity or to confirm theirs.  It’s part of the creative process that bridges us on an entirely different plane. On this plane, you sense the cynics in the room, brush shoulders with the thinkers and oversleep with the dreamers.

Yet on this same plane, you worry about whether the job description looks too frumpy on you or if your 3.1 GPA brings out your eyes. You let everyone in line cut in front of you, despite a few decent friends telling you the water’s fine.

I walked around the cul-de-sac tonight. The scent of impending rain reminded me of the first few drops after it had not rained for months. The warm smell of asphalt, tickling the nose, and wet grass —  petrichor.

Nostalgia rocked me.

Those rainless months in California left an indelible impression, spawning my romanticism for rainfall. The sun hit differently there, how it baked your forearms, your shoulders. Now, you treasure weather patterns, the speed of traffic and empty intersections at dead hours. I still recall the quiet drive home, precise traffic lights and 2 a.m. drive-thru meals. The way the headlights hit the last stop sign before making my last turn to the house. How about those nights Dad locked me out, forcing me to crawl through the doggy door?

It’s funny now.

Heavy eyeliner, blond highlights and a bottle of Sailor Jerry’s, things we could afford.

I can talk about these things now.

Today, I wondered if my life needs to be more eventful to feed my creative endeavors. Daily drives to the city, idling in traffic, my son’s language flourishing — these things I know. Five yoga classes a week, burning the candles at both ends, another call to action, another copy, another condolence. Just feeling spectacularly average in this peripatetic life.

I played a Bright Eyes record today. Conor sang of pain like a big red rubber ball. Like receiving a call from Mom on the home’s landline, telling you she’s working double. Dad’s still stuck in Burbank and the only light turned on in the house is the second-floor hallway. Leftovers again. You are home, but you’re homesick. Afraid of school the next day, wondering how to blend in as a tomboy, standing in a straight line with the pretty girls. My hair, black, tied in a ponytail; theirs long, blond and flowy. It’s all subconscious now, these things never leave you. It hardly stings anymore, but you recall the sensation.

In ways, life is slowing down, and these erstwhile events and people are catching up. Yet why is life moving faster than it ever did? It’s so easy for me to leave people. It’s even easier to recoil.

I’m still here. Lately, I’m plagued by knowing I’m going days without you as you age. White hair in your dark locks, but your deep red lipstick stays, vibrant, familiar.  Another year goes by after Mitchel’s death, but I mourn differently. I grieve like a mother, not like a sister.

How do you understand anything or see them through when you’re good at leaving?  When you’re here not for a long time but a good time?

These lamentations have nowhere to go but bleed into spaces, vacant or occupied. Nothing to fix here. No void to fill, right, just space. Stories with really no punch line or allegorical theme. Just sharing. Living, and if you care enough, courageous enough, you’ll learn.

I’ve been reading about David Foster Wallace in Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky. It’s a book in a transcript/interview format that tells the exchange between Rollingstone reporter and editor David Lipsky and Infinite Jest author, David Foster Wallace. They take a road trip. They sit with his dogs. They confess. They tell and find common ground.

I am the backseat passenger, the customer behind two dudes in line engaging in brilliant conversations that consumes me. Like being on the outside looking in, being incredibly drawn even though I can’t keep up with every inside joke, every esteemed piece of literature.

So many profound little bits here, this one in particular. Wallace sheds some insight into how reviewers will use his “first book as a noose to hang” his second. He also mentions how authors can be easily displaced because of new authors or “better” works hitting the market.

Wallace, an introspective soul as human as they come, arrives with profound insight as a writer, as a writer tackling topics that confound him some that include but are not limited to fame, prestige or life in general. Especially here; I love how he articulates or sometimes struggles to articulate, given his thought-riddled messy cognition, how he doesn’t identify with “more talented” or “less talented” or if something is “shit.” Rather, he thinks, “Man, there might be something here, but I just don’t get it. This is just not my cup of tea.”

How refreshing! How easily someone can dismiss a piece of work that fails to get across, so they reach for the closest, easy to grab, sorry excuse they could find instead of reasoning and sympathizing with the artist.

Wallace’s response is genuine and thoughtful because as someone who’s too into himself, too inside his own mind, David knows and knows too well how it’s like to go through these waves, how the “envy stuff” just burned him and how that kind of mindset can tear you up. He doesn’t “wanna send any blood supply to that part” of his brain anymore.

To be revered for your work and to want more recognition, it’s a vicious cycle and everyone’s out competing in a saturated market for the same small slice of the pie.

“And it’s not like I’m above it. It’s just that it — the amount that it hurts me, outweighs whatever good feelings it gives me.”

Finn’s Girl, Ruby explores the theme of self-love. Kaplan, whose favorite movie is True Romance and who has ditched a career as a lawyer to pursue photography, keeps Madison at bay. A tortured artist to describe him in the least, he effortlessly remains an enigma—displaying only that tip of the iceberg—because, like many of us, he feels as though he has barely made it this far in life merely by tailoring himself to others.

By shaping ourselves around others, we feel desirable and interesting because, hell, if others were to discover the kind of person we believe or think we are, it’ll devastate us. We’ve convinced—maybe even duped—others to believe we’re hunky-dory most days, forthright in our disposition and even resilient when really, we talk around what we mean or allow ourselves to shatter once we get home to an empty apartment. Because once others learn how we operate, we’re afraid they’ll think we’re just like the rest of them—like vanilla, uninteresting, unlikeable, or disingenuous because we invited them to lump us into some category of species to which we’ll find insulting or untrue.

In turn, it accelerates from there. We know we’re a phony, pathetic even. Just like Kaplan, we’ll accept the type of “love” or any degree of attention we think we deserve, let it be isolation or self-hatred. When someone doles out a compliment to us, we find it glib or gratuitous.  Since we dislike ourselves and feel as if there is this paragon of Us that we must be, we unfairly hold others to a high standard. Furthermore, we don’t allow ourselves to remove ourselves from unhealthy situations or thinking patterns because it’s become more comfortable for us to brood than to reorient our way of seeing.

Madison and Kaplan have this profound sense of viewing the world, which people fail to discuss or even have the capacity to understand. Their method of understanding or seeing is oftentimes nauseating with its many layers, which these characters don’t deplore getting sick and exhausted over. Because in the end, they always end up finding one another.

I like to think life can be more easily navigated if we just allow ourselves to be who we are—ghosts n all.

Creating is tough in a society where everyone will misunderstand you for a potato. It’s full of ups and downs and pauses.

Like when I get stuck. When I’m lost in the fog, wandering in the doldrums. When my brain reaches a pause, a necessary step before it can catch up with itself.

But it’s essential–the stagnation. It’s a stall, a completely normal episode that must happen in the writing process where I can wander back on track and continue Freewheeling off the beaten path where, although bumpy and sickening, is worth every mile in my progress.

When I’m standing still…

I’ll let it win.

I’ll try to fight writer’s block, but in the end, I’ll accept my defeat. During this creative constipation (if you will), I’ll tend to other things that require my attention (feeding the goldfish, scraping hard bits of pasta from my Dutch pot) before I can resume. Creativity is shy and it’ll demand sometime before it reveals itself.

I’ll unplug from the social realm.

I need to cleanse. When I find myself tumbling down the rabbit hole of the social sphere, I’ll seek isolation. The social world cripples the Self, but I’ve learned to put the phone down for days on end before I find myself regressing back to an unhealthy state. To write from within, I need to disconnect. There are moments of desperation where I’ll compare myself to others, whose journey and timeline differ from mine. It’s no fair match or should be one at all.

I’ll go out.

By embracing these dry spells, I’ll go out. I’ll surround myself with people. Pick dandelions. Climb a tree. I’ll then receive a text from Inspiration letting me know they’re on their way because their drunk cousin, Procrastination, fell asleep on his car keys.

I’ll read, watch and listen.

I seek inspiration from works I know and appreciate. I’ll reopen a favorite paperback or listen to meaningful songs. I’ll pick up new books for some fresh talent that will help grease this engine and hopefully get the momentum going.

I’ll just write.

It’ll read neither here nor there and I’ll believe I was someone else an hour ago, but the fact of the matter is there is something there: written words. Sometimes, onward and upward trump stagnation. Experimenting is essential to creating, like a mental exercise. You’d be surprised at how much you can bend without breaking.

I’ll seek the company of other creators.

Surrounding myself with other writers or artists making things happen renders me that drive. I like connecting with them, learning about their projects or their obstacles because, in the end, we’re not alone in that matter.

The enemies to lovers, the comic relief and the unsuspecting hero—we are no stranger to these plot elements, character classifications and exhausted themes peppered throughout works of fiction. They’re taken and rehashed only to be told from an author’s imagination, thinking it can play off last season’s argyle sweater with a cashmere scarf.

Books are filled with tropes and we devour it anyway.

But was it refreshing?
Did your stomach churn like butter?
Did you weep like an underpaid Applebee’s waitress saddled with student loan debt?
How about your nails? Did you chew them off after that hair-raising scare?

I like playing with tropes because they’re understood on a superficial level, yet still render a chance for authors to personally connect with a reader on a newfound degree. Here are a few I like to hang my hat on:

1. Hot-Mess-of-a-Protagonist Trope

She has a personality on her, cilantro between her teeth, is in between careers and says “Sorry” over a dozen times to a man she hit with her oversized carry-on. Sure, she’s that adorable younger cousin you’d prefer to leave at home instead of taking her out to meet your friends, but I cast her anyway because she offers a wealth of room for creativity.

2. Mysterious Character Trope

One of my favorite ingredients in the character development recipe. I feel like the sky’s the limit here. Mysterious characters are infectious and there is a gamut of ways in constructing them. From a troubled childhood to a relationship that spawned trust issues, we can’t help but ask, “WHO HURT YOU? WHO HURT YOU, ERWIN?!”

3. Friend Zone Trope

Ah, the sidelines where bench warmers unite. You don’t get to play, but you sure are the loudest cheerleader!

Everyone likes a nice girl. He is so quick to friend her, but she doesn’t mind as long as she can get five minutes of his time in between classes as he fills her head with his latest crush. (Sounds like a YA novel.) Because let’s be real, he can’t look past her obsolete tomboy days redolent of baseball tees and armpit farts and the girl he used to build forts with when they were seven.

4. Star-Crossed Lovers Trope

Think Pocahontas or Brokeback Mountain. No matter how hard characters try to make sense of a romance, they just can’t in reality even though it makes better sense up there.  Forbidden romances are tough pills to swallow, but there’s no better romance than one worth fighting and waiting for. Am I right?

5. Troubled Family Dynamic Trope

What do you remember from your childhood? Frederick Douglass once said,

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

It’s true that many capable and fully functional adults feel unfulfilled. Little do we realize that what did happen or what didn’t happen to us as children can greatly impact us later.

Characters are shaped by their upbringing. They don’t realize the weight of influence their youth has had on their adulthood. It goes without saying that family dynamics are complex in their nature and much more complex to flesh out in a novel, and by far, that has been one of the leading themes I struggle to tackle.