Monday, February 15, 2010

Six Months

There is a feeling I have quite often after awakening from a dream where I have an odd sensation that the dream was not a dream at all, but a parallel life I am living. Mostly this shadow is present after a BAD dream. The details so vivid and so unsettling I go back and examine as much detail as I can reconstruct to see if I recognize anything from my awakeness.

It has been exactly six months since we returned from New Zealand. Six months today. February 15, 2010. And I find myself forging through my memory wondering how much of that whole experience was real...and what has been corrupted by my imagination wanting it to be so good.

"New Zealand" is starting to feel like an event that happened to me rather than my life. Sort of like a dream. There is a quality of evaporating. Of melting. And I am desperate to fortify the experience. Somehow to package it so I can try it again. When I first got back, I declared I would "write a book" about our experience. I have always had a book in me. I am pregnant with a book. I am longing for the book to write itself. But six months has gone by and the book hasn't budged. The stories are sitting so patiently. Like children waiting to be called on.

I know writing takes discipline. I signed up for a writing class at the University of Chicago no less and missed half the sessions due to...MY SCHEDULE. My WORK SCHEDULE. The New Zealand gift of no schedule has vanished. I signed up for a writer's group. Maybe that will coax out the chapters.

I consider writing more blog posts. Is life at home worthy of the blog? Is writing about the women in Lincoln Park who exchange their dog's names, but not their own as interesting and meaningful as writing about Moko the porpoise or about the Maori?

Is my adventure and the freedom and wonder of starting over still compelling now that I'm home?

We'll see.

Six months later. No book. No blog. Damn it! I need to bring some kiwiness to Lake Shore Drive. I need to tap the wisdom and quiet of Down Under to illuminate this path right now.

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