Starts Very Softly

A note on a piece of scrap paper says: “Starts very softly.” I wonder what that could be about.

Another says: “Feed the calm.” I know that one is about writing.

Another: “boy is cipher.” And I think that is about a film I saw. But I can’t recall which one. And I can’t recall which boy.

What do we do with the fragments, notes that were important in the moment, but then are lost to distraction, fatigue, an interruption?

What do we do with notes in a time of disaster, of genocide? Or are all genocides necessarily flashes of moments of memories on the verge of forgetting? Or are all notes the possibility of something yet unrealized?

I cannot say these notes are about Palestine. I cannot say they are relevant or purposeful or true. But I can say that I cannot focus, and every time I start to write, I get lost. I lose myself.

I have wanted to get back into a writing routine. I have a book coming out in August of (oh my god, soon to be ‘this’ year) 2025. I have done the copyedits and returned them. I have read through the book, haltingly, in fits and starts…rather than with the solemn diligence of a man editing. I am a man annotating, interrupted by a sinking feeling, a song, our dog, a story of a city turned to ash. And all of it, somehow, gets done.

I am ashamed of this. I am ashamed at how I can, sometimes have to, compartmentalize things. I don’t know if it is a skill or a survival mechanism, but I have this ability: put the feelings in a box and do not return to it until you have finished doing what you are doing. Except, I am somehow losing the skill, the coping mechanism. My boxes are being left open. My body is becoming porous.

It starts very softly.

But then, the feeling of needing to get ‘it’ done. The thing. The learned disposition. And unlearning is also feeling. Also, being affected.

I have heard people say they cannot work anymore. I have heard people say they cannot write. A block. A box that does not open.

I used to wake up at five and work out and make coffee and then sit down to write in the silence of the morning. I used to have a ritual.

And now, it is fits and starts. Now it is opening this blank screen and forcing, or perhaps confessing, that I have to start softly, and work back into it. The it being: words on the page that are not emails or spreadsheets or meetings, but words that are thoughts that need to emerge. Words that are thoughts about anything. About something.

I have things I need to write, but I open up my email browser instead: it is easier to put out a fire than it is to sit quietly. It is easier to feel like I am ‘doing’ something rather than feeling this everything.

I get to this point, to what feels like enough words for this missive to you, this note, to feel like ‘something’. Like it is enough of a thought to ripple into the world.

I get to this point, and I will let it go, and I will hope that tomorrow, I can start softly. I can be soft with myself. I can sit down again, and hope that there is just a bit more space, a bit more possibility. And I hope this for you, too.