Freefall

I feel cheated when I cannot complete a freefall (a time spent writing freely writing whatever it is that comes into my head, a technique I learned from the wonderful Barbara Turner Vesselago – go on, Google her – I should provide the link here I know but I do not have the time) on holidays and weekends.

So for this day and tomorrow I shall suffer the frustration of missing out on my favorite morning activity. It is like early morning music practice, the glide of my hands over the keys. I cannot correct errors as I go and as a consequence the sequence of my thoughts are almost as first produced, the thoughts that spring to mind as I sit here contemplating what next to write.

But the thoughts that spring into my mind must surely be different from the thoughts that spring to mind in ordinary states of quietude, when I am mulling over events and feelings.

When I write I receive my thoughts slowly, to allow enough time for my fingers to keep up and somehow therefore I think I must censor them. I must censor these thoughts in so far as I want them to fit into a logical pattern of sentences and meaning. When I daydream I suspect I do not bother with such neat constructions, I just let my thoughts take me where ever they want to go. And because I know the thoughts will not enter the light of day, unless I’m rehearsing a speech or something I want to share with someone else, then I know they will remain safe with me. I need not polish them too heartily. But when I write I check myself, however lightly. Like now, behind these written thoughts there are others unwritten, like the order to myself to get rid of those adverbs, ‘lightly’ and ‘heartily’. There’s no room for adverbs here. While in daily thought and when speaking there’s plenty of room for adverbs. I do not try to abolish them.

This line of thought is drying up, my cup of coffee is nearly drained and I have so many jobs to do that soon I will stop this freefall, get dressed and go into the crowds at the Camberwell market to buy the odd Easter egg for an Easter egg hunt tomorrow, to buy wine for tonight’s dinner to celebrate my brother’s birthday tomorrow and to buy ingredients for the dessert we are to provide. My daughters will make it, a type of crème brulee, chosen to accommodate my sister in law’s celiacs, a condition that means she cannot tolerate gluten. Therefore no cakes, unless they’re flour free.

I wish I could stay at home and send the others on without me. I wish I could be like one of my writing companions who takes herself off for days on end to write. An independent means, a husband who supports her, children grown, she has the space I lack. So I must make do with the little scraps of time I can find between my commitment to my work, to my children to my husband, house and home and play away on this clickety clack computer in the morning spaces in between.