writing loneliness. processing and lullabies.

Just read a passage from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones about loneliness, about using loneliness in writing. Her last sentence had some resonant phrase about sharing our love for rooms, for light, for lullabies. Lullabies—are these merely the songs that we hear, the melancholy melodies we play over and over on our stereos or in our minds? Is the loneliness and the slip into self-satisfying sadness part of what this music attracts in us? Or do these songs offer some distraction, or some testimony to how sadness birthed creativity, how the artist found a productive way out? I don’t know why this seems so fascinating to me at the moment, it’s just coming as a series of thought. Stream, never the right word—because thought jerks and stops and this fluidity, whatever there may be here, calls itself warm and processed. My brain is rusty at times when it comes to processing. The image of a milk or cheese processor comes to mind. Yogurt cultures may be better. Imagine: the metal gears—whatever they look like (N.H. and S.A.G. will both probably know what they really look like)—in the dairy factory, where the processing takes place. And this is my mind, broken down over the matter. Rusty gears contaminating the processing—taking away the excess fat, meanwhile adding my own foreign dirt and grime.

Don’t ask me where these images come out. I’m in Thailand, for goodness sakes. Maybe it’s the skim milk in my fridge: unusual, though not unheard of, for me to keep a skim milk in my possession.

This is not to say that I’ve found myself in the throngs of loneliness. Sometimes it takes but a morning in one spot, playing that minor-keyed song over and over, to brew the whisper of loneliness. Sometimes it takes but a word, a phone call, a prayer to get out…