I'm not quite sure what I expected from 5 and a half weeks of intensive writing. Mostly, I guess, I just expected to "get the project done." I didn't think about what effect it might have on my mental, emotional, or spiritual state.
If I had thought about it, I would've had no way of knowing that the answer would be "plenty!"
Mentally, I find that I now filter all statements made by anybody about truth, love, beauty, artistry, creation, imitation, communication (etc.) according to the grid of the paper. These words come up pretty frequently, and the person using them seldom does so in the sense to which I have become accustomed. I feel like a dog... someone says a perfectly normal word, uses it in a perfectly normal way, and I'm hearing registers of sound undetectable to them which are nevertheless causing me to wince.
That's a minor side-effect, and it will pass. I note it for the benefit of posterity. Two others are more interesting. I call them the "knowing what I believe" effect and the "cone of intense silence" effect.
The first is simple to explain. I read somewhere once (I believe in a volume of famous quotes) that "Those who write learn what they themselves believe" or perhaps it was phrased "to write is to find out what you believe." Point: after five weeks, I know a great deal more about what I believe. I know what I know. I know what I don't know. I know what I can't guess. I have articulated at some length the interconnectedness of principles which, prior to April, I would not have thought to be connected, much less have realized that I
knew them to be connected.
This has a strange impact. Imagine that several hundred particles, floating about in your being for two and a half years, slowly crystallized over the course of five weeks into a definite shape--a hammer, say, or a sword, if we want to be romantic about it--which you suddenly found to be heavy and powerful and
usable. I speak softer, and carry a much bigger stick, than I did five weeks ago.
The other effect is the more difficult for daily life. It is the effect of having locked myself in a cone of intense concentration for five weeks, with the result that I now stand blinking in the hot sunlight of normal summer life, feeling utterly clumsy. I don't remember how to interact with live people!--or at least, that's how it feels. My companions have been books, stacks of books, well over 100 books... what am I to do with human beings?
This effect, like the first I mentioned, will wear off quickly. It is at present more an opportunity to laugh at myself than anything else. How odd to find that I'm still a person after all, with a personality, feelings, youth, even gaiety---and not just a writing machine.
I haven't had much chance to "come out of it" because I got home from graduation just in time to turn around and go to NC for a major conference. That, however, is winding down, and I hope to be home by tomorrow night.
Home.
And Brittainy. And the High Queen. And Charity getting back from Italy. And Marjorie and Juli and the Warehouse Gang. And reading, writing, and teaching Shakespeare. And digging a coi pond in the backyard. And running. And cooking. And buying bookshelves for the study. And yoga. And my wonderful great-aunt is sending me
forty-five Easton press books in September (!!!!!!!!!).
It's going to be a SPLENDID summer. :-D
