Easy Does It

One of my favourite AA slogans. Along with Just for Today, which may have been a subconscious inspiration for my Just One Year (JOY) idea. Who knows? Let go and let God, I always say.

Anyhow.

Despite how effing haggard and beaten I felt, yesterday was a beautiful day. Because I wrote and it was glorious. I didn't push. I didn't count words. I just wrote for the sheer joy of it. I wrote Be Selfish on a Post-It note, sending an energetic PFO to everyone else and their ideas, opinions, needs and feelings. I let everything wait outside the door until I was good and done.

I wrote the way I write this blog, actually. I arrived at the page, which is to say I got present. I waited, hands poised above the keys. And then I let it come.

Don't be shocked, but I don't really plan what I write on this thing.

The stories I tell, tell themselves. They come from a place beyond thought. Even if they're stories about things I've done or said, they come from somewhere larger than me. I've described it before as God passing through my fingers and onto the page.

But it's not like I'm possessed or anything. I'm just flowing. I'm getting out of the way and letting the words and ideas pour out. I'm working and it doesn't feel like work. I feel curious about how this story wants to be told. Not stressed out about whether it's good or bad.

The story that asked to be written yesterday was about meeting Dana the Artist. A crazy night, back when I was still dressing like a Canadian tourist with sensible shoes and a Gortex rain jacket.

I arrived too early to a very-obviously-lesbian cafe in Le Marais and circled round and round, peering into the faces of everyone sitting out front. Trying to determine if any of them were Dana. And trying to ignore the ones that looked me up and down and turned away in disgust. (Gortex must not turn them on.)

Dana arrived and we had a drink before proceeding to another bar. Where I met a bizarre-and-beautiful burlesque dancer from Kentucky, who I fell madly in love with on sight. Who was just returning from a bondage workshop. Who only dates non-biological men. And whose head I almost knocked off her body by coming in a little too fast for the kiss-kiss French greeting thing.

It was, howyousay, le weird. I have never felt as whitebread as I felt that night. It took me three days and a map to find my comfort zone again. If I ever found it.

All of which makes for a damn good story.