Goodbye to All That

This is my last night at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. (Surprise! I blew my secret!) I head back to DC tomorrow afternoon. It's been a much more mixed experience for me than it was five years ago. I've been through just about every emotion possible in relation to my writing -- and sometimes in relation to one or two fellow artists, though for the most part they've been kind, interesting, and generous.

You'd think I'd be happy to have completed one essay I'm happy with, seeing as that's one more than I've completed in the last three and a half years. That alone should have made this residency worthwhile, right? Yeah, it should have.

But yesterday I had such a bad day with my work -- or lack of it -- that I was starting to think about returning a day early. If I hadn't come to my senses on my own, the words of a Baltimore poet I've become friendly with would have been enough: "It's all part of it," she said in response to my discouragement. "But the one thing you cannot do is leave early." She meant it too.

It's a good thing I listened because today, after days of nothing, I started a new essay -- about my dogs and my relationship with their other dad, with whom I share custody. I'm happy to be writing something that seems to be going somewhere. (My entire life, every time I hit a block, sometimes years in length, I think I'll never write again.) I have a sense that this particular piece may turn out to be as personally healing -- vis a vis my relationship to the "other dad" -- as it is, at times, painful to write. Meaning: It's not a bitter essay but a loving one (so far anyway). Surprise again!

Now I'm hearing the rain outside my little studio -- the "corn crib," they call it -- along with the cicadas and crickets, and pretty soon there might be a cow's moo in the mix. I'm feeling mighty bittersweet about leaving. My poet friend is right -- it is all part of it.

The space I was afforded over the last two weeks to experience all of my internal responses to my work (from deep despair to general anxiety to pleasant discovery), to get to know a constantly rotating group of congenial artists from all over the country (and Germany), to go to my writing studio day after day, even when doing so was torturous and unproductive -- that's unavailable to me, in that way, at home.

But I do feel inspired to get some particular things at home done now, and not just the infamous Book Project. (By the way, that e-mail I sent out to a potential source hasn't gotten a response yet. Time to send out another e-mail, to him or someone else, I guess.)

Finally, before it's too late, someone restrain my hands and keep me from typing the words I dread going back to work on Thursday.

Too late.