I want to write like a wild animal who is madly in love with the world . . .

The poem needs to sit for a moment. needs to widen and leaven, as threads of story and image find each other in the proving drawer. For now, tho, it’s good enough. I can let you see it.

Earlier this week, in Notes, I wrote something that shook me inside. It just poured out, a naming and a claiming. Something that was sleeping was coming alive.

I want to write like a wild animal who is madly in love with the world. An animal who, in order to express that love, must learn to speak - and this will take a while (or no time at all, if she learns the one language that everything speaks.) I want to write a book that is a poem and is also a pile and also a scriptural text - a book that teaches without preaching, by example - a book in the story way of things. A book that shows and demonstrates a way to read the world like a snow globe but you are inside of it - like a dollhouse and you are a five year old moving the furniture, like a diorama, like a stage where the players are enacting your life, like a bubble and you are inside of it, floating through a world of bubble worlds. #TheWildBook

Since the stroke, I’ve been exploring my writerly self, giving her legs and arms. amd time and space. I’ve made her a separate Substack to spread out in. It’s called All the Books I’m Writing. Why? I needed to separate that work from the work that I do here - an impulse that I do not fully understand (it’s a lot more work to have two Substacks and I have four). Still, it’s an impulse I can trust. I can feel the root of it - the depth of this other me. A different me, with a different voice. She doesn’t want to write about angels¹. She doesn’t want to teach intuition². She wants to tell stories. What if I let her? I asked one day.

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In this process, I’ve been going through my old work - the journals, the half-finished (and completely finished) unreleased works. In my 2023 notebook, I found this poem - which was not so much ‘lost’ as it was left behind. Written partially, fleetingly, in response to a writing prompt from Jeannine Ouellette or Sabrina Orah Mark.

These are the teachers who’ve inspired me to write again. They are gifts to this thirsty wordsmith. And so are you.

I cherish your feedback. Like so many (perhaps most) writers I work mostly alone. In this, I am not lonely - I am deeply immersed and I can write from 6 am until 11:30 some mornings, so deep is my engagement in the work.

But when I come up for air (and drive to Whole Foods Market for my daily oat milk latte) I love sitting in my car and reading your comments and messages.
I am so blessed to do this work - and so blessed to share it with you.

xxoo
Amy

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The poem that built itself from the prompt:
What is the smallest image in the story that is refusing to be written?

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Photo by FORREST CAVALE on Unsplash

1. The part of me that wants to write about angels has her own space now: The Guidebook. Again, that work asked to be separate, inside of its own container.

2. The part of me that wants to teach about intuition and dreaming and take people on journeys has its own space now, too. It’s here, at Soul Caller School (of Magic and Miracles)

As I give each part the space and the time that it needs to expand, I expand - my nervous system calms as all these parts come together, each allowed to participate, each given a full voice.