Writing with Rox WEEKLY—The moment you knew

Recently a student told me that her favorite writer, Haruki Murakami, described the moment he knew he was destined to be a writer. My student described it far better than I could (or anyone else/anything I have found written about it), but the short answer is baseball. Not just baseball, mind you, but the lingering, sensory, amniotic, depth of it. Says Murakami,

"...The crack of the bat meeting ball on the sweet spot echoed through the stadium. Hilton easily rounded first base and pulled up to second. And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know what? I could try writing a novel. I can still remember the wide-open sky, the feel of the new grass, the satisfying crack of the bat. Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and whatever it was, I accepted it."

So, what is it about baseball anyway? I mean... is it everyone's muse?  What is it about this game that makes it the literary darling of ball sports? That's the first thing.

But the main thing, what I find so striking (no pun intended, really), is thinking about the exact moment when we knew we were writers. Not just the reasons why we write (which are great too, obviously), but the wordless collision of all perfection, the muse, the "I have to write this down" moment.

I agree. It's hard to pinpoint. It's elusive.

I knew it when I wrote my first short story in first grade about the color purple and could not stop writing. I also knew it when I wrote a letter from my 24 year-old self in the basement at my first counseling job in Seattle to my future self, living under sunny skies, far from here, reminding myself things would get better, to hang in there. 

I knew it every time I wrote a love letter. 

I knew it when Jude spoke his first word: "Bus!" I knew it the first time I heard that huge crystal singing bowl that Deb played that night at Lake Harriet among a small gathering of drummers, where suddenly I was among a hundred whales breathing me back into my body. 

I knew it six years later when Jude came running toward me—walk, trot, skip, ruuuuuuuuun!— across the green summer fields at Camp St Croix after five days at sleep-away camp. I knew it when I knew I could never ever put into words how long that sprint toward each other lasted and how very right that moment felt when he jumped up into in my arms.

Regretfully, I knew it with each heartbreak and I knew it when I was well aware I was doing the absolutely wrong thing at the wrong time and proceeded anyway. I knew it when I saw a young man carrying a clipboard run across six lanes of traffic before he was struck by a car, knocked onto the sidewalk and died in front of me on a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles a week before my first wedding. I knew it when I felt nothing at the height of celebration, when I felt everything when it was over, and when I felt the earth against my spine while laying in corpse pose at yoga.

I know it even when I have nothing to do with anything. When there is no I, no me, and amazingness is happening anyway.

I knew it and I know it each and every time I surrender. To music. To love. To the moment. To being wrong. Or right. When I laugh so hard I pee my pants and when I let someone else drive so I can enjoy the ride.

Oh, I could go on. I could mine deeper into this wordless world where I am endlessly moved by the earth's poetry, layer upon layer, where each of these moments reveals a brief window, an opening, a portal into everything at once, a oneness, a sense that I have absolutely been here before countless times and will be here again. Perhaps it takes me back to the womb, the wordless womb.

So why? Why do I have to write it down? Why not just leave the wordless alone? I do... most of the time. But each time I attempt to translate the wordless collision, I am giving back to the writers and musicians and all whoeverybodys who have understood me, translated for me. Because of their gifts, the sharing of their stories, I can celebrate, embrace, and worship this one life, navigate and belong here, at times tolerate, occasionally just get by in, and once in a blue moon want out of this life, well knowing it will all pass and that I am exactly where I am meant to be. 

And that's a moment to write down.


WRITE WITH ME?
AT WHICH MOMENT DID YOU KNOW YOU HAD TO WRITE IT DOWN?