Freewrite

Sometimes I cover the screen so I cannot see the words. It’s a freewrite, a game to try to make myself write something. A freewrite has no theme, no restrictions. It only insists that I write something, anything.

Today, all morning, the words “I have nothing to write about” have kept themselves in front of my mind--like a blocker in a football game--to stop me, to keep anything from getting through to the paper, to the screen. Sometimes a freewrite can break through and find what's behind the block.

Quiet. Wait. Something will come, like magic, to my fingers. Something is in my mind, something to write about. Often when I freewrite my dad comes into my mind. I do not know why.

This time I am in my old neighborhood, the house where I grew up, looking out from my father’s office or from anywhere inside the house. I can see through the walls, see the hydrangeas at the front of the house, the strawberries Daddy planted along the west side, and the bougainvillea with its dark pink blooms climbing up the front wall to the second story. I see the hill my house sits on, the palm tree in our front yard, the lawn sloping down to the retaining wall, the red tile roof on the apartment building across the street where my friend Sandy lived.

I look to the right and find the ocean, see my little legs trying to keep up with my dad as he walks with my sister Lucile and me down the hills that lead to the beach. He walks fast, like he's in a hurry, and we have to run to stay with him. It is six blocks, I think, but it seems longer. I can’t wait. But when we get there Daddy is not patient. Clearly, this outing was not his idea. A few minutes in the swing, twice down the big slide, and we are done and on our way back up those hills. But that part I don’t remember.

So much for free writing, because it seems to me that my freewrites will never be free enough. I have tried the morning pages to dump out what’s floating around in my brain, that old stuff that sits there without purpose and probably without worth. But I do not know how long I would have to write to get past certain things. Memories that seem to be waiting for my fingers to rest on the computer keys, and then out they come. Or my dad popping into every free writing I do. I want to retrain those pathways in my brain, but I forget now how to do it.