All you need is a drip. Just a couple drops. And then a whole lot of patience. Before you know it, something unexpected blossoms. From there, the building begins.
I drew this more for myself than anything, a reminder of just how powerful those idle, phone-less moments have been for me these past couple of years. Yes, fatherhood has shrunk the amount of time I have to create. But I’m actually writing more because I’m doing two things: 1) making better use of the time I do have, and 2) savoring those moments of walking or playing with my daughter, where my brain can sit and be patient and slowly wait for something to leak out.
A key example: once we were trying to watch a movie (The French Dispatch) only to be interrupted so often in the first ten minutes by our daughter’s nighttime crying that we wondered if the sound of the TV – which never seemed to carry that far – had somehow awoken her. It turned out she needed a diaper change. But then as I rocked her back to sleep, staring into the dark, a few leaks sprung out the back of my brain and out grew an entire 1st half of a movie I’ve been trying to dream up. The shots. The storylines that weave together. It all came to me so carefully-constructed. I knew the challenge would remain to put it to paper, a translation that is never quite as precise as we’d like it to be. But it’s there. And it all came from a little drip-drip as I rocked in the dark, my daughter rowing towards the shores of Dreamland.
It is probably no coincidence some of the best dripping occurs in the shower. Just recently, I had been trying to work out how to restructure a seven-thousand word first draft of an essay, an accomplishable task which still stressed a brain desperate to relax. Shortly after the glass began to steam up, the drips kicked in. Little by little, vertabrae unspooled, begging me to pull it in alignment. I luxuriated in the feeling of having something. It made the shower that much sweeter. And then I rushed to type it out before it escaped me.
(Sister: I still have the Aqua Notes waterpoof writing pad you so cleverly gifted me; I just to find it first! )
There is much for me to learn from our 16-year-old cat. The way he lounges pretty much all day, saving up his energy for late-night zoomies. The way he can sprint from any situation at a moment’s notice. How he can snuggle in ways blankets never could approach. Whenever we use the bathroom, our 16-year-old cat crowds the sink, awaiting a drip from the faucet. But there’s a particular flow he craves. Drops aren’t enough to get him interested. A rush of water is too fierce. What he requires – and insists upon – is a steady flow, like a perpetual blowing upon a dandelion. Soft enough to be a whisper; steady enough to be a breeze. He knows what will satiate. He knows what will carry him on.
Drips come in many forms. Showers, mindless car trips, sitting in a doctor’s office with my phone in my pocket. The mind needs to the chance to breathe, to drip, to find its way into a steady, satiating leak.
