Been Thinkin’ About…A cup of peach tea

Last week's floods and storms and my chest cold are now memory, history washing away. Rest has been a healing boon recently, rest being something I say little about. First, much of my schedule doesn't allow such things. Second, if I do talk about resting, I am met with the invariably, sarcastically droll comment, "Must be nice." Must be nice [to set your own schedule]. Must be nice [to do whatever you want]." I only really guess as to the full inference. Nonetheless, their meaning is typically clear — for some strange, magical, unfair reason, I must have it easier than others who are pulling their fair share. And so rest, when it does occur but rarely, remains unspoken in my usual narrative.

I stir the tea bag, hot, peach-infused tea swirling in the cup. Outside, another place, another time, another springtime when torrential floods and rains that seemed to never end. Some seven years ago, I believe. I was working, naturally. I was also finishing the final edit of my novel, a book that did not make it onto the best seller list.

I really don't mind, mind you. I did not write for the book to become, generically, the "great American novel." I don't even know what "the great American novel" means. I could Google the term, of course, but I don't care to. There is something superficial in the supposition, the idea that, if art is worth creating, then the art must become "the thing," recognized by subjective, yet imperial, standards. All other art comes up short, unless we are Steinbeck, or Fitzgerald or Hemingway.

Having read some of the lives of Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, I'm not entirely sure each those men even wanted to be themselves. Why would I want to be them more than they?

There is something towering yet shallow in reaching so high, aspiring to fame for the sake of fame itself. Better, I think, to create for the sake of creating, for the love. Art is powerful that way, powerful and cathartic. We live in the mountainous and depressing shadow of celebrity. From scrolling on social media to reading generic headlines to staring at airbrushed faces staring back at us from the grocery store checkout line, we are inundated with the singular message: "THESE people are important, worthy of attention, unlike YOU, unimportant, un-beautiful shopper." My work in the Ozarks has come to embody the antithesis of this brainwashing belief. The important people, those worthy of attention, are all around us — simple, true people who choose the hard choice of caring, of giving their attention to that which is important to them in their moment, and thus rising their consciousness above that of the herd. Fortunately, there are many such people. and some have humbled me by becoming part of our StateoftheOzarks events. I am honored to celebrate them on our media platforms, not out of duty, but because I know they are the real celebrities. Not myself, and certainly not the plastic people on the magazine covers.

The first words of my first book find their soul, typed out in black and white, now, so many years ago. "Child of light, trial borne, comes willingly, sacrifice given to open the great gate of the Moon. The watchers wait." I wrote that cryptic verse to begin my novel, "Plague Child's Doctor," published back in spring 2018. The book was a pragmatic labor of love, a pragmatic labor of which I speak rarely. It feels weird to talk about my own work. Not because I am not pleased with the book. But perhaps because the novel is so weirdly personal; not autobiographic, of course, just... personal. I write so much but for deadlines. That work is craftsmanship, not art. The novel was purely art, a weird chunk of soul for better or for worse.

The creative process is a delicate, barreling thing, all hope and guts, and we live in a creative-bereft world. Monolithic education taught us to be good workers, cogs in a machine, each with properly timed behavior in the form of predictable social cues. Erased was the self-awareness that we are the product in the crafting, personal agency doled out only in small ration. Our creative spark and hope are "Marvel," "StarWars," or “Harry Potter.” Before you throw something at me, know I love all three. But I'd rather lose myself in my own creative process than in someone else's. Those names hold magic, of course, but I have names that hold special magic to me, also. Names like, "Micahel," Cyrus," and "Avie." If those names don't sound familiar, don't worry. They are characters in my novel, people real to me in weird and magical ways. Art is like that.

We are told that, in order to be responsible adults, there is career, working for someone else, and then there is hobby. "A nice writing hobby, perhaps.

Something on the side, something for fun." Those simple, categorical distinctions make no sense to me. I don't work for someone else, not anymore. And whether the work paid or not, I would always be writing. Writing, for me, was never a hobby but instead life itself. I don't have hobbies. I only have that about which I am passionate and tireless, and fortunately, such things pay these days, albeit in sometimes circuitous ways.

I stir yet another cup of hot, peach-infused tea, remembering the old days and the then-new book. I wrote that book because I had been tasked with teaching a class on novel writing and had yet to write a novel. But also because there was a weird and phantasmal tale of Americana and I wanted to wrench that tale from my soul and place it onto the pages. True creativity is never a waste of time. And neither is rest. Such work does not conform to industry-hours. And the finished product? The work is not famous, not needing to be, uncrushed and free from the weight of hubris. The work simply exists. And at the end of a long, hard work day, that is honest and more than enough.