Pancakes
Near year’s end of 2017, I started a project of writing a thousand words in one sitting, every day, for as long as I could sustain the practice. Seventy-five days later, my notebooks held seventy-five, one-thousand-word essays. While I’m away recovering for the next few months, it might be fun to revisit some of those pieces. This is an early one, abridged (and revised) into blog-like form.
It’s New Year’s Day, 2018. My writing-mind has knotted up like a fine chain after a few minutes in a paint mixing machine. That or it wants the day off, but here I sit, waiting.
If you show up, the words will come. That counsel comes not from the muse whispering assurance in my ear but rather on a loop like an affirmation of my fondest hopes. I have my list of over one hundred fifty subjects on which to write. Today none of them appeal. I’m tired, hungover from New Year’s Eve champagne, and distracted because we have house-guests. Still, I promised myself I’d write one of these essays each day no matter what else was going on.
Today sitting before an empty screen feels less like writing and more like nervously balancing my fingertips on the planchette of a Ouija board. Will the pointer move? Will it provide meaningful insight or blather out gibberish? Gibberish unbidden might be remarkable to researchers, but I’m concentrating on producing words focused on one of my subjects—or at least will present me with a coherent idea. So far, I have nothing.
Then, without warning, the Ouija planchette scoots along the board with sudden enthusiasm. The lightweight pointer pulls my hands along as it dances from letter-to-letter. I type each symbol to find the word. What does this star-nursery of creative possibility have to say for itself?
PANCAKES.
Did pancakes undo the knot in my mind? Yes and no.
This revealed an unexpected gem dug deep in my subconscious. Truly, are there any knotty conundrums pancakes can’t sort out?
I go to the kitchen pantry, grab the mix, quadruple the recipe. I build a sky-scraping stack of flapjacks, enough for everyone in the house—for the entire week. I cover the stack with a clean dish towel, stick them in the oven to keep warm, and shout an invitation for the others to come help themselves.
Like writing, I don’t do this work only for me. I want those who partake of my efforts to feel nourished. As to be expected, family and friends take places at the table with far more eagerness than they’d respond to being invited to read. That’s okay. Pass the butter. Pass the berries. Pass the syrup. Please.
Did pancakes undo the knot in my mind? Yes and no.
In truth, pancakes do nothing, as Ouija boards do nothing, but both produce magic all the same. Both entice others—the hungry and the curious—to gather, to talk and laugh and share stories of what they’ve experienced of a world in which we are all miracles.
That’s what I really needed. My tired mind didn’t crave arranging more words in double-spaced horizontal lines. I craved the excitement and solace of other human voices, real human voices, to refill the reservoir of language.
Writing can so easily trap me in my head, trying to catch all the ideas zipping about brightly, a mind full of shooting stars. Exit from that self-created space is found through reestablishing connection with community. Often, for me, the solution for being stuck in a ditch with my writing has nothing to do with what I want or need to say. Listening to others tell their stories reminds me, yet again, to stop trying to prove I can write and tell the story in the same way people talk around a table while they serve themselves a second helping of pancakes.
Revised May 16, 2023
Photo by Joshua Ryder on Unsplash