A Writer's World


I must unpack, immediately, whenever traveling somewhere new. I love turning my hotel room or little log cabin, in this case, into my own personal oasis. A “2.0”, to the room I already live in. I unpack the endless array of tee shirts, because I must have other options. I shove my mound of underwear into a new home. Why a mound? Why not just a couple? I mean, you’re only away for five days. Well, if I have an accident every hour, of everyday, then I’ll be thankful for those extras. My suitcase gets tucked away into the corner and I don’t think about her again till it’s time to re-pack. My room is full of photographs and paintings, a soft green paint coating its walls and a nice queen size bed in the middle of the room. It may be rented, but it’s starting to feel like my own. 

 

I’m in Pennsylvania at the Highlights retreat center with my master’s program. You remember Highlights Magazine— a staple to every child’s doctor and dentist office. This trip is time to be productive. Time to revise, edit, come up with new materials, learn from too many lectures by writers I’ve never heard of, and listen to too many podcasts in my free time. A time to be inspired and focus. A time to touch grass and apparently drink and smoke cigarettes with professors who technically aren’t your professors anymore; they’re your mentors. There is nothing more real, raw and poetic, than watching my superior reach into his back pocket during an evening reading and slyly pull out a flask. He pours it into a little glass full of only a splash of water and I now must remind myself: I’m an adult now, I’m an adult now, I’m an adult now. 


There’s a new social protocol now, one that involves calling adults by their first name instead of their last and finally following each other back on Instagram. I’m no longer viewed as the shy little undergraduate student who came into the university way too late and graduated even later. 

 

I’m one of the youngest in my class and probably the only one who never showed up to eight A.M. breakfast. But, in all honestly, who the heck is hungry that early in the morning. Too early to eat, more time for me to sleep. There’s another girl, a poet, Isabella. She’s my age and we’ve grown fond of one another. We’ll be going to study in Dublin this fall. It’s a lot more difficult now a days making friends. It doesn’t come as naturally to me as it did in nursery school. Back then, you just had to offer someone your snack pack or a seat at the lunch table, or perhaps some advice on investing in the stock market. Other than that, we were pretty low maintenance. 

 

After the third evening of festivities, I went back to my cabin to write. I sat down at the cheap little desk I’ve rented for the week and laid all my things out on top of it. Two journals, a laptop, my iPad, sticky notes and wait…


I need a pen.


Too lazy to go scouring through my tote bag, I opened the desk drawer. It was empty, until I went to shut it. A banana yellow, 1388-2/HB soft pencil DIXON Ticonderoga came rolling towards me. Its is tip dull and begs to be sharpened, but I ignore it. It’s evidence of the writer who sat in this chair before me, and every cop show has taught me to never tamper with the evidence.


The pencil was capped off with a turquoise eraser, bruised with small cracks to show all the mistakes it once expunged. I haven’t written in pencil in years. Only pen, it feels more permanent, and I love to strike out words with a simple “X”, to remind myself of what I’ve taken away, or what I’ve lost. We don’t get to erase the past; we write it in pen.

After a few more poetic thoughts floated through my head, I decided to tuck the pencil back to where it came from. Leaving it for the next writer who stays in the cabin after me.