Franny Rhodes

It’s a joy to be here alone.  Like graffiti inside the cylindrical tube--no one could care, but so much more enjoyable than painting in one’s room.  

It’s lovely that I’m still afraid.  Still holding back, erasing.  Not willing to say what's on my mind.  I am only here because I promised myself 365 days.  Eventually, the safety will bore me.  

Tonight I’ll present a paper for my peers in a class by a woman who has been very clear she finds me incorrigible, unpalatable, not to her liking.  She designs her assignments to make us vulnerable.  She picks her favorites and her uns in the first session.  I wrote a middle-of-the-line paper.  I didn’t go out on the limb I started out onto.  

Join me in a commitment to write--write anything--for 365 days.  May 11, 2018,  to May 11, 2019.  I’m giving myself ten days to mess up.  Or maybe to warm up, create my parameters, see if I am joined.   I want to see if this finds me dialogue or a readership or if it will prove an even deeper solitude than the private journal (which would be fascinating, too, though I think it’s dialogue I’d like best).  

I will learn what it’s like out here in the world where you write in a space where other people can see instead of in a notebook that will get tossed into a landfill, or soaked in an attempt to save other things after a fire.  The point of doing the writing here is simply to learn.  Learn what it leads to, and to learn to be comfortable out here.  Anyone want to join me?   I learned to include hashtags at the bottom by reading Jeff Garvin, Symptoms of Being Human.  

I don’t know how to underline.  I don’t know if I can mention someone else’s book without some kind of permission.  I don’t know the path one would have to take to be reading this, even.  

I have a steep learning curve, but it’s time to start the climb.  Lesson One: Get Out There Every Single Day.  If someone finds this and teaches me only how to underline on Tumblr, I will count this venture a success.  

           When fear is set loose—and these days it arrives in bulk—plastic-wrapped on warehouse pallets on my front porch, no signature required, grave and unavoidable—it surges straight to the core of me without switching on the light.  It’s a familiar and thorough feeling, fear’s arrival, and my reaction equally predictable.  I scramble to protect myself from everything and then everything from me (I have never been very brave).  I thrust my trust and power from myself—for its own good—throwing my most precious things—integrity, grace, credibility—out to sea, for safe passage away from the deathtrap danger I am in.   When the storm subsides, as it always does, I’m left even more powerless, the straightjacket, synching ever tighter as the canvas dries and pulls a coil tighter weave than ever before. I am barely breathing, fish out of water, no grace.  When the fog burns off, I see the shore.  Shallow steps away, timeless and unmoved.