There was a time, when I first found out I was pregnant with twins, that I saw only a state of conflict. When I looked at theater and parenthood, I saw only war, competing loyalties, and I thought my writing life was over. There were times when it felt as though my children were annihilating me (truly you have not lived until you have changed one baby's diaper while another baby quietly vomits on your shin), and finally I came to the thought, All right, then, annihilate me; that other self was a fiction anyhow. And then I could breathe. I could investigate the pauses.
I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.
-Sarah Ruhl, 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write
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2 Comments
1/27/2015 12:14:42 pm
Oh, very cool! I got the book from the library as part of my recent non-fiction/essays binge, but as usual my eyes were bigger than my available reading time and I was only able to read a handful of the essays before I had to take it back. I've thought of this passage numerous times over the last couple weeks, when life is intruding more than I'd prefer. Life is not an intrusion... Leave a Reply. |
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