when I close my eyes

This week I flew with my eyes closed. I didn’t have a book and the magazines a flight attendant gifted me just weren’t holding my attention. So on the plane I shut my eyes and let myself dream instead. I’ve said before that crises activate my imagination, and sometimes going back to Toronto feels like a kind of crisis. This time I was helping my mother move into a retirement home, which meant purging and packing her belongings. My mother is something of a hoarder—not the stacks of newspapers from floor to ceiling type, but she had twenty vases. Seriously—20. She had tons of chachkas and decorative holiday napkins and things my grandparents had given her that she didn’t need but found it hard to give up. I’m fairly ruthless when it comes to “stuff” and don’t feel bad at all when I donate or regift something I no longer want or need. But I still came home with three fancy Royal Doulton teacups and saucers, a crystal dish, a Limoges candy dish I used to admire as a child, and a precious Xmas ornament that would have been lost forever if my mother wasn’t such a hoarder. Most of the packing I did over the past week was for stuff going to the charity shop and it was tedious and tiring. I was in introvert overload mode because, of course, I needed a break from packing and taking care of my mother and so I tried to see as many folks as possible during my 5-day trip. I finally got up to Picton to see my friend’s beautiful farm, and I spent a day downtown meeting with publishing people. I talked a lot and I didn’t write at all (though I tried to stay on top of my inbox, which always seems to fill with requests as soon as I leave town). I didn’t write but I did dream—especially when I was on the plane. And because I flew out of Harrisburg, I had a stopover in DC before reaching Toronto. The two flights were short but the dreams were vivid and intense—it was almost like using a remote to flip through TV channels. Each “show” was more interesting than the last so I kept going back and forth between book projects. When I got home this afternoon, I turned the computer on and tried to write down at least one of the scenes that had played out in my head. It’s a YA novel in verse that I pitched to a young editor I met with yesterday. It’s a bit risky and I certainly don’t want to cause her any grief in her new job, especially when she’s working hard to get Black writers through the door. But then I think—she knows what she’s getting with me. And if I am FINALLY going to get published in Canada, then I want that first book to be authentic. Daring. Difficult. I have so much work to do but I’ve already decided to give myself as much silence and solitude as I need over the weekend. And if I need to sit in this armchair and close my eyes for a while, then that’s what I’ll do. Because dreaming is part of the work—not the hardest part, but it still counts.