I have a first draft to turn in. It is all a first draft should be according to the author Anne Lamott.

Maybe someday I will learn how not to be a reclusive and grumpy hermit when I write, but considering the amount of writers I have read about who share this affliction, I'm not holding out much hope.

I tried to tell a story. Or at least tried to drive something to an ending. And it only took two cups of tea, my left over thai food and a diet coke to do it.

In a little under 48 hours I have to turn in a first draft of a personal essay for my advanced writing class.

I'm stuck. Completely and totally stuck. Like there is a wall in my brain and the words are trying to get over and nothing. I picture it a stone wall, just too high to jump. The words, the ideas, the letters keep throwing themselves at the wall. They are not trying hard enough.

I've made a pot of coffee. The bulk of this needs to be done by early afternoon tomorrow, cause I've still got reading for Brit lit. I've been nice enough trying to cajole these little words over the wall, now it's time for business. I'm pulling them over whether they like it or not.

Maybe I need to simplify. Quit thinking of thematic elements. Quit thinking of characters and time and just tell a story. This is what happened. This is what I took away from it. Tell a story. Over a cup of coffee. Tell it to an audience. Tell a story. Just a story. An everyday story.

About a night in a diner and seven people who danced. That's all the story is. Just a spring night, a diner and seven people.

Sometimes when I'm stuck in writing, it's because I don't know how to start. This time I don't know where to start, go or end.

I sit down. I start. The writing is heavy, like an elephant. I don't mind heavy, I just need the elephant to pirouette.

The elephant refuses to dance. Just sits there on gray haunches. Looks at me, reaches out for a peanut.
"No peanuts," I say. "No. I've need you to dance," I say.
On gray haunches. Looks at me.
"Elephants aren't really made for toe shoes," the elephant says.
"But you're talking," I say. "Elephants aren't made to talk, either."
"Yes, well. Just cause your imagination gave you a talking elephant, it doesn't mean I have to dance," she says.
"Stop reaching for the damn peanuts," I say. "Why don't you have to dance? If your a figment of my imagination you should have to dance. Why, when I say dance you say -"
"Now hang on a minute. No one asked me if I wanted to be your figurative muse -"
"No muse ever came in a body like yours."
"Oo - there's no need to be catty."
"I'm just saying, if you came from my mind, then you ought to do as I please."
"I'm not even working for peanuts," she snorts. "Even figments have free wills."
"I don't really have time for this," I say. "Oh have a damn peanut."
She catches the peanuts and turns around, her gray shoulders start to shake.
"C'mon," I say. Roll my eyes. "You're crying now? Crying?"
"I-I-I am n-not crying," she cries. "It's just that you didn't have to be so harsh, if you had just asked maybe I would have danced. If you had given me a lavender tutu, some lovely ribbons. Glitter eye shadow. But now. Only demands."
I step back. I take a deep breath. I am not paid enough to work with uncooperative figments.
"Fine. Would you please try to dance."
"No. I don't dance. I'm an elephant."
"Gimme back the peanuts. Go'on, git."

I walk her to the edge of the page. "Go'on."

My natural writing voice is the voice of an elephant who wants a lavender tutu.

Just tell a story. Tell a simple story. A cup of coffee story. An all-night diner story. Tell the story. Of a group of seven who danced.

When I go for a run, I run up Garth Avenue past an elementary school, past a wooded trail and over a creek. The bridge that goes over the creek has a concrete barrier on the road side and a tall chainlink fence on the other.

Everytime I run by this chainlink fence on the bridge I have a bizarre urge to loft my keys into the air and over the fence and into the creek below. I don't know why I want to do this. Everytime I go through a dialogue in my head.

"I should throw my keys into the creek - it would be a gesture of triumph. Symbolic of some type of freedom. I would swing them once around my finger and let go, watch the sun as it would glint off the metal."
"If you toss your keys you will have no way to get into the house."
"I wouldn't even watch them hit the water. I'd just catch a glimpse of their arc over my shoulder and keep running. Maybe I would hear them hit the water."
"Do you know how sheepish you are going to feel when you have to tell your roommate/landlady/friends/family/professors/random strangers how you lost your keys."
"I could do it, I could toss 'em. But after I tossed them, they'd be gone and I'd still need them."

At this point in the dialogue I'm usually across the bridge. I have the same dialogue as I come back the other direction.

I overslept for class this morning, and needed a little warm up before I started my day, thus I give these lists that have been running around other people's blogs:

Seven things I want to do before I die:

1) Go surfing
2) Have a vegetable garden
3) Get a tattoo
4) Have a great love
5) Have some kids, take them to the circus
6) See the Northern lights
7) Be a teacher

Seven things I can do:

1) Write illustrated letters – as in little narratives with pictures
2) Whistle through my hands
3) Sleep with my eyes half open
4) Follow a recipe
5) Organize my books according to a personally devised system in which authors that were or that I think could have been friends go together on the shelf, thus Hemingway and Fitzgerald go together.
6) Wake up early
7) Turn off my alarm clock in my sleep

Seven things I can’t do:

1) Skateboard
2) Put away my clean laundry
3) Keep books from forming piles throughout the house
4) Listen to Holst’s Mars from his Planets suite – it scares me too much
5) Stomach lima beans
6) Do a pretty dive into water
7) Tell a lie

Seven things that attract me the opposite sex:

1) Generosity
2) A great laugh
3) General dorkiness
4) Confidence – but never arrogance
5) Ambition, but not in a cold aggressive sense
6) A nice beard or goatee
7) Gentleness

Seven things I say most recently:

1) Well, I figure there’s a lot of places with newspapers – one of them’s got to be hiring
2) Can I get you anything?
3) Hi, my name is Sara and I’m a reporter with …
4) Oh, I don’t really know yet but I’m casting a wide net
5) I’m writing a paper on the development of the plantation romance
6) Do you want lunch?
7) Huh.

Seven Celebrity Related Thoughts I’ve had recently:
1) My professor just called a place someone’s Xandu, that means he’s probably seen Citizen Kane
2) America’s Next Top Model starts in two weeks and I am totally watching it
3) I’d like to meet Emma Thompson
4) So not excited about the remake of Pride and Prejudice with Keira whats-her-face
5) Would Oscar Wilde be fun at parties or just obnoxious?
6) Has Sally Field done anything lately?
7) John Travolta and Tom Cruise are both weird, but I think Travolta would be more fun at parties.

My immediate response to recent occupants of Speaker's Circle:

I went to Speaker’s Circle today to listen and to watch the team of approximately 10 people, six or so of whom were holding large signs proclaiming that angry women and rock’n’rollers were bound for hell, and the rest rotating in and out of speaking and sign holding.

There I was asked if I was a Bible student. “Yes,” I said warily, not knowing if I was about to be converted by one of the performer’s number. “Well what about 1 Peter 3:15,” the man said as he shook his head at the performers. “…Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

We looked towards the signs, looking for the gentleness. For the metered tones and for the eagerness in sharing that hope; instead in red letters, 10 inch letters were the words, “judgment,” “sin,” and “hell.”

I went to my class; my skin full of sun and turning pink, sweat running down my neck and back. Afterwards, I returned to Speaker’s Circle, for no other reason than that I did not understand why these performers were so compelled to be there, to yell so strongly.

I did not understand why these people were compelled to say that Jesus was a capitalist. That God was not a God of poverty. That women are supposed to be babymakers, and if they have to work it means that their husband is not a good enough provider. That the hurricane was a judgment on New Orleans.

I went to a religious school for 10 years. In that time I sat through weekly chapels and daily Bible lessons. Still I must have missed the lesson where God endorsed an economic platform and political party. That was probably when I had the chicken pox in 5th grade. Also the lesson on women not having jobs or going to college, since women only exist to procreate and serve at man’s pleasure – that was probably the week that I went to the All-state academic competition. Don’t get me wrong either, I was definitely there for the science class where we studied weather patterns and natural laws of physics – and nowhere in that did we discuss God’s judgment-through-weather clause of interaction with His creation. And as for God being all for material prosperity, well I guess that my check has been lost in the mail.

I am a Christian. Not because I believe God endorses a political platform. In his own day, Christ refused to lead an overthrow of the government, “My kingdom is not of this world,” He said.

I am a Christian. I do not see this as inconsistent to my belief in the equality of the sexes. For in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, nor male nor female.

I am a Christian. Not because I am looking for earthly blessings, Christ never said that His followers would get monetary end-of-the-year bonuses. Rather He encouraged the building of lasting Heavenly treasure which could not be corrupted by rust nor stolen by thieves.

I am a Christian. I am a Christian because I have seen in my life that I am a sinner, and as such have no fellowship with God, but Christ’s sacrifice and moreover His resurrection offer forgiveness and grace in order that I may enter into communion with God. It is not a state I have earned or worked for or deserve, it is a state that I have entered into and continue in by faith.

I do not say these things to the performers in Speaker’s Circle because at some level I feel burdened to try and understand these people, to come to some level ground. It is just as well, I think, that I do not speak from the crowd of hecklers because my voice is not good for yelling and I do not think that the performers know how to listen.

I know I do not speak often here of my faith. But at some point, those of us who earnestly hold a Christian faith must respond to people like these who make, purposefully or not, a mockery of the Church. We must no longer ignore these loud voices so enthralled with passing off weary and worn clichés as doctrine. We must not respond to them in anger or hate or animosity, though at least for me, groups like these are completely baffling and definitely raise my ire. We must instead continue to bear forth Truth in our lives and actions by and through and for the grace that is granted us in Christ Jesus.

A year ago today I was getting on a plane to London. I wanted to remember everything. As I waited in the airport I wrote in my journal.

My family and I cried as we said goodbye and I headed off through airport security. We always cry at airports.

I sat in the chairs at DFW waiting to board my flight to Chicago, and I was a little nervous. But I remembered that my Mom had been about my age when she moved to Germany to be with Dad. I remembered that Grandma Alsup had been over 50 when she left the country for the first time – by herself, that Grandma Hefflinger had moved the family to Saudi Arabia. I thought about these strong women that I come from and I felt better. That's what I wrote about in my journal.

A year ago I was on my way to London.

Now I’m back in Columbia, missing Texas and home, and looking forward to wherever comes next.