Writing about writing.

  

I’m waiting for the bus inside the Brownsville central station. Since it’s gonna take half an hour to get here, I came in to charge my phone and type up this blog. I’m fresh off my solo writing retreat at the island so I wanted to process how my week went. 

The night before my trip, I was out with some friends & didn’t get home till past midnight. When I made it to my house, I turned on a show while I packed, then set up my cat with water and food for the next couple of days. Cleaned her litter box, etc. (My sister was gonna be checking in on her the rest of the week.) Then I was too excited to sleep so I stayed up till about 6 am. I decided to take the bus instead of my car to the beach because anytime that I can skip on driving, I’ll definitely take the opportunity. I checked the bus schedule & found a bus that left at 9:30 am, so it gave me about an hour and a half to sleep. 

As a university student, it was a full free ride from McAllen to South Padre. In fact, the SPI shuttle took me straight to my hotel lobby, so why not, right? I plugged in my headphones, listened to some soft music, and took a short nap on the bus ride there without having to worry about traffic or crazy drivers on the highway. 

*****

I took a literature class last semester on the author Jack Kerouac, whom I love because of how he lived to adventure and write about his adventures. As an undergrad, I’d taken a Beat Generation literature course & that’s where I learned about Jack Kerouac, so as soon as I saw the class listed last semester, I hauled ASS to sign up.

Kerouac is most known for his book On the Road. We read it and it was pretty good, but we also read about five or six more of his books and a bunch of extra reading material, so I really got a good understanding of the Beat era and Kerouac’s writing style. My favorite book of his was Big Sur. 

After the sudden fame from his wild adventures in On the Road, Kerouac found himself annoyed at being in the public eye and surrounded by the upcoming generation of hippies who wanted to wild out like the beatniks. 

A poet friend of his owned a cabin out by Big Sur in California and Kerouac borrowed it for a while to get away and write. He arrived passed out & drunk as fuck and then-- wait, go read the book.

Anyway, the idea of writing in isolation resonated deeply with me. I’ve done it before but only for short bits of time, not a whole retreat where your only obligation is writing in solitude by nature. Literally a dream. 🤤

*****

It’s a trip that I needed to make now during my first thesis course because it’s a semester of intensive writing and revising. I booked a king suite & when I arrived, the room had a jacuzzi. Definitely a nice little surprise. Later during the week, I made a trip on the shuttle to Port Isabel to write at their nice Starbucks and bought some bubble bath at a store next door. 

With taking the bus, I was exposed to situations that I wouldn’t have been if I’d gone in my own car. In a way, that was the only socializing I had during the trip. I’d told my friends and family that I was going to try to be on my phone as little as possible, so I’d text them when I got back. I felt aggressively protective of my solitude so if someone did text me, I just didn’t reply. 

I made a schedule of when I would write and when I would have free time to chill and get a mental break. In my free time, I listened to audiobooks, read, and watched documentaries, all related to what I was writing about. Just once to clear my mind, I rewatched an episode of the Squid Game while I soaked in a bubble bath in the jacuzzi, drinking a little cranberry vodka. 

There was a lot of time to think while riding the bus & random situations while waiting for it to arrive. 

One of my favorite things to see was an old couple. I was making a trip to the cafe probably, when they flagged the bus down and got on. It was an old lady and an old man, white, most likely in their eighties. Both were very tall and thin, almost skeletal. They sat behind me, and though I usually zone out when people are conversing around me, I did hear the last thing they said.

“So what are we going to do first?” the old man asked his wife. 

“I don’t care, what do you wanna do?”

“Well, are you hungry? Which restaurant should we go to?”

“How about that one right there?” she said and pointed to one outside the window. 

“Sure.” 

They tugged on the red handle over the window and we pulled over to the side to let them off. 

He walked out first and as soon as his feet touched the ground, he turned around and reached for her hand to help her step off the bus. The last thing I saw was how they held hands as they slowly walked into the restaurant. 

I thought to myself-- that’s what it means to grow old together. Neither of them 'attractive' or youthful anymore, yet both clearly still in love with each other. Still adventuring together. 

*****

Anyway, one week wasn’t enough. If I had it my way, I’d take an entire month off to go write & enjoy nature and solitude. 

I did get a lot of work done and the getaway helped me renew my focus on my writing project. There were a couple instances where I cried with a paragraph I wrote or with my research. Not all-out type of crying, but a moment where I pondered on deep shit and shed a few tears. 

But yea, I’m definitely going back next month.