Writing Is My Drink by Theo Pauline Nestor

converged, the lamb and the lion down for an af-
    ternoon nap.
    Even if I’m not the one writing, I feel a certain peace when-
    ever two or more people are gathered to write together. In my
    memoir class, there is usual y an in-class writing time. After
    the initial shuffling of papers, a hush fal s over the room as the
    students bow over their notebooks. Watching them—this col-
    lection of people who by day work as attorneys, doctors, recep-
    tionists, teachers, mothers—I feel a maternal, protective peace
    as they write, wanting to keep away anyone who might disturb
    their time. This time belongs to them. This is their time to write
    together. Afterwards, yes, you can have them back to answer
    phones, fill out forms, and wipe noses, but first let them have
    this.
    One hot day during my third summer in Utah, I saw a flyer
    in the grocery store advertising a writing class in someone’s
    home. The teacher was a poet named Rose. I took a tab with the
    phone number, and a week later I was sitting cross-legged on
    the floor of a trailer that smelled of Indian cotton and scented
    candles in the middle of the desert. We wrote words and phrases
    on scraps of paper and put them in a bowl. We took turns choos-
    ing words from the bowl and then we all sat in silence, scribbling
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    W r i t i n g i s M y D r i n k
    madly on our pads of paper, prompted by the words from the
    bowl and the presence of each other. If I’d been at home trying
    to write—which I hardly ever was—I’d probably just be staring
    at the blank page, but here the urgency to write was palpable and
    I wrote with a fury.
    As we settled into our writing, a warm breeze blew in and
    the sounds of the desert evening came through the open win-
    dows. An engine turning over, a birdcal , a screen door falling
    shut, followed by feet coming down some steps—wooden steps.
    Life was buzzing in and out of the room like breath. A room
    full of strangers, we sat silent, barely yet intensely aware of each other—and there was nothing awkward about it. In fact, it was
    magical. When I think of that time now—and the many like it
    I’ve had since—the word that comes to mind is “communion.”
    We were each ful y engaged in our own work and yet undeniably
    connected to each other.
    The feeling I had writing in that poet’s trailer was one of gen-
    uine contentment. I was doing the work I wanted to do, but in
    the company of others. I was following a thought but not up the
    dark, lonely alley I’d always believed was my gauntlet to run if I
    were ever to become a true writer.
    Writing in the poet’s trailer in the middle of a red desert
    surrounded by a small circle of writers, the sound of their pens
    scratching against paper, I caught a glimpse of another way, a
    way to be engaged with my work and with others at the same
    time. This moment seared a possibility into me, and after that I
    sought to re-create this experience of creative intimacy.
    This need for this communion became more acute after my
    first daughter, Natalie, was born in 1994. Before Natalie, I’d bus-
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    T h e o P a u l i n e N e s t o r
    ied myself with work during the school years and travel dur-
    ing the summers, but now I was home more, still working but
    less focused on work. Around this time, my friend Sara from
    my Santa Fe waitressing days invited me to become part of a
    through-the-mail writing group. Once a month one of us would
    mail out a writing prompt along with the writing assignments
    the nine of us had written the previous month. Most of the writ-
    ers were friends of friends I’d never met before, with al uring
    addresses like Martha’s Vineyard and Topanga Canyon. Each of
    us in the group longed to write but were without an audience,
    and so we became each other’s audience.
    One month I opened the manila envelope and found the
    writing assignment “A Holy