Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
- Niels Bohr
- Niels Bohr
I attended a writer’s class recently for five weeks. Christopher Laney (writer, pilot and all around amazing human being) lead the group. I have struggled with writing. It isn't the need for stories to tell or a lack of love for words that holds me back, but one of my blocks is that I sit down to write and what comes out, for all of it’s potential, isn't that good. It has ‘good’ in it, but it just isn't the ‘perfect’ piece I would like to write – so, I write only rarely – when the inspiration bludgeons me to action.
Christopher shared an analogy with us. In the same way a sculptor must begin with a block of stone in order to carve a work of art, the writer must begin with a mass of words and begin the process of carving piece from them. I have been experimenting with this approach by writing free-form for 30-40 minutes and then slowly sculpting something from the mass of ideas and words generated in the free-form time. I thought it might be fun to share one of these sculpting projects with you, so I have posted below the mass of words from which I will be seeking to carve something akin to an essay. I plan to post another phase of this next weekend, and I invite you to return and see what has been released from this writer’s block of word stone…
Rivers, oceans and streams collect things – rain, mud, branches, sand, and the dead. Dead birds, fish, people. He went to sleep with the fishes.
Some would say we came from the sea, an evolution of undaunted genetics that have to, must evolve – gather its one self and form to conform to demands of our own becoming. So with the waxing and waning, the tugging of the moon’s tidings upon us – a planetary massaging of our little planet – we have become this formed p[lace and these formed creatures, plants, people and things.
Some speak if coming from and returning to our creator, and if such is true then we are created by the hands of the sea. See then the sea in all of us? See all of us in the sea?
We do return to the sea – the splashing of childish play and delight (I witnessed many occasions of children and adults witnessing the sea for the first time – they have been in-landers all of their life and never seen the sea. That seems strange to me – what a change of perspective that must be – to see the sea, to see and feel for the first time the sea from which we are created?), the percussion of a dead body dropped form the pier, the trickle of mucus-like decay through soil, water tables and into the streams that feed the sea – we all return. We return and melt and blend in to the great sea – dissolved and transported.
Then some poor fool turns on a tap and drinks us.
Clinging to branches among the oaks
Timeless observer of time’s passing
You sway through breezes and revolutions
Directing humanity’s passage
As if orchestrating a divine symphony
With nothing but a wisp connecting you
To the lofty vantage from which you observe
Coy and unaffected
Your slight presence fans our dreams
As a winter wind stirs the smoldering fire
Little more than air feeds you
A hint of sea salt to spice your tasting
Of our adventures and chaos
You remain, lingering luscious
As the memory of a lover’s sigh
Eternally upon us
Below are some excerpts from an essay I'm developing.
The coffee here is horrid. I forget this little fact between visits. It is weak in flavor and appearance. As I settle into my place among the identical sets of heavily varnished oak furniture, I notice this restaurant offers a similar transparency. Country curtains on every window and systematically placed cut-glass salt and pepper shakers proclaim homey character. Maps printed on faux aged parchment and brochures labeled by decade tell us this place is rooted in our own ancestry. Here our personal memories have been catalogued for us, our own character defined.
The character they would have us find here is one of home as if presented in the tidiness of a Norman Rockwell painting. Yes, this place has character written all over the walls, menus, nick-knacks, and the wardrobes of the waitresses. It is a script carefully written by some deliberate designer and published by a majority vote in a boardroom. Yet, if it reads character it reads too loudly…
… This place fails. It isn’t the character that fails. This restaurant doesn’t lack for location, or presentation. What is missing here is something less easily conjured up on design tables or decided upon in board rooms.
The ‘Stinky Cat Coffee Shop’ wasn’t pre-planned. It just happened. Over time, it grew. In its own lore the place was a house, a home. People lived here. They dreamed away nights, ate breakfast together, thought of and planned for days at work and activities at school. They went about practical tasks and created meaningful moments. There are records of this planning and living preserved here. Faint lines on the back of doors catalog the slow ascent of children. Scars on the cabinet doors mark the memory of child safety latches. Claw marks on a door frame are deep assurance that a cat was part of the family.
Time passed and the family left. The house passed from family to tenant to vacancy with each chapter adding its own story to the place. For a while the building sat empty, housing only the occasional vagrant that slipped in to sleep or drink himself into unconsciousness. One sometimes stood in the corner and peed himself when he could do no better. Those stains don’t really come out, no matter how many times you clean and polish. The stains fade and become part of the character of the wood, but they do not disappear.
People disappeared and smaller occupants arrived. Squirrels hoarded acorns, rats nested, insects bored into the wood and things too small and transient to leave much of a legacy for us to see all made their contributions. In the scratches on the doors, the discolorations of the wood, the layers of paint, partially missing wallpaper and yellowed tile they all left their marks. People, insects and rodents alike have all left something of themselves…
…This place speaks its story softly but intently brushing against every occupant, purring an old and worthy message…
Is it just me, or does this 'funny' line seem a bit discounting.
"What's the difference between a boyfriend and a husband? About 30 pounds."
- Cindy Gardner
What if i were to say, "What's the difference between a girlfriend and a wife? About 30 pounds."
How many women would be on my case about my abusive humor? So, why is it that we are more accepting of this towards men. This quote appeared on "The Quotations Page" and was populated to my iGoogle home page.
I feel so used...
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
- Iris Murdoch
- Iris Murdoch
The planes don’t bother me anymore. When I first started traveling to
When does something bothersome get absorbed into our awareness and become normal? What shifts in our perceptions and understandings might allow us to accommodate such a change? Is it a slowly growing numbness like getting accustomed to cold ocean waters on a March morning? Does it happen more suddenly as if the nerves that carried crisp messages of pain suddenly misfired and went silent? Is it a choice? Do we choose to adapt one day and casually flip off the switch of caring? When does the new become old?
What is that old saying? “The devil we know is better than the devil we fear?” No, that isn’t it, but I know there is one – something about new things becoming old things. “Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.” Yes. It is like getting married, in a way, when the new becomes familiar.
Getting married used to be, or at least we pretend it used to be, a rite of passage when many things formally taboo suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the moment of a kiss and the placement of a ring, are turned to sacred and expected to become normal. Permission from some higher authority gives us consent and instantly we change. Yet, it doesn’t happen so quickly. It takes time for us to travel from the something new to the something old, the familiar something.
We travel, though, finding ways to understand, cope, and even accept things that once surprised us. The towel left on the floor every morning, tucked away in the corner between the tub and the wall annoys us. At first we discuss and argue over the silliness of it.
“Why don’t you just hang it up?”
“I don’t know. I’ll pick it up next time.”
The next time it does get hung neatly on the rack, but soon the ‘next time’ gets lost and there’s the tossed towel, again; a damp, lifeless testimony to some inability to change. Then there comes a moment when we realize that this is a small thing, after all, and there are so many, must be so many, bigger than damp towel things. So we adjust. The cap gets left off the toothpaste and we manage to stop seeing it. The crumbs settle into the sheets and we grow accustomed to the little nuisances, simply brushing them aside to scatter somewhere else.
It isn’t a problem, really, accommodating the nuances of another, is it? Most would say, “No.” But, we have seen it matter. Sometimes it costs us too much.
Who knows when it happened to Sally? Somewhere between the something new and the something old she lost herself. Somewhere beyond the damp towel and a routine of rage she found herself staring at the barrel of a gun pointed at her like an accusing finger, like his finger. She trembled with fear. She stood there with a docile acceptance that kept her stationary when running should have been an option. It was her passive, undaunted acceptance that did her in. The bullet launched from the barrel and punctuated its own message through her skull and brain and into the plaster. She had accommodated too much. Some higher authority had been heard by her alone and commissioned her journey from startling to familiar, too far.
It is a precarious route we maneuver when we make those things new into things old, when we cease to be surprised and alarmed by the unkempt towels, loud noises in the dark and the violations of our peace. Sometimes we travel too far. Tonight I find myself wondering what else has found its passage to benign acceptance in my world along with the planes that don’t bother me anymore.