Category Archives: Writing

Woe, the Signpost

07 Monday Feb 2011

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All Saturday and Sunday and even some today, I’ve been wondering about my role in the blogosphere.

My thinking leads to questions.  About purpose, for one.

More to the point, it leads me to question myself.  I’ve wondered what unique gifts I bring with so many out there in the wide blog yonder.

I’ve wondered in the heavy silence that stands between me and the computer screen why I think I can write.  Or want to, for that matter, since writing isn’t easy.

Writing always feels like carving in stone blind-folded.  Far too often, I don’t know what end the stone will yield until I get there myself.  Sometimes I walk away from a partially completed bust knowing I’m too small for the subject at hand.  But there are other times, too, and it’s these that keep me pounding away at hard white space.

In spite of its shaky feel, this is no “woe is me’ signpost.  I’m just expressing my truth du jour.  In part, because I know I’m not alone;  I realize we must all have days when we wonder about life purpose and its associated questions.   So I write to confess, because admitting the truth is freeing.  And for good measure, I’ll forgo pan-handling for encouragement, by placing a lid on the spot where comments typically go

But before I place a lid on today’s thoughts, I wish to confess that I’m not without consolation.  That today’s has strangely come from that stranger-than-truth locust and wild honey eater, who many mistook for the Messiah;  because at his memorable best, John the Baptist served as a solitary signpost in the wilderness pointing a finger at one greater than he, whose sandals, he confessed, he was unfit to untie.

So today I confess how I know this feeling well.  How it comes in part from keeping company with my blog betters — those on my roll and others not.  And how I think,  as I read their blogs:  Now, why again, am I blogging?  And for whom am I blogging?

It’s always this last question that gets me.  Some days, I struggle to answer it with a few original words — words I later baptize with a  title  after it’s known by me. Other days, I’m content in being a signpost for my blogroll.

The one which comes without woe — well, it’s the wrong one.  Which means I should have called this piece, Woe and the Signpost.

An Everyday Poet

26 Wednesday Jan 2011

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I began a poetry class today with no wish to write poetry.  Instead, I long to listen to poetry recitations.  And read more than a few poems.  And hope keeping company with poets will infect my prose in a good way.

While there, I learned my passionate-for-poetry professor desires that poetry once again be written in everyday language so that it will, once again, connect with everyday people.  “Some call marijuana a gateway drug,” he said, “So I call Billy Collins a gateway poet.”  All I can think of, sitting in my chair, is that his words smack of addiction rather than the mild infection I signed up for.

Yet my professor’s use of that word everyday — not once but twice — made me wonder if Billy Collins is not a pot-like poet at all, but more like a meat and potatoes poet.  And if so, Billy and I will get alone just fine.

White Spaces

25 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by in Home Restoration, Life at Home, Writing

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Painting a room is much like writing my everyday life on this sliver of white space; I’m finished only when I’m willing to walk away from it.

Usually it’s because I’m satisfied with the result.  But when not, I’ve learned to leave well enough alone — that is, until I know how to improve upon it.

Downstairs in my living room, I lived with a smudged and streaked ceiling for three years.  After three failed attempts at getting it right, I realized I didn’t possess the skills to make it better.   So I lived with it, looking up at it ever so often, as if wishing upon a star.

A few weeks ago I knew it was time to try again.  I had just finished the dining room and had spent the last seven months painting for others.  So, with my husband’s help, I emptied the room of all its furnishings and spread drops cloths all over the floor.  And painting quickly, with a very wet roller cover, I covered the ceiling with paint and smoothed out the lines, trying not to look back on what I had just finished.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s painting or writing — it’s hard to move forward without a backwards glance, and not get caught up in fine-tuning what’s not ready for finishing touches.  As it dries, a freshly painted ceiling will appear streaky when it’s not; and when I give in to temptation to roll-over those phantom streaks, I end up making streaks where there were none.

When I write, if I don’t continue to dash forward on my thoughts —  instead editing away on what’s all ready there —  I not only get derailed but often eliminate what ultimately could be an important thread.  But it’s hard, so very hard to keep moving across this digital page, to see where my thoughts will take me, to encounter emptiness and white space.

I don’t have white spaces in my house.   Unless one counts woodwork.  Bathroom tile.  And crisply painted white ceilings.