A writing day

September 21, 2013 candacemorris 0 Comments

Good evening, my bloggy friends.  I am spending this evening in solitude, having granted Joelio a night out after he was with Bowie alone all day.  I am feeling satisfied and the best kind of brain-spent.  Today, I attended a writing rally hosted by Waverly Fitzgerald and I worked hard for six hours.  Eight other writers sat in each other's strange and silent company and collectively gave ourselves permission to work. I was a bit anxious about not being able to use my time well or that perhaps it would drag on or I would get antsy, but what I experienced instead was that elusive work that guides you to a consciousness beyond time.



I have several projects in the hopper, but there was one that wouldn't let me alone until I worked on the first draft.  I got 9 pages down and could have kept going.  But the first hour was riddled with angst as I tried to organize my thoughts and time - an mainly due to my personal avoidance of what really wanted to be written.  Tough choices, hard subjects, things you simply would rather not dwell on.  But when an idea is not done with you, it will stick its feet in the creative quicksand of your mind. I've long given up fighting this voice.

When I get to those places, you know...the ones where you know exactly what you are going to do, but pretend with yourself that you don't.  Where the decision has been made, but for the sake of hell-if-I-know you put it off and peruse wikipedia for "research" instead. (Thankfully, oddly, the internet wasn't working where the rally was, so I had less distraction.  I highly recommend it!)

So when I get to those places of pretend indecision and try to put off the inevitable, I usually recenter myself with a piece of writing.  Today, it was Denise Levertov, and I thought you might find it centering as well.

Into the Woods

Everything is threatened, but meanwhile
everything presents itself:
the trees, the day and night
steadily stand there, amassing
lifetime and moss, the bushes
eager with buds sharp as green
pencil-points. Bark of ceder
brown braids, bark of fir, deep-creviced,
winter sunlight favoring
here a sapling, there an ancient snag,
ferns, lichen. And the lake
always ready to change its skin
to match the sky's least inflection.
Everything answers the rollcall,
and even, as is the custom,
speaks for those that are gone.
--Clearly, beyond sound:
that revolutionary "Presente!"


                                                                       I am here.