writer's pile of tumbling blocks.



perhaps i need to be playing different keys for now

I am niggled with guilt at neglecting my blog in order to focus on the visual world.  My blog is quick to point out that it is in good company, neglect-wise-- along with my paperwork, most no-longer-visible surfaces in my living space, and my correspondence habits.  I took to the web to find literary solace, asked for water and it gave me gasoline.  The rapscallion Chas
Bukowski has disabused me of any rationalizations and I am at temporary peace with the lapse of my written words.  Here's how:

so you want to be a writer?
by Charles Bukowski
 to every thing, there is a season, and this is gonna be a bang-up one if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was. -ed note: i can tell something's going to get born, but i think it's going to be a messy delivery.......

Difficult Gifts

Sometimes love swells up so big in a heart it leaks out the face.

It's beautiful outside right now.  The skies are a rare Oregon-clear, the stars bright and the breeze perfectly cool.  The moon is reluctant to rise just yet, but I know it's out there, big and yellow and still swollen though waning. The sun is out there too in that dark somewhere too, though as is often true of our sources of life and light it's not apparent from our limited perspective.

I read a sad and beautiful letter tonight from an old friend writing on Caring Bridge.  If you know the site, you know that you are visiting it because there are Big Scary Things afoot.  The friend talked about how she is working with integration of the return of her (miraculously and temporarily disappeared) terminal diagnosis.  Her incredible shine, her integrity and devotion to love as the centering point was profound.  She didn't shy away from the fear part.  She bore witness.

I went to the backyard and sat and stared at the sky and cried.  This woman's community is strong.  And everyone in it would likely gladly give up a year of our life to add a month to hers.  But we don't get those choices.  There are a lot of choices we don't get.  What amazes me is the choice some people make to go into love when facing death.  To keep getting bigger and bigger in spite of all the good reasons to withdraw.

In gratitude and with love to my friend and teacher A~.
Jana