I'm convinced that my words are sign language and that what I'm hearing is really the wind
and the waves are actually a hurricane of communication.
Who knew?
Steinbeck. (Kino knew.)
Thoreau. He knew the gentle solace that lead to divinity.
Melville knew. He is buried close by.
E.B. White knew. He watched sparrows carry ribbons in their beaks.
Walt Whitman knew. He knew for himself and for us. He knew us.
Elizabeth Bishop knew. The blue eye of that fish.
Donna Tartt knew. She doesn't even live in New England.
I don't know about D.H. Lawrence. That's grey.
O'keefe knew. Her insides were outside and everything flowered once she met the desert and got out of the green that plagues the northeast.
Paul Muldoon knows.
Sherman Alexie knows.
They know themselves and what they are supposed to feel and their sense of heritage. Their respected and respective lands that have tore them apart and built them up.
Bukowski didn't know shit. I think we enjoy (?) his dry rot and wisdom teeth that were never pulled.
Billy Collins knows.
Stanley Kunitz did too.
Marie Howe felt it some.
Sharon Olds didn't know there was anything to know.
Galway Kinnell knew. I never knew about him until recently.
Thanks be to bear.
(Read it: The Bear: http://staff.psc.edu/schneide/Kinnell-TheBear.html)
Showing posts with label writing process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing process. Show all posts
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Excuse the sentimentality. Here's a rarity:
I am everything but lonely when I am alone.
Alex asked me today why I went back to school and why I went back for writing instead of art. This is my favorite question he has asked me recently.
I am not in school for writing. I always write. The two are happening simultaneously.
In short:
I write because I can not do anything else with compulsion and passion in a fulfilling way. Writing lets my cloud bursts come in aisle three. My water breaks on the six train. I get a nosebleed while I'm driving. Right before I go to bed I write a novel. Most of this is gone before I can write it down. I am not some uber productive Tolkien unrevised hobbit of the pen. NO. Sometimes some words slide out...
I have a tapeworm that eats my words and makes my sentences skinny when spoken aloud. But it's all there buddy... it's brewing. Live. active. generating.
Inside my head I've got the bloat- a parasitic consumption of letters and punctuation. Rotund and starving, digesting and discarding. Sometimes it's raining and sometimes it's all sorts of precipitation. I've got a lot of weather between my ears. Sometimes I think I can't hear because of all the thunderclaps that mimic awkward applause, or the subtle roar of booing.
It doesn't matter if you aren't God's gift to some prize or short-list. If you do it out of passion, you own it.
A lot of this ranting is coming from my cleaning and sorting through old papers. I'm downsizing my archive in a serious way. When I say archive, I'm referring to a collection going back to journals that are purple from fourth grade and contain my first handwritten poems. There are also quips ("I don't like teacher so and so because when he turns off the lights to get our attention his shirt becomes untucked and I can see all of his hairy belly." God help me. It was 1994. I love hairy bellies now!- and also...bellies-ahem) Sorting through this is a draining chore. I can't let go of the written word. Unfortunately, it stacks up to my height.
On to the next one:
I never feel alone when I'm writing. I never feel alone when I'm alone. I can go a surprising amount of time without conversation. Analyze that to death if you like. Let me give you some hints: I came from a fighting family, I still have a fighting tongue, I'm always in love with something or someone, I'm always worried and anxious... I can spend days on end in the woods with a bottle of gin, my favorite book, a bowl of grapes and a baguette.
This is getting personal.
Forward>>
Boil down:
With people - mis communication and the sudden urge to snorkel with them so we can be underwater and together and make noises of exclamation about beautiful things without describing them and blabbing.
Without people - missing the touch. feeling the weather.
This in know way undercuts my absolute love for people. I would just about curl up and die if I couldn't snuggle or make divine connections with really special souls. The older I become, the more I think I would have a grand time holding hands and singing songs instead of saying: "BITCH PLEASE."
New York is such a ginger root.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So I write because I can't NOT write.
I write when I can and sometimes I just sit in my car facing the Long Island Sound thinking: remember to download this song... remember to... remember. Remember to write down what that fisherman is wearing. Usually I revel in that moment. There's a slight chance that those moments will make it into my upcoming portfolio.
I've got three poems I'm editing. One is serious, the others are on the dangerous verge of straight malarkey. Reuben helped me with one. Workshopping helped even more. Meena has been helpful in her graceful and fluid way. The Olivetree is always filled with the best mashed potatoes. If we were a holiday we'd be Thanksgiving. All the components are overwhelmingly different and complimentary. I've loved getting serious there lately. It's fun to show up naked in liquid latex, but the it's better to me a marshmallow of repressed feelings on a red couch and explode, no? I digress. I digest!
Love,
Rebecca.
Alex asked me today why I went back to school and why I went back for writing instead of art. This is my favorite question he has asked me recently.
I am not in school for writing. I always write. The two are happening simultaneously.
In short:
I write because I can not do anything else with compulsion and passion in a fulfilling way. Writing lets my cloud bursts come in aisle three. My water breaks on the six train. I get a nosebleed while I'm driving. Right before I go to bed I write a novel. Most of this is gone before I can write it down. I am not some uber productive Tolkien unrevised hobbit of the pen. NO. Sometimes some words slide out...
I have a tapeworm that eats my words and makes my sentences skinny when spoken aloud. But it's all there buddy... it's brewing. Live. active. generating.
Inside my head I've got the bloat- a parasitic consumption of letters and punctuation. Rotund and starving, digesting and discarding. Sometimes it's raining and sometimes it's all sorts of precipitation. I've got a lot of weather between my ears. Sometimes I think I can't hear because of all the thunderclaps that mimic awkward applause, or the subtle roar of booing.
It doesn't matter if you aren't God's gift to some prize or short-list. If you do it out of passion, you own it.
A lot of this ranting is coming from my cleaning and sorting through old papers. I'm downsizing my archive in a serious way. When I say archive, I'm referring to a collection going back to journals that are purple from fourth grade and contain my first handwritten poems. There are also quips ("I don't like teacher so and so because when he turns off the lights to get our attention his shirt becomes untucked and I can see all of his hairy belly." God help me. It was 1994. I love hairy bellies now!- and also...bellies-ahem) Sorting through this is a draining chore. I can't let go of the written word. Unfortunately, it stacks up to my height.
On to the next one:
I never feel alone when I'm writing. I never feel alone when I'm alone. I can go a surprising amount of time without conversation. Analyze that to death if you like. Let me give you some hints: I came from a fighting family, I still have a fighting tongue, I'm always in love with something or someone, I'm always worried and anxious... I can spend days on end in the woods with a bottle of gin, my favorite book, a bowl of grapes and a baguette.
This is getting personal.
Forward>>
Boil down:
With people - mis communication and the sudden urge to snorkel with them so we can be underwater and together and make noises of exclamation about beautiful things without describing them and blabbing.
Without people - missing the touch. feeling the weather.
This in know way undercuts my absolute love for people. I would just about curl up and die if I couldn't snuggle or make divine connections with really special souls. The older I become, the more I think I would have a grand time holding hands and singing songs instead of saying: "BITCH PLEASE."
New York is such a ginger root.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So I write because I can't NOT write.
I write when I can and sometimes I just sit in my car facing the Long Island Sound thinking: remember to download this song... remember to... remember. Remember to write down what that fisherman is wearing. Usually I revel in that moment. There's a slight chance that those moments will make it into my upcoming portfolio.
I've got three poems I'm editing. One is serious, the others are on the dangerous verge of straight malarkey. Reuben helped me with one. Workshopping helped even more. Meena has been helpful in her graceful and fluid way. The Olivetree is always filled with the best mashed potatoes. If we were a holiday we'd be Thanksgiving. All the components are overwhelmingly different and complimentary. I've loved getting serious there lately. It's fun to show up naked in liquid latex, but the it's better to me a marshmallow of repressed feelings on a red couch and explode, no? I digress. I digest!
Love,
Rebecca.
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