341
right…
i was going to write, but i’ve finally got this opportunity to catch up on sleep. i’ve been in bed since just after i got home, pulled out some old t-shirts i’d like to take some scissors to, and decided it was just too cold to be creative. instead i watched ‘what’s eating gilbert grape’… that movie that’s been on the sidebar forever as the movie i’m watching ‘now’. it should really say something about how i carry these netflix dvds around with me for weeks on end before i find a time to watch them–and then i feel guilty for not doing something else on my list while i’m watching the movie.
so, here i am writing while laying in bed. the laptop is on my legs, and is just a little too far away to see clearly. i guess that means i should add ‘get new glasses’ to the list of things to do.
i’ve been thinking a lot about writing lately. it seems to be coming up in conversations with a variety of people lately. i wonder a lot about the connection between writing and sitting. does awareness practice make one (me) a better writer? have my years of writing practice made awareness easier?
i don’t remember a time when i wasn’t observing. it’s that fox totem that helps me with that. sit back, blend in, and watch what happens. and certainly i cary more mental notes about more noticed things when i write more. hand in hand, i say. certainly there’s a relationship, but is it causal? can you have a two way causal relationship? ah yes: symbiosis.
perhaps if i felt more compelled to write in full paragraphs, or at least full sentences. i’m simply not currently inclined in that direction.
things are changing, as they always do, and i’m feeling the urge to put finger to keyboard in regard to some of it. to be honest, though, i believe it should be pen to paper for a while. there are some things i’m not ready to share. perhaps this is another fine opportunity for the dip pen?
nah. i need the texture and sound of a paper filled to capacity by a bic roller ball pen. love that feeling.
and now — since i’m not going to write — to sleep!
March 28th, 2006 at 9:41 am
I can’t write with a pen anymore. Can’t. Physically. Do it. It sounds fun though.
Speaking of writing . . . you’ve developed a strong voice on this blog. Nice job.
It’s true that we make more mental notes when we write more. I’ve noticed that myself. It’s making some coherent sense out of those mental notes that is the tricky bit.
I think writing helps us process the world around us and the more we write the easier it becomes to process. I tend to process slowly, which I guess means I don’t write enough.
March 28th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
thanks!
i found this in an essay about a writer who was in new york at the time of the 9/11 terrorist activity.
from ‘The Sea of Information’ by Andrea Barrett, pg 13 of _The Best American Essays_, 2005
“But of course there is always a point: reading and writing are two of the ways we make sense of our mysterious, sometimes terrible, world.”
(i didn’t bother to look up the proper way to cite that, but i think most of the relevant info is there.)
i think it echos your point above. certainly when i write more my mental notes are more complete, i remember not just words, but pacing; not just looking for a car in a cold park late at night, but how it felt to walk through the mud in a borrowed coat while doing so. (you know, the feeling of the mud and how borrowed coats never feel right even if they fit…)
March 28th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Nice. Yes. It’s the details that matter.