I just came back from a walk on a warmish early spring evening. It was exactly what I needed.
I've spent all of this Sunday working, working, working - as I spent Saturday, Friday, and every day before that. Weekends tend to be the busiest. How strange is that?
Rhetorical question, of course. It's very strange.
I walked alongside the still-frozen lake that confirms how bitterly cold and long this winter was, since the entire body of water had turned to solid ice, from sun-chewed surface to muddy bottom. And, as I ambled - walking stick in my grip to ward off potential coyotes, bears, or other creatures that might want a piece of my weary flesh - I thought of what an evening this would be for writing.
Writing is who I am, what I've always been. I was born inquisitive and simply grew more insatiably curious as I grew up. The fact that I write some of it down, now and then, is simply fulfillment of my contract with myself. Not with the universe, who doesn't give a shite if we write or binge Netflix all weekend long - but with myself.
I did some writing yesterday, and I'm proud of that, particularly after visiting the local high school on Friday and was asked by one writing student: "How many hours would you say you write in a day?" I gave an honest answer ("Right now? None, because life is so busy being an author and university teacher and doing the freakin' dishes and laundry." That's a paraphrase, though.) I prefaced that response, of course, by saying, "When I was young and prolific, I wrote for several hours every single day, birthdays and Christmas included." But, now, the sad fact is that I'm too busy to write every day.
Something's changing for me, though. During this semester - in which I not only taught university courses and put off an exhibition at the AX, Arts and Culture Centre of Sussex gallery, which took many months of planning and execution - I forced myself to write whenever I could, and sometimes, most often, even when I felt I couldn't.
The result is that when this semester ends, I'll more easily slip into my writing clothes. For a couple of decades now, when the academic year ended, I would look forward to a summer of writing, but it would always take 3-4 weeks before the exhaustion of the teaching year had left my brain and bones. This time, I feel different. I did a little writing this evening - "no time, Granny, no time!" I hear the wolf explain to Red's grandmother on The Bugs Bunny show - "Land's sake, Wolfie - aren't ya gonna eat me?" she asked. He pulls her out of bed and shoves her into a closet (or maybe under the bed - I don't remember. I'd Google it, but I don't have time) and says, "No time, Granny, no time!" I feel that way a lot - no time for obedience to my nature and nourishment, only time to react to the latest crisis.
But I made time. You have to make time. It's what matters. It's what separates us from the beasts - or the rest of humanity - that driven devotion to scribble things down so we can figure it out and before we forget, and before we grow too old and feeble, or die altogether.
I was reminded of that fact today, again: we all die.
Fuck. I was reminded. And I hate that fact. There's no beauty in that for me. I found out the husband of a friend has cancer. He'll be okay, apparently, after treatment. But, then, I'm not sure any of us really are okay, regardless of treatment - maybe treatment is the problem, to begin with. We're all in remission. We all need a cure.
This is mine. Walking. Running. Writing. Thinking. Breathing. Feeling. Knowing. Hoping.
Where I walk doesn't matter.
Where I run won't wait forever.
What I write depends on what the muses are smoking that day.
What I think evolves with each word I write, every word I listen to, every face I remark.
What I breathe depends too much on big business and government, but I can choose where.
What I feel is urgency. Tiredness. An overwhelming need to say something true and let it ring out.
What I know is too dark for words.
What I hope is that I am wrong about many things.
But everybody knows what they think they know.
Sunday, 31 March 2019
Sunday, 3 February 2019
Capture and release
I feel the need to blog again. There’s something in the air
these days that makes me want to get it all down before it’s gone. Maybe,
someday, the internet won’t be there either – I expect that day will come. So,
if I told myself I’m writing for some future world, I’d be mistaken. I’m
writing for the moment and for anyone who wants to read it in between busy hours.
The Fountain of Trevi |
My new mission will be to keep it short. That way, I can say
more.
Brevity is relative, though.
In the past few years, so much has changed in my life, and I
feel there’s greater change ahead – just different kinds of change.
I strive for authenticity but often fail. Most days, I’m
more like Icarus. I reach for the sun and go crashing to the earth. But I
started out on earth, so assuming I survive the crash, the quest was the wiser
choice.
I’m just trying to figure it out for myself, to make sense
of it all. I’ve been blessed in the past five years to have visited some of the greatest cities on earth –
NYC, Dublin, London, Florence, Rome, with more travel to Lilydale, NY this coming July and Scotland on the horizon
this fall. I remember the quieter moments the most – a boat tour on Loch Gill
past Innisfree, a walk through the olive groves in Chianti, a self-satisfied
ale at The Bleeding Horse – and always the train ride past open fields,
pastural landscapes. More and more, I feel like it’s passing me by – that I
need to capture it all as it goes – as I go stumbling through this world on
great, ungraceful, mad-flapped wings.
Under the Tuscan clouds |
Although, maybe that’s not quite true. I have my moments of
serenity. My last night in Tuscany, the air had erupted in windstorm, and the
rain was as fresh as a newly unsealed can of coffee grounds. The aroma was
similar. But I sat there overlooking the benighted vineyards and wrote a goodbye
poem to that place, that adventure, and to the version of myself that had come
to that region in the hope – and with the earnest expectation – that it would
somehow change me forever. Mission accomplished, even if I couldn’t quite grasp
it at that time.
The bus would be leaving for Florence soon. Janie and I
would be staying there for only one night before taking the noon train to Rome. But
I found my moment. As I always do, I felt the pull of staying forever, simultaneous
to the pull of moving on.
Catching the sun in flight |
I’m trying to say something here, and I’m not sure what it
is. Maybe it’s this: time is infinite, but we are not.
My feelings are a kite
that depend on the direction and fury of the wind that day, each hour. My thoughts are
clouds that sometimes float like those of a soft summer sky, sometimes threaten
to burst like those darker clouds that form like murder over the lake and then
keep moving on without spilling a drop.
That’s the mood of the moment, in fact,
as I write this. Sometimes, very rarely, those clouds erupt with hellfire rage,
dance rain like a midnight cloudburst over crowded Times Square, roar like a blizzard
that turns to freezing rain during a risky book tour, or shift and shimmer with wondrous thoughts that
send me to the page or the screen, inspired to write, wherever I am. Those
latter brainstorms are precious to me. I need to rest, but I don’t. There’s too
much to do.
Post-storm sky |
There are many kinds of clouds, as Joni Mitchell would agree;
it depends on how you look at them. But the main thing, for a writer or artist of any kind, is to
look at them with sincere curiosity, and to do something about it – even if doing
means doing nothing, with purpose or, if possible, without.
For the previous, much older posts, go to: http://gerardcollinsblog.blogspot.com/
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