Slowly it dawns on me that writing is not easy, that all of the voices that say this is not real work deserve to be put to rest.
I’m not the first to say this, but it is my dawning. A mechanism turning inside of me, a key, letting me know what this is, my writing.
I can’t remember the last time I wrote a new poem.
I jotted down a dream a couple of weeks ago, a vivid dream of a thin emerald-green book of unusual size, leather-bound, the cover rich in color and texture.
But no poems per se and not much desire to share my thoughts here of late.
Sometimes the time quickens, sometimes it drags.
What is this calling? I appreciate silliness and I love to write nonsense. But I only want to write down the most important of my thoughts just now.
Yesterday, we drove from Massachusetts to Northeast Ohio. It had been a very long time since I’ve made this trip in the car—the last time was the summer of 2009. It is close to 600 miles.
I have never read Watership Down, but we have been listening to it in the car for long stretches on this trip. The narration is excellent and I am reminded of how much I love to be read to, how much of a pleasure to all humans this gift of stories being told aloud is. I feel thirsty for it now and I have decided that I will read at open mics even when I don’t have my own work to read.
Such is the thanks I would like to give. I love reading out loud as much as I like singing out loud. It is a great pleasure to me, like the emerald-green book from my dream. The richness of the color I can summon in my mind’s eye. How I would like you to know it, too, to take it from me. I will hand you the book so you can feel its richness, the animal skin, the creamy parchment of the pages, crisp and soft at the same time.
I want to leave politics behind, the truth of war and rape, the way humans have of tearing down what cannot be shared.
I want to take and drink and give back.
Thanks Giving and Thanks Taking
Peace
twinklysparkles 