…indecision, doubt and anxiety about talent, skill, or just running off to produce useless drivel.
Need to seriously focus on if I do this or if I don’t–not just blogging, but writing at all. Too many other things left undone to pursue a winding path that leads nowhere. Time may be better spent in reading. Time is the fool. Time is the god. I’ve learned too much about time to not take it more at its real value. It has laughed at me as it flew by, whipping me down to my knees at what I’ve lost.
All I’m doing here is relieving the pressure of daily posting. Writing every silly thought that comes my way. They’re not vital pins stuck in the map to show a journey, but more annoying blips in little podunk towns that have a story, but one I seem to miss.
I’ll write. But only when I’m writing well. I just need a little time to think.
Addendum: As so often happens, I find answers and more questions in a natural setting (and this thought alone is what I mean by senses picking up, brain assembling, fingers typing without carrying the thought through to fruition). There is a grapevine growing in my walkway. It is capable within a couple years of producing fruit that can be turned to wine and jelly, leaves that wrap around a ball of beef and rice and chickpeas doused in sauce, vines that twist into a wreath. But it will not do so where it is living now; it is out of place.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I’ve thought about you every day and hope you’re doing ok. Have thought your words on your father beautiful, but…
At the moment I am impressed by your italics. You write of relieving pressure and recording silly things…but then, your addendum–every day drivel by all accounts–and written perfectly. How would you change a word?
Don’t stop writing, please. Stop trying maybe, but don’t stop writing. Trust your voice. Your voice, as opposed to all the screeching murmurs of teachers and advisors and nonsense makers–your voice is something else. Let us have it. Just you, talking about grape leaves. It’s beautiful, it’s you, and it’s perfect.
(It’s surprising how those silly thoughts about everyday things, popping in our minds, can turn out brilliant metaphors without our trying.)
Susan, I really think you’ve got a great voice. The trick, maybe, is just to talk. Even if it sounds silly.
Sorry if this oversteps my bounds. Lord knows I don’t want to mess with you right now, and I really am trying to impress on you my respect for your voice.
Best,
Owen
Owen, thank you.
I realize that here my tendencies lean towards overly dramatic, and in reality I don’t think it’s quite as evident although it’s been a part of me forever in my mind. Here I speak the way I think when I’m alone, and then embarrassed, I retreat. Along with drama comes a need for audience–even that of one, if that one understands or even tries to comprehend, and better still, relate.
I cannot, nor can you and the many others like us ever still that voice that reaches out. It’s just the touching and the fear of touching that creates this vacillation we live daily within ourselves.
Thank you; for not only your kind words of support and praise, but more for your understanding of the need.
the need is what continues to feed our belief that we will find relief, or at least a salve to soothe the wounds