It's a reflective night, a pensive one, and as nano's left in its tiny coffin of tags, margin, and punctual bounds. I'm mulling over poetry, and the nutmeg and cinnamon sticks of my mentality perfume the dreamy air. I am Mark Strand in these stanzas, tonight:
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
(Mark Strand - Keeping Things Whole - Reasons for Moving)
We are all scattered pieces of a shattered whole. None of us, as yet, perfect, I'm fairly sure. Wherever I am, I am what is missing. I feel this, sometimes. Stronger in the retrospective melancholy of hindsight, where I am here and there and now and not. Nano is finished, but my story is undone. And in the void, spilled treasures of fae gold are left ashen. How I remembered these memories differently. A puzzle, once vibrant, stained in salty water that no longer matches its master - how will I ever arrange these cardboard cutouts again? If your life is remodeled, you cannot walk through the same doors, slide over the laminate in your socks, or ride the banister into the grand hall.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.
Mark Strand - Lines for Winter
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Stories
Well, ladies and gentlemen: I'm near finished. I haven't written nearly so much this month as previous attempts at NaNo, but I'm glad to have gotten as far as I did, and I think that writing this story has taught me a lot of things about character driven story writing that I hadn't considered before. What's actually strange is that as I'm writing this story about knacks and magicks, I find myself mentally balancing the characters as if they were heroes in an online game. "Hmmm, that chararacter is tad overpowered. I'll have to balance that out with some great weakness" as though each character pulled from a limited pool of resource points, and tallied these into their character.
And this is an odd nanowrimo in another way in that I won't finish the story. Every other attempt at the novel writing event concluded with a finished product. The first year, it was a fairy-tale mythos that was the lousiest thing I've ever written ever. The second year, I attempted a Lloyd Alexander-esque piece, and met with some limited success. This is my favorite thus far, for obvious reasons: the first sucked, the third was a split piece that ended up being a bit of a mess (sorry Matthew), and this one is unfinished, and doesn't count yet. The third year, I co-wrote a mystery-dystopian with Matthew, and... well... I like the plot!
It needs a lot of work. They all do.
But it's interesting to look back over each year's renditions and compare the stories with my life experiences at those times, looking at my journal entries and such. It's interesting what you write based on what you've read, what you experience, and how you feel at different stages of existence. It explains a lot, seeing some of the characters that have written novels over the centuries: Poe, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Donne, Keats, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and so on. Authors, and artists in general, are often peculiar personality. Perhaps we all are, and we merely shift the lens of scrutiny upon these individuals like historian peepers scouring the tabloid wikipedia for tidbits of juicy non sequitur from these artist's lives.
Writing is an adventure. I find out more about myself each time. It's a foray into wisdom, if you'll allow your external inspection become introspection. And motif, metaphor, themes, and beliefs all surf the rocky waves of the ocean we brave to create, whether we skim the tips of the salty surf in schooners, or flounder like a hound treading water. This is how I examine my life
And this is an odd nanowrimo in another way in that I won't finish the story. Every other attempt at the novel writing event concluded with a finished product. The first year, it was a fairy-tale mythos that was the lousiest thing I've ever written ever. The second year, I attempted a Lloyd Alexander-esque piece, and met with some limited success. This is my favorite thus far, for obvious reasons: the first sucked, the third was a split piece that ended up being a bit of a mess (sorry Matthew), and this one is unfinished, and doesn't count yet. The third year, I co-wrote a mystery-dystopian with Matthew, and... well... I like the plot!
It needs a lot of work. They all do.
But it's interesting to look back over each year's renditions and compare the stories with my life experiences at those times, looking at my journal entries and such. It's interesting what you write based on what you've read, what you experience, and how you feel at different stages of existence. It explains a lot, seeing some of the characters that have written novels over the centuries: Poe, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Donne, Keats, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and so on. Authors, and artists in general, are often peculiar personality. Perhaps we all are, and we merely shift the lens of scrutiny upon these individuals like historian peepers scouring the tabloid wikipedia for tidbits of juicy non sequitur from these artist's lives.
Writing is an adventure. I find out more about myself each time. It's a foray into wisdom, if you'll allow your external inspection become introspection. And motif, metaphor, themes, and beliefs all surf the rocky waves of the ocean we brave to create, whether we skim the tips of the salty surf in schooners, or flounder like a hound treading water. This is how I examine my life
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Every season is love
It's not been a month for blogging, or journaling on many days. It's difficult to find time for extra writing when novel writing is already the struggle of the month. After writing 1700 words, sometimes I don't want to immediately rush into writing for myself, and even when I do, I often don't have the time to do so. And because of this, journal time gets tossed out the window, blogging gets flush down the toilet, and novel writing takes the fore.
It's a beautiful time of year. The cold of winter has arrived and it's no longer the portion of fall with brilliant colors. Fall is so short, sometimes. It comes back for a few days of Thanksgiving and for Halloween, but the interim is all winter's edge and the hunger of darkness.
Every season provides room for complaining. In winter it is too cold, too dark, or too rainy for far too long a time; in spring, the colors only arrive at the end, and really spring is winter in disguise. Spring, too, is rainy, and the snow hasn't melted off the mountains for hiking, and the allergens flourish. Summer is beautiful, but sleeping is often difficult when the sun refuses to set and the warmth lingers after dark, and the wetness of the air, and the constant sweating, cloying weather. Fall brings lovely colors, but dies too swiftly, entering eagerly into winter's deathly embrace. Fall suffers the same pains of winter, and worse knowing it has only begun and you've many months left to go.
If you want to complain, there are always points worthy of complaint in each month. And yet, you can also celebrate the differences, and there is ample opportunity for such blessings and thanksgiving. Fall is beautiful in its colors, and resplendent in its holidays: chanukah of the lights, thanksgiving with its cornucopia of colors, family, thanks, foods, and the warmth of togetherness; halloween with its candy, and the entire season full of pumpkin, apples, harvest, corn, turkey, fireplaces, cider, chai, and maple.
Winter arrives with the advent of Christmas, and what better holiday is there than that? Shortly after, you celebrate the new year, and the greens and the reds of christmas join Janus' two-faced nervousness about the impending days. There is valentine's day, the day of love and single-angst, stuck in the center of the northern-hemispheres cold, and st. patricks day celebrating green in a season of white and gray. Winter is full of snow, rain, lovely mountain peaks and early morning fogs. It is the best time for snuggling by a fireplace and reading a book, and drinking warm tea and lighting candles.
Spring is a blessing of verdancy, as the first snowdrops peak their heads out from the frost, and the deciduous trees tentatively turn out leaves, and the evergreens shake their white-fur coats from their sleeves. The animals emerge and the birds begin to return, and the fogs and lakes lie in cold beauty as the world remembers colors and light. Wildflowers come to life on the mountainsides, and the butterflies and bees remember life.
Summer is the time of life, the blooming of full flowers: lilac and lavender and rose, and the sunflower season and time where everyone is outdoors enjoying each other and the world.
It's a beautiful time of year. The cold of winter has arrived and it's no longer the portion of fall with brilliant colors. Fall is so short, sometimes. It comes back for a few days of Thanksgiving and for Halloween, but the interim is all winter's edge and the hunger of darkness.
Every season provides room for complaining. In winter it is too cold, too dark, or too rainy for far too long a time; in spring, the colors only arrive at the end, and really spring is winter in disguise. Spring, too, is rainy, and the snow hasn't melted off the mountains for hiking, and the allergens flourish. Summer is beautiful, but sleeping is often difficult when the sun refuses to set and the warmth lingers after dark, and the wetness of the air, and the constant sweating, cloying weather. Fall brings lovely colors, but dies too swiftly, entering eagerly into winter's deathly embrace. Fall suffers the same pains of winter, and worse knowing it has only begun and you've many months left to go.
If you want to complain, there are always points worthy of complaint in each month. And yet, you can also celebrate the differences, and there is ample opportunity for such blessings and thanksgiving. Fall is beautiful in its colors, and resplendent in its holidays: chanukah of the lights, thanksgiving with its cornucopia of colors, family, thanks, foods, and the warmth of togetherness; halloween with its candy, and the entire season full of pumpkin, apples, harvest, corn, turkey, fireplaces, cider, chai, and maple.
Winter arrives with the advent of Christmas, and what better holiday is there than that? Shortly after, you celebrate the new year, and the greens and the reds of christmas join Janus' two-faced nervousness about the impending days. There is valentine's day, the day of love and single-angst, stuck in the center of the northern-hemispheres cold, and st. patricks day celebrating green in a season of white and gray. Winter is full of snow, rain, lovely mountain peaks and early morning fogs. It is the best time for snuggling by a fireplace and reading a book, and drinking warm tea and lighting candles.
Spring is a blessing of verdancy, as the first snowdrops peak their heads out from the frost, and the deciduous trees tentatively turn out leaves, and the evergreens shake their white-fur coats from their sleeves. The animals emerge and the birds begin to return, and the fogs and lakes lie in cold beauty as the world remembers colors and light. Wildflowers come to life on the mountainsides, and the butterflies and bees remember life.
Summer is the time of life, the blooming of full flowers: lilac and lavender and rose, and the sunflower season and time where everyone is outdoors enjoying each other and the world.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
The Other Side
There aren't always a multitude of paths, but often. And at these crossroads, an easier road and the harder options. The easier road isn't always better, nor the harder always worthy of the journey. But there the easy sits, parallel to the spiky pit, and the rivers are bluer, the sky clearer, the grass greener on that rise, while through these ruts I claw.
And it's beautiful for the summit, splendid for the crawl, but what does the other side look like? In those twinning times, where I dream I stole to the other side, I wonder if I was strong enough, or was there joy enough like this life?
What if I'd picked the harder trails? I could have chosen any life, and this I took in stride.
And even happier than can be, I'm stuck with wondering who else I could have been. How much better can I be?
And it's beautiful for the summit, splendid for the crawl, but what does the other side look like? In those twinning times, where I dream I stole to the other side, I wonder if I was strong enough, or was there joy enough like this life?
What if I'd picked the harder trails? I could have chosen any life, and this I took in stride.
And even happier than can be, I'm stuck with wondering who else I could have been. How much better can I be?
Friday, November 7, 2014
Wayside Writing
There's always a sacrifice with priorities, it seems. Writing elsewhere consistently means this forum for release gets neglected, and journal time often takes second-string to novel writing, which fits into the corners and cracks of daily life. The same is true of anything. I've been strung thin with sleep since daylight savings, and I'm struggling to recover some semblance of rhythm (mostly the circadian sort). The weather gets chill, and foggy mornings and nights issue forth from over the hills, seeping into the valley like a tidal pool for the receding surf of clouds.
I was contemplating slowness the other day. I often believe everyone's definition of slow is quicker than mine. People who consider their molasses lives are slugging along, and I see these racing by - even snails on airplanes are moving fast, indeed. Living in a small town or country does not necessitate slow, but only suggests it. You can bring the city anywhere you please, if you spurn nature-living.
I once believed in this, the pen-ink dream, and cleverly devised brilliant lines schemed in gold and green. Brilliant, by-the-by, with diction not unlike effigy, clairvoyant, melancholy, where clear voyage into future sight was a crude and morose mimicry of gentility and aristocratic flair.
Now I pray those same breaths don't suffocate me, for some while. When these beliefs do not drown, they fly so elegantly, fluttering with vestigial wings.
I was contemplating slowness the other day. I often believe everyone's definition of slow is quicker than mine. People who consider their molasses lives are slugging along, and I see these racing by - even snails on airplanes are moving fast, indeed. Living in a small town or country does not necessitate slow, but only suggests it. You can bring the city anywhere you please, if you spurn nature-living.
I once believed in this, the pen-ink dream, and cleverly devised brilliant lines schemed in gold and green. Brilliant, by-the-by, with diction not unlike effigy, clairvoyant, melancholy, where clear voyage into future sight was a crude and morose mimicry of gentility and aristocratic flair.
Now I pray those same breaths don't suffocate me, for some while. When these beliefs do not drown, they fly so elegantly, fluttering with vestigial wings.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)