2 posts tagged “writing practice”

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It's a Nice Night

Jul 1, 2009
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I need to get back to thinking in words, again, to writing. I've been floating in the blue for a while now, spacing out, staring at the sea. It's been worrying me lately, but today I'm noticing it's maybe fine, good even. L came into the bar for dinner the other night, and said as much. I told her I'd been wasting a lot of time lately, and made some sort of apologetic noises about it. She just looked at me for a minute, that look where she cocks back on her hip, tilts one eye at you, and takes your entire measure in a glance. Then she said, "It's ok to waste time. You should do that."

Wise woman, that L. Being one of the most driven, effective people I know, I feel she's got pretty decent credibility about wasting time as a right choice. She's my boss at My Institution, and she's one of the best mentors I've ever had---wicked smart, morally sound, in every way, and simply the most constructively challenging teacher I've ever had. And I've had some superb teachers.

At any rate, she's right. I've been thinking, furiously, at full speed, for a good chunk of years, now. I think now of Dorothy Allison's line: "A [person] needs some dream time." I've been on dream-time this past month, and now that I think of it, thank God! This past year, teaching full-time for the first time, recovering from grad skool, keeping my life happening and in good enough health---man, I was starting to get really properly tired. ;)

It's like I've been innertubing down narratives, on that laziest narrative river of them all---TV shows. Specifically, Numb3rs. I turn it on, with its easy-peasy-intellectual-inquiry quality, and its family-that-likes-each-other quality and its smooth-problem-resolution quality, and just float on out on my imagination, gently bouncing and toodling along, from point to point.

This dream-time will have to recede eventually, at least by August, and I think it'll be good for it to ebb sooner. So like I said, I need to get back to thinking in words, to writing. I find myself interested in making some poems again, just little ones, little snapshots. I like snapshot-poems. I made a ton of them a few years back. It was a delightful time of paying close attention and finding a lot of beauty and interesting things.

Hmmmm....