On Writing Life

You can read that however you want.  Two meanings could be teased out, and I suppose those two meanings are what I mean.  There is a breeze that blows through my heart on occasion these days.  It whispers a promise of hope to me.  Like a little stirring up of sugar in coffee.  Something sweet.  There is something working in a deeper part of me than I am aware of.  What kind of creatures swim in that long neglected sea?

It is like a re-awaking of my writer.  The girl who loved to sit by the water; the edge of the river in the woods and write poetry in cold shadows while she skipped out on class.  The young woman who chased sunsets down Chuckanut Drive and sat on boulders to watch the last sliver of sun striking the sky, making the islands turn black in shadow and the Madrona's tree bark turn red with a celestial glow.

I have thought my writing life over in many ways the past few years.  Social media takes up my words, puts them in pictures, requires little shaping for the mind to imagine a scene.  I just give it out.  I take the risk of being misunderstood in gross ways; gross aka large.  I am too distracted by a million things I can't be bothered to take the time to pen on paper.  My hand can cramp writing out a list, so out of practice.  The keyboard offers an easy solution, but I can't sit still.  I can't get quiet in my mind and heart.

The quiet.  That is why I used to write.  To quiet my mind and heart that got so full of life, the details, the living.  Things clamored in my mind banging around until I wrote.    Gave them life on paper.  They lined up like soldiers in neat little rows.  Made it seem like my crazy wasn't so crazy.