Reading, or the Lack Thereof

A very good friend recently drew my attention to the fact that I haven't been reading as much over the year as I had in the past. It was one of those "true facts" that take you a little by surprise when you notice them, and I started wondering why that is.

A huge reason that I've identified so far is that I get more deeply and easily annoyed by poor writing now that I understand the craft better. I've realized that it's probably good to be a little selective about what you develop expertise in. I'm not arguing that "ignorance is bliss", so much as realizing that there is value in being able to appreciate something on a very simple level. Once you begin to really learn all of its ins, outs, ups, downs, dos, don'ts, and details, it can be difficult to just sit back and enjoy it without analyzing and critiquing.

On the flip side, though, I've noticed that I now appreciate truly excellent writing so much more than I used to. Recently I was reading one of the early chapters of a new book. The author introduced an important new character with one sentence: "Charley Feavy was a short man with dark hair and perpetually dirty fingernails." That one sentence gave me such a clear, visceral picture of this character and his personality/behavior/role in the story that it really was all he needed to say. I spent 5 or 10 minutes just reading it and appreciating all of the craft and editing that most likely went into writing that one perfect description. Those small moments of deeper awareness and appreciation more than balance out all of the crap books that I put down and never pick up again these days.

Thunderstorms

There has been a thunderstorm churning outside since yesterday afternoon. Lightning keeps sparking in the distance, and you can feel the energy on your skin. Seems like the weather outside has caught up with my own atmosphere of late.

Everything has felt pressed together and rumbly lately, as if something is building, and all I can do is watch it build and wonder what is going on.

I can't exactly explain what I'm talking about, it's really just a feeling, but it's gotten intense enough to become distracting at times. Most of my life, from business to where I'm living to relationships and everything in between, is all potential energy just hanging around in the air, and it's been making me nervous.

I think I'm due for my own thunderstorm sometime soon, and I have no idea what my landscape will look like when the wind sets everything back down again.

It's been way too long, but I've been feeling blog-stuck, so here's a short little piece I wrote recently, just to get things moving again:


Fire is the Song. It is the leaping flower. It is rage, love, and hope, all of the things that smolder in the heart and fill the eyes. It is the wild, calling from the top of a mountain, the first flash of the dawn star. Sing, and the fire will come.

Water is the Dream. It is the sweeping fields awaiting harvest, the taste of the future on your tongue. It is the now and never-to-be. It is the un-graspable. It is deep breathing in a dark room. It is the midnight silver on the needles of fir trees. Dream, and the water will come.

Earth is the Memory. It is the thick-bowled oak tree. It is the endless turning, the never-changing, the deep rooted. It is the stillness before a question. It is the cool clay banks that guide the river. It is the all-swallowing roar of sudden anger, the grinding of boulders, the crashing of ancient trees. Remember, and the earth will come.

Wind is the Dance. It is the soaring, swift-winged kite hawk. It is the hidden whisper and the sudden shout, the brilliant flash of lightning that strikes and is gone. It is the great-pushing, the up-lifting, the rain-bringing. It is the quick smile and the swift embrace. Dance, and the wind will come.

Things I am Learning about Living in the City

1. Everything in Alexandria closes at 10pm on Mondays. If you should happen to have run out of cream for your coffee, or want some milk for cereal, you are shit-outta-luck, fella. I know it may seem like you should be able to just walk down the street and buy some, now that you live in a city, but this is a vicious lie. Even if you walk 10 blocks to the end of King street, you will not find a single restaurant, bar, or deli that is still open, so don't even bother.

2. Simply being in the city makes you more productive. You will find yourself working at odd hours, when just a week ago you had trouble getting yourself to work for an hour. You will spontaneously think of great ideas, and then actually sit down to work on them instead of putting them off for weeks until you can't really remember what you got so excited about in the first place.

3. Just being in the city will not automatically make all of your dreams come true. You will still feel lonely sometimes. You will occasionally wonder when life will move forward. But unlike living in the country, where you have endless silent hours to try not too think such thoughts, in the city you will quickly find something else interesting to capture your attention. Feelings of loneliness, frustration, or confusion will move from close to overwhelming to merely visible in the background. After all, there's that new coffee shop you haven't visited yet, and you really wanted to go spend a few hours in the bookstore this afternoon...

DC bound

So much has happened in the past few weeks that I've been putting off blogging about it because I haven't really known where to begin. But I know better than that :). So, I'm going to break things down a bit and get caught up in smaller updates rather than one epic one. Today's is about moving to DC:

As some of you know, but some of you may not, I moved into a townhouse in Alexandria last week, and I've been loving every minute of city life so far. The owners of the house are friends of my parents, who spend every summer with their extended family in France, so we're house sitting for them until some time in August. Which works out to several months of rent free living in DC :).

The area itself is really cool. We're about 3 blocks from King Street, the main drag in this area, which is full of great restaurants, little shops, a book store and movie theater, etc. After a long walk with mom and dad a few days ago I discovered that there's even a cool kind of harbor/park area on the Chesapeake at the end of King Street. I'm sure I'll be spending more time there over the summer once the weather warms up.

I've never really lived in a walking district like this before, but it turns out that I absolutely love it. I've started going out for strolls to get coffee and wander around, just to be on the sidewalk with other people. I've also started taking my laptop to work at the Cosi down the street instead of staying in the house like I usually do. It's amazing how hungry I've been for this kind of thing.

I haven't really begun connecting with people yet, or exploring some of the activities that I want to do while I'm here. I'm treating it like a hot tub, easing my way in and enjoying every minute of it. It will be interesting to see how things change once I'm spending more time with friends here.

So that's my DC snippet. Here are some King street pics I took to give you a feel for the area. I'll write about some other recent life developments soon.

Pop Quiz!

I wanted to shake things up a bit, so let's play a game :). I had an idea to create an internet scavenger hunt, but that's going to take a bit more work, so while I'm getting that ready let's go with a little history trivia in reverse. I'll put up a list of years or dates, and in the comments field you post any significant events that occurred in that year ("significant" being entirely up to your own interpretation). I'll try to cover a range of different time periods and kinds of events. Feel free to look around online if you want to take the easy way out ;):

1. 356 BC

2. December 7th, 1941

3. 1969

4. 1215 AD

5. 1862

Ok, for the second half I'm changing it up. Here are some riddles:

1. What eats to live but never drinks?

2. What do the poor have that the rich crave and God fears?

3. A man lies dead in the middle of the desert next to an un-opened package. That contents of the package explain his death. What is in the package?

4. A man was to be sentenced, and the judge told him, "You may make a statement. If it is true, I'll sentence you to four years in prison. If it is false, I'll sentence you to six years in prison." After the man made his statement, the judge decided to let him go free. What did the man say?

5. What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?

6. What can travel around the world while staying in a corner?

One More

Here's another. I think this one is my favorite so far:

Wide Ruled

Wide ruled, the Cormorants flew
Bearing scepters, the Kings of birds
Sweaty feathered, the prophets of the Sun
They scream of doom and the birth of the new
They stir the tides of oceans with their beaten wings

In the wind and the waves I find purpose, mindless and terrifying. The rush of unstoppable will grants no quarter to the sons of earth. I long for a softer place, a haven, a fortress of warm breath and twilight curls. I know only long hours and fruitless searching, salt lips and daydreams. I am the watcher, clothed in reeds. I have no nest, no kin but the silent clouds. I have heard the hidden music of stars, but cannot share their secrets.

A wise man once said, the highest crags bear the loneliest snowfalls. What hope is there then for me, without even the comfort of stone deep-rooted and unyielding? Yet even now I know a strange companionship. I trust the wind, and laugh with stately Cormorants above the waves.

Freewriting Again

It's been awhile since I've posted anything new. I'm getting ready to move to DC in two weeks, and I spent the last one in Charlottesville with some of my favorite people (both of which deserve their own posts at some point soon). In the meantime I thought I'd post some of the freewrites I've been doing recently. It's been really encouraging and just plain fun to be writing again for the sheer enjoyment of it, rather than to try and make progress on some part of my novel. I've noticed that my writing has been getting a bit more abstracted lately, which I like. Perhaps it has something to do with my own growth in this last season? Anyway here's one of my favorites:

There are no hands

There are no hands, only empty spaces

There are no feet, only bruised words

There are no swords, no plowshares, only twisted metal ripped from the earth

There are no children, only the endless becoming of more

For we slake our thirst in unwonted fountains, and feed our hunger with stolen gumdrops. We are the movers and shakers.

Like the vagabond, ragweed, tumbledown thistles, we leave no trace of our comings or goings. We will not be chained, only held with promises. We kill with our music and bless with our silent stares. We take no bread. Only the fruit of the earth sustains us, and it is infinite.

For lo, there will come a time, a silent moment, when all that was will be again, and all that will be shall endure. The earth will surrender to our pantomime, and in our sticky fingers we will hold the seeds of ages like pearls before swine. We will be the endless grains of sand, and the sun will smell our dreams like fragrant dewdrops.

All that you know is changing.

All that you hoped for has come.

Progress Once More

I'm writing again! Apparently Tuesday's coaching session really helped un-stick me, as I am now the proud author of a new 6 page scene. The exercise we came up with during the session was having me come up with 10 alternate ways to write the beginning of the story, as varied and different from each other as possible. It really helped me relax, and let go of the feeling of permanence that was keeping me from making much progress. I'm really enjoying the process of just writing again. Funny what an apparently minor internal shift can accomplish isn't it?

And as an added bonus, I realized about halfway through it that this scene (which I had originally envisioned as an alternate begin that started with the antagonist of the story instead of the main character) is actually a really solid scene that I like a lot, and it fits really well at a somewhat later point in the story. It's extra fun when something I had just been thinking of as a good exercise morphs into something really cool and useful.

Also, I ate the sandwich in the picture for lunch. It was delicious.

I'm Afraid

Yesterday I had my first Arts Coaching appointment with Adam Fleming. I've been feeling bogged down, paralyzed, and all around stuck in my writing project lately (I'm working on a fantasy fiction novel). It's been incredibly hard to make even tiny bits of progress. I thought it might have something to do with my writing patterns or something like that, but after some reflection with Adam I realized that my constraint isn't coming from patterns, it's coming from simple, deeply rooted fear.

I guess I just hadn't really faced into the risk that comes with creating something that really comes from your heart with the intent of sharing it. It's freakin' scary. What if it sucks? Or, even worse, what if it's just kind of generically "good" but never really touches anyone in a real or lasting way.

These kinds of fears are very very common, I know. I guess I'm just encountering mine more vividly as I've committed myself to this project in a more intentional way. It was really good to name them, though, and to plan some short term action steps to begin moving forward again in spite of them. I'm actually having fun with this again :).

I'll let ya'll know what comes out of this week, I'll have some new (fairly different) things to read soon.

J