I attended a writer’s class recently for five weeks. Christopher Laney (writer, pilot and all around amazing human being) lead the group. I have struggled with writing. It isn't the need for stories to tell or a lack of love for words that holds me back, but one of my blocks is that I sit down to write and what comes out, for all of it’s potential, isn't that good. It has ‘good’ in it, but it just isn't the ‘perfect’ piece I would like to write – so, I write only rarely – when the inspiration bludgeons me to action.

Christopher shared an analogy with us. In the same way a sculptor must begin with a block of stone in order to carve a work of art, the writer must begin with a mass of words and begin the process of carving piece from them. I have been experimenting with this approach by writing free-form for 30-40 minutes and then slowly sculpting something from the mass of ideas and words generated in the free-form time.  I thought it might be fun to share one of these sculpting projects with you, so I have posted below the mass of words from which I will be seeking to carve something akin to an essay. I plan to post another phase of this next weekend, and I invite you to return and see what has been released from this writer’s block of word stone…

Rivers, oceans and streams collect things – rain, mud, branches, sand, and the dead. Dead birds, fish, people. He went to sleep with the fishes.

Time heals all wounds, well time allows for adequate decay, anyway. It softens, swells, expands until it pops- melts looses from its form (lets loose itself?) and changes into the collective. In water we are all borg – resistance is futile – really it isn't present at all.

Finally it becomes homogeneous – a mixture of all things , formless, laps with all tides and waves, a rocky cradle of the world’s mush – oatmeal of everything.

Some would say we came from the sea, an evolution of undaunted genetics that have to, must evolve – gather its one self and form to conform to demands of our own becoming. So with the waxing and waning, the tugging of the moon’s tidings upon us – a planetary massaging of our little planet – we have become this formed p[lace and these formed creatures, plants, people and things.

Some speak if coming from and returning to our creator, and if such is true then we are created by the hands of the sea. See then the sea in all of us? See all of us in the sea?

We do return to the sea – the splashing of childish play and delight (I witnessed many occasions of children and adults witnessing the sea for the first time – they have been in-landers all of their life and never seen the sea. That seems strange to me – what a change of perspective that must be – to see the sea, to see and feel for the first time the sea from which we are created?), the percussion of a dead body dropped form the pier, the trickle of mucus-like decay through soil, water tables and into the streams that feed the sea – we all return. We return and melt and blend in to the great sea – dissolved and transported.

Then some poor fool turns on a tap and drinks us.

Labels: blog games, blogging, emotion, family, life on life's terms, spirituality, word play, writing

Clinging to branches among the oaks

Timeless observer of time’s passing

You sway through breezes and revolutions

Directing humanity’s passage

As if orchestrating a divine symphony

With nothing but a wisp connecting you

To the lofty vantage from which you observe

Coy and unaffected

Your slight presence fans our dreams

As a winter wind stirs the smoldering fire

Little more than air feeds you

A hint of sea salt to spice your tasting

Of our adventures and chaos

You remain, lingering luscious

As the memory of a lover’s sigh

Eternally upon us

Labels: blogging, emotion, family, poetry, spirituality, travel, word play

Labels: blogging, coffee, emotion, meanderings, spirituality, travel, writing

Labels: blogging, emotion, gender stuff, quotes, word play

Labels: blog games, blogging, meanderings, tweets, twitter, word play

Labels: quotes, word play