Returning the Umbrella

The number of things that have gone in my life since I stole the umbrella is mind boggling. I walked back to the government building where I stole the umbrella and was waiting in line to speak to a person at an information counter, my idea being that I would tell them I found the umbrella, when my phone rang. It was the director of my daughter's preschool. She had a rash and I had to come pick her up immediatement. I got to the front of the line. I looked at the tired lady at the desk and smiled, then said, "I found this umbrella upstairs." She looked at me and said, "Wow, that's a beaut. I'm sure somebody's gonna be lookin' for that." As deadpan as I could muster, I said, "Trust me, they are."

Word Count: 18 432

Sleeping

I watched my daughter sleep for a few moments last night. She was perfect in peace.

Word Count: 18 432

Stolen umbrella

Here it is in its baldest telling. It was raining. I got wet. I went to my office where I thought I had an umbrella. It wasn't there. I went into an office where I had to wait in line (government stuff). When I got to the cubicle to talk to the person who told me I couldn't do what I wanted to do, I looked down and noticed a nice (but obviously forgotten) umbrella. I took it and walked out. Completely uncharacteristic of me and now I am scared to walk with a hot umbrella. Life is very strange.

Word Count: 18 432

A line from a speech

I'd been feeling a little down. The world was seeming a little remote and I was feeling lost. So I was sitting at the computer not working and not writing. I decided a watch a speech. The speaker said one line that resonated withing me,

the decision to not try at all

and it caused everything to shift into focus. Not trying is a choice. Not doing is a choice. This scared me enough to begin. I wrote on the manuscript today after a very long time of not doing so. I wrote in sections that I had struggled with, but made no progress before. Today, it worked. Today, I wrote.

Word count: 17 630

Writing for others (and the Word Count)

I've been writing, though I have to admit that it has been more for others than myself. I recently wrote a piece on the Ailey II dance group that is coming to Brock University. It will be published in a magazine by the Brock Centre for the Arts in about a week. It was an interesting exercise in many ways because I had to describe both the dance style and history of the group without (except for YouTube clips) ever having seen them. The finished piece was successful insofar as I think I cut the line between information, description, and aesthetic analysis, all the while maintaining an engaging and fun tone. After my wife read the piece, she told me that she wanted to see the dance troupe solely because she felt she already had a relatively deep understanding of how they dance.

Work on my manuscript has not begun, but there has been a lot of thinking about it. The problem of course is setting time aside to work on that project while still making money doing other writing and editing. I am lucky of course to be able to make money the ways that I do, but I would still love to devote more time to that writing. I am going to institute a word count tally at the end of my posts which indicates the length of my manuscript.

Here it goes. Man, this feels naked. Word Count: 16 540

Inaugural Post (or the numero uno)

Hi. I've decided to initiate my blogging practice without letting anyone know. Perhaps in time others will find their way to these words, but for now I am using this as a way to encourage writing in my life. I have a manuscript that I worked on in the past. I know it is a particularly important piece of writing for me to complete, but for reasons that are difficult to discern, I have largely avoided the work involved in bearing it to its completion. Now writing that the reasons that prevent me from writing it are difficult to discern is a little bit more than disingenuous. Because I am precisely the reason that prevents me from writing. Somehow, I am convinced that continuing to work on the manuscript will devour me. In a way, it will. Completing it will require me giving up a part of my past. These memories have been very important to me because I've believed that they have a talismanic significance in relation to my personal identity. Therefore, the logic continues, to give these memories up in writing would entail me letting go a signficant aspect of what makes me who I am. And even though I know these justifications are really just how I let myself not work on something important, it is still difficult to know how to begin again upon a piece of work that has lain dormant for some time and requires a new kind of work and vision.

Vision is a really appropriate word for this task. I need to revise, to resee what I have already done in a way that connects with a seeing this work to completion. I am already seeing how this space is capable of generating connection. Writing about the difficulties of reinitiating this project helps me to see how I can do this very thing.

Here is a quote I read last night by Bassui (upon comforting a dying person):

Your essence was not born and will not die. It is neither being nor nonbeing. It is not a void nor does it have form. It experiences neither pleasure nor pain. If you ponder what it is in you that feels the pain of this sickness, and beyond that you do not think or desire or ask asnything, and if your mind disssolves like vapour in the sky, the the path to rebirth is blocked and the moment of instant release has come.