Old habits die hard. It is Thursday and I am posting to this
blog again. This is a little more personal. For one thing, reader, you will not
have found this note through FB.
I began the ‘Walk to the river’ blog as the first steps of a
journey almost five years ago. It was important for me to at least imagine readers. For one thing, a reader
helps to hold me accountable for my words. I want to discipline myself to be
careful to speak my part as well as I can. But I have also been continually
convinced that a sort of magic happens somewhere in between a writer and a reader.
When the reader is also being careful to hear, the meaning of life, the
universe, and everything may be sometimes revealed in the interaction.
Or I could say it like this: Sometimes I spit over the
railing into the Kaw River and I imagine that part of me will end up in the
ocean.
I am ridiculous and serious at the same time. We humans are
bits of ubiquitous star stuff and glorious beings. The universe has apparently
never seen our like before as we travel through
this present blink of an eye. And I accept the audacity of my existence.
Time is one of the great paradoxes. There is so much of it
and not nearly enough, it seems. And open your mind to this. If time is not
infinite, then what – or when – came before the beginning? But who can
comprehend infinity? I do not know how to hold these and other mysteries completely
in my mind, but I mostly try to live within these present moments.
And so I have reached a stage on my journey. I am a writer. I
write. I am beginning to get the sense of what I want to try to say. I am
joining a chorus of voices who use words to express their sense of … something.
This blog space and this weekly pace doesn’t suit me as well
as it did during previous years. In part, I am old fashioned, but am also simply
convinced that it is better if readers read my words as they are collected in a
paper book rather than on the screen. More physical thingness and less
electronic blipness. And still this screen has allowed me to get some of those pieces
of writing in front of readers and ready for collecting.
Did you hear the one about the chicken and the egg?
I write for myself. But when I get the words right – and I
sometimes do – I want a reader to reader them.
**
I have several writing projects in the works – things that
do not fit this blog form. I want to give more attention to them. And I want to
present my writing in a way that feels right to me. I won’t abandon the
internet as an outlet – but it is certainly not the only game in town – at
least not in my book : )
I do occasionally toy with the idea of traditional
publishing, but I also still have more writing I want to do either way. One story,
well started, is about an older man and a young woman – two strangers traveling
on a ‘Time Bubble RV.’ To say the very least, my mind wanders when I am
‘walking to the river.’ Those words are as metaphorical as they are
representing physical steps. That’s one of the mysteries.
Again, I extend my thanks to you who have taken the time to
listen to what I have sometimes stumbled to say – and what I think that I have
sometimes said well enough.
**
And the penultimate word goes to Ecclesiastes: And
further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end;
and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Taste that first
sip of currant iced tea after walking. - bert
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