Not the best run in the world, but at least I ran. I just need to keep this momentum going so I don't fall back into my routine of never working out, like first and second quarters. I left at like 7:15 and stretched for a couple minutes. I got back at 7:40 ish. I walked a lot too (but I blame that on stupid menstrual cramps, on top of not letting my food digest enough before I started. That sucks though because dinner time is usually when I get pumped to run. ...I will just have to change that.) Anyway, I have really good stamina, so distance/time isnt really the problem. The problem is route. All this week I ran the same route (plus/minus some) and 1) it isnt long enough, by far, and 2) I really need variety because that is what motivates me. What disengages me from exploring is the prospect of getting lost (another thing I will just need to get over... this campus isnt that big). Ahh well, I am just happy that I'm active again.
hmm.
oh yea, I wanted to list the songs that I listened to on my runs. The ones that are effective in helping me focus (or relax, as the case may be). Maybe I will make a playlist (if I can ever figure out how on that damned device --which I love!)
Today I started with the first one that came on which was Transatlanticism. Of course that one has a perfect rhythm and I am already use to getting short of breath on that one, cause I generally freak out and jump up and down for 7 minutes whenever they play it at concerts. :P
Anyway, the next song I didnt skip was Avenged Sevenfold's I Won't See You Tonight (Part 1, mind you). I let that song play because I know it can make me really angry, and emotional which, coincidentally makes me want to run more.
After that, which is another long one, I came across some deer and pulled out my headphones so I could talk to them as I passed. I walked here, and watched them. They didn't mind how close I was and were hopefully glad to have someone to talk with briefly. Who knows, though?
I walked for a while cause I really didn't feel good at that point, plus I was at the prettiest part of the route (out on Geoduck Road). I listened to a song by the guy from The Frames (it was one of the songs from the Once soundtrack)... oh, his name is Glen Hansard, and he sings/plays with a girl who's name I can't pronounce -- Marketa Irglova (I guess I can pronounce it, just can never remember it). I'm pretty sure he plays the guitar, and she the piano. There is also a violin (and cello, maybe... I can't remember). Anyway, there are no vocals in that particular song (The Swell Season), and it was perfect for walking amoung the trees.
I ran again, listening to We Believe (RHCP) and one other song that I can't remember, before I arrived back at the apartment.
though I don't think its from the cold.
I'm so exhausted.
Why don't I enjoy sleep more? I do... but it is really just the process of getting there. Compile OCD with being a night-owl; by the time I even resolve to sleep I have to spend an hour more getting ready and then making sure everything is okay (you really don't wanna know) before I can actually relax.
And now I'm all excited about tomorrow. Not to mention this weekend.
Ahh, well.
:)
Really though, I just need a good hug right now... that would make it easier.
I'm so exhausted.
Why don't I enjoy sleep more? I do... but it is really just the process of getting there. Compile OCD with being a night-owl; by the time I even resolve to sleep I have to spend an hour more getting ready and then making sure everything is okay (you really don't wanna know) before I can actually relax.
And now I'm all excited about tomorrow. Not to mention this weekend.
Ahh, well.
:)
Really though, I just need a good hug right now... that would make it easier.
2 really girly, really emotional movies later...
and only a few tears more.
So strange.
and only a few tears more.
So strange.
Anger
Writing
Rain
Ego
Anger
Running
___
Written Reflection
Week 3 of Cultivating Voice
::
I learned a lot,
…but, that can’t be all I have to say.
I ate a lot too,
…but what did I eat? Why did I eat it? How is it important that I ate what and why?
Well truthfully, last night I ate way too much Thai food for my own good, and today I ate an egg-salad sandwich from Starbucks. But only half of it. The other half, I decided as I resealed the container, I wanted to give to a hungry woman on the side of the road. We had stopped on the off ramp and given her all the change in our pockets, which probably amounted to less than $3. So, I wanted to give her the rest of my sandwich too. But when we pulled up to get back on the freeway, there were four lanes of traffic between her and I.
That is no excuse. I could have run across; the lights were red, the cars were stopped, waiting for me to act upon my good will. But I didn’t.
Why? Conditioning (I will steal the term from Huxley), …running across the traffic was too dangerous. But, then again, it is dangerous also for her to be on the streets starving. Why is my life more important? Because I am a moving, working cog in the machine? Because I go to school? Because I am not starved of knowledge?
Neither is she.
But I ate, and she didn’t. I learned, and maybe --probably-- she learned something this week too. However, she most assuredly didn’t learn about “reader response literary theories” or sit on a hill and talk to a tutor about how she writes.
But maybe she laid on a rock in the woods, staring at the sky at dusk, and discovered something about herself --though it’s unlikely she wrote about the experience in her blog.
What I really mean to say encompasses all I have discovered this week about my thinking and learning, about my writing and myself.
When I look at a single session of listening or thinking, my reflection of that can be no more depth-ful than the flat plain of the mirror which I can reach out to touch, but go no further. As I take in a whole week, and account for the many different occurrences and influences, places and times of learning, my reflection gains depth and body --I am then looking through the mirror glass, at a re-creation of my multi-dimensional self. At this point the very act of reflecting becomes a learning process in its own right.
Week 3 of Cultivating Voice
::
I learned a lot,
…but, that can’t be all I have to say.
I ate a lot too,
…but what did I eat? Why did I eat it? How is it important that I ate what and why?
Well truthfully, last night I ate way too much Thai food for my own good, and today I ate an egg-salad sandwich from Starbucks. But only half of it. The other half, I decided as I resealed the container, I wanted to give to a hungry woman on the side of the road. We had stopped on the off ramp and given her all the change in our pockets, which probably amounted to less than $3. So, I wanted to give her the rest of my sandwich too. But when we pulled up to get back on the freeway, there were four lanes of traffic between her and I.
That is no excuse. I could have run across; the lights were red, the cars were stopped, waiting for me to act upon my good will. But I didn’t.
Why? Conditioning (I will steal the term from Huxley), …running across the traffic was too dangerous. But, then again, it is dangerous also for her to be on the streets starving. Why is my life more important? Because I am a moving, working cog in the machine? Because I go to school? Because I am not starved of knowledge?
Neither is she.
But I ate, and she didn’t. I learned, and maybe --probably-- she learned something this week too. However, she most assuredly didn’t learn about “reader response literary theories” or sit on a hill and talk to a tutor about how she writes.
But maybe she laid on a rock in the woods, staring at the sky at dusk, and discovered something about herself --though it’s unlikely she wrote about the experience in her blog.
What I really mean to say encompasses all I have discovered this week about my thinking and learning, about my writing and myself.
When I look at a single session of listening or thinking, my reflection of that can be no more depth-ful than the flat plain of the mirror which I can reach out to touch, but go no further. As I take in a whole week, and account for the many different occurrences and influences, places and times of learning, my reflection gains depth and body --I am then looking through the mirror glass, at a re-creation of my multi-dimensional self. At this point the very act of reflecting becomes a learning process in its own right.
I feel I went on too much of a tangent this week. Maybe none of these ramblings have any sense of congruency to anyone but myself. As for a personal goal, I strive to be more able to express my true meaning; to better explain the synchronicity of ideas that I see in my head. And if I work and learn and reflect as much every week as I did this one, such improvements will come quickly.
I NEED TO CRY.
What is with this dry spell?
What is with this dry spell?
more than the fall."
I don't think I deserve to feel this way again, although I know I brought it upon myself. I searched for it and I'm not quite sure why I would do that. My explanation is that I was looking for something good to remember. Pictures are one thing, but words... words are honest. A smile can lie. A picture can be interpreted. Words can be interpreted too, but words expressing love or happiness is more telling than a picture of his mouth to my head. And when the words I read say that the pictures weren't sincere, then all the truths that I find in the pictures are false.
It's been years.
I'm losing my mind tonight, and this time there is no way to blame it on a lack of sleep, or food. No. There is just too much circling my brain.
Dream:
You visited me even before you went back to the valley. You came just to see me. And...it was more than just that. It was...
Nevermind.
I will see you this weekend. Finally. It has been months. Months too long.
fuggggg.
I'm done for now.
(PS. Why do you never call me?)
It's been years.
I'm losing my mind tonight, and this time there is no way to blame it on a lack of sleep, or food. No. There is just too much circling my brain.
Dream:
You visited me even before you went back to the valley. You came just to see me. And...it was more than just that. It was...
Nevermind.
I will see you this weekend. Finally. It has been months. Months too long.
fuggggg.
I'm done for now.
(PS. Why do you never call me?)
but only for like 20 minutes. I felt really good, and could have kept going, but I stopped wanting to be creative about the route and ended up back at the dorms. I sweat a lot though, which means I was either working harder than my run at Illwaco, or that I ran longer (which I didn't), or that it is warmer here (which is true). So... next time I am gonna push myself more, even if it means running in circles. And hopefully next time will be tomorrow or Tuesday, though that depends on how much work I finish today.
And on that note, it is time to start reading.
And on that note, it is time to start reading.
...I will always manage to find something that really hurts.
Still hurts.
That made me deserve it all.
(I should really delete some of that.)
So much for running today. Or maybe that was just enough fuel for the fire. Yea, I might still run.
But I need to read too. And write. And I really need some company.
Still hurts.
That made me deserve it all.
(I should really delete some of that.)
So much for running today. Or maybe that was just enough fuel for the fire. Yea, I might still run.
But I need to read too. And write. And I really need some company.
Sincerity doesn't seem like something many people are capable of anymore.
I am sincere because I want people to know who I really am. But sometimes we aren't suppose to show certain parts of ourselves; it isn't acceptable. So I often find myself hiding. And I am sick of trying/pretending to be something or someone that I'm not.
I already wear my heart on my sleeve as much as I can. I bear my soul to the world on this blog. So why do I feel so fake?
Because I am surrounded by fake people. Not everyone, but many. Or maybe they are real. It doesn't matter. What I think of them doesn't matter because they are they, and I am I. And while I want to know them, understand them, feel what they feel, what really matters right now is how I feel. And how I can feel better. This is because I am alone in my room, on a Saturday night, after eating way too much, and watching a movie that should have made me cry more than it did.
And I am thinking about the beautiful sun hitting the body and feathers of the bird on the pier in Illwaco.
I am thinking about how it made me feel.
I never thought I would stop photographing it.
I stared into the lifeless eye, still attached to the beak, which were both disconnected from the rest of the twisted form.
I wondered if it was bad to find this beautiful; to invade its space and capture the sun glinting off the feathers with my camera.
But this body held a soul once, and it, laying there discarded, made me find some peace in death. Because the life was gone from the eye (the eye that no longer had any function, of seeing, of perceiving), but the life was not gone, because the story of the bird played backward in my mind. It lifted from the strip of man-made land and struggled through the air, taking back its last breaths, and moving toward its first. It got stronger and stronger and landing on the post of the dock, with the others for the last time... for the first time. It lifted off, again backward and flew back home. It lived its whole life again. A life, a mind, a will. Just like me.
Now, the body, soaking the sun, rewarded for carrying the soul.
and the soul, somewhere else. A new body. A heaven. Surrounding me. Or scattered across the universe. I don't know which, or whether it is something else. But I do know somehow that the things those empty eyes have seen will never be forgotten. Even if I am the only to remember.
I am sincere because I want people to know who I really am. But sometimes we aren't suppose to show certain parts of ourselves; it isn't acceptable. So I often find myself hiding. And I am sick of trying/pretending to be something or someone that I'm not.
I already wear my heart on my sleeve as much as I can. I bear my soul to the world on this blog. So why do I feel so fake?
Because I am surrounded by fake people. Not everyone, but many. Or maybe they are real. It doesn't matter. What I think of them doesn't matter because they are they, and I am I. And while I want to know them, understand them, feel what they feel, what really matters right now is how I feel. And how I can feel better. This is because I am alone in my room, on a Saturday night, after eating way too much, and watching a movie that should have made me cry more than it did.
And I am thinking about the beautiful sun hitting the body and feathers of the bird on the pier in Illwaco.
I am thinking about how it made me feel.
I never thought I would stop photographing it.
I stared into the lifeless eye, still attached to the beak, which were both disconnected from the rest of the twisted form.
I wondered if it was bad to find this beautiful; to invade its space and capture the sun glinting off the feathers with my camera.
But this body held a soul once, and it, laying there discarded, made me find some peace in death. Because the life was gone from the eye (the eye that no longer had any function, of seeing, of perceiving), but the life was not gone, because the story of the bird played backward in my mind. It lifted from the strip of man-made land and struggled through the air, taking back its last breaths, and moving toward its first. It got stronger and stronger and landing on the post of the dock, with the others for the last time... for the first time. It lifted off, again backward and flew back home. It lived its whole life again. A life, a mind, a will. Just like me.
Now, the body, soaking the sun, rewarded for carrying the soul.
and the soul, somewhere else. A new body. A heaven. Surrounding me. Or scattered across the universe. I don't know which, or whether it is something else. But I do know somehow that the things those empty eyes have seen will never be forgotten. Even if I am the only to remember.
are a little bit of heaven.
:)
Goodnight,
(Finally).
:)
Goodnight,
(Finally).
something I wrote stood out.
like thoughts stand out.
and people.
someone I want to be.
or want to be like.
or want to be liked.
or want them to be alike.
they are.
quite.
quite different. the two paths.
the two halves.
of the moon.
make a full moon.
no moon.
new moon.
its too soon.
you're too far.
to get to.
ahh, the sky was so blue.
tonight. at twilight.
you might.
laugh.
but I'm not kidding.
i stepped out of the building that held my day
and looked across the lights.
the trees.
the distance.
it was dark.
ish.
it was bright.
bright blue.
bluer than I'd seen.
unless.
I had never noticed.
what a sight not to see.
the blue beyond the trees.
the you beyond the me.
hmph.
who is she? ["am I in love with just a theme?"]
in the picture?
in the mirror?
in the window.
out of mind.
out of my mind.
out of this time.
out of time.
["Somewhere across the sea of time, a love immortal just like mine will come to me eternally. Immortal she, return to me."]
like thoughts stand out.
and people.
someone I want to be.
or want to be like.
or want to be liked.
or want them to be alike.
they are.
quite.
quite different. the two paths.
the two halves.
of the moon.
make a full moon.
no moon.
new moon.
its too soon.
you're too far.
to get to.
ahh, the sky was so blue.
tonight. at twilight.
you might.
laugh.
but I'm not kidding.
i stepped out of the building that held my day
and looked across the lights.
the trees.
the distance.
it was dark.
ish.
it was bright.
bright blue.
bluer than I'd seen.
unless.
I had never noticed.
what a sight not to see.
the blue beyond the trees.
the you beyond the me.
hmph.
who is she? ["am I in love with just a theme?"]
in the picture?
in the mirror?
in the window.
out of mind.
out of my mind.
out of this time.
out of time.
["Somewhere across the sea of time, a love immortal just like mine will come to me eternally. Immortal she, return to me."]
"2 am and I'm still awake writing a song. If I get it all down on paper its no longer inside of me threatening the life it belongs to. And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd cause these words are my diary screaming out loud, and I know that you'll use them however you want to."
...or not
...an excess of thought
...not enough time in a day
...too much to say
...overheat
...left on repeat
ask me
throw me into the sky to find out why I am
this is dis[torted]
diction
[ad]diction
[contra]diction
fiction.
like dreams
[insight into life beyond the stars we see]
but not for me.
reality.
is hard.
soft
strange
slight change.
I'm
insane.
insom[niac].
[oh Sleep, pull me down with force, so I can see a new day and smile once again.]
...or not
...an excess of thought
...not enough time in a day
...too much to say
...overheat
...left on repeat
ask me
throw me into the sky to find out why I am
this is dis[torted]
diction
[ad]diction
[contra]diction
fiction.
like dreams
[insight into life beyond the stars we see]
but not for me.
reality.
is hard.
soft
strange
slight change.
I'm
insane.
insom[niac].
[oh Sleep, pull me down with force, so I can see a new day and smile once again.]
I write and put periods where my thoughts end. Where I pause. This is limiting. I hope to expand sentences and thoughts...
sometimes.
sometimes.
[but all the while, you're growing too.]
The Day of Silence is tomorrow. In a few minutes actually. 15.
What to say? Where to even start?
Reading about the internment of Japanese Americans, hearing about the genocides in Africa ect, remembering the atrocities against African Americans in the US, knowing that people were "exterminated" in the Holocaust. Learning about all this. This is common knowledge. Things we have memorials for. Things we are ashamed of. And yet, we still discriminate. We still can't figure it out; accept each other, love each other, embrace each others differences... or AT LEAST tolerate them.
Humanity is capable of compassion. I've seen it.
What to say? Where to even start?
Reading about the internment of Japanese Americans, hearing about the genocides in Africa ect, remembering the atrocities against African Americans in the US, knowing that people were "exterminated" in the Holocaust. Learning about all this. This is common knowledge. Things we have memorials for. Things we are ashamed of. And yet, we still discriminate. We still can't figure it out; accept each other, love each other, embrace each others differences... or AT LEAST tolerate them.
Humanity is capable of compassion. I've seen it.
I'm thinking, and dreaming, at the sky, in the woods. All the stories. My story. Laying on this rock. Looking upward and outward. Letting go of control. Just sitting, and not deliberately scheming... just letting my mind flow.
Anger lifted me up. Anger inspired this. "Anger is a gift."
The trees above me form a circle around the sky. Catching the sky. Catching my eye. Catching my thoughts, in the webs, of branches, of spiders (of lovers, of fighters).
For a minute or two or three or ten, there is nothing I have to do, nothing I want to do, nowhere I want to be. Except here in the trees, with the sky, and the rock, and my eyes and my ears. And my nose, and my mouth. To breathe in the air, to breathe in the life. To live. And feel. Unbarred. Unprecedented. Unreal.
An impulse to stand, and move lifts me but does not disturb the peace. Does not even seem to be a movement. Flowing. Going.
For once I know where I am going, and where I want to be...
But only when I'm in the trees.
I step out. Dance along the curb. Deliberating again, but still not disturbed. The light of day, the stillness. Captured. The anger, the energy. Quelled.
The beauty. The simple, pure, healing power brought by the quiet and stillness of the trees...
Anger lifted me up. Anger inspired this. "Anger is a gift."
The trees above me form a circle around the sky. Catching the sky. Catching my eye. Catching my thoughts, in the webs, of branches, of spiders (of lovers, of fighters).
For a minute or two or three or ten, there is nothing I have to do, nothing I want to do, nowhere I want to be. Except here in the trees, with the sky, and the rock, and my eyes and my ears. And my nose, and my mouth. To breathe in the air, to breathe in the life. To live. And feel. Unbarred. Unprecedented. Unreal.
An impulse to stand, and move lifts me but does not disturb the peace. Does not even seem to be a movement. Flowing. Going.
For once I know where I am going, and where I want to be...
But only when I'm in the trees.
I step out. Dance along the curb. Deliberating again, but still not disturbed. The light of day, the stillness. Captured. The anger, the energy. Quelled.
The beauty. The simple, pure, healing power brought by the quiet and stillness of the trees...
Weekly assignment for Cultivating Voice:
This week I am trying an exercise employing techniques from “Writing as Cooking” by Peter Elbow. This version is a couple steps after the original “external cooking” I did in my notebook, but for the purposes of this exercise, it is fairly similar:
I feel that, my first step is to open myself up. Write freely. I should know how to do this… although, I censor my blog a lot too now. And I have never been able to do it for an assignment because I so often feel that my words will stick to the page, to the piece, even if I discard them later. (Maybe that is the point…) Anyway, I wish to make this cooking process work for me. I edit out too much too quickly, as my mind and my hand filter and scratch out anything less than my supposed best. For this reason, I always have trouble starting.
I write as I stare out a train window. Writing, while traveling across the grey-green country, and sipping a too-hot cup of cocoa, listening to a beautiful song I had long forgotten; this is heaven. I am distracted, I am thoughtful. I am not fluent, and well, that isn’t the point. But I pause every few seconds searching for the thoughts, and each word as though they are strewn across the landscape, or hidden in the signs that briefly enter my life, and vanish more quickly. A new song starts. “Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box. They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe.”
(Wow, I feel like I am really bad at this “external” thing because of how much I am thinking. …But then again, everything is a process--even learning a new process.)
I found this week in Cultivating Voice to be especially profound. The three sections I have divided in my mind, have each provided their own unique insights to me, helping me relearn how to project myself and my feelings onto the page; how to be open and expressive and honest with my writing. Joe Tougas’ presentation is the first of these sections. He captured me with his soft, but powerful approach. I watched as he turned a circle of people into a thoughtful crock-pot of idea, insight, truth, and questioning. He opened us up.
That was class.
On Wednesday I went to the center to work with a tutor. When I signed up, I made sure to get a different guy then I got the first time I went there two whole quarters ago. I had seen him lurking around, and I really didn’t want to encounter him again. I needed an experience that would get me cooking, rather than shoving me down the garbage disposal.
Dear Skye,
I will never forget this first session with you. When I had started to reduce myself, my writing, my art, my life to nothing, you sat with me, talked with me, and opened me up, exposing my reclusion. You stimulated my passion, my meaning. And you talked and questioned until I again knew all the things I had once found in myself through writing, but that I had lost along the way.
…I lost them through my writing too, because I had lost the art. Well, more accurately, I had given up on the art. It was no longer art for me, even if I wanted it to be, because I refused to see myself as an artist, or even as a person with the ability to be artistic.
That is wrong.
I have been creating, and what anyone creates is art, because it has the properties and involves the process of art: expression, perception, chance, meshing, molding, thought. Creation is art, and creators are artists. You, Skye, helped me remember.
Thank you,
Alex
We have just emerged from a long dark tunnel, and I look out the train window. The view opens up into a wide, bright body of water. Choppy. Waves cresting and breaking to the tune of the song that started playing through my headphones just as the darkness fell, and the clouded sunlight reconnected to this page. I stare. The train is hardly moving and I have time to see and hear, or at least imagine, a million symphonies in this particular texture and motion, this area of the water; the boundless inspiration in one site. And I can be a composer.
My final “enlightenment” this week came from the very reading that inspired this exercise: “Writing as cooking.” I am a better writer just having read it. That must be because it made me, again, look at my relationship with writing. Seeing that other people struggle with the same exact problems as I do, and discovering the techniques I need overcome those difficulties. I feel like exercising some of those techniques in this paper has already helped.
This week I am trying an exercise employing techniques from “Writing as Cooking” by Peter Elbow. This version is a couple steps after the original “external cooking” I did in my notebook, but for the purposes of this exercise, it is fairly similar:
I feel that, my first step is to open myself up. Write freely. I should know how to do this… although, I censor my blog a lot too now. And I have never been able to do it for an assignment because I so often feel that my words will stick to the page, to the piece, even if I discard them later. (Maybe that is the point…) Anyway, I wish to make this cooking process work for me. I edit out too much too quickly, as my mind and my hand filter and scratch out anything less than my supposed best. For this reason, I always have trouble starting.
I write as I stare out a train window. Writing, while traveling across the grey-green country, and sipping a too-hot cup of cocoa, listening to a beautiful song I had long forgotten; this is heaven. I am distracted, I am thoughtful. I am not fluent, and well, that isn’t the point. But I pause every few seconds searching for the thoughts, and each word as though they are strewn across the landscape, or hidden in the signs that briefly enter my life, and vanish more quickly. A new song starts. “Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box. They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe.”
(Wow, I feel like I am really bad at this “external” thing because of how much I am thinking. …But then again, everything is a process--even learning a new process.)
I found this week in Cultivating Voice to be especially profound. The three sections I have divided in my mind, have each provided their own unique insights to me, helping me relearn how to project myself and my feelings onto the page; how to be open and expressive and honest with my writing. Joe Tougas’ presentation is the first of these sections. He captured me with his soft, but powerful approach. I watched as he turned a circle of people into a thoughtful crock-pot of idea, insight, truth, and questioning. He opened us up.
That was class.
On Wednesday I went to the center to work with a tutor. When I signed up, I made sure to get a different guy then I got the first time I went there two whole quarters ago. I had seen him lurking around, and I really didn’t want to encounter him again. I needed an experience that would get me cooking, rather than shoving me down the garbage disposal.
Dear Skye,
I will never forget this first session with you. When I had started to reduce myself, my writing, my art, my life to nothing, you sat with me, talked with me, and opened me up, exposing my reclusion. You stimulated my passion, my meaning. And you talked and questioned until I again knew all the things I had once found in myself through writing, but that I had lost along the way.
…I lost them through my writing too, because I had lost the art. Well, more accurately, I had given up on the art. It was no longer art for me, even if I wanted it to be, because I refused to see myself as an artist, or even as a person with the ability to be artistic.
That is wrong.
I have been creating, and what anyone creates is art, because it has the properties and involves the process of art: expression, perception, chance, meshing, molding, thought. Creation is art, and creators are artists. You, Skye, helped me remember.
Thank you,
Alex
We have just emerged from a long dark tunnel, and I look out the train window. The view opens up into a wide, bright body of water. Choppy. Waves cresting and breaking to the tune of the song that started playing through my headphones just as the darkness fell, and the clouded sunlight reconnected to this page. I stare. The train is hardly moving and I have time to see and hear, or at least imagine, a million symphonies in this particular texture and motion, this area of the water; the boundless inspiration in one site. And I can be a composer.
My final “enlightenment” this week came from the very reading that inspired this exercise: “Writing as cooking.” I am a better writer just having read it. That must be because it made me, again, look at my relationship with writing. Seeing that other people struggle with the same exact problems as I do, and discovering the techniques I need overcome those difficulties. I feel like exercising some of those techniques in this paper has already helped.
