11 August 2007

I spent much of today writing.

Transcribed narcissistic jottings from the backs of envelopes and paper bags written one-handed at 70 miles per hour cross-country on an ice chest in the passenger seat.

Two weekends ago, I became an advanced student of Shintaido. Which basically means you abruptly learn in a truly loving way how little you know. Not only how little you know about Shintaido, but how little you know about yourself. Hard to be uppity with a mouth full of sand. Still. My body seems to understand more than my brain does. We examinees were told we did very good, and I’ll trust the examiners.

It’s been hard to write and drive at the same time, so when this first quiet day arrived, there’s been an explosion of documentation keyboarded among mounds of untouched dirty clothes. 11 PM has rolled around, and I still have nothing for nativearthling. The pieces I finished I fear are much less significant than I make them out to be. Then there are unfinished essays about wind-powered generators and their giant white blades rolling down the highway (came out perhaps too school-marmish and didactic, deserves more pop), about powerful synchronicities (likely impressive only to the writer), about the Four Explorable Mysteries of Shintaido (or are there 5? Or 3? What makes me an expert?), about accidental detours through cemeteries (I can do what these folks have done! The art of being plucky about the inevitable…), about how really, I’m still among the living: the unfulfilled intention to write instead of about death, about sex (no recent enough research), and finally, about creative ways to blame hypnotic trances for every mistake and meanness you’ve committed this year (that really could be the reason, you know!).

Meanwhile, I’ve lost my reader. Every decent writer has a reader, that bottomless interest in every word you write, sparkling or flat, typed or scrawled.

Still. It seems I’ve managed one more blog entry…

4 comments:

kedoin said...

First, congrats on the Advanced Student ranking!

Second, readers are out here. I doubt I'm the only one :-)

I still find it amazing that when you think you have nothing to write an entry about, you still create an intriguing entry with teases about all the things you *could* be writing about...
-Rob

linda said...

Thanks, Rob. Thank you very much!

Anonymous said...

Well, you have at least 2 readers now.

linda said...

Ha! Thanks, Jeanne-