I’m always writing something in my head. That habit forces me to evacuate the right now of countless situations. I’m wondering if I miss out on things. And most of the time I am digesting something from years ago.
I remember my mother getting irritated at Christmas when I would write in my notebook (after I opened my presents, of course). I think that at times she, and other family members, took writing as a kind of negative, ungrateful body language.
I have been spending time with Matthew Thorburn’s book Subject to Change. In the poem Triptych, he speaks of the dichotomy involved in the writing life. He says, two lives, pushing on in one, one circling back to re-imagine and rearrange.
That duality is something I think makes someone a writer or an artist of any sort.
I’m not complaining. I wouldn’t trade my writer self. It’s probably the most authentic me, but sometimes it makes me feel different and lonely.
3 comments:
i have always found that people who don't really know you are intimated by seeing you writing in notebooks. it's as if you dare to withdraw into something they don't understand or are not a part of. it's a powerful tool in public, the notebook and pen.
I always figure everyone else is preoccupied too. Half the time they only pretend to be there. With writers they don't bother pretending . . . They just pull out a pen and paper. And why not?
Thanks for your comments.
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