To Write Is To Get It Wrong ~ Over And Over
When I sit down to write I go on a sort of road trip; a plane ride, a swim, a horseback ride. I take that first step never quite knowing where I’ll end up, not concerning myself with it. I picture taking flight as a bird, sometimes an eagle, sometimes crow, infinite being, unlimited possibility, embodying universal creativity as though there is no ME in it. I circle the earth, streets I used to live on, places I played as a child, towns and cities I visited in my youth, places I return to in my heart, even now. I recall emotion, touch, taste, smell, the people I knew then, the people I know now. I journey vistas of my heart, memories, experiences. Sometimes a song will appear, reminding me of the knowledge I had, what I was experiencing when I heard that song for the very first time. I remember heartache, joy, loss, friendship. I pluck out a moment, a single stone, and the first word reveals itself to me. I bring that word to the present, to the page, and give it life. I do this because it helps me enter a door(I am no fan of closed doors) and this is the way to threshold. Once through this opening, there is no past or present or future. There is only the confession of my entry. The next part is messy and illegible, but it is the next part. I erase line, then paragraph, then chapter. I wait for something to speak to me. I wait for the starting point of that something. I notice the minute hand on the clock, advancing always rapidly as I race to catch up, knowing another day is fast approaching and there is no backward allowed in all of this. My body accepts and rejects the finite hours of the day amidst the immeasurable nature of creativity. I question everything. I turn to my dictionary when vocabulary fails me and learn I am always learning. There is a swirling feeling in my head, a throbbing excitement in my heart. I think I lean on emotion too heavily but that can’t matter in this. If it did, I’d never write anything. I can’t mimic or adjust myself to be like other writers. If I do, the doors begin to shut. They are someone else’s doors. So it is. Continue. Stanzas form, a poem emerges. I reorder it, try to be of fresh mind, come at it from behind, beside, underneath, within. Take out ‘I,’ put it back in, take it out again. I write with colour and sound hoping the images and thoughts are portrayed properly, the way they deserve. I need to remind myself that the reader has likely never been to New Zealand, the Great Wall, Sedona. That only I know what its like to be me, that not everyone has been mere feet from a wolf and for a moment, switched places with it. I am my own animal. I speak to people who aren’t there. Prayer follows me throughout my days – this is within me, and you? The way a coffee drinker thinks everyone loves coffee. The poplar trees in my minds eye are the ones from the movie Gladiator or a farm in Metchosin. Those are the poplar trees I know, they are the ones I write about. I transplant them into a poem(for you, my love). I may forget to tell you of their beauty, their breeze, their white and green, their tall, their grandeur, their importance to my joy, my writing them anew.