This week has been climaxing on this theme, works and words I've needed to write...to pick back up and begin again to do that which feeds my soul. Write. I am in the process of writing a book...though, shamefully I must say it's been nearly a year since I was really and truly writing with the fervency I know is there if I would only give it the time to exist, to be....and yes, I want to justify my absence, the time in between, but...bottom line it wouldn't change things for me.
This week, I did it though, I picked my keyboard back up and opened the document, the book to be, and started at page one, because writing just isn't the formation of words and sentences, paragraphs and plots, it is also the revision, the edits, the evaluation of what's on the page and where the end must be to see if there is a compelling and a connection from where you are to where you want to be at the end, and how the reader will travel with you. So my writings this week are minor in words, but major in that again the book is in process and the relief I feel takes me by surprise, though it shouldn't. It is as if I've been holding my breath for a year, without need or reason...and so here I am breathing again and feeling a bit silly for not breathing for this past year.
Today, not only did my blog undergo revision but as I was cleaning out a drawer of papers I've been meaning to transcribe I came across a letter I was writing to myself to reflect on the changes that happened to me in the year 2005. (I started this reflection of the year 2005, just after the start of 2006, so the memories of the time lines and the hardships, the awe was still fresh at both the abundance I'd experienced and also the sharp edged trials.) The letter was on nice paper, a good pen scrolled the words, thoughts and captured what I'd lived through....or well, at least they did for the first 4.5 pages. I fondly picked it up and I remembered exactly what I had wanted to do that fateful day in 2006, I remember exactly how it felt to be me at that moment, knowing how pivotal 2005 had been and how important it was that I put it all down....and today I read those pages, both as the woman I was in 2006 and the woman I am 3 years after that year....and at the end of the last word, which left me half way through a sentence I felt real grief that whatever had interrupted me had caused me to leave the whole letter unfinished. I still mourn a bit, not writing it as the woman I was in 2006, a survivor of the year 2005, raw and real...vivid....
2005 was a big enough shift for me that 3 years later I still remember it...it changed me that much. But I write today as a woman who has grown since, I am a product of those changes, and all the ones in between. And, though, I've never been good at journals or journal type things, I suddenly today realized that this has to change, I have to change this...I need to do what it takes to have the discipline to do so. I may not write about what I ate for lunch, or what the weather was, or what the news said...or the even the timeline of my days...I need not write about the minor hiccups, minor routines....but I do need to write.
Life is a journey, each day, each year only comes across us, through us once. And we are never the same. This a gift. I'd venture to say there are things, moments, memories and circumstances we all wish we could go back and react differently to, act differently in....but the value of the sum, the whole is still beyond price, greater than the sum total of the parts, each part bigger than we realize as we live within each one...
One hang up I've had is, well, I've not felt I mattered enough to undertake such an effort like recording my life. I've felt inconsequential, back ground, minor, boring even...but that is not true or right. I do matter. I am special. We all are. I easily see the wonderful, amazing, greatness in every other living soul...how priceless, how valuable...and why I don't give myself the same standing is a long and complicated intertwining of many things, but the great and glorious news is I don't have to see myself the same as I once accepted as only right, and only just for who I am. I don't see myself accurately. This I acknowledge, and confess. But I'm trying to see myself more truthfully, see myself as God sees me....a beloved daughter, a priceless soul....or at the very least at least bring myself up to the same standard and level to which I see everyone else.
The journey is important to mark, and remark upon. One of my pastor's has had a crisis hit his family and he and his wife have begun an online journal to both capture and communicate what is going on, what is happening and I treasure it. It is a gift and an honor to read and pray for them, to be given the details of this part of their journey as it happens. I am amazed...they are so wonderful, great, amazing, so....I lack the words, but I'm blessed and I treasure the time they take while they traverse the part of their journey to stop, to write, to bridge the journey with thoughts and the events I am not witness to in person...to include all who would dare to enter, to read, to walk with them and beside them...through words, through prayer, through...
So here I am, rambling, trying to find my way from the beginning of the entry to the end, trying to grasp the point that taunts me from a vague place in my subconscious, as if it is at the bottom of a river bed, trying to rise to the surface...but the silt still holds it, coats it, and it isn't light enough to float yet, to journey lightly on the top of this ever moving river of life.
I am thankful to be writing again, both here, on paper and in my book...I fit into me again, and there is a sigh, a pressure released...and the possibilities are endless but reachable...the hope ignites again, burning stronger and solidly...not that it was ever extinguished, but suddenly I find myself turned towards it rather that trying to live with it at my back, in the distant reaches of the light and warmth it gives as if the edges were really where I wanted to live, as if I actively picked the shadowlands...when really it was by not choosing, not acting, not fighting, not staying by the light, not feeling as if I deserved to stay by the light and the hope and the fire that resulted in and allowed the distance to span, to grow, to inhibit me...to slide away through inaction, indecision...it wasn't a leap, it was a sudden voila, and I realize my return will not be such a momentary flash of light either...
But for now I write, I see the fire of hope, the warmth and feel the corresponding spark within me, feel the draw and the pull...and I throw aside the weight declaring, incorrectly, that I first be perfect, or brilliant, or ....no, I simply just need to be, and to write...and that is beautiful. Beautiful for the priceless imperfections of today that shape who I am and will be, and mark where I have been and who I once was, and the transitory state that exists only in this moment, too fleeting, too volatile, but present for a breath, for right now...a present, a gift, a precipice.
Words on a page---
Pages in the wind---
the book of my life (to quote Sting)...
Today, though a blog.
~K
1 comment:
Yippeeeeee. A new entry. I am a happy girl. Thanks for the inspiring note of searching. I really appreciate what you mean. Take care my friend. Love ya
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