Drafts of Liquid Imagination and Table Top Dancing
8-30-02p to the new reader… this is when I originally wrote this entry,
A four day weekend
Friday--
They're playing Spanish music.
I want to get up and dance around the cafe, clattering castanets, twirling skirts.
Oh no they changed the music. A dumb song about" keep smiling, keep trying" set to a monotonous beat. Oh yeah it is in English.
Oh good they switched back to the Spanish music.
My feet are wet. This is the first time I have walked the two miles to Borders. It feels good to have walked through wet grass, smelling the grass and honeysuckle, feeling cool winds and listening to the killdeer overhead. We have had so little rain that they are considering closing businesses one day a week. We save the water normally wasted waiting for the shower water to warm. The corn which grew 7 feet tall in early spring rain is dry, yellow, with few, tiny corn husks. Walking is so much better for observation. I discovered a hidden field not yet eaten by development
A young German couple is studying a road atlas. I envy them. I wish Mary and I were traveling in Germany and some German would-be writer is studying us.
I see my face reflected in the screen of the PDA- full face, edges blurred--- I look like a hooded monk. I wonder if in a previous life I was a monk, perhaps an evil monk --Savonarola. I hope not the simpering parsons in Jane Austin novels. I wonder if I took delight in putting witches to death. When I was young I was in the emotional and intellectual clutches of nuns. Religion was a big deal to me. It was a guiding principal. So I am not surprised by such thoughts as these. I would love to embody my objections to Religion in a character. The religious character would be in conflict with a character representing beauty. Wait! Wait! that was Chocolate! Read that book. Saw that movie.
I have been anxious that I have not been writing lately. I have been reading more lately. You said that would help my writing. It has only discouraged me.
"How Can I possibly write that Well?"
So here I am at Border's. Writing to my Audience of two. Ok granted, two special gifted people who seem not to mind my self indulgence and wandering, unfocused attention.
The cappuccino has been too hot. Sipping slowly searching soothing something will happen soon.
I have loved reading "Poetry to Read" This is the first poetry book I have bought in years.
Wow. It is only 10 am. I am beginning to feel the effects of the caffeine. I have a general feeling of well being. My hands feel slightly numb. I can almost see my thoughts drift outward in long threads. Some made up of the DNA of words...spiraling into new creation... some in musical colors. I can almost step out of my physical self and hop from table to table looking in the eye of each person as they are reading something. They cannot see me. I can see them as they really are. Some surprise me. I thought that guy was smart and all he is, is a hollow shell. Another deep draft of liquid imagination and I can fly, knocking books from shelves, commanding them to return before the "humans" see them, lining them up by color and returning them in an instant. I seem to be caught between instances. My time opposite the beat of a human heart. I tire of flying. So I float on the soft notes of piano jazz and muted trumpet, watch the piano strings vibrate, count how many times per second the trumpet reed hums.
Now I float in air riding up on each bubble of thought from each cafe patron's head. The bubbles turn to threads. I want to sew them all together. There must be a story here.
I am so undisciplined, so utterly lazy. I need a stern teacher. Anna claims to be lazy. Yea right. Why do I see a weekly poem? Why do I see all those points wracked up that Anna can get a digital camera? (Not to mention the art work and endless summer company)
Then there is the Jasmine flower growing up in a new house, responsible for children, giving so much of her time to anediting award winning magazine... she has Arose to the Throne.
Cappuccino is gone. I am off to home. Then to the Library. Maybe I'll write more lately.
A four day weekend
Friday--
They're playing Spanish music.
I want to get up and dance around the cafe, clattering castanets, twirling skirts.
Oh no they changed the music. A dumb song about" keep smiling, keep trying" set to a monotonous beat. Oh yeah it is in English.
Oh good they switched back to the Spanish music.
My feet are wet. This is the first time I have walked the two miles to Borders. It feels good to have walked through wet grass, smelling the grass and honeysuckle, feeling cool winds and listening to the killdeer overhead. We have had so little rain that they are considering closing businesses one day a week. We save the water normally wasted waiting for the shower water to warm. The corn which grew 7 feet tall in early spring rain is dry, yellow, with few, tiny corn husks. Walking is so much better for observation. I discovered a hidden field not yet eaten by development
A young German couple is studying a road atlas. I envy them. I wish Mary and I were traveling in Germany and some German would-be writer is studying us.
I see my face reflected in the screen of the PDA- full face, edges blurred--- I look like a hooded monk. I wonder if in a previous life I was a monk, perhaps an evil monk --Savonarola. I hope not the simpering parsons in Jane Austin novels. I wonder if I took delight in putting witches to death. When I was young I was in the emotional and intellectual clutches of nuns. Religion was a big deal to me. It was a guiding principal. So I am not surprised by such thoughts as these. I would love to embody my objections to Religion in a character. The religious character would be in conflict with a character representing beauty. Wait! Wait! that was Chocolate! Read that book. Saw that movie.
I have been anxious that I have not been writing lately. I have been reading more lately. You said that would help my writing. It has only discouraged me.
"How Can I possibly write that Well?"
So here I am at Border's. Writing to my Audience of two. Ok granted, two special gifted people who seem not to mind my self indulgence and wandering, unfocused attention.
The cappuccino has been too hot. Sipping slowly searching soothing something will happen soon.
I have loved reading "Poetry to Read" This is the first poetry book I have bought in years.
Wow. It is only 10 am. I am beginning to feel the effects of the caffeine. I have a general feeling of well being. My hands feel slightly numb. I can almost see my thoughts drift outward in long threads. Some made up of the DNA of words...spiraling into new creation... some in musical colors. I can almost step out of my physical self and hop from table to table looking in the eye of each person as they are reading something. They cannot see me. I can see them as they really are. Some surprise me. I thought that guy was smart and all he is, is a hollow shell. Another deep draft of liquid imagination and I can fly, knocking books from shelves, commanding them to return before the "humans" see them, lining them up by color and returning them in an instant. I seem to be caught between instances. My time opposite the beat of a human heart. I tire of flying. So I float on the soft notes of piano jazz and muted trumpet, watch the piano strings vibrate, count how many times per second the trumpet reed hums.
Now I float in air riding up on each bubble of thought from each cafe patron's head. The bubbles turn to threads. I want to sew them all together. There must be a story here.
I am so undisciplined, so utterly lazy. I need a stern teacher. Anna claims to be lazy. Yea right. Why do I see a weekly poem? Why do I see all those points wracked up that Anna can get a digital camera? (Not to mention the art work and endless summer company)
Then there is the Jasmine flower growing up in a new house, responsible for children, giving so much of her time to anediting award winning magazine... she has Arose to the Throne.
Cappuccino is gone. I am off to home. Then to the Library. Maybe I'll write more lately.
posted by Kajgreb | 5:46 PM
3 Comments:
I want to get up and dance around the cafe, clattering castanets, twirling skirts
and kebgrt, what sort of skirts do you wear, a little white greek something, scottish plaid, or perhaps something that Mary has cast aside?
I loved this entry; even if it's old I don't remember reading it
before.
You wish you were traveling in Germany with Mary? Not I, although I do have a hankering for the Scandinavian countries. Sweden, take the ferry to Denmark. I would love to visit Finland where only as a very last resort are people jailed and a very popular pastime is dancing the tango.
Tomorrow I am traveling to St John NB to take a Smart Car out for a test drive. (I am bringing a cheque just in case)
Hey Kaj, what an extremely entertaining stream of consciousness you've penned! But this is old. I want to see new. What were you thinking yesterday, or today? Were you in cappuccino heaven, or riding the waves of a still September storm?
We are all lazy and undisciplined in some way or another. And its so very easy to compare ourselves to published writers and come out feeling discouraged. But what you don't see is the first draft of these published works. The first drafts are the "vomit" drafts as one writer recently put it. After the first draft comes the real work: editing it, polishing it, removing whole sections, rewriting entire works. Exhausting. Exhilirating!
Write a short story Kaj, maybe 500 to 1000 words. Make it stink. Make it bad. Then go back and edit it a hundred times. And you'll see that you ARE a writer. A very good one!
Kaj,
I am so happy to run across this!
I have never known you to be lazy - in fact you are one of my favorites. Perhaps your mind runs faster than you can type?
I will visit again.
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