Saturday













Okay, it's Saturday. I've gotten some rest, had a healthy meal, went to the library and checked out several books. In my pile of books are the authors: Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, Dorothy Parker, Joyce Carol Oates, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, Flannery O'Connor, and Milan Kundera. I'm searching for inspiration. If I can't find it in those books, it isn't meant for me to find it this weekend.

I've noticed how selfish I am in my writing and in a lot of other things I do or don't do. So often when I write poems, it is about my inner self and that has served its purpose in a cathartic way, but I feel this pull to remove myself from my writing - to be an observer of life and not step into the frame, but show others what I see and the significance of that snapshot as I interpret it in an emotional way that extends far beyond my own skin.

Perhaps it is growing older and learning how short life is and how true happiness lies beyond one's own cluster of wants and desires. The most minute details can become enormous if you allow yourself to be small and really look up close. I want to become so small I forget I'm there...just a tiny pair of cartoon eyes--watching and learning, taking it all in, finding the gifts hidden in the shadows--beneath the tall grass or buried in the scars of a stranger.

Comments

Kristin Dombrowski said…
I think it is important to have an incredible understanding of the self... It's not selfish at all! You have to filter the world, all the people, and all the many observations you make through your own mind. It's a cool thing, if you ask me!
Plus, it sounds like you have a great stack of books to work with.
Good luck finding inspiration!
January 18, 2009 at 3:58 PM
S. L. Boots said…
Inspiration, I find, is a foolish hope a writer has of having a story come to them without looking. It's a lazy way to go about writing, isn't it? ; ) There's so much of life out there that you can draw into a story and it is so terribly easy if you have your eyes wide open.

And, as for writing being selfish, it is always selfish in some way. It's impossible not to be. You're writing from your own perspective and only your perspective. Your ideas, thoughts, and beliefs are slanting your writing in unconscious ways. Weaving them to support your mind.

Although, I agree with the sentiment that you have to expand. You have to observe life first and foremost as a writer. Observation is everything.
January 18, 2009 at 6:43 PM
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