Fragments, crumbs, and not-even fragment-or-crumbs
Saturday, 24 November 2012 07:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59[It isn't so much that I haven't been writing, it's that I haven't been writing very much, and I haven't even been posting what I have been writing. Some of these pieces are months old, and I'm resigned to not finishing them, but I'm going to post them anyway.]
[written April 18, 2012, edits made November 4, 20112]
"A Piece Of Lawn Furniture Fell. All The Way Over."*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I talked to a robin the other day.
I was walking around the parking lot and I heard a lot of rustling in some bushes. Then a robin hopped out, and I asked, "Was that you, making all that commotion?"
The robin did not answer.
It isn't that nothing's been going on lately, it's just that I haven't cared much. A couple weeks ago I put up a display of my poetry at Central library. I'm going to take some pictures of the display because I think it looks nice.
I'd gone the day before to buy paper to print the poems out on, and I wanted something kind of sepia-looking, like very old photographs. So I went to Arvey's, which is an office supply place near work.
Pat and I used to go there a lot. We also went to Office Depot a lot. We both loved office supplies.
But Arvey's was special. It was where I bought the special papers I used for Dreams Unwind, my Twin Peaks novel, including the back cover that, unbeknownst to me, was heat sensitive. (It was a kind of sea foam green, and if you put your hand against it, the color would temporarily disappear. I only found this out when I got it out to the car, but it seemed so perfect for Twin Peaks. I don't think the paper still does that.)
Arvey's was also where we bought our wedding invitations, and where we bought envelopes for the cards Pat used to make.
It's closing in a few weeks. It's a real place, and real places are becoming obsolete.
I went out for dinner and to another Unbroken Bones performance on Saturday. I wasn't one of the performers, but I had a nice time. I went with my friend Juli. And Diane and Howard were there. I successfully drove home in the dark, and it was foggy, and Meg was waiting for me.
I'm starting to feel better, probably because spring is moving forward. I'm also making real progress on a very old Wiseguy story that had been languishing for many years. Sometimes I'll just think, "Soon I'll be the person who has finished this enormous project." (And I do mean enormous—I've already got about 53,000 words written, and there are still plot points I have to hit.) And it gives me a lift.
I'm getting tired of people describing their posts about the bad things going on in their lives as "first world problems." How many people on your flist have something other than first world problems"?
Actually, I have a friend who is having what I consider to be a second world problem, although she lives in the US. But when she writes about problems she's having, very often it's about her first world problems. That's because they're all her problems, just like all of my problems are my problems–
Which world category would not having a door that closes properly fall in? (I'm talking about both security and keeping the weather out.) And because that was my most serious problem, should it have been the only one I wrote about?
The reason this upsets me so is that I see it as having a chilling effect on writing about whatever is important to each individual at the moment. If I want to write about receiving two broken discs from NetFlix right in a row, I shouldn't feel like I have to add the caveat of, "I'm sorry this is so trivial, I'm sorry I'm not writing about something more important." And neither should anybody else.
*Alonzo Bodden
[written April 18, 2012, edits made November 4, 20112]
"A Piece Of Lawn Furniture Fell. All The Way Over."*
-:- -:- -:- -:-
I talked to a robin the other day.
I was walking around the parking lot and I heard a lot of rustling in some bushes. Then a robin hopped out, and I asked, "Was that you, making all that commotion?"
The robin did not answer.
It isn't that nothing's been going on lately, it's just that I haven't cared much. A couple weeks ago I put up a display of my poetry at Central library. I'm going to take some pictures of the display because I think it looks nice.
I'd gone the day before to buy paper to print the poems out on, and I wanted something kind of sepia-looking, like very old photographs. So I went to Arvey's, which is an office supply place near work.
Pat and I used to go there a lot. We also went to Office Depot a lot. We both loved office supplies.
But Arvey's was special. It was where I bought the special papers I used for Dreams Unwind, my Twin Peaks novel, including the back cover that, unbeknownst to me, was heat sensitive. (It was a kind of sea foam green, and if you put your hand against it, the color would temporarily disappear. I only found this out when I got it out to the car, but it seemed so perfect for Twin Peaks. I don't think the paper still does that.)
Arvey's was also where we bought our wedding invitations, and where we bought envelopes for the cards Pat used to make.
It's closing in a few weeks. It's a real place, and real places are becoming obsolete.
I went out for dinner and to another Unbroken Bones performance on Saturday. I wasn't one of the performers, but I had a nice time. I went with my friend Juli. And Diane and Howard were there. I successfully drove home in the dark, and it was foggy, and Meg was waiting for me.
I'm starting to feel better, probably because spring is moving forward. I'm also making real progress on a very old Wiseguy story that had been languishing for many years. Sometimes I'll just think, "Soon I'll be the person who has finished this enormous project." (And I do mean enormous—I've already got about 53,000 words written, and there are still plot points I have to hit.) And it gives me a lift.
I'm getting tired of people describing their posts about the bad things going on in their lives as "first world problems." How many people on your flist have something other than first world problems"?
Actually, I have a friend who is having what I consider to be a second world problem, although she lives in the US. But when she writes about problems she's having, very often it's about her first world problems. That's because they're all her problems, just like all of my problems are my problems–
Which world category would not having a door that closes properly fall in? (I'm talking about both security and keeping the weather out.) And because that was my most serious problem, should it have been the only one I wrote about?
The reason this upsets me so is that I see it as having a chilling effect on writing about whatever is important to each individual at the moment. If I want to write about receiving two broken discs from NetFlix right in a row, I shouldn't feel like I have to add the caveat of, "I'm sorry this is so trivial, I'm sorry I'm not writing about something more important." And neither should anybody else.
*Alonzo Bodden