Writing and the need to imagine a different world - urgently

Well, so much for my once a month promise to this blog. Missed November - a dreary, dreary month 'round these parts. Too reflective of my mood, especially as a writer. I don't know how to write of and to these times. The pace of tumultuous change is picking up speed. I take in a day's worth of shocking news and events, and then, just as I try to absorb them, reflect on them, process my own thoughts and feelings, open to whatever emerges - more shocking news and events come storming in.

Storming - too often quite literally these days. Unprecedented weather events are almost daily fare now, disrupting lives, bringing personal tragedies to thousands of families, and billions of dollars worth of destruction - and that's just in this country. But, have you noticed the culture changing its priorities at all because of these things? Do those not affected "feel" these events as part of their lives?

A poet? Really?

I find this terrifying - and moving. Poems published?

I remember being young and falling in love with Frost, Whitman, Dickinson, and wondering if I could ever be a poet. I scribbled horrible poetry when young (except for one brief verse in my teen years that I hope will be an intro page for a collection some day). Now in these later years, something in life turned me back to poetry like a thirsty wanderer in the desert of this world - you know, I can't possibly drink enough.

What matters

That's one of the phrases I put in my blog description: the writing for me is about what matters. So much of what we read, view, entertain ourselves with just doesn't matter. Yet we live in a time when so much matters, so much of what we do, our life choices, how we go through our day, what we care about, what we pay attention to - really, really matters.

I don't mean that we should not experience laughter, lightness, pleasure, playfulness, and sheer joy. We should! Because these things matter - a lot. As a matter of fact, the dearth of authentic laughter, lightness, pleasure, playfulness, and joy is part of our cultural pathology. That's why we entertain ourselves in such manipulative, numbing ways, entertainment intended to deaden feelings, not awaken them, to hold authenticity at bay rather than delve into it for fear of what we might find there.

Those mystics, artists, and psychologists who have been saying for generations that we cannot experience joy if we cannot also experience sorrow, grief, and the rest have also been right for generations.