When you just can't write...

Sometimes the world overwhelms. Sometimes life becomes that thing that happens while you're making other plans. Sometimes available hours to write just don't appear. 

Sometimes you wonder why we live in a culture that does not support culture and the arts so that that time would be available...

It's especially hard when you are in the middle of a project you love, that is coming from deep within you, that wants to be written, that is even important, and that you know is some of the best writing you've ever done.

And life unfolds...

April Is No Fool

A lesson in clinging: the winter that is so reluctant to let go. Every now and then we get a teaser, a day when it actually feels like spring. It lasts a day or two, then - well, today, for example. Back in the 30s and a winter weather advisory for the overnight.

A lesson in clinging. If you want something new, you gotta let go - mostly of expectations. Winter and spring are in this intense dance this year, more intense than in many years, and it is exhilarating to be in it, to watch the wrestling match, knowing that the cycle does ultimately tell us which one will finally relent.

Our urgent mission to 'gentle the human'

I'm a little surprised to see how long it's been since I've posted here. Many excuses - a conference in Kentucky celebrating the work of Wendell Berry (which I wrote about on my project blog), finishing up the first set of revisions of the memoir (exhausting internal work), fundraising for my project, and then this week...

...this awful week.

Something surreal about watching things unfold this morning. CNN and MSNBC ought to be embarrassed for much of their coverage. On some of the alternative media websites and Facebook pages, there are thoughtful, disturbing, careful back stories to all this that challenge the tendency to knee-jerk responses, automatic stereotyping, and rush to judgment. What cable TV wants is to be there for the shootout, and waiting for that means filling a lot of empty airspace with nonsense. Watching these reporters being semi-hysterical amidst the police presence in Watertown reminds me of the guys who stand in their hip boots and raincoats while being battered by hurricane winds and rain shouting into their microphones, "The wind is really blowing now...!"

Hey, guys, we get it. There's a big storm going on.

In times like these, why write?

I am driven to write. The more I do it, the more driven I am. It starts crowding out all the other things I need to do, like make a living. Writers mostly have to do something else to make a living. A sad statement about the culture, really. This isn't just true of writing, but all the arts. The culture doesn't value a masterfully written poem, or a painting that makes one gasp, or question the social and psychological constructs of our world.

But writers are also challenged by the sheer volume of words. Words proliferate. They pour off our computer screens and smart phones with a thousand apps and cable TV. And as they proliferate, they get louder and louder until we are all just shouting at each other trying to be heard. That's how it seems to me, anyway. And I am so weary with all the shouting. So more and more, I just turn it off.

Most of us know that not all words are equal. And we know they can be used to destroy, to manipulate, to construct false worlds, even to shape values, including some very destructive ones (Hitler, for example, was a master of words when up on a platform in front of adoring masses).