In recent days and weeks I've had cause to reflect on my writing and my purpose. Reading others' blogs in all their beautiful rawness and beauty, and sometimes wrenching honesty. Attending a social media conference with hundreds of dabblers and experts in this (still) new, strangely connected and faraway world.
Having my attempts at creating new words, different stories - in my work - yanked down behind my back, for reasons I still don't entirely understand.
Conversations with other writers, people who think about writing and craft it. Understanding that I'm not alone, that I'm not the only one who feels the urgency, the craving to collect and shape these bundles of meaning.
Paying to have my poetry manuscript 'assessed' by a famous Australian poet and editor, and coming away feeling despondent instead of buoyed.
The ongoing need to tell stories that I have carried in my flesh for years on end, decades even. The stories I am afraid to utter, because it would make them real. Because I don't know what will happen to my words when I release them from my body. Because of their ability to fracture the tenuous connections with the people around me.
I've tried for a long time to segment my life. Keep work thoughts and learning and stuff at work. Contain the effects of my personal life within my own time. Only write poetry in poetic places, only write about a dark history in private. Maintain a semblance of having-it-together in the right places, presenting the pretty side, the palatable truths.
I think it's time to bring it all together. Not to be different: I've always been honest. Just to go deeper. To be wide. To be unafraid of being tangential and interested in too many things at once, so much so that I hardly know where to begin. I can talk about everything, if I just begin.
To be integrated, whole -- to re-member oneself, as Adrienne Rich said, the opposite of being dismembered -- and courageous. Humming. I honor this.
ReplyDeleteThank you Holly. You are one of my role models for this.
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