13 July, 1998

The Shape of Words

It's been a while since I've had time to sit and just write.
Actually that's not quite true. It's more a case of not really having time to sit and write at the computer. Work was very busy Thursday and Friday and after I got home I had very little desire to be on the computer at home, let alone sit and write for a half hour and then double check HTML for another twenty minutes.

I've been absorbed off-line with paper-writing. Stories, diary entries, poetry. You name it, it's been pressed into the page with a pencil or pen into tasty sheets of white or off-white paper. After a rather long hiatus, my paper journal is flourishing again and by default, the on-line one is wilting. It seems that, as much as I do write, I only really have enough energy for ONE constantly updated effort.

What that means I guess, is that I'll be concentrating on writing whatever I want and that I'll let you in to share the pieces that I feel like sharing, when I have time to type it in. Typing is not my instinctive means of communication. Sabs, prefers to type, not only because his handwriting is very nearly illegible, but for him, the ideas flow more easily when he's using a keyboard.

I need to feel the texture of my words, I need to feel closer to them, so my most organic and complete writing comes from the nib of a fountain pen. I love to watch the words shape themselves, see the form of each letter and feel how each word fits together with the next. There is a flow across the page, which mirrors the flow in my brain and there's something so intrinsically satisfying about that, which I can't get from typing here on the computer.

The form of the letters doesn't appear until after I've fully formatted the pages you see. I compose first and then make it pretty with all that nifty HTML code. Which is not the same relationship with the words as creating them from scratch, with your own two hands. Typing, often seems to be very divorced from the act of creation to me. It's like how working in clay is one of my favorite artistic media, though more often I draw, simply because clay is very messy and requires a space which I do not currently have.

Of late, I have been missing my art classes dreadfully, and wondering again if I've in fact picked the right career path to follow. I love history, don't get me wrong and I am very excited for the start of classes in just over a month. But, sometimes I think that I should have tried harder to make art more central in my studies. After all, those were the classes which I always enjoyed the most of all, even though I loved English, History and all of my languages courses.

In one art class, a potter came to visit us and gave a talk about throwing and wood-firing techniques. He also talked about careers and following your bliss. He reminded us that money wasn't everything and that if you find something which you love to do, then you should do it, because you only live once, and getting stuck doing something you hate can be a horrendous waste of a lifetime. He was a smiling, relaxed person who seemed utterly at home up to his elbows in clay, in clothing spattered with samples of slip and glaze, speaking earnestly to our group of teenagers on the cusp of life.

His speech affected me very deeply and I've carried his words with me for a long time now. It's at the heart of why I've been so reticent to even look at high-powered business corporate jobs and getting myself locked into the business world. However, at the same time I don't feel like I've followed that advice very well. Of course, part of the problem has been figuring out what my bliss is.

A further complication stems from my extreme insecurity and self-doubt: I do not believe that I have the talent to do most of the things that I love to do. So I keep settling for those things which are firmly within my realm of capacity, out of fear of winding up on the street. How cowardly, how shallow, you may say. And it's true. I am a coward, I'm not rising to the challenge of living. It's something which makes me very sad and melancholy and restless.

I stare out the window, more and more often, mulling all of this over, looking for ways and means and reasons. I peruse the leaves of the community college catalog and think about taking a ceramics class. I look towards the Fall and the upcoming history classes, and wonder what will become of me.

Words shaped my weekend in a negative fashion as well. An argument about inconsequentialities. Tempers flaring, shouting, crying and that horrible sick feeling, as if nothing will ever be okay again. But we patched it up, spoke and re-crafted and fixed and re-built and the space is clear again and the love flows smoothly, for the most part, over the small bumps and curves in the river.