Warmth is wasted on the young.
When you have swollen joints, aching bones, sore muscles, then you feel the fingers of heat massage and mend. Why are the young given so much energy and strength when often they have no direction; couldn't we save some of that for later in life when we've figured out what we want but the world weighs us down? So often those who have it don't appreciate it and the rest of us are beggars at the side of the road chasing flies from our nose holes.
The snowfall yesterday was all bark and no bite. It amounted to nothing at all, a little whiteness that disappeared by noon. The long range forecast promises rain for Monday. Rain! Ha, ha, winter, you lose.
I wonder what I shall ever make of these pages - anything? There are prayers here, and promises. There are sentences that read like poems and sentences that real like I'm a real cantankerous son of a bitch. Yet as the pages accumulate, they are a full core sample of one piece of ground everyday at the same time. I am not nearly observant enough, but something has been caught in the web I've been weaving. What? What have I caught?
Every time I look, I'm seeing myself in a fun house mirror. I need a little distance yet. I need to continue making my notes, yes, but let the distance work.
We have blue sky this morning, and softness along every visible horizon. The world has texture. It is the kind of day to touch things - the bark of trees, the hard edge of the snow on the ground, the red image of the house. The retreating darkness.
The problem with staying in one place is that you go nowhere; that is also the beauty of it.
There is winter enough that frost clings tight to all the windows of the car. If I stood here an hour it might cling tight to my ears, here in the shadow of the neighbor's house.
Smoke from chimneys in the village hangs low in the suddenness of cold air. The flag at the cemetery hangs down its head. Even ninety six million miles away - the sun. My skin. The warm kiss. Longshadow is lifted.
I imagine that it's very interesting and satisfying to read this entry from 6 years ago (!!) and see much writing and blogging you have done. And with all your walking, I bet you aren't even aching any more than back then! Congratulations on showing how it can be done, one day at a time.
Posted by: marja-leena | January 26, 2007 at 01:34 AM
Hi, Marja-Leena. Something will come of these Morning Drive Journal pages, yes. They piled up to a total of 1,000 pages. Perhaps the cream of them, say the best 200 pages, would make an interesting book? We'll see. I'm too busy right now to think about it, but that might be next year's project??
Writing does get done one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, one page at a time. As Annie Lamott says, "Bird by Bird."
It helps if you have established who you are, so you take a stance with your world, which shapes your writing and gives it a roundness it wouldn't have otherwise.
Posted by: Tom Montag | January 27, 2007 at 05:30 AM