pen ink river

Silent up here in the trees this morning. Occasional tire-on-Oak-Creek-Road sounds but not many. Soprano buzz from the iBook, chirp of finches and chickadees outside. The trees stand sentinel, tall, unmoving. They thrive on silence, I think. It's their preferred medium of communication. Meanwhile, I bog down trying to read Gertrude Stein's book, Tender Buttons. Any distraction is better than her attempt to cubistically? fracture words so that it's all about sound, not meaning. Hmm...I actually like the titles of her pieces better than what's written underneath. Things like: Water Raining, Malachite, A Cold Tumbler, and Suppose an Eyes. I think the idea is that we are supposed to be getting inside her consciousness. So, is she a genius or what? Is she only looked at today because she was friend and mentor to famous writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald? Was she only able to do this writing way back then because she was independently wealthy and Paris was pretty affordable at the time?

I don't want to think this way but so much is the serendipity of who and what you are born to. Gertrude Stein, family money, so artistic options and adventures. Tillie Olsen, kids and ironing, and her slim volume takes years to get written and luckily finally gets out. Where do I see myself on the spectrum? I really ask myself, days like this, am I really an artist? Or merely a person who appreciates art, is enchanted with creativity? I wonder if I'm not selfish enough to be an artist. If I don't have a strong enough ego. If I like daily life and its simple pleasures too much -- order and sunlight and running errands, crossing items off my list.

Off to work, physical fitness bulk foods, in barely three hours. Soon the classical music show Performance Today will come on. I rather like having that in the background, a murmur I half-listen to while I fritter away time, ask these questions about what, really, is MY work.

I begin to think writing -- poetry, stories, shorter nonfiction pieces -- is, for me, becoming avocation instead of vocation. How can I get to a place where this doesn't feel like surrender, or some kind of failing on my part? I love words. Always have, always will. What I don't love is the business of getting words into print. Maybe I don't even love the process of writing, revising, writing, revising -- over and over and over it can seem endless -- that seems to be the received wisdom of how it works in this creative writing 21st century biz. I am supposed to know my purpose, to have a mission for this new, improved phase of my life. How does one know when it's time to revisit long-held myths, a long-idealized idea of what I wanted to do, to be in my life? That's where I sit now, this 19th of July, less than five months from 50. Asking questions. Forgetting to simply breathe instead.

I want to make peace with this, or make peace with the unsettledness of living with this.