pen ink river

From Chekhov's play, "The Seagull"—words spoken by Teplev as he struggles with his writing, near the play's end in Act IV:

"I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's not a question of new or old forms, but the act of writing itself, with no thought for what's new or old, but writing as it freely pours from the heart. "

Earlier, in Act I, the doctor Dorn offered Teplev this bit of advice:

"There must be a clear and definite purpose to what you do. You have to know what you are writing for; if you embark on the artist's path without a clear aim, you will delude yourself and your talent will destroy you."

Touche!

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Another day of not wanting to turn to words, to express myself, my self, well, whatever it is I have been turning to express these years of exploring this—words, writing, the writing life, a writer's life, whatever it really is. I suppose this could be simply a low-grade February depression in response to the return of ice (this morning) and now clouds and rain (now). But the part of me that is trying really hard to give up self-delusion now that I'm in my 50s is saying something different, in a voice that's mostly muffled but constant: whatever this is, it isn't enough. And with that, whatever I thought I had to say or wanted to say seems to have gone silent for now. So my quiet life, my life with breathing room, with space and time, with room to focus, a life that's rejected faux busyness in favor of attempts at the authentic, and honesty at the expense of getting ahead—well, something's gotten lost or derailed and I find myself not very good about sorting out what it is. I may believe, as I state on my web site, that words are all we have. But right now, at this point in my life, somehow words aren't enough. Moratorium time?

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In the spirit of a new me, putting the work out there—whatever out there might mean—here are two poems I worked on in January, those days when the snow and ice kept me housebound with cats and the leftover scraps of a dream. Both have already been rejected by the Oregonian for their Sunday poetry column which means I've begun to doubt their worth, something I am supposed to be learning not to do. Especially since all it likely means is that their reader/editor has a different aesthetic from mine. Or maybe they totally suck. But does that even, really and truly matter? I know they don't necessarily get at my deepest rivers of truth. But, for what it's worth, I think they are something not nothing. Both grew out of writing exercises, mirroring language found in the work of other poets.

What to Wish For

Never insist on a flood,
raging beyond this bounty,
a diva in galoshes as she slogs
through the shimmering mud.
Be content with the verb,
the way in recitation,
it palpates, lets the shore
of the sentence roam. Rust will
desecrate the I-beams and waves
crash the pilings that hold up
the bridge. Everything's in the root
of the cattail.

Revisionist History

Snowy today and I feel less than comfort
hiding in these hills away from
black spots on the road
where drivers slide, invisible ice.
The open fields offer vista,
maybe even a tree line, and
still that doesn't turn the trail into
a useful metaphor.

I could write a friend, make inquiries
about the diagnosis, her treatment
but I prefer to stoke the fire until it's hissing
in what surely is the sound of eternal ruin.

Last night I dreamed of you again.
You, like an image on a darkroom negative.
Years ago, I watched as your eyes emerged
from the fixer. And even though I burned and burned
every scrap, every photograph and letter,
I could never snuff you out.

It's winter, and everything is taut.
The sky pales and rain-craving conifers,
heavy with snow, list until I'm certain
their trunks will warp.

Out the door, between the deck steps
and the compost, the pear tree looks
pitiful without its summertime leaves and
the water in the birdbath has frozen
like a tide arrested mid-wave.

The weather's been doing this
for weeks: making puddles,
and freezing them,
then making puddles again.

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...a new outlook or approach or attitude toward the creative writing life I said I wanted and have been trying to lead, to make my primary focus this past seven or eight years. This realization after a week in the rain forest on the east shore of Maui in a solar-powered cottage with rain water gathered for showers and water pumped from a stream in the gulch for every other need. After a week of simple, calm, peaceful, non-striving living in between bouts of run-around touring in the rental car—beaches, the north coast, the road to Hana, Haleakala at 10,000+ feet. So what does this have to do with writing?

I came back home, to western Oregon, and immediately felt turned off, almost repulsed, at the state-of-the-art, at what it takes to get one's words and one's voice out there. The turn-off was exemplified by inbox e-mails from poetry competitions and writing websites and the latest rejection from the Oregonian Sunday poetry column. So much ego to get one's preciously crafted words out there and then what? Who reads them anyway? Those are the immediate return-to-my-reality thoughts I had.

What if I stopped, stepped outside what I thought I wanted and took a completely different view? Dug deep down to sort out why it is I thought I wanted to speak and be heard. Found some way to connect in a moral, meaningful way with community that is somehow outside or beyond the very tiny world I continue to believe I inhabit sitting here alone, at this desk, fiddling around with words.

I had hoped to do such soul-searching during the time we were in Maui. But instead, it was the wind, the sound of the afternoon windward rains on the palm fronds. And it was the moon, full and rising over the slopes of Haleakala. And it was the stars—more than I've ever seen before because there is so little electric light and no power poles on our side of the island. And the sun, setting then rising, and us too, getting up with it as the light returned each and every day. While there, I wrote in my journal more than once that I felt words were failing me or perhaps I was failing the words. But maybe it really isn't either. Words had somehow fallen out—of favor, of my ego-need to record without fail what my tiny window-on-the-world self was experiencing. Words—and my often desperate engagement with them—somehow moved from center to the sidelines, lost their allure, their luster and sheen as I moved from doing into being. For me, there was a divine contentment in simply that.

So now what? And what next? How to get outside the ego that often fuels the artistic endeavor? Is meditation the only way? And then how to write what I want, what tells my story, my truth and not feel disappointed or depressed about the state of the art, the state of recognition in the corporate-dominated publishing world of today? Or how to embrace other media, other art forms, if the words fail me or I fail the words? It isn't necessarily an all or nothing, rather a continuum. How to explore and move forward with that?

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