. Spinning .

The Joy of Flying

The feeling is of lightness
and the unburdening of life
that’s left behind to melt and spread
upon the sheath of earth, and be
drawn in and absorbed within its core
while freely flying far above
as in my dreams of youth
I hovered in delight above the beds
of older sisters while they dreamt
of mundane things like love and boys.

And so my eyes are raised to dance
along horizons and the budding treetops
close to home, though bound by gravity
and need, like me, to find reality
below the surface rather than to seek
except with vision and excursion
of the mind we all together stretch
and reach eternally just as
simultaneous and necessarily we sink
our roots as anchors in the earth.

I need a softer bristled brush, and oily pigments that will flow onto forgotten pastel canvas the image of the ghostly child that walked the lonely beach some thirty years ago. It haunts me still, and yet can I, with words, define with strokes of bolder color and so be forced to face the past?

It is difficult for me to study and match in words the progress made in literature, especially in poetics. Again and again in mood and tone I seek regression rather than advance upon a world that seems too harsh to live in pretty words.

Instead, a cave of poetry is formed by introspection; with walls that grow and harden in determination to act as shield around the mind too delicate to paint with the graffiti of the present.

Will faith and truth and beauty then, seek shelter underground?

Yesterday’s full schedule of events proved to be just as exciting and informative as day one of the Tunxis Writers’ Festival.

The opening act was Ernest Dorling, author of Consciousness of Guilt and Murder: A Family Affair who stressed the process of non-fiction writing as a search for truth that called upon even more than his twenty-five year experience in law enforcement. His point by point emphasis on the journey of writing and the research involved was extremely informative, especially at a community college where Criminal Justice is a primary program of study.

Author Colin McEnroe is much more than a local celebrity radio host and his personality and public speaking manner made me want him to go on and on for much longer than his brief one-hour presentation. On the topic of Memoir Writing, Mr. McEnroe read from his book, My Father’s Footprints and discussed in depth the special techniques and emotional involvement required of this genre. Mr. McEnroe kindly shared a bit of his journey as a writer, and offered much insight into the paths writing can take.

After being beaten into “submission” by all those who went before on the sorry state of publishing hopes for the first time author, thank God for Patrice Hamilton’s uplifting presentation of query letters. She offers a ray of light in pointing out what makes a submission request get at least a bit further along to its goal, and shared her own story of progress both heartening and heartbreaking that displayed a gutsiness in both its revelation and its determination.

Robert Brown teaches journalism on campus, and his experience coming up through the ranks of the media to claim the editorial position at a major local newspaper organization was inspirational. He also pointed to truth in journalism, and it extends to all forms of writing in non fiction, as well as hinting at its importance in being honest to your own voice in fictional work. Journalism is based on compression, and this format as well as poetry are two of the best teachers of truth in as few words as needed.

We were graced with a talk by Jesse Abbott who teaches literature, writing, and philosophy and so were treated to the aesthetics of writing established by his most enthusiastic and ongoing delight in poetry. Perhaps he gave one of the best definitions of muse, a word that is thrown about without clear understanding of its meaning. His readings were of exceptional quality because of his ability to get into the poetics in both voice and manner, from rap to Shakespeare, not only his voice, but his expression and stance displayed his involvement and serves as inspiration to explore poetry further.

All in all, bless Neha of Wanderlust for initiating what we hope will become a tradition.

Another interesting point brought up at yesterday’s Writers’ Festival, and clearly evidenced by these last three posts, is the mechanical orientation of reading text.

Brought up in his lecture on Hypertext Media, Steve Ersinghaus once again displayed his ability to twist your head loose a bit just when you thought it was screwed back on tightly. Using a children’s picture and text book as an example, he illustrated both the normal manner of reading a book following pages in a left to right progression, and the normal child’s tendency as well to go back and forth following memorized pages of higher interest. Linear progression is often not as vital in children’s literature, but while we may flip back in the midst of a novel for clarification—was that Bruce who raped Wendy back in high school or was it Randy, his buddy?—and discounting those who simply must read the last couple pages or dabble nosily within the middle seeking just a taste to tempt the mind, the sequence is the intent of the author. Flashbacks are carefully planned within. Hypertext, on the other hand, leads you off into a direction other than your fellow readers, and my fear of missing something or not being able to assemble the parts into a whole is one of the reasons I may be muleing around about the method.

But with the weblog, right here, every day, millions of people globally are sometimes being forced to read differently than we’ve been taught in our childhood. While every site, as John Timmons pointed out, is hypertext in action as we click away on links, weblogging presents another format, and I must admit, one that has kind of irked my natural sense of order since blog day #2. Reading from top to bottom, and scrolling rather than flipping a page, we are also subject to the disruption of storyline in the way posts are entered. Latest post on top, reading down, and then STOP! We’ve read the next one already. If you follow a particular topic covered by many posts, it would be a case of scroll down, find a starting point, read top to bottom, scroll up a post, read top to bottom, scroll up a post, etc. Likewise, every time we return to a particular weblog the first “page” has changed, leaving us with a new beginning point every time, even though it is the starting point. Flipping back (there is no “ahead” from this starting point) is a process of going through archives or categories, where again, page sequence follows an upside-down kind of chronology.

Sounds like a simple thing, and yet, if you think about it, it has overturned centuries of tradition. Who’da thunk that reading would be open to change?

Shoot, I can’t sleep.

As an addendum to the below post, one of the things that was said regarding the road to publishing one’s work is the old axiom, “don’t give up your day job.” Setting aside two hours a day for indulging in the craft of writing was thought to be a reasonable suggestion.

It worries me, or more accurately, fills me with guilt, that I personally have put so much time into writing for the last half year, often letting other things slide that sometimes really should have been given more time and effort. On the other hand, writing has helped me cope with a few of the more emotionally demanding events that have come up in my life, and I don’t know that they would not have consumed even more of me and been more inhibiting of productivity in all other areas without my ability to reason them out in writing.

Sure, being published would be the ultimate high. But the need is not there; the burning need to write is just what it is, and this is what I can do. Maybe I must learn to limit my computer time a bit. Harder still, to limit my thinking about writing even when I’m not writing. I don’t think I have physically turned off my computer in six months except once or twice during power outages or briefly for downloading upgrade purposes or other computer needs. It must be as ready as I am to produce at a moment’s notice. It was tough to be so far away from my keyboard yesterday, and will be so again today.

I don’t know. Maybe, if I can’t restrict myself a bit, I should seek professional help. But then, I don’t make a lot of money at picture framing; I might as well, since I’d prefer it, not make a lot of money at writing instead.

UPDATE AT 6:20 AM: Via Crof at Writing Fiction, a link to an article in The Globe and Mail that offers an interesting alternative in self-publishing, making it no longer a dirty word.

Incredible day. Obviously I’ve been on a roll since October–no, much earlier than that I admit. Imagination, dreams, confidence, creativity, and hopefully, skill, are just growing and expanding as if unleashed, instead of festering inside to crush these qualities under the daily routine of living. I feel like a pot boiling over.

David Pesce was a brilliant and entertaining speaker, and though I will read his book, Armistad, one can tell just by his exuberance in verbal communication that his writing must be decent as well. Victoria Zackheim spoke and read passages from her novel, The Bone Weaver and her love for her characters and her craft shone through in her voice. Both of these published writers reiterated the tough road an author takes towards publication, and while discouraging to one’s dreams, proves that it can be done, although profit is obviously taken from the satisfaction of accomplishment rather than financial gain. Discouraging, yes. But just as encouraging in the knowledge of the game, and the direction that can be taken just to continue the craft in some form, i.e., teaching, editing, hell, just having ANYTHING at all to do with the business of writing that keeps one within its arena.

Steve Ersinghaus finally got me hot on the idea of hypertext, no small feat. I resisted it as a reader, and I resist it as a writer. But anything I approach with stubborn distrust is usually something I want to know more about and question more deeply. Most of my questions have been answered by his presentation, and I’m willing to disassemble the walls I have built up against it. John Timmons walked the audience through a couple of interactive fiction pieces (although I desperately wanted him to go through Schrapnel which has been my nemesis and has never left my mind since I got into but abandoned it many months ago) and beautifully explained the writing process within it.

I can’t speak for the others in attendance, but there’s no doubt in my mind that many like me came away with fired-up furnaces of desire to continue following through with our need to create.

Who said writing is always a lonely choice of life? Oddly enough, it takes words from others to inspire the words within oneself to come out.