The leaves wastes dance with confidence in the air. The wind reminds me of the mysterious chill of autumn. An eloquent, articulate state of mind. Focus and concentration calls for analysis not just intelligence.
The connections between focus, concentration and intelligence and grace or rather the grace of intelligence must be calculated struggle (internal and external) and by the exceptional connections of the withdrawn, shutdown shell of the human body questioning everything. Questioning nothing at the same time. Winter it is hard to let you go. It is hard to live with and without the sun.
I have learned as a diarist to read everything and when reading as a child reads, not thinking about censorship but rather free will and understanding and toleration you will regain, invest, claim back the energy and see, feel, be drawn to think about the innocence and tenderness behind the furious beast of the words., and once again you will be the purveyor of truth.
Courage will always soar. Let the flair of empathy dazzle alongside profound truth, the fairness of justice, and integrity. Before you dream of freedom, count your blessings. Name them. In naming them you will bring honour to them.
The sun came out today and all the world was still. Its loveliness was beautiful to see. I loved the day. I knew in my heart if I dug down deep enough that it loved me in the breath, way, shape, form that I loved it in return with its deep colors, woven tapestry, textures, leaves. You could see spring everywhere even as the weary rain announced itself. Leftovers from winter. I also knew that this day. I would never experience it again. I could see and acknowledge this beauty from my window where I spent hours working. Crafting a poem for myself to myself. Crafting a poem (in other words writing love letters to myself). Writing fiction that I hoped that I could from a short story into a novel.
When evening falls away, the night, the early hours of the morning spent ruminating, restless, frustrated, promising, pathetic (see tired), introspective, nervous, doubtful, insecure, troubled. Yes, I think it is good to describe it in the way that I am doing now. That it all fell away. For me, I trust older women rather than the younger ones. I feel love. I see love. I have a collective empathy when it comes to the outside world. When I connect with it. I have joy in my heart when I see people happy. I have my moments when I am weak.
Moments that turn into hours and days.
I perform my duties as a writer up to a point within my crowning belief system, the sweetness of the liveliness/livelihood that virtues offer me. One day I came upon ‘fire’, this gift and it lit a flame inside my heart. It has been faithful ever since. I cherish this gift.
For without it I would be invisible and that would mean a succession of deaths to me. I would under other circumstances be living in exile now in another life. A wife, a mother with a job, a proper career. If I did not write perhaps I would have been married to a writer, psychiatrist, teacher or an academic (see professor with tenure at a university).
Politics are superimposed on my ideals of love, my ideas of dead literature and literature that is very much alive. Here I am ready to give up my life to writing. Daily it is like living on a deserted island armed with a virtual treasure map. ‘X’ marks the spot. Prose is expected. It is poetry that is the unexpected. ‘X’ marks the spot where the treasure is buried. The door is closed when I am writing but I am constantly interrupted by a small child with an inquiring gaze and searching mind. A child who wants to play. I am also interrupted by a father, a mother, a brother.
Survival and drowning, strength of human will and the weakness of stigma. Knowing my limitations are what I must live with every day. I have made mistakes as a young woman (I am not so young anymore). I’m not perfect. No one really is. I’m constantly learning all the time.
From the world’s pain and my own. I know what the memory of love is, and hopefully I write from that perspective. I think with both experience, being dominated by a man’s world and a woman’s psychological framework in that space. I am influenced by other women, old or young, married or divorced, whether they are writers or not. I am influenced by the birth of the universe or of a new day in a child’s eyes. Most of all my mother’s personality.
Today I might be a writer or a woman at work in the shadow of love.