writing process

I love this description of Siddhartha Mukherjee's attempts to get himself writing....


.

start close in

Start Close In

David Whyte

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's questions,
don't let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another's voice
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don't follow
someone else's
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don't mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take

every day a new day

this morning there is a moon
a moon!
above my head
through the glass
as I drink my tea

even through the window pane
without my glasses
I can see its blue bruises
violet
against the yellow circle
glowing
around its form

the moon is not the sun
an unexpected form of light

losing words

I'm losing words for all this at the moment. And losing readers, too, it seems! I was astonished to see that in the week I posted the Paul Oertel interview excerpt I apparently had 90 people come in here. I find that hard to believe.... I wonder who you people are???

Anyway, I'm slowing down towards the holidays, and reassessing the way that this blog makes me do words when perhaps I'd be better off with something else. I probably won't post much now until well until January. Or even February.

I did rather want to post the end of an interview in the Saturday Guardian  with Ralph Feinnes, in which the interviewer accuses him of being selfish for not having children. It's an interesting few paragraphs about why being an actor is the opposite. At the end of the interview, as a plane roars overhead above the caravan they're sitting in, he apparently bangs the table and says, 'it's not selfish, it's generous......'.

Perhaps I'll put more of it in here some time when words are working better for me.

secret home

I was just watching some of Rebecca's other films. This one, Secret Home, is... well, have a look ....



  

rebecca's film

My friend Rebecca is a lecturer who also takes astonishing photographs and makes films. Not many people get to see what she does.

She flew to New York earlier this year to make a film about the September 11 memorial weekend.

Here it is: http://vimeo.com/30037736



 

I think continually...

I think continually of those who were truly great

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from endless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of the white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Stephen Spender, published in 1933