Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Write or Wrong

I got a comment from a writer-friend a few days ago that has stuck in my head because it’s so true: I think too much.  I often write down the weird little thoughts that occur to me, and one of my favorite writers and bloggers, and someone I consider a real-life friend as well, suggested to me a few weeks ago that my maintaining a little book of notes was proof of my being a “writer,” just as another esteemed blog colleague sent herself phone messages so she wouldn’t forget what she thought of to write about while she drove. 

I’m comfortable thinking of all three of these guys (gender neutral, of course) as writers.  I have a hard time thinking of myself in the same way but I do write a lot and I do keep a little book of literary notions.  In fact, I just finished transcribing the notes out of just such a little book that I’d cleverly left in my sweatpants pocket on laundry day.  Here’s a tip, for those of you who are curious: soaking notepaper in detergent impaired the overall functionality of the book as a whole, so I had to decypher everything marginally good that I’d written there and re-write it in a spare book I luckily happened to have on hand. 

My point?  Oh yes, of course… I write notes to myself so I remember what to write in my writing book so I have something to hurl up here at the ‘hut for the general delectation - because I’m always thinking of crap and every so often it seems like a decent idea for a little essay or something.  But just as often I think of something and don’t write it down.  Yesterday on the bus I had just such an idea escape me.  I gazed into the open page on my lap and had no idea what I had intended to inscribe on it.  So instead I wrote about that, and here it is:

It came to me while showering
the lather purling off my flesh
I thought about it as I drove
while circumnavigating death
the notion came to mind as I
lay swaddled in my cozy bed
such brilliant shafts of gentle wisdom
never would escape my head
each time I chose to let it go
not to inscribe it anywhere
assured myself I would recall
forgot my memory’s impaired
I’d put off setting it in notes
till once I’d shaved, arrived, awoke
and sit here now, the notebook yawning
reconstructing trees from smoke.
The mote of genius I had cherished
all the world deserved to hear
original and entertaining:
temeritous, has disappeared.
A million blogs, a billion words
each soul an author in its way
I wish that they could read my mind
but I forgot what it would say.