wednesday morning thoughts...

I got up early this morning so that I could get ready and be out of the way for the painter who is returning to finish our bathroom. Just as the coffee finished brewing he called to say he can't make it until tomorrow because of an emergency. He's a nice Italian man (like my husband, but twice as old) who has a daughter the same age and with the same name as me. These little details seem to give us an instant comfortability with each other and it makes me miss having a strong father-figure in my life. Maybe it's not fair to put it like that because, after all, I do have a father and our relationship seems to slowly be returning to some level of normal after a very sad and distant couple of years.

But where did that come from? My god, I sat down to tell you how happy I am that the painter can't make it today because that means I can use this extra time to enjoy a strong cup of Costa Rican coffee at a leisurely pace and finally update my blog. I've been missing my blog lately. Funny how that happens, ey? Sometimes I yearn to write like I used to. What I mean by that is that I have this perpetual assumption that I used to be a better writer, that I used to be better at capturing the moment, and that these days my blogging has become too much feeling and too little description. It gives me this floaty sort of feeling (yep, there's another feeling) and I find myself really hungry for the grounding factors of details and description. After all, my favorite thing in the world are the details.

Details: There is a stack of 14 books to the left of my elbow, all of which I am reading. And there are another 5 books in my bag out in the living room that I checked out from the library last night. I've been wondering what it will be like to no longer have a destination for my writing (school) and found myself in a state of elation as I sat with a stack of writing books in an odd shaped chair facing a window whose darkness reflected every ounce of excitement held within my body. The elation, which I still feel even now, stems from the notion that there is really no end to this writing life. And, even though I've known this all along, the re-realization of it never ceases to amaze me.

Oh yeah, but there I go talking about feelings again. Really, what I love most about writing is the way it causes me to associate every single little concrete thing with a memory, an experience, an emotion. Writing is endless like that. I've missed my blog because I miss being immersed in that way of thinking. Painting, on the other hand, is the moment before language, when language isn't enough. Painting is the breath you take before speaking. I only include these thoughts about painting because I have a hard time separating my writing and painting selves. It seems that, over time, I have become one, but never without the other.

On my desk I also have a bronze Dog-Buddha statue. It is a perfect combination of shininess and texture. It is unassuming and quiet, and all of the animals are attracted to it. Louis sniffs it and the cats rub up against it. I bought it a couple weeks ago to remind me to live from my center and listen to my heart. It has also become an internal logo for my web design endeavors. I look at it often and it has a strange, centering affect on me. The body sits cross-legged in meditation, but it has the head of a dog who looks much like Louis when he is at his calmest. Perhaps what I am most attracted to in this statue is the way it radiates love. Can a bronze statue radiate love? Well, if not, then it somehow manages to pull love from the center of my chest--love connected by threads made of filaments of the universe. They are the sort of threads that defy description. I could try, but words never seem to get it right. Words get it wrong, no matter which ones I use. The most profound experience I've ever had with these threads was when my great-grandmother died. I was holding her hand when it happened. The air opened up, just a sliver, and those threads slipped through. She was 105.

Anyway, the painter didn't come today and I have time to write...and this is the inside of my mind. Which leads me to wonder not only why I write, but what causes the desire to share it in this way. In one of the books I'm reading, The Business of Memory: The Art of Remembering in an Age of Forgetting, Lydia Davis asks:

“Why do I want the past (the material contained in my memory) to live on in the present? Why do I want evidence of it now? And why do I want someone else to know, too? Why am I not content to leave it where it is and remember it in solitude”

I am fascinated by these questions and, despite my best attempts, my own explanations fall short every time. I want to have a conversation with you. So tell me, what do you think?