Dear Writing Buddy,

.

PS.







"... If you read between the lines? You'll know that I'm just trying to understand..."



When Dad got so sick, I made myself a mental Zen Garden. I thought of you. You seem alot stronger than I am. So I pretended to be strong too even though my knees were knocking. It took a while but slowly my knees stopped knocking and to my amazement I became strong too. Not the "lord it over people" kind of strong. The focused climbing up the side of a cliff strong. Slowly but surely until I looked over my shoulder and there was the sea and the top of the cliff. The bottom of that cliff far, far below me. The confidence in my heart...

Well it happened.

Somewhere between when you and Darlene were the first people to post on 12dogs until now?

I found my writer's voice. It's good. Like how you would miss climbing? I would miss writing. It's not a reactive sort of writing. It's not calculating either. I think about it. Ask myself the question, "Is this what I mean. If someone were to read it, agree or not, would my meaning be clear? Would it cause them to think about the world? Is it worth the time it took for them to read it?" Then I'll read it again. Set it aside. Come back and re read. I think that is what a writer does.

Remember the story about the little boy who sits on the dock with his flower? He's contemplating the enormous events that he just doesn't have the experience to understand. To him life is about the immediate. I am cold. I am hungry. Why are the adults so sad? Where is my Mom? I can close my eyes and see that place. With all the things good and bad that have happened to me, I was very much like that little boy. This year has been different. I finally could no longer keep my eyes shut to the pain of loss. I was lucky though. Somewhere in Heaven God took pity and my Dad didn't die before I could say and hear the words, "I love you."

I think that both of us should stop questioning the people who love us and who stay. Maybe we should take pity. How hard it is must be to be loving such prickly, un huggable, porcupines. We should hug their necks and sit silent. The love that is there is like a quiet cool breeze on a very hot day. If we don't sit still we might miss it.

You will never know how much I miss hearing about you and your life. The good thing is, that unlike Billy and my great aunt and Irish David and my little one, we got to say good bye. There's good in that.

I found that out with my dad.

I hope that someday we'll get a chance to chat again. There's lots to tell.



Kind regards (and hugs),

Ann



.
PS

Poetry.

I like writing poetry.
True the blog posts allow for the deconstruction of conventional grammar and punctuation, but it's still not like the freedom of poetry. For me poetry is like singing with the bare minimum of words.Sometimes the words are important but sometimes it's just the sounds they make that tell the tale. I guess it's what the Expressionists and then the Cubists (visual artists) were about. The sensation of a flash of light across the night sky is not about the words. The disorientation of walking into a flock of birds at night. Words like whirl. LOL I feel a right ass "lecturing" you about that. Honest ot God. I just loved the idea of having someone to tell that to who wouldn't shut down and say, "Oh no here she goes again with the talking about ...."

Hugs agan.

C