If I felt keen to begin yet another unfinished novel, it could have as title perhaps: What happened to last year? Not as mysterious as Last Year in Marienbad, but now that I recall, not much happened in that film except some beautiful black and white cinematography, whereas my past year was typically event-full, and my determination to spend more time writing, indeed: to devote myself to getting writing done, dominated.
Over past months much of my writing time has been interleaved with a lot of reading, in the areas of poetry, poetics, cultural theory, and -- yes -- ongoing reading in the areas of deep ecology, environmental art, and climate change. That left little time for posting to a blog, and at last count I think I have about four blogs begun on various burners, all of them sitting and barely simmering, just taking up space in the ether.
One of the frustrations of sitting at a desk at home or at a library, continuously tapping at a keyboard or scribbling with a pen, is the isolation from what we habitually call the real world, as if the act of writing somehow is not itself "real" and when humans set aside time to write from our hearts and minds, that the words we write are not not real, and therefore have no "meaning" unless they appear on television or newspapers or magazines or some form of published media. Some of the finest reading I've found is on blogs written by people who are variously wise, witty, informed, passionate, eloquent, and more than anything else, dedicated to sending their words out into the world to find their own communities of readers. The process of committing time and thoughts and language to the void is daunting: many of the sites I explore are created with lavish dexterity that boondoggles me, and few blogs that I follow elicit comments of substance, possibly because so many of the readers are spending their time writing blogs themselves. Yet there is a kind of mycelium created by all this languaging that creates a sense of engagement in matters of importance to our collective culture. Therefore, rather than commenting on posts by others, I will return to this fallow blog and start writing here again.
I owe this growth spurt to email conversations with a couple of west-coasters who are reliably passionate about our planet and our fellow creatures. One of them is a non-blogger albeit a generous communicator, writer/editor, community activist, circle-dancer and ongoing inspiration. The other is an educator in the best sense of the word, in her ability not only to devote herself to "finding out" but also to passing it on with a generous spirit, and for anyone wanting inspiration in green education I recommend the resources of her blog.
With some temerity, because this is a work in progress, I'll post here something new that arose from a much larger piece I'm working on. On a later post, I'll elaborate.
Continuous birth*
"people do not always agree about what is alive and what is not"
- Tim Ingold
from dust blown through rain
a mucky birth
bursting to flow
nested in weeds
among tadpole swerves
grown into frog-rich
rivulet voicing
ripples and splash
through curves
running open
running long running
wider rainfall nurtured
banking and overflow
captured and stilled
in a lake built under a bridge
life source choked
now to narrow passage
un moribondage
a stagnant sinking
corseted by thick-turfed roof
far below a fashioned course
for good walks ruined :
bridged silted and silenced
the buried creek barely breathes
dreams of rebirth
January 16/2010
(revised January 21/10)
n.l.
*from words in an essay by Tim Ingold, “Rethinking the Animate, Re-Animating Thought” – also the epigraph; and acknowledging Mark Twain’s definition of a golf course. The words un moribondage (morbidity) from a poem by Douglas Oliver for the resonance of bondage in it.
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