WEEKLY WRITER'S PATH #32Back when I would sneak out of my bedroom window to write poems about fairies in the Midwestern moonlight, someone told me I couldn’t just write about things that were beautiful; poetry was more than just beauty. I remember thinking I couldn’t write poetry if I had to add politics to it.
Not long after, my father died unexpectedly and everything I wrote was tinged with that introduction to death. Ever since, I have been trying to write only what was beautiful with the result that somehow, death, impermanence, dissolution was always lurking just beneath the surface.
For nine months in this blog I have given myself the permission to write just about beauty for beauty’s sake. And now I have come to that time of year—fall, when nature’s impermanence is so clearly manifest. And yet, the events that have marked this season are the epitome of heavenliness.
As a writer of beauty, I must log that I have my first paid writing gig of the year: content development for a garden designer’s web site. It is not every year that I am paid to write anything, so I must celebrate it here with you.
As a viewer of beauty, I have purchased my first “real” camera. My subjects this week have been what I can shoot without leaving my backyard. I have been focusing on a pair of volunteer sunflowers that grew up in my son’s garden out back. Their heavy heads are bent toward each other with care as their seeds turn from soft gold to hard black. In their graceful swaying in the winds and brave tenacity and sunny deterioration, they remind me of Ronnie and me.
As a promoter of the beauty within others, let me announce that Ron started a new job today in a field where we all know he will bloom and grow. What more important work could he begin than learning water management? We should all find ourselves in just such an indispensable position.
Lastly, as a lover of technological beauty, tonight I sit with my new 17-inch MacBookPro in my lap, loving the speed and ease with which I can do the things I do a hundred times a day. Thanks to so many people who helped me define my business and my plan, who trusted in my ability to create work, I have been able to assume a business loan that has made these advances possible for me.
Although my dream of my own office is still a dream, and my DIZZY SUSHI manuscript floats “out there” looking for its true home, I can create my virtual office here with you.
And perhaps your imagination is better than mine and you can tell me what color the walls are, and what dimension my desk is and we can dream it up together next year.
