Writing and The Inner Critic

There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.

~ Haruki Murakami

I am a self proclaimed perfectionist, though I have spent the better part of my life trying to dismantle the harmful aspects of this particular trait. After all, it’s not something I cultivated, it’s how I came into the world. And so you can well imagine how challenging it is to simply capture ideas and experiences and release them into locution without the Censor’s head over my shoulder nodding or tsk-ing, depending.

origin of image unknown

I remember a creative course at Vermont College some years back – where we were required to actively engage expression in an artists’ journal. In fact I came across this little black book just the other day. It was shocking to note just how tight my words and images were compared to the present, how inauthentic in their dance with caution. And it was refreshing too, recognizing how far I’ve come with regards to loosening up in order to reveal more of myself to the reader. I still remember my dear professor, a genuinely supportive woman who proclaimed us all artists, whether we believed it or not. I did not, at least in the realm of the written word.

I knew I was an artist from early on, as I’ve always been able to depict a likeness in pastel. Considering writing as art was intimidating, for it touched on my vulnerability as a wordsmith. I had never taken a writing course, ever – I was too afraid of being criticized for a necessary and enjoyable endeavor. There was serious and there was pleasurable, and never the two should meet! Happily fear itself had never prevented me from writing – which I have done consistently throughout my life. (Let it be noted I wrote mostly poetry, allowing me to hide neatly behind metaphor as a child disappears behind the shaggy trunk of an old hemlock.) Meanwhile this teacher encouraged a free-flow of ideas and images, whether clipped from magazines or culled from our own heads. I didn’t fully grasp the deconstruction process until much later, witnessed through years of journaling in pencil with many erasures and careful rewording.

Thankfully my journals of today are messy – scribbled and replete with crossed-out mots and margin notes. I have finally allowed myself to record ideas as they flow from my mind, (mostly) minus the Censor.  I’ll admit though, and I know I’m not the only one, that when I post on WordPress and hit that “Publish” button, errors I hadn’t seen before pop up like caddis flies hatching on a still pond. Suddenly I’m “Updating,” hoping nobody picks out the adjective I’ve used twice in the same small paragraph. I guess perfectionism can never truly be eradicated, for it does retain favorable aspects. I still strive to produce a body of words that flows nicely and musically onto paper, delighting the reader not only with intriguing ideas but with the beauty of our splendiferous English language. It, and you, dear reader deserve no less.

image: flyfishingfromscratch.com

HORSEBACK

What is it, this pleasure -

wedding form wholly to the

flesh of another, thrill of

elongating one’s body by the

breadth of something fully itself,

extending our paltry power into

virtual infinity, equine

muscle and hoof the increase of

torso, of leg …

 

What rapture to join

fused, to trust the

majestic one

completely to carry us

upon its back, not buttressed into

too-cumbersome seats fashioned for

domineering men, but

skin to hide, running

unprotected over

sky-streaked fields, synced with

earth as one who keeps

faith with her …

 

We, who long to ride on backs of

great whales singing to the

depths of an

indigo sea, never

caring who

listens.

 

image: worth1000.com

 

FALLOW

My handwriting is atrocious at best. That sprung, I have always written (save for the academic) in longhand. Only recently have I become lazy in over-using a keyboard out of habit. This has resulted in a stilted proclivity not to write much of anything at all. Easy to blame abandonment by the muse, especially in the face of life fraught with its share of challenges.

What invitation is declined when technology supplants flow from cosmos to graphite – how does the intermittent caress of a hound’s cheek or shifting positions from supine to seated alter the creative process? Or is it the time of day – brilliant sunshine on my shoulders would only cloud an LCD screen … Does the soft glow of my bedside lamp casting golden upon the simple lined page grant more poetic license than a heated box merely prompting brain to punch keys (and what gets omitted)?

How do sunlight, wind through a panax hedge, two lazy dogs by my side and the urge to pause and reflect (thus gazing out toward the sea or sweeping expansive emerald fields dotted with cattle) – how does the lone frigate bird circling overhead or the distant drone of tires on asphalt, the mellow tone of windchimes or the shiver of a summer breeze contribute to a fecund flowing of words onto paper?

Yet and thus – begins the day.

RED

is the color of today, of summer

sunset streaked across a

foreboding sky, of my

kinky hair, of

blood, the

pumping verve of the

human heart –

 

Red is poetic, indignant, the

hue bleeding through

eyelids while

blinking at the sun,

red -

 

seeping through bell-bottom

white, in the seventh grade when

Woman replaced the lost

childhood within.

 

Well-red depicting

exertion, exhaustion,

excitement; well

loved –

Red, not brunette.

 

Definitely

not

blonde.

 

Red, not white or blue.

Red, not the

primary color, but

burgundy

merlot

vitality and

vigor, simply:

 

Red.