Writing from the heart and other difficulties

...words...don't come easy...to me...

I am in recovery. I love community/arts development work. I find it exhausting because I give it everything I've got...and feel that it is deserving of this devotion. But there is a cost. This cost is my inability to write while I'm living through it. I sit down with all these words floating through my mind and just can't get them out through my fingers and into some kind of form.

Part of this is the desire for honesty in my writing and not all of community development is a bed of roses....or maybe rather it is, thorns included. I feel nervous to put into permanent record the things I haven't worked out from my side. How to communicate with people when every conversation feels like an attack. How to find out practical information from an organising body that is the opposite of organised, how to keep the dream alive when you feel despairing of just getting to next week. All of this with the highs of genuine collaboration of ideas and purpose and direction, great conversations about story and how crucial it is for our lives etc, making connections across country, across the country and across the world. It's a mixed bag and feels good now it's coming to a close but I lost my ability to write and I'm wondering if this is important or not...or does one lead to the other, times of darkness and light, going in then emerging out....no easy answer ...only to just keep going, to write when I can and maybe consider that there is a preparing that happens and a readiness that emerges of its own time, that this time is ok and necessary. 

This process is mysterious and I have always loved a good mystery. 

Washed

What was my name before I was born?

A beginning again

Going beyond the rudder....

Poetry in residence.....2014

The way in sometimes takes time and space.....gentleness with ourselves is a way....this work was about stopping people in the moment

Going in....

A lot of time writing for me is about quiet and anything but writing. Lots of thinking and seeing and phrases float through my mind....I may get hooked on a sentence or a word....I may be captivated by the breeze as it gently sways a silky oak branch and the leaves seem to shimmer....it used to really frustrate me, this time of brewing.

But now I realise that I have to let it be and thicken until I can't possibly hold it in a moment later... and I sit down and write for 6 hours and still not want to stop! I love this time. I feel free and purposeful, a sense of satisfaction unlike any other....and at times when I'm lost in it all I dream of days like this....of there being endless days like this. And then it begins again....

I feel the same whether I'm writing poetry or a project outline... The clarity of expression that emerges and the sense of direction is such a relief. The perfect piece for me is the marrying of words that form an action with beauty of their form across a page...font, spacing, and colour become significant....the word formations become an image just as much as something to be read...I feel as if I'm aiming for a kind of subversive absorption...my meaning transmits without effort. Constantly and effort to be effortless!

And yet the honesty of my effort feels as important as the final work as presented...in fact it feels more important and can sometimes feel too much, too overwhelming....but then the last full stop is tapped in and something in me unwinds and I breathe differently and I know that a new work will soon begin....