Quiet

This blog has been gathering dust recently, but not for want of things to write. And not for a lack of desire to sum up my world in neat little packages of blog posts and creative pieces.  After some difficult family news in early autumn, I thought often about things I wanted to write here, or somewhere.  I drafted a few posts that will never see the light of blog day.  I wrote some weepy prose that only I and God should have to suffer through reading (sorry, God).

After a wonderful friend-filled trip to England and Scotland I struggled again with the right moment to encapsulate, the day I wanted to enshrine for posterity.  I sketched a shaky poem on the back of an Edinburgh postcard while sitting alone on a rock, staring across town, and I thought perhaps I'd work on it when I got home.  The postcard is tucked away on my bookshelf, likely to get stuck between the pages of a book I won't crack open for years.

My blogging has been mostly experiential, housed on The Minneapolite, detailing restaurants and things. The more creative exercises have felt tired, and even when inspired, my posts to this particular blog (old and dear though it is) have felt like a chore.  To add insult to injury, my poetry muscle is weak these days, and teenage in its tendencies. I used to draft poems for no reason at all, just to capture something.  But now I've reverted to my teenage poetic self, scratching out verses only when I'm hurting, the only element missing is the Tori Amos soundtrack wailing in the background.  I at least have the decency now to let Bon Iver provide my depressive ambiance.

This isn't to say that I've been unhappy, only that for some reason my creative writing has been limited to poetry and that poetry has only flowed on the days he has chemo, or the days work bores and exhausts me, or the days I'm just tired of this specific moment in my life.  I rebound quickly and maybe the poetry helps, even if it is melancholy and not worth sharing. Maybe everyone has creative seasons where the creation is a means of comfort, not expression. I'm also going to take a moment here to blame the damn Minnesotan cold.

It seemed for awhile that my creative writing was moving in some sort of publishable direction. Stories. Poems. Essays. Fits and starts of interesting things, most of which I abandoned. I even sent a couple stories to a small press and their rejection didn't bother me, at least not much. I was writing often and well, excited by my own ideas and toying with the idea that maybe I should share them.  Maybe others would read this stuff. Maybe I could be a writer.

But sometime this fall that all just stopped and I cannot pinpoint the hurdle.

I remember in college I said something to a dear professor and friend, something about wanting to be a poet. He is a poet himself, and I know that he was kind in his encouragement, even though I shudder at the thought of the poems I shared with him. I penned them in a tiny journal with a tough, almost wooden, exterior that was secured with ribbon. There were little Shakespearean quotes on the corners of each page. He picked out phrases he liked, descriptions I'd made, or rhymes he thought particularly smooth or lovely. He was specific in his praise and gentle in his comment that time and practice would be beneficial.

So I'm chalking up these last few months of dull-as-dirt, self-indulgent poetic drivel to a season of "practice" that will yield something noisy and fruitful someday. My creative pen has never been silent for this long. But I like to think that exciting things may be developed in the quiet spaces, maybe there's a shy story in there somewhere that needs a bit of coaxing before she starts making her own tap-tap-tap on the keyboard. Maybe she likes Bon Iver.