No one will read this

That is what I have to tell myself before I blog these days, because I am too afraid and too silent. So you are not really reading this. :)
....
... I'm blocked again, because I acknowledged you.

I wish I was Mary Oliver, kind and old and wise. But especially I'd have liked to be kind, to myself, to you. Here is what Mary Oliver would have said:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


and here is what I can say...

...
...

Looking at You

You sit quietly so well:
your hands don't fidget,
your lips do not tremble.

If it were not for your eyes,
your large, overwhelming eyes,
I would not know you were
crying.


I wrote the above but I do not like the above. Mainly because it ends with 'crying' - I wish I had found another way to say it, but right now am not keen to find another way, am lazy - and I just want to get this on paper before it disappears like other lines in my head. Lines like:
"I like to stare at dead things." I'm going to try to put that in a story. A story that has another line like "Then why do you keep our pictures still?"

'ats wat 'e sayz

more bukowski on writing

so you want to be a writer? by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.

writing saves

nothing can save
you
except
writing.

it keeps the walls
from
falling.

- excerpt, Bukowski on writing

As I lay myself to sleep

As I lay myself to sleep
Thoughts rise up from the deep.
They keep me awake.

It's too hot; it's too cold;
I can't forget what I've been told
that day.

Dreams I've dreamt, loves I've left
Rise up from the place I've left
inhabit me.

Words and thought and metaphors
The turns I shall use in my prose
visit me.

Thoughts on a sleeplessness night, and remembering how when I put my head on the pillow I knew how I'd write this article.

Absolutely WRITE

Tonight I can write so many lines... (that's a play on some Pablo Neruda poetry)

I have been greatly inspired by this artist that I met up with yesterday. I met her at a party where she told me about her peripatetic project in Cairo. I asked her if I could walk along with her, and write about it as an article.

So just from meeting her at a party, I had an idea for an article. And walking with her has taken me down so many avenues of thought already, although it was only yesterday that we walked together.

I also realized that much as she breaks out of her ken by walking with different people, I break out of mine through my job as a journalist. I write about people and experiences I have never known before, and my job forces the structure of my approach. I go, I question, I find out, and I write. And like her, I have had accompaniment on all my journeys; in my case, a more or less constant one: my editor, Joe. And Joe has often pushed me to go at a faster speed, or to go beyond my imposed self-restrictions, basically beyond my set route or map to discover newer terrain, just as Amira discovers new places and experiences the city anew with people she goes with.

I was also thinking about how I get ideas for writing my articles. I remembered that while attending another concert yesterday as well, I sat next to this bunch, and I ended up eavesdropping on their conversations. Their comments will no doubt make their way into my writing as they did in my observation of the event. And the were also talking about Cairo Ultimate - a frisbee sport group which I then looked up on facebook, and then pitched to another editor as a story for an article.

It is funny how comments, conversations, and the stuff of everyday life makes its way into your work, and your writing. As is right. Absolutely!

what am i doing?

I'm sitting across what appear to to be two korean girls practicing their arabic: a picture postcard of purpose and dedication to it.

Staring at gchat and skype - realising for the umpteenth time how uncomfortable I find it to be alone with my thoughts.

Still writing, despite it, so that I can.

I met Lawrence Rudic yesterday - who was in Antigone with Wi and I. We talked about how writing kept us centered and rooted. Kept me honest, kept him sane. Talked of Wi's advice to keep breathing, and how basic, important, and easy to forget it was. I remember that I slept last night because I reminded myself of it.

so my two humble projects for the moment are to breathe and write.

and i've added reading to the list. Currently on bookshelf:
1) Your First Novel (a guidebook on writing)
2) Incredibly Close and Extremely Loud by Jonathan Safran Foer (already love it/him)

and am debating which two to borrow from following three:
1) Teach Yourself: Creative Writing
2) Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss
3) Ian McEwan's The Innocent

I think I'm leaving McEwan for later.

Bukowski on writing

writing

often it is the only

thing

between you and

impossibility.

no drink,

no woman’s love,

no wealth

can

match it.

nothing can save

you

except

writing.

it keeps the walls

from

falling.

the hordes from

closing in.

it blasts the

darkness.

writing is the

ultimate

psychiatrist,

the kindliest

god of all the

gods.

writing stalks

death.

it knows no

quit.

and writing

laughs

at itself,

at pain.

it is the last

expectation,

the last

explanation.

that’s

what it

is.

by Charles Bukowski
from blank gun silencer - 1991
stolen from: http://zosome.blogsome.com/2007/03/22/writing/

afterthought...

...come to think of it, that moment of articulation was actually in an online conversation, which involves written as well as 'spoken' speech.

that is where the catalyst kicks in then.

***********

on another poetic note, i read ondaatje again after a long, long while..


The Cinammon Peeler
By Michael Ondaatje


If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.


You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

Talking makes it easy....

Last week, when I was writing a review on this musical performance of oud (stringed lute), these are the words that i wanted to articulate. I didn't arrive at them for purposes of the article, but tehy came much easier when i was talking to a friend:

one of the functions of music may be to point to silence, to elaborate on it, like lace.

Looking back at many conversations i have had, i find that they act as catalysts to thoughts, even the articulate ones. But strangely enough, I've been told on more than one occasion that I articulate myself better in writing than in person.

I have many an msn chat, however, that is full of amazing repartee that I don't think I could duplicate in writing, should I be writing with me, myself, and pi. :)