A Legacy of Sorts

During a conversation I had recently with a friend, she commented on how much she used to like my newspaper articles. When she asked what I'd been doing since I stopped writing them, I told her that I'd gathered about a year's worth of those essays and had them published in book form. It was, I explained, my way of leaving something more tangible for posterity's sake, something more lasting than a trail of newspaper articles that would eventually get lost in some virtual and dusty archive.

This fits right in with why people write books in the first place: they either have an important story to tell, a lesson to teach, or a vital message to get across. And while a newspaper article can be pleasant to read, it doesn't, in my opinion, offer the same lasting value as do words preserved forever between two covers. It's no secret that some books are written purely for their entertainment value. The stories they tell lack substance and are designed merely to help pass the time on a rainy afternoon. Then, there are those books that teach and from which we stand to learn something new or be reminded of something we might have forgotten. As for poetry, they are paintings that use words rather than pigments to tell a story or to share the author's thoughts in a unique, lyrical and often highly memorable way, condensing often complex ideas into neat packages of symbols and mental images.

Essay writing, on the other hand, differs in that it generally conveys important truths or information either individually or collectively. A single essay can tell a small piece of the story, while a collection of them based on a specific theme expand and extend into all sorts of possible directions that theme might be taken in. Based on fact, essays not only share knowledge but broaden perspectives, and the themes of many are timeless and never lose their meaning no matter how faded their pages.

Writing is hard work, and the competition is stiff, given how the internet has opened venues up to everyone and anyone who can type a legible word. Bad writing abounds, but don't tell its authors that. For many delude themselves into thinking that contributing to micro-blogs at a penny-per-view makes them bonafide writers. Anyone can nail a few boards together into something that vaguely resembles a book shelf. But only an artisan can make that book shelf into something you'd want to preserve for all time. And therein lies the difference between writing and good writing, only there are exponentially lots more words to wade through than there are poorly-nailed-together boards before one reaches that conclusion.

So back to my own attempts at writing, humble as they are. I knew going in that there was a very good chance that I'd die before ever getting rich off them. And on that note, I take great comfort in the fact that many of the world's best and classic authors were long gone before their work made an impact. Names like Dickinson, Poe, Kafka, Hurston, Keats and Lovecraft are hardly to be scoffed at. But in truth, they all left bodies of work that would be appreciated only after their demises. That's a sobering truth indeed, and it leaves a writer, any writer, with a choice to make between hoping for some sort of tangible remuneration or writing simply to keep one's spirit alive long after the clock has stopped ticking.

Because writing, like any art, is an extension of the author's spirit. And writing, like any art, requires imagination that generates ideas, and when enough of those ideas have accumulated, they need somewhere to go, releasing bits and pieces of the creator's psyche in the process. This is easy to see in van Gogh's "Starry Night," where those twirling star vortexes adequately depict the painter's inner state at the time. It's not so easy to decipher in Toni Morrison's complex narration, but it's there in how she makes us dig to find its meaning.

So I hold in my hand a purple book that contains a year's worth of impressions garnered when I lived in the woods or some place that wasn't far from them. Hopefully others will hold their own copies, too, and I am going to try very hard to see that that happens. Not because I seek fame and fortune but because I'm in that book sharing what I've done, where I've been, what I've seen, and what I've learned, and I hope that readers are listening.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876

My Reality

Do you ever have one of those days when everything outside of yourself is so perfect that you can't help but wish that everything inside was just as perfect? Today is one of those days, at least for me. Outside, the weather is what you would call picture-perfect...cloudless blue sky...bright sunlight bathing the leaves that seem to have unfurled overnight this year...light breeze...70 degrees...Who could not love such a day? Certainly not I, but then, for one brief moment, I turn inwardly, and there it is--my reality--and it is nothing like the day.




Oh sure, I could make it like the day. I could sit here trying to convince myself that all of my many problems and issues have no power over this day, that no matter how much I rant and rave (inwardly), the sun will continue to shine, the clouds will stay away, and the day will glow. For nature, as has been said, really doesn't care much about me or my issues, and everything around me existed long before I got here, so I am but a blip on its radar screen. It will persevere with or without me.




But once again, that would take yet one more enormous effort of the will on my part to achieve, to pretend, for the remaining hours of this day, that all is as well within as it is without. So is that really what it's about, getting up each morning and facing each day with a renewed resolve not to allow reality to spoil the view? If nature, and all this beauty around me is indeed a balm to the soul, then all that means is that my soul needs a lot of balm, and that the underlying issues will never go away and will need perpetual tending.




I've come to the conclusion that everything I do is but a way to offset the inevitable, which is that someday, all this will end. When my mother died 12 years ago, I spent the next several years grasping at whatever I could that simply FELT good, or at least that felt better than facing the truth that she was gone. I bumbled about for a long long time dabbling in whatever eased the pain for a few hours or a few days, and it took as long, if not longer, to finally reach a plateau where that was no longer so immediate, and I found that I could get through a day without needing so much solace or comfort.




Which takes me to where I am now, once again grasping at those things that feel good, and that make ME feel good, though they now represent choices that are vastly different from those I made back then. Now they involve walking in the woods, taking photos of the things I see and love, watching old movies, losing myself in a good book or some good music, and, of course, writing.




Always always...writing!


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS

Getting Into Gear

Some days, there seems to be no going forward at all. There is, in fact, no movement at all...not going forward, no going back, nothing. Just a standing still, an infuriating incapacitating lack of movement that could easily set the stage for stagnation, and then the ultimate--death. Not in a physical or biological sense, but death nonetheless, of an idea, a possibility, the permanent blocking of a path that had not that long ago seemed to open and unobstructed.




Yet here I am, stopped dead my tracks, unable to take another step forward. And I call to mind the words a math professor once used to describe the peculiar habit I had back then of coming to a screeching halt when a problem presented itself that I could not solve.




"It's like you come to a tree," he said, "and you stop. Instead of moving around it and continuing, you stay behind the tree, looking around it, but afraid to go on."




Well, in terms of math, that fear was very real. It was an algebra class, and I'd never even got the gist of fractions and decimals in grade school, so I had no business even dabbling in anything beyond basic math. And that fear? Well, it was of failing, of course, because if I wasn't certain of anything else, I was positive that only failure lay at the end of any mathematical journey I might undertake. And I haven't been proven wrong in that theory yet.




But words? What do I have to fear from words? Plenty. That they won't come out sounding right, that I'll have to rearrange them until they do, and then, when will I know I've succeeded? Or maybe I'll think they flow well and adequately convey my meaning, but how can I be sure?




The truth? I can't. I can only trust that my years of crafting sentences and building them into paragraphs will work, and that others will want to read them. Because at its most fundamental level, writing isn't about hoping people will read my stories and like them. It's about reading my life and seeing me at my most exposed and hoping they'll understand and not think me too ridiculous.




As most serious writers know, writing isn't simply the act of stringing words together into pretty necklaces that we hope will sell. It's about stepping out into broad daylight wearing all our faults and our foibles imprinted on a sandwich board for all the world to see. And for many of us, those boards are large and very heavy and sometimes hard to carry all day, every day. But we do.




Because we must.


https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS