Being a Writer / Writing one's Being

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While writing I need to write....

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I promised myself I would not write about the virus, masks, quarantine, any of the daily conflagrations (however quiet they may be--  --especially from my writing studio on the second floor of a big house at the top of a small hill on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood, where daily we forget to wear masks when we leave for a walk, because we don't run into people right away.) I promised myself, because I did not feel like privileging my experience, which has been a lot more benign than that of friends living in packed cities.  And because everyone else is writing about it, and I always have to be "different" -- right? But I'm breaking that promise because even though I do not live alone (and I cherish my partner), I have been feeling too alone of late, and it's strictly, I think, because of the New Normal. I am still "new" in Bloomington, and how do I meet people?  And now the pall on daily life, has thickened, because the current quiet belies the pr
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Equinoctal

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How quiet I've been. Just working on the project -- which has a new working title, Thank You for Being (etc). The mind wants to be quiet, as well, at least around the edges of writing -- which, frankly, is... most of the time. As Michael Gottlieb notes in his essential little book, What We Do: Essays for Poets (quoting Max Beerbohm): "the only problem with being a poet is figuring out what to do with the other twenty-three hours of the day." In these "other" hours, it is better for the mind to be absorbed in the rest of whatever is going on:  emptying dishwasher, checking chickens, hugging partner, gratifying cats. Vacuuming (a terrifying word, if you really think about it). Staring out second-floor window onto the bright grass, leaves of the dogwood below starting to turn, angle of the light already sharpened in that autumnal way that brings such delight (even if it it signals -- especially on this date -- a turn toward the dark. For a while... ). But the mind,
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