Skip to main content

Here's a Great Example of My Life's Commercial Breaks

Right now, I'm feverishly trying to meet a writing deadline for today. I've known about it all week, but the diversions of life (like a trip to the only pharmacy in the county that will fill my dog's prescription, a successful search for a new computer bag, and an irritated piriformis) have a way of sapping my inspiration.

This magazine article is about a fascinating real estate company in Tuscany. In fact, if I had the money, I would buy one of their properties tomorrow just so I could go out for myself and wander the ancient cobblestone streets of Italian villages. And that's just what I'm trying to convey in this article. So far, I have 162 of 1000 words finished.

Thinking that some wine might push along the creative process, I opened the closest thing I had to an Italian wine. It's a German auslese: very, very sweet, and it's from a region far closer to Italy than the Argentine wines on my shelf. So here I am molding the words in my head like modeling clay and sipping a delightful white wine and hoping that the right phrases are somewhere in the ether around me. I really could do this full time, you know.

This has been my life for the last few weeks.

My one creative endeavor has been an experimental poem that's not quite finished. I watched a documentary on Jack Kerouac last week. Although I'm not a huge fan of his work, I like his concept of spontaneous prose and the idea of seeking out and writing about life's experiences. One of Kerouac's more experimental works was a poem about a conversation with the ocean. In the poem, he captured the sounds of the ocean.

With that in mind, I sat on my porch one afternoon as the evening storms were approaching and wrote down what I heard. Keep in my that this is a very rough draft taken directly from my journal. If and when I finish it, I will share the final version. In the meantime here is my "Conversations with the Wind":

aaaAAHHHAAaaa
Flit-it-it
OOOOoohoooAhhh
Flit-it-flap-flAP-AP-Ap-it
hooooOOOoooohoooOOOooohooo
flit-flap-flap-tit-tit
ShooSheeShaShooSheeSha
haAAAAAAAAAA
hiIIIIIIIiiiii
noHAhaHaoo
shew sha sha shew
dip-dip-flit-tit-tit
whoooooooSHHHHHHoooo
shhhhhHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOoooo
whichachachacha
Labels:

Comments

Christy said…
Very fun :)
7:44 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Restless Soul

Someone recently told me that I have an impulsive streak. ("Just an observation, not a criticism.") My initial reaction was to vehemently deny that statement despite the fact that I had just confessed to walking into Total Wine and buying $200 worth of wine just because it seemed like a good idea at 11:00 on a Thursday morning. Me? Impulsive? Don't answer that, especially if you know the truth. I shared this with my therapist yesterday and his eyes lit up when I said, "I think I have a restless soul." The fact that his eyes lit up is significant since we spend most of my sessions arguing with each other about ideas like whether or not a book he recommended is filled with psychobabble bullsh*t or why I should do a bit more thinking with my heart instead of my head. For once, he agreed with me and quickly pointed out that this is not necessarily a bad trait. In fact, it's what stirs my needs to explore and to write. It's also the reason why I don't, by...
5 comments
Read more

Gators and Bees and Snakes...Oh My!

Let me preface this by pointing out that we have a deaf, epileptic Great Dane, a one-eyed cat, and a slew of young cats outside that we just haven't been able to part with. Love for animals abounds here. It seems we have a critter fest going on around here lately. In mid-September there was the Great Goose Massacre courtesy of a visiting alligator. Two weeks ago we had the Invasion of the Bees that left nearly 100 dead bees in its wake. Last week was the Demise of the Rattler. Alan heard a strange sound when he walked out on the porch last Sunday. He thought at first that it was a large dragonfly caught in the screen. It turns out that it was a rattle snake, coiled up and ready to strike. He says that he will never get the rattling sound out of his head, but I think he was a bit more freaked out at the thought of watching one of the kittens get struck by the snake. (Bonsai was apparently completely willing to risk his life to investigate the snake.) His first words to me when he pi...
5 comments
Read more

Frustrated Readers Make Great Fans

I haven’t felt this betrayed by a story line since Neo learned that not only was he not the first person to challenge the Matrix, but he was part of the plan all along. Even though I was sorely disappointed in what appeared to be a cop-out story line, I can understand the logic in that disappointing plot twist. I can’t say the same for Stephenie Meyer’s conclusion to her wildly popular “Twilight” series. Look, I’ve read each of the first three books at least twice, and my grad school entrance paper was a character analysis of Edward Cullen. I loved these books. I read “New Moon” and “Eclipse” in a single day. I’ve been discussing the plot lines and characters with my students for the last two years. It was a long wait for this final book. And a huge part of me wishes I was still waiting. It was that much of a letdown. I’m still debating just how to tiptoe through my inevitable conversations with students about this part of the “Twilight” saga. My students were embarrassed enough by th...
5 comments
Read more