2021 has been a busy and blessed time for me. In the Days to Come, I can see more and more goodness. This year full of blessings (even as the pandemic raged through the world), has been a wonderful change from past years. It’s not that my past years were awful, only harder.
As the days get colder on Beech Mountain, I wanted to move to a blue theme for the website. The image of the water is there as I learn how to use a new iMac. Because of the sale of my condo, I’ve been able to replace my bad PCs. Because of my art, many have suggested for years that I move to Apple, but I resisted. As I prepare a new book for 2022 and consider another poetry collection for 2023. There are challenges in computers anytime a human is working on one. I tend to expect too much from them, especially when it comes to “keeping up”. It seems that the old computer couldn’t keep up with my typing speed. Or, if uploading a photo, it took forever. As a result, I kept writing but not posting to the computer. Though I hope that the new computer resolves my technical difficulties in creating works of art with words, there have been other challenges to writing as I prepare to move to Boone and as I and my new love consider the future.
Love. Love is a major theme in my life and a major theme in what I hope to do on this website and in all that I create. As love grows greater in my new relationship, often I find there aren’t words to express my heart. Even music seems limited at times and painting (rather the blank canvas) can be daunting for me. For the past two weeks, I’ve been reading a book by Mark Doty, “What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life.” There is a beautiful paragraph that best summarizes the past half of a year and why I’ve been silent on this website. The paragraph comes after Doty asks the reader To be in any form, what is that?
“This presents a sweet, provocative paradox. The poet, the one you’d expect to have faith in language, knows that naming alone does nothing to dispel mystery. For [the writer]*, a word is a gesture in the direction of reality, and does not limit or circumscribe; the poet knows that nothing at all is settled by the word. On the contrary, perhaps what words do is propel us farther into the uncertain nature of the real. They pry open possibilities, and suddenly, the plain grass seems to be rustling with meanings.” ~Mark Doty
Love, love, love. Think of the possibilities in that one word. There are a lot of unknowns in my life as I move to Boone. I’m on a waitlist for an apartment and neither of the places I’ve applied will give me definitive dates as to when I might have a place. Where I will live in 2022 is a bit of a mystery, and yet, there is something calming about it. I know it’s because of love. As I move to Boone, I will be closer to people who love me and want me around. Birdie is excited too because she’s missed our friends and fellowship with friends even more than I have. Love. There’s all kinds of love but yet, there is an everlasting love that exists in the trees, the sky, the ground, the seas. Possibility. That’s what my mind is excited about as the fall turns colder and the days become shorter. What are your possibilities for more love?
*Doty uses “For him” but as a female writer, I want the poet or writer to be either…or both. Quote is taken from page 56 of What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life.