The Winding Woods

photo by ayacata7.

It isn’t always straight forward, the way we find our way through the woods. It isn’t always by light of morning but sometimes by light of moon, when the owl’s hoot and silent wingspan fills dark spaces between the trees, and when eyes aglow follow our trail, quiet, waiting.

It isn’t always plain to see, the town that comes beyond the hill. The ramshackle huts with smoke drifting skyward, or the laundry drying on the dead brambles, or the twisted sheen of the madmen gathered near the well.

It isn’t always what we thought it would be, this love of the girl we travel to see, this milkmaid or seamstress or nursemaid’s scullion. At times she hides a blush behind her hand, while others she screams with pretty little fists that beat your chest, hollowed and tight like a drum. Then the stolen moments, fleeting for the memory to cup, and ugly moments that will never end and neither drink nor sleep will see it fade, and once she is gone there are all the moments that never were, but that we play upon and mould with hands now empty. Linger upon days that could have been, if we had found our way by different paths, for the woods know best, in their weathered bark and aged span of limbs, which is the path for me that day, and the next, and the next.

Dreams Doomed Never to Come to Pass

photo by Cullen Golden.

From the Writer’s Block blog on the Loft: "Entangled in mutual dependence, their breath clogged with the unique vapors of dreams on their downside or possibly doomed never to come to pass, these characters wield cudgels of bitter years and lacerating longing every time they open their mouths to speak to one another."

This made me think about my own life, and the degree to which my frustration and anxiety is linked to the awareness of a dream doomed never to come to pass. What is my dream? No matter how many years pass, I always come back to the same answer — “writing.”

Why not hold up the pursuit of love, living my days in happiness, landing a career both meaningful and fulfilling? Why cling to a childish dream that requires an activity that I am always avoiding? Those other dreams are as abstract as air - Love, Happiness, Meaning. Maybe their incarnation is best encapsulated in this simple act of words.

Does writing bring me love, happiness, and meaning? Truth is, writing is anxiety, fear, frustration, and hard labor. Writing beats my head bloody. Writing has become for me a dark cloud on the horizon from which I cower. I have placed writing at un unattainable height, but it has no business being up there. I am fully aware that I have fallen into the same rut that all would-be writers encounter, but knowing I am in a hole does not grant me a way out.

In that same Loft blog, the writer shared this tip about what makes for great writing: "One of the criteria of great writing is that it inevitably confronts truth. It represents an act of courage on the part of the writer, the sort of boldness that by necessity we spend most of our waking hours maneuvering around in order to present a unified and reasonably placid face to the world. It’s telling that O’Neill wished for his great play to be hidden from the world for so long: There are truths that a writer wishes to keep from the public, or from one’s family and friends. Some truths are so powerful that the anonymity of decades might seem the only proper protection."