wordstopaige

There is a crack in everything – that’s where the light gets in – Leonard Cohan

One of my favorite quotes. Its so true. If we were all perfect, we’d be so incredibly boring. I’d like to add my own spin to it: There is a crack in everything – that’s where the words come in. I have always wanted to be a writer but I didn’t write. Not that I couldn’t, nothing was stopping me, I just didn’t.

Realization: I have lived a life not doing what I always wanted to do.  ouch…

I realize now that I was trying to write from the whole, trying to deliver a story in complete form, perfect; delivered from a finished, proper, perfect, me. If I still didn’t have things figured out, then I didn’t have anything to say. That is where my error was. I was missing the gold mine that is the crack, the messy, confused, un-evolved, bumbling me that was just trying to get her footing, to understand what the hell is going on in this crazy incarnation, to just make her way in the world. I don’t know if it’s a family trait, or just some belief I picked up somewhere – I always thought that everyone else had it all figured out. And that somehow, despite my best efforts, even though I was really close to ‘it’, something would happen that would keep me from ‘making it’. Whatever that means.

The Japanese have a wonderful art form called Wabi Sabi. Defined: represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. (thanks google)

And their whole premise of Wabi Sabi is the flaws or repaired places of things (and people) are where the beauty lie. They fill up the cracks in pottery with gold. Simply by repairing the crack enhances the beauty of the piece beyond its unbroken self. Well, there is a lesson in embracing my cracks. Maybe by filling up my cracks with my words, I’ll enhance my beauty (my fullness) more than I ever could with only living from the whole? (that was never truly whole because it didn’t embrace the cracks!)

This is my rational for this blog: the great writers say that you have to write a bunch of crap before you write anything worth reading. I forget her name, but she was a prolific, brilliant writer who said that your first two novels are going to suck. I’ve wanted to write since I published my first Muppets Magazine when I was 9. I’m now 3 weeks away from my 44th birthday and I haven’t written anything, no thing, let alone a shitty first novel. So if that’s the case, I better get busy writing crap so at least I can write something worth reading before I die.

That is the romantic inspiration that is propelling me to write this, it wasn’t a broken heart, or an inspiring teacher, or some overwhelming compulsion to write what I feel, the thing that finally broke over 35 years of writers block is the permission to simply write crap. hmm. I was hoping for something more “fresh air story worthy”, but the fact is this is what’s working, so I’m going with it. The craziest thing that I don’t care what it is, I’m just excited its workings. Nothing else has. And I’ve tried everything. Literally (and literary). But those are stories for later. For now, I get to sit here and write and trust that by doing so, I’m wading through the crap to get to the gold.

If by some very off chance anyone is reading this, i suggest you head over to youtube until I get to post 1001. For some reason I feel there is going to be some thing magical about that post. The first reason is that it’s going to be my goal for this blog. I have to get to 1001 stories, posts, musings, or whatever they are. If I make that, that means I’ve written a whole truckload of crap and I I must have hit on something decent by then. I don’t have a second reason right now, I thought I did, but it’s gone. I’ll save it for another post.

Odd, this is quite liberating. Wish me luck.