This could be the worst cup of coffee
My first sleep in for a long while since I am staying in a cottage in Pacific Grove rather than my downtown neighborhood has morphed into a writing session with my travel mug filled from the front desk offering loosely called "complimentary Continental breakfast." What? No Earl Grey? But I don't want to go out in the wet morning fog to seek higher forms of caffeine: it is so cozy to be enclosed in my cottage room, with a throw over my shoulders. The coastal fog makes it feel timeless.
Writing. Posting on Alice's journal got me thinking. I have been teaching student writers all summer that their voice is important and that they have something to say. I championed free choice as opposed to assigned writing. And now, with all the time and choice in the world, I wonder what to say?
Mostly I am amused by recalling a friend's confession, sotto voce, to liking the thin, watered down cafe brew made in diners and donut shops, quarts of acidic stuff from only one packet of dried, ground beans. And whatever our comfort in a bit of hot liquid of a morning, I think what we prefer is whatever our routine be. And what be your routines?
Giving thought underneath the layers of living, beyond coordinating the events that must happen by the clock to equal school credit or a paycheck, is a habit hard to cultivate. And yet I keep being pulled to the reflection of writing. I try not to inflict my verbosity in print on new, prospective boyfriends. I wait for some of the juicier realizations to share at the infrequent girl friend dinner date.
I have other pulls: like I want to return to my yoga mat and I need to get out and exercise where I feel the wind on my face. I am pulled into the idea of making my classroom better every year -- and intrigued with the studio model I got to experience teaching small groups at writers camp. Ah, but 33 fifth graders who did not all choose to be there; that's a different story.
So writers just put Ass-in-chair, fingers-on-keyboard daily. It isn't remarkably different than making a great mug of Earl Grey from loose tea, doing solar yoga warm ups, or rocking out to salsa/timba riding an exercise bike.
I am less bothered by the specter that I may not have anything to say, than the hant that I might actually have something to share. Those freedoms from lifelong assumptions, break aways from self-imposed and culturally imposed constraints perhaps are worth sharing for other readers who think as they take to the road.
Then, again, maybe thinking is highly overrated. What about the blessed be-ers who simply are and do not question or reflect; for who meta-cognition is a silly word not worth the bother of defining? Those I imagine so much more content than me.
Writing. Posting on Alice's journal got me thinking. I have been teaching student writers all summer that their voice is important and that they have something to say. I championed free choice as opposed to assigned writing. And now, with all the time and choice in the world, I wonder what to say?
Mostly I am amused by recalling a friend's confession, sotto voce, to liking the thin, watered down cafe brew made in diners and donut shops, quarts of acidic stuff from only one packet of dried, ground beans. And whatever our comfort in a bit of hot liquid of a morning, I think what we prefer is whatever our routine be. And what be your routines?
Giving thought underneath the layers of living, beyond coordinating the events that must happen by the clock to equal school credit or a paycheck, is a habit hard to cultivate. And yet I keep being pulled to the reflection of writing. I try not to inflict my verbosity in print on new, prospective boyfriends. I wait for some of the juicier realizations to share at the infrequent girl friend dinner date.
I have other pulls: like I want to return to my yoga mat and I need to get out and exercise where I feel the wind on my face. I am pulled into the idea of making my classroom better every year -- and intrigued with the studio model I got to experience teaching small groups at writers camp. Ah, but 33 fifth graders who did not all choose to be there; that's a different story.
So writers just put Ass-in-chair, fingers-on-keyboard daily. It isn't remarkably different than making a great mug of Earl Grey from loose tea, doing solar yoga warm ups, or rocking out to salsa/timba riding an exercise bike.
I am less bothered by the specter that I may not have anything to say, than the hant that I might actually have something to share. Those freedoms from lifelong assumptions, break aways from self-imposed and culturally imposed constraints perhaps are worth sharing for other readers who think as they take to the road.
Then, again, maybe thinking is highly overrated. What about the blessed be-ers who simply are and do not question or reflect; for who meta-cognition is a silly word not worth the bother of defining? Those I imagine so much more content than me.