I’m not writing much these days, although I’m always at the keyboard. I edge hesitantly and rarely along fiction’s overgrown pathways. The novel I’m two-thirds through seems to have lost it relevance, and nothing else is clamouring for attention. However my own past assertion keeps me questioning the silence: the assertion that when I spin fiction, in some sense I spin my own life forwards. Well, that has seemed so in past years. I’m not sure if it still holds true. Is it enough for now to stretch myself in other directions: building my organisational, editorial and liaising muscles; learning to be calm and clear and with any luck effective?
I suppose we each ask ourselves such questions from time to time (if not daily, hourly): What is it imperative to keep in my life? What do I need to ditch? What is my best service to others? My best creative effort? What keeps me alert and growing? And of course each question has to be lived, pushed at, experimented with, turned inside out (what if I do? what if I don’t? how do I recognise my own yes or no?) because no one else can answer it for me.
Do people exist who are not nudged and gnawed at by such deliberations? Blessed are they.
Shoot. I was going to write about how the cat’s in the dog’s basket again, and the dog’s taken the cat’s place on the sunny carpet while outside the Peasgood nonsuches waggle about in the morning breeze … and I’ve ended up writing another sermon. Sorry.
Go forth in peace.
6 responses to “Deliberations”
Thank you for revisiting March, Marylinn, bringing your thoughtful addition to the cogitations. Curiously, I just posted today’s blog before I opened your comment: we’re decidedly in sync (or it seems so to me :-). “Unquantifiable readings of the heart . . .” yes.’
Too long away, here I am commenting on March postings. I believe Claire has it, that the nudgings and gnawings are blessed. Each moment, it seems, we must choose…how to spend our resources, especially time, energy and then, of course, money. Time most of all, for we really have no idea how large our portion. And “What is our best service to others?” What do I bring, perhaps uniquely, definingly, and will the sharing of it be service? A set of questions, linked and continuous, unquantifiable readings of the heart, mind and spirit, as Melissa says, taking our temperature.
You’re right, Claire, we are all differently blessed. Blessed are the placid. Blessed are the gnawers and the gnawed.
I did need to. Wise and thoughtful Melissa, thank you.
Dear Pen
You are not alone. I think many of us are all similarly beset by similar deliberations. Things as we once knew them are shifting, realigning, asking to be revisited, released and, in many cases, redrawn?
In response to your question ‘ Do people exist who are not nudged and gnawed at by such deliberations? Blessed are they.’ I find myself entertaining the thought that perhaps those of us who are feeling tossed in the air and sometimes sorely challenged are every bit as blessed by the nudging and gnawing?
Love to you, Polly and Biddy – three women sharing sunshine ; )
Claire x
You may be in a meditative mood now, Pen, because the challenges of your new venture have been vast and imperative, and I suppose you’ve had to devise a different way of responding to the bright shininess of it all. Maybe the meditation is a way to slow yourself down so that you can weigh this new portion, check to see how you are learning all the skills you enumerated above. Any of us who think and feel do take our temperature vis a vis our life, as part of the world’s life. You needed to write that. The cat and dog will change places tomorrow and the next. You can capture that too. xo