Today I read an article about free-writing for a class of mine. It said that free-writing can be a great tool to get the juices flowing, but can also cause writers to get stuck in a quagmire if they get addicted to freewriting at the expense of editing. I kind of feel like that's what happened to me with this blog: I've been freewriting to force myself to write, without proper editing. I've gotten lazy.
I also think that I've been having problems with words recently, because words can be - should be - an expression of our deepest selves, and I have not been taking time to connect with God - so how can I connect with my deepest self when that self is made in the image of God? Furthermore, words should be used as tools to serve God - and I have not been using my words enough to say kind things to people, to pray and to learn Torah. On Yom Kippur we say, "The widening of the hear is from man. but the gift of words is from God", and I truly beleive that. Each poem I write is a gift that God gave me.
Today I looked at someone who loves me and told them, "You are not worth words" - I meant of course, they were not worth the words of my trying to explain my behavior. But it came out wrong, and I think that that phrase "You are not worth words" is one of the meanest phrases one could ever say - and I also think it would make a great line in a story, and my brain plugs scenarios into that line, and none pleases me. I keep on thinking of that line by (I think it was) Stephen Dunn: "When mother died, I thought: Now I shall have a death-poem and that was unacceptable"*
But what is life if not the feild for an artists' scythe? Of course, Oscar Wilde said that it is not art that immitates life, but rather, life immitates art. Then there are those artists who try to craft their life like a peice of art. I consider Frida one of these: From her journal to her riboso and signature flower, she wanted each action, each word, each peice of costume - for her clothes were a costume - to reflect her essence as an artist. But I am afraid, because art can be broken; I have seen the emasculated naked men in Greek statues. But as Rilke would remind me in "Torso of Apollo", that broken art remains immutable, immortal in its ability to affect us even when the stone has been chiseled away.**
What strikes me most is the final couplet of the poem: "burst like a star: for here there is no placethat does not see you. You must change your life." This strikes me because it is what I think about when I think about God: To confront God is to be forced to confront oneself - that is why there is exegesis that the "man" Jacob fights with that results in his being called "The one who wrestles with God", because "I faced God and my soul was saved", is actually Jacob wrestling with himself, and winning. This is also my take on Existentialism: For Sartre, one must be able to look oneself in the eye and be happy - to look at oneself through the eyes of another is hell, as he expressed in his play "No Exit". For the religious person, one must be able to look at oneself in the eye as reflected through the metaphoric eyes of God, and be happy.
I am not quite sure where this is leading; perhaps it is becoming a rant on all of Western culture. I do know however, that I pray to God to help me to use my words as tools to serve Him. Today we had to write six word memoirs in class, based on the famous Hemingway story: "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.". My memoir was: "Glimmering: To grasp gold from shadows. ". I will leave you to ponder the meaning of those words.
* I am quoting from memory, so a word or two may be off, and punctuation may be off.
** http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19707
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