February 9, Thursday

 Ross Gay calls this “essayettes”. Spectrum: prose poetry, Poetry. How do we think. About our own writing. Writing as a conversation. Book of Delights feels like. A solitary action. Maybe. Ross. Gay. Is writing more about writing as thinking.  What is it that takes writing conversing to writing, who is the. Reader? Maybe more like an existential reality.


What do I know:

I said yes to something I know nothing about, it wasn’t the first time, it more seemed like a prerequisite to doing anything. In an odd way. Just like a sentence do we have to have anything. To write. About? 

This time my drivin gintention was to support my family. Yes I’ll take care of Dad. I’ll introduce myself, my your daughter Barbara. I looked for some recognition and saw none.  I know there are some things he can do without difficulty but it involves short terms tasks: painting wood, breaking the stems off of asparagus for a meal. 

I  wasn’t sure how it was going to go, But how to occupy every minute of a day of an adult who doesn’t really know who he is or who I am, when I would have to go to work and could I even leave him at my house? Alone. He was known to wander. I had no help. Then it would cost 270,000 dollars to hire someone to stay at my house, but my income was only 25 % of that.


HERMIT CRAB ESSAY: 2 blog posts about that. Like a hermit crab takes any form to make its home, we could make our own form: grocery list, email, etc. What if I wrote an essay about how my 6 year old talks, as you go about your day, can figure that out. Want to write  about learning about on day 14, could be a speech, but it is really an essay. Hope to put it in your writing practice. Next rapid fire thing is Poets and Writers Website. They do daily poetry, fiction, nonfiction prompt. Very long list of data base or list of nonfiction prompts. 

Avail yourself of other forces. Maybe restrict to punctuation marks to be a prompt for writing. 

WRITING PROMPT FOR THE DAY: AGAIN.

10 MINUTES 250 WORDS LETTER TO A YOUNGER SELF.

Explaining what you know or believe to your younger self. Notice what age you are  drawn to. Can be anyway you want: lyrical, hard nosed, funny, can continue on that vein as needed who is going to read what I write. Maybe that-year old self.

HEY BARBARA. What are you doing? Sitting on the front step waiting for someone to come by. Mom said to sit out here and wait for something to happen. But hey you don’t have to wait for something to happen, it’s happening all around you. And what you are seeing and feeling is enough in and of itself. You don’t have to wait for that. Those feelings are real. Not being able to label them is real. It’s ok. You know already, lots of things, you like to create, and seeing something that you have personally made is important to you. That comes from inside of you. That is who you are. 

Not just a body that wakes up and goes to school and waits for the day to end. You have already made some important decisions. You will find what is important in a way that works for you, kind of like trial and error. But I want to let you know there really isn’t an “error” per se, anyway, not for you. Perhaps one of the things that could help you is to ask questions to other people. Like “how would you solve this problem”, believe me you do not have to accept their answer as  valid, because you can ask many people the same question.

Remember how you wondered about what it would take to become a doctor. You never really asked a doctor that question and actually that was really smart, because in the small town you grew up in, you would have been discouraged from pursing that vocation, by a number of ways: the town doctor was lecherous, it was the 50s and women were supposed to teach or get married and have children and that was mutually exclusive, so by not hearing all of that until much later you were able to pursue your interests.

Also, I wanted to let you know that you are a kind person, sheltered but kind, and you did an excellent job of figuring things out for yourself, even though it happened through lengthy difficult experience without any actual support from neighbors or family. Yes there was a friend along the way that applauded your very existence, one who recently passed away, but you will find a few respectful people who love you and over time you will connect with them in many different ways: Andrea, Mary Jo, Walter, George your Dad and Mom, your aunt Ruth,, your great Aunt Viola. All will be there in many ways. 


THE WAGER (funny) per Alexandra






Just-the-punctuation.glitch.me


Writer McCormack. Punctuation left and right.

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