testing

Once, I was a writer, writing a friend, writing to think, to get closer, to find something that was always just around the corner.

"My friend" I wrote, and then, such things as "I have been thinking about what you said the other day.""My friend, I am no longer sure of the things I was sure of." "My friend, I read this story." He sent me songs, I sent him books. I sent him doubts, he sent me reassurance. He wrote to me once, many years later, saying "I remember you as a thinker, someone always looking for the Truth behind the truth."

I was surprised before I saw the accuracy of the statement. I had forgotten how much my writing, to me, is the equivalent of searching, of describing & analyzing, of testing my ideas, of getting closer, of finding something just around the corner. When I write, I have no need to travel. When I write, I don't want to go anywhere, or see anyone, or move an inch from exactly where I am, curled up on my bed, with my laptop on my lap.

This past month, I have been not-writing, for reasons, mainly beyond my logical explanations. I realized it when I read Keri Smith's analysis of her own summer slowness on her blog:

if you look at nature you might start to notice that animals slow down at this time of year. they retreat to a shady spot or wade lazily in the water. they are not pressuring themselves to exercise or create something for others.

eat, sleep, retreat."

It is summer that made me want to not-write, not-seek-out-truth, not-puzzle-on-words. I went to an Antillian music festival with lot's of salsa dancing. I had a long midnight feminist discussion over women & engineering. I walked in the grass with bare feet. I read books in trains, I walked around cities in flipflops, I moved all my stuff once again.

Also - I have been confusing you people, I have taken distance from this blog so that you would not read it. There. I may write, but , perhaps because my writing is like thinking out loud, I am not sure I am ready for a reader.

Also - I have been employing different methods to test the grounds, to get closer, to find something just around the corner. I have been talking, I have been saying things out loud to test their reality, ful well knowing that if my phrases did not overlap entirely with reality, this was only because reality was still in the making.

"I am applying for Ph.D.'s", I would say, and then "I am taking some time", and "I am working with a travelling theater group". I'd throw in a funky one, just for kicks: "I am a random encounters guru." I said: "I am an economist", and "I am a translator" and once, driving through the night in a car with a musician-composer, softly, just above audibility level "I am a writer".