Writing

 

[Writing]

 

stand behind this line

that goes to the end of the current day

even as you fall asleep

 

this line of early enquiry

buoyed by pure wakefulness

exercising excitement unstopped

 

this line sent to earlier selves

whatever it is friends say when friends

getting it right or wrong

 

this is the line you’ve got

whether you keep it or not

highlight, alter, or blot

 

this be the line you sign

never knowing where it’ll end, the need

the silence of the reader

 

stand behind this line

where top speed pulls in to a stop

and a door opens

 

this is that certain line?

wanting to say everything heeded

saying this thing and that

 

the line of reflection

timed to perfection

stuttering with inflections

 

stand behind this line

a place impossible to define

either the mess or the design

 

the line where the story begins

the one you thought you forgot

give it your best shot

 

line that could be a want

line of high velocity wind and sun

line that is a wound

 

stand behind this line until

you come to a complete standstill

please wait for further announcements

 

this line on this very platform

you arrived at just on time

or so it appears, in the din

 

stand to attention, at ease

rest behind this line, contemplate

sometime where the line came from

Writing (January)

Photograph of Mirka Mora invitation words at Heide Gallery, taken by Carol O'Connor

 

In her books of memoirs Mirka Mora writes somewhat like Gertrude Stein. Not the Gertrude of ‘Tender Buttons’, Mirka’s sculptures are her tender buttons, but the Gertrude of ‘Paris France’ and ‘Wars I Have Seen’. Mirka lived in the same Paris described by Gertrude in those books, a style that adopts a child-like appreciation of everyday people and things, now those people and things could be taken away overnight by brute force. Mirka’s handwriting is decent copperplate. Her months are clear, starting with lucid January. Gertrude’s are not lucid. She goes out of her way to make her handwriting unreadable.

Writing (September)

September writes itself. Tries of alphabet children loop rightways, their spelling exploring space. Legal statement exacts vocabulary, hungry for a comma, certain of a sentence. Powerpoint makes it look easy, calling cards of immemorial memes. We prod toward production, a press of pen-pushers. Their number is legion, uploaded like light years, the 24-hour reports of eyes awake to immorality (Diagnosis: media mania). Or else writes the email that fell the city. Taps out the weather map with a flood like Genesis, a language tower like Genesis. Rights itself with 26-letter reports of eyes awake to imaginary facts, factual images, dropboxed.

Writing (June)

Remember. Writing’s nothing to feel guilty about. The time it takes saves time, clarifies your thoughts. You cannot write while driving, but good thoughts occur while driving. Unlike phones, it’s not illegal to write while driving. Some people write to pass the time: you are not one of them. You write out of need. Some people write about wild city car trips on June nights. That’s okay, but it’s not the same as God, is it? Is it? June car trips may bring wisdom, a wise person probably needs to know about such things. Keep an open mind. Express yourself.

Writing

Here are some definitions of writing that are not found in the dictionary:

Writing is the gathering of our language and our wits into a cause.

Writing is not neutral in its intentions, is not a text or document of letterings, but comes carrying freight, it carries weight and meaning and purpose and effect.

Writing is something we learn at school and some of us go on learning for the rest of our lives.

Writing abounds as our thinking abounds, as our breathing expands and contracts, as our body moves and stays.

Writing employs grounded clunky words to fly through the air like a dancer.

Writing goes into places you wouldn’t read about.

Writing enlivens words every day, affirms words and can make new even the oldest words in our vocabulary.

Writing wants to stop time while being itself a product of time.

Writing involves people who spend half a lifetime writing a book that no one reads and people who spend one day writing something that is read by everyone generation after generation; and vice versa, involves people who spend half a lifetime writing something everyone reads and someone who spent a day writing something that no one will ever read.

Writing makes the mark you hope you will never wish to cross out.

Writing usually knows how to start, almost invariably has to figure out how to continue, and sometimes doesn’t know how to stop.

Writing is the voice by another means.

Writing is a rational way of going beyond the rational.

Writing deals in transparency, objectification, reason, logic and singularity, but with equal facility deals with contradiction, paradox, incompatibility, inexplicableness and plurality, sometimes on the same page.

Writing uses tangible elements to present intangible realities.

Writing is sometimes the only way out, sometimes the only way in.

Writing is created in the light and we wish writing acknowledged this more often than it does.

This is part 4 of my opening night paper, originally called ‘Mapping the Terrain’, given at the Writers Retreat at Santa Casa, Queenscliff, on Thursday the 20^th of June 2013, under the aegis of the Carmelite Centre.