What I didn’t know about writing is that you are supposed to have a plan first, a graph, a map, an idea, an outline, something for the words to fall into, that you don’t just stand there empty handed and catching them as they fall.
I felt like a neglectful writer, unskilled, untaught and uncaring, yet as I step back and see the overview, I am astonished how hard most writers make it.
It seems they are trying to predict the unpredictable, like trying to control reality, or planning for an unknown future.
As I look upon my first 46 years of living, I had structure, I had rules of a religion to follow, and I had to fit into that, foregoing all my instincts and passion.
My natural spiritual self was whittled down to fit into their mold.
My mother sculpted this mold, and we had to squeeze ourselves into the walls, making sure we didn’t jut out unbecomingly.
Our goal was to replicate this mold and make our children to conform to look the same, sound the same, and walk the same, little molds of sameness.
Kept to the outside were words that didn’t match this mind set, this ideology and beyond their very rigid lines danced wonderful words and ideas in a field of pure potential…forbidden to us congregants.
We had to disregard all things that didn’t match the mold, and by doing so passed up 99.9% of reality…and lived with .1% of our self.
This .1% of me is where I began writing from, asking how I had sold so much of myself off and what did I truly believe coming from the base of me.
From the base of me I ask the question and have no rules as to what comes, or where it takes me, what conclusion we draw, what systems we debunk, there is nothing off limits, there are no walls between me and my words.
In fact I am tearing down the parts of me that have been crammed into the tight space, and giving life again to the long forgotten parts of me.
There just simply can’t be a grid to follow, for I have no idea who I am, where I am going or what my purpose is…writing is helping me define who I am.
I am meeting my words with a blank slate and they are coming from the mold of extreme restriction, so they too are excited not having to guard themselves and their truths.
We are the clay and the sculptor with no pattern or mold in sight…
