Sunday, November 29, 2015

THE GHOST PARAGRAPH AND THE CIRCLE

sofia and cat toy
 
This the final day of Thanksgiving weekend, a thankful attitude has been with me for four days, looking at the world that is my life, noting gratitude unto overwhelmed. It is seeing in a new light, though not altogether new, in a light that has joy in it. I look out the window, see Jenny eating Jack's grain and laugh within. A few minutes ago Jack was standing at his grain pile eating, Jenny standing behind him after she'd finished her grain, like waiting in line. She eats faster than Jack. She will eat three carrots while he eats one. Jack was aware she was standing behind him and knew what came next. He could have easily popped her on the chin and chose not to. She was anxious, shifting her weight on her feet, watching Jack. After waiting long enough she walked around to Jack's right side, nonchalantly turned her rear end to him and stepped backwards, placing her back knees under his belly threatening. He stepped aside and let her have the last of his grain. She could not have taken his grain soon after I poured it without a fight.
 
 
 
The first day of thinking about thankfulness because we're s'posed-to was Thanksgiving day. Tapped into facebook, it's impossible not to think about it. First thing I came up with was just about everything. I woke from a nap a little bit ago, during which I composed in a dream the first paragraph for a subject I thought I'd write about today. It happened in half dream state and half slightly awake, though the awareness of being awake may have been part of the dream. I wrote it out, sentence by sentence, thinking I'll get up and write down this paragraph composed in sleep. Waking, I sat up on the side of the bed, slipped feet into shoes, Sophia jumped onto my lap. I looked at the dream for the paragraph and the first sentence was gone, then it was all gone, then I forgot what it was about. In subconscious mind, while writing the paragraph, it came to me I am grateful for each one, individually, of my readers. The reader completes the circle of the writing, like a band and the audience. One needs the other to complete the circle.
 
 
 
I'm especially grateful for the people I've met through the writing, the Daily Creative Practitioners among them. This is the best part of every day for me. I enjoy writing to you more than watching a good movie, even. Some years ago, I wrote a weekly column for the local paper. In conversation with the editor one day I mentioned that the time of writing was my favorite time of the week. He said, Really? I said, Yeah. He said, You need a life. I heard his remark as the stupidest assessment I'd ever been offered about myself. He had a passion for changing my punctuation. One day I told him I'd like him to stop messing up my punctuation. He said, What? I told him it changes the meaning and the rhythm when he changes a comma to a period. He said, The rhythm? You're strange. I couldn't hold back. I said, Remember this: I am the strangest individual you will ever meet in  your life. I felt it a safe prophecy as he had the most limited mind of anyone I know.
 
 
 
I especially like about writing in a blog the absence of an editor. Everyone I have talked with who wrote a newspaper column for a period of time said they left it over an impossible editor who could not refrain from making disruptive changes. I left after being censored the third time. I was told at the beginning my column is in my name, independent of the paper. That didn't last long. The final one was in the time of Abu Ghraib prison torture in the headlines and photographs of Geneva Convention atrocities. I was saying this is an embarrassment to all that America stands for around the globe. He said, We are not a political paper. I said, This is not politics; it's history. He said, We can't run it without changes. I said, Then you'll not run it. He said, What should I put in its place? I said, I don't care; you're the editor, figure it out. I wrote a farewell piece to my readers for the following week and was done with it. Five years was enough. Time to pass it on to somebody else. Writing daily is fulfilling. Not in a big external way like appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres show, but in a big way within. I use it as a psychoanalyst's couch, to see more clearly.
 
 
photos by tj worthington
 
 
 
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