Writing my Life: Excerpted from Talk
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
I take my camera most everywhere; it is my habit. I take it because the weight of it around my neck reminds me to see—to decide against deciding that my world is overly familiar, already known. I look for cracks and fissures, for the new or the newly announced. I look for the water to run a different color in the stream, or for the sun to strike the pond at winter with deafening, delirious force. If I can’t see, then I don’t know, and if I don’t know, I’m not writing, and while some may question the value of the written word, I shall make this claim for stories: They spook and spur us. They recall for us. They suggest the tremble of the whole so that we may believe in the lives we’re living.
Live your life, some say. Don’t write it. But I don’t know how to do one without the other. I don’t know how to feel alive unless I’m writing.
8 comments:
Sad but true story:
Our first digital camera was delivered via UPS shortly after the birth of our daughter.
My husband bought it, not out of a love of technology, he would like to heat our house with a wood burning stove, not to do any of that wild online editing, though that is very cool; no, we bought a camera b/c a good 3/4 of my photos are blurry, smudged and unrecognizable; and printing copies of bad photos was eating a hole in the budget.
Sadly, my lack of focusing ability does not deter my forefinger from hitting that shutter button.
Nope. I click away and can now laugh, delete, enlarge or crop to my hearts content. The wonderful part about digital is that I can take 400 pictures, delete 385 and have 15 that I am pretty proud of.
Hooray for digital ~ a true gift for the untalented but (over) eager!
hehehe
SR:
Yes, absolutely. Hooray for digital (and for the undaunted heart!)
JaneS:
I know you just left a message on here. And somehow it's been eaten by goblins. And I apologize, and yes, I found out what makes a class engaging:
Providing plenty of room for the students to talk. Lectures don't work. Conversations do.
Yes, to your comment about getting the students to talk. I just read a children's book, in which,for a segment of days or weeks, the English teacher assigned Romeo & Juliet to be read aloud during class. Their homework was thinking. No papers, no extra reading. Class-time became filled with thought-provoking questions and answers.
BYW, you are inspire my journal writing. :)
I have to agree with Sierra that the cost benefit for digital is great. Although, now there isn't that feeling of excitement and anticipation when you open the folder of pictures from the store. Of course, I always did want to learn how to develop my own pictures...someday, someday.
Sherry — that's incredibly interesting, that Romeo and Juliet nugget. Thank you for that.
And Em, oh those indeed were the days.
I love Sherry's observations about the power of reading aloud and thinking. Made me think of an inspired 5th grade who had us acting out scenes from Julius Caesar...
Thanks Beth, for giving us all a forum for lively exchange.
I've been thinking about this so much lately, about why I write. You've hit it here, I think--I don't feel alive unless I'm writing. Thanks for this post and for the beautiful photo.
Jane, Sherry: This blog wouldn't be you without either of you.
And Kate, I enjoyed reading, just now, about your AWP adventures.
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