Taking leave

Who has turned us around like this, so that
whatever we do, we find ourselves in the attitude
of someone going away? Just as that person
on the last hill, which shows him his whole valley
one last time, turns, stops, lingers--,
so we live, forever taking our leave."

~Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), The Eighth Elegy,  

 

 

I apologize for the length of this blog.

 

All I can say in my defense is that over time it became addicting, and also a true companion.

I tried to open it every morning, even if only for a brief moment, and often it was not until I wrote here that I found what it is that I want to say.

 

My other line of defense is that many of the entries here are rather short, at times only a picture and few words. Those were, are, my inspiration. In analyzing my writing process I find that quotes, and pictures, start the flow of thoughts that later leads me to write. I wonder at times if they can create the same magic for others.

 

I meant to cut it short at the end, and tried several times to do it, but as a true reflection of my thought process during the course, cutting it, I felt, will take away from its coherency.

 

So bear with me and feel free to jump over anything that does not strike your fancy.

 

Thank you everybody for the support and good advice.

 I will miss it, I already miss it.



 some links;
http://unschoolin.weebly.com/index.html
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http://onewordatatime.weebly.com/

https://twitter.com/ldplus4u

Finding out what one has to say

 

 

Then one precedes, finding out what one has to say and finding it out in the only possible way: by writing.

If a picture can paint a thousand words.

A picture can paint a thousand words but at times few words can paint a picture, draw a vivid image, capture a feeling, make us giggle; create a good feeling or a feeling of a looming doom.

For awhile now I have been collecting those one line wonders and here are few of my favorites;

If tomorrow never comes

Summer faded into fall

I stumble amid the words

We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen. Rainer Maria Rilke

So many years in one yesterday - Carla Phelps Wert

He was a missing person who no one missed at all

All things on earth point home in old October - Thomas Wolfe

Each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. ~Edgar Allan Poe

Like a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind’

For forever you need once upon a time

When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.

If we have any sense of who we are it is because we live inside the eyes of others – Paul Auster

So we live, and are always taking leave - Rainer Maria Rilke

Writing is power, as a writer one can make the world stop and pay attention

I can hear the truck tires coming up the gravel road – Rascal Flatts

Perhaps only migrating birds know–Suspended between earth and sky–The heartache of two homelands.—Leah Goldberg, 1970

My write place

This is clever, a nice play on words. I am in the write place, where is the write place for you? How do one describe his/hers write place?

Got it?

For years my 'write place' was any place with a lot of people. Inside the noise I could carve a small private bubble and write. I liked the noise, the movement, and the feeling that I am not alone. Coffee houses were a natural choice since I like coffee (with a cake) and the offering, included, in the price, a table and few chairs. Big bookstores with a coffee corner were just as good, and the added bonus of books breathing around me was a nice touch. But even noisy bus stations, train stations, airports, everywhere that a sitting place was provided was just fine.

Things changed dramatically when I discovered the computer and the word processor.

Within night I was transformed from that person who loved to write, by hand, to a depended, needy slave. This conniving machine takes my words, line them neatly on a lighted screen, and then starts messing up with them. Red marks, green scribbles, sometimes even blue. At times it even tries to finish my words for me, or will announce with smugness that the last sentence I wrote will not do.

So this is my write place now, on a chair, across from a screen, being continuously abused by a ‘thinking’ machine.

Writers live twice...still hang up on the title

This one is truly inspiring. If it was only mine. I wonder if Natalie Goldberg will mind. Writers live twice, it has a nice ring to it and it is aiming right to our atmost fears and desires. Immortality. Maybe it should say, writers live forever.

An inspiring friend

Almost at the end of this blog and I feel a little sad.

Actually there are way too many entries here and to be true to the assignment, I should go in and cut them to the 30 needed. I am not sure that I can do that. This blog accompanied me for four months now and was such a loyal friend. Whenever I needed to clarify my thoughts, get some inspiration, sort the main ideas from the ones that did not work, I used it. Whenever I got anxious, restless, uptight, unsure, lost, I used it. My usual morning writing was often done here. And at times when I had nothing much to say I just put in a quote, or a picture because let’s face it, a good quote or a clever picture are worth a thousand words....ha...ha.

So how does one abandon a friend or cut him down?

You are never too old to fight dragons

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet