Determining Moments

One morning this week, I went out early for a walk with my camera because there was fog, and it’s not the most prevalent weather phenomenon here. Also, I like that feeling of appearing and disappearing which accompanies a walk in the fog. 

On another morning, first thing, I ignored my computer, and sat with 6 Charles Wright books on my lap, and just opened them here and there and read this poem and that one. I drank my coffee and I dipped.

“What are the determining moments of our lives?
                                                                  How do we know them?
Are they ends of things or beginnings?
Are we more or less of ourselves once they’ve come and gone?” 

– Charles Wright, in Negative Blue

Maybe it doesn’t matter. The thing is to write it down:

“The unexamined life’s no different from
                                                                    the examined life –
Unanswerable questions, small talk,
Unprovable theorems, long-abandoned arguments –
You’ve got to write it all down,
Landscape or waterscape, light-length on evergreen, dark sidebar
of evening,
                   you’ve got to write it down.” 

– Charles Wright

If you want to sit with the books of a single poet on your lap, of a morning, and dip into one and then another. If you want to sit and think about art and existence, if you want to sit and mull things over, read a little more, and mull a bit more, then I highly recommend the work of Charles Wright. 

It’s good, too, to walk in the fog, on muddy paths. To feel the way the fog seems to part around you as you walk, and you disappear into it, but you’re still there, even if you appear as a murky smudge to anyone in the distance. A daub of gray paint. 

The only writing advice you need: write it all down.