Initiation? in Everyday Ramblings

As I have gotten older my brain doesn’t process words on the page the way it used to. I don’t see some words, I repeat some from two sentences above, many names of things I can’t remember and need to use all sorts of tricks to find in my brain. The precision is gone.

This is something I have been struggling with for the last seven years or so. I asked my doctor about it, and she said not to worry. I still have the impulse to write, to express myself in writing. For years the only places I have felt safe writing have been here and on 750 Words.

But I want more than that. And when the English professor poet, (whose father was a very well-known poet, a brilliant, brilliant guy who spent his life in the guise of someone ordinary and easy going and not complicated at all), asked me last weekend to write an essay about reading Walt Whitman while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, it sent me into a bit of a tailspin.

I worked on it all week. More in my head than on the page. And it stirred up a bunch of emotions about who I am and what I do and what I can do these days.

It is as finished as it is going to get. I sent it off this morning to the facilitator of the group and the professor and we will see if they think it is worth sharing with the wider group of 25.

Mr. Finch and I spent a fair amount of time and effort trying to get to know these people when he was alive. This poet writes little bits off the cuff and shares them with the group. This is a level of ease that I aspire to achieve. In a way this is a bit of an initiation. A way of being taken seriously as an artist that only having a published book would have done in the past.

It is not that I am afraid to try hard things. Hello Handstand Club. But my confidence as a writer, as an artist has been badly shaken over the years with the stupid job, the loss of Mr. Finch, the demands of supporting myself and the loss of a nimble brain.

Wish me luck with this. Wish me luck.

Last updated June 05, 2022