New Year

As the new year is upon me I am faced with the reality that I never write in this blog anymore. I am not sure what to make of that just yet, meaning I am not sure whether to continue or to, perhaps, resolve to. I suppose this was inevitable, as I was never entirely sure what the purpose of the blog was, some amalgamation of journal, letter to friends, and open communication to the invisible internet ethos. Things without a set purpose are quick to return back into the nothingness, I suppose, from whence they came.

Reading J and M's blogs makes me want to blog more, and to send out images of the beautiful or interesting into the world, believing it matters. But that is them, and perhaps not me. I am not sure.

Regardless, I am pondering my New Year's go-lutions (a combination of "goals" and "resolutions" inspire by Jen L).  I like the emphasis on "go" in this neologism. Plus I am fond of neologisms, in general. 

One of my golutions will surely involve writing or returning to the realm of the creative, be it poetry, prose, songwriting, or all of the above. I am not sure why the creative comes and goes in waves, how much to accept it or how much to fight it. It's like the tide in that way-- requiring a delicate balance of your approach; going too far in either direction can lead to missing out or missing persons. Either way it's bad. I suppose writing, like the sea, takes you in and spits you back out again a thousand times, each time in a new place. So it's a confusing shoreline we traverse.

I have been working on one poem for over two years I think. Based on that sentence, one would assume it is a great poem, a kind of epic or crowning achievement. In fact, it is a normal poem but longer than the others; I do not think it is fantastic in any way except that it has roman numerals inserted between stanzas to make it seem more important. The question becomes whether to give up on it or keep pushing. Is the clay overworked or just needing a few more poundings? You would think such things would be easy to tell, like pasta-- aldente or mushy-- but they are not. 

And in the end, I keep telling myself it's about the process of writing the poem, not the form of the poem itself. Focus on the outcome ruins things sometimes, the same way focusing on the shore, when you are so far out, only makes you tired.

The poem, if it matters, is about the Sago Mine incident that happened back in, what, 2007 or 2008? Maybe that is what makes this one harder: it's based on a real thing, or at least a real note scrawled by a real dying, now dead, man and reprinted in a real newspaper article that I read.  Maybe it is the reality of it that makes it harder to give up.