Saturday, April 27, 2019

Continuous Practice



It is a fine over-the-top Spring we are having this year in northern New Jersey. Along with daily bursts of color, shots of energy, bird song, lots of pink blossoms, and a car covered with tiny green things fallen from the old maple tree above it (a very bad place to have a driveway), I am inspired to begin again to post weekly (or more often) starting on this lovely sunfull-blue-sky-emerald day. For those readers who followed me for a few years, I hope you return, for new readers, welcome. This
post is brief because I plan to go for a long walk in the park (currently a fairyland of pastel blossoms) right outside my back door, before clouds roll in later.

A writer walks (the longer the better), collects ideas in an always-present notebook, a camera, records days and expands ideas in journals, turn them into stories, poems, books. What I do every day. A continuous practice. Things happen. Ideas develop. Stresses and anxieties exist, get written down, become something else. Not necessarily easily or quickly, but at a certain stage of life one does become aware of wasting time upon things that need their own time to resolve or may never be resolved. So be it. I've heard an often repeated NJ mantra since I've been here: it is what it is. A lot has transpired over the last two years or so, some wonderful things, some sad. Angers, loves, losses, gains. Life. All is well and all will be well. Meanwhile here are a few tips someone posted to me, purportedly from Goethe:

Every day:
Hear a little song
Read a poem
See a fine picture
Speak a few reasonable words