There have been many times recently when I have had insights or reflections that I have wanted to share but haven’t had the time to write about. If I am lucky I manage to write down a few words to serve as a reminder later. Often they have an urgency about them that can’t be ignored, they seem so important.
But when I go back to these hastily scribbled notes I find that they have lost their initial significance. I struggle to find their original meaning. I may castigate myself for not writing enough, not making it clear enough, but in essence these insights are now old news. Trying to conjure up the impact they had on me at the time is like trying to describe a wave that broke on the shore five minutes earlier while looking at a wave that is currently breaking.
I can find this disappointing, a waste of snippets of wisdom or profound learning. I hang on to what I thought was new and vital, but it is neither now. It is a lesson that I need to write as Life unfolds, in real time space, while it is still fresh and raw and real. Of course this isn’t really attainable either as my writing is always too late, occurring after the ebb and flow of the thoughts or emotions I am experiencing.
This has been shown to me very clearly recently in a more concrete form. I belong to a writing group that has published an anthology of poems and short stories including my own. It has taken two years to amass enough entries and produce the book. When I re-read my stories I almost don’t recognise them as coming from me. What really stands out is that they resulted from where I was at the time of writing them and may be very different to where I am now in terms of content, style, attitude, perception etc.
However, any shifts in consciousness, any minute changes of perception, will inform who I am at any given moment so that when I do write it will contain and include all these even if I can no longer isolate them or describe them.
This creates a bit of a dilemma in me but also makes me smile – the fact that I love writing this blog whilst at the same time knowing that it is already out of date.
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