Going to the Source

Look, Ink is Bleeding Through My Fingers!

The farm season is winding down. The season to expand inward, the season to create and write is here. For four hot months the characters in the new book have waited patiently. They have been pulled with the weeds and sowed with seed. They have been given away through the sweat of a summer's tilling and harvests. They are patient, but time moves on... at least in this realm.

Sitting at the writing desk A blank mind blinks in the blue cursor of a white screen How do we begin again? My fingers hover and hesitate over the keyboard. I feel shy, like a besotted lover who has been on a long singular journey, one who finally is arriving home to his sweetheart. Who moves first? What do we say? How do the words become loving actions from a clarified Autumnal heart?

Many questions. Analysis about writer's block won't help with answers. Figuring how to arrange the schedule and desk and the files of electrons in the mainframe won't help. Go directly to the sources, the characters of the soon to be book or canvas. What do you say patient ones? How do we begin?

And the pen begins a long arc. Messy words tumble and splash all over my hands and onto the page. The meanings are inarticulate, clumsy at first. But I will write anyway. I just keep at it. And soon the lover will become familiar again. Soon the characters will be more than projections; they begin live in my dreams again. Soon their words are sowed upon the willing page.

A poem comes through the conversation as so many poems do:


Talking With Two Characters While Writing the New Book
                                   It’s Time: Just Write the Damned Book
I’m helping you come alive.
Sure, I know you are both me.
Finding your voice is finding my voice.
You are bringing me to light too.

So, why is it so hard to co-create you here?

“It’s difficult, being born.” you say.
“It’s difficult facing death.” you say.
“It’s wonderful being seen by bringing light to the darkness.” I reply.

Yep, we can trade platitudes all day, Spirit and me.
That becomes a day divided against itself,
a transport of circularities.

“Just commit to yourself.” you say.
“I don’t know that self.” I reply.

“So make yourself up.
Write it.
Write us.
Write yourself.”
~~~~
Whatever your endeavor, from within a heart of love and devotion take solace. It is in the beginning again and again that miracles occur. It is in the willing efforts of the spirit and hand that new life is born.

If you dream it, then begin it. And see where the words and colors lead you.

Blessings to you dear readers. May your characters and colors and living ink splash upon the canvas of your lives.

Rick




(c) Copyright on Image and Words, Richard Sievers, September 2015