Darlings

I lived with my friend Caitlin in college. In our room of our Vanderhorst Street apartment against the dark cobalt wall I painted she hung a photo collage from high school that read, "Life is motion".

Life moves. 

It's a noble aspiration to think a written word could send waves of thought and perhaps tranquility or change or humor through a sea of people on the Internet. But I doubt it's realistic to really perpetuate change en masse through a blog, by whatever measure one could hope. For example, the recent "Starbucks red cup" debacle circulating is a sad marketing joke to drive hoards of people to advertisers' sites for the sake of bottom line. And so many people are happy to shamefully spin themselves around in the mud, digging a rut of ridiculous nonsense that means nothing. Time wasted for nothing but the advertisers. So much of what we filter through on the web exists for them. 

What is its point? This - why do I write, and why do I share? I've contemplated that quite a bit recently, asking myself why I would want to share this blog. One consistent reason is because I began to make too much of it, quietly telling myself it could be useful, beautiful, provoking. But - "Murder your darlings," said Arthur Quiller-Couch, said Faulkner, Wilde, Chekov, said them all. And so here I am, sharing, and murdering these darlings so I can move on from them. Another hope would be that it yielded conversations with others about writing; useful, thoughtful exchanges that may or may not talk about the writing within here, but that goes beyond it too. 

At the core of "why", though, I am reminded of this quote - Kurt Vonnegut once said, "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia."

And so the answer is, I write for myself. I share it to remind myself so many are capable of piecing words together like this, but I write for my own sanity. Because without even this smallest piece of practice, after awhile I begin to feel desperate. I want to practice listening to myself, want to feel the satisfaction of mulling words and phrases around in my head because I like doing that. It means something to me. It waters my spirit. And that matters.

I think influencing - dare I say "changing" - a person's life is a much quieter, much longer, and less anticipated process than one might think or even hope. I believe we affect other's lives each day with or, often, without knowing it. For better and worse. It doesn't come packaged in a blog. 

It's not this blog that will move a person; it's the kindness shown when pouring coffee, it's time spent alone cooking a meal for a new mother, sending a thank you card seen only by its recipient. I believe change is perpetuated not by broadcasting, but by loving. We as humans are otherwise too fickle a species. 

Life is motion in so very many ways. It is also the quiet capture of these moments that are often only me, a cup of coffee, and my dogs. 

Alone, thinking, writing to appease myself.