Hot, hot, hot

Hello, intrepid readers. I must confess this has not been an on task week for me. The Olympics, my birthday, Henry Poole is Here, blueberry picking, my new love of Steven Augarde books, the "whopping" article due on September 1, and last of all, it is hot, hot, hot.

I have pecked at my own writing, but that is about all. The big writing thing I have been doing this week is noticing. I'm not sure exactly how to explain noticing, but it's basically opening my eyes and looking at the world around me. I have found that good stories seems to spring out of authentic details.

I went to the bog again today. It is near my home. There are acres and acres of it. Deer, coyotes, maybe a black bear or two, all live in the big tangle thatch of brier brambles, Oregon grape and wild blue berries. It's a magical place to me.

A poor snake had been run over by a car on the dirt road that lead to the bog. Even in its death, it was beautiful; I liked the sinuous curve of it. The blueberry bushes were heavy with fruit -- bunches of bloom-covered berries. The sweet tartness of their taste; the heavy sugary air surrounding me, the twinge of fear that always sneaks up on me when I am alone under a painful blue sky. The buzz of wasps and dragonflies drones on in me ears. I noticed everything. I could fill pages and pages.

The memory of a friend who noted that I could see, that I was very aware of the world around me, slipped into my present and I could feel that deep sense of connection that I have with everything and along with that -- the truth that sometimes it is in knowing others that I come to understand myself.

This connection with the universe makes me want to write. I wish to spin out my stories and let the world know about the web that we are all caught in. I hope my words make my readers feel the temporariness of spacetime and at the same time know the eternity of our days. We live and breathe and then someday stop. Who are we? What do we want?

So if your life is busy and the hours to write have dwindled down to a very few, take time and notice the world around you.

Enjoy your journey.

I call this doodle Blue Gull in a Purple Sky



Remember: ©Molly Blaisdell, all rights reserved. If you want to use my cool doodles, ask permission first. It is so wrong to take people's doodles without permission!

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Henry David Thoreau