Words

15 January 2010

Dear Journal,

I apologize for taking so long to write you. Icould say I've been busy at work, or perhaps the madness that is the holidays overtook me. But that's not quite true. I've had the time. I've even had the inclination to write, many times. Yet I haven't. Unsure of what to say, or how to say it, or more honestly, why I would be saying anything at all. I lost my voice. And now I struggle to get it back.

I think I think too much. And by thinking, and rethinking, I stall and procrastinate, diverting my attentions elsewhere, pushing available words farther away from my pen, and very nearly out of sight altogether where they cannot be retrieved.

I wish to write again, and to return to your good graces, Squire. Not, mind you, because I think I write good, but because I enjoy the writing. Over these past weeks and months, I've wandered the same places as I have for years, watching, observing, considering, pen in hand, camera stowed and ready in the pocket, binoculars around my collar, open to discovery, revelation, inspiration. I stroll from beach to creek to estuary, and sometimes the other way 'round, seeking something worthwhile to relate back to you.

Alas, the words that rise to the fore when I walk, at least the fore of my mind if not my pen, began to sound the same as every day prior. And why keep telling the same damned story over and o'er.

Yet in my reluctance to tell a dull story, I've failed to tell any story at all. I've learned enough to know I enjoy the telling, even if I don't know much about what I'm saying.

Ben Franklin said either do something worth writing about or write something worth reading. It's abundantly clear I'm not pre-destined to to do much worthy of another's pen. If Gentle Ben is to be believed, my only chance at eternity lies in leaving a few misshapen words lying about for others to stumble upon. Perhaps a nugget of my verse will land near enough where some word-starved reader may discover it, consider it, and allow in a weak moment for that conjured phrase or image or idea to seep inside their brain. Perhaps at some odd moment in the future, that, those words will be recalled suddenly and for no apparent reason. Is that not immortality?

A change in pseudonym is due, though I've yet to settle on anything. There will be less rangering in this correspondence perhaps. I was never much good at that anyway. And while Humboldt County remains my primary landscape, it's not all that important where these words lay on the map. I'll continue relaying the discoveries of mid-afternoon beach strolls - the birds, the waves, the skies that open my mind to images and possibilities. An occasional rant or veiled memory will appear from no where now and then. I hope as well, to explore new ideas, those of simplicity, time, living in the moment. If there's any chance that writing could ever lead me anywhere, I have to write. I yam what I yam, Popeye says. The only thing I know is me, and even I don't that topic all that well.

Enough with the procrastination already. Hasta la proxima. Until the next time.

J

P.S. The ocean is a churning, steely green gray topped with sediment-laden, beige-tinted foam nearshore. Hundreds of western gulls share the mouth of the creek with colorful, breeding ready pelicans, a horde of 30 lazy harbor seals, and eight mergansers.