What is a Writer?

There is a difference between a writer and an editor or better said a friend who reads your writing. If I read through some writing and add some bits of spelling changes or ask a few questions about intent, that does not make me a writer but may make me a friend who listens. My own writing is different than that, it is personal, not political, no specific message except one of kindness and inclusion. 

It helps me to think about this, because writing about something or writing something is different than being a collaborative writer. That is something I would like to do with my BFF, who has the opinions of a lifetime of experience and is a total genius in my mind, can find her way through a political quagmire in a way only working with bright people can do. I hope she and I become collaborative writers about what has made a lifetime of work for me. 

On some level I feel a deep disappointment with my love affair with work, a hesitancy.

WHO IS BY MY SIDE

It was March

Spring of the Winter of my life

Renewal of Faith in Hope

And Beauty

One day left in the Month,

Of the year you were born

And I will always be there

Always be at your side

You can be thousands of miles away

Or far away and still standing next to me

I am here

Sitting and thinking of you

So far away and so close

To my heart

Sometimes I think I gave my heart away

But when I think of you

The one who let me believe

That life is better with love

Life is better with you

I know I will always be at your side

In my heart

In my soul

In the life

I was given so many years ago

When I took my first breath

I didn’t know

I could feel a love

Like the one I feel

When I see

The ones I love

When I feel the love

Of all those I meet

Every day

Sometimes it is only a moment

A laugh

A smile

A thank you

But each time I remember

That moment when I was alive

When I looked into your eyes

And felt that total emotion

Body, spirit and mind

The time of truth

Was your gift to me

Your birth

A colleague of mine died

I suppose sharing this with strangers seems odd, but it is all I am thinking about. He was born a year after me, and I think, you think about your own mortality when that happens. He died of the same CA my aunt did years ago. It's hard to imagine how you might feel before that happens, but I felt a loss, like when you know there could have been more in your life and you let it all go for something you thought was greater than yourself. Then you realized that there is nothing really outside yourself except some kind of peace, and the ability to love another. If you feel that kind of daily, you have an opportunity to breathe. And I mean really breathe, like take a breath in fully and let it expand in your lungs and heart and through every part of your body, until it pours out of every pore your have. Until you can feel a connectedness with everyone and everything and when that happens, then and only then: breath out and let it flow everywhere, with love and compassion and understanding. 

Then, maybe your friend and colleagues death and dying and anyone's for that matter, would not have been in vain. I guess what I mean is that this colleague only showed compassion for everyone. I'm sure he had his moments, but when you met him you would think "how can someone so driven to help others have no need to show his importance." He was so well recognized and did so much to be inclusive and self-effacing, you wouldn't know how much he had done to made permanent improvements for children all across the state of North Dakota.

I will miss him and all he stood for, and miss the place he held in the world, a place of veneration, of honor, of love. There is no real tribute that could explain all that until you meet is family, in-laws and grandchildren. All of them understood his impact on the community and their own lives, much better than I ever could. I can only see the ripple effect of his existence, and I believe that will never stop. I believe it has created a sound of triumph and that in a world that responds to the glitter and glitz and shine, he stood for valor, truth, and caring in a way that should be touted as what we all strive for. 

Hot Clear Days No Fire

Hot Clear Days on the Prairie, no fires from the North. "Canada" says it burns every year and this ear was no exception. Well, there was an exception, it was worse than ever. Towns evacuated. Fighters flown in.
But today it is a Hot Clear Day on the Prairie. Not like when I started this blog, when the only thing that burned me was a desperate sense of aloneness in a world filled with stress, anger, waiting, and demanding. No smiles or thanks just a point of presence in the world. A point of need, and interface. And the Heat was an overwhelming sadness. But now it is truly a clear day, and I look out and see the prairie's heat, the grains the growth push up from the earth.

Back in Isolation or is it Routine

It's been a week and a half, and I have slept in my own bed for five nights now and I feel a kind of restlessness, rested but restless, like something is missing. You know how, when you are infatuated and totally unclear about the emotion, but you can't let it go. You know it seems silly to be so over the top about someone, but there you are. It's that kind of restlessness, online there are so many sites that offer the perspective, that those feelings are actually obsessive, but then I guess all the love poetry in the world is like that, maybe poetry and writing in general are obsessive. Look at Stephen King, all of his stories are ones of obsession by someone or something. Perhaps that is what will come of all of this, a need to realize the obsession. A way to channel the need for it. Perhaps obsession is what the drive is that gets us up in the morning. In a way, I feel that way about work, a kind of dread and then jumping in without looking, hoping I will surface in a functional way. Hard to believe that all of that training can be undermined so easily. 
This morning I listened to the birds again, looked out at the treat that fills my whole downstairs window and hides the prairie. Last night I walked in circles because I could and because the prairie itself is so far away.