Why we write

The older I become, the more I cherish those elusive moments when my world feels completely in balance. Nothing amiss, astray, or awry. All is well.

There are many forces in our lives that conspire to compromise our inner peace. The key to a healthy existence, as Allison suggests with her blog title, is to "keep calm and carry on," and to gravitate towards and revel in whatever it is that brings us closer to that state of pure perfection.

Sometimes it is triggered by something singular; a breathtaking vista, a lover's glance, a song or a poem. But more typically it is the collective sense of balance we are blessed with when the disparate tangle of daily details somehow settles into a sustained moment of blissful harmony.

For many of us who write, the process of putting our thoughts into words speaks to this quest for an inner euphoria. Whether we are striving to fill a void, or feverishly attempting to expel an excess, the compositions we create, in prose or poetry, soothe and satiate our restless, imaginative spirits. When we manage to capture and corral those voices and ideas that continually swirl and eddy about in our brains and tidily formulate them into a meaningful or funny or poignant or even an angry flow of articulate phrases, we feel accomplished. We read and re-read what we've written and think, YES that's it... I said it, there it is, and hey... it sounds pretty good. It works. And whether we share those words with the world or keep them completely to ourselves, they allow us to savor a small joyous moment. We pause. We enjoy. Then we pat ourselves briefly on the back and move on. Because there's always more to say.

Pamela

Six Word Saturday

Where the hell are my glasses?

family circle

I have to say that I'm impressed with you guys. It amazes me how some of you can write such wonderful posts, with such devoted regularity. Seems like I have to percolate for awhile between writing sessions, before I can accumulate enough mental material to sit down and type out even just a few paragraphs. But I have found myself ruminating, not only about my next topic of discussion, but about the thoughts and issues and feelings and funny stories that I encounter daily in the diverse selection of blogs that I've become addicted to following. So. Thanks for the inspiration.
I don't know what key I pressed or what icon I clicked on, but for some reason my text keeps getting translated into Hindi. And it's coming out double spaced which is not my intention. Hmmm. What's the deal with that??
But anyway. I've been pondering this whole question of anonymity, as in, whether to share my outpourings with the people I'm close to, or just to send them out, unidentified, into the cyber sphere of unseen faces. My decision is not to solicit readers from my own circle, but not to deliberatly exclude anyone. So. If blogging comes up randomly in conversation, I will confess to my partcipation and reveal my location, if it doesn't, well, then I won't.
I think the possibility of revelation steers our expressions away from negative and potentially hurtful examinations of the flaws and the shortcomings and the percieved evils of the people who populate our lives; particulary those we are closest to. Admittedly, we all need to vent and family dysfunctions often make for good humor. They also provide our readers with the comforting realization that they aren't the only ones who feel alienated from those freaks of nature they will forever be related to. Of course, if you are distanced from said relatives, you probably won't be sharing your blog with them to begin with.
At any rate, although the preceeding description does not characterize my relationship to my family, and my parent's don't actually even own a computer, I still plan to avoid, for the most part, complaining about their frustrating, judgemental attitudes. I will always love them. Enough said. And I want these compostions of mine to remain, essentially, in the positive zone. When possible. Although I do reserve the right to complain about the randomly annoying people
who occasionally piss me off or simply amuse me with their idiocy. And I hope you will all continue to do the same because I've been finding it really entertaining.
And she's off to iron a shirt....
Pamela
PS... an afterthought. In case it may have occured to you. I would of course never even consider using my blog as an outlet to express any displeasure or irritation with my beloved husband because he is, unequivocally, perfect in every way. Right, honey? (I notice that a lot of us seem to feel that way about our partners. Hmmm.)

Quirks

Thanks to everyone for their kind and useful comments.

As we all seem to agree, being part of a community of writers (I'm not fond of the term "blogging" but I might just have to get over it) allows us the comfort of discovering that our thoughts, fears, confusions and even our little quirky habits are shared by at least one or a
handful of other intelligent lifeforms out there in the unfathomably large universe. Thank God, or the wizards of technology, for setting us all up with these magic screens and their companion keyboards that condense the world by connecting us so effortlessly to the unseen souls in our midst. It really is quite miraculous.

And now I can feel a bit less strange, realizing that I'm far from being the only person who makes my cats talk. Well. I guess I already knew that because my husband does it. He's actually the one who got me doing it cause he does it all the time.

This morning, for instance, my two black cats, Tara and Claude were listening to NPR with me while I made breakfast. When we heard a story about how some British airline is thinking about combating rising operational costs by charging their in flight customers to use the bathroom, we were all pretty appalled. I said "that's ridiculous" and Claude agreed. "Yeah. Really fucked up," he said. (Claude swears a lot) Then little Tara concurred."That's totally bogus," she added. "Way over the top."

And so. Yes. We Sanfords amuse ourselves by conversing with our cats. It's fun. Really.

Pamela