Small Cow – Question at the Center
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Author Archives: TheSeize
Red Journal – Poem – Drive Through
We drive through as if we see
more than a few dotted yellow lines
and a few inches of crumbling black
Pieces of pine trees emerge,
emulating an outline for our
path traveled.
Eyes ahead, we sometimes spare eachother glances.
Our tattered clothes rest upon yellow bits of foam
poking through, against us.
His weathered, nicotine hands grip
the pin pricked pattern of
brown, leather
wheel.
One denim and grease leg is stead to the floor.
The other leg rocks side to side
keeping in time with the tune
on the radio.
One hand rests his head
lids half open, four ‘o clock shadow running late
lips half parted in concentration on the early am mist
parting for the boat front.
Red Journal – Talking About Bells & Pretty Words
Red Journal – Important Instructions, Unexpected Person
Never Start From the Beginning
The idea of the beginning is a bad one to start with. All beginnings are a beginning, not the beginning. Every day when you wake up is a beginning. When you step foot outside, when you open a box, when you lock eyes with a person, and even when you enter dreamland every night are all beginnings as much as they are endings and middles.
When you sit down to write, the worst thing I think you can do to yourself is to think of coming up with the beginning. Instead, start with what strikes you. What is interesting to you right now? It can be a scene at the end, a snapshot from the middle, or maybe it will end up as the beginning.
True story: everything I’ve ever finished writing was not written in a linear fashion, from front to back. Every journal I have you will find part finished pages, blank pages, and finished pages at what seem like random.
A beginning blank page can intimidate. There’s a pressure to put down the ‘right thing’ that will set the tone for everything else. If I mess up, everything that comes after is crap, as if writing is like baking a cake. It’s not. With writing, you can rise your cake before you even mix your ingredients together. That is part of the magic of this medium.
So I dare you to open up to a place in the middle and make a mark, even just one. Maybe start scribing on the second to last page. Even better, in this digital realm, write without knowing where exactly it falls into time, just that it exists and you are creating.
Number Numb
People forget about the concept of quality in lieu of quantity all the time. In real world practice, I see people counting and measuring with numeric metrics to measure units if life.
Lets take the 30th birthday. Why do we care? Because our system is based on units of ten. Being thirty doesn’t mean anything.
People measure the minutes of their commute. I’m sitting on the T (Boston subway) writing down thoughts for a blog post on my phone using the WordPress app. Do you care about how long or how stressful your commute is?
I’ve always thought that people can put too much faith in numbers without qualifying what those numbers might mean. I love the questions ‘what’ and ‘why’, and will always ask these more than ‘how much’ and ‘how many’.