Observation 1

She would ask me to write what I saw. To show her; not tell her. The colors in the sky. The way sunlight hit the crab apple tree. "Observations," she'd call them. The sky is blue, I thought. Blue with white clouds. I'd sit and wonder how on earth I was supposed to pontificate upon that for fifteen minutes; how many different ways I could say blue and white. Then I'd stare out the window pretending to create a composition in my mind to later transfer to the page. My mind would drift to which pair of soccer shorts were clean enough to wear (blue? white?) to practice that afternoon or what K and I were going to do that weekend. Or I'd look at the way my A's slanted on the page and how my T's and H's were almost the same height. I'd sluggishly scrawl a few lines of this or that before we moved on to grammar, then art. The next day I'd be back at the kitchen table with four more "Observations" to write, alone, without her to guide me, to prod me along. Sitting idly by, I let the world happen all around me as I stared at the way I had written Observation across the top of the paper, pious at the placement of the dot dead-center above my "I" or the roundness of my "O."

Little did I know that those afternoons spent gazing out at the light as it sifted through the leaves in the backyard would shape the way I felt about the world. The way I felt about recording events in my life. That her instructions to exactly and absorbedly (with dreamy attention) stare out the window for fifteen minutes at a time would change the way I processed every flicker of golden light around me. That years later I'd read what others have written about light and shadow and know exactly what they were seeing because I've used similar words to describe similar things.

Two nights ago, I opened up my journal for the first time in over two months. The desire to write had vanished back in June with 80 degree afternoons and nights when the cooler could be left off. I've been wary to fill its lines. Worried my words wouldn't be sufficient. Unsure of my ability to correctly capture what has been going through my mind. The same has been true with blogging. I'm never sure who reads what I've written. I have learned this is much more for me than anyone else, but suddenly I became afraid of what everyone around me thought. This feeling of inability to record recent happenings created a critic -- one inside my head and perhaps one outside of it -- one who was always measuring, comparing. Throwing anxious doubts my way. I lost sight of my true self, the one who was trying to free what I really thought from what I thought I ought to think. All creativity had been killed. Drafts sat in my post box, all unfinished. Unpublished. I left all unsaid. Unrecorded. Idle.

It wasn't until today -- this afternoon -- when I pulled a book from the shelf, that the desire came back; that I cornered the critic and stared him in the face. Thanks to wise words from m. and Ueland's book, I've been able to harvest my thoughts and kick the critic out of the corner for good. Well, at least for now.

Tonight as I gazed out at the warm evening light that bathed marble columns in Memory Grove, I let go. I left the conversation. My thoughts drowned out the music and the voices. I was present. Now, a few hours later, I sit by the soft glow of the computer screen, fingers to keyboard, ideas flooding in. Suddenly I'm back at the kitchen table. She's there. My notebook is open in front of me; empty pages full of possibility and vistas of "Observations" ready to be recorded. My words won't be perfect. Some readers might not understand exactly what I'm feeling, but at least I'm writing. Ueland is right: (At times of) creative idleness...you are being slowly filled with warm imagination, with wonderful living thoughts...For what we write today slipped into our souls some other day when we were alone and doing nothing.

For anyone else suffering from blogger's block or for any of you who have contemplated starting a blog but haven't (I can think of a few of you in particular), follow m's encouragement: open up and let it out. you won't regret it. speak from the gut and be brave. and if you're nervous, then follow this advice:

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face... You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Happy writing!