I am supposed to be preparing for a class and here I am pounding out letters instead.

“You will write, if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting.” Gertrude Stein on “creative recognition”

And so I write or type – no thought but the coming in and out of words and no continuous idea but the immediate typing of words that emerge from the keys. Isn’t it interesting – at least to me –that the piano has white and black keys and the typewriter has black and white keys as well…. perhaps they produce a music of sorts. I keep searching for definitions of words, short story, writing, memory, confusion, desolation, loneliness, longing, sorrow and ….I stopped typing because I was thinking.

This morning I was looking for a book of poetry – Jane Hirschfield’s Salt and Sugar– found it and then found myself sitting on my meditation mat reading neglected poems.

There are people I loved once who are lost to me. I did not tend love well enough – maybe there was too much envy, bitterness…something changed and those I loved were lost.

Another day.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside.”   Maya Angelou

Lying in bed I feel at home – reading – marking passages. I am drawn into other countries of the heart –to stories of love and loneliness. Sighing deeply, my sadness empties for a moment onto the page.

There is quick comfort. The words open my grief. The story enters my eyes and pulse, makes a connection, and returns to black letters on white paper.

It is Sunday morning – books on the shelf behind my pillow, reading glasses secure – books and papers piled beside the bed, some books having spent the night on the bed. I reach behind my head, pull out a book and begin reading (Starting Out in the Evening – Brian Morton). After an hour or so I pull another book – begin reading – the words enter my sadness again, ring loud , pierce what I guard so carefully.

Bed and books, the loose comfort of being known through words, touched by them.  It is years since anyone held me – skin to skin, lips meeting lips, fingers pulling and pushing and grasping for a fuller need – now words and story touch me in this Sunday morning bed.

Nothing was ever empty. What was gone left wounds – invisible and loud.

This is a space for “echoes and fragments” to use Virginia Woolf’s words. I may reflect on something, I may ruminate, I may poem and I may prose. I hope the reader will find this space even provocative at times.