Rueful

In other houses, other workshops, other cafés, behind the visible or invisible doors of their solitude, people have been writing this morning. Beautiful sentences have emerged, and hang now on the shredded remains of burst chrysalides, slowly opening and closing their drying wings.

Comments

[Lilian Nattel]

That is beautiful. I have to confess that I was writing this morning--but nothing beautiful. I have generally written badly to start, occasionally competently and I aspire to write well in a first draft. But the point is to write, and many drafts later, I know it is very good. What matters is putting words together from beginning to end. What matters is tolerating the badness of a first draft, or learning to see the goodness in it. After all, only an abusive parent would sneer at a toddler learning to walk.

[Mary]

I always remember poet William Stafford who came to write every morning.

[Vivian]

me too I was writing this morning after long silence, haltingly, phrases that didn't connect and didn't even point to the right place, but the hectic day that followed found me just a tiny bit more resilient than it otherwise might have.

[Mouse]

now that would be a good name for a French blog!

[Laura]

An imagist poem in prose!

[Beth]

A clarification, in response to a private email: I was certainly not rueful about all the beautiful creation by others that was going on, just annoyed at myself for frittering away yet another morning and not using it well.

[Peter]

I frequently abuse myself for not using time productively. There is so much I could be doing, and I might be doing something else, or doing nothing at all. And yet -- is time not spent according to Plan A, or even Plan B, really misused? After reading the last three of your posts and being inspired by your picture of a hern to look up a Thurber cartoon I loved -- and finding as well the somewhat precious Tennyson poem he was making fun of ("I come from haunts of coot and hern"), I find I have burned 20 minutes that were earmarked for paying the bills, and that I don't really care. I learned something. I had my imagination stretched. I enjoyed a memory. Plan A can wait.

Rue time spent brooding, or rehearsing speeches never to be given, or justifying yourself to yourself. If pottering around accomplishing putting things away is what you need to do between deadlines, potter proudly. Maybe you're working toward a goal you don't realize you had.