As we enter the less-than-one week countdown to the wedding, we finally picked our last poem today to be read at our ceremony. It’s surprising how much I dislike most poetry about love when it’s love of another person. Poetry is good when it’s about God, loss, sex, regret, death, irony, writing, or the family pet. But finding another poem about love after we had already found one? How the second had eluded us, words of love without the tang of saccharine, the ring of the facile and obvious. Until today.
Then this afternoon, we met with the minister to discuss, among other things, our ceremony. It became a discussion of context and language: scripture to be read or not read in full or not at all, lines we wanted taken out of the service, all in light of "the cultural milieu" (the minister’s phrase not mine), and our own consideration for our own integrity and all those dearly beloveds who will witness our happy day.
All this wrestling with language made me realize tonight that I had not written much in the last two months.
I had turned outward to direct experience and inward, not willing to share in writing what I had been feeling (sorry Gentle Reader), but happy to let others do the writing.
Two days ago I started writing again. A new friend told me about a writing exercise where you handwrite 4 pages every morning without stopping. Supposedly it's to "unblock" your Inner (Read: Nasty) Editor. So I started writing. Only few interesting insights have appeared on the pages in the midst of mostly boring stuff.
Yet I will keep writing.
This past weekend as my Husband-to-Be coped with his Wife-to-Be's pack rat ways (see above photo of former home office as Exhibit A), what emerged from The Merging of Things were characters in folders of unfinished stories and one pretty room, a room of my own, a room where the writing will once again occur.
My Love has given me many gifts but what a gift this new room is. A quiet clean place for words.
