Saturday 17 January 2009

an introduction

I figure I should open this blog with an introduction, and an explanation as to why I desire to write about my self, my thoughts, about the things I do and have done, and post them here on the internet for anyone to see. 

I seem to have a hard time with these kinds of things. Questions like, “Who are you.”? always have me scrambling to come up with some magic two minute monologue that sums me up. I think humans are more complex than that. I know I am. 

Today I was at the park with two of my kids. My eight year old daughter was high up in a tree. My five year old son stood at the bottom holding a long thin branch he had found on the ground. As he called her names, trying his hardest to poke her with the stick, both of them making a whole lot of rowdy noise, I read this passage from "An Expedition to the Pole" by Annie Dillard:

Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand--that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.

And I realized that this is where I see my self and this is why I write. It’s that energy, that something, that has me moving down this path I have chosen, trying to exist within this strange body, this life, the limits of time and circumstance. How do I make sense of it? 

I have always loved the power of a story. The personal histories of strangers intrigue me. When I think of the now, I think of the whole life I’ve lived so far, tucked under my arm, like a book. 

Listing facts about me always feel so empty: I grew up in the most conservative part of California full of Christian guilt. I had my first child at sixteen. I was married for seven years, having two more kids during that time. I came out as a dyke at twenty-six. I moved to Mexico just five months ago. We home school the kids. 

I want to dig deep. Lay it all out in this space. Find that workable compromise. 



3 comments:

  1. hey! i followed you here from carrot's blog. great entry-way to start things off with a bang by quoting the most amazing annie dillard (i'm in the thick of pilgrim at tinker creek right now)

    keep writing, please!

    have you read grace paley? the small disturbaces of man is a great quick read.

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  2. well, nice to meet you!

    I just discovered Annie Dillard and I am devouring Teaching Stones To Talk.

    I haven't read Grace Paley but I just looked her up on Wikipedia and I'm hoping they've got something of hers at the little English library here.

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  3. i was going to send you the annie dillard writing book!!! it is in my package that i will never mail. or might.
    xoxo

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