tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90112502802396009342024-03-13T12:41:24.341-07:00Writing Left-HandedA Writer's JournalErica Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01127299214277063163noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011250280239600934.post-54307390290260082892013-03-22T21:02:00.001-07:002013-03-22T21:02:52.942-07:00I used to write poetry.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">Coleridge once said "poetry is for
the very young", hence the theory of the Byronic
complex. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">The young, vibrant, often violent male intelligence forging its
way, etching out life through pain and poetry. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">But once grown he becomes
silent or mute and happy or complacent. Maybe the truth was that poetry </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">is either for the very young or the very old. And age is not
chronological, but rather attached by relative means </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">to all sentiment and
feeling. And then we can always write. If we choose to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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And I could have written you a thousand letters
with my fallen thoughts upon this paper...</span><br />
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<h1>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Beauty of Partiality</span></h1>
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I love the beginnings and the end.</div>
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And in the middle,</div>
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I love the room to question.</div>
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It is a playground to haunt.</div>
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A mysterious gaunt </div>
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That becomes so alert with understanding</div>
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As it is depicted. </div>
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The more distressed it becomes,</div>
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The more complex and stunning it appears.</div>
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<br /></div>
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You could live a life out of pure irony,</div>
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Many have.</div>
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You could send letters to editors</div>
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Explaining it all,</div>
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But the world not would be able to interpret</div>
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The way that you so vainly address </div>
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Every issue with such ease,</div>
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As if you regretted it already,</div>
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But were hiding it so well.</div>
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<br /></div>
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If prudence is just, </div>
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Then why have foresight?</div>
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And why is it so bad to live miserably </div>
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When half the world</div>
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Is constantly restraining
their regret?</div>
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<br /></div>
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I believe in the joy of sweet, stinging sorrow.</div>
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As if catharsis were granted</div>
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In step with meaning.</div>
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Then how could we not </div>
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Hold on to a half-placed world</div>
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So thoroughly incomplete </div>
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That the only way to achieve anything</div>
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Is to mistake it?</div>
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We live amongst the disposed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Writers’ Bed</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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Of yourself upon a hard bed</div>
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Where our faith does not exist.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I took that stack of papers</div>
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Down to your desk,</div>
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And I glanced at your work</div>
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Despite your request</div>
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To never let loose the meaning or intent.</div>
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<br /></div>
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You, silent player of what is right,</div>
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You, the hero of the night,</div>
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Christ has found his better brother</div>
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In you tonight.</div>
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<br /></div>
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You choose the way to leave.</div>
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It was nice of you </div>
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To give so much of yourself</div>
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To the imagination.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This way the softness </div>
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Can linger in feigned lust. </div>
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And the eagerness can vanish </div>
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unnoticed. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Mismatched syllables </div>
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Take effort to roll onto the page.</div>
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I am glad to give you that. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Syncopated misfortune.</div>
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It is something, at least.</div>
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Do with my musing as you will,</div>
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You always did.</div>
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<br /></div>
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---EKN 9/16/04</div>
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<br />Erica Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01127299214277063163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011250280239600934.post-57886804851606839152013-02-24T22:09:00.000-08:002013-02-24T22:09:21.176-08:00I used to write fiction.<br />
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--From “Breaking Water” by Erica Neal</div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“In the beginning the world was flat", Ptolemy told
us. And we believed. Then Copernicus told us our land and
water curved spherically onto itself. This theory defied previous logic, but we learned it to be true. Our thought is a result of our expertise at
the time. And ignorance can be bliss, as
so long as the bliss ultimately does not result in any significant pain or
blood loss. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"> I was n</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">ever one for myth, the
facts seem to be more reliable allies to me.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">But then lies the age-old question- what do you know for sure?</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Empherically so, the answer truly is nothing.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">And so to live like this can be a blind walk to
the ends of the ocean, but fortunately for us the ocean leans back on itself, and eventually takes us
to land once again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Their town was not on the edge of the
world or even near it, it was buried under woods just miles from the
interstate. It was five minutes from its
exit sign and had little history that anyone knew. </span></div>
Erica Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01127299214277063163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011250280239600934.post-9302136411877482582013-02-24T21:57:00.002-08:002013-02-24T22:01:24.543-08:00I used to be a writer.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">After a long life intermission filled with change, love, marriage, children, work, and greater higher education, I have come back to myself as a writer. I have been writing and
writing. Remembering how to find words.....</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">And rarely, but sometimes, I am seeing the moments again-the hallowed briefs in between the thoughts we have, the words
we speak, and what we really mean. And I laugh for no real
reason other than just because I can still see. </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I really was not at all confident. So perhaps</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> out of contrition, I am returning to a place where I think, and I read, and I write. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Even when the day is long, because it always is, and even when the last hours before my laptop turns on my two precious children have somehow managed to suck all warm-blooded life out of me, even then I find myself compelled to try. I open one eye, then another. I drag out my ancient, reclaimed trunk from the attic, and pull out of it my history, my pieces, the mismatched bits of myself. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">And I am really not at all confidant in myself, as a writer, anymore. I was confidant at one point, or at many points in my life, I suppose. I can not much remember time before I felt myself writing either on paper or in my imagination. I find it funny that as I have become so certain of myself as an adult, a career women, a lover, and a mother, I have become less in myself as a writer. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">So I am starting this blog in order to keep a journal of sorts, to name the parts, and to meet others who can hear my voice and whose I know. I can not promise anything. And I am at once reminded of words from the American poet, Stephen Dunn:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> "Here is where loveliness can live</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> with failure, and nothing is complete. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> I love how we go on."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> Please join me.</span><br />
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Erica Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01127299214277063163noreply@blogger.com0