up down up down

After a week of going madly in all directions, ridiculous interruptions, and general despair at the absence of the muse, today - a decent morning of writing.  The thing to do when mired down in bog of despond: read.  Take photos.  Take a walk.  The photo above makes me wildly happy, who knows why.  The colours, the silliness, the slightness of it perhaps.

A person should always read this bit from Woolf's diary when feeling a failed and stupid writer:



"A note: despair at the badness of the book:  can't think how I ever could write such stuff - and with such excitement:  that's yesterday:  today I think it good again.  A note, by way of advising other Virginias with other books that this is the way of the thing:  up down up down - and Lord knows the truth."




So, yes, today I think my obscure book quite good again.

I repeat, up down up down.  Reassuring somehow isn't it?  Tomorrow it will be back to despair at the badness.  : )

Interesting how I take more photos when the writing is going well.  I also fill my diary up with more nonsense.  Feathers and leaves are suddenly magical.

I read an essay by Christa Wolf on Ingeborg Bachmann this past week.  Re-read.  I'm finding I need to revisit all my old books right now rather than delve into anything new.  What I love about this particular passage is that Wolf seems the perfect reader for Bachmann, and that too is reassuring.  She says,



"When you get ready to read this prose, you should not expect to find stories, descriptions of actions, information about events; neither characters in the ordinary sense of the word nor loud assertions.  You will hear a voice: daring and lamenting.  A voice that suits the truth, that is:  talking about what is certain and uncertain, on the basis of personal experience.  And a voice that truthfully goes silent when it doesn't know what to say."  



I could read this paragraph all day.