weeks.org - What I wrote while finding time to write

LATE FRAGMENT

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

--Raymond Carver
from A New Path To The Waterfall

What I wrote while finding time to write

This week I wrote
a lot of words
about other stuff
than I'd intended

I wrote to friends and leads and family
to customers and strangers
to customers I like to call my friends
and to some I'd rather call strangers

I started to write about vision and patterns
Even patterns in chaos and noise and debris
I wanted to write about slowing down
And the power & promise of depth over speed

Still

For the most part, nights and days
skipped and blurred into a grey disc -
Flat.
As far as I could see

And I wrote letters, posts, specs and reminders
and occasional notes about what drives me

I wrote of dissent and reconciliation
and that if our NO is not OK to express
then any YES is meaningless...

...Then I made a shopping list.

I wrote online & offline
in blogs and web pages
search engines and wikis

I wrote to document, estimate, invite and remember

I wrote with my phone
and I wrote on my hand
There are receipts and post-its
in my pocket
with writing that I
wrote on them

I wrote this week in margins, while reading others’ writing,

I wrote on keyboards, whiteboards and black

I wrote with a stylus on screens
and with thumbs on a gadget

I wrote in chat windows and web forums
and on the printout of an email message

I wrote in Excel and Word and Power point

On index cards.
With inkjet printers.

I wrote my name on a dozen credit card receipts
and at least one thank you note, I think.

I wrote directions on a business card
And used a marker on a storage box

I wrote down just how long it took
to do a lot of what I did
Then wrote estimates of how much longer
What is left will take to do

Somehow I'm still hard pressed
to say just where all that time went

I wrote appointments, checks and balances
Words of truth and fallacy
But very little of the kinds of things I’d thought I'd write.
- A few precious feelings, sounds and scenes

So now my skull is roaring with
the wrestling of open loops
and missed announcements
of all the words I didn't write

They roll & entwine, snap and remind

Threaten, encourage and make themselves rhyme

Yet end up, at best, on that day’s TO DO list

The week was a-scrawl with pencils and pens
A-wash in the din of the click and the beep

All those bursts and leaks
of word and symbol
Forgotten.

Turned to language litter

And now they speak from where I left them
on the roadsides of each day
of the speed with which I wrote or
scribbled them along the way

Assembled and recycled, here
The rhythm of their read back lines
A eulogy for words I spilled
while looking for some time to write.

Randy Weeks
July 2006

Copyright 1992 - 2012 by Randy Weeks
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