Thursday, October 11, 2012

(other people's) thoughts on writers

Despite the fact that there's not much writing going on around here these days, two of several interesting quotes from this article (translated--feel free to correct me):

"For the Spanish writer and journalist Rosa Montero, the key is in the necessity to write. 'I've come to learn, with time, that a writer is, in reality, the one who needs to write in order to live. That is to say, to face the darkness of life, to be able to get up each morning. One is a writer because he can't not be; because of this, most novelists, for example, began writing in childhood: it's something that's part of your basic structure. So that necessity is what makes you a real writer, but that's not to say that it would make you a good writer.'"

"A writer is a strange thing. He's a contradiction and he's nonsense. To write isn't to talk. It's to be quiet. It's to wail without sound."

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

from my notebook

It seems appropriate somehow that it was a year ago that I first moved to Pitesti. Alicia put up a picture this morning of us in October 2006 dressed up for Halloween and to think about that, that it's been six years since that moment--what do I write in response? I think about the fullness of that friendship, what six years has held.

Sometime back in March I told someone that I was going home for a little bit in December and they responded by saying mai e ceva, still a ways to go. And I said then, no, I think it'll fly by and now here we are, two months away, all those years from a place I wouldn't have guessed one thing that's true right now.

I say it seems appropriate to write this first thing in a new notebook--it usually seems to happen this way. I filled up my first one and started the second right as I came to Romania. And it feels like something new these days, some new season. And as I look back on six years--not just as a whole, but even on each of them--there is abundance of abundance, my cup running over even out of the empty places.

It reminds me of the other day, of reading this in Ezra (and it's been in my head since then):

"And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sounds of joy from the sounds of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away."

And in response: "Something about this. It settles deeply in my heart, in a place already carved out for it, in a place shaped by the knowing of this thing. I don't know what it is. But I know this, my heart is pulled toward its truth."

That sounds much sadder than I mean for it to. I look back and rejoice, I really do. I look forward and rejoice. And wonder what even the next year will look like. 10,000 roads, indeed.


(pictured above, two babies otherwise known as sarawr the dinosaur and the colombiana. also, that's the girliest halloween costume i've ever worn--the following years i was a bag of jelly beans and then juno.)