Writing

(I have decided to resume my journal after years of neglect, and shall present it here when inspiration permits. Methinks I have been intellectually stagnant of late, and the thought of winter depresses me, so writing regularly helps clarify my thinking.)

    12-2-2016- Clouds, intermittent drizzle. 40F.   Walk Warren at noon. I have not walked though town in months, preferring nature and solitude generally, but there is something new and fresh after such a long absence, and the less traveled roads offer a relaxed, familiar place- and pace- by which to reconnect with my pen. I notice immediately that both time and distance are shortened by the wonderful, distracted immersion that creative thought demands, and I am already less troubled by the winter skies. Perhaps that is the best advice for anyone looking to find a sincere occupation: do that which engages you so completely that time flies.

      As I look out over the town after living here for ten years, I realize that I cannot fairly judge it without first admitting and dismissing my own moods and biases about life in general. That is, town is not responsible for what I bring to it, and to call it poor, or conservative, or wealthy, or liberal, or friendly or unfriendly, would demand that I first define those things in myself. The Allegheny River that divides this town is a better measure of my shifting opinions. The river at least reflects my human frailties from an ageless direction.

       As towns go it is less than 10,000 persons by last census, and traffic rarely backs up at the stoplights. People who have passed their lives here tell me that it is a small town in the sense that people know one another, which from my perspective of one who has lived most of his life near the eastern cities, both encourages concern for ones neighbors and inhibits people from addressing the potential problems of nepotism. Despite the impersonal alienation of a metropolitan area, there is a greater opportunity in a larger city to embrace ideas of truth and justice independent of personal feelings. In that regard impartiality is easier when one does not personally know ones neighbor. Of course as I write that statement I realize that there are good, noble people in both places and also the corrupt and unprincipled, and when there is a critical mass of either persuasion social history is determined.

       As I cross back over the river at the end of four miles I pause to watch the pigeons fly over the buildings and circle back to a wire near the bridge. None of them are the same individuals I had watched ten years ago, although in truth I feel mostly unchanged in this sacred, mysterious place from which my words arise. In this place I am an observer of my own life passing by, independent of the outside world, where writing remains a stable force springing from a realm I have sometimes called heaven. Regardless of how dry and lifeless words can be sometimes, at their best they have cajoled and inspired and angered and frustrated me, and made me laugh and cry and feel wholly alive. For those reasons I have resumed my journal today.