My Words are Chewing on Themselves

I am sitting at Goodday Coffee+Book shop in Kilgore. I'm with Connor and we just finished classes at Kilgore for the day. He is in a chair nearby wrestling with a computer class assignment and talking to his laptop in an unfriendly way in short syllables.

I am lucky because major tests are over for now and I'm free to blog. At least I want to say I'm free to blog. My head is still imprisoned in a rut of the antithesis of creativity and when I start to write, sadness comes out. I don't want to write about sad things, because I figure I've done that enough. But how do you write from the heart on such an overcast day without sounding sad?

The sad things I feel but don't want to write about are like boxes in a room in a house I moved into a long time ago. I don't come into this room much and it hurts unpacking the boxes, but I am curious about their contents because I seem to remember some things in them that used to be displayed and enjoyed in the brighter parts of my house, and some time ago I packed them away out of sight. I miss them like a favorite book. Or a favorite tea cup.

This coffee shop is peaceful. The soft green on the walls is soothing, and so are the beautiful books that line the walls, books that look like they were chosen for expressly decorative purposes, but are actually for sale. On the wall over the table
where Connor and I often sit, there is a quote by T.S. Eliot that says "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons."

Connor thinks this is an awesome quote and so do I, although putting it up in a coffee shop is taking it grossly out of context, I would think. But poetry is subjective-- I suppose you can take it to mean anything you please, as long as you don't assume the author meant that as well.

My brother and I have been thinking about art and discussing it lately-- music for him, writing for me. Art is something that has to be shared, or it will ferment and burst out of you. That's why we have to listen to music in the car together, that's why I want to write a blog, that's why I am glad there is poetry on the walls of a coffee shop. It's why I wish more people took time to love beauty instead of trampling it. It's why I want to find more creative outlets. I don't know much about art, only that there's a part of me that hungers for beauty, and a part of me that was created to create.

After a long walk at the walking track a few days ago, and the conversation we had there, Connor and I agreed that what we are looking for in art is what is REAL. On my part, if I have to wake up to the ugliness of life, I need all the more to wake up to the beauty, because the beauty is the rope where we hang onto God. By beauty I don't just mean flowers. I mean everything that is good. A Weird Al song that makes me laugh my head off, walls painted green, Winnie the Pooh, rain outside the window, my sister's shimmering hair, sitting in the living room with friends talking about life...real life.

I didn't mean to write about this. It seems foolish to me somehow. Every time I write a word it turns and attacks the word behind it so that my sentences regularly get chewed to bits and I have to erase everything and start over. Even now they are salivating and growling and I see that I should post this blog before I lose my chance...