The matter with words
Some sombreness with Berger, some Taoism with Le Guin
It’s been an odd couple of weeks writing-wise. I am swollen with the need to write, but no words come. I open documents, create new notes, scribble in my journals… but they’re all mere scratches. The words give no purchase. Like pedalling with a broken chain.
Writing will always keep me insecure, I suppose. Every new story will be oddly shaped. Angular. At times missing a head or feet.
Discomfort is a writer’s rite of passage.
My restless mood made me want to re-read one of my favourite stories by John Berger. And so I did, in the hope of finding words that would tweeze out this feeling and, perhaps, offer connection.
I did not remember this passage until I read it again:
“Forming the letters, however, was not writing, as Tyler pointed out on my first day in the Green Hut. Writing involves spelling, straight lines, spacing, words leaning the right way, margins, size, legibility, keeping the nib clean, never making blots, and demonstrating on each page of the exercise book the value of good manners.” From Woven, Sir by John Berger
After reading Berger, of course, it was time to revisit Le Guin, the one whose writing tugs you by the lapels and invites you to sit by the fire.
I’d read the Lathe of Heaven in a bit of a daze when I was more in awe of Ursula the person, than of Ursula the writer. She was influenced by Taoism while she wrote this book, envisioning the self as a jellyfish bobbing in the vast ocean of consciousness. Here is the opening of the novel, for your reading pleasure.
Read these words aloud, but softly, and tell me you don’t hear the swish and feel the sway.
Here’s what she has to say about a writer and her words:
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls.
And here is some mass-produced Etsy art that I cannot but help find beautiful, because words were her matter.
And so, for now, I shall focus on spellings and gentle cursive leans, and maybe read some more Le Guin.