So, yes. I've been rejected a handful of times since my last post, but somewhere along the line, a higher power (or board member) missed that blog entry and granted me not only a month long writing residency at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota, but also a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist's Grant. I'm cast as a vow-of-silence-monk asked to cantor for Easter Mass. I haven't been writing. I've been working on projects of a more capitalist nature, and now I feel a swelling of anxiety (even fear) in venturing to the Anderson Center for a month of nearly nothing other than exactly what I haven't been doing: writing.
My thoughts are a pair of steam-engines pulling against each other. One continuously thinks: What do I bring; What will I write; How will I do this? The other replays a phrase mentioned to me in an ex-lover's bittersweet letter: I love that we're both starting our lives (or so it seems). I think it's taken longer than either of us expected.
Has it taken longer? Am I starting my life? I think my writing life began in fourth grade with my first short story (an hand scrawled six-paged rollicking adventure of Olav the Viking). But what of other things? Perhaps my life has yet to begin. Perhaps we live multiple lives simultaneously within ourselves. There is never any going back, but only forward and starting again. And it all begins with a prayer answered--or not--by the gods.
Write on, shine on,
Thomas.
