It seems about a year ago that I wrote of the tree falling on our house. It’s long gone, now we have seedling grass growing, and thoughts of what kind of new tree. And in the meantime, we’ve been to Maine laughed and hugged and cried with family–and eaten my brother David’s blueberry pie, been to Madison laughed and hugged and celebrated birthdays with family, and come back home.
As part of getting back home, I was cleaning my desk and writing space yesterday and listening to the Terry Tempest Williams interview on the radio program “On Being.” She said she was recently asked at a party, “What do you do?” and she actually thought a more appropriate question was, “What do you see?”
She was speaking to all listeners, writers and otherwise, but it seems especially true for writers. What do we see? What we see so informs what we say. And what I’m wondering today is how do we get ourselves to see more, see better, see deeper. If you have a hammer, they say, every problem is solved with a nail. I guess if you are a writer, every solution involves a pen and a notebook. I’m buying a new notebook and I’m going to start filling it with what I see–trash, twigs, orioles, and pies–all of it. I’ll report back. You, too.
Confession time: I haven’t done the “golden shovel” yet. But there’s a page in the new notebook.
