So, knowing that I was planning to take on this writing project for Lent, my super-wonderful hubby purchased the notebook at left for me as a Valentine's Day present. Purple cats. Rawk!!! It will be a great resource for jotting down those random ideas I want to investigate further as I go through this process.
The first note that I made in it, yesterday, came to me while I was researching flight prices for an upcoming trip to San Francisco and the California coast (family reunion in June). It reads "Pre-pay for our baggage". Now, in the course of shopping travel expenses anymore, that seems just a reasonable note to self about process of purchasing airline tickets and budgeting for a trip. Unless you are flying Southworst or carrying on luggage, this is one more fee airlines have decided to add to keep their ticket prices artificially low. I disagree fervently with the execution of it--just add the price into the ticket already and cease nickel-and-diming your customers. . If I have to pay the fee, at least on many airlines, I can prepay it at the time I purchase the tickets. It does make it easier and alleviates the annoyance somewhat. So, to make a short story long, I jotted down that note because I wanted to make a deeper investigation of "baggage" not as just the stack of essentials one bundles up to take with them on a trip, but the metaphoric sense of how we carry our pasts around without regard for how they cost us in our currents and our futures.
Wouldn't it be easier in many things if we could prepay for the load of crap that we often bring into relationships? Rather than having to pay extra when we check in to our friends and families, and they find us carrying more than they think we should; should we not be open, honest, and carry our baggage without pretext?
Yesterday, I alluded to the desire to write, but without clear direction of what that means; nor did I set a specific goal other than making a daily composition. At this time, I am not sure that anything more than that goal is necessary. For now, the goal of changing the habit so that writing becomes something I do daily, and whether the output is a poem, a monologue, a reflection, or short fiction does not yet matter. In fact, most of the early writings will probably consist of personal reflections (meandering maunderings?). I had a playwriting instructor in college who encouraged us to figure out our beliefs and enhance our understandings before we started to layer those beliefs in metaphor and literary conceit. So, I need to remind myself of what I know and believe before I can obfuscate it too far in staged conversations.
A blessed second day of the journey in the wilderness.
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