The industry of distraction
Makes us forget
That we live in the universe.

We have become converts
To the religion of stress
And its deity of progress.*
(John O’Donohue)

Remembering writing outdoors at Hedgebrook and elsewhere, I think about the human pace of longhand, and how one is constantly looking away from the notebook at things around it, near or far, changing position as one sits, doodling in the margin while working on a transition, half-consciously noticing the slant of the sunlight, the advance of shadows, the colour of the sky: fully absorbed in the work, and yet open to the surrounding world, as we are no when working at a computer screen.**
(Ursula Le Guin)

Where we are, this place, isn’t half-bad.

Who we are AND what we can make happen, are more than enough.

We just need a way or ways to explore more, to save ourselves from distraction and noise and busyness, and writing may be that way.

After all, the thing we are writing is our life.

(*From John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us: For Citizenship.)
(**From Ursula Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter.)