the beginning

While i'm busy trying to reconfigure my life, i was thinking about all of the blogs i used to read. there was a great blog from a girl in arizona, written while doing her masters. it was about life, relationships, breaking up, moving on and all the other voices of life that people forget to share. i am still bummed she doesnt write it anymore. but sometimes these things are for moments and the need for them runs its course. she used to use only use initials and once dated a guy she called pb. some days i would think, "i should check the blog to see whats up with her and peanut butter." as i recall, my brother met her in phoenix and told her i called pb peanut butter. i like to read blogs for the same reason i read people magazine. i'm nosey and interested. i'm looking for the familiar and the outrageous. i found someone on myspace who posted one of my poems in her blog. i dont know her but i had forgotten that i was once a poet and that that piece got published. it was something i loved. i have scraps of paper from 20 years of writing. sometimes when i looked at each scrap or napkin or whatever, i can remember where i was when it came to me, what my life felt like in that moment and who each piece is about. i can tell you in the last few years i've written probably less than 10 pieces. all still first drafts. in that time, i somehow stopped saying what was in me. its not that i didnt have a voice, but that i chose, for many reasons, to ignore it. last weekend i took the kid to a photo show of a local news photographer i know. she loves photography and i wanted her to see what it can do, the stories photos can tell and how it used to be something i loved. while there, i ran into the former dean of the j-school and my old ap style prof who must be a cujillion years old. that dean is the reason i came to missoula. he wrote me a personal letter, giving me all the reasons that UM's j-school would be the best fit for me as a young native writer. i still have that letter. he didnt have to, but charlie always took the time with us...when he left the j-school so did i. i realized how much i miss telling the story. i was once an aspiring journalist. its hard to convince my daughter that i was a good writer and a decent photographer when theres not much current to show her. i dont even think i've shown her the old stuff. so here i am. to talk about whatever i want to talk about. i'm not trying to find a new voice, i am just transfusing my thoughts past the wall of quiet into the same body again. like dialysis. clearing out the bad and freshening up the good and putting it back in where it belongs...