Midden

Listening to a poetry podcast, wherein Fanny Howe talks about her latest novel (and Conor O'Callaghan graces the world with his wonderful Irish brogue), sparked a thought in my head. Nothing groundbreaking, but perhaps interesting nonetheless: when asked when she wrote the opening, autobiographical essay, Howe stated that she wrote it many years before – an understandable response considering the content (her life) as a topic of consisted analysis. The rest of the book was a compilation of fragmented ideas that she had cut and paste into different stories. I paused the podcast (which I have yet to finish) and reflected on my writing: I often feel as if my thoughts are never coherent, never fully realized. I write down half-formulated ideas, something scratching on my brain and nagging me to let it out. So I find a place on my computer or a spare notebook and give it a home, but generally that's the last I see of it. Lately this has been bothering me, how much potential may be wasted because I don't have a larger plan for it, because I'm ignoring it (though "ignore" connotes an active refusal to acknowledge, doesn't it? "disregard," then?). After all, if these ideas bother me enough to write them down, they must mean something, right? This process of writing reminds me of the life of a pack rat, a rodent whose nomenclature tends to mimic my habits in many ways: they store and store and store because there's room for everything and everything can have a place, and leaving something out makes room for regret. It's all a matter of finding the right area of the nest to place it. Some ideas need space and time to permeate, to expand and embody a larger, possibly unexpected theme, whereas other ideas function more semiotically. They may need tweaking and cleaning, sure, but their presence, however large or small, can nestle their way into an even greater nest of writing.