To write fragments is to write minutes, to write seconds.
To write fragments is to write unknowns. Olivia Dresher
Time is definitely on my mind lately. Maybe because it’s still winter (that metaphorical season of death) but feels like spring as climate breakage is upon us in full force these days from coast to coast no matter what part of the world your nearest sea may be. (Do you notice that that was a long sentence? I do, but I’m not changing it.)
I’ve mostly been a fragment writer as there was little time early on in my life to set aside the necessary blocks of time to complete larger written works. Poetry is my first love, having fallen in love with it again in my thirties, and it was about the same time I learned of free writing and early pioneers like Dorothea Brande, Brenda Ueland, and Peter Elbow. Of course, there are probably others more well known from earlier times, but these were my first encounters in the late eighties as I began my foray into poetry.
The opening quote is found in the book by Olivia Dresher, Fragments of a failed mystic which was published in 2023. In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing was the first book I purchased from her in 2006. At one point, I later caught her posts when she started tweeting on the “old” Twitter. Twitter, when it was in its infancy and poets and writers posted in profusion was an exciting interesting place. Bots and trolls had not taken over, and it was a great place to follow writers who excelled in short forms as the original tweet format was no more than 140 characters.
Aphorisms are her specialty. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it’s defined as a “pithy observation that contains a general truth.” When it comes to pithy, Olivia is the pithiest there is! Her life, literally seems an open book of snippets, as she writes in a stream of consciousness in what seems like real time. Her writing is what visual thinking might look like if you had one of those cartoon captions over your head. Or at least to me, her words on the page are about as close to spontaneous living/recording in real time as you can get to capture life. She captures snippets of thought which might otherwise get away.
Here are a few aphorisms from her book:
339 What does outer space smell like?
465 I don’t fit in here, but here I am.
597 I’m seasick on this sea of me.
703 When I go out in the world, I pretend I’m me.
902 Where is the news to help one bear the news?
Her latest Twitter posts are as interesting as ever. A couple of favorites
“When the sky is filled with clouds, how human that feels. But the sky filled with stars feels beyond human.”
“Now is open for everyone to see. The past and the future are closed.”
“ My writings blend the person, the poetic, and the philosophical. It has been my life for many years now to make my written thoughts, feelings, and memories as short as possible. Writing here at Twitter has inspired me to shape them that way.”
She shares tweets often. Twitter is not much fun for me these days as I’m a political junkie. It’s more and more difficult to find the others who interest me in the writing arena as I get distracted by all the political angst and pundits who explore every nuance of our current ununited trip down a seemingly dystopian lane. As a second-wave feminist, there is much to be concerned about which is enough said about that in this venue.
I’m pretty sure I have a tad of hypergraphia as I buy countless journals and write often as I feel compelled to write or paint whenever I can. “Writing a book in my head” which is actually thinking a book in my head adds to my urgency to keep notes as I try not to forget things. Maybe all creative types have some sort of compulsive behavior which keeps their minds alert and those little moments of clarity manage to get recorded somewhere. As Alexandra Stoddard stated in her book, Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal:
“It took years of keeping journals to trust a simple fact: like life in transit, the writing inside is often fragmented, messy.”
For now, I feel as if the time train is hurtling toward some final destination that could be just around the next corner. Time travel has been fun for the past 70 years or so, so my goal is to explore, record, or share some daily thoughts about creativity. Is it me or does writing seem to take longer than thinking?
Postscript - Outer space smells like burnt almond cookies according to one astronaut. Others mention welding fumes, walnuts, brakepads, and gunpowder. Starstuff is smelly for sure!
taylorcollins©2024