Thursday Thoughts...

“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won’t really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we’ll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won’t wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”  

Anne Lamott 

(Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

Pondering books and writing, I came across this beautiful description of what it feels like to be a writer, a poet, a teller of stories.

The imagery of sand castles being built with words and the way the tides affect them is such a genuine and sympathetic insight into how many folk feel as they create. All writing can disappear - hit delete often enough and there is nothing left on the page. Burn the pages, same result.  Words themselves are ephemeral up to point. 

And yet I love how she portrays the thinking of the writer; the hope of the poet, that somehow, with skill and strength and will power and spirit they can somehow divert the waters, and turn the tide away to enable their work, their piece, their book, their poem, to withstand the ebbs and flows. To remain  and to be seen and to be read. 

That thought must be a comfort in the long hours of writing and toiling away, committing words to paper.  

Persistence, passion and drive enable us to leave something worthwhile behind.