Thursday, February 27, 2025

LOST IN PROCESS

A lot has been lost in the past few days. It is hard for me to comprehend the nature of this loss, and yet I am plagued by the notion of something missing. Part of this can be attributed to age, but mostly it is the familiar attributes of Time's decay. It is so difficult to keep Now in an ongoing presence as it is always slipping into the future or dallying with the past. I know it is related to creative process and the ways that imagination has been deflected through neglect and negative energy.

I am not the first to encounter creative blocks, and having lived almost nine decades, I often have been overwhelmed by negative creative inertia. I try to comfort myself that spiritual forces within me are continually flowing in and out. Eventually, I tell myself, this creative block will dissolve, and I will go about my business of creating new work. 

But there is a deeper Truth to this moment. I know there is part of me that continues to create, even during intervals when I appear stagnated and ineffectual. So I linger on the edge of new work... I am somewhat astonished that I have been able to continue writing and exploring this experience of life. Phaedrus beckons and we have our confrontations. I am almost overwhelmed at the abundance of ideas that flow through the present moment and how many perish for lack of nourishment.

Sometimes I feel like I detract from my writing by keeping this Blog. But actually the opposite seems to be true. There are many ideas that perish from lack of attention. There are so many ideas erupting every moment that many die from lack of irrigation. So I understand how these are lost in the process. Yet these flowing of ideas gather into ponds, lakes, and maybe even oceans. Hopefully I will find myself lingering by these reservoirs and discover beauty about to bloom.

Friday, January 03, 2025

AUTHOR'S DILEMMA

 The New Year brings new projects and the closing of old projects. I was composing a new poem every day for 2024, an experiment that began almost tentatively. But now, a year later, I find that I want to continue some sort of writing activity. I had a reader of my poems who indicated she was thinking of starting a writing project. I encouraged her to write, if not Facebook, maybe a blog. But then I thought, maybe this is my new project. I have a Blog, Wyzard Ways, which I started in 2005. My entries of late have been sporadic, so now I think I may entertain the notion of maintaining the Blog with new entries, almost daily. I will link the entries to Facebook, so I can continue the semblance of a project. Writing is about wordsmithing, about capturing some essence of Time and making a linguistic fossil that may get lost from day to day, but shows up in someone's future search.

The question for me is whether I should link to the Blog from Facebook, or repost. Maybe I will link, and provide comments from time to time. I am still in a state of flux, as I have had some negative energy confronting publishing my books.

To date, I have published the following books as John Vance Gilbert:

TILTING TIME
REMNANTS OF BEING
MULBERRY DAYS
FACEBOOK POEMS 2024
(January-June)

THE SANTA OF JEJU ISLAND
(Published under name Jonathan Vance)
ALIENS
(Published under name Jonathan Vance)

More books on the way:

MAKING MUSIC
NEW YORK STORIES
FACEBOOK POEMS 2024
(July-December)

There are some other titles I am working on, including an adventure novel. But the most pressing is New York Stories. I still have to complete two stories, or decide not to do them. 

The dilemma that arose was to consider the best path forward for my creative process. I'm not sure how best to proceed, but at this point maybe resuming the Blog WYZARD WAYS is the answer.