A fundamental concept to blogging is to post frequently on topics whether they warrant further discussion or if to call attention to ordinary items that might warrant a deeper look – a second glance, perhaps, from another perspective. Subject matter aside, bloggers create dialogue at times because words need to be added to the page. They may take stances on subjects merely to have a stance, not because the issue bears any real significance to them. An audience is following their work, enjoying their opinions, and in turn the opinions become more frequent and not always the hills on which they might prefer to die.

Though the thoughts I post here are genuine, I apparently violate Kierkegaard’s principle in the material I write on occasion. I am not keeping silent. I am not nothing and more than likely not destined for a life beyond this one. I am writing for practice and to develop a voice – a loud one – that will hopefully be listened to as greatly as the words make their way out from my fingertips.

My speech has lesser grace, a lesser capacity for eloquence and I’m not as capable to deliver words so far as I can with the written kind. The ability to use words adeptly in the modern era is a dieing ability, we are told. While voices aren’t being silenced, they aren’t being heard either. The creation of social media outlets, blogs and other informal electronic web formats, we are often told, are killing grammar, punctuation, language and with them another greater danger. Is it that people are struggling to put thoughts and what they really feel in their hearts into the world in a meaningful way?

It isn’t likely that those who haven’t learned to speak well we be suddenly moved to complete silence, as attractive as that option might be for the rest of us. Luckily, it’s the fools who offer frequent opinions, who cackle pointlessly like farm hens, and perhaps it’s those individuals who will be faulted to after lives in kingdoms other than Heaven. I can only hope that the Creator accepts me for who I am, the talent I have, and for creating some love among the people in this world for the creatures he set on the planet to decorate it just as lilies do on a mountainside.

I bought Gary Snyder’s A Place in Space earlier this summer in a discount bookstore the same size and dimensions as an airplane hanger. The book is a collection of the poet’s assorted writings, including articles, essays, speeches and book prefaces. The following quotation is from the essay Language Goes Two Ways:

“Wildness can be said to be the essential nature of nature. As reflected in consciousness, it can be seen as a kind of open awareness – full of imagination but also the source of alert survival intelligence. The workings of the human mind at its very richest reflects this self-organizing wildness. So language does not impose order or a chaotic universe, but reflects its own wildness back.”

I’ve found, as others have when writing, that the mind brings its own natural order to thought, prioritizing and arranging the events and details of a story as they rank for you. Sometimes the end is the beginning and the beginning is somewhere near the middle. Achiveing this automation, though, requires freeflow of thought – or wild writing – so that the mind can sort itself out. This process eliminates supernumerary revisions and frustration.

To stem a bout with writer’s block a couple of years ago, I enrolled in a junior college writing course. The session lasted only one night, but it was immensely beneficial. At the end of the three-hour class, I approached the writing instructor – an adjunct professor and graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Kansas – and told her I was having trouble starting my stories in the wrong places. She asked, “How do you know where the beginning is?” I was cured. I knew where the beginning was all along … it was where my mind started, where the thoughts were still wild and untamed, and all I had to do was reflect the moments back to paper.