Thought Required; Pants Optional.

Category: Writing

  • 2013, and Back to the Keyboard

    2013, and Back to the Keyboard

    A few weeks ago, I wrote an open version of the year-in-review “Christmas letter.” At that time I related that, while I had started 2012 with a very definite agenda in mind, I lacked similar focus in 2013.

    It has been 2013 for a few days already, and I still don’t have a crystal-clear overarching life agenda. I have,succeeded in discerning, though, that more frequent writing has to be part of anything I do with myself this year. My closest and most candid friends in the world have told me repeatedly, “Brian, you need to write more.” This year, I have decided to believe them.

    With that in mind, I have resolved that in 2013 I am going to be more deliberate and frequent about blogging. I also hope to do other kinds of writing that I won’t publish here, but blogging will comprise a large portion of what I write. At its best, blogging has gotten me in touch with intelligent, perceptive friends and critics and helped me maintain writing as a frequent discipline.

    As the year unfolds, I hope to blog more frequently about all of my interests, but you will probably notice that much of my blogging will focus on a more tightly focused set of themes. I have vague ideas for larger projects I want to get off the ground in 2013, so my blogging will undoubtedly converge around the issues involved in those. Expect more about those soon.

    Part of my resolve involves greater attention to my blog’s design and structure. You see some of the results of this process already in the change to my site’s layout. Also, my blog is now at its own domain, briancubbage.com (although it is still hosted and maintained in WordPress). I am my own worst critic when it comes to design, so the site may go through multiple facelifts in the coming weeks. Bear with me through this process; I promise that if the site looks different tomorrow, the content remains unchanged.

    One big change I am considering is to the name of this site, “Thought Required, Pants Optional.” While it is clever, it is also a tad flippant and doesn’t quite match the site’s content. (You shall search this site in vain for discussions, much less photos, of any “pants optional” event or activity.) Thoughts for a new title for my blog/site? Share a comment!

    Another resolve: I will promote the work of other writers whose work is important and deserves a wider audience. It’s not as if I have a terribly large platform from which to promote others, but that doesn’t matter. It’s not as much about getting more page views for people I like (although that is nice) as much as it is about acknowledging debts I owe. It is, deep down, a spiritual and intellectual discipline.

    So: 2013 will be a year of more blogging. I want to send a huge “thank you” to all of my current readers, as well as to all of those others who may not see this but to whom I still owe tremendous gratitude. You make it worthwhile.

  • “A Fly in Amber”

    I wrote this poem today and I publish it here without comment. I hope you find something in it that resonates with you.

    I had sought to fix my life,
    A fly in amber
    Kept safe from time and from death,

    Hard resin encased all round
    Me, an inch of air,
    A drop of hard dried blood

    Is all I took in with me,
    All the oxygen
    And life I sought to protect.

    Of course I was a fool, for
    What is but an inch
    Of air and a clot of blood

    Against even the slightest
    Pressure of boundless
    Gravid eternity? So

    The air and life’s blood of course
    Gone, vaporized in
    Eternity’s batted eyelash.

    Alone, then. In an instant.
    As life dwindled to
    A dim phosphorescent point,

    I hated my sheer
    Folly, but what is much worse,
    I hated the air, I

    Hated the blood, those very things
    That were most precious
    And fine, those very things to which

    I owed any life and good
    At all. This last was,
    Poor me, my one true folly.

    For there, in the dark and the
    Pain, the air and blood
    Showed their actual nature:

    The air I trapped was, down to
    Its last molecule,
    The breath of Edenic life,

    And in the drop of blood lay
    Hidden all good, complete,
    Entire, whole in itself,

    And with it the hearts of all,
    Loved and feared, I sought
    To wall out with my amber.

    As in the darkness I sat
    Self-condemnation
    Flooded me. I realized:

    My folly, my sin, was not to
    Seek protection, but
    Was instead the base contempt

    I harbored, deep within, for
    These very things I most
    Sought to love and to protect.

    But it was not done. In grief
    And tears I found a
    Grace not expected or earned:

    I was, I saw, not apart
    From the air and blood,
    Those things I sought to capture,

    But I was entirely in
    And of them, and through
    Them, in and of all in all,

    Down to the last inch of me.
    No wall or power
    Could separate me from them.

    And in that moment at last
    I was free.

  • Writing Under the Gun

    In keeping with my earlier theme, I’ve just found out about, like, the most incredible thing I ever heard of: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The idea is that you sign up and make a public commitment to write an entire draft of a novel in the month of November.

    I’m totally gonna do this.

    I haven’t thought of a premise yet I want to use for this project. I have a couple of ideas I’ve been booting around for a while, one of them for a very, very long time, but neither one feels right for this kind of endurance trial.

    Do you have a premise you think would suit my literary sensibilities? If so, let me know. I’m up for just about anything besides Nicholas Sparks weepies. Be warned, though, that I don’t work on commission.