Category: writing

meanwhile i should still be writing but i’m reading a bit of teresa of avila (admit that the image of her, the book and the pen is amazing!), and see how she announces her writings:

“I really think I have little to say that I have not already said in other books which I have been commanded to write; indeed I am afraid that I shall do little but repeat myself, for I write as mechanically as birds taught to speak, which, knowing nothing but what is taught them and what they hear, repeat the same things again and again. If the Lord wishes me to say anything new, His Majesty will teach it me or be pleased to recall to my memory what I have said on former occasions; and I should be quite satisfied with this, for my memory is so bad that I should be delighted if I could manage to write down a few of the things which people have considered well said, so that they should not be lost. If the Lord should not grant me as much as this, I shall still be the better for having tried, even if this writing under obedience tires me and makes my head worse, and if no one finds what I say of any profit.”
(Teresa of Avila, 1577, Interior Castle)

it has all been said before, i don’t really remember what it’s all about, i should have written it down when i was talking to a friend and explaining it so well, nobody is going read this anyway, and it’s giving me a headache. already back then…

This last week has revolved around writing, chapters for two books and a conference paper. I haven’t been so immersed in writing since that summer of 2004, when the dissertation needed to be brought to an end. The anxiety of then has left, but still the process feels familiar: a kind of possession of the mind by how to string together thoughts and words and images and arguments and sentences till something emerges that flows with the need or desire that urged the writing of a particular piece in the first place. A possession which takes me into the writing bubble, with concentration for air and intensity for time. Stepping outside of the bubble means that, in no time, the writing oxygen disappears. Being inside the bubble means that the world around me fades a bit away. Except if there is someone to write with, and now there is Maggie. But basically i’ve been seriously neglecting friends and dear ones these days – even you, dear readers of this blog. And then there’s the body. Sacrificing of sleep, forgetting to eat – all indications of the mind’s concentration. And if all of this sounds like suffering, then let me assure that it is precisely that. Writing has always been suffering, i haven’t been able to do it in a different way.

And then there was Giulia on the phone today. And as i described the mechanism of these writing trips, all of a sudden it became clear to us: suffering, transcendence of the body, sacrificing the body to the spirit, in order to touch a piece of truth – it is all about holiness! Sto facendo la santa.

After that revelation the poor body deserved a treat and i went into our jacuzzi. My first time in the rain. Light was slowly retreating from a very grey sky (à la belge…), rendering the branches of the tree of protection in our garden even more crooked and impressive in the back-light. A confused hummingbird came to a split-of-a-second stop in between two branches above my head – could it have mistaken our tree for a hummingbird-tree? – before it disappeared as fast as it had come.

It’s usually dark outside when i jot down something for this blog.

As i wrote this week to a part of my brussels family, it works like this:

j’ai commencé un petit blog, au début j’étais un peu incomfortable avec l’idée que ce soit quelque chose que les autres gens lisent, mais tout doucement cette idée commence à me plaire. souvent c’est le soir avant de dormir que j’écrive quelque chose qui me passe dans la tête, qui me préoccupe, sur lequel j’ai fait une petite recherche pour comprendre un peu mieux cet environnement social. et ce sont toujours des moments dans lesquels je pense avec beaucoup d’intensité à tout(/s) ce(s) monde(s) ‘back home’. le soir avant de dormir, c’est comme une petite prière, non?

But now i’m writing you while bathing in the sunlight of this beautiful sunday afternoon. This is how our garden looks like when we’re doing all the housework. And i was the gardener this morning, clearing and preparing a piece of earth for the prairie flower seeds Maria will sow soon.

“I wished to see them, to hear their voices, to get physically close to them, too. Isn’t writing made for long-distance dealings? For the far-off? For absence? Made up of words that are already partially abstract and bereft of flesh?”
– Luce Irigaray, in I love to you

I have the most beautiful working space in the world. Or at least, the most beautiful working space i ever had. Sahar, who arrived in this country on the same day, other coast, responded to my sense of alienation here (her sense of alienation over there): “we did not come here to feel at home.” How true that is, we came here to work.

Carried by all the wisdom of those women doing intellectual work before us. A room of one’s own and much more than 500 guineas, thanks to Marie Curie…

This is Susan’s office, my desk is in front of the window. This is the view from the window: redwoods. Only redwoods.

The forest hides a pot of white parade roses (a present from Susan when we first met) on my desk, a beautiful card Nadia send me from Morocco some years ago, a beautiful picture of Giulia in Rotterdam, and much more…

Thinking a lot of Meryem and Nadia now, girls good luck with this life of writing, writing writing…
And thinking of Maud.