Clerks 2 (hardly clerkin')

That title has nothing to do with this post i just thought of it it's from the end of dogma if you're wondering.

This is the last week of my writing workshop and I don't think there's been any marked improvement (what do you think?). The trouble (and good thing) is that it's pulled me out of my comfort zone (blogging about me) and forced me to try - ack - creative writing. Shudder.

Last week I wrote such purile nonsense. And being me, I just had to share it because of course I fear nothing. And now I'm thinking what an idiot I sounded like (I wrote a poem with absolutely unveiled references to sexuality in the language of gardening - like that's not the most lameass overused trick in the book). I didn't really realize it at the time - but I was hating it right after. Like in that moment when the only other person who is consistently brave enough to read her work read hers. She is actually not all that brave - she can read hers because it's always good and she knows it is. She actually has some education in these things. She can spout off about any number of poets and recite from memory and compare romantic commitment to flying buttresses.

Meanwhile, I'm writing about Dick and Jane. Actually, that was probably more original when originally written.

I'm just really not a poet, which is something I've known for ages, and it's frustrating that poetry is used to teach writing becasue it's short and easy (ha ha) to produce and can teach us all sorts of useful tricks and language and structure issues. But I just can't do it without devolving into over-used crap. It requires so much more brainpower than I'm used to putting into my writing.

Anyway, throwing a pity party for myself is also not attractive (and I've been concerned about how I come off since a blogger whom I respect came down on me for being unattractive in my attitude) so I should probably just quit it.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can write my drama (both the kind for performance and what I vomit on the blog) in peace without expectations. Even my own. It's just...bleh...I just read these great poems and then somebody can come up with something beautiful in 5 minutes and all I can do is try to be funny or shocking.

(you see how I write the things that I think others must be thinking about me? The real question is: do I actually believe any of it about myself or do I just repeat the stereotypes I figure probably apply to me?)

I desperately want to write something for This American Life...maybe I should look through my posts and see if anything would read well out loud. Does anyone have a favorite post? Seems like I got the most response back when I was doing the Christianity and sex stuff, but it would be hard to read any of that on public radio.

I will tell you a secret, the real dream, the ultimate prize: if I could write anything, I would help to write the next revision of the prayer book. Oh! What a treat that would be!! And I could help inclusivise all the language, and write new prayers for hurricanes and clinical depression. And I could write the same-gender marriage ceremony, and a service at the loss of a pet (despite the giggles in Grief class about counseling people on such a topic). And I could find some way to incorporate the new way we see things...the new way we think in windows and icons (computer not byzantine) and blogs. We see the world differently now in my generation, you know.

Anyway, like if I won the lottery, I'd buy my way onto that committee. If I actually stuck out a PhD or the ordination process, I'd do it for that goal. Even right now, when I'm reading Duck and Wilson-Kastner and Ramshaw, I'm seeing how important this all is. It would just be so cool to be part of writing the great play of the liturgy, the drama of dramas.

Well now that is out of the bag, so I will forever question its propriety. As will you.

Now it's turned cold and I need to go to a meeting then walk (hopefully not in rain) to the train to go home and read some more. And post this and then you'll read it and now our two lines of history have merged. So off I go. See you.

hi.