the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--

8:45 AM

It's a refreshing thing to sit down here, open up Write Yourself Thin on my bookmarks, and write whatever I feel like writing. Of course I could do that, and have done that, anytime. In a journal, on the computer. But the semi-public quality of the blog raises the ante just enough to make it more interesting, more alive.

Only a few people know about this blog, and fewer still would be actually reading it. But that's enough to make me wake up a little. Take some responsibility for what I say here.

It's a different kind of self-editing. What I write here, it doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to be inspiring or wise or funny or profound or publishable or even original. But it should be true. I should mean what I say here, and think, for myself anyway, that it is worth saying.

from "A Ritual to Read to Each Other," by William Stafford

And so I appeal to a voice, to something
shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should
consider---
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the
dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to
sleep;
the signals we give---yes or no, or maybe---

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.