Wednesday, October 24, 2007

falling in love with carrots, or #2, on writing

"Recently I moved to Santa Fe, and since there were few writing jobs here, I worked as a cook part-time in a local restaurant. Waking up at six a.m. on Sunday to cook brunch all day, I questioned my fate. At eight a.m. I was busy cutting carrots at a diagonal, noticing the orange of them and thinking to myself, "This is really very deep." I fell in love with carrots. I laughed. "So this is what has become of me! Too easily satisfied with so little."
Learn to write about the ordinary. Give homage to old coffee cups, sparrows, city buses, thin ham sandwiches. Make a list of everything ordinary you can think of. Keep adding to it. Promise yourself, before you leave the earth, to mention everything on your list at least once in a poem, short story, newspaper article."
-- from Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg
(An "ordinary" list is forthcoming by the author of this blog who just this morning fell in love with the sound of laughter.)

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