The Writer Sits Down to Write

3:25 p.m. Monday

The Writer sits at her desk to write.  She has no idea where she is going with this.  Perhaps, she is thinking, she will find an old piece that needs work.  That would be worth while.  She already has an idea for her character in Jeannie is afraid of everything.

It is a beautiful sunny day.  The Writer wants to put on some shoes and go out and hang a bird feeder.  Why should the birds suffer because she hasn’t written anything?  She gets up.  It is 3:28 p.m.

3:52 p.m. 

The writer is back.  She has a cup of coffee made with some half and half she took from a restaurant.  Yum.  She has no thoughts to write about.  She is going to go look at the Jeannie story.

3:58 p.m. 

After staring for a while at the Jeannie story she decides she hates everything about it, so the Writer returns to her desk and blank computer screen.    She plays with the mouse and dully watches the cursor slide across the screen.  This is like meditation.  Her mind is blank.  She starts to deepen her breathing and that leads her to focus on the thin mucus threatening to run out of her nose before it is sniffed back in.    She gets up to get some tissue.  It is 4:12 p.m. Monday.

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5:00 p.m. Tuesday

The Writer is irritable.  She wants to be taking a nap or sitting in the sun on the front porch holding a magazine she will not look at.  Instead the Writer is at her computer because she has Writing Group tonight and Valerie will be there and she has nothing to read.  The Writer considers writing about how much she hates writing, but that seems petulant.  She has an idea.

She starts writing a poem about spring and how untrustworthy it is.   She is.

It takes trust

to put away the warm clothes
to plant the spinach
and get out the lawn furniture.

You want to trust Spring

but she is a notorious whore
who does what she wants
never thinking of others.

She may bring snow or ice

just to get your attention
then tease you with sun
and ethereal fragrance

Until you are grateful

for just her slightest glance
and when she storms, as she will,

Da dum da dum dum de de de...... 

The Wriiter is stuck, does not know how to end this poem and also thinks the poem is too much like another one she wrote, except for the first stanza. She has no love for this poem.   It is time to go to group.  It is 6:34 p.m. Tuesday

Leslie's Magazine Republished!

     When I was a little girl, back in the 20th Century, I was excited to find covers of an ancient publication called "Leslie's Magazine."  It was something of a fashion magazine for bonnets and extra-long shoelaces and bloomers for the women of the 1900's.  (Note:  I have done zero  research here and may be off by 5 or 150 years).  Anyway, as a lonely little Leslie in a world of Lindas and Peggys, I yearned to know there were other Leslies in the world.  Not too many of them, because I didn't want to be commonplace like those Lindas and Peggys, but just a few select and elegant Leslies.  Therefore "Leslie's Magazine" meant a lot to me.  To repay the favor, I have named my humble blog after the magazine.  It will be a large disappointment to anyone who is familiar with the original publication.

     In my opinion, a blog is  a narcissistic little effluvium of words in the huge river of words which is the internet. In fact, that is how I imagine it, a floating log with my words clinging to it like so many termites as it is pushed toward the ocean.  It is not a particularly ambitious image.


Note:  I did a little research and there was a Leslie's Magazine which contained information of substance about WWI and was published 1900-1920ish.  But this is not the magazine I am thinking of.