Times Passes, All Right!

Well, times passes for sure! Due to a number of other pressing concerns, this blog and its story have been on hiatus, a break that will have to continue until after the first of the year.

To be honest, more has been involved in the delay than this. I (JL) actually wrote the next posting, titled “Time Passes,” and was ready to post it when . . . how to put this? . . . there was a bit of a rebellion on the part of the characters. I know it sounds as though I am exhibiting dissociative behavior, but I’m actually not. Fiction, any fiction writer will tell you (even schlock-meisters), involves a lot of listening—listening to one’s intuitions, listening to the inner voices that produce . . .

Actually, I have to stop. If I keep writing, they threaten to rebel all over again. It’s Jason mostly, but he’s not the only one.

So let’s leave it thus: sometime after we all recover from the holidays and I launch the next semester’s work, the blog shall reappear. Who, exactly, will be writing it (me or one or more of the characters) is still up for negotiation. In the mean time, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. And may the new year be gracious and healing for you and yours.

Let me end this with a poem by, of course, Mary Oliver. It’s called “Blue Iris,” and it can be found in her book, What Do I Know (DaCapo Press, 2002, p. 53):


Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?

Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk.

Well, I think, I can read books.

“What’s that you’re doing?”
the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.

I close the book.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

“What’s that you’re doing?” whispers the wind, pausing
in a heap just outside the window.

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face.
It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, you know.

“Doesn’t it?” says the wind, and breaks open, releasing
distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,
the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.