Patterns

     As a human being I'm observant.  Or, I can be.  I try to be. I keep my eyes open, my ears in gear, my senses awake.  Mostly.  I am often surprised at what I observe in these ways.  The shapes in clouds, the birds calling to one another, the wind on my skin. This external observation enhances my internal dialogue and keeps me connected both outward and inward. My point being that observation is not always outward and confined to a sense of sight, although that's what I intend to write about today.  I'll see how that goes because my intention as I begin to write often is tempered by some unconscious part of me that moves the writing in another direction.  I think that is a wondrous part of writing.  I don't know what I'm going to say, at least consciously.  I know where I want to start, but where will it go?  I've learned to step back and let my characters have their way with me in my stories, because if I try to have my way with them, they often pout and refuse to grow and become like adolescent children demanding to go in the opposite direction, just because they can.  Like unsupervised adolescents, my characters often get in trouble.  This I've learned.  So, I provide some boundaries and follow them along.  We usually work it out in the end.  Of course if I'm doing academic writing and making points of logic in argumentation of my position, it is not the same.  Not quite.  I pause more as I'm writing and I wonder if I am not so trusting when it comes to my unconscious then.  Although I do have those aha moments that give me smiles and in a kind of Steve Urkle fashion I say, "Did I do that?"  Writing can be that way, amazing.  The pattern then really is the same no matter what I write.  This essay, a short story, a novel, an academic treatise.  I start with what I think I know, write to find out what I do.  I learn something along the way about the process and end up with a product.  It's a trust issue.  Like the man who arranged the used tires in the truck.  Did he know what a piece of art he would be creating when he started to stack the tires and unconsciously, most likely, understand he must put this one here and that one there?  There was, no doubt, no template for tire stacking yet in the end he created a piece both with purpose and of beauty.  Like artists who follow their unconscious do the world over.  We do, because we are.  We do, because we be.  We do be do be do.  : )