I finally looked at the calendar to see how many days in I am with this 40 day blog promise:  post something every day for 40 days.

For me, with anything creative I need to walk a fine line of solid discipline and loose expectation.  Hence, I began a 40 day writing commitment, noted it in my calendar, then promptly forgot the dates.

I really don’t know exactly what it is I’m doing here.  Questions abound.  But I have come to this WordPress screen every day for the past month.

I look to a bookshelf by my desk and see the titles which reveal a minute reflection of just some of the threads I follow.  Plenty of books on writing – some of which I’ve read, others just a scan.

However small this gesture, showing up here each day is some way to make an idea tangible.  And in doing so, I watch the questions arise and simply smile.

This Rilke poem was shown to me by Kim Stafford.  Reading it just makes me take a big sigh and relax…

Be patient toward
all that is unresolved
in your heart

Try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms
and like books written
in a very foreign tongue.
Do not seek now the
answers, which cannot
be given to you because
you would not be able
to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.

…perhaps you will
then gradually,
without noticing it,
live along
some distant day
into the answer….

Rainer Maria Rilke