Number 2

So, I created this blog on September 1st. It will be September 6th in half an hour and I have not yet posted again. Not an auspicious start to this adventure.

The problem is not a lack of thoughts. The problem is a surfeit of thoughts. And I just went to check the definition of surfeit. I do not want to misspeak and it's a word I've not used in quite some time. Sure enough, the first given definition is having an overabundant supply. Interestingly, however, it also has a sense of being overly indulgent in something. And its etymology is from Middle English, Anglo-French and Latin words that mean to overdo. So, probably that second sense came first and usage has simply changed.

I love words. So much. I've often said I wish I had become a linguist. And yet, I have recently met someone who not only loves words, he has pursued them, through several languages. I can sometimes recognize the roots of words, but most of my knowledge comes from rote memorization. He, on the other hand, knows words. He sees their DNA. Which allows him to appreciate and use them more precisely. Which is a thing of beauty. Though it strikes me that almost certainly the majority of the time, the beauty of his precision is known only to him. To others, they are just words, one as good as another. His mind alone gets to savor their nuance. As when the vintner is faced with the unsophisticated palate. The subtleties of bouquet he painstakingly worked to infuse mean nothing to the uneducated tongue; it is merely red or white. I am reminded too of a former boyfriend, a consummate builder, who once constructed a foot bridge that would have supported a tank. No wood was 'wasted.' It was just the beauty of his design, the knowledge of the fundamentals. He sees wood like my friend sees words or the vintner sees grapes-- what belongs and what does not. But no person who has crossed that bridge would ever know by looking. It is just a bridge. Or a glass of wine. Or a word. But, no, to the ones who know the wood or the grape or the language, it is so much more.

But I was discussing my surfeit of thoughts as the impediment to my having written even my second entry for this blog. Yet, seeing that surfeit also means over-indulgence got me thinking. Do I have an overabundance of thought, or do I over-indulge in thinking? I pinned an eCard to my Pinterest board "That's ME!" today and it fits so perfectly with what I now have learned about surfeit. It says "I've been overthinking about overthinking again." Heh.

I am a thinker. But am I a lazy thinker? Or a gluttonous thinker? Too undisciplined to choose one idea and do the work to make a coherent, start-to-finish exposition of it? Or too inclined to gorge myself on one delicious musing after the next, never stopping to digest and gain the singular nourishment each could offer? I do not know. There must be a reason that, labeled as I have been from at least my adolescence as a Writer, praised as I have been for having a Voice, I nonetheless have written very little since leaving school. Which is not true. I have written reams. Notebooks full. The stack is at my feet this very moment. But unless someone wants to read the chronicle of one young (and then not-so-young) woman's battle with inertia, mistaken for undying love and devotion, I might as well not have written a single sentence.

But, I have now written two entire blog posts. Of dubious value, perhaps, but nevertheless words, written and 'published.' (Assuming I do get around to inviting someone other than my sisters to read this thing).

As with most everything I have written, prose or poetry, it feels unfinished. Endings are hard. In writing. In life. Ah, perhaps the subject of my next post has spoken. Endings. And already I am considering how endings relate to beginnings. Vive le surfeit!