Mon, Jul 10 2006

War is hell and let's see—what am I going to do with all these bananas?

I was dashing around this morning in an attempt to juggle an unexpected windfall of ripe bananas from friends, put laundry away and put a letter in the mailbox for the postal carrier to pick up and get the gate opened for some construction workers who were on the way. I tried to pause for a moment and consider a blog entry, but those of you who write in any capacity know that making yourself settle into the correct frame of mind can be tough when the details of the day keep crowding into the creative space in your mind.

I decided to check some news articles in the hope that I could make a transition to writing, just as the workers arrived and began banging materials around and started to saw and drill. I happened to open an article from Peggy Townsend of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and my details of the day suddenly seemed petty in comparison to the woman she wrote about, a woman in her late 50s who is headed off to serve in Iraq. There's nothing like a grandma-going-to-war story to shock a person into facing the proper perspective of the day.

posted at: 11:06 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry