weeks.org - What I wrote while finding time to write

What is sacred about all of our lives, even those of us who would never dream of using such a word for it, is that God speaks to us through what happens to us - even through such unpromising events as walking up the road to get the mail out of the mailbox, maybe, or seeing something in the news that brings you up short, or laughing yourself silly with a friend. If skeptics ask to be shown an instance of God speaking to them in their lives, I suggest that they pay closer attention to the next time when, for unaccountable reasons, they find tears in their eyes.
-- Frederick Buechner

What I wrote while finding time to write

This week I wrote
a lot of words
about other stuff
than I'd intended

I wrote to friends and leads and family
to customers and strangers
to customers I like to call my friends
and to some I'd rather call strangers

I started to write about vision and patterns
Even patterns in chaos and noise and debris
I wanted to write about slowing down
And the power & promise of depth over speed

Still

For the most part, nights and days
skipped and blurred into a grey disc -
Flat.
As far as I could see

And I wrote letters, posts, specs and reminders
and occasional notes about what drives me

I wrote of dissent and reconciliation
and that if our NO is not OK to express
then any YES is meaningless...

...Then I made a shopping list.

I wrote online & offline
in blogs and web pages
search engines and wikis

I wrote to document, estimate, invite and remember

I wrote with my phone
and I wrote on my hand
There are receipts and post-its
in my pocket
with writing that I
wrote on them

I wrote this week in margins, while reading others’ writing,

I wrote on keyboards, whiteboards and black

I wrote with a stylus on screens
and with thumbs on a gadget

I wrote in chat windows and web forums
and on the printout of an email message

I wrote in Excel and Word and Power point

On index cards.
With inkjet printers.

I wrote my name on a dozen credit card receipts
and at least one thank you note, I think.

I wrote directions on a business card
And used a marker on a storage box

I wrote down just how long it took
to do a lot of what I did
Then wrote estimates of how much longer
What is left will take to do

Somehow I'm still hard pressed
to say just where all that time went

I wrote appointments, checks and balances
Words of truth and fallacy
But very little of the kinds of things I’d thought I'd write.
- A few precious feelings, sounds and scenes

So now my skull is roaring with
the wrestling of open loops
and missed announcements
of all the words I didn't write

They roll & entwine, snap and remind

Threaten, encourage and make themselves rhyme

Yet end up, at best, on that day’s TO DO list

The week was a-scrawl with pencils and pens
A-wash in the din of the click and the beep

All those bursts and leaks
of word and symbol
Forgotten.

Turned to language litter

And now they speak from where I left them
on the roadsides of each day
of the speed with which I wrote or
scribbled them along the way

Assembled and recycled, here
The rhythm of their read back lines
A eulogy for words I spilled
while looking for some time to write.

Randy Weeks
July 2006

Copyright 1978 - 2025 by Randy Weeks
(This old site has been online since 1995... I'll redo it eventually, maybe...
Meanwhile, consider it a museum piece from the early web). :)

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