The experiment begins

7:27 according to the computer. The first time I use this blog as the place and technique for my morning pages. (See below). I have already, in less than three sentences, found myself editing, one of the things Julia Cameron warns or admonishes against while doing morning writing, just write. And I am conscious that others might read this and do not want to appear incompetent. I want my thoughts clear before committing them, and the point is to let them come, clear or muddled or not even formed at all. So, I look out at the sycamore tree, my morning companion for the years that I have lived in this one bedroom apartment near downtown Asheville. I note again the brown creeping in, beginning to overpower the green. The grass is littered with the vanguard of fall. The school bus came by just as I was sitting down to the work table. the dump truck is on its rounds, garbage truck, bang clatter whack, whir of motor, down the street and now back, backing up, driver looks down Furman Avenue, takes off forward again.

I pick up the cigarette. Unlit. Haven't ingested the toxic fumes of one of these things for I don't know, thirty years, was when I was in Cullowhee, twenty-five years ago. Someone, this also may have been Julia Cameron but I don't think so suggests dressing up to write, some way that you wouldn't ordinarily appear in public. Perhaps in a way that suggests a character one is writing about. I write much, although not exclusively about private investigators and we think of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and can't imagine them without cancer sticks in their mouths. I sometimes wear a hat, if I haven't showered preparatory to going out in the world, don't want to get the hat hair. I have a shirt I wear almost exclusively when writing, a blue chambray shirt, but it is too warm to wear in hot weather, I put it on this morning. 62 degrees out although warmer by ten in my house even with the AC on last night. Under the blue shirt I am wearing the t-shirt with the picture of the Conquistador on a steed with lance, Don Quixote like, given to me by my daughter who lives most of the year in Madrid. Seems the right thing for writing.

The garbage truck has cleared the area. The quiet is broken only by the hum of the computer. If I listen closely I think I can hear highway noise on I-240. But the computer and my tinitus cover up certain low level ambient noises.

I read poetry in the morning. Have been doing this since reading a little book about writing by Walter Mosely in which he suggests doing same. I am torn (happens a lot as I live up to the stereotype of a Libra) between reading one poet all the way through a book and reading anthologies. I have been reading Wordsworth but picked up Garrison Keillor's collection, Good Poems. I like it. Read Louis Jenkings and Debra Spenser this morning. Some mornings this- the blog -- may appear in poetry like fashion, depending on how brave I am. More coffee.

Coffee. Bad stuff for you. I love it. Milk, a little sugar. Just an edge of bitterness. Same was I like my ale. Although I like my coffee hot, put it in the microwave even if I have just poured it out of the pot. Hot. Ale, cold, none of this room temperature business I understand some peoples prefer. I'm an AMerican beer drinker, as in I grew up and live in America. Grew up on Miller Hi-life, and Blatz and PBR and Schmidt's and, while at school in southwestern Ohio, Schoenling and Weideman and Hudepohl (Hudie!). And, of course, Bud. Have gravitated to local beers and ales although I like Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale and Newcastle as well as the offerings of the local microbreweries and now I feel like I'm getting into the what I had for breakfast kind of blogging I told myself I wouldn't do. Maybe I'll just report sometime when I've come across something especially good.

OK. I've been into this a half-hour. Seems like I lost the flow when I got up for that second cup of Joe. Maybe thirty minutes is my limit here. It's been OK. I'm giving it a week.

Namaste.