Body Parts

In a movie I watched today, one of the main characters, a young single woman, was wearing a tiny gold chain with a diamond stud pendant, which rested just inside the place in her neck right where your trachea meets your breast bone, like the indentation you would make if you pressed the edge of a spoon into a stick of soft butter. There it is, I thought: the most beautiful part of a woman.

Welcome.

My first reaction to blogging was "why would you assume that everything you think about is fit to print?"

Then I remembered: I'm a writer. I traffic in the public presentation of ideas, right? ("Public presentation of ideas" being taken in the broadest terms of how small I am in the universe, of course.) And lately, I have come to realize that my first novel, in addition to my fledgling second, could be read as a conglomeration of "everything I think about" imposed on a narrative. I often see the books this way myself.

In the last few months, I have been forced to think a lot about my relationship with my writing, and I discovered that my resistance had (really) more to do with a self-imposed division of what is meant only for me and what is to be read by others. A fake sacredness that I invented.

And I'm over it.

Thus, the work can be "the work." And thus, the work can suit the purpose, be it here, as viewed by me (and maybe two people plus my mother, if I'm lucky) or committed to actual paper and available at your favorite independent bookstore (if I'm luckier.) Whichever is most appropriate.

The name of my blog is taken from Joan Didion, who said: "Grammar is a piano I play by ear." It is the way I have always worked, groping inside the language for the right words, or the words that are sufficient, which is as much as I think any writer can hope for. And Joan's idea seemed appropriate for the technology, especially my introduction to it: exploring a new way of working, reading and writing.

So, welcome. Here we go.

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PS - All of the above, plus my friend Witold created a brilliant yoga practice blog and though I fear I won't ever be able to top him (no gay jokes, please) I figuredI could at least get with it. If 2005 is going to be the year of the iPod and the cell phone...well, have you ever known me to do anything half-assed?