I write to settle myself. A sentence is a settlement of parts, a happy arrangement . . .

although the subject matter may disturb or challenge. I hope so. This blog is my play space. I write also to play; to make shapes, to produce images, make unexpected arrangements. To replenish my voice but also to pay attention, to focus. I practise finding my focus, adjusting my lens, finding my subject. Play is crucial to that; a surprising alignments between words. I write then also to play - I move around my toys — this then is also a space for whimsy, for dreaming, for opening up space: extra-territorial, moon-lit, sunlit, whatever she stumbles upon. A cracked door, an open room.

Good syntax is elastic; it pings. I remember that game we used to play as children, cat’s cradle. Sometimes we played with thread and sometimes with elastic. I write to create shape and texture, to hear that ping, the release of energy. Writing is a way of recharging. Syntax is also a form of wiring and the wiring needs a lot of work, so I write and rewrite. I shape shift. Nothing stays still for long. A writer is a restless creature, pacing and pacing around the room, sleepless, her eyes closed, groping her way into other worlds. That famous sentence from Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse describing the death of Mrs. Ramsay:

Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs. Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.

Syntax squirming into life even in the face of Death, perhaps because of Death, and so she squirms through a series of interrupted subordinate clauses which somehow reflects life interrupted — those arms outstretched, stretched out, his arms.