"You mean - you're journaling in unlined pages?" asked a new writer."Yep," I answered.
"I never thought of that," he said. "It seems - I don't know, scary. But I guess it would be more fun, wouldn't it?"
Writing on unlined pages is scary to those who have been tamed and caged and lined. To be released into this uncharted wild seems threatening. One morning last week, I got up at 3 am and wrote:
Here I am, craving wildness, willing to risk my normal life and uncage my thoughts and roam the wilderness without lines or familiarity. Faint white lines can be like the stripes on a freeway, keeping you in place. They keep you safe and civilized, and remind you there is a road map showing every exit.
Thing is, writing is NOT driving a vehicle. It is all right to take creative risks: they won't hurt you. One may become lost in wild places, may reach and climb where there is no one to guide.
What I learn: there is more wisdom and freedom and grace in the unmapped hinterlands than in the small spaces I keep to because they are known to me already.
Go unlined.
I love the word hinterlands. Also, there is more than one hinterland. It could take all the time in the world to go to the hinterlands.
ReplyDeleteI want to go there. Travel. Move. Do something somewhere interesting and fun. I could even get more than lost. I could make a big mistake, or do something that I will regret, or get in trouble.
But journeys are like that--good stuff--bad stuff. It's because this is a planet of opposites. We are here to learn something about that. I'm not sure what yet, but I bet I find out in the hinterlands.
Sometimes I'm afraid to go; other time I'm not because the hinterlands are just the one third of our time called "tomorrow."
And I don't want to miss that part afterall.
What I love most about this post is the picture...because that page IS lined...it's just not a straight line, and it's not horizontal. I think it would wonderful to have a whole journal full of irregular lines...what wonderful sentences might be formed to fit those funny-shaped spaces!
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