Jana Remy
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Jana Remy

  • Writing
    • Disability
    • Making History
    • Digital Humanities
      • dayofDH
    • Canoeing
    • Creative Nonfiction & Essays
    • Feminism
    • Bibliographies
      • Pacific Worlds Bibliography
    • Social Media
      • Mentions/Links
  • Scholarship
    • Awards/Fellowships
    • Conferences & Invited Talks
    • Collaboration
    • Workshops
    • Conference Planning
    • Technical Skills
  • Teaching
    • Blogposts About Teaching
Daily Archives

January 19, 2012

we write…(and I call it breathing)
songs/poetry

we write…(and I call it breathing)

We write to heighten our own awareness of life.

We write to lure and enchant and console others.

We write to serenade our lovers.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal.

We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.

We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth.

We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely.

We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.

When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color.

It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.

February 1954, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5

January 19, 2012
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About Me

About Me

Hi there friend, and welcome to my blog. I started writing on the internet two decades ago. Since then I've started and finished a PhD program, left the Mormon church and became a Quaker, got divorced, remarried, found full-time work in academia, took up rock climbing and outrigger canoeing, and traveled across the globe (China! Belgium! Italy! Chicago! Montana! Portland! Gettysburg! and oh-so-many points in-between). This blog is eclectic and random--it has poetry and cooking and books. And cats. And flowers. And the ocean (my ocean). But in that sense it's a good reflection of me and my wide-ranging, far-reaching, magpie curiosity.

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