An Apology

If you're reading this blog, it's Janice Brown's fault.  If you don't know her, you're missing out.  If you do know her, you'll understand why a conversation with her could be the reason I'm typing the first words to my very own blog.  
Recently, Janice helped me figure out that I'm a writer, that hiding God's gifts in the sand was poor stewardship, and that I needed to start being what I am for the Glory of the One who created me.  (I guess I've been living in denial for a very long time.)  I also realized that I actually wanted to share thoughts with people and hone my writing skills.  I guess I should find some friends, huh?  Well, I have some.  The major problem is that they are scattered all over the world.  From Brazil, to Spain, to France, to Canada, to Cambodia...from California, to Alaska, to Michigan, to Wisconsin, to Pennsylvania, to Arizona...it's the sad and wonderful result of having traveled too much.  (They don't tell you about that part when you get on the plane...) So here I am trying to provide something less trivial than Facebook and more detached than a handwritten letter.  I'm sorry that I'm not more traditional and that you are the victim of these writings.  I'm at an odd point in my life in which I'm having to make some uncomfortable compromises due to the deluge of technology.  I welcome any constructive critiques of anything I write...and I mean that.  That said...I'm not exactly sure what I'll be writing about. I imagine it will be an odd mix of colors and thorns.  Most people are an odd mix of colors and thorns and I find that to be fascinating. So if you're up for the ride, we will have to see where this will go.
Oh, I guess I should tell you why the name of this blog is "A Batter Against the Brilliance."  It's from a poem by Richard Wilbur.  I'll copy the words for you.  Essentially, this blog is my attempt at becoming a better writer.  I have handed my pen over to the Author of Life and I'm looking forward to what He will do with it.  He is Life itself and (for that reason) will probably be the topic of many of my posts.  I imagine I will fail, quite frequently, to give to you (my audience) the words for all the world of intensity that I'll be trying to communicate.  I imagine that there will be posts that you don't like, and that's fine too.  I also imagine that in a year I will have dropped the need to do this.  However, for what it's worth and for however long I am able and willing to continue this rather reluctant online expression of myself, welcome to the realm of my battering.  I hope you don't feel battered in the process.  :)
Hang loose and prosper,
e.j.


The Writer by Richard Wilbur.  

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,   
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys   
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:   
I wish her a lucky passage.
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.   
A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor   
Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;   
How we stole in, lifted a sash
And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,   
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove   
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits   
Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window   
And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish   
What I wished you before, but harder.