Yes, this is the magic post. 1,000 posts seems like a lot. I did write each one. Some are better than others, and a few have pictures. I remember as a young boy that I only like books that had pictures.
These days I try to use poetry to create images in the mind. Actually drawing pictures isn’t one of my gifts. When I started this blog, I didn’t really consider myself a poet – more of a prose writer who wanted to just have a way to consistently write stuff. I did my first post to this blog on April 13, 2011.
Yeah, I had to look that up. That was ten years ago. The name of this blog, “Andrew’s View of the Week,” originally was me writing about Easter week after reading one of my favorite Bible scholars, Marcus Borg’s book, “The Last Week.” My faith has always been based around the events of the last week of Jesus’ life and Borg’s book really opened my mind up to a lot of new things. Seemed natural at the time to try and write about it.
I didn’t stay focused on that for too long and started writing about other things. In that first year I wasn’t very consistent in publishing schedules and kept trying to figure out what it was I was trying to do with this blog. I wasn’t even sure I’d keep it up.
Then in December 2011 my life took a strange turn when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Cancer is a scary word and treatment for cancer is at best an anxiety generator and at worse life threatening. I was one of the more fortunate cases as it was caught early and radiation treatment was all I needed. In the nine years since treatment, there has been no sign of recurrence.
Treatment did have a physical impact as well as a big emotional impact on my life and writing.
As I started treatment I felt the need to write what was happening and in the spring of 2012 I started writing more regularly here. My first writings were most about the cancer, but soon I drifted off into other topics. After awhile I settled into a weekly personal essay about something.
I’ve never had a consistent theme in my writing. Mostly I just sit at the keyboard and write about whatever I’m thinking about that week.
Which is why I’ve never changed the name of this blog. “Andrew’s View of the Week,” is still that – my view on whatever is going through my brain that week.
I’ve added to that over the years with my Friday wisdom posts and my modest attempt at humor, plus the occasional “Wednesday – something” post where I show something I’ve done recently in the workshop, garden or the rare picture of my cats.
Along the way, I tried to write a book about my cancer experience. It was going to be a prose book with a lot of research – you know my experience along with the current medical information on prostate cancer.
I couldn’t write it. Every time I sat down to write about my experience, it came out as a poem. In fact, I started writing a lot of poetry.
Then one day, Heather and I were in a used book store when I found myself in the poetry section and came home with two poetry books, the collected works of William Carlos Williams and “The Weight of Snow” by B.L. Bruce.
A few years after reading Bruce’s book, I wrote a poem I titled, “The Weight of Clouds,” which other than the play on the title has nothing to do with the book or this post.
It wasn’t long after buying those books that I started to read more poetry, write more and even posted a few poems. I did write a poetry book based my cancer experience and now am writing a new collection of poems based on the book of Mathew, which is taking forever to complete.
I am a slow poet. I’m not one of those poets who sits down and knocks out a poem a day. Half of the poems I start, I delete and a completed poem is subjected to endless editing. Not all the poems I write make it onto the blog. There are times I generate a lot of poems and have long dry spells when the words just don’t coalesce into an image that works.
All my poetry is about trying to create an image or a feeling in the reader’s mind. Words are my colors and shapes. Words are my texture and perspective. Words are my tools that transfers the image in my head to yours.
When I started writing this blog I was a software engineer in the midst of a good career and now I’m retired and living in a new city.
But this blog is still part of my life as is poetry, marquetry, and creativity in general. I have long been convinced that it is through our creative efforts that we are connected to the divine and the great mysteries of the universe.
Where to from here? No idea. Long ago I made a choice on this blog to announce any future writing plans or what I might post here. Likely I’ll continue to post here.
But each week brings something so you’ll just have to check back later to see what is going on with Andrew this Week.
Andrew's View of the Week 