Birth of a Super Blue Moon

the Pith of an idea; a crescent moon of thought

Author’s note: Annie Dillard writes of writing “At its absurd worst it feel like what mad Jacob Boehme… described… writing incoherently as usual, about the source of evil. The passage here, though, will serve as well for the source of books. ‘The whole Deity has in its innermost or beginning Birth the Pith or Kernel, a very tart, terrible Sharpness, in which the astringent Quality is a very horrible, tart, hard, dark and cold Attraction or Drawing together, like Winter…’ If you can dissect out the very intolerable, tart, hard, terribly sharp Pith or Kernel, and begin writing the book compressed therein, the sensation changes. Now it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.”

This — dissection of the tart hard real pith of an idea from my rambling thoughts — this is one of the great challenges I face writing. Sometimes, I feel there’s something even if I haven’t found it yet. So, for today’s bonus material for paid subscribers I’m sharing a raw, unedited, passage from my notebook which might stumble upon a kernel of an idea, but which I’m still trying to shape into something more. There’s a lot of alligator wrestling ahead, but perhaps there’s some Pith present, if still eclipsed. I hope it provides some interesting insight into my writing process, and perhaps prompts something in you. If so, I’d be interested to hear what!

“Impossible things are happening every day.” – Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella

This past month we had a blue moon. If you believe the papers, not any old blue moon, but a super blue moon. Very much the opposite of my beer. Which is a very regular blue moon, and now slightly warm.