“Writing is making sense of life” (Nadine Gordimer).
Last night I thought of this post from so so long ago, and thought, yes, time passes but something remains. Long time Nine Cent Girl readers, I hope you will indulge me with a reread. Those of you new to my blog, here is a glimpse into how it all started. We all have our stories. As always, I’d love to hear more of yours.
In these last weeks dominated by the Wood Snake I want so badly to shed the old useless notions but am overwhelmed by what I can’t control which is seemingly controlling me. It is exhausting fighting and doing nothing at the same time. So today, instead of writing about my rage and impotence to enact change, I will repost from years ago, when I considered the power of the creative spark, the one that drives our hearts and souls and minds straight into our most powerful emotion: love. Just as important now, don’t you agree. Before we venture on the Fire Horse of 2026 and realize your next bold adventure into being, let’s prepare. Be mindful. Get some rest. Dream boldly. That enormous imaginative space is just waiting for us to enter, together, to build back our beautiful collective vision with all the collective love we can muster.
Like most, I am enriched by words. Writing them, reading them, listening to and endlessly speaking them. Words arrive as gifts, born out of my imagination or within the printed material piled up throughout our home. In Kerri Andrews’ book, Wanderers, she wrote, “On foot, Woolf walks out into the fields and into her mind.” The two activities, walking and writing, mesh for me as well. Virginia Woolf cements the idea in her May 11, 1920 diary entry, “Directly one gets to work one is like a person walking, who has seen the country stretching out before.” On my daily wandering, I think endlessly about the characters dancing about in my head, as vividly as I sort out real-life dilemmas that need the same attention to pacing. Walking connects us to all that swirls about before pen hits paper or brush slides over canvas or spice gets sprinkled into the dish. Walking journeys us along the path inside and out. Books do too.
Nine Cent Girl 