After all these years, a way of writing is still a way of writing

 

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A Way of Writing is an essay written by American poet William Stafford (1914 - 1992) and published in nineteen seventy. In the short essay, he details his writing philosophy, beginning with this sentence:

"A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is        someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he    would not have thought of if he had not started to say them."

     In the summer of nineteen eighty-six, an English professor at UNC-Greensboro used Stafford's essay as a writer's prompt for his students. I sat at a desk in his class and wrote the following response: 

Books, like people, leave you with a feeling

 

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I remembered a book I read when I was around ten years old, but I could not remember its title. It was about an animal, a fox, I thought, and I loved the story. The author, as well as any other identifying characteristics, were buried deep in my subconscious, underneath an accumulation of years and other books. I tried to dredge up those particulars, but they were buried too deep, and I finally gave up on having the pleasure of reading it again.

    Fast forward a few years.

A time to keep and a time to give away; "To every thing there is a season"

 

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Someone I know is cleaning up his life. He is selling or giving away the bulk of his possessions. Things like a vintage car, a tractor, a truck, a vacant chicken house, a kit for a building he never built, a fiddle, a mandolin, books ... 

    "It's all going," he tells me. 

    Why? Because he is an octogenarian, and time for him is running out. So that his children will have less to do when he departs to a place where clutter does not exist, he is sweeping out the contents of his house and barns and sheds. These acts of simplification have been underway for several months, and he is making headway, but there is more to do, as his earthly possessions are plentiful.

    Earthly possessions. We all have them, and most of us have more than we need.

    I ran across an article about this very thing, along with the mention of a book titled, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter (2017). The title reminded me of Someone I Know, and I decided to read the book.