Write On/Write Back
Mining The Erg, The Eternal Richness Of Everyday Experiences
(This essay by Gayle M. Petty reprinted from June, 1995 issue of Minnesota Literature NewsLetter)
Erg is that choking throat sound that you make when an idea is on the tip of
your tongue and you are not yet ready to write about it. It brings on both
restlessness and the tranquillity of suspended anticipation. (How can art not be
the result of tension?) Erg, tells us it's time to get out into the universe.
As a diversely published writer, let me share my path to the waterfall.
Our world is becoming more and more an international community. Experience
this richness at Eisenberg Fruit Company, a place where what is stocked can't be
predicted, a place to wonder rather than want. Dicker with the banana man.
Listen to the chorus of languages spoken by the shoppers. Wonder about each
person's story. Go home and write poetry.
Go to an open reading at the Coffee Gallery. The ceiling is peeling.
Overhead are exposed pipes. Benjamin safety lamps salvaged from a grainery
illuminate the reading room. Lithe poets in broomstick skirts read of newly
discovered sex and love. Mystic poets chant. An impassioned artist anguishes,
"Are these poems or raving, screaming, words?" A homeless man requests a poem
about heaven and world government. Intermittent espresso machine noises
propels the erg of artists in the air like a cry in the night. Tea is convivial.
Coffee is not. So much caffeine and raw emotion will sustain all night
writing.
Drink weekly at a round table and experience ribald laughter. Writing is a
solitary and sometimes lonely act. But as writers, we are fed by the richness of
all humanity. I can neither dictate your watering hole nor your gathering
group. I can only say for myself that I gather with musicians after rehearsal
to tell jokes and laugh. Dorothy Parker had the Algonquin round table, I
have my night at Billabongs with a Dingo Red. Coming together for connection
makes the solitary path more joyful. Writing is for the incompleted
conversations and the things unsaid that need saying. Your erg should rise
from gut level boiling over onto paper.
Collide with objects. Wander aimlessly. Visit the Axman, Harris Warehouse,
and other surplus stores as often as you do art museums. Make lists of what
you see, touch, marvel at, and buy. Go to Lunds and Byerlys and scour the
shelves for unusual foods. Eat them. Bathe yourself in music whatever your
taste. Sing to your house plants and read aloud to your cat. Go to the theatre,
often. Read books. Listen to books on tape.
We all share the erg, an emerald of wisdom. I am curious about other writers.
Do they, too, wear curlers and write in their house slippers? Readers "Once
Upon A Time," write and discuss the mining of your erg. Everyday there is
richness!
© Gayle M. Petty
Originally published
in the Minnesota Liturature Newsletter
(I have recently been informed by way of a nostalgic friend that "ERG" was the name of an electrolyte replacement beverage used by marathon runners in the late eighties. Anyone who can verify this "first meaning" of ERG is encouraged to respond.)
