Dr. Frost. Okay, he's not really a doctor...

...But his words felt like a remedy.  

There is a nook among the alders

Still sleeping in the catbird's hush.

Below, a long stone-bridge is bending

Above the runnel's silent rush.

 

A dreamer hither often wanders

And gathers many a snow-white stone.

He weighs them, poised upon his finger

Divin'ng each one's silv'ry tone.

He drops them!  When the stream makes music

Fair visions with it's vault voiced-swell,

And so, for us, the future rises,

And thought-stones stir our hearts farewell.

-Robert Frost

I took an AP lit class my senior year, and towards the end (with graduation fast approaching), we had an assignment in which we were to pick a poet, delve into their work, and find a short, concise masterpiece to present.

I am a complete nerd, so stuff like this is tremendously enjoyable.  What's interesting to me two years later is not the paper I wrote (and recently found, which is why I'm taking this to blog world), but the process I went through, which comes back so vividly.  

With this sample, I did the glad work of breaking it apart, analyzing it, taking it on rabbit trails, testing it's malleability, stretching it, hating it (after I plateaued), wadding it up and throwing it out completely, picking it up again sometime later, smoothing it out, listing all the points of application, coming to great resolve, and then writing about the process. 

Interesting because one, I can now articulate that process, and two, because I am completely ridiculous.  I do this with just about everything.  Situations and stories are always 20-step mental processes for me.  My goal isn't to get over it, mostly because I don't think I can... it's how I'm wired.  But rather my goal is to be far less ridiculous in the future. :)   

I see a 10-step process on the horizon...