An aggregate of berries and ideas

   Sometimes writing is easier for me, other times, more difficult. This particular blog entry has been one of the more difficult ones, and so I begin again with a slate that has been cleared of written words, but a brain that is still full of ideas from previous attempts at this subject. Generally, the way I write about a particular subject is to form some ideas with words, fine tune them, and edit, which usually involves me removing a few words or a sentence here and there. For this entry, I have chosen to delete everything that I have written, as I had lost control of my ideas, and felt that I had to abandon ship.

   I have never thought of myself as a writer, and only began writing four years or so ago as a way to express some thoughts that I felt needed to be exercised from my brain's exclusivity, and my visual art background and interest did not seem to offer an avenue for them. Perhaps I just needed a change of form.

   As a visual artist, I had for years taken the approach of an assembler (putting visual elements together), and the act of writing has turned out to be exactly that for me, though I never knew that would be the case. I find it beautiful that words are so impermanent and so easy to change, as it allows me to be so free when I use them, and I can just add and remove them at will, and even reuse the same one again if I so choose. Together, they form sentences and hopefully, coherent thoughts that are true to what I want to convey. Often, I end up writing about something in a way that has seemingly taken shape only through the process of writing, devoid of what I was trying to elicit.

   I began this blog entry with the intent of writing about blackberries, learning through previous attempts that they are called an aggregate fruit, as a single berry is an aggregate of sixty to one hundred berries. The challenges that I have had in finishing this piece has fostered the idea of writing and blackberries as an aggregate subject, and I consider both to be special in their own way.

   Below is a picture that I took of a blackberry that I was soon going to eat, and marveled, as I usually do, at it's intricate structure. I eat a lot of blackberries, much more so than any other fruit, because they are low in sugar (which I have to be careful of, as my blood sugar tends to run a bit high), easily transportable, and often times very delicious. Each individual berry contributes to the cluster in a way that I cannot see what holds them together, and one of my finished blog pieces feels like a similar construction. Although blackberries have a short shelf life (even when refrigerated) which pushes me to buy them regularly and often, I still do what is necessary to keep me stocked up, because I feel like I'm taking care of myself when I do so. Writing feels the same way.