Writing is a pen, scratching on paper. Paper, made out of trees, sunshine, water. Ink is toxic, from petroleum, but in my book rather the opposite: carbon-sucking algae.

Writing, as we saw in the updated intro to the old “Murder, She Wrote,” is now mostly pixels on a computer screen, a sort of magic born of electricity born of coal, usually, but now, more and more, wind, and solar, and all that goes into making those harnessing technologies possible.

Writing is a hand, holding the pen. Education, the mind and body wielding it. Memories, trauma, joys, insights, learning, dreams, studies, ideas from a few hours spent curled up in an old armchair with a good book read in the light of a lamp on a Sunday evening in early January.

Writing is Maitri: contemplation, the fruits of ones relationship with oneself, expressed via empathy (caring) to others, leading to catharsis, enlightenment (relatively, at least) and then community through our respective acts of writing, reading, sharing, commenting.

Writing is simple, yet it is complex. It is an intersection, it is a highway, it is a journey within, shared without.

When we write with simple intention we take care of ourselves, we get to know ourselves, we garden ourselves. When we read and comment and share and contemplate we harvest. And our community may join in that harvest at the farmers market. Just as a farmers market is for the public, our writers market is for the public.

We get to know ourselves and share the fruits of that journey and that’s what we share. It is blessed work that begins simply, and connects high and low and in and out and left and right and up and down, to all things, either directly or indirectly.

Join Elephant’s independent community, and leave Big Tech behind. Write. Read. Comment. Share. Contemplate. Delight. Learn. Benefit. Support. And be supported.

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