Journal & Musing

  • extensive lung capacity

    I just started writing again after a long absence. That’s not true. I write little notes on my phone all the time. This particular spot here is about a minute old, so I can’t say that I’ve been absent from here. What I have kept my distance from is sharing anything substantial, partly because I haven’t felt like sharing and partly because I haven’t written anything of substance in a long time. Too long. I don’t feel myself when I’m not spouting absurdities, and I haven’t been myself in a while. I’ve been living some version of myself that the real world sees. I’ve avoided the inner me. She never really knew herself any better than I did, and that’s likely why she writes or why she would write if I gave her the chance. Writing is reaching for words in the dark. It’s finding something that isn’t there and shining a light on it. She was always pretty good at pointing out the unobvious because her blindness to reality trained her to see the details that no one else could. But she I have had to live in the real world the past few years and have lost touch with the yummy details, those nuances that hide around corners and peek between the wooden slats of the fence as you pass by, like smiles in the negative spaces where the silhouettes of tree limbs curl around patches of blue sky.

    Nah. I’ve been aware of them. I’m discovering that inner me and outer me are actually the same me. In my second half-century I am finally able to reconcile the two. I’ve just been too busy for a pesky imagination.

    That’s what imaginations become when you get busy with real-life stuff: pesky.

    Anyway.

    I’m considering crawling back into this den of slippery words and making alphabet soup again. I could leave one foot out of the covers to balance my imaginary world with a little cold reality. Give my reality a little warm imagination. No need to be so polarized. Right? I think I need to at least try writing again. Seriously. Inner me needs to come up for a breath.

  • the struggle

    It’s in the dark where words are found. They run from the light where any old fool can pick through them. They like to be discovered and manipulated. They like to manipulate. The relationship between the writer and the words is symbiotic: a mutual benefit between the user and the used. Which is the used is up for debate. The struggle is real.

    And yet, writers continually allow themselves to be tortured by the need to seek and find the most elusive words. I often think of them, those words, as imps. But when coerced, when manipulated by the craftiest hands, they are beautiful. I fear the challenge and yearn for it all the same. More often than not, the words best me. Occasionally I win. But the harder the struggle and rarer the victory, the sweeter the joy. Like a drug, the accomplishment of good writing sends shockwaves through my veins. Such a silly thing, really, pining for fleeting moments of joy found in arranging funny symbols into anything remotely provocative to the senses.

    What is it like to master the art? I suppose it’s best I never find out. My life would cease to exist in the real world if I do, and I’m told that I’m needed there.