evolution

I was deeply inspired what seems a lifetime ago by a writer who for some reason thought I was a decent read. I reread a couple of his posts tonight for old-time’s sake, loved them, said so, and then reading through the comments saw that I had already expressed my love for them when they were written and posted in 2018. I laughed when I saw my alter, alter ego–the 3rd (?) iteration of me. Why I hold on to nothing and resurface now and then like a turtle in a pond is a mystery. I try not to read too deeply into myself. Not much good comes of it.

Writing is different for me now, mostly because I have no time for anything but an occasional blurb in response to a prompt that catches my eye. Prompts are easier for me to write a response to than for me to follow up on an original thought. I feel like I’ve run out of those. In fact, that occurrence, the one when all the ideas were used up, likely happened millennia ago and the ideas keep reincarnating and mixing around with other stuff in people’s brains to make new ideas that have also come and gone. All of everything has been written already. It’s just most of the words have been forgotten. Or they’re in books I haven’t read. There are a lot of those, some of which are in a stack on the shelf over there under the ones I’ve reread multiple times. Whatever the case, deep, existential thoughts evade me.

My efforts have detoured the past few years, the last two in a similar direction those efforts took two decades ago when I pursued deep thoughts of a different nature. Ones that require lots of weird math. This blog has been my attempt to hold onto the writer in me. But the space has become an occasional, quick escape. Makes me sad. But time is a thief, and I have so little of the bits between later and now when all the big stuff happens, like work and life-altering events, that writing seems wasteful use of my time. I’ve reached an age when everything I do matters because the clock is ticking faster. I remind myself I have a good 40 years left provided genetics and avoidance of major disasters holds up. That’s almost a second half of life, one whole chunk of time nearly equal to what I have already lived. But less happens in the second half, which makes the clock more noticeable. The ticking is louder these days, and life is slipping by. Do I have time for the tiny details anymore? My sense of urgency to fit the expectations I have for my life in the next four decades overshadows the whimsical world I once lived in my head. Social media has replaced brain space I reserved for the reinvented original ideas I once conjured. I don’t like that word, conjured. I feel its meaning has been altered, though it hasn’t really. I have just allowed it to lean toward a more sinister meaning, the consequence of being led astray by mindless entertainment. Media has contributed to the bastardization of word-craft. Memes have replaced prose, condensing ideas to a single image. We immediately absorb what was once savored, then scroll to the next random (or not so random) tidbit that an algorithm has decided would entertain us. My attention span is not what it was once, and that has had a profound effect on how I spend my leisure time. Hence the neglected stack of unread books under the stack of read ones that, themselves, are gathering dust. It’s not really that I don’t have time for them, it’s that I choose to give in to the instant gratification of social media. Soon I’ll forget my words altogether.

I miss my writer friend who helped me nurture them. I think he has slipped into the ether. Or is buried in a book. Not writing where I can find him, anyway. Who will inspire me now? I need to read those books. I need to reread Bluebeard.

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.