I am beginning to understand my path as a writer, and what I want my work to stand for. I am perpetually searching for humanity in all things, farming emotional nuggets from moments and memories distant and near.
I wish I could say where each piece draws its inspiration, but the answer is a lot of places. My work is not autobiographical but "patho-biographical." It pinpoints, perhaps, an emotional pulse in a lifetime of relationships, reading, and understanding.
I am grateful to have an outlet for weekly expression that I can share, and you can read. The rest of my life is spent toiling away on novels, such an internal endeavor, it's hard to mark my progress in any meaningful way. The work itself is satisfying, but there is no immediate response.
I hope you enjoy my meanderings, I certainly enjoy pulling words out of my journal each week to share them with you.
I do. I do.
I do not care about pressed napkins, dusted pianos or three course meals. But you do, so I do. You do not care about harmonies, staccato rhythm, or poetry. But I do. I do.
You cannot say a million things and I cannot say a million more. We tiptoe across each other like lovers in the nighttime. Like poets uttering only innuendo, only metaphor. But we are not lovers and we are not poets.
I was born of you and you were born of me. An umbilical cord stretches across states and time zones connecting two bodies, each puppets puppeteered by the other.
I do not care about quilted toilet paper, matching upholstery or crystal stemware, but you do, so I do. You don’t care about lines on a canvas, the difference between dawn and dusk, or cheeseburgers that taste even better when you eat them in the car. But I do. I do.
You are a frustrating reminder that you can’t love exactly everything about any one person. You have to pick what you love. Discard the rest. Even though your daggers are sharper than the rest. Even though they stay with me like a cloud of gnats, biting over and over until I get used to their perpetual sting.
You are the crate and barrel to my thrift store cacophony, you are the dust free, grout-less tile, matching pillow case nightmare to my rug-free, scratched paint, sweaty dream.
What do you want but for the rest of us to be like you? What do you want but for the mess to stay outside, and the dreams to stay gray and in bed where they belong?
We are led leveled and hard boned and different. We are different but on a spectrum from A to Zed, from high to lowest of low we are the same. We are from the same street corner. Literally. We read the same books, we dated the same man, we loved the same movies, we cried the same tears.
We grew up together, even if I’m not entirely sure I know what that means. Now, there are not enough seats on your prim couch for one more me, and there is not enough wild in my world for one more you.
I sink back into pillows and you perch on a thin wire frame. And because you care about pressed napkins and euro shams and curtains that close, I do. I do.