Must there always be reason to write? To concretize thoughts into words, written, encoded, inscribed, carefully put together so that they can roll off your tongue, feel soft between your lips and gently echo what is in your head? I guess for me, the answer will always be a resounding, yes!
I’ve had so many things that I’ve been meaning to write about. However they all must first swim in my head and wait for just about the right time to be born into the written word. It calls me but speaks to me at the most inopportune time, like when I am in the shower, or when I’m pushing the grocery cart in the supermarket, or in the car on our way to work. Then they’re gone and I try my best to recapture that moment of inspiration. It’s never easy but they haunt me and push me so that I can make them real.
I got notebooks exclusively for these sorts of thoughts so that they can’t sneak away, which I truly hate. I hate waking up the next morning knowing for sure there had been an inspiration for writing while I was drifting off to sleep—something that had to do with how the fates had intended for me to think this thought so that it can lead me to the next so that altogether they make up one cohesive piece. I’m trying to keep these from being stolen away, thus the notebooks, which I can’t have one too many. There’s quite a handful by my bedside table—some completely filled out, some with nothing at all, a few half-filled, with blank pages feeling a bit betrayed because they have not been used, yet. Some day, one day soon, I’ll find time and fill them up with words for celebrating, for mourning, for telling.
There will be a time when I will write about hate and fate. I will talk about feelings of guilt, and experiences of late. I will, I will. There’ll be a page to celebrate being a woman, who’s feisty but true. I will write about love, yes, I will. I will commemorate friendships—one of the bestest things in the world; I swear I can survive whatever, whenever by having friendship alone.
I will encourage with words that will have so much meaning to me, and a friend, or two. I will use words to comfort, to shield friends from pain. I will, I will. And then later, we will laugh because I will continue with telling them stories my grandmother told me, like the time she cut off her pet monkey’s tail, so that in turn, they can tell the same story to their daughter’s daughter, and they will laugh over that same train of thought, extending some thread of life, until the granddaughters of our grandest sons fill their heads with somehow the same thought and feel the knack to write. I will write till my hands hurt and our eyes blur. Until our backs kill us, and arthritis pains our sides. Till up the time that perhaps I begin forgetting the words to describe why I have a penchant to write. Until then, I may rest some but will not stop. Yes, I promise, I will not.
But for now, I let the words find its way to that space in that tiny note keeper which is always keep with me. Its pages are labeled “this and that” and “so and so,” and I fill it up with phrases and secret codes when I have that aha moment. I know I promised writing 52 times this year and I had all the best intentions. But with Feb gone and only one entry then to show for, I realize that sometimes I just can’t force the words out. They’d have to circle their route, get lost somewhere in my head first because they’re lousy map readers, but they’d find their way here. They’re pretty smart and I betcha, they will eventually end up here.
***
Pictured: A cupcake, from Sonja’s
Finally Dee 