Well, That About Negates Post 1

Definitely not getting easier. I am sitting on approximately four posts right now. No, you can't see them. Yet.

Staring at the blank white screen, cursor bar blink-blinking, keys click-clacking. This is music and a beat I usually can work myself into, finding a rhythm in my inconstant key-tapping. Sometimes my middle finger hits the "t" key, sometimes a pointer finger. It all depends on which is closest. Which is faster. My fingers dance, crab-walk, now quickly, now slowly, sometimes careful, sometimes in a blinding flurry- don't blink. But sometimes I falter, and once off a beat, I am lagging, behind, trying to catch up to the whriling dervish in my brain. Yes, that has a beautiful ring, no, those words don't flow. Flow, I need something something better, something worthy. Every day, I try to read something of merit. How very subjective that statement is. That I could be accountable to anything daily when I cannot even account for my own body, my pain level. Now, on a scale of one to ten- who's to say? What if my four is your ten? What if my blinding headache is your moment of relief?

I fold into myself, falling softly into shavasana. Think of nothing. Move nothing. Only my fingers click-clacking, tip-tapping a rhythm, a beat, unsteady, uncertain, a pitter patter of words. Words are clutter, suffocating, strip them away. Where is the heart what is the soft, gooey center what is holding it together. What is holding ME together? Last week, I went to the park almost every day. I saw no one I knew. But every time, I see someone I almost recognize. It's like in a dream, when you're with a group of your friends. You don't know who they are really, and your conscious mind doesn't recognize them, but in your dream, they are your friends and you know it. The contstruct is built.

I have nothing and everything to write about. I am waiting for the spark to light the fire of my creativity, but I am missing steel from my kit. Of flint, I have no end. I am bad kindling, too damp, to weak to catch fire. I once burned with everything unsaid in my head. Now it is all smoke and mirrors, inspiration fleeing before I can quite put words to it. Whirling dervish, spinning top, slow your rattle. Let oxygen come to fan the flames. I am singly-suited in cards, too much clinging to one straight and narrow path to open myself to anything else, too open to mixing metaphors into an incomprehensible soup that spills from my spoon. I have begun and scratched, sunk the eight ball on the break.

 I am in the midst of Pride and Prejudice. Yes, again. It strikes me how apt my reading choices are. How much pride can stand in the way of a good relationship, friendly or otherwise. How a preconceived notion or strongly held belief can keep people apart, no matter how well-intended or misguided.

I was once told my words were beautiful and I strive to get back to that place, that frame of mind, to snap the picture of it, capture the essence on filmy paper and secure it in an album to go back to when I need it. Here I was, and here, and here. Here, I felt, really felt. But the film seems overexposed, the focus blurry, the image grainy when washed in chemicals by hand. Wash, revise, edit as I go. Staged. Forced. Just relax. Sift the photos in my hands until I find the moment that defines me. Can there be just one moment to capture the breadth of a being? My clawing at jagged shards of instinct leads me to believe that I want to believe this. But does that mean I do? I grasp at straws until, hands gouged and bleeding, mind sore, I sink back into myself, my keyboard, music and rhythm, reconstructing my walls higher, better, designing the resevoir, diggin the well from which I will next draw water.

May Blogging be Like Reading in Public

Reading in the park is not an easy, relaxing, leisurely thing to do if you're someone like me who is constantly paranoid about being looked at. I am not a "center of attention" kind of girl. Birthday parties are my nightmare. So when I felt the need to escape the sanctuary of my home, my cozy little chair inside and my bench on the deck outside, to read out in the big wide open world where anyone could see, it took some getting used to. I found my favorite park. I found a perfect spot.

I sat on the picnic table in the shade and read. At first I did my best not to look up from the page. At first I could not concentrate at all. I would sit, staring at the same place in my book until I felt it was time to go home. I felt so silly. People passing by my perfect picnic table in the shade walked their dogs, pointed out the lily pads and ducks to their small children and chatted amongst themselves. No one pointed an accusatory finger at me, asking how dare I read literature in a park. No one cared. With that realization, I kept going back.

That park, that picnic table, has become my place. I don't have to be anyone there, just a girl reading a good book. I don't have to be efficient, witty, put together, composed, animated or prepared. I don't have to pretend that I care about anything. My world is primarily composed of paper, ink, cardstock. That wonderful book smell as the vanillin in the pages breaks down. In that brief time (almost) every day, I myself seem to be comprised of these elements.

Now, I know the thing I am both dreading and anticipating, the thing I cannot define but am waiting for, will not happen, and I read. In Rabbit, Run, there is perhaps one of the saddest pieces of writing I have ever in my life clapped eyes on. I could read it over and over, a fantastically crafted stream of consciousness, barreling like a freight train to an inevitable ending, but still a shock when the conclusion was reached. I could read it over and over, and I did, sitting there in the park. Pieces of writing like that literally and figuratively bring me to my knees. Right there in the park with no one looking (I hope).


So this first post, however daunting, is hopefully my gateway as that first visit to the park with a book in my hands. I am positive that everyone is looking at me, though the truth is probably that no one will notice my ripples in the water. The tide is crashing in elsewhere. But I am gaining momentum.